Posts Will Be Sparse This Month

I haven't been able to keep up with a regular posting schedule this month. Part of that is just being too busy with household problems (a dead washing machine soon to be replaced) and prep for the holidays. I'm also having some eye problems, which I'm hoping will clear up over the next month (bad dry eye) and that's making it hard for me to read.

I don't want to shut the blog down but it's likely to be quiet here until early January. 

Movie and TV Reviews - November 2025

Movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in November. I do these posts mainly so I can keep track of what we've been watching, so the reviews are cursory. 

Movies

• Goodnight Oppy: A BBC documentary about the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers. Quite good and gives a sense of just how remarkable this mission was. (Amazon Prime)
• Frankenstein: I enjoyed it though I found it hard to watch (many dark scenes) and some of the changes from the novel confused me. I found it interesting that Del Torro updated the technology in the story (all the electrical stuff, for example) to a late Victorian level, even though the story is set in the 1830s. The gothic tone is faithful to the book even if some of the characters and details vary. (Netflix)
• Deep Cover: A trio of improv actors gets hired by the police to pose a criminals to entrap a drug dealer. Things go spectacularly wrong. A good popcorn movie but not much more. (Prime)
• The Family Plan 1 and 2: Extremely implausible but still somehow watchable. More popcorn movies. (Apple TV)

TV

• The Nature of Things: Implosion. Documentary about the Titan submersible disaster. Should have been longer. 
• Slow Horses (season 5): A bit lighter than some of the earlier seasons but still enjoyable. 
• Trainwreck: Woodstock '99. Three-part documentary about the disastrous Woodstock '99 festival What were they thinking? (Apple TV)
• Only Murders in the Building (season 5): The plots continue to be implausible, but we are enjoying it. Steve Martin is brilliant, as always. (Disney+)
• Antiques Road Trip (seaon 12). Only four more seasons to go and we will have watched all of them, (PBS)
• Beyond Paradise (season 3): The season finally continues after the Christmas episode. I'm enjoying this one more than earlier seasons; not all episodes revolve around murders. (BritBox)
• Lazarus: We had high hopes for this because it was based on a novel by Harlen Coben. But we only got through about 20 minutes of the first episode before giving up. If you like shows about troubled psychiatrists having visions of dead people you will like it; we didn't. (Amazon Prime)
• Code of Silence: BritBox has been heavily promoting this show about a deaf cleaner who gets hired by the police to lip read to help in an investigation. It's a bit implausible but quite watchable. (BritBox)
• Only Murders in the Building (Season 5): The deaths continue at the troubled Arcadia as the intrepid podcasters try to find the killers. (Disney+)
• Murder Is Easy: An adaptation of a story by Agatha Christie. This one turned out better than I expected, though that's not saying much. (BritBox)
• I, Jack Wright: A British brick magnate dies suddenly and his family implodes in spectacular fashion. Grim, twisted, dark, and made with that special brand of dark humour t hat the Brits do so well. But the ending ... there had beter be a second season. (BritBox)

Featured Links - November 25, 2025

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Lifeguard station at Scarborough Bluffs

Reinventing the Subsistence Economy. "How Energy and Food Decoupling Rewrite the Map of Post-Growth Futures." An optimistic look at a possible future from Karl Schroeder.

The Terminator Future Has Arrived. "Gaza represents a future of warfare that will be repeated elsewhere as the algorithms are proving efficient, merciless and remorseless."

The Worst Part About Publishing a Book in 2025 Is The New Kind of Spam. Authors are getting buried in targetted AI-authored spam. 

Google’s New Gmail Upgrades—Why You Must Choose Carefully. Unless you live in the EU, Google may be opting you in to giving them access to your private data.

Russian Unreality and American Weakness. "Notes from a bizarre moment of diplomatic history." An absolutely devastating take down of the proposed "peace plan" to end the Ukranian war from historian Timothy Synder. 

Open the pod bay doors, HAL (Arguing with A.I.). A detailed post showing how AI can provide misleading results, with examples.

Bitcoin isn't anonymous — investigators can trace every transaction on the blockchain. Just in case you thought all those drug buys were safe. 

Photo of the Week - November 24, 2025

This week's photo is of a lifeguard station at the Scarborough Bluffs park. Of course, there were no life guards on duty this time of year. Taken with my Pixel 8 Pro.

Lifeguard station at the Scarborough Bluffs

 

Saturday Sounds - Philip Glass and Tenzin Choegyal - Be the Sky

This week's musical treat is a new album from Philip Glass and Tenzin Chiegyal, Be the Sky. I've just listened to this and love it.

From Google: "Be The Sky" is a recent album collaboration between composer Philip Glass and Tibetan musician Tenzin Choegyal, released on November 14, 2025. The album is described as a collaboration born from their two-decade friendship, blending Glass's minimalist style with Tibetan musical traditions. It's a musical tribute to the Dalai Lama and serves as an offering of hope and spirituality.'

It's one of Glass' best works since Glassworks. Beautiful, ethereal, contemplative music for the soul. Enjoy. 

An Update on Our LG TV

Two years in on our LG C3 TV and I am finally starting to get comfortable with the native LG interface. We've been using either the Rogers apps or casting from the Chromecast. But the Rogers remote is a bit awkward to use and the Chromecast can be glitchy with some services (Disney+ in particular).

LG recently upgraded their WebOS and it's quite usable, although with my vision I occasionally have to get up to get closer to the TV. My main problem with it is that the remote is not backlit, a major omission for a TV that's likely to be used in a dim room. (It does have voice control, which I have yet to set up, but I will get to it).

There is also an app for Android that can be used in place of the remote and does finally seem to work the way it should. I had tried it when we first got the TV and found it had issues with the earlier version of WebOS.

Now I am in the process of getting the various apps for services that we use to work. More on that another time.

A Significant Anniversary

I saw my first Grateful Dead concert on this day in 1970. Five minutes into their set, I was a Deadhead for life. Apparently, only one audience tape has survived the perils of time; if the sound crew recorded the show, it's been lost. That's sad because the jam with Jorma Kaukonen of the Jefferson Airplane, who were playing at a different venue the same night, is worth a listen. (Jack Casady may also have played; my memory is fuzzy, though some reports suggest he did play).

