Leftovers

• El País ☛ ‘He either has no fear or he is crazy’: Buster Keaton, how Hollywood’s most influential star was forgotten and rediscovered 

  Knoxville and Keaton each filmed the scene without any tricks. Keaton – who never used stunt doubles for his extremely dangerous action scenes – used an authentic two-ton facade, with a nail on the ground marking the precise place where he had to stand. If he had moved even a couple of inches, the result could have been dramatic. It’s a classic sequence that Jackie Chan, Shrek and even The Simpsons have paid homage to.

• Deseret Media ☛ How a Swedish candy store found success in suburban Utah

  Their business quickly outgrew their original space, but the team was unable to terminate their lease, and that location sat empty. After Sonderhaus hosted a pop-up event in Salt Lake City one day and decided to include a Swedish candy wall — which was a huge hit — they realized they could use their empty storefront to sell candy.

  It took three months to get the necessary permits and set everything up. Redd, Sunderlage, Bradburn and their families built everything for the shop themselves, from shelves and ceiling tiles to the handprinted tiles on the checkout counter.

• Tracy Durnell ☛ Decisions are the foundation of art

  “Art only happens where there is room for options, where things can be fundamentally otherwise,” writes Brian Eno. That is, where there is artistic choice. Aesthetics are subjective; there are no “correct” artistic decisions, simply individual choices guided by taste, intention, genre, medium, and ability.

• Simone Silvestroni ☛ Trip to Somewhere

  Since he was a technophobe, constantly afraid of losing data, he had a maniacal relathionship with his printer. My first blog, the one I had started in 2002 and subsequently erased from my computers and from the Wayback machine, it turned out he had it. Printed, in full.

• Philip Zucker ☛ My House Mildly Burned Down

  We were escorted in again to get a bag of clothes and gather up laptops and crucial papers (checkbook, passports, etc). There was water pouring out of the light fixtures and it stank of smoke. We were very lucky to ultimately have little damage other than a ruined rug and some damage to the couch. I was worried for my books that night as they are the most valued possessions that I had to leave behind. I love my books. At the time we didn’t know how much damage there was going to be. Someone there suggested the possibility of the ceiling collapsing from water. This never happened.

• Ankur Sethi ☛ Everything is index cards

  Much of the knowledge-management software we use today is modeled after stacks of index cards. Here is a growing list of applications that are directly or indirectly digital recreations of processes and techniques commonly used with index cards in the analog world.

  I’ll keep appending to this list.

• Cost Rica ☛ The Celtic and Christian Beginnings of Halloween Explained

  Yet the holiday’s beginnings lie far from North America, tied to Celtic customs that later blended with Christian observances, creating a tradition that has shifted over centuries.

• Joel Chrono ☛ When blogging topics pop up again

  It's kind of fun when conversations and challenges go around in the blogging scene, even some older ones return from time to time, and I wonder which one's next.

• Career/Education

  • Matthew Weber ☛ Overestimating My Reading Capabilities

    Remember a few weeks ago, I wrote about how I had these plans to read a literal ton of books in October? I had been coming off my worse reading slump in ages, and dammit, I planned on finally getting some of the books off of my TBR list.

    Yeah.

  • New Yorker ☛ Inside the Trump Administration’s Assault on Higher Education

    This compact was broadly popular. Conservatives groused about ideology—in the nineteen-fifties, the public intellectual William F. Buckley, Jr., blasted Yale as dogmatically secular; in the eighties, the political philosopher Allan Bloom decried relativism—but the consensus held. “The general feeling about American higher education was that it was the finest in the world,” Margaret Spellings, who served as George W. Bush’s Education Secretary, told me. “People came from all over the world to study here. It was a major driver of our economy. Scholars and academics were widely respected.” Republican reformers worked within that consensus: Spellings convened a commission to push for greater affordability and accountability, asking colleges to provide better data on things like student outcomes and employment, but “the university community was, like, ‘Hell no—give us our money and leave us alone,’ ” Spellings recalled. “It does make me wonder if we had read the room and rung the bell back then, whether that would have prevented some of this cynicism.”

• Hardware

  • Android Police ☛ Why your TV is probably the wrong choice, and how to fix it

    Recommendations on viewing distance are nothing new. Buy a new 4K TV, and the instruction manual will likely come with advice on how far away you can place your TV so the pixels "disappear."

    However, as the study concluded, this distance is further than you think.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Ultra-HD televisions not noticeably better for typical viewer, scientists say

    Research shows 4K or 8K screens offer no distinguishable benefit over similarly sized 2K screen in average living room

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Old VCR ☛ They call it Mister Pibb (again)

    For the sake of my day job, I should also officially state you should consume Mr Pibb/Pibb Xtra or any other sugar-sweetened beverage in moderation. After all, as Steve Jobs famously said to John Sculley, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me [from Pepsi] and change the world?" If you don't have a Coke bottling plant in your vicinity, which is probably where the "select markets" are, Coke says you'll get it in the "national rollout" sometime in 2026 — and it may also be coming to a soda fountain near you.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ This Physicist Says We Don’t Take COVID Seriously Enough

    It’s an existential threat on many levels. And a long-standing belief that children are comparatively less affected is dead wrong: [...]

