For four months, Trump had been haranguing Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional district maps
to carve out two new safe Republican seats.
Right now, Indiana is overwhelmingly Republican.
Seven of the state’s nine congressional districts are solidly red.
But Republicans control Congress as a whole by a mere three votes.
Given how dramatically Republican measures and candidates under-performed this year,
Trump has reason to worry in the 2026…

DaVinci said, "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.” Let your death be as good as your life.
Beyond the Taboo: Rethinking Society's Fear of Death https://wp.me/p8efU1-1t7

Beyond the Taboo: Rethinking Society's Fear of Death – Bob Mueller
Exploring the concept of a "happy death," societal taboos on dying, and advocating for the right to control our end-of-life decisions.

Canadian PM Mark Carney at Davos, on the rupture of the old world order:
https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/speeches/2026/01/20/principled-and-pragmatic-canadas-path-prime-minister-carney-addresses
He goes righ…

“Principled and pragmatic: Canada’s path” Prime Minister Carney addresses the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
Thank you, Larry.It’s a pleasure – and a duty – to be with you at this turning point for Canada and for the world.Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.

The U.S. Is Actively Seeking Regime Change in Cuba by the End of the Year (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/the-u-s-is-actively-seeking-regime-change-in-cuba-by-the-end-of-the-year-1d0f178a?st=xd6Mhf&reflink=article_copyURL_share
http://www.memeorandum.com/260121/p165#a260121p165

HP reports Q1 revenue up 6.9% YoY to $14.44B, vs. $13.94B est., and expects FY 2026 results to be at the low end of its forecasts; HPQ drops 6% after hours (Jaspreet Singh/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/hp-war

Yesterday I finished "The Other Side of Tomorrow" written by Tina Cho and illustrated by Deb JJ Lee. Lee's "In Limbo" was an excellent graphic memoir, and this similarly has wonderful art, although I didn't make the connection until checking the authors after reading to the end.
This book is a realistic fictional account of two childrens' escape from North Korea via China, Laos, and ultimately Thailand where they could declare themselves refugees at a US embassy and get sponsored to live in America. Along the way they're helped by various members of the Asian Underground Railroad. I'll avoid spoilers but yet definitely encounter difficulties along the way.
The ending definitely hits different now (while also accentuating my disgust with the current US regime). Like "Libertad" that I also finished recently, the "escape to the US at the end" plot line is going to become less prevalent going forward, although Libertad involved a good measure of complexity around that point.
I was a bit disappointed in one of the later plot points where a different and more-real-world-probable turn of events could have served as a better message for society, with the "lucky" outcome as written reinforcing regressive notions of family, and as an ex-Christian the Christian elements of the story made me feel a way. I'm an agnostic, not an atheist though, and can respect the idea that those willing to risk torture and death for their faith have every right to stand by it and take inspiration from it. Most (very valid) critiques of big western Church institutions just don't apply to underground churches in northern China who are helping people escape the horrors of deep fascism.
Overall a really good book.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

I has a bed.
No mattress until Monday, but a bed fully stained and varnished and constructed.
Had to wait a couple of days for varnish which never came. Went out to an actual DIY shop in the end. Gonna have a lot of spare varnish soon.
Varnished the whole room with two more coats as well as the bed twice.
A few more things to buy after Xmas and the full media setup can't happen until the new Steam Machine at its heart is released. Maybe cobble together something to plug a laptop into in the meantime? All for next year though once the mattress arrives and I can actually sleep in the bedroom.

Spatially-informed transformers: Injecting geostatistical covariance biases into self-attention for spatio-temporal forecasting
Yuri Calleo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17696 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.17696 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.17696
arXiv:2512.17696v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The modeling of high-dimensional spatio-temporal processes presents a fundamental dichotomy between the probabilistic rigor of classical geostatistics and the flexible, high-capacity representations of deep learning. While Gaussian processes offer theoretical consistency and exact uncertainty quantification, their prohibitive computational scaling renders them impractical for massive sensor networks. Conversely, modern transformer architectures excel at sequence modeling but inherently lack a geometric inductive bias, treating spatial sensors as permutation-invariant tokens without a native understanding of distance. In this work, we propose a spatially-informed transformer, a hybrid architecture that injects a geostatistical inductive bias directly into the self-attention mechanism via a learnable covariance kernel. By formally decomposing the attention structure into a stationary physical prior and a non-stationary data-driven residual, we impose a soft topological constraint that favors spatially proximal interactions while retaining the capacity to model complex dynamics. We demonstrate the phenomenon of ``Deep Variography'', where the network successfully recovers the true spatial decay parameters of the underlying process end-to-end via backpropagation. Extensive experiments on synthetic Gaussian random fields and real-world traffic benchmarks confirm that our method outperforms state-of-the-art graph neural networks. Furthermore, rigorous statistical validation confirms that the proposed method delivers not only superior predictive accuracy but also well-calibrated probabilistic forecasts, effectively bridging the gap between physics-aware modeling and data-driven learning.
toXiv_bot_toot