From Rolling Stone: "Serendipitously, the Jefferson Airplane were playing the War Memorial in Rochester, New York, the same 1970 evening that the Dead were doing a college late-nighter. So after his band’s gig ended, Airplane guitar pilot Jorma Kaukonen headed over to campus to join the Dead for a hot take on the Bobby Womack-via-Rolling Stones nugget “It’s All Over Now,” some smoking blues jams (both country and Chicago-style) and a rocking rendition of the old folk standard “Darling Corey.” Sketchy sound on the surviving bootlegs, but fiery playing."

Featured Links - November 18, 2025

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

The Scarborough Bluffs

• Loeb’s 3I/ATLAS “Anomalies” Explained. It's weird, but not 'that' weird. (I would love to be proved wrong on this, but I'm not holding my breath).
• Review: Playing the Short Game. How to Market & Sell Short Fiction. Review by Geoff Hart, technical writer/editor and author. 
• We could have healthier, more affordable lives through renewables and electrification. "Vested interests are spending $billions to prevent this."
• A Chinese AI model taught itself basic physics — what discoveries could it make? "A tool called AI-Newton can derive scientific laws from raw data, but is some way from developing human-like reasoning."
• The Big Shift in Cardiology to Atheroma and Inflammation. 'One A.I. company's tag line: "Creating A World Without Heart Attacks"'. This ties in to the idea that COVID-19 is a hematological disease that just happens to have a respiratory component.
• Workplace Surveillance Is Here, Counting Your Mouse Clicks and Bathroom Breaks. "Remote employees are being tracked and punished by invisible systems. Some workers are refusing to play along."
• Inside Canada’s shadowy crypto banking system that makes it easy to facilitate ‘an unlimited amount of crime’ (gift link). "Reporters went undercover to expose a growing crypto-to-cash industry that is openly flouting anti-money laundering measures."

Photo of the Week - November 16, 2025

I took this week's photo at Bluffer's Park in Toronto earlier in the week, right around noon. For some reason, my normally reliable Pixel 8 completely botched the exposure, and the resulting picture was underexposed and had no contrast. So I started playing around with it in Google Photos and came up with the picture below. It looks nothing like the original, or the actual scene, but I rather like it. (I do wish I had been shooting RAW, though). 

The beach at Bluffer's Park in Scarborough

Saturday Sounds - Pearl Jam - 2025/05/18 - Pittsburg, PA

This week's musical treat is from Pearl Jam, a band I've enjoyed listening to for many years but have never managed to catch live. (I did see Eddie Vedder driving down Kingston Road in a classic car one night when they were in Toronto for a concert).

The concert is from Pittsburg, PA on May 25, 2025. Unfortunately, it's blocked from embedding, so you will have to watch it on YouTube. It's a fan-shot multicam video but the audio is a soundboard dub. Enjoy.

We're Toast 64

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. 

Winter is coming

The planet has entered a ‘new reality’ as it hits its first climate tipping point, landmark report finds. "As humans burn fossil fuels and ratchet up temperatures, it’s already driving more severe heat waves, floods, droughts, and wildfires."

The Caribbean has a super-hurricane problem. "Caribbean nations face an increasing threat from super hurricanes, which can cost a significant fraction of their GDP. Climate change is expected to make the strongest hurricanes stronger."

World’s oceans losing their greenness through global heating, study finds. "Researchers say decline in phytoplankton suggests weakened planetary capacity to absorb carbon dioxide."

They were drilling off Oregon. What they found could shake all of California. "Scientists have uncovered evidence that megaquakes in the Pacific Northwest might trigger California’s San Andreas Fault. A research ship’s navigational error revealed paired sediment layers showing both fault systems moved together in the past. This finding hints that the next “Big One” could set off a devastating one-two seismic punch along the coast."

This Week in Space 185: Gutting Goddard. "Dismantling a NASA Center." The war on science continues. 

Vaccine Skepticism Comes for Pet Owners, Too. "Anti-vaccine sentiment is spilling over into veterinary medicine, making some owners hesitant to vaccinate their pets, even for fatal diseases like rabies." Rabies is fatal to humans too. To quote Jerry Pournelle: "Think of it as evolution in action."

The pandemic next time. "How President Donald Trump’s administration has undermined efforts to develop vaccines and drugs for the next viral scourge." People, perhaps millions of people, will die because of their stupidty. 

VLC Is Getting Dark Mode

I generally use VLC for media playback but it's been a struggle because it doesn't have dark mode, which with my vision problems is essential. Well, it does now if you download the latest nightly build, version 3.0.22. 

The current stable version seems to be 3.0.20, which the  Check for Updates option says is up to date. Version 4.0 is in development but I'm not going to try that one for now..

Instructions on downloading it are in this blog post by Gordon Glas. Note that Windows Defender will probably give you a warning about installing it, but considering it's coming from the developer's website, you can ignore that. 

Given that the build is still under development, it may not be stable, but so far I haven't noticed any major issues. The dark palette could use some tweaking for better contrast in places like the Help > About dialog and the playback buttons , but it's still far easier on the eyes than the previous version. 

Featured Links - November 11, 2025

 Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Model of the Edmund Fitzgerald at the Shipwreck Museum in Michigan

A Ghost Fleet of Tankers Is Keeping Russia’s War Machine Afloat. The West Can’t Stop It. "How Putin outsmarted the oil sanctions."

Still Haunted by the Edmund Fitzgerald. "50th Anniversary Tribute". Seems appropriate that we are getting our first winter storm on Sunday. 

 Google Docs Gets Smarter. "Audio narration, AI help, and 40 new templates." Many of the new features require an AI-enabled plan, but there are some, like document tabs, that could be quite useful for longer documents.

The Florentine Diamond Resurfaces After 100 Years in Hiding. "A legendary jewel of the Hapsburg dynasty — not seen since 1919 and thought lost, stolen or recut — has actually been safe in a Canadian bank for decades." This is quite a story. 