  • The Tyee ☛ This Physicist Says We Don’t Take COVID Seriously Enough | The Tyee

    Its central conclusion: “Health-related absences from work continued to track COVID-19 circulation and were 12.9 per cent higher in the post-pandemic period compared with before the pandemic (140,000 monthly absences).” Absences were highest in occupations with the greatest exposure to the public.

    The study added that continuing circulation of COVID variants has created “a new year-round baseline for work absences” that amounts to adding an additional flu-like season in the workplace.

    Reality No. 2: excess deaths. That’s the level of mortality above what it was before the pandemic. This metric has not returned to normal and remains significantly elevated.

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Malware implant authors can see you delete their evil code

    Rebooting an infected device removes BADCANDY, the ASD says, but warns “rebooting will not reverse additional actions taken by the threat actor and will not remedy the initial vulnerability exploited to gain access.”

    Worse, rebooting may alert attackers that they need to hack harder.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Simon Willison ☛ New prompt injection papers: Agents Rule of Two and The Attacker Moves Second

      Two interesting new papers regarding LLM security and prompt injection came to my attention this weekend.

    • Don Marti ☛ I wish I had better news on the whole quit marketing and become an electrician thing

      So I can see why getting out of marketing and into a skilled trade is tempting.

      The problem is that almost every job is a tempting target to be turned into what Cory Doctorow calls Chickenized Reverse-Centaurs. Like nursing and farming—which are both really hard—the work of an electrician is a prime target for someone to set up a gatekeeper platform to micromanage and extract value.

    • Doug Jones ☛ My current thoughts on LLMs - Doug Jones

      I don’t trust OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Facebook, Apple* or any of the companies producing the frontier models.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] Jaguar cyberattack the UK's most expensive to date: study

• Security

  • Confidentiality

    • Daniel J. Bernstein, ☛ Notes by djb on using Fil-C (2025)

      I've started accumulating miscellaneous notes on this page regarding usage of Fil-C. My selfish objective here is to protect various machines that I manage by switching them over to code compiled with Fil-C, but maybe you'll find something useful here too.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Next Move ☛ Alexander Vindman: The Military's Obligations to the Constitution

    However, Hegseth’s stunt can also be read as an attempt by the current administration to project a sense of political control over military leadership and test the waters for a future demand of personal loyalty to Donald Trump. The message from Hegseth’s rally was that culture war and personal alignment to the political interests of the current administration take precedence over the interests of the United States and every servicemember’s oath to the constitution. In the future, officers and leaders may find themselves witnesses to illegal actions or recipients of unlawful commands.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] Ivory Coast's democracy under scrutiny ahead of election

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] Louvre Museum reopens in Paris after jewel heist

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] Middle East: ICJ says Israel must ensure 'basic needs' of Gaza

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] North Korea fires ballistic missiles, says Seoul

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] Serbia: Vucic supporter shot near parliament

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] Uganda: Dozens killed in highway bus collision

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] UK sanctions Balkans-based migrant smugglers

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] US hits alleged drug-smuggling boats in Pacific, killing 5

• Environment

  • CBC ☛ As water dries up in northeast B.C., some want industrial users paying more to pump it

    She worries about how much longer her well will hold out, and what’s being done to protect the water that feeds it.

    "I’m bracing for the day I will have no water."

  • SBS ☛ What is net zero, and why have the Nationals abandoned it?

    This means the party will formally abandon its previous commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, a long-standing goal of Australian governments across the political spectrum.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Dam disasters of the 1920s made reservoirs safer—now the climate crisis is increasing risk again

    As geomorphologists who work on river processes and landforms, we are researching the landscape-changing effects of such dam breach floods, but also how topography can amplify the hazard to communities.

    As the Dolgarrog disaster showed so graphically, reservoirs that drain into steep and narrow upland valleys present a particular hazard, especially where flows increase in speed and pick up destructive boulders. All aspects of the landscape setting should be part of flood emergency planning.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] Eurostar plans double-decker trains as rivals eye Tunnel

    • CBC ☛ 2025-10-27 [Older] Cenovus raises MEG Energy offer, wins Strathcona support

    • CBC ☛ 2025-10-27 [Older] Nova Scotia Power hasn’t paid some contractors in months

    • Truthdig ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] ‘Newspeak’ Comes to the Department of Energy

    • Arduino ☛ Improving bicycle safety with voice-activated turn signals

      Bicycle safety is always a concern, but is a particularly big problem in cities where cycling is less common. Drivers in cars don’t expect to encounter cyclists and don’t know how to share the road properly. To protect themselves, cyclists need to be as predictable as possible and overt with their intentions. Signaling is critical, but hand signals may be misinterpreted. That’s why Manivannan developed an AI-enabled smart helmet that leverages Edge Impulse and Arduino for the hands-free voice activation of turn signals.

