PicoBlog

It’s a rarity for any spy story to rely as heavily on its characters as Will Smith’s (no, not the slappy one) Apple TV+ series Slow Horses does. In a genre often defined by intricacy and twists — plot-driven narratives that usually rule and dominate — leaving less room for character drama, Smith’s thriller (based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novels) is a welcome exception. Don’t get me wrong, throughout its three seasons (so far), the inner workings of MI5, terror threats, Cold War secrets, and conspiring Russians have all played a vital part in the show’s steadily growing success.

Abstract: We did it! Delivered a major software project in record time! Our customers were happy, and we got a ton of funding, but then, the troubles started. There are plenty of stories out there around “how people built things from scratch”. This is the story of what happens next, i.e. after a successful launch. A few years ago my team brought Salesorce’s first-ever video streaming service, Salesforce Plus to life.

Today’s newsletter podcast (recorded in January 2021) features an arborist discussing ways you can spot when your trees may be in danger of falling, especially in a wet, windy winter. More information about what was discussed in the podcast can be found at the University of California Ag and Natural Resources publication, “Inspect Your Landscape Trees for Hazards”. In this era of "Big House, Small Yard", choosing the right size tree can not only enhance the beauty of your backyard, it can forestall serious and expensive pavement problems that might force you to crack open your wallet in five to ten years.

[Archives] One sunny evening last summer I dropped the hook of my 24-footer behind Protection Point at the mouth of Nushagak Bay. The point afforded protection from the SW breeze, but a strong flood tide swept up the coastline, and as soon as the anchor grabbed, the anchor line went bar-tight. As pleasant a night as you can get in these parts, I knew there was only one thing that could interrupt the serenity: in a few hours that tide would reverse and with it the current.

Welcome to Techno Sapiens! Subscribe to join 13,000+ other readers and get research-backed tips for living and parenting in the digital age. 5 min readI got my first cellphone when I was 14. The only things I remember about it were that it was light blue, plasticky, and small enough to fit into the tiny pockets of some horrifically low-rise jeans. I also remember, in the days before T9, spending many hours furiously thumbing the multi-tap keyboard.

Tuesday, November 22, 2022 Greetings from Toronto! And Happy Thanksgiving week, my favorite cooking holiday of the year. Last week my third cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers, came out and thank goodness, because it was impossibly hard to keep it from you for so long. There are so many recipes in there that I worked at for years to get exactly right and I cannot wait for you to make them all — like thick, tender molasses spice cookies you can make in one bowl, no handmixer required, the kind that make your whole home smell like the holidays.

[this week’s smocking, silk on ecru cotton] One of the very nice things about this newsletter is recognising names of people who read my original yarnstorm blog, the one I began in 2005 (until who knows when - it faded away in the end). I started this one on a whim, not sure if anyone would subscribe, so it’s lovely to know readers from what seems like a million internet years ago are here.

In case you thought last month’s resignation of the University of Arizona’s Chief Financial Officer Lisa Rulney meant she was out of a job, we’ve got news for you. We received a tip yesterday that Rulney — the person in charge of finances when the UA reported a $240 million miscalculation — had been rehired, which seemed to be confirmed by the school’s campus directory. But when we asked the UA, we were surprised to learn that she never actually left.

Holy shit! OpenAI just gave me sneak preview early access to GPT-5 (to do some red-teaming) — and it’s incredible! What really makes me is happy is that they let me look at the training data, too, so I could do proper tests of its generalization. This thing is LIT! And wow, there is now an option to run purely on licensed data, so artists and writers are fairly compensated. And I haven’t spotted a single hallucination or boneheaded error, yet.