Passing fancies #24

 

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

Beer

Divers just discovered a bottle of Guinness in a shipwreck which is 162 years old.  Would you try a sip?  While I'm not disappointed when visiting a restaurant where Guinness is the best beer on the menu, I don't think it ages particularly well.  I believe I'd skip the opportunity to taste it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4kx9zkd90o

I found this photo of a very cool lamp at a Sapporo location.  I'm almost always amused by decorations made from beer bottles or kegs.

Books

I follow Zach Weinersmith on Mastodon and when he described his new book, Sawyer Lee and the Quest to Just Stay Home, it sounded like a great gift for our youngest grandson so I sent him a copy.  Then I got curious from the reviews I read, so I bought the Kindle edition for myself.  It was weird and amusing which is exactly what I had been hoping.  I enjoyed another book by Zach and his wife, Kelly called A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?  It helped confirm my opinion that the plans to create a Mars colony are overly optimistic.

I also follow another author, Catherynne M. Valente, on Mastodon.  Since I've been enjoying her posts there, I had been wanting to read one of her books.  Fortunately, Audible just had a great sale featuring some of her books.  I just finished reading Comfort Me With Apples which I quite enjoyed.

And finally, I re-read A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs who is better known as the creator of Tarzan of the Apes.  I first read Burroughs' Mars books over 50 years ago.  Back then it was easy to find the original paperbacks as well as the stories serialized in pulp magazines in used bookstores.

Television/Movies

This week we watched a documentary about the Voyager spacecraft called It's Quieter in the Twilight which I found very inspiring.  Some of the people working on the project have been working on it for the better part of 50 years.  I find NASA's efforts to keep the probes going in order to further humanity's knowledge admirable. 

Links

I find the notion that a toolbox which appeared in a scene in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off might sell for a lot of money both baffling and a little sad because people's priorities are so misguided.  It's just a toolbox and not even a particularly nice looking one.
https://www.jalopnik.com/2233865/snap-on-toolbox-ferris-buellers-day-off-auction-for-sale/

This article about Kelly Slater still surfing so well at 54 made me smile.  I've found surfing fascinating since I first heard the Beach Boys singing about it when I was young.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/aug/11/kelly-slater-near-perfect-surf-tahiti-pro-monster-swell

I think it may have been on Northern Exposure that I first heard about trebuchet.  Ever since then they've been a minor obsession for me.  If you want to see more about them, search on Youtube for videos of them flinging large objects like the piano one flung on Northern Exposure.
https://hackaday.com/2026/08/09/creating-a-supersonic-trebuchet/

I had heard about cocaine being used to make early versions of Coca-Cola, but its use in wine was news to me.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/a-short-history-of-cocaine-wine-and-coca-cola-44600

This bluegrass version of the theme from the movie Jaws is actually pretty good.
https://laughingsquid.com/blugrass-jaws-theme/

I've thought Ray Harryhausen's special effects were are amazing since I first saw them as a kid.  Those stop motion skeletons were amazing!
https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/how-ray-harryhausen-conjured-the

I enjoyed reading this article about Rudy Rucker, a favorite SciFi author of mine.  It's hard to believe that I first read one of his books over 40 years ago.
https://losgatan.com/rudy-rucker-writer-mathematician-painter/

I used to enjoy taking the kids to the Maryland RenFest so I found this article interesting.  The last time I took my daughter, I found it somewhat formulaic.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-surprisingly-radical-roots-of-the-renaissance-fair-180982918/

I've read a number of books about how our brains work including a couple by Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Computing.  Many of the books have discussed how inaccurate our senses are.  We spend our lives trusting our eyes but it turns out you can't necessarily believe what you think you've seen.
https://boingboing.net/2026/08/05/gray-apple-brain-sees-red.html

A book which Mark Twain wrote in 1898 seems to predict the Internet. at least according to this article.
https://boingboing.net/2026/08/07/mark-twain-telelectroscope.html

The term Tendril Perversion describes how the cords on land line phone used to get tangled, seemingly on their own.  I used to be obsessed with trying to undo the strange way they got messed up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendril_perversion

Working on Linux kernel modules offers a nice change of pace

I'm fortunate to be able to do most of the low level programming for my team at work, a type of programming I enjoy more than application level programming.  I got my start in software because I taught myself machine language programming while I was a field engineer 40+ years ago.  Working on computers with front panel switches and lights which made it simple to enter short machine code programs and to step through them was impossible for me to resist.  Having started at that level of programming made me a natural for doing systems programming once I made the switch to software.

The majority of the low level programming I do these days involves mapping device registers to allow me to use them to control various devices on our custom hardware.  Last week I was trying to fix a problem with a Linux kernel module (aka device driver) which behaved strangely when the system was under a heavy load as it often is.  We use an open source device driver supplied by the vendor of one of the chips on our device to transfer data via PCIe (a peripheral I/O bus used to connect peripheral devices to a system).  This device driver exposes a few of its driver variables via sysfs (a pseudo filesystem used to provide access to device information and controls to application programs).  I was using one of the sysfs variables in the application program to dynamically change the timeout control to improve data transfer performance.  The problem was when the system was under heavy loads, there was a noticeable lag between when the application program updated the sysfs variable and when the device driver actually saw the linked variable change.  With this delay, the data transfer speed was noticeably degraded.

