People have all kinds of takes on why conversation pits stopped being a thing but the real answer is just that Americans eat fewer beans.

Atlas V is an incredible rocket, and one I will miss dearly. Last night the final Atlas V 551 put on a show that can only be described as breathtaking. I have had one shot in mind for this variant for years, and not only did I finally get it on my last chance, it might be my best work yet.

There's no backwards compatibility anymore

A plot of the most colorful birds.

The "high" in "highwaymen" stands for "high trust."

I spent the last month obsessed with finding colors that can't be displayed on a conventional screen. This is what I found. moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/w...

The signs said "road work ahead" but actually road no work ahead.

I have computed the bird chromaticity convex hull: Asian Green Broadbill Crimson Seedcracker Emperor Fairywren Fork-tailed Woodnymph Golden-crowned Kinglet Green-winged Pytilia Long-tailed Sylph Mountain Velvetbreast Orange-breasted Bunting Paradise Tanager Violet-tailed Sunbird Violet-tailed Sylph

I sometimes enjoy reading ancient history as it was known to later ancients. Plato had an understanding of environmental history which I find interesting both for what he knew and for what he didn't know.

Kicked out of the Turing test for being too interested in goblins.

This calls to mind a time when one mathematician I know sat on a proof he found unsatisfying in the correct belief that another mathematician would, within a year, produce a better proof of the same result.

My personal bugbear is the "wildlife numbers have declined by 73% in 50 years" line people get from WWF. That is a fact about a set of populations but not a fact about their sum! Its relationship to what you're thinking of is highly sensitive to the relative sizes of the populations involved!

sorry, not sorry

We are Discovered. Flee at once.

And again.

I've been seeing more people talking about how poorly our corn ethanol policies serve us and it makes me happy.

nature occasionally red in tooth and claw but quite frequently just wants scritches

Most alfalfa grown in the US stays in the US and most alfalfa grown in Arizona stays in Arizona. The problems with irrigating alfalfa fields in the Southwest are mostly not about the export market.

Six-factor authentication.

The problem is that it's too easy.

Another day, another phone call for the person who had my number 20 years ago.

You get a transparent truth predicate T, but in the T-free subsystem everything looks classical. The nonclassical system asks you to give up uniform substitution and cut, but you can keep them in the classical subsystem and cut is eliminable there anyway. The Liar and Curry become failures of cut.

It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should wither the curiosity of one of these little ones with the UX from hell and the problem queue from lesson one extending into eternity.

It's not just you, strawberries have less flavor and aroma than they used to. One surprising reason was published this year. No one wants anthracnose and botrytis eating their strawberries, so growers apply a fungicide like Pristine 38WG or Abound 2.08F or Quadris Top 1.67SC.

Who called it Parkinson's Law and not Procrustination?

It's true: if you hold this up to your ear you can hear Woody Guthrie.

i built an entire x86 CPU emulator in CSS (no javascript) you can write programs in C, compile them to x86 machine code with GCC, and run them inside CSS lyra.horse/x86css/

Two pileated woodpeckers graced the dead tree out back this morning. :)

Summer snow among the wildflowers in the Rockies. Walking across the suddenly pedestrianized lakes, crystals creaking underfoot. Lying on a bed of snow looking up at a vast blue sky. Looking up at the snowflakes lit by a street lamp, falling out of the void, marking space in the air. This.

all men are brothers you sons of bitches

If you have a hypertext problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the <a/> Team.

Ever wonder what birds really look like without the Mercator projection? www.cfpayne.com/work-1/peopl...

When I say that AI is using all of our water, I just mean that I think irrigation control systems are intelligent.

Chocolate chip cookies not only with browned butter but with browned, cooked down pumpkin purée and a little pumpkin spice and a sprinkle of flaky salt on top.

Who called it "symmetry breaking" and not "going chiral"?

Big weekend for moon-gazers.

Everybody wanna be a transfluvial salt merchant, but don't nobody wanna lift no heavy ass.

Sadly this revenue did not materialize. That was a difficult earnings call.