‘Frankenstein’: How Close Is Guillermo del Toro’s Film to the Original Novel? A Mary Shelley Expert Answers Our Burning Questions. "So, just how well does del Toro’s version stack up against Mary Shelley’s original novel? We asked Julie Carlson, an English professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and an expert on the British Romantic period and the Wollstonecraft-Godwin-Shelley family, for her thoughts." I enjoyed the movie, though I did find it hard to watch in places (many very dark scenes). 

Find cancer clinical trials in Canada. "Helping people living with cancer and healthcare professionals navigate cancer trial options." It's good that Canadians have an alternative to looking in the US for information. 

New laser treatment could stop blindness before it starts. "A new laser treatment may halt dry macular degeneration by using controlled warmth to trigger the eye’s self-repair mechanisms." Of course, it will be years before this becomes widespread, assuming it works. 

I’m never going back to Microsoft Word after mastering this open-source self-hosted tool. "Enter HedgeDoc, the open-source web-based collaborative markdown editor that has changed my writing setup. By running it on my server, I achieved true data independence that Word could never offer." Ten or fifteen years ago, I would have jumped on this, but at this point in my life, I just can't be bothered.

Photo of the Week - November 9, 2025

Here's another fall photo, this of a neigbour's burning bush. I love the red colour. Taken with my Pixel 10 Pro. 

Red autumn leaves

 

Saturday Sounds - Julian Taylor - Live at TD Music Hall

This week's musical treat is a live album from the Julian Taylor Band. I posted here last November about Taylor's last solo album after we saw him perform in Greenbank. This live album, recorded at Toronto's TD Music Hall last year, features him performing with his band. The songs include material from his solo career and from his albums with his band. Enjoy. 

More on Disinformation 8

It's time for another post about disinformation and misinformation. I could probably do a post a day like this if I had the time and the stomach for it.  

Imagery faked with AI’s help only added to the awfulness of Hurricane Melissa. "A Category 5 landfall during Halloween week was scary enough on its own."

The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly. "We uncover footprints of activities connected to scientific fraud that extend beyond the production of fake papers to brokerage roles in a widespread network of editors and authors who cooperate to achieve the publication of scientific papers that escape traditional peer-review standards. Our analysis reveals insights into how such organizations are structured and how they operate."

Scientists slam Trump administration climate report as a ‘farce’ full of misinformation. "Experts say the report being used to justify the mass rollback of climate regulations has many claims based on long-debunked research."

Symbolic Strength More Important Than Facts When It Comes To Misinformation. "Why do some people endorse claims that can easily be disproved? It’s one thing to believe false information, but another to actively stick with something that’s obviously wrong. Our new research, published in the Journal of Social Psychology, suggests that some people consider it a “win” to lean in to known falsehoods."

You did no fact checking, and I must scream. "Recently, the beloved actor Patricia Routledge died. Several newspapers reposted a piece of viral slop which I had debunked a month previously. Let's go through the piece and see just how easy it is to prove false."

MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying), Freedom, and the Lie That Canada “Kills Its Own”. "When a government program becomes a punching bag for MAGA/MAPLE MAGA Religious Cult led internet outrage, facts go missing. Let’s put them back."

Anti-vaccine myths surged on social media ahead of the CDC shooting. Before the shooting, social media companies relaxed their protocols around misinformation.

The Autism Epidemic That Never Was. "RFK Jr.'s scientific illiteracy has led the ignorant down a dangerous path."

How the Rapid Spread of Misinformation Pushed Oregon Lawmakers to Kill the State’s Wildfire Risk Map. "This is how misinformation gets accepted as fact."

A Sodom and Gomorrah Story Shows Scientific Facts Aren’t Settled by Public Opinion. "Claims that an asteroid or comet airburst destroyed the biblical Sodom captured the public’s imagination. Its retraction shows that scientific conclusions aren’t decided by majority rule in the public square."

Delusion by Design: How Conspiracy Groups And Bad Actors Are Engineering AI Platforms And Chatbots to Confirm Their Beliefs and Lies. "Chatbots and AI Models Trained on Junk Science are now Being Used to Radicalize, Recruit, and Mislead the Masses - and It's working."

Three quarters of Canadians say misinformation affected the federal election: poll. "The Leger poll, which sampled more than 1,500 Canadian adults from April 29 to May 1, suggests that 19 per cent of people think false information or misinformation had a major impact on the election."

Hot Air: the danger of climate misinformation. "Tortoise has identified more than 300 influencers who are spreading content about climate change that ranges from scepticism to misinformation. Claims made over the past three years on X, YouTube, TikTok and media sites have been compiled in a searchable database that shows how online untruths about climate are growing, changing shape and spreading."

2025 World Fantasy Awards

The 2025 World Fantasy Awards were presented last weekend at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, UK. The full list is available on File 770. These are the fiction winners.

•  Novel: The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey/Hodderscape)
•  Novella: Yoke of Stars by R. B. Lemberg (Tachyon Publications)
•  Short Fiction:  “Raptor” by Maura McHugh (Heartwood: A Mythago Wood Anthology)
• Anthology: Heartwood: A Mythago Wood Anthology, ed. Dan Coxon (Drugstore Indian Press)
• Collection: A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell (Hogarth/Granta Books)

Review - The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantary, Volumes 12 and 13

Over the last couple of years, I've been neglecting short fiction, which is odd considering that I was a frequent reader of science fiction magazines as a teen. (I used to dream about Analog and for a while I had an almost complete set of The Magzine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and a 30-year run of Astounding.Analog). So after finishing Ray Nayler's excellent The Mountain in the Sea, I decided to dive back into anthologies for a while. I;m going to start publishing short reviews as I finish them. 

For many years, the best annual anthologies were those edited by Gardner Dozois. Sadly. he passed away in 2018. so his last anthology was the 35th edition of The Year's Best Science Fiction, covering 2017. Since then, Jonathan Strahan and Neal Clarke, among others have edited series of year's best anthologies. 