I find this type of problem particularly interesting to try to solve.  It usually starts with trying to build a mental model of the hardware and software involved by studying the code and any documentation available.  Once the model is somewhat accurate, you can consider what modifications might affect the problem and testing out your theories one at a time.  I first tried a custom callback procedure for the module parameter in question but that still allowed the delay to occur.  Then I decided to try adding an IOCTL command to allow me to change the variable directly and was happy to discover that this approach actually worked.  With this problem solved, I'll be moving back to application problems and looking forward to my next opportunity to do true systems programming.

 

Passing fancies #23

Strap yourself in and prepare to be inundated with my weird interests.

Beer

Last weekend I stopped by my favorite beer shop in Winchester, VA which is called The Beer and Wine Shop.  This visit I picked up a bottle of 3 Floyds Black Colossus, an imperial stout made with pasilla & ancho peppers, vanilla, cocoa, cinnamon, and coffee and topped off by barrel aging.  3 Floyds makes some excellent beers and this one is no exception.  In the hands of a less talented brewery, this many ingredients could have resulted in a confusing mess but somehow they managed to balance everything.

Rodenbach Brewery is one of my favorite Belgian breweries.  I particularly enjoy their lambics - lighter beers made with fruit and allowed to cool in Coolships (large shallow vessels which permit natural yeasts to join the party).  I love lambics which feature a blend of flavors including both sweet and sour notes because they confuse my palate in the best way possible.
https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2026/7/28/visiting-rodenbach-brewery

Books

I'm still reading The Moonshine War by Elmore Leonard as an e-book before bed.  Starting to read when I'm tired makes for slower reading.  It's so good that it prompted me to by the complete set of DVDs from Justified, a TV series based on Leonard's Raylan Givens stories.

I've been listening to an audiobook of Long After Midnight by Ray Bradbury.  It's been a while since I read anything by Bradbury and I had almost forgotten how wonderful his prose is.  Highly recommended if you haven't read any Bradbury lately.

Music

This week Youtube recommended a video by Gogol Bordello, one of the band I discovered while searching for bands like Hazmat Modine.  Hazmat Modine is so unique that they're really in a category of their own as this video should show.  The websites which claim to be able to recommend music based on a band you like do a terribly mediocre job of that task, like most of the AI components of any search function.  Gogol Bordello's music makes me smile because they seem to enjoy playing for an audience so much and they make incredibly happy music.
https://youtu.be/IJGh50t6crw?si=Ml1S-j1gUS2i829w

Today Facebook showed me a video from Jess Kenn, a wonderful musician we discovered since she was part of the audience for one of the recent Felix Pickles performances we've enjoyed.  I had an inkling of how good her voice was when she sang along with the band as they encouraged us to do but hearing her perform on Facebook convinced me that it was a good idea to follow her.  We've got plans to see her perform soon.  If you want to hear her for yourself, search for "Jess Kenn Music" on Facebook. 

Television/Movies

This week we finished watching the Apple TV streaming series Cape Fear.  I've enjoyed a couple of the movie versions of Cape Fear in the past but Javier Bardem is so incredibly compelling in a role like this version that I'm certain it will remain the definitive version for me.  As good as all the performances in the Coen Brothers movie, No Country for Old Men were, Bardem's performance still manages to stand out for me.

I recorded Eraserhead on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) recently and watched it this week.  I've been hearing about this movie for a long time but had never seen more than a snippet of it.  After watching the entire movie, I'm definitely not a fan. 

Links

This article about about the variability in USB-C cables illustrates one of the things I hate about technologies designed by committees.  There's a tendency to make them support far too many features which makes them needlessly confusing.  I've been writing code for USB devices since before there was decent support in operating systems.  Windows 95 OSR2 (OS system release 2) was the first OS that seemed to have reasonably good support.  For what it's worth, I have one of these USB-C cable testers.  It's one of the most reliable ways to figure out what features a cable can support.
https://www.makeuseof.com/i-stopped-trusting-usb-c-cable-labels-started-testing-with-meter-instead/

There are far too many tech CEOs and CTOs who seem to function mostly by parroting buzzwords found in periodicals aimed at tech execs and who have too little understanding of the technologies those buzzwords imply.
https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/brainwash-an-executive-today/

The fact that California farmers are being forced to destroy 420,000 peach trees due to Del Monte having to declare bankruptcy depresses me.  Peaches are one of my favorite fruits and I truly appreciate farmers for all their hard work in keeping us supplied with good food.
https://ubirataonline.com.br/california-farmers-will-destroy-420000-peach-trees-after-del-monte-closes-canning-facilities/

I've long been fascinated by trebuchets.  This video covers the variants in this ancient technology.
https://laughingsquid.com/trebuchet-history/

I've often wondered how behaviors seem to be passed down from generation to generation in other species.  It seems to be passed on too efficiently to be the product of parents passing along the knowledge to their offspring.
https://www.upworthy.com/ten-year-old-butterfly-researcher-discovers-that-memories-an-be-passed-down-through-generations/