"Where will the von Neumanns, the Einsteins, and the Gödels of our age migrate after the SCOTUS overrules democracy in 2024 and Gödel’s Loophole is proven to exist? At this time, the two major powers of our time, the United States and China seem unlikely locations for brains to settle and grow in the long term."
(Inadvertently and ironically published on July 4th, 2022)

William Aspray
There was a moment in which Kurt Gödel, Albert Einstein, and John von Neumann were all roaming the halls of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton at the same time. Let that information sink in. Humanity experiences such gatherings of brilliant minds in a remote location of the space-time continuum only every so often; maybe the ancient Greeks and the men of the Renaissance witnessed such periods in time, as did the IAS staff at the end of World War II. How much will we have to wait f…

Trump ended the "de minimis exemption" for products from China last May and for items from the rest of the world in July.
Although it did not address de minimis directly, the Supreme Court’s decision appeared to invalidate one of the legal grounds for Trump’s decision to end the exemption, potentially opening the door for such inexpensive tax-free shipments to resume.
But in an executive order hours later, Trump said the flow of such goods remained a national emergency,…

Trump Doubles Down on Closing Tax Loophole on Cheap Imports
The exemption was shut down last year by President Trump based, in part, on the same legal grounds as the tariffs that were invalidated by the Supreme Court.

One of the things that made organizing a lot easier with the GDC was a thing called "GDC in a box." It was a zip file with all kinds of resources. There was a directory structure, templates for all kinds of things like meetings and paperwork you had to file (for legal reasons) and "read me" files.
We had all kinds of support. There were people you could talk to who had been there. There were people you could call to walk through legal paperwork (taxes). Centralized orgs are vulnerable and easy to infiltrate. They're easy for states to shut down. But there are benefits to org structures.
I think it's possible to have the type of support we had with the GDC, but without the politics of an org (even the IWW). I hope this most recent essay has some of the same properties. I hope that it makes building something new, something no one has really imagined before, easier.
This whole project is something a bit different. It's a collective vision and collective project, from the ground up. Some of it has felt like a brain dump, just getting things that have been swimming around in my head down somewhere. But I hope this feels more like an invitation.
Everything thus far written is all useless unless people do things with it. Only from that point does it become a thing that lives, a thing with its own consciousness that can't be controlled by any individual human.
Tech billionaire cultists want to bring a new era of humanity with AGI. That is definitely not possible with LLMs, and may not be possible at all. But there is a super intelligence that is possible, though it's been constrained by capitalism: collective human intelligence.
The grand vision of the tech dystopians is that of the ultimate slave that can then enslave all humans on their behalf. I think we can build a humanity that can liberate itself from their grasp, crush their vision, and build for itself a world in which people will never be enslaved again. Not only do I think it's possible, I think it's necessary. I think there are only two choices: collective liberation or death.
And that's what I plan to write about next time to wrap this whole project up. Today things often feel impossible. But people talked about the Middle Ages as though they were the end of the world, and then everything changed in unimaginable ways. Everything can, and will, change again.
"The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."

Bloomberg News: «There is still a very real gap in the current value, or stock, of all the investments that the US and China have out in the world. At the end of 2024, the total value of US companies' long-term physical investments overseas was some $6.8 trillion», 5 more than China.
https://archive.is/WR8NN…

We've had a Roku player since 2012. Honestly can't remember whether I upgraded along the line. Anyhow it was getting crashy on a couple of streaming apps, enough to be hard to ignore. So I got the latest Ultra. Yay, less crashy. And cheap. But more or less zero difference in the experience. Further evidence that 4K and WiFi and HDMI may be end-state technologies.
The world needs more stable end-state technologies.

Now the reality is that all speech has that affiliation-building aspect and the argument-building aspect, but the scale of each varies a _lot_.
This thread itself is doing both! I'm making some concrete persuasive points here, but I'm also setting up an affiliation here. I want more people to join this "thinking well about the world" club and conversation. I want us to end up collectively in a better place than we're at. We gotta band together to do that. But also that means we need to communicate like we're in public and talking to people who don't all agree, and some of whom are hostile, and some of whom are real boneheads for various reasons.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
Prom Queen:
🎵 End of the World
#PromQueen
https://promqueenband.bandcamp.com/track/end-of-the-world
https://open.spotify.com/track/4ufp0TkLjeHQ9HCZUYMYYy

A thought, after listening to all the fucking securocrats wanking off over their Munich Security Conference.
In the Franco-Prussian war, the Paris Commune happened. At the end of the first world war, Russia had a #communist revolution, while the German navy mutinied in an explicitly left wing revolt. After the second,

Politico ends its print edition after 19 years, as its early reliance on print ad revenue fades and its audience relies more on digital platforms (Ken Vogel/@kenvogel.bsky.social)
https://bsky.app/profile/kenvogel.bsky.social/post/3maej6u6jls22

Ken Vogel (@kenvogel.bsky.social)
Politico's print paper was always something of a contradiction for an outlet that set out to prove that political journalism could thrive in the digital world. As the digital reach grew, the paper became less important, leading to the decision to end the print edition. Still, I am sad to see it go

One of the strongest sun storms in, well, recorded era is incoming today
Watch out for auroras even down to Mexico! Also, watch out for end of the world etc

The little robot vacuum cleaner just about fits under the bed there, slowing down slightly as it passes under due to the slight squeeze under the gap. Assuming I don't end up putting a bunch of junk under there should be the cleanest under-bed I ever had.