In this post, I'm going to briefly discuss Jonathan Strahan's anthologies, The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, Volumes 12 and 13 covering the years 2017 and 2018.  These are hefty books: Volume 12 has 539 pages and 29 stories, Volume 13 has 30 stories and 494 pages. Both volumes include an introduction by Strahan and short biographies of each author.

For each book, I'm just going to list the stories that I bookmarked as being especially good with occasional annotations. I should note that I much prefer science fiction to fantasy, so I didn't read many of the fantasy stories (though I did start reading all of them). I bookmark the stories that I like and create a numerical score: stories I liked/number of stories in the book, expressed as a percentage.

Volume 12 (Likes: 29%)

• "Eminence", Karl Schroeder
• "The Chameleon's Gloves", Yoo Ha Lee
• "Crispin's Model", Max Gladstone: This one turned out to be horror, not my usual taste but quite good. 
• "The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine, Greg Egan": A dark look at an AI-dominated near future. 
• "An Evening with Sereryn", Rich Larson
• "Babylon", Dave Hutchinson
• "Bring Your Own Spoon," Saad Z. Hossain: A science fiction story with djinn.  
• "Belladona Nights", Alastair Reynolds: This was easily the best story in the book. A vision of humanity's far future that was elegaic, powerful, and terribly sad. 

Volume 13 (Likes: 23%)

• "Yard Dog", Tade Thompson. Jazz and fantasy, a nice mix. 
• "The Blue Fairy Manifesto", Annalee Newitz
• "Okay, Glory", Elizabeth Bear
• "Meat and Salt and Sparks", Rich Larson. I must track down his story collections; I like everything I've read by him.
• "Nine Last Days on Planet Earth", Daryl Gregory. I think this was my favourite story in the book.
• "Golgatha", Dave Hutchinson
• "Quality Time", Ken Liu. If you know any software developers or tech engineers, get them to read this. 

Featured Links - November 4, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Autumn Leaves

My Non-Fossil Car Experience. "Very few EV drivers ever go back." Our next car will probably be a hybrid. I don't think we're ready for a full EV yet. 

Photoshop's biggest rival is now free, with one big exception. I'm going to have to download Affinity and have a good, hard look at it. I don't need the (mostly AI) subscription features for the limited editing I do. 

A Review of Grokipedia, Using Myself as Test Subject. John Scalzi explains why you shouldn't trust Grokipedia and LLMs in general. 

Why time feels like it’s speeding up, and how to slow the pace. "You’re not wrong to think time is running away from you. Experts explain the strange phenomenon and what to do about it." 

We’re Number Two! "How Trump ceded the future to China." In less than one year, the Trump regime has set the US into a decline that may take a generation to recover from, if recovery is possible at all. 

Please stop using NotebookLM as a note-taking app. "At its core, NotebookLM is a research assistant. Not a note-taking tool." Here's a contrast POV to the article I linked to last week. 

Can You Use a High-End TV as a Computer Monitor? "A high-end TV can be an affordable way to get more display real estate for your computer setup—but there are some essential considerations before you replace your monitor with a massive OLED or QD OLED TV."

Movie and TV Reviews - October 2025

Movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in October when not watching the Blue Jays march into baseball nirvana. I do these posts mainly so I can keep track of what we've been watching, so the reviews are cursory. 

Movies

• Black Bag: A British spy thriller directed by Stephen Soderbergh. Not a lot of action but very tense. Well acted, well made, and well written. (Amazon Prime)

TV Shows

• Death Valley: A British police procedural set in a small town in Wales. A somewhat ditzy detective connects with a retired actor who played a detective on TV.  This one is pretty light but well writen and acted, and funny. (BritBox)
• The Studio: We only got through two episodes of this before giving up. It was billed as a comedy but it works only if you enjoy stupid people running around yelling at each other. Lots of cameos, but that wasn't enough to keep watching. (Apple TV+)
• Karen Pirie (seasons 1-2): A British police procedural featuring a female detecitve tasked with investigating a 25-year-old cold case. Twisty and well made. (BritBox)
• The Reluctant Traveler (season 3): Eugene Levy heads off on more travels. One of the highlight's is a rour of Windsor Castle conducted by Prince Willam. (Apple TV+)
• Invasion (season 3): I'm not sure why I kept watching this, It was more interesting than the previous seasons but, like too many series these days, far too padded. The one good idea in this season was the religious fanatics worshipping the aliens as the vector for the Rapture. (Apple TV+) 
• Nova: Superfloods. Documentary about the North Carolina, Texas, and Valencia floods. Scary stuff. 
• Nova: Pompeii's Secret Underworld. A look at what daily life was like in Pompeii before the eruption. Some nifty recreations of what the city was like along with some remarkable historical analysis. Could have done wihtout the junky fighting recreations though. 

Photo of the Week - November 2, 2025

We seem to have moved into a very autumn-like weather pattern here, with cool blustery weather being the norm the last week or so. This picture is of Lake Ontario on a windy day taken with my Fujifilm X-S10 and the 16-80 mm. zoom.

Incoming waves. Fujifilm X-S10 with Fujinon 16-80 mm. at F5.6, 1/480 second, ISO 400, Velvia film simulation

Satureday Sounds - Blows Against the Empire - Jefferson Starship

This week's musical treat harkens back to 1970. I was then (and still am) a big fan of the Jefferson Airplane, but it was clear the group was splintering. That became blindingly obvious with the release of Blows Against the Empire billed as by Paul Kantner and the Jefferson Starship. It instantly became one of my favourite albums and has remained that way ever since. 

I've heard it called a solo album but that doesn't really fit considering that the musicians include members of the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and other San Francisco musicians. It was the first (and maybe the only) album to be nominated for science fiction's Hugo Award, though sadly, it didn't win. 

File 770 just published a long article about the album, including quotes from an interview with Paul Kantner. That prompted me to give the album another listen, and I still think it's one of the peak moments of the San Francisco psychedelic era. If you're only familiar with the Jefferson Starship through their hits like "Miracles" or "Jane'' (or God forbid, "We Built This City"), this will be an eye opener. 