My first job in the computer industry was as a field engineer (computer mechanic) for mainframe computers.  That left me with a nostalgic view of how computers should look.  Sometimes I miss punched cards and the card punches and readers which made them useful.
https://kishlay-notabot.github.io/reviving-ibm-punch-card.html

This essay about how engineers use to be the dependable, silent parents made me a little nostalgic.  Engineering used to be a nice 9-5 job instead of one which required long hours and often insufficient rewards.  That changed at some point and engineers started being absentee parents as a result.  The tradeoffs often aren't worth it.
https://matt-schellhas.medium.com/the-invisible-geek-bb170d6166bc

I've known for a while that Vikings didn't wear horned helmets but it's such a cool look that it's hard to let go of the stereotype.
https://danjones.substack.com/p/history-etc-the-vikings-didnt-wear 

The car tuner culture reminds me of the early days of personal computers where it was easy to add functionality with a little hard work and a touch of obsession.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/07/like-a-cheat-code-for-your-car-we-investigate-ecu-tuning/

Being a power user used to be something computer savvy people aspired to.  That seems to be slowly dying out as the population ages.  I have fond memories of manually configuring plug-in cards for computers via switches or jumpers on these cards.
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/the-slow-death-of-the-power-user/

Passing fancies #22

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you might gather from these links, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Beer

I recently stopped by a favorite beer shop in Winchester, VA called The Beer and Wine Shop and bought an interesting Russian Imperial Stout called Confessions from Adroit Theory Brewing.  It's pretty smooth and hides its 16.6% ABV well.  Russian Imperial Stouts are a favorite style for me.

Goose Island has announced their 2026 lineup for Bourbon County Brand Stout, a series of beers I look forward to each year.  BCBS is typically released on Black Friday.  Goose Island made the original Bourbon barrel-aged stout.  It's often my only Black Friday purchase.
https://newschoolbeer.com/home/2026/7/2026-bourbon-county-stout-lineup-reveal-from-goose-island

Books

I've been reading The Moonshine War by Elmore Leonard which Amazon had offered on sale in the Kindle version.  The topic reminds me of my favorite grandfather who used to tell me stories about his father making moonshine.  It became the inspiration for an episode of Justified, a TV series based on the character Raylan Givens featured in several of Leonard's novels.

I finished The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield this week.  It was an interesting mystery which offered lots of interesting details about space travel.  My favorite Hadfield video is of him performing Space Oddity in space (see the link below).
https://youtu.be/KaOC9danxNo?si=5ubpZbx29fV3Q0NB

Music

Over the weekend we enjoyed another opportunity to hear a favorite local band called Felix Pickles.  This time they performed on the porch of a cool little grocery store called Round Hill Farm to Table Co which had recently revived their practice of offering live music on their porch on Saturdays.  They also make very tasty sandwiches.  While we were enjoying the music, we saw two groups of 10 or so Porsche cars drive by which I assume was part of a local car club.

Television/Movies

This week we saw a movie called Minions & Monsters which was amusing.  We saw it at Alamo Drafthouse, my favorite venue for watching movies.  One thing I like about Alamo is the fact that they show 30 minutes of themed short videos like the weird one about a cute version of Cthulhu at the link below during the time most theaters inundate their patrons with annoying advertisements.  I like Alamo so much that I refuse to visit other theaters.
https://youtu.be/FOHJUrcVdJk?si=afHowTbq8S0G_sMa

We also saw a movie called The Born Losers which introduces the character Billy Jack, a Vietnam vet who is part Navajo.  It was a hokey biker film which I thought was much worse than Billy Jack which the second film in the series.

Links

I love this quote from Tina Fey about not wasting energy to argue with your critics.  It rarely pays off.
https://www.tvline.com/2219406/quote-of-the-day-tina-fey-critics/

I started my career as a field engineer (computer mechanic) and have heard many great stories about debugging tough problems.  This is a really good one.
 https://www.tumblr.com/patrickthomson/2499755681/the-best-debugging-story-ive-ever-heard 

Proving Richard Feynman wrong about something is an impressive accomplishment.  If you haven't read any of Feynman's books, they're worth seeking out.
https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/feynman-and-followers-you-guys-are-off-physicists-disprove-decades-old-richard-feynman-theory-on-silly-sprinklers

It's amazing that we got our first closeup look at the surface of Mars 50 years ago.  I'm a sucker for stories about NASA.
https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/humanitys-first-look-at-the-surface-of-mars-shared-on-50th-anniversary-of-historic-nasa-landing-space-photo-of-the-week

Everyone I know who is more than a casual user of technology has at least one box of old cables which they're not sure they can get rid of yet.  I'm no exception.  The few times I've weeded out my old cable collection, I always seem to find a need for one I've discarded.
https://www.engadget.com/2219812/old-cables-worth-keeping/

Slashdot had a story about college students getting caught cheating on a midterm exam by the professor who had included some hidden text within the question which instructed LLMs to include the word "Madagascar" in the response.  Apparently the 32 students caught cheating didn't even bother to proofread the answer provided by the LLM before submitting it.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/07/25/2114259/32-of-35-students-caught-using-hilariously-wrong-ai-generated-answers-for-professors-midterm