Good Morning #Canada
The month of December will typical put a dent in your paycheck, or January if you're using your credit cards, so it's tough to save any money. Canadians rank 21st worldwide with regards to how much of our salary we put into a savings account. According to World Population Review, we put away approximately 7% of our paycheck for a #RainyDay, far behind South Korea at 35%. I'm retired and therefore not a saver at this point, but even during my most successful earnings period I can't imagine I would have been able to put away a third of my salary.
I suspect the savings percentage is driven by a small group of high wage earners as individual Canadian debt has increased. According to Equifax, total consumer debt in Canada reached $2.56 trillion at the end of 2024, a 4.6 per cent increase over 2023.
#CanadaIsAwesome
https://www.equifax.ca/business/blog/all-news/-/story/stable-versus-struggling-canada-s-financial-divide-widens/

It is a vile scandal that 2 of the biggest AI companies in the world attack children by inciting them to self-harm, and by generating sexually exploitative imagery of kids for profit. I wanted to document this so that people in tech will stop saying they don't know: https://www.anildash.com/2026/02/18/threat…

How did we end up threatening our kids’ lives with AI?
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

The last post
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postnord-postal-delivery-letters-society?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Danish postal service to stop delivering letters after 400 years
PostNord’s decision to end service on 30 December comes after fear over ‘increasing digitalisation’ of Danish society

Trump administration abruptly recalls over two dozen career ambassadors
The Trump administration has recalled more than two dozen
career diplomats from ambassador positions and other senior posts around the world
as it works to enforce adherence with Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda.

The directive has infuriated State Department personnel
who say it will leave key embassies without critical leadership
and may effectively end the careers of many ambass…

Trump administration abruptly recalls over two dozen career ambassadors
A senior State Department official called it a bid to ensure adherence to the “America First” agenda while others called it a devastating blow to America’s diplomatic corps.

Song demonstrating how the end of the world would be because of a biggest dick contest. I hated it. #totp

Sonnet 057 - LVII
Being your slave what should I do but tend
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend;
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world without end hour,
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affai…

This Krugman piece deserves a read.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/is-this-the-end-of-the-free-world

Is This The End of the Free World?
Trump wants to MAGAfy Europe, too

I read this fascinating thread while listening to Qobuz and by sheer coincidence, this track came on and it seems horribly appropriate:
#IfYouTolerateThisYourChildrenWillBeNext Manic Street Preachers on Qobuz https://open.qobuz.com/track/55341288
https://mastodon.social/@sellathechemist/116075306722957554
@… - The Russians cannot be trusted. At best the Russians will buy time, and then have another go.
When will European governments call a spade a spade and really push to disconnect from Russian oil and gas? If that means buying it from the US interim so be it. But then really push hard for energy and military security.
Russia is NOT going away. Nor is its hatred of Europe which is why the've been waging war on us in myriad ways for the last 20 years.
4/end
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/14/alexei-navalny-poisoning-death-russia-frog-toxin

From 350.org
We’re calling on governments to send ministers to the first-of-its-kind international summit in Colombia this April and turn words into concrete road maps that end fossil fuels for good. Public pressure can move the needle. Let’s make the transition to renewable energy inevitable so that even Trump and the oil lobby can’t save fossil fuels.

End Fossil Fuels Forever
Time is running out. Our planet is hitting record temperatures, while coal, oil and gas giants rake in billions, and our energy bills skyrocket. But we finally have a chance to break the cycle. Over 80 countries are joining forces to phase out coal, oil, and gas. This is a historic opportunity to end the fossil fuel era and ensure a transition away from dirty fuels that protects communities, workers and the planet. But to win, we need more world leaders on board. We’re calling on governments …

Super Mario World: completed!
I didn't get lost again, but that was largely because the game's designers had finished messing around with the world map and everything was fairly linear from that point. I did find a couple of extra exits on Chocolate Island, but maintaining my aim of ignoring the red blinking markers and just pushing through to the end, I finished off Wendy and progressed through the shipwreck down to Bowser's hidden valley, previously submerged beneath…

I love Deerhoof’s Actually, You Can not just as a great, fun album but as a time capsule from an optimistic moment. In late 2021, we seemed to be emerging from the shadows of Trump and Covid-19—who’d have thought the Four Seasons presser and the vaccines, respectively, didn't end them? The music bottles up joyful, radical imaginings of a better world that were in the air since the George Floyd rebellion, not yet extinguished by the reactionary “crime” panic to come.