The version embedded below is the remastered release, which includes a few bonus tracks, none of which are essential. 

Featured Links - October 29, 2025

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Autumn colours in the park

• Catalog of Dark Patterns. "Discover a variety of dark pattern examples, sorted by category, to better understand deceptive design practices."
• Electronic Eye Implant Restored Vision in Patients With Age-Related Macular Degeneration. '"The device could be a boon for millions with vision loss from advancing age." They still have a long way to go before this technology becomes widely available and effective. 
• I tried using NotebookLM as a personal journal (and it worked better than I expected). If you keep a personal journal, this might be worth looking at. 
• This free video editor replaced everything I used to pay for in Adobe Premiere. "Here’s why Lightworks is a solid Adobe contender…" I don't do enough video editing to need anything more than Clipchamp but I do need to find an alternative to Photoshop. 
• GlassWorm: First Self-Propagating Worm Using Invisible Code Hits OpenVSX Marketplace. " It's using stealth techniques we've never seen before in the wild - invisible Unicode characters that make malicious code literally disappear from code editors. Combine that with blockchain-based C2 infrastructure that can't be taken down, Google Calendar as a backup command server, and a full remote access trojan that turns every infected developer into a criminal proxy node." This is a security nightmare.
• OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws. "In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits." 
• The Pivot. "I'm calling this the pivotal year of our times, just as 1968 was the pivotal year of the post-1945 system, for a number of reasons." A thought-provoking article from SF author, Charlie Stross. 
• 5 undeniable, truthful facts about dark matter. "Dark matter has never been directly detected, but the astronomical evidence for its existence is overwhelming. Here’s what to know." This is the most convincing article I've seen yet for the existence of dark matter as opposed to other theories. 

Photo of the Week - October 26, 2025

This week's photo is of one of the lookouts over the hydro marsh along the Lake Ontario shore near the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. It's part of the waterfront infrastructure rebuild after high water levels and storms destroyed the boardwalk and beach infrastructure a few years ago. 

This picture was taken with my Fujifilm X-S10 and edited in the Windows 11 Photos app to straighten it and boost the contrast and saturation a bit to compensate for the cloudy sky. The Photos app has become a decent basic editor and is good enough that I'm considering cancelling my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. 

Marsh lookout, Fujifilm X-S10 with Fujinon 16-80 mm, F5.6, 1/450 second, ISO 400, Velvia film simuation

Saturday Sounds - Nebraska '82: Expanded Edition

Like many Bruce Springsteen fans, I've been waiting a long time for Springsteen to release an expanded edition of Nebraska with outtakes and the rumoured electric version. It's finally out and that's this week's musical treat.

Was it worth the wait? After a first listen, I'd have to say, not really. There's some good stuff here. The first disc has a couple of unreleased tracks and demo versions of some of the songs that eventually ended up on Born to Run, including the title track. But the electric version on the second disk is a bit disappointing and doesn't come close to some of the live tracks I've heard, even including the recent tour. (The version of "Reason to Believe" that he did when I saw him in Toronto last year was absolutely stunning.) The solo perfornance on the third disk is just meh and modern tech can't add much to the remastered version of the original album.

For a review from a more knowledgeable critic, see this from Pitchfork. 

So here it is anyway. It's not a revelation but diehard fans will probably find more nuances in it than I did.

Apple iPad Mini 7 After Six Months

Back in April, I finally gave up on my Amazon 8" tablet and bought an iPad Mini 7. Shortly after that, my sister gifted me with an iPad Air 3rd Generation (2018). At the time, I posted about my first impressions, and this post is an update to that. Most of the comments here will be based on the iPad Mini; I'll get to the iPad Air at the end of this post. 

Yesterday, I published a post about my first impressions of iPad OS 26.

Hardware

I have three main complaints about the iPad Mini hardware. 

• The screen's maximum brightness isn't bright enough. It can be difficult to use outside beause of that. 
• The battery life is not great. It's better than my Pixel phone, but I expected more. It seems to be somewhat worse under iPad OS 26, even with the Liquid Glass interface toned down.
• It doesn't have FaceID. I can unlock my phone by looking at it; that would be a nice capability to have on the iPad. (I think I knew about this going in, but I didn't realize how much it would bother me). 

It's a well-made tablet with a very good screen, especially considering that it's not an OLED panel. I did think about buying a pencil for it, but it seems that Apple changed the way pencils work with the Mini 7 and I can't find one that is compatible with the Mini 7 and my iPad Air 3. 

Reading

My main purpose for buying the iPad Mini was to use it as an ereader, and for that, it works quite well. I use both the Amazon Kindle app and Google Play Books for reading ebooks. 

The Kindle app doesn't get bright enough on the Mini, forcing me to use the system control for brightness. OTOH, the Play Books app doesn't always retain its brighness setting. The Kindle app will sync page count between the iPad and my phone in both directions; the Play Books app will sycn from the tablet to the phone but not the other way around. Given the font size issues I've had with the Kindle app on my phone, I prefer using Play Books, so that is annoying. Both have their strong points but overall, I prefer Play Books.

I also use Libby, primarily for reading magazines from the library that aren't available on News+. (Discover and Astronomy, for example) or that don't support the text mode in News+. 

A suggestion to Apple: Add the ability to adjust the brightness on an app-specific basis. This would work the same way the Font Size control works. It would be handy for apps, like the Kindle app that have their own brightness control but don't get bright enough, or that rely on the system brightness setting. 

News+

I got a three-month trial of News+ with the Mini and it didn't take long for me to realize that I was going to have to pay for it when the trial expired. It's now become my main source for browsing for news articles and reading magazines. I do wish that more magazines had the "read articles in text mode" feature, though I have been able to use Libby for some that don't support it.  (Both Libby and PressReader have a text-mode feature that works on all magazines). Even if something is available from the library, News+ often has content from their websites, which is one of the handiest features. 

When reading magazines, I usually use the iPad Air for News+; it's easier to use on the larger 11" screen. 

iPad Air

I won't be upgrading the iPad Air to iPad OS 26. I've seen too many comments online about performance problems. It's running iPadOS 18 just fine and I don't want to risk messing it up. It is still getting updates to IOS 18 and given my limited usage, it will probably be fine even after updates to that stop. 