    • IT Wire ☛ How to overcome the hidden holdup of the battery revolution

      With 11 battery business bankruptcies and over $15 billion erased in the process in the past year alone, it’s clear that something is short-circuiting the development of the next big energy innovation in the U.S. and Europe.

    • Paul Krugman ☛ The Domestic Politics and Geopolitics of Renewable Energy, Part I

      The United States was in the planning stages of building a somewhat smaller but still very large solar farm in Nevada, the Esmeralda 7 solar project. But a few weeks ago Trump administration officials stopped the environmental review, which has probably effectively killed it.

    • YLE ☛ PM Orpo: New Turku-Helsinki rail line will be completed

      The state and the municipalities that own the West Railway venture have finally agreed on financing for the first phase of the high-speed train project.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] Invasive Asian seaweed: An unwanted traveler on international ships

  • Overpopulation

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ We’re All Caught in the Land Trap

      Jacobin sat down with the Economist’s Mike Bird to talk about his new book The Land Trap, on why land retains its centrality in our economy even into the digital age — and how land ownership cements existing inequalities.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Thomson Reuters' playbook is AI everywhere

    While acknowledging that AI hype is at a peak, Hron said he’s bullish on its long-term potential.

  • JYN ☛ build system tradeoffs

    I am currently employed to work on the build system for the Rust compiler (often called x.py or bootstrap). As a result, I think about a lot of build system weirdness that most people don't have to. This post aims to give an overview of what builds for complicated projects have to think about, as well as vaguely gesture in the direction of build system ideas that I like.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Omicron Limited ☛ NASA rejects Kardashian's claim Moon landing 'didn't happen'

      However, conspiracy theories about the moon landing have swirled for nearly 50 years, with the most recent comments coming on the latest episode of the A-list celebrity's series "The Kardashians."

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Newsweek ☛ Bodycam Footage Reveals New Info in Charlie Kirk Meme Arrest Case

    The post was a meme featuring President Donald Trump and the words, “We have to get over it.” The meme says that the quote was from Trump last year after a school shooting at Perry High School in Iowa.

    Bushart wrote, “This seems relevant today …,” the outlet reported, citing the affidavit.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] EU's Sakharov Prize goes to imprisoned journalists from Belarus and Georgia

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-22 [Older] Belarus: Sakharov Prize for imprisoned journalist

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ U.S. citizen shot from behind as he warned ICE agents about children gathering at bus stop, lawyers say

    “He was telling them, ‘Excuse me. Can you guys please, you know, please wrap this up.’ And immediately, the masked agent pulls out a gun and exchanges some words,” said lawyer Cynthia Santiago. “[The agent is] also shaking his pepper spray.”

    “He’s in fear, and he’s trying to get out of the situation,” she said. The agents and their cars had blocked one southern lane on Vineyard Avenue and jutted into a second.

    “He had to reverse to get away,” said Simon.

    “Then there was a shot from the side, back passenger window, to the car,” Santiago said. “Use of deadly force is to be used as a last resort. Coming out to communities with guns drawn is the opposite.”

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Labor Unions Need to Activate Their Members to Defeat Trump

    As we’ve watched our rights, our membership, and our power erode over the last few decades, it’s become obvious that business as usual just won’t cut it. That’s why our union has embarked on our Building Union Power campaign, an effort to engage and activate every single IUPAT member.

  • US News And World Report ☛ 'We're Not a Violent City': Chicago Locals Take on ICE Block-By-Block

    “We are not a violent city. This is not a war zone, and I think these guys are terrorizing us and trying to incite us,” said Conway. “We want them out. We want them to stop kidnapping our neighbors.”

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ The [Internet] was born this week in 1969, and immediately glitched — only two of the five letters in the first computer-to-computer message were received

    The foundations of the [Internet] were set 56 years ago. However, like many other great moments in history, the story of the first computer-to-computer message sent over a distributed packet-switched network, began with an underwhelming fizz, rather than a bang. Moreover, it involved a computer crash and a ‘typo’ – how thoroughly modern.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Some Pirates Use Religion as an Excuse, For Others It's a Moral Barrier

    Religion has two faces; that's also true when it comes to online piracy, albeit with a twist. A new academic study has found that those who use religion mostly for social benefits are more likely to pirate than those with strongly internalized religious beliefs. It also pinpoints the mental gymnastics pirates have to use to justify their actions.