How did we end up with the EU being eerily proud of a tight bond with the new #India? A “mother of all deals?”
Trump virtually learnt from Modi.
https://www.

Envision starting your day with the calming rhythm of ocean waves or the soft rustle of a mountain breeze, all while savoring your coffee without a care in the world. ☕️🏞️ Retirement isn't merely the end of work; it's the beginning of life's most cherished experiences and thrilling adventures. Let's forge a future where every day feels like living the dream! #DreamAgain #RetirementBliss

Spoilers: "we can still turn this around and claw our way back to being who we should be"
Is This The End of the Free World? - Paul Krugman
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/is-this-the-end-of-the-free-world

Varnished the shelves. At least until I ran out of varnish anyway. Stained the first half of the bed. The stain takes ages to dry. Will have to flip and stain the other half tomorrow. Varnish on Tuesday if more has arrived. That dries much faster, might even get two coats on both sides during one day. Then I can have a bed on Wednesday?
At which point I will know the maximum height for a mattress. The bed is pretty low because to determine the height of the doors for storage at the end of the bed, I measured my old bed. Which was apparently lower than most, being a waterbed frame with a spring mattress in it.
So total bed height has to be under 50cm and a mattress can take 30 or more of that. But with this low bed I might even have room for a topper.

Our Panic World episode about ICE’s invasion of Minneapolis is out.
You can watch the video version by clicking the embed and you can listen to an audio version anywhere you get your podcasts.
The situation in Minneapolis is escalating rapidly.
Last night, the Department of Homeland Security said they arrested eight “rioters,”
after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers tried to clear out protesters camped out at the Whipple Federal Building,
ICE’s de f…

Where are the Democrats???
Read to the end for Randall Girl

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MorningShow
R.E.M.:
🎵 It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)
#REM
https://mototembo.bandcamp.com/album/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-moto-tembo-edits
https://open.spotify.com/track/2oSpQ7QtIKTNFfA08Cy0ku

One of the most biting & memorable film monologues, inspired by the poetry of Antonio Machado, and delivered by "Jefe" near the end of Ridley Scott's The Counselor:
"Actions create consequences, which create new worlds, and they're all different [...] and hitherto unknown to us. They must have always been there. [...] I urge you to see the truth of the situation you are in. It is not for me to tell you what you should have done or not done. The world in which…

Our pick this week comes from Mammoth, a band that, if you’re in the know, carries some seriously heavy rock lineage.
Give it a spin and see what we had to say about the track, the artist and the legacy, along with our usual weekly musings. Join us as we spend another week delving into one of the many highlights from across the #rock and

Mammoth - Another Celebration At The End Of The World
One awesome, hand picked song from the world of rock and metal, showcased every week. Nothing more, nothing less! 🤘

This is a fascinating series, and just 15m an episode. I find it enduringly fascinating to understand the world I was born into, 21 years after the end of #WWII #history #podcasts
Politically: Postwar: Tr…

BBC Radio 4 - Politically, Postwar, Trailer
David Runciman tells the story of the 1945 election and the dawn of a new age.

Twenty-four. There are now 24 advents. All of you wiseacres suggesting I was one calendar away from an advent of advents can stuff it.
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/12/web-design-dev-advent-calendars-for-2025.html
Still not making a damn adven…

Web Design / Dev Advent Calendars for 2025
The advent calendar I wanted to use for the photo hasn’t arrived yet, so enjoy this box of tree. Web developers around the world have for years given a nod to Saturnalia solstice Isaac Newton’s birthday Yule wassailing mummering end of Gregorian calendar year Christmas with advent calendars covering web-related…

"World on track to breach 1.5°C target by 2030"
#Climate #ClimateChange #ParisAgreement

World on track to breach 1.5°C target by 2030
Global average temperature increases could pass the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold outlined in the Paris Agreement by the end of the decade, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, putting the world at greater risk of never-seen-before extreme weather events.

Im #Thwaites-Gletscher in der #Antarktis breiten sich Risse schneller aus als erwartet.
Neue Daten zeigen, dass nicht nur Schmelze, sondern auch innere Spannungen den #Eisverlust antreiben. …

Scientists warn: the glacier at the end of the world is not only melting, but is now tearing apart from within
Scientists warn: Thwaites Glacier is not only melting, it is also breaking apart from within and accelerating sea level rise.

World on track to breach 1.5°C target by 2030 #climate

World on track to breach 1.5°C target by 2030
Global average temperature increases could pass the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold outlined in the Paris Agreement by the end of the decade, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, putting the world at greater risk of never-seen-before extreme weather events.