It's a little depressing that new Imax theaters aren't possible because the parts to manufacture the projectors can no longer be manufactured.  It seems ridiculous but I've heard of similar tech failures.
https://variety.com/2026/film/news/why-no-more-imax-70mm-screens-the-odyssey-christopher-nolan-1236813019/

As a fan of John Carpenter's movies, I found this article interesting.  The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China are my favorite of his films but there are so many others I enjoy.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jul/20/everything-i-know-about-evil-i-learned-in-that-small-town-john-carpenter-on-terrifying-the-world-with-halloween-the-thing-and-the-fog

This humorous article made me smile.  Spoiler alert - the cat was responsible.
https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/flight-tracking-news/just-for-fun/investigators-release-preliminary-report-on-lego-747-and-space-shuttle-crash/

How and why Hannibal crossed the Alps with war elephants has long been the topic of debate.  Scientists may have finally figured it out.
https://thedebrief.org/scientists-may-have-finally-solved-the-mystery-of-how-and-why-hannibal-took-war-elephants-across-the-alps/

Sadly it doesn't surprise me that the firms which buy up manufacturing businesses experiencing financial difficulties manage to produce substandard products with a previously respected name.  Trying to make businesses more profitable by the easiest method available drives out the best employees which hurts the business and using cheaper materials also contributes to producing a bad product.
https://www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-cookware-got-worse-on-purpose

Bluetooth connected alarm systems in some cars has left them vulnerable to hackers.  Apparently once the alarm is hacked, the ignition can be disabled and doors can be unlocked.  It's hard to believe that manufacturers don't take security more seriously.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/anyone-in-bluetooth-range-can-unlock-cars-kill-engines-through-alarms-owners-may-never-have-paid-for 

Passing fancies #21

 

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you might gather from these links, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Books

In the past week or so, I finished reading Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks.  It's an homage to P. G. Wodehouse's characters Jeeves and Wooster.  It was enjoyable but it's hard to match Wodehouse's mastery of the English language so I found it a bit lacking.

I also finished Neil Gaiman's graphic novel The Sandman, Volume 5: A Game of You.   Gaiman's comics often send me researching terms or topics he includes and this book was no exception.  The only comic author I'm aware of whose works are more reference laden is Alan Moore.  This one sent me down a few rabbit holes looking up references.  For instance, I had no idea that Thomas Paine was imprisoned in a French prison for a while.

Music

Over the weekend we enjoyed another opportunity to hear a favorite local band called Felix Pickles.  They're causing me to buy more music by getting songs they cover stuck in my head.  I just bought the MP3 of Jenny Says by Cowboy Mouth because once I get an earworm, I need to listen to the song to get it out of my head.  The version from Felix Pickles was intensely interesting in its own right.

I also found a Youtube video by Red Baraat, a band I discovered while searching for bands like Hazmat Modine.  That search discovered a few interesting new bands for me but none of them were much like Hazmat Modine.  Red Baraat's music is happy music and seeing them perform it is even better.
https://youtu.be/lgmw41CY1Fo?si=HkbxMiY8MIR9q1aN

Television/Movies

We watched Project Hail Mary for the second time which was enjoyable because I always notice things in movies which I missed on the first viewing.  It was great on the big screen but watching via streaming allowed for breaks which is nice.  I'm happy to report that I liked it just as much the second time.  The book is excellent as well.

I also convinced my wife to watch Normal which stars Bob Odenkirk.  I've been enjoying his journey as an unlikely action movie star which I think started with Nobody.  Nobody is worth watching because it throws a surprising early twist at you.

I also watched Slaughterhouse-Five which surprised me by being shown on TCM for the first time recently.  I loved both the book and the movie.

Links

A few days ago I saw a post about on Bluesky about doing software estimates using LoC (lines of code) which I've always thought was absurd.  It reminded me of the comic linked below which in turn reminded me of a friend who reported his weekly status as 125% because he had exceeded the LoC estimate he had originally provided.  Management was not amused.  Often they seem to have no sense of humor.
https://www.workchronicles.com/p/comic-the-estimate-game

This article about Scrum (meetings in the Agile methodology) echoes my feelings about it being ridiculous but somehow a necessary evil.  I think it often trades careful design for quick results.
https://kasperowski.com/scrum-doesnt-matter-and-it-never-did/

I found the idea that someone was producing counterfeit BMW vehicles surprising.  It would be hard to produce cars as carefully as a German company does.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/07/11/bmw-warns-of-unauthorized-production-of-pirated-cars-in-russia-a93223 

Given how badly Facebook has managed to screw up people's timelines, it's no surprise that people are abandoning daily updates.  For me Facebook is more of an obligation to catch up with a few friends there than it is a joy these days.  I much prefer Mastodon and Bluesky where there are an abundance of interesting people and far less argumentative behavior.  Both seem to have the philosophy that it's better to block trolls than it is to interact with them.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/death-of-the-status-update-why-55-americans-stopped-posting-social-media

I was happy to catch a glimpse of Umberto Eco's large library of books.  I admire his writing and what he chose to spend some of his money on as well.  One can only imagine what it would be likely to have that much space to store the books accumulated over a lifetime.
https://www.openculture.com/2017/03/watch-umberto-eco-walk-through-his-immense-private-library.html

