Passing fancies #25

Strap yourself in and prepare to be inundated with evidence of my weird interests, much of which I discovered via my RSS feeds.

Beer

 

The founder of one of my favorite breweries, Dogfish Head, is one of craft brewing's most memorable characters.  I've had the good fortune to talk with him on several occasions, including sitting next to him at a brunch celebrating Dogfish Head's 20th anniversary as shown in the picture above.  He's a really interesting guy.  Here's an article about his considerable impact on the industry.
https://www.americancraftbeer.com/craft-beer-legends-dogfish-heads-sam-calagione/

Books

This week I finished Tim Sullivan's latest book, The Tailor.  It stars his fascinating character, DS George Cross, a neurodivergent police detective.  I've been eagerly devouring this series as they become available in the U.S. which had been subject to a delay with his earlier books which I assume was due to the challenges of publishing books destined for a foreign country.  I was hooked quickly and have preordered the last few books.  Unfortunately, in my enthusiasm I end up reading each new book far too quickly.
https://crimefictionlover.com/2026/07/the-tailor-by-tim-sullivan/

Television/Movies

I recently watched Picnic At Hanging Rock which was entertaining but which I felt had an unsatisfying ending.  Then I made the mistake of searching for more information and found hints that the author had intended time travel as a possible explanation for how the girls disappeared.  I think I would have been happier had I not found that out.

I also watched The Shawshank Redemption which I thought was a much better film.  I had read the book by Stephen King recently and wanted to see how faithfully the material was adapted.  I'm happy to report that aside from the inevitable need to shorten the story to a movie, the story was kept largely intact, much like the movie Stand By Me, also adapted from a King book.

Links

When I was a kid, few movies entertained me more than those with stop-motion animation like that done by Ray Harryhausen.  The skeleton battle scene in Jason and the Argonauts is a particular favorite of mine.  This article with more information about how the illusion was created is a treat.
https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/how-ray-harryhausen-conjured-the

Since I recently featured a link about a new form of trebuchet, this article about possibly the first victim of Edward I's Warwolf trebuchet caught my eye.  Having 167 fractures does not sound like a pleasant way to die.
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/skeleton-with-167-fractures-discovered-at-scottish-castle-may-have-been-first-victim-of-edward-is-war-wolf-trebuchet

I was surprised to hear that unfavorable forecasts from the weather apps on people's phones are having such a dramatic effect on small businesses.  I think people often don't investigate the timing of potential inclement weather to try to work around it.
https://finance.yahoo.com/small-business/articles/weather-app-rain-icons-cut-213000881.html

It's easy to overlook modern conveniences which make our lives easier than our ancestors had it.  It's also nice to take a moment to appreciate how much they increase our enjoyment.
https://ordinaryabundance.com/

I'm fascinated by octopuses and how alien their intelligence is.  Their nervous system is distributed between their brain and their eight arms.  The arms are capable of operating on their own and continue to do so for some time when lost by the octopus.  Understanding more about them might help us when and if we meet aliens from other worlds.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/octopus-extraterrestrial-intelligence-1.6871036

Finding out that the person who bought the domain name noreply.net is being inundated with email makes me smile and feel a bit sad that people are so clueless as to try to direct email to the domain name.
https://www.wired.com/story/sensitive-info-goes-into-no-reply-emails-constantly-this-guy-sees-it-all/

It doesn't surprise me that hobbyists are rejecting the use of AI.  I enjoy solving problems and programming is a perfect way to scratch that itch.  LLMs can be occasionally helpful but I never enjoy using them.
https://boingboing.net/2026/08/12/hobby-coders-against-llms.html

Like the author of this article, I fear that true craft of programming will be lost once everyone resorts to the use of AI.
https://www.alexkroman.com/p/the-new-craftsmanship

This combination of a black hole and a massive star looks pretty amazing.  We can thank the James Webb Space Telescope for assisting with this discovery.
https://news.mit.edu/2026/astronomers-discover-brand-new-type-astrophysical-object-black-hole-star-0812

While the winner of the DARPA Lift Challenge didn't quite hit the 4:1 ratio of payload to weight ratio required to win the full prize, it got impressively close.

https://dronexl.co/2026/08/10/darpa-lift-challenge-results-avidrone/

My stepfather died of ALS 10 years ago.  This brain-computer interface would have made his last few months much more pleasant.  For a man who had been active his entire life, being confined to a wheelchair, having to rely on others to do everything for him was hard to deal with.

https://health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/brain-computer-interface-enables-independent-accurate-communication-for-man-living-with-als/2026/06

Back when I was a field engineer, the oldest systems I worked on were the GE-200 series machines.  They had so little memory that when I needed to run diagnostics on a peripheral device, the computer operators were forced to give me the entire system.

https://icm.museum/blog/?p=564

One of the things which worries me is research into dangerous areas such as inverted bacteria which might be able to confuse or bypass our immune systems used to dealing with non-inverted bacteria.  I hope they're using redundant safety systems with lots of oversight.

https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-inverted-bacteria-that-experts

It's amazing to consider how much thought went into computer input devices.  Even the devices which appear simple on their surface are more complicated than they appear.

https://aresluna.org/show-your-hands-honor/#input-slow