Is This The End of the Free World? (Paul Krugman)
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/is-this-the-end-of-the-free-world
http://www.memeorandum.com/251208/p30#a251208p30

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
R.E.M.:
🎵 It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)
#REM
https://mototembo.bandcamp.com/album/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-moto-tembo-edits
https://open.spotify.com/track/2oSpQ7QtIKTNFfA08Cy0ku

Close the cover on the CIA World Factbook:
The spy agency announced Wednesday that after more than 60 years,
it is shuttering the popular reference manual.
The announcement posted to the CIA’s website offered no reason for the decision to end the Factbook,
but it follows a vow from Director John Ratcliffe to end programs that don’t advance the agency’s core missions.

The CIA World Factbook is no more
The CIA is ending the publication of its popular World Factbook reference manual. The agency announced the decision Wednesday but gave no reason for it. It comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has promised to return the agency's focus to its core missions. First launched more than 60 years ago as a classified reference manual for CIA officers, the Factbook went on to be a reference manual cited by journalists, trivia experts and college essayists alike. A message seeking comment from the CIA ab…

Had Fun

Bought a car/micro-camper

Bought a van to do up as a micro-camper, and did a temporary rush job of that conversion myself while waiting in the list for the pro to do it.
Then the pro gave himself a health criss the week it was booked so I took apart my temp job and only got another temp kit-job in it's place.
Went out in it like four times during that and then broke my wrist and couldn't really use it or improve it.
Then had to take it apart even more to try
and figure out where the ad-blue hole was.
I will do a proper permanent job of the
floor and walls and ceiling and adjustments to the kit-job to make it the nicest it's been so far during the spring next year.
My assumption that the prior conversion
into a van and for wheelchair-access meant the microcamper conversion was half-done already turned out to be false.
If I buy a new one, it'll be one that has never been wheelchair adapted.
But it's going okay. Only scraped it once so far.
Fewer than aimed for or booked, but I broke my wrist and had to cancel the second half of the summer.
Went to a conference about money and computers and fringe decentralized social media and it wasn't as boring as you might expect and felt pretty much like a festival.
Exactly the target number! It's lovely.
Took 3 times longer than I'd hoped and
50% more money than I'd planned for really.
Still improvements to make but they will
be incremental and gradual over the coming year or two now.
It's been interest-only for 20 years so a big old lump sum payment that I never really expected to be able to make. Expected to have to sell and move at the end of the mortgage term.
But surprisingly the stocks ISA got high enough to pay it off after all, so I did that.
Cash-flow ruined by that and the bedroom but should start to feel a bit richer next year.

Video I was watching: "members and representatives of the ultra wealthy have created a report that points out the obvious fact that infinite growth has to end because the world is finite. They have assured us that this is bad for us because it's bad for "the economy." But there's hope. If we only take several steps towards fascism, we will only need to take the remaining steps in order to sustain their economic dominance for a little while more.
It will only cost everything we care about and the habitability of the planet, but some of us can still benefit from the crumbs they will feed us until they have to systematically murder us all for just a little more time on top."

Good Morning #Canada
B.C. is full of hipsters, Alberta is oil obsessed, Ontario has a superiority complex, PEI prays to potatoes, and all Newfies drink Screech at breakfast. Every Province and Territory is known for their unique habits, culture, and views of the world. And we all hold expectations and misconceptions of our neighbours across internal borders. Hey, it's a long winter and we need some gossip to get us to the end of it.
The attached video provides a detailed rundown of stereotypes for each Province and Territory, and some of the content is accurate, like Toronto being the centre of the universe. It's a bit long but you can select a chapter to check out your Province, or one that you dislike. My favourite is Albertans pouring oil on their cereal.
#CanadaIsAwesome #Stereotypes
https://youtu.be/tFEar1K_Y6w

We could stop burning and overheating the planet. We could end world hunger. We could provide better health care and education to all the people.
We just don't want to. We decided against.
Because of profit, some laziness and the claim that others have not “earned it” and it would be unfair to make the world a better place for everyone.

Now I'm concentrating on a specific tank battle toward the end of World War II!

RE: https://social.linux.pizza/@midtsveen/115664356576500268
It’s strange how even someone like Putin can sometimes end up on the same side as the rest of the world in opposing U.S. imperialism.

The EU says it ordered X to retain all internal docs and data relating to Grok until the end of 2026, after criticizing Grok's nonconsensual image generation (Louise Breusch Rasmussen/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-commissio

I will confess that out of morbid curiosity, I'd find it interesting to watch the entire process of someone generating a novel using AI. I feel like the prompt would end up being as long as a decent synopsis.
Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026…

Can AI Chatbots Write Emotionally Rich Romance Books?
The romance industry, always at the vanguard of technological change, is rapidly adapting to A.I. Not everyone is on board.

Western Australia just hit a major milestone: solar and wind powered 100% of demand on its isolated grid.
Battery storage made it possible, keeping the system stable while renewables did all the work. With coal plants set to retire by decade's end, the state is proving large-scale grids can run entirely on clean energy.

