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Could a new, fifth force of nature provide some answers to our biggest questions about dark matter and dark energy? We’re working on it. The Standard Model is, for all intents and purposes, the supreme accomplishment of modern physics. It describes four forces of nature, a zoo of particles, and how they all interact. It is perhaps the most successful scientific theory of all time. And it’s fantastically incomplete. It …

I had an enjoyable little discussion with Joe Murray of The Human Podcast, part of his new series, called 10 questions in 10 minutes, in which he asks his interview subjects for short answers to ten quick questions on their … Continue reading →

If the case doesn’t settle, Smartmatic’s defamation trial could happen this year.

To make progress the Conservative Party needs to acknowledge some of the recent past and move away from it, faster Giles Dilnot “For better or worse, depending on your opinion, Badenoch is not Johnson, Truss, or Sunak. Those that say she’s completely the same just need to keep repeating it to help their own party’s cause. However, she’ll need to do more, soon, to show the difference, and if she …

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In my teens my Grandpa gifted me a first series of books from his collection. In this were the Paul Karau OPC GWR branchline series and I found Hemyock. It wasn’t much later that Dapol re-released the 14xx with improved motor and thoughts turned building my first solo model railway…It was Hemyock, my first love, that fuelled my first documented attempt at ‘proto-freelance’, Stapley. Paul’s book focused only upon termini …

Accidentally discovered something very interesting while messing around with the Photoshop remove tool, which on certain settings uses generative AI to replace out whatever you select with it. In this case, was just playing around removing stuff from a photo of our living room, and saw that the tool was inventing paintings or posters that don’t exist: That one in the corner, I zoomed in on and went through a …

Some time in 2020 I started collecting CD-ROMs from old Macintosh magazines. Whilst the discs are of Japanese origin—because the supply was plentiful during the extended spring clean of lockdown—they contain a great deal of software from all over the world and a lot of it is therefore in English. They’re an amazing source of old gold: sofware, images, demos, documentation, and many other files. As of today I have …

If you’re going to ask me my favorite foundation at the moment, I’d immediately tell you it’s the Kanebo Lively Skin Wear which I got in an event last 2023. After I tried that, most foundations just couldn’t compare. When I saw that Kanebo has launched another foundation, I knew I had to get it. […]

Just over five years ago (over New Year’s) Viv and I visited Los Angeles, and the part we were staying in is now under an evacuation order 😳 I think it’s still only the second-most shocking thing that’s happened in a place I’ve stayed, though, after the metro station I used, like, every day when I visited Santiago in 2013 was reportedly converted into a torture facility by cops (carabineros …

Contrary to expectations, nonfarm payroll employment surprises +256K vs. +164K Bloomberg consensus. The standard deviation of changes is 85K, with mean +186 (over 2024), which means the surprise is about one standard deviation. Several observers have questioned the accuracy of the CES measure of nonfarm payroll employment. On the basis of the preliminary benchmark, Heritage’s EJ Antoni argued the recession started in July. However, it’s apparent to me that there …

Sonic Advance 3 is a curious game. It disregards the speed-focused design of its predecessor, but it doesn’t return to the classic style of the original Advance. Instead it forges its own path, partially based on the teamwork-based systems of Sonic Heroes, to create an experimental co-operative 2D Sonic platformer. One that’s long-winded and often tedious, but nevertheless ambitious enough that it might be worth trying out. The story’s slightly …

An exceptional deposit of 141 Roman gold coins dating to the late 4th century has been unearthed near Holzthum in northern Luxembourg. The coins are gold solidi struck during the reigns of nine emperors who reigned between 364 and 408 A.D. Three of the 141 solidi were issued by Emperor Eugenius whose coins are rare because he reigned for only two years (392-394 A.D.) and was never acknowledged as western …

Young Stars, Dark Nebulae