Very validating to be able to fix one’s own childhood disappointment by giving younger kid a RC car that she thinks is perfect and the best gift ever. (I wished for one several years as a kid and then when I finally got one it couldn’t even turn properly, only run in circles when reversing.)

Hot take: these pro gingerbread houses are so overwrought that they leave their original aesthetic category. They entirely stop being gingerbread houses and turn into wonky-looking scale models. www.hs.fi/helsinki/art...

there is often a relevant @smbccomics.bsky.social

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a optimistic tale about how the arachnids of Klendathu could be defeated Dutch filmaker: At long last, we have parodied the Torment Nexus from terrible sci-fi novel Please Create The Torment Nexus

kids would actually be old enough to see this, hmm

The 2025 Headline of the Year Nominees 🧵

Kovaa kamaa: “Ugaritin taruissa mennään suoraan asiaan: jumalan penis on kuin vuorovesi, ja tulee pitkäksi kuin meri”. Tämä siis eräs Vanhan Testamentin Jumalan edelläkävijä. arenan.yle.fi/1-76376828?u...

Thing that should be known but apparently isn’t? Do countries where public masking is commonplace (like Japan) do measurably better on general respiratory illness stats compared to countries where it isn’t (like most of Scandinavia)?

Another way to visualize the lack of snow in Europe… Wow.

Cool middle ages factoid heard on the radio, relating to John III of Sweden, also Arch-Duke of Finland: John was afraid of assassination by his half-brother, and eggs were popular food among people in his position, because they couldn’t be poisoned! Program about this book otava.fi/linnaelamaa-...

"It is not even clear evolution can do hill climbing" I mutter to myself over and over again as I become the joker.

2025 is the year of the crank

Abyss was oddly influential for me. Saw it way too young on TV, was like 10 maybe, then parents sent me to bed *just* when they marvel at the weird comb jelly alien crafts, then finally saw the ending like 8 years later. Fun shift from submarine scare thriller to woo Cool aliens.

A perfect example of a grey rhino event. Handling something like this should be required before widely rolling out self-driving taxis.

Self-driving bikes don’t do this.

Was wondering if the navigation on the car had broke, when it kept showing u-turns on the way home. Actually it was trying to get us to drive via a charging station because the battery was low, instead of the home parking hall (where there *is* a charging station).

this seems like a very reasonable concern to have about using LLMs

a tech can actually have *lots* of practical uses and ALSO be wildly overhyped in the midst of an over-investment bubble this is in fact exactly what I think is happening with LLMs

19th century house in Loviisa rural surroundings renovated by my family; some past inhabitants scratched initials and years in the window. Never seen this before! (If someone wants to rent it as a summer house, DM for details.)

ok amazing and also: sloths apparently living the dream of ”what if your camo clothes were also snacc”

For more info, check out this awesome diagram from Pauli et al. (2014), as publicized by PBS.

honestly messed a bit with me how the film first seems to open up in the ~present, then it is ”16 years later” and, they give his age.

lol Leonardo DiCaprio’s somewhat washout character in One Battle After Another is revealed to be exactly 42 years old. So: I’m officially middle age person in films age. Even a plausible casting choice, he’s 51.

Bit like this memeified explanation. Learned the coding version, never the math notation!

Dullposting: Just replaced the final lamp in our 6-led wire spotlight living room installation. It lasted maybe 6 years. On the box it says they should work for 15 years, but that is assuming 2.7h/day. These are probably on for more than 8 hours usually. So all in all, a little worse than promised.

our house is overflowing with discarded drawings of manga girls

Checking up on classic texts is a sometimes necessary counterpoint to the experience of living in an era of exceptionally dumb takes. ”Loos concluded that "No ornament can any longer be made today by anyone who lives on our cultural level ... Freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strength"”

A happy and peaceful Christmas to all our followers.

this is baffling, although, anecdotally even places like California are quite a bit behind e.g. Finland in public charging infrastructure

Musk being a fundamental bullshitter hit home for me with hyperloop, and relatedly that showed who are buying in on the grift by not seeing hyperloop as infeasible (and possibly a scam to tank interest in high-speed rail buildout)

as someone who likes cute animal spam, I think it is also sadly not something I feel terribly outraged about. Those of us who like this content must be honest about how much are plandids or even staged

I made this association, so now you have to see it too. God jul.

The cost of grid-scale solar plus batteries has become so cheap that spreading solar power out over 24 hours is now cost-competive with building new natural gas plants in many cases. ember-energy.org/latest-insig...

Reading Gibson’s 2003 ”Pattern recognition”, Viking hardcover, and the pages are very, very yellow. Sort of though hardcover books would be made with less acidic paper. The present-future aspect of the story feels somehow cozy today. The seeds are there, for our world, that is far more cyberpunk.

I wonder if someone somewhere is trying to let Claude run their family finances. Dril candles speedrun.

incredible

'Hubris' is a recent (19th-century) arrival in English, taken directly from Ancient Greek ὕβρις. That's reflected in its spelling – English has historically rendered the Greek letter upsilon with Y (e.g. 'cycle', 'gym'), but 'hubris' gets a U. 'Hybris' is also documented, but it hasn't caught on.

Wonder how this lands with the international audience? Now, if some Asian media wishes to continue this story, they only need to get an interview with Teemu Keskisarja, because he’s more or less guaranteed to fan the flames. yle.fi/a/74-20200615

Suo, jossa olen viime viikot rämpinyt: erikoinen Suomi-slop, joka leviää Facebookissa, koska Meta ihan itse maksaa tällaisista tekoälysisällöistä nykyään. yle.fi/a/74-20197424

everything is mad libs now

Paula Koivuniemen hitin gritty reboot

Interested in a fully-funded #datavis PhD with training? Applications for our 2nd cohort of PhD students at Diverse-CDT open! We're keen to diversify the sector, encouraging anyone with enthusiasm for using 📊 to make change, even if you've not considered PhD study before: diverse-cdt.ac.uk

08.12.1917 Laatokka no 88, s.4 http://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/sanomalehti/binding/1259460?page=4 Kansalliskirjaston digitoidut aineistot

very disappointing, this about Oliver Sacks fabricating patient stories mariakonnikova.substack.com/p/the-man-wh...

always nice to see a comparative collection of book covers for different editions

this is a crazy interview.

7yo: Is Santa real? Me: what do *you* think? Well, I Don’t believe in the flying reindeers, because magic isn’t real… a friend thinks Santa is real Well you shouldn’t fight with them about it No, we don’t fight, just play fights Belief in Santa as a way of teaching kids about religious tolerance.

Eivätkä meidän haittaisänmaalliset jättäneet tätä suinkaan tähän:

Learned to drive in my 40s. Massively regret it. So stressful. Make a mistake and best case scenario is hundreds of pounds of damage, worst case is I die. Get me back to the train.

Thinking about this, I guess the 20th C. has been a period of so much change, so carols, children's songs etc. that refer earlier times feel more stable, not like dated novelties. Same tendency you see in fantasy literature that tends to be set in a fairly static world with regards to technology.