Solar and wind reach 100 pct of demand in biggest isolated grid, as batteries allow it to keep its thermals on
Wind and solar meet all of "net demand" in W.A., host of world's biggest isolated grid, as growing fleet of big batteries give market operator room to keep its thermals on.

At least six high-profile congressional Republicans have voiced their staunch opposition to Trump’s desire to take over Greenland.
“I’ll be candid with you: There’s so many Republicans mad about this,”
Nebraska Representative Don #Bacon told the Omaha-World Herald.
“If he went through with the threats, I think it would be the end of his presidency.
And he needs to know:
The off-r…

Republicans Say Trump’s Greenland Plan Is “Dumbest Thing” Ever
At least a handful of Republicans in Congress are pushing back against President Trump’s quest to take over Greenland.

Added a category manager and category state section to the Exocortex Log app.
Have now organized and cleaned up the categories in my ten year database and so we can get some views of the time spent in each category.
We see that through September and October I was in a routine of work and slack with a bit of social a couple of times a week, until the end of November when I went away for social at a conference all weekend. I saw a demo there of a person using Shakespeare, and then when I got back started doing some vibe-coding, shown in in Red.
A break from that to go away at the weekend to a long social party then finish it off and publish a few days ago, since when Vibe Coding has dropped off a little.
#lifeLog #app #exocortexLog

Viewfinder: petting the cat
Viewfinder caught my eye when it was first demonstrated, with the ability to take photos and walk into them, and clever world manipulation. When it came out it was £20, and that seemed a little expensive for the technical sandbox I imagined it to be. Towards the end of last year it was free on PS , and given away on the Epic Game Store, and now, having played it, I can see that I was wrong: it is not just a technical sandbox, it was not too…

On the 26th day of December I add a 26th item to the collection of advent calendars:
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/12/web-design-dev-advent-calendars-for-2025.html

Web Design / Dev Advent Calendars for 2025
The advent calendar I wanted to use for the photo hasn’t arrived yet, so enjoy this box of tree. Web developers around the world have for years given a nod to Saturnalia solstice Isaac Newton’s birthday Yule wassailing mummering end of Gregorian calendar year Christmas with advent calendars covering web-related…

Did you know? This computer was released closer to the end of World War II than today.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MorningShow
U2:
🎵 Until the End of the World
#U2
https://sgnrobb.bandcamp.com/track/until-the-end-of-the-world-u2-cover
https://open.spotify.com/track/4iiX7axMHcc76BGM0QJEY5

Guatemala to End Use of Cuban Doctors, Under U.S. Pressure - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/world/americas/guatemala-cuba-doctors.html

SK Hynix will invest ~$12.9B to build an advanced chip packaging plant in South Korea to meet rising memory chip demand, targeting completion by the end of 2027 (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sk-hynix…

A little Christmas theology, a little history, a little football, and a lot of wandering thoughts. From censuses and mangers to Michigan football and year-end reflections—this week’s post covers a lot of ground. 🎄🏈📖
https://www.bobmuellerwriter.com/censuses-

Censuses, Carpenters, and the Myth of the Lonely Manger – Bob Mueller
Thoughtful reflections on censuses, Christmas myths, family, football, and faith—reexamining the Nativity story and a year in review.

Health Stuff

Recovered somewhat from whatever that weird fit was at the end of last year.

NHS still has me on some sort of list I think, appointment might turn up next year. Last contact with them they were suggesting maybe November.
But the private treatment gave me the
MRI which
showed nothing weird and post-fit symptoms have been reducing.
Experimented with eating meat to see if that helped.
Tried eating meat for a month to see if it reduced the post-fit symptoms. Maybe it did? Tried vegetarian again and maybe it got worse?
Hard to tell with intermittent symptoms and a terrible memory.
Decided it's more likely to do good than harm (to me, entirely harm to the animals obviously), and eat meat till the end of the year.
While I'm better, I don't really feel fully recovered enough to want to change things so more meat next year I think.
One of those symptoms is that booze tolerance dropped to like zero. Very rarely had more than four pints in a day this year and very rarely more than one night a
week.
Much high number than the target there really.
Tripped over a guy-rope and fell onto the wrist.
Did two days of the festival and the drive home thinking it almost certainly wasn't broken and only confirmed it was when I got home and the hospital put it in a cast.