I've long thought that the English language could benefit from an attempt to correct its spelling and pronunciation.  What might young people learn if they weren't required to devote so much time to memorizing all the exceptions to the rules of English spelling?
https://boingboing.net/2026/07/07/why-english-spelling-looks-like-it-lost-a-bar-fight-with-history.html

People sometimes seem a bit surprised that despite having spent the better part of 50 years in the computer industry, I avoid smart appliances in our house.  After spending my days designing and writing code, I feel little need to interact with it to accomplish mundane tasks in the house.  I have friends who love to show off smart locks which can be activated by their phone.  I still recall the absurdity of a vacation spent in a rental house equipped with smart lights and ceiling fans controlled by Amazon Echo devices as well as people's attempts to interact with one ceiling fan which had no physical switch and which resisted all attempts to control it via vocal commands.  Apparently a previous owner had set up many of the smart devices and some were still tied to their account and unable to be transferred to a new account.  That's bad enough but paying for the privilege of being spied upon seems ridiculous.
https://www.engadget.com/2210745/smart-appliances-data-transmission-weekly/

The use of 3D printing to create tiles for a seawall which not only protects the coast but provides room for marine life to use as a shelter seems a brilliant use of the technology.
https://news.fiu.edu/2026/fiu-researchers-install-3d-printed-seawall-tiles-to-support-coastal-protection-and-marine-life

Hearing about a 95 year old mechanic who enjoys his job enough to continue working made me smile.  I plan on continuing to write software for my own use and amusement once I retire because I enjoy solving problems.  The reason I'll retire is because I'm tired of corporate nonsense after this long in the industry.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/old-school-tennessee-mechanic-celebrates-95th-birthday-working-at-the-shop

Three women set world records at the Lumberjack World Championships recently.  I'm fascinated by the customized chainsaws used in these type of competitions.  Some are basically a motorcycle engine with a blade attached.  This is one of the few sporting events I'll watch willingly.
https://abcnews.com/US/wireStory/3-womens-world-records-set-annual-lumberjack-world-134907345

The corporate shrine

This week I met 11 friends for happy hour.  I had worked with most of them about 25 years ago at a startup company called Ocular Networks.  Ocular developed optical network hardware and was a fun place to work despite the long hours required by most startup companies.  Eventually our company was purchased by Tellabs which caused a clash of corporate cultures which made work less pleasant.

A few of us were asked to visit corporate headquarters in Illinois where we discovered an unexpected corporate shrine.  It was a small meeting room containing little more than a large painting of the founder/CEO of Tellabs.  That painting struck me as weird and I was seized by the urge to make fun of it.  I got one of my friends to take a picture of me "worshipping" at the CEO's portrait.  We got odd looks from people who passed us in the hallways which made it all the more fun.

 

I didn't last long at Tellabs after that trip.  It became increasingly obvious that I wasn't cut out for that type of environment.

 

Passing fancies #20

 

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you might gather from these links, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Books

In the past week or so, I revisited both books in Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently series.  Their titles are Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul.  I enjoyed both books more than the later books in the Hitchhiker's Guide series which I found a bit uneven.

Music

Over the weekend we enjoyed hearing a favorite local band called Felix Pickles.  Their music always makes me happy.  I particularly enjoy their covers of Tom Petty, Black Keys, White Stripes, and Nirvana songs.  The fact that the show took place at a local brewery was nice as well.

Television/Movies

We've been watching a couple streaming series recently.  The first season of Cross, based on the Alex Cross books by James Patterson, was gripping.  Most of the episodes ended on cliffhangers which coaxed us into watching later than we usually do.

We've also been watching Apple TV's new production of Cape Fear.  It's very suspenseful but since the episodes are dropping slowly, we've been forced to postpone our enjoyment until the next one is available.

Links

As a long time SciFi fan, I've read a number of books about Von Neuman probes.  While the concept is fascinating, I've long wondered how realistic the actual process of replication is.  Here's a metallurgist's opinion of how difficult it would be for machines to duplicate themselves using metal mined from asteroids or other sources.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/07/10/a-metallurgists-doubts-about-self-replicating-probes/

The news that some types of monitors are installing Windows adware on the computers they're connected to is disturbing.  I'm guessing this is accomplished if the monitors have a USB connection to the PC since USB multifunction devices are possible which would allow the monitor to also appear as a storage device which can sometimes install software via AutoRun.  I have AutoRun disabled on all my computers.
https://www.techspot.com/news/113031-lg-alienware-monitors-caught-auto-installing-windows-adware.html

I had heard that doctors behave differently than most patients when presented with a cancer diagnosis.  I guess having knowledge of the low odds of survival and the high costs and suffering of attempting to fight the disease would make one weigh their options differently.  I think if diagnosed with some form of terminal disease with low odds of survival, I'd tend to refuse expensive and painful treatments as well.
https://archive.cancerworld.net/featured/how-doctors-die/

My favorite coding editor is Vim but I've been avoiding upgrading because the developers have been accepting AI submitted code changes.  The limited experience I've had with AI has not left me with a wholly positive view of its capabilities so I'm happy to be able to avoid it in my editor of choice.
https://jasonpolak.substack.com/p/interview-drew-devault-on-an-ai-free