Going Forward

I will probably start looking at some of the native iPad OS apps and maybe a few casual games (a chess game would be nice to have). I should also try Safari; so far I've been using Chrome for the little web browsing I do on the tablets. And I need to take a closer look at the accessibility features; my eyes are not getting any better.

First Impressions of iPad OS 26

This is the first of two posts about my Apple  tablets. Tomorrow's post will be about my experience with the iPad Mini. 

I put off upgrading my tablets to iPadOS 26 for a month, but finally decided that the Mini shouldn't have any problems running it. My main concern was the Liquid Glass interface, which looked to me like it could seriously compromise readability. The first thing I did after upgrading was to turn down the transparency and motion effects. Given that, I haven't noticed any readability issues that weren't also present before upgrading.

I did turn on the windowing interface, mainly so I could access app menus. I was worried about readability because they are very small at  the top of the window, but they expand to a reasonable size when triggered. One of my peeves about iPad OS in general is that the top-of-screen menus and icons are too small and there doesn't seem to be any way of making them bigger (unlike Windows). I did run into a problem in Play Books where the bottom controls (go to TOC, move the page slider) wouldn't' respond; I had pulled down the window a bit too far and switching back to the full-screen interface fixed it. (I haven't been able to reproduce that so it may have been a glitch). 

I was excited to hear that Apple had introduced the Accessible Reading feature.  Google's similar Reading Mode app is a lifesaver on my Pixel phone. Sadly, Apple's version is not up to the quality of the Google app. It's fussy to customize, it's not clear how to switch out of it to the standard interface, and sometimes it just hangs up. I'll have to experiment more with it and hope that Apple improves it in later OS updates. 

Battery life, which was not great to start with, seems to be a bit worse under iPad OS 26, even with the Liquid Glass junk turned down or off. 

I'm certainly not the only one who doesn't want to have anything to do with the Liquid Glass interface. N/g, founded by user interface experts Jakob Neilsen and Don Norman, have published an epic takedown of IOS 26 and Liquid Glass.

The interface is restless, needy, less predictable, less legible, and constantly pulling focus rather than supporting seamless access to content. Instead of smoothing the path for everyday tasks, iOS 26 makes users relearn basics while enduring a constant parade of visual stunts.

Apple may call it Liquid Glass. To many users, it feels more like a fogged‑up window: pretty from a distance, but frustrating when you try to see beyond it.

Apple seems to be feeling the heat. The latest IOS beta includes an option to turn off Liquid Glass, or at least reduce the transparency effects. (There are options that will do this under the Accessibility settings, but they are not prominent). 

 

Featured Links - October 21, 2025

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. 

• Sportsnet gives viewers what they want after Brendon Little’s Game 5 meltdown in ALCS — the unvarnished truth (gift link). Even the broadcasters from the network owned by Rogers (who own the Blue Jays) were criticizing manager John Schneider's controversial eighth-inning call. 
• Not needed, not wanted. "PEC defaces Sir John A's building anyway." A story about a citizen's successful action against small-town bureaucracy.
• Mark Carney Is a Very Demanding Boss. "His elbows-up enthusiasm won him the election. Now he’s governing like a Bay Street exec." A long and detailed profile of Canada's new prime minister. It's not a puff piece but the contrast between him and Trump is stark. 
• The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh. Some economic pessimism from Cory Doctorow.
• A High-Tech Ankle Guard Is Helping NBA Players Stay in the Game. "BetterGuards has teamed up with the NBA Training Association to outfit players with its adaptive ankle brace. The pro ballers are avoiding serious injury while evaluating the stabilizing design."
• The Great Reckoning: What the West Should Learn from China. 'The economic historian Adam Tooze, reflecting on his recent, intense engagement with China, put it to me in July with characteristic directness: “China isn’t just an analytical problem,” he said. It is “the master key to understanding modernity.” Tooze called China “the biggest laboratory of organized modernizations there has ever been or ever will be at this level [of] organization.” It is a place where the industrial histories of the West now read like prefaces to something larger.'
• How we sharpened the James Webb telescope's vision from a million kilometers away. "We would be using Webb's highest-resolution mode, called the aperture masking interferometer or AMI for short. It's a tiny piece of precisely machined metal that slots into one of the telescope's cameras, enhancing its resolution. Our results on painstakingly testing and enhancing AMI are now released on the open-access archive arXiv in a pair of papers. We can finally present its first successful observations of stars, planets, moons and even black hole jets."
• Millions of Us Have Likely Lost Our Smell Without Even Realizing It. "The impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continue to be felt across the world, but some consequences are more noticeable than others. New research suggests a large proportion of people may have lost their sense of smell after catching COVID-19, without even realizing it."
• ‘What I do with my body is none of your business’: musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland on trans rights, cult stardom and living with dementia. "His music was ignored for decades. Now, at 81, he is collaborating with pop stars. He and his wife talk about his extraordinary life – and facing severe illness."
• Constipated? Here’s What Actually Works, According to Scientists. "New evidence-backed guidelines highlight the things most likely to help you stay regular in the bathroom."
• Beware “Evil Kerning”: How Hackers Trick You with Fake Email Addresses. Someone needs to write a browser plugin that displays URLs in a monospace font that cant be kerned.

Bluesky PSA

If you are on Bluesky, you may want to have a look at this blocklist. On Friday the Trump regime tried to spam Bluesky by setting up a whole bunch of accounts and then posting the usual odious crap. Fortunately, Bluesky makes it easy to block accounts and even easier with blocklists, which require only a couple of clicks to block the whole list. Here's one you can try.

Photo of the Week - October 19, 2025

This week's photo is another of the world's longest pedestrian-only bridge, in Pickering, over Highway 401 and the rail corridor. I edited this with Google's Magic Eraser tool to remove a black box sitting on the floor beside the window. As far as I can tell, it worked perfectly. The original photo is also below.