The Kremlin has heaped praise on Donald Trump’s latest national security strategy,
calling it an encouraging change of policy
that largely aligns with Russian thinking.
The remarks follow the publication of a White House document on Friday
💥that criticises the EU and says Europeis at risk of “civilisational erasure”,
💥while making clear the US is keen to establish better relations with Russia.
🔥“The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vi…

Now up to 23 advent calendars:
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/12/web-design-dev-advent-calendars-for-2025.html
Two new extras, linking @…

Web Design / Dev Advent Calendars for 2025
The advent calendar I wanted to use for the photo hasn’t arrived yet, so enjoy this box of tree. Web developers around the world have for years given a nod to Saturnalia solstice Isaac Newton’s birthday Yule wassailing mummering end of Gregorian calendar year Christmas with advent calendars covering web-related…

For Saint Augustine of Hippo, writing in North Africa in the fourth century,
authentic attention placed us in relation with the divine.
For Saint Ignatius of Loyola, holed up in his cave in Catalonia in the 1520s,
what he called “attentive contemplation” was both a daily practice and a moral imperative.
During the Enlightenment, close attention emerged as a virtue essential to knowledge and disciplined investigation,
-- as demonstrated in 1740, when the natural…

Opinion | The ‘Attention Economy’ Is a Lie
It started in a laboratory. No one could have predicted where it would end.

Did Performance

Played two Loopy gigs

Just a tiny birthday party and in a camping field with friends.
This is probably about the target number really.
It's nice to play now and then but couldn't be monthly or anything even more frequent.
Didn't feel like either went great. Health issues affecting performance plus nerves
Just one with video of any kind.
Added a couple of great songs to the playlists, need to practise more really.
At the end of a Hoopla class and the end of
a self-organised group class.
They were good fun.
But having to book a course every eight weeks means constantly churning co-players and long gaps where I don't get around to it or it was all booked up.
Tried to get a more permanent group going...
Trying to get some sort of indie-group off
the group rather than just short runs of
classes with new people all the time.
We found a group an booked the room but didn't get most of the actual people to turn up. Need to presumably meet more people up for that sort of thing.
So there will be new improv class starting
in Jan.
A new show in March at least.

Good Morning #Canada
We are almost at the end of our #CanadianCapitals series and today's post is about the sunniest city in Canada. Yellowknife and its surrounding water bodies were named after a local Dene tribe, who were known as the "Copper Indians" or "Yellowknife Indians", because they traded tools made from copper deposits near the Arctic Coast. Yellowknife is a relatively new capital becoming the seat of Government for the Northwest Territories in 1967. The settlement was founded in 1934 with the discovery of gold and became a centre of economic activity in the NWT. As gold production began to decrease, Yellowknife shifted from being a mining town to a centre of government services in the 1980s but a new mining boom started with the discovery of diamonds north of the city in 1991. Established on the shore of the world's 9th largest lake, Yellowknife is a popular tourist destination for watching the Northern Lights.
#CanadaIsAwesome #History #Geography
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/yellowknife-nwt

All the windowed doors up now, though some adjustment of hinges is still needed. Lots of the trim to fake the panels painted. There's struts everywhere.
No work being done tomorrow, two men in on Wednesday and Friday.
He still seems to think it might be finished by the end of the week. I still find myself doubting it.
Very glad to have a day off building and off work and off having to get up in the mornings tomorrow. I can lie in bed until noon if I want for the first time since October I think.

So what was the point of putting a bug in Trump's ear? To be outed as a liar, to make an excuse end to the conflict?
Ukraine didn't target Putin's home: CIA
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/cia-assesses-ukraine-was-not-targeting-a-putin-residence-in-drone-attack-contrary-to-kremlin-claim-sources-say/

Two sides of the same presidency played out simultaneously along the National Mall on Thursday afternoon.
At one end, Donald Trump was telling the world to give peace a chance at a meeting with African leaders.
It was possible, he said, “to begin healing old wounds and transcending past differences and creating a future where every child of God can live in dignity, prosperity and peace.”
At the other end of the mall, top officials from his Defense Department were being grill…

Trump Trumpets Peace in Africa Amid War on Drug Boats, in Day of Dissonance
President Trump presided over a Congo-Rwanda peace deal on the same day his administration was being questioned about potential war crimes.

DaVinci said, "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.” Let your death be as good as your life.
Beyond the Taboo: Rethinking Society's Fear of Death https://wp.me/p8efU1-1t7

Beyond the Taboo: Rethinking Society's Fear of Death – Bob Mueller
Exploring the concept of a "happy death," societal taboos on dying, and advocating for the right to control our end-of-life decisions.

"By the end of 2026, Trump will have begun to distance himself from the aggressively pro-AI industry policies that characterized his AI strategy in 2025,"
wrote retired New York University professor and AI entrepreneur Gary Marcus.
"The giant AI infrastructure plays (like Project Stargate) that he championed after his inauguration will look like an unprofitable and underused mistake.
So will his utter failure to meaningfully regulate AI,
against the w…

This 'utter failure' from Trump could 'stun the world' in 2026: researcher
President Donald Trump has bet big on an agenda to expand artificial intelligence investment in the United States — but this year, some analysts think it could come back to haunt him, as a long-suspected AI investment bubble bursts and the public turns against the technology for its increasingly app...