It's been a while since I've heard about Hannah Montana Linux but apparently it's been updated recently.  I'm not personally a fan of ornate window managers so I'm guessing I'm not the target audience for it.
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/hannah-montana-linux-gets-modern-remaster-after-nearly-two-decades-sweet-niblets-new-v26-is-built-on-debian-with-a-re-skin-of-kde-plasma 

When I was young, I owned a 1948 Jeep for a while.  It was a very primitive vehicle which came with manual windshield wipers operated by moving a lever back and forth which operated the wiper blade. That caused funny looks each time I had to get a safety inspection.  These days I value my creature comforts too much to consider trying to assemble a replica of that old Jeep but it's nice to know it could be done if I ever got the urge.
https://www.theautopian.com/i-bet-my-company-on-an-impossible-jeep-build-then-a-miracle-happened/

Someone is creating handmade electric guitars using the valve covers from old car engines.  I imagine that metallic chamber gives an interesting resonance to the instrument.  Plus it looks so cool. 
https://www.designboom.com/design/old-car-engines-second-life-handmade-electric-guitars-vlado-plateis/

Isaac Asimov noticed the rise of willful ignorance in American society almost 50 years ago.  I fear it's only gotten worse since that time.
https://www.openculture.com/2026/07/isaac-asimov-laments-the-cult-of-ignorance.html

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is being shutdown for about 4 years for renovations which will make it better at studying the behavior of small particles.  I look forward to reading about new research done with the results when it's back online.
https://home.cern/cern-bids-farewell-to-the-lhc-and-enters-long-shutdown-3/

Our dog enjoys a new toy

Kya, our rescue pit bull, loves playing with stuffed toys which contain a squeaker.  They rarely last long since she's a determined and very powerful chewer.  We have to watch her carefully until she gets to the squeaker and we can remove it so she doesn't accidentally swallow part of it.  She killed the squeaker in this toy within the first three hours of having it but it's still providing many hours of fun removing the stuffing. After that, she'll carry it around proudly and try to get us to play catch with it.  She's such a playful and loving dog.

 

Passing fancies #19

 

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you might gather from these links, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Books

This week I finished two books, both by favorite authors of mine.  The first was The Suitcase Clone by Robin Sloan who is probably best known for Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore which is my favorite of his books.  The Suitcase Clone ties in most directly to another strangely fascinating book of his called Sourdough, which is about a weirdly sentient sourdough starter.  Robin's books feature inventive blends of fantasy, technology, and food or wine.

The second book I finished this week was a graphic novel called The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman.  Like the best graphic novels, the award winning The Sandman series features lots of interesting and sometimes obscure references which makes me glad that I'm able to read them on my iPad since that makes it easy to research the many references which sometimes take me on side journeys.  It inspired a streaming series which we enjoyed watching.  Another graphic novel I love which is similarly reference-laden is Watchmen by Alan Moore.  It also inspired a movie and a streaming series, both of which I enjoyed immensely.

Music

For a while, we had a Peacock streaming account and while we did, one of the programs we enjoyed was We Are Lady Parts which is about a punk band formed of Muslim women.  It managed to be funny, touching, and thought provoking.  Somehow this week I found a link to a song performed in the show called Bashir With the Good Beard which is funny as well as catchy.

Youtube recommended a cover of the AC/DC song Thunderstruck by a band called The Rock Orchestra which was really interesting.  I still prefer the AC/DC version but sometimes covers can be enjoyable on their own.  Youtube's recommendations are sometimes eerily accurate at predicting content I might enjoy.

Television/Movies

This week we finished watching the award winning streaming series The Bear.  The final season featured so many challenges for the people working in the restaurant that we could hardly wait to see how it turned out.  The finale wrapped up things nicely.

Something I read reminded me of the movie Highlander and it turns out that my wife had never seen it so we watched it although I don't think my wife enjoyed it as much as I did.  It's an entertaining fantasy but features some questionable accents, most notably from Christopher Lambert whose French accent often shines through his intermittent attempts at a Scottish accent and Sean Connery who doesn't attempt an accent to match his character Ramirez (aka the Spaniard) much like his performance as a Russian sub commander in The Hunt for Red October.

The first episode of the third season of Silo was released on Apple TV and we enjoyed continuing the story in this very compelling series.  Silo was based on Hugh Howey's Silo book series which starts with the book Wool.  I found the books fascinating.

