Curling explained...

Fun take on understanding English through its evolution open.substack.com/pub/colingor...

Well, that's book 5 of Lord of Mysteries finished.

I've been using the new AI tool from Claude and it is hella amazing. It is working independently for longer. Doing better when it does and it's subtly better in a way that's hard to describe. It's clear, despite all the hype, my job as it used to be is gone.

@mrjamesob.bsky.social Bedford CC dealing with the bigots like an absolute boss.

Having installed peon ping for Claude, I can now be notified of issues standing in the way of my coding tasks thanks to the sounds of Managed Democracy and the Helldivers 2 sound pack. For Super Code!

#protecttransrights #genderaffirmingcaresaveslives #genderaffirmingcare #transkids #lgbtqrights #LGBTQRightsAreHumanRights #transrightsarehumanrights

So, I've just finished book 4 of Lord of Mysteries and just, wow was it good. Spoilers to LoM books 1-4 below. No spoilers for books 5 and onwards for me please, I'm still reading!

One of the wickedest things Wes Streeting has ever done is push politically convenient falsehoods about suicide rates amongst young trans people. We have new data from the National Child Mortality Database that exposes the truth he tried to cover up.

I'm really enjoying reading Lord of Mysteries, a Chinese take on the Cthulu mythos, mixed with isekai and SCP Foundation. I'm in book 3 and it's just a great world setup, with an interesting magic system and Visctorian setup, and there's so much to read that it's meaty and fun.

I'm increasingly finding myself telling my boss "Here is some code I'm submitting for code review. I don't know what it does or how it works. I only know it works, has tests and passes all of our linting rules." AI driven coding is increasingly changing what it means to code.

A new systematic review has found that trans women on HRT have the same level of fitness as cis women and don't retain any advantage in sports. www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

Back from another Contingency TTRPG Convention. I had a really good time and played some great games. Tried Cyberpunk Red, Shadowrun: Anarchy, Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, Daggerheart, Era: Friction, Mumchums, Great Martian Tripod Race and Heartbeats in Perfect Sync. Details in thread.

This is really interesting, about floating solar power, which is such a great idea. medium.com/the-new-clim...

Went for an eye appointment and discovered I seem to have conditioned myself to use my left eye for distance and my right for close up work. It's something the optician said he'd never seen for what it's worth.

So, after I told a DnD friend of mine about a setting I created when I was young and stupid, he said (broadly) "that's cool, if we add these things, then it'll be better". He was indeed right, and he is the reason we worked together to create a fun setting for my next campaign.

Today, I specifically had the urge for supermarket pizza. I have now satisfied that urge!

There are many things I love about anime, but occasionally it just confuses the hell out of me. One of the most confusing is the undying popularity of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umamusu... which features racehorses anthropomorphised as pretty girls. It's... 🤷‍♀️

Canada's leader saying it like it is: open.substack.com/pub/stevesch... I wish we had such clear eyed leadership.

Keir Starmer did everything he could to be US poodle and his strategy has ended in total humiliation. Both him and Farage are puppets of a hostile foreign nation. It's obvious that if someone is a bully - you don't just keep appeasing them. Disastrous strategy by Labour.

Anne McCaffrey has always been my illness comfort read, and while I've been recovering I picked up Restoree. It's her first book, first published in 1967, and not even remotely her best. But it is a straightforward kidnapped off Earth pulp sci-fi novel with the gender of the main character swapped.

In a screeching u-turn from its Manifesto the Government now backs conversion therapy for trans people. That is what 'supporting' trans youth but denying them the medicine they need to physically transition means.

I'm done with this winter. I'm ill and off work for the third time and this time it's hitting me really hard.

I was puzzled for a moment about why DHS would release the phone footage from the murderer's point of view, since it clearly shows that the murderer was in no danger from the victim.

I watched the first episode of an anime called Shiboyugi yesterday. It was well told, well animated and well plotted but holy hell was it fucked up. Nope. Just nope. It's SAW the anime and what is wrong with you people...