I took the photo with my Pixel 8 Pro and edited it on the phone. So far, the AI tools haven't made it to the desktop version of Google Photos, perhaps because I'm in Canada. 

The Pickering pedestrian bridge (edited)

The Pickering pedestrian bridge (original)

Saturday Sounds - Chicago Jazz Philharmonic - Havana Blue (Live)

For this week's musical treat, we're back to jazz with a lovely album by a group with the unwieldly name of Orbert Davis' Chicago Jazz Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble. This is another find from SiriusXM; I was struck by the song "Sabor" and had to find more by the group. There isn't much, two albums: Havana Blue (Live) which contains "Sabor" and The Chicago River, which is a tribute to, you guessed it,  The Chicago River. Of the two, I prefer Havana Blue (Live). 

As you might guess from the group's name and the album's title, this big band orchestral jazz with a Latin flavour. It's quite lovely and is now on my Spotify jazz playlist. 

Featured Links - October 14, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

A grey Lake Ontario

• Toronto vs Chicago: Transit Moving Masses Through The Metropolises. On the map, it looks like Chicago has a more extensive transit network than Toronto, but the reality on the street is very different. 
• A digital dark age? The people rescuing forgotten knowledge trapped on old floppy disks. "From lectures by Stephen Hawking to the letters of British politician Neil Kinnock – it's a race against time to save the historical treasures locked away on old floppy disks." This was a real eye-opener and really interesting. 
• How can a blind photographer take such great photos? Find out here. As a photographer and a person with low vision, I found this both interesting and  inspiring.  
• The Village and the Stars. "Science Fiction, Greenwich Village, and the American Counterculture." An article by Robert Charles Wilson. 
• Regular Expressions, and AI. Using ChatGPT to help construct useful regex expressions is something that would have been a great timesaver in my last job. 
• Engineers create first artificial neurons that could directly communicate with living cells. "A team of engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has announced the creation of an artificial neuron with electrical functions that closely mirror those of biological ones."
• The Destruction in Gaza Is What the Future of AI Warfare Looks Like. "American tech companies have given highly consequential support to Israel's campaign."
• Another mid-M7 earthquake in the Drake Passage. "The third large earthquake to strike between South America and Antarctica this year." 
• Have We Reached a Space-Junk Tipping Point? "In some orbits, the Kessler syndrome is already underway." This is rather disquieting. 

Off for t he Thanksgiving Weekend

It's Thanksgiving weekend up here in the (soon to be) Great White North. We celebrate earlier than our US cousins because our growing season is shorter and harvest earlier. So I'm taking the weekend off to do things like getting the garden ready to plant garlic, cooking a big dinner for the family, and watching the Blue Jays in the ALCS. I''ll be back on Tuesday. 

Future home of next year's garlic crop

We're Toast 63

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. 

Our future

• Scientists issue warning after discovering concerning phenomenon in trees: 'Simply not keeping up'. "Increasing temperatures around the globe are threatening habitats and ecosystems. In fact, a study by the United Nations declared that 14% of the world's coral was lost between 2009 and 2018 because of warmer ocean temperatures."
• The Siberian Tundra Is Exploding. New Research Helps Explain Why. (gift link) "Spontaneous gas explosions appear to be increasing in northern Russia because of climate change and some specific local conditions."
• Trump's Crusaders: Christian Nationalists Are Gaining a Solid Foothold in Washington. "U.S. President Donald Trump has opened the doors of power to far-right Christian nationalists." Gilead is rising in the US. 
• Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid. "It’s not just a phase."
• ‘Nightmare bacteria’ cases are increasing in the US. " Infection rates from drug-resistant “nightmare bacteria” rose almost 70% between 2019 and 2023, according to a new report from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists."
• COVID-19 infections impair our immune systems for months or even years. "Even mild cases can lead to serious health problems years later."
• European Society of Cardiology: Major Consensus Statement Released on Long-Term Cardiovascular Impact of COVID Infection. 'Professor Vassiliou said: “Covid-19 has a profound and lasting impact on cardiovascular health, with complications emerging during acute illness, recovery, and even after reinfections or vaccination. In the absence of clear evidence-based guidance, patients risk harmful treatments and clinicians face uncertainty.'
• Oxford Historian Offers Dire Warning With Prediction Of How Long Americans Have To Save Their Democracy. "Noted British historian, author, and head of the Oxford University European Studies Center Timothy Garton Ash wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian that the 2026 midterm elections will decide the fate of the United States.. Will it continue as a democratic republic of unified states or continue on its current path to become the Christian nationalist, White supremacist authoritarian regime the Republicans' Project 2025 called for."

Photo of the Week - October 5, 2025

This week's photo is of Highway 401 facing east taken from the Liverpool Road overpass. The bridge in the background to the GO station happens to be the longest pedestrian bridge in the world, according to Guinness. There was very little traffic, even for a mid-week afternoon, on one of the busiest highways in North America. Taken with my Pixel 8 Pro. 

Highway 401 and the Pickering pedestrian bridge

Featured Links - October 6, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. I didn't post last week, so here's a baker's dozen for you. 

GO Train tracks out of Pickering

• Chicago and the Horrors of Carte Blanche. "The Trump regime believes it has all the justification it needs to violate our laws and the Constitution. It is mistaken." I am boggled that this is not front-page news and appalled at the silence of the mainstream media. 
• How China is Powering a Clean Energy Revolution. "And bringing cheap electricity and energy security to poor countries."
  