Links

Have you ever wondered what F1 race drivers choose for transportation when off the racetrack?  Here's a set of photos which shows some of their daily drivers.  My favorite is Landon Norris' E-Type Jaguar shown in the last picture.  I think E-type Jag's are the most beautiful sports car ever made although I prefer the hardtop to convertibles.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/heres-a-peek-at-the-f1-drivers-parking-lot-in-silverstone

The Voyager 1 space probe is nearing the impressive distance of 1 light day from Earth.  The fact that it's still operating nearly 50 years after its launch in 1977 is evidence for my belief that NASA is responsible for some of the finest engineering ever done by humans.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-voyager-1-and-voyager-2-now/

I share the concern which the author of this blog post expresses about being overwhelmed by the tendency of smart devices to chip away at our ability to concentrate deeply.  I disable almost all notifications and avoid smart appliances in our house.  My ability to stay focused while creating system software is something I value far more than the minor conveniences offered by smart devices.
https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing

I found  this article about programmers needing to meditate interesting.  The author is involved with building AI infrastructure which I believe is largely responsible for much of the stress which programmers face these days.  I'm avoiding AI wherever possible because of the toll it takes on our ability to deeply focus by getting into the flow state.  It's rare for me to be able to achieve flow state on my days in the office due to having too many distractions.  While working from home, it's much easier for me to concentrate deeply enough to hit that mystical state.
https://jacob.gold/posts/programmers-need-to-start-meditating-now/

Apparently birds in Ukraine are making use of fiber optic cables when building nests.  This is weird because while it undoubtedly creates more durable nests, it's also a sad reminder of drones being used to cause destruction.
https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2026/07/fiber-optic-materials-in-ukranian-birds.html

Here's an interesting and somewhat sad article by a travel writer who met her hero, Anthony Bourdain, and how those interactions affected her.  I feel a bit sorry for people who feel compelled to constantly search for new and exciting experiences because they seldom seem to enjoy having achieved something.
https://cailey.substack.com/p/i-wanted-to-be-anthony-bourdainuntil

The news that scientists have managed to create a living cell from scratch if nothing short of amazing.  It's also a bit disturbing since chirality can affect how molecules interact with living tissue so it may be possible to intentionally create harmful mirror molecules.
https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6157418679944799691/2587135840302117398 

I was surprised to read that honeybees choose individual routes to foraging locations.  Bees seem more complex than most people think.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)00084-9

While I enjoyed a good argument when I was younger, I find I no longer want to waste the energy and time necessary to prove I'm right about something.  Given people's tendency to ignore documented facts and hold on to misinformation, it's not worth the effort.  It's easier to walk away from argumentative people and go do something I enjoy instead.
https://wangcong.org/2026-06-30-why-i-stopped-arguing-with-people.html

One of the best things about being near retirement is I no longer need to worry about having to endure another technical interview.  The majority of interviews I've been subjected to have been absurd and unpleasant.  A couple have been bad enough that I've extracted myself early by telling them I was no longer interested in their company.  The looks on the face of the interviewers when they realized they would be denied further opportunities to torture me were priceless.  It reminds me of the time an interviewer told me I had more experience than they expected and asked my age.  I responded that I thought it might be illegal to ask that question which turned his smug look into a worried one.
https://nelson.cloud/what-i-actually-want-to-say-in-tech-interviews/

Apparently laughter was key to humans developing the vocal control required for speech.
https://thedebrief.org/new-research-suggests-human-laughter-may-hold-a-15-million-year-old-secret/

This article about keeping historical events in perspective states that humans are really bad at doing so.  The example is that Oxford University is older than the Aztec empire which I wouldn't have thought was true.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/university-oxford-older-than-aztec-empire-other-facts-will-change-your-perspective-history-1529607/

Our ability to see things does not work the way most people believe it does.  Human eyes perform motions called saccades, rapid movements which do scanning of objects which the visual cortex helps combine into a complete picture.  I first read about this in Jeff Hawkins' books On Intelligence and A Thousand Brains, both of which are well worth reading.
https://ishan.co/no-way/

Older tech workers are retiring (voluntary or involuntary) in larger numbers than usual.  At some point, I think this might catch up with companies similar to the way Ford was forced to rehire 350 veteran engineers to help fix the problems caused by their attempt to let AI do most of the work.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/older-tech-workers-are-tapping-out-early-heres-what-that-looks-like/

Raspberry Pi 5 as a development machine

 

This morning I replaced a noisy cooling fan on my Raspberry Pi 5.  The replacement fan cost a reasonable $10 with free shipping and only took me about 10 minutes to replace.  Only a small screwdriver and a pair of needle nose pliers were required for the job.  The fan noise had been most noticeable when it booted up as the firmware runs a fan check.  It will be nice not to have to endure that any longer.

One of the small ARM based embedded systems which I build firmware and software for at work uses the same Linux Debian Bookworm 64-bit release as I have running on the Pi which makes building code much easier.  The cross compile environment we had been using on Intel based Ubuntu servers took much longer to build our application software.  Plus having a Unix like environment readily available automatically makes me so much more productive.

It's so easy to install software packages on the Pi and there's such a wide variety of software available that I can use the Pi for almost any task I need to accomplish.  It's become my second favorite development machine of my lengthy career, marginally behind a Sun Workstation I used in the early 1990s.

This machine was affordable when I built it two years ago but AI's endless thirst for computing hardware has driven the price of memory and flash storage devices up a lot.  I think duplicating this machine at today's prices would be close to twice the $200 this originally cost to build. 

 

Passing fancies #18

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you can see, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Books

This week I've finished two books.  The first was World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters.  It's the final book in The Last Policeman trilogy.  This was my second time enjoying this trilogy, the first time started in 2013 shortly after the first book was published.  I loved it on the first read and even more this time.  I'm often so keen to find out what happens in a book that I don't take enough time to fully appreciate the writing itself while reading it for the first time.  This series is about a policeman who continues trying to solve crimes even though the Earth is doomed to be struck by an asteroid.  It's an interesting tale about human nature under extraordinary circumstances.