If you build world-class public transport, people will use it. Six of the UK’s most used railway stations are on the Elizabeth line, and all 10 are in London.

crowdsourcing: looking for online articles/essays that provide a comprehensive account of how the anti-trans backlash was a highly coordinated & well-funded effort. I have lots of examples that tell part(s) of the story, but none that lay the whole thing out. pls share any you can think of. thanks!

Just watched the first episode of "Sentenced to be a Hero" and THAT is the way to open an anime season. If the rest of it brings even part of that energy it's going to be good.

Ah Pulumi... I come back after the holidays expecting to run a command that goes "no changes", and it goes "you need to recreate everything, and delete all your S3 buckets and recreate them" Why, Pulumi, why?

This is just amazing. A historical piece set in the Star Wars universe analysing the Empire/Republic conflict as we would with real history. mobunited.wordpress.com/2017/12/15/t...

2026 beginning of the year cleaning up files on my PC and found this one a friend send me when working on some code. Every developer can relate. #solodev #indiedev #development

I just went to change some bedding before bed and didn't realise just how wrong that simple thing could go. But, I have lost bedding mysteriously and smashed crockery and I'm just grateful the bed is still standing to right now.

This is your regularly scheduled reminder that the US possesses the ability to turn our economy off and then back on again. I am sure after recent events in Venezuela this causes you no concern. Carry on.

To my TTRPG fans, you need to hear this: youtube.com/playlist?lis... Brilliant set of songs covering an imaginary campaign ranging from the funny to the serious. In particular Reflections Lie hits hard.

This address by Cory Doctorow is a great summary of everything that is wrong with the internet and how to fix it. pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/3... A good entry point for the various people I talk internet security with.

another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls

Just before Christmas I started Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation and just finished season 1. It's living up to the high praise I've heard from others as a great and simple Isekai about a flawed but heroic character.

A worthy Christmas topic, to which I have donated. Please do so if you can.

Last Christmas I gave you my heart The very next day Kali ma shakti de

I've come down I'll and so I've just been playing some games to pass the time and distract from feeling awful. A hidden gem I've discovered is Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. If you've not encountered this game, it's really giving me vibes as a spiritual successor to Baldurs Gate 2

This Christmas I'm enjoying some comfort watching of films. So far, with friends, who are less keen on watching things they'd seen before, I've researched Starship Troopers and Porco Rosso.

This. I don't understand how removing rights from immigrants makes other workers have better rights. Instead it undermines the rights of everyone. This the US, but it's the same here in the UK

Just watched the Big Short and it really reminded me why I hate the financial system. I remember living through the 2007/8 crisis and wondering how any of what they were saying made sense. It didn't, it fell down. But at every stage it was always fine, until they couldn't pretend anymore.

This article sums up real consequences of the kind I envisaged when I voted against leaving the EU. It's depressing to be so right. open.substack.com/pub/iratusur...

Robin Ince reveals to last night’s audience at a recording of Infinite Monkey Cage that the BBC has forced him to resign over his support of trans people

lol it’s so genuinely fun seeing Cory take decades of fluency in how these systems are broken and serve it up for a mainstream audiences. Even if you know “enshittification” well, this is worth the watch. And love to @eff.org! youtu.be/d2e-c9SF5nE

Over the past couple of weeks I have been rewriting the deployment of AWS's Elemental video encoding pipeline reference implementation into SST and Pulumi.

Fun company trip to see the musical Matilda, which was a lot of fun. Followed by a nice meal out.

Every time I doubt the adage that there is no coding problem that cannot be fixed by a good night's sleep, I have mornings like today to remind me that it's valid. Today's time to fix the unfixable issue from last night: 5 minutes

The thing I love about Reddit are the weird little gems that come up, like this discussion on the powers of Excel in DnD www.reddit.com/r/DnD/s/VhEX...