Funny, even on here, I still refer to things as "tweets" when I think about them.

“Boids Demo Reel” survived as a videotape cassette on my bookshelf for many years, then was digitized for a documentary around 2010. “Breaking the Ice” was on broadcast quality reel-to-reel videotape until 2023 when Tom McMahon and others worked on a remastering for the 50ᵗʰ SIGGRAPH conference.

Why I 🧡 the web. Fliiipbook is a "simple #gif animation app for the web". www.fliiipbook.com #webtools #animation

This @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social video is absolutely INCREDIBLE. The numbers he cites, the strategy and results they produced — it’s the future. When have you heard *any* campaign talk about this, ever? (Video split in 2 to fit in Bluesky’s limits)

Having a bad day? World politics getting you down, heat too much to bear? Behold the Singer-theremin-hurdygurdy magic.

I just bought a 2nd-hand Volkswagen car, and I am gob-smacked that you can not download the user manual as a PDF anywhere. Been scouring forums, various sites, pages and pages of search engine links, but, nada. "official" VW position? You should order the dead-tree version from a dealer for €€€€

A printed ❤️ symbol from a 1702 text about the Holy Trinity.

I'm reading Bartz v Anthropic, of course, from a very practical, interested perspective. ("What can libraries let me do, and how exactly can we stay out of jail?") The first thing I notice: I didn't realize Anthropic had rolled their own GBooks. Doesn't sound prohibitively $$$. 1/3

I am really quite charmed with MonsterUI monsterui.answer.ai It feels like that moment when Bootstrap came out way back when, and made everyones lives easier. See this great video tutorial for why: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVWA...

Curious about ICONCLASS? 👉 You can still register for the two-part online workshop “Iconclass - Content Classification and Technical Features” on Monday, June 30 and Tuesday, July 1 (10:00 - 13:00) nfdi4culture.de/events/detai...

And so it begins! #isws2025 #group7

Off to Bertinoro, Italy today for: International Semantic Web Research Summer School Knowledge graphs for reliable AI 2025.semanticwebschool.org Looking forward to being a participant, and not a tutor or speaker. Fun!

And as background music at high volume: "Levi Schechtmann, born in 1999 in Hamburg, is a German pianist redefining classical music by fusing it with hip-hop, electronic beats, and contemporary sounds." open.spotify.com/album/3BHHdM...

Trying Claude Code this evening, instead of going Tango dancing. #nerd It's just too tantalizing. First thing is trying to understand an existing codebase from an opensource project I wanted to read ages ago.

Last weekend I was at a festival in Welkom, Vrystaat. Most of the people there would readily identify as "Afrikaners". Early afternoon, not many people there yet. The cover band plays the iconic "Pata, Pata" by Miriam Makeba, and the few people bop happily. Gave me the feels.

Tomorrow night in Amsterdam! www.melkweg.nl/nl/agenda/fo... Fokofpolisiekar / Van Pletzen / Early B | Melkweg

Just back home from the trip to SA, next week I will be at 2025.semanticwebschool.org Really looking forward to meeting new people and the intense week.

I’m currently on maternity leave. Biscuit-making opportunities are proving hard to come by, but I should have a couple of new sets to share soon. If you’d like to see more in the meantime: - ellahawkins.com - Instagram – @ellamchawk - Facebook – Ella Makes Cakes Happy National Biscuit Day 2025! 🍪

This Way Up in Cape Town

Happy Glorious 25th of May! GNU Sir Terry Pratchett. How do they rise up? #Glorious25th #Discworld #TruthJusticeFreedomReasonablyPricedLove #Speakhisname

I do love a good fact check.

Repeat after me: There's no genocide happening in South Africa. White people have on average longer life expectancies, better educational outcomes, higher incomes, more wealth, better healthcare access, and more local and international mobility than any other racial or ethnic group in the country.