The second was God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.  This was at least the second time I've read this as I'm a big Vonnegut fan.  It's hard to summarize what most of Vonnegut's books are about because they tend to cover so much territory.  They're always fascinating reads though.

Music

Somewhere I found a mention of Andrew Strong, the actor who played the lead singer in The Committments (which is an outstanding movie if you haven't seen it).  His voice was perfect for singing old soul classics.  After the movie he sang in a band called The Bone Yard Boys.  Apparently their music isn't available for purchase in electronic form which is a pity.  At least I was able to find a few Youtube videos of him performing like the one below.
https://youtu.be/QN43ZXivDa0?si=UC-GE4TU-nyz_dyU

I also found an intriguing mention of a band called Newen Afrobeat which I hadn't heard of previously.  I discovered I enjoy their music. 
https://youtu.be/YCZZWu9WR5s?si=3uU2h5mF4QHn-Vls

Television

We watched the first episode of Triumph: Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics on Netflix this week and are anxiously awaiting the next episode.  I knew parts of the story but there's so much I hadn't heard and it's fascinating.

Links

Like many people, I get tired of being pushed to secure my online accounts with passkeys.  While they may be convenient, I'm not convinced that they're more secure than the traditional username and strong password.
https://www.makeuseof.com/why-im-still-not-giving-up-my-password-for-passkeys/

When Quentin Tarantino states a preference for reading books over most of the movies being released, I know I'm not alone in finding most new movies insufficiently compelling to bother seeing them in a theater.  Project Hail Mary is the only film I was anxiously awaiting in the past few years.
https://brandons-journal.com/post/these-days-i-d-rather-read-a-book

Here's an interesting article which references Chesterton's Fence, a term I'd never encountered previously.   In it G.K. Chesterton states that changes should not be made until the thing being changed is fully understood.  The article below complains that changes to software are often made with insufficient documentation for the software in question to be properly understood.  In my experience this is true.  There are too many engineers who don't adequately document changes they have made. 
https://www.arp242.net/chestersons-finger.html

It makes me happy to hear that the producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation granted famous physicist Stephen Hawking's request to sit in the Captain's chair on the Enterprise bridge.

I'm not sure exactly how to feel about the news that Denmark has a Mullet Championship.  I had thought that questionable hairstyle was uniquely American.
https://apnews.com/article/denmark-mullet-hairstyle-festival-competition-ea0c4b66b1eb9f133983ea4d6f44f37c

Kentucky's economy is dealing with a huge downturn in demand for Bourbon.  The final line suggests that the same may eventually be true of Data Centers.
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/kentuckys-bourbon-problem/

Why doesn't it surprise me that Richard Feynman (famous physicist) had a method for optimizing food choices at restaurants?  If you haven't read any of the books about Feynman's life (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character or What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character), you'd probably enjoy them.
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/06/06/eating-out/

A pulp magazine from 1912 containing the first appearance of Tarzan recently sold for $58,560.  I have fond memories of reading old books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan and John Carter of Mars books while I was in high school.  At that time I was hell-bent on absorbing all the genre books I could get my hands on.  The best part is they were often available cheap at area used bookstores.
https://boingboing.net/2026/06/11/the-first-tarzan-pulp-sold-for-58560-at-a-record-setting-auction.html

I was a little surprised to read that old iPod models are making a comeback thanks to Gen-Z and then I remembered that our granddaughter had asked for a portable cassette player similar to a Walkman.  Apparently cassette tape players have made a comeback as well.
https://www.engadget.com/2196894/ipods-comeback-gen-z/

Editors I've been fond of at some point

I've used a number of editors for programming during my nearly 50 years in the computer industry.  Once I discovered vi in 1990, it or some variation of it has remained been my primary editor.  The learning curve for vi is steep but once you spend enough time with it to become productive, it's really hard to justify the effort required to learn another editor.  Vi has always been extensible thanks to its ability to define key mappings which gave it macro capability.  I'm still using a few vi macros which I created in 1990.  These include simplified syntax for marking, copying, deleting, and pasting portions of text, both within a single file or between files.  Once I started using Linux, I discovered Vim which has remained my editor of choice ever since.  The builtin color syntax highlighting makes code more readable for me.  I really love its ability to split and resize windows.  And my fingers remember the commands so well that I rarely need to think about how to do anything.

The first programming editor I liked was IBM's Personal Editor 2, aka PE2, which was only available for MS-DOS.  I used PE2 in the 1980s while working at General Electric and continued using it for about 6 years.  One feature I really liked was its ability to operate on columns of text.  Once a column or multiple columns were marked, the text could be replaced, have its case toggled, copied, or moved.  That capability seemed unique until I figured out that WordStar for DOS had a column mode as well.  Until we discovered that capability of WordStar while I was working at the Washington Navy Year, my colleagues would occasionally bring me a file on floppy disk to have me perform some column magic on it.  Recently I was surprised to read that a number of authors are still using WordStar for DOS.  I understand why they choose to continue using WordStar since it performed well, had a great feature set, and never crashed for me.  A bