Below are things I’ve learned, remembered, or found interesting in the past month:
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The words “Quote” and “Quoth” are completely unrelated to each other! Quoth comes from proto-Germanic for “To say”, while Quote comes from old French for “To mark a reference”.
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Garden post about what I learned from David Allen’s Getting Things Done.
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According to a study by researchers at the UK Science Museum, objects in our world are getting less colorful.
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I previously posted my notes from a talk on how to pitch a board game to a publisher. I can now confirm that this does in fact work.
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Garden post:Notes from Nobody Wants To Read Your Shit. Bonus: notes from Steal Like an Artist
- Some good Bluesky posts:
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This promotional video from XCOM: Enemy Unknown
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Thanks to friend of the blog Ross for sending this one over: Ancient Roman cookbook translated to English, with many recipes containing silphium, the miracle plant we’ve covered here before.
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Related, some lost other lost technologies include Greek fire, Damascus Steel (though this one we’ve been able to broadly replicate, and surpass), and the mysterious mummification of Girolamo Segato. Yes, I understand that that makes it sound like he was mummified. No, I won’t change it.
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I love Pushbullet, and have been using them since before there were many [any?] other similar services around. It lets you send messages between devices, and text and mirror phone notifications to your PC. I use it daily to send notes, ideas, and reminders to myself, in the form of a persistent notification on my phone.
In fact, I like Pushbullet so much that I switched web browsers in order to continue using them when Google disabled extension support for Manifest V2, removing support for Pushbullet, most ad blockers, and many other extensions.
Recently, I subscribed to a month of Pushbullet Pro, and canceled it after 24 days so as to not be surprised by the renewal. They issued me a 20% refund! Anyway, support Pushbullet, I love them. I’ve written about Pushbullet previously. -
I don’t share many short videos, but this one brought me joy. Mirrored below.
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I’m always fascinated whenever we send signals over to our space probes. It’s multiple feats of engineering every time, and this most recent one (bringing Voyager 1’s backup thrusters back online after decades of inoperability) was inspired by a flash of human insight.
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An interview with Chris Avellone, the lead writer for Star Wars: Knights of the Republic 2, reveals his (scrapped) treatment for a third game. Related, back in March, Saber Interactive confirmed the KOTOR 1 remake is still happening in the weakest possible terms: “…We working on numerous games across many different genres. Everything that we have talked about is still in development. We will share information on upcoming games when we have something cool to share”
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George Carlin played Mr. Conductor on Thomas the Tank Engine. Someone made a dub with some of his better known works mixed in. Strong language!
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Oops all video?? Farmer setting the tale straight about farm subsidies.
- Dinosaur mass grave yields perennial results!