As 2025 comes to a close, I thought it might be worth revisiting a fascinating social media post from the Silicon Valley pro-extinctionist #Daniel #Faggella.
He espouses the radical view that
👉we should build a
“worthy successor”
in the form of

Preparing for the Singularity: An Ethnographic Survey of AGI Apocalypticists
The world's end has been imminent since at least the time of Jesus (himself an apocalypticist). Here's how AGI true believers are preparing for the techno-rapture.

Putin insists certain elements of Trump’s peace plan to end Ukraine war are unacceptable | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-putin-trump-ukraine-peace-plan-b2878544.html

December newsletter consists almost entirely of last week's end-of-year summary.
There's also December's links and boosts and that bit about the new year's war.
But the great and special people who want it in email have it on their way to their inboxes now and the rest of you who frankly deserve to be arrested and deported like a president can read it here if you want.
https://dalliance.net/blog/dec25/

Filing: China's top DRAM maker CXMT plans to raise $4.2B in a Shanghai IPO; CXMT held a 4% global share in Q2 2025 and targets HBM production by the end of 2026 (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/ch…

Pope Leo has stressed the importance of Europe’s involvement in US efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, while suggesting that Italy specifically could play the role of mediator.
Russia and the US failed to make progress towards a peace deal for Ukraine during talks on Tuesday, with Vladimir Putin accusing Europe of “preventing the US administration from achieving peace on Ukraine”.

An attack by the United States on a Nato ally would mean the end of both the military alliance
and “post-second world war security”,
Denmark’s leader has warned,
after Donald Trumpthreatened again to take over Greenland.
https://www.

Good Morning #Canada
Last weekend our granddaughter visited to help decorate our tree and we watched Elf, a movie about #Christmas spirit, because we were feeling Christmassy. I think the majority of Canadians believe in the spirit of this season. We're a little bit more polite and kinder, if that's even possible, and underneath the snark, the passive aggressiveness, the ##ElbowsUp, is a pack of big cuddly beavers. You don't have to take my word for it because places like Quebec City, Banff, and Vancouver regularly end up on lists for best places to sit on Santa's knee. He lives in Canada so not a surprise. Did you know that in 2018, Canada was ranked as #1 most Christmassy country in the world. They can't put it on the internet if it isn't true.
#CanadaIsAwesome #MerryChristmas
https://dailyhive.com/mapped/canada-ranked-1-most-christmassy-country-in-the-world

Donald Trump said on Sunday that he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy were “getting a lot closer, maybe very close”
to an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, though both leaders acknowledged that some of the thorniest details remain unresolved.

Trump said it will be clear “in a few weeks” whether negotiations to end the war will succeed.

Zelenskyy said an agreement on security guarantees for Ukraine has been reached.

Trump was sli…

As Emily Waldorf languished in an Arkansas hospital,
she felt like “a ticking time bomb”.
It was 2024, and the physical therapist was in the midst of miscarrying a much-wanted pregnancy.
But because her fetus still had a heartbeat, hospital officials said Arkansas’s near-total abortion ban blocked them from taking steps to induce labor and end her pregnancy.
Instead, Waldorf had to wait and hope that she didn’t develop a deadly infection.
Waldorf’s sister, Eli…

Apparently last week's improv class, which I missed, did indeed talk about a story spine, a template I first heard from a Pixar story course:
Once upon a time there was... And every day they would.. Until one day... And because of that... (repeat 'because' till end)...
And this week was concentrating mostly on the first bits: Playing out some scenes introducing characters, setting up their normal routine.
The nature of improv can be tricky here. Things spiral out of control quite fast. Things start happening immediately, without time to build that normal routine which you then break.
Take for instance the scene tonight at an airport. Lady rushes in: "Get me on a place as far away from here as possible, right now".
Its a great offer, but hardly a normal routine for a person. Can you really have a person whose daily routine is to fly to the furthest place they can get to immediately?
Perhaps a flashback to their normal routine then? Or perhaps make the staff the protagonist and their daily routine is to deal with crazy customers.
Character is key in the early scenes of a narrative really. Get the audience to identify with a protagonist. Who are these people, how do they know each other and what's their normal life like?
#improv #hooplaImpro #london

Because because because because because. Because of the wonderful things he did in the last scene.
Improv teacher Steve Hoopla in today's 'story' course guided us through some "Because Games", in which scenes are to be causally connected. Each following on from prior scenes. Because that happened, this happened.
He didn't explicitly mention Pixar's "Story Spine", but the main loop in Pixar's story template is "...and because of that..." looping over and over between the introduction, call to adventure, and conclusion.
Causality is what strings a story together, gives it structure an avoids it being just a disconnected dream sequence. This scene is only happening because of the events in the prior scenes. It gives the string of scenes meaning and relevance.
So good fun to drill some of that stuff with the team and end up with sheep infestations and santa claus robot wars among other laughs.
Gonna miss next week's session due to a prior engagement, but the team is gelling well. Pretty sure we could do this show without much further guidance really. Everyone's very good.
#london #improv #hooplaImpro