The amazing thing is the way that the truth is blended with falsehood. True stories of crime, but with collapsed timelines and fake statistics, real rally clips assembled over 10+ years that make these songs feel ubiquitous.. This is lies through curation.

Next week I will be in Johannesburg, and the following weekend in CT. Will be on vacation with two young adults and one old toppie. (who still likes to boogie) Any tips for cultural events, music venues, festivals etc. ?

His bank accounts here in the UK have been frozen. This is his home country. Never shut the fuck about this.

How did we get here: Afrikaner Refugees edition. A 🧵 (backed up by research)

More, most excellent Afrikaans content: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOEc... Crank up the volume, and enjoy. (ons is nie almal so nie)

Extraordinary to see the gap between how both pro- and anti-Trump Americans are talking about Afrikaners, and how almost anyone talks in South Africa. Antis, I know you think you’re helping but we generally frown on racial abuse in South Africa, even against your political opponents.

International scientific collaborations that involve the US are complex now, but a good start is to assume you're collaborating with the 18c. The state is largely hostile to science. Economic theory is mercantilist. Travel is difficult. Research funding depends on the goodwill of quirky aristocrats.

OK, enough moaning from me. What are Afrikaans people actually like? Like this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kLt... Beautiful doccie about some real people.

How is it possible that people in the USA that consider themselves good people, can allow an actual genocide to take place, while putting on a show about a fake genocide from SA and shipping off some other desperate people from one continent to another? Does not compute. Heartbreaking.

Watched this lecture last night: www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_ed... Incredibly clear and entertaining lecture by Richard Feynman, still useful today, explaining the nuts and bolts of our universe.

Dis altyd beter in Afrikaans. 🤣 Die Groot Tsek. Na die land van Trompie Mammon.

It feels so silly saying anything "normal" in these times, and yet this is what we must do. Keep on doing what we do, spread the understanding, build stuff, maintain "normality" for what it's worth. Reminder: "Do not go gently into that good night. Rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Not all Americans are stupid, racist, greedy, lying, hypocritical fuckers. Nor are Afrikaners all backwards, dimwitted, religious twats. Some of them are friends and family, and I love them dearly. My heart goes out to the contingent of true mensch people in both camps hanging their heads in shame.

From the horses mouth. www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025...

How can you so blatantly be a horrible person? It can't just be utter stupidity.

Reading through arxiv.org/pdf/2504.04584 BARQ: A Vectorized SPARQL Query Execution Engine Insightful sharing from the authors explaining the new architecture of Stardog

Amen! Remember when this used to excite you luigitesch.io/2025/05/01/r...

After being fairly rattled by this: ai-2027.com - I am re-reading the The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. (from 1990!) He was eerily prescient in his tales with regards to the AI clades, and other things like social media and communications forms. Hard SF for The Win! 🤖💀😍

Friday moment to share some African joy. If you were ever curious for some excellent contemporary Afrikaans music: open.spotify.com/playlist/0PN...

Whoo-hoo! Redis is open source again. antirez.com/latest/0 In the early days, I was an enormous Redis fan-boy. It was just so incredibly useful. In the past few years I have sorta just stopped using it as other things proved even more userful. But looking at the huge range of new features...

Ooof! This post hits me in the feels. Bit moist around the ole peekers as I type.

Listening to the "Voëlvry" CD, music of the alternative Afrikaans movement in the 90s, and it hits me: seems like the same vibe we had then as the folks in the USA are feeling now. Authoritarian, racist, conniving, lying, opportunist greedy peeps rising to power and then refusing to let go.

Know what? For me the "hood" over here has pretty much become what I missed on Twitter. I am getting almost the same value and feels from years gone by over there. The transition has happened! Happiness is.

Something I suffer from with software is this: "Give someone a hammer, and everything looks like a nail" It is a bit of a bad habit which is _very_ hard to kick.

"Afrikaans is a karos under which all her children have to lie, and where there is often a wrestling match when someone feels they are not being properly covered." www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/... Absolutely adore this essay.