• When Did the New Global War Begin? "So maybe now I can finally pose the question that has been keeping me up at night: At what point will it become evident that we have entered a global conflict? A third world war?"
• CHORD will be a huge leap forward for Canadian radio astronomy. "The next-generation radio telescope will leverage Canadian astronomical leadership to unveil the mysteries of the cosmos."
• Canada Tables A Bill That Can Net You Life In Prison For Hate Propaganda/Hate Speech. IRL And Online. LFG. "You Might Want To Start Scrubbing Your MAGA Timelines..."
• ALS Breakthrough Shows Fatal Disease Is Driven by Immune Attack. "Researchers have uncovered how the body’s own immune system may be driving the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS — a breakthrough that could reshape treatment of the fatal disease."
• Why a massive Russian plane was moved at Toronto Pearson Airport. The AN-124 has been there since the start of the Ukraine war. 
• Anya Pogharian, Montreal teen inventor, takes portable dialysis machine to the world. "18-year-old tests her invention on real blood during internship at Héma-Québec." I hoipe this works and can be put into wide production. It will change peple's lives.
• Declining American Democracy: Trump is a Symptom, Not the Cause. "The modern GOP is inherently authoritarian." This is one of the more insightful essays I've read recently.
• Rise of the Middle Powers. "Who are the adults in the room, in modern politics? And what if those adults want neither a return to American hegemony, nor a multipolar world order?"
• Scientists uncover how to block pain without side effects. "Current painkillers like ibuprofen and aspirin often come with harmful side effects because they shut down both pain and inflammation. But this new research identified a single “pain switch” receptor that can be turned off without interfering with inflammation, which actually helps the body recover."
• Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? "Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and what we can do about it."
• He Created a Spiritual Jazz Masterpiece. He’s Still a Mystery. "Shamek Farrah’s 1974 debut is a highly sought-after rarity, but even his most ardent admirers know little about him. In a rare interview, he tells his story."

Saturday Sounds - Stevie Ray Vaughn - Live at the Capitol Theatre - October 4, 1985

This week's musical treat features Stevie Ray Vaughn playing at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, NJ on October 4, 1985. I saw Vaughn in the summer of 1985 when he opened for Dire Straits in Toronto. I wasn't a big fan before seeing him play, but I was when I left the concert. There isn't a lot of quality footage of his concerts, so this is a treat. Video and sound quality are first rate.

 

Movie and TV Reviews - September 2025

Movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in September. I do these posts mainly so I can keep track of what we've been watching, so the reviews are cursory. Now that it's baseball season, there will probably be fewer items here.

Movies

No movies this month. We were watching too much baseball.

TV Shows

• Countdown: Another slick and expensive-looking thriller from Prime. It would have been better if they simplified the plot a bit and cut it back from thirteen to six or eight episodes. And toned down the American jingoism which really got on my nerves. (Amazon Prime)
• Foundation (season 3): I didn't much enjoy the first two seasons of Foundation, though it had some interesting ideas (not all of which were from Asimov's stories). The third season is quite good though I could have done without silly bits like the speeder chase in the one of the early episodes. Visually, it's absolutely first rate. Coupled with Apple's streaming quality, it's occasionally stunning. (Apple TV+)
• Ballard: A Bosch spinoff about a detective trying to solve cold cases who discovers police corruption. One of the better US police procedurals. (Amazon Prime)
• Alien: Earth. This is probably the best of the Alien stories since the first two movies. They've expanded the story and developed the background elements while maintaining the original 1980s (almost) steampunk aesthetic. It's very dark, both visually and thematically, and the fast-cut action sequences are hard to watch, but overall it's very well done. Like the original movie, it's not for the squeamish. (Disney+)
• Lynley: This is a reboot of Inspector Lynley, a British police procedural about two mismatched detectives that we watched a few years ago. We liked the original and we like the new version. (BritBox)

Been Busy

You may have noticed that posts have been sparse the last week or two. Nothing bad has happened; I just seem to be too busy to post much. I'll have more posts next week.

I may change my posting routine. I've been trying to keep to sort of a schedule with a Featured Links post every Monday or Tuesday and a couple of other posts on the weekend, with various subject-related items in between. I may start doing the link posts when I have enough  interesting links to fill them and not on a fixed schedule. 

In the meantime, here's a cat picture. This is CJ. 

CJ relaxing

c

Saturday Sounds - Tedeschi Trucks Bamd with Leon Russell - Mad Dogs and Englishmen Live at LOCKN' 2015

 Here's some joyous music to get you started for the weekend. 

Ten years ago, the LOCKN' Festival featured the Tedeschi Trucks Band playing the full Mad Dogs and Englishmen album with a bunch of the original musicians, including Leon Russell. It's an amazing performance and it's now been officially released . I  don't know if there will be a video release, but the audio recording is out. It's absolutely wonderful, truly one for the ages. 

Relix Magazine has a long interview with Derek Trucks talking about it if you're interested.

Canada Fights Back and Why

The Canadian press has done a lot of reporting on how Canada is responding to Trump's trade war but not so much on Canadians' response to his administration's fascist takeover of the US government. That doesn't mean there is no response.

In Toronto recently, a group calling themselves Canada First, and clearly patterned on the US extreme right, held a rally (or more accurately tried to hold a rally) in Toronto's Christie Pits park, site of an infamous antisemitic riot in 1933. They were outnumbered 10 to 1 by anti-fascist demonstrators. 

The win last weekend was straightforward. Neighbours showed up, beat drums, chanted “Fascists go home,” and starved the rally of clean footage. City officials called it what it was—a hate demonstration—and community organizers delivered a family‑friendly counter‑rally that kept the energy non‑violent and the message unmistakable. Police reported ten arrests tied to the dueling events. And then everyone left, leaving the organizer to get pissed off that not enough Groypers and racists showed up. LOL.

 ...

 Canada First tried to plant violence and American grievance in a Canadian park with a Canadian historical memory of fighting back. Toronto—regular people with flags, drums, and kids in tow, not “left wing lunatics”—showed that our democracy does not make space for ethnic‑cleansing euphemisms or white‑supremacist cosplay.

That is what patriotism looks like here.

Charlie Angus published an article that looks at Canadian patriotism from a historical perspective. 

In the years since the Group of Seven, Canada has become a multiracial, multinational country that is increasingly urban. Our diversity is also part of who we are as a nation.

But we are, at our core, still children of the wild north. The reality of life in such a land is so that we could never survive without our trust in each other.

In Canada, there is little room for the rugged individualist. Mr. Marlboro Man wouldn't last long here; he wouldn't be able to push his vehicle out of the snowbank without asking someone for help.

Canadians have survived because we understand that we have to rely on neighbours.

Its a lesson that our neighbours to the south seem to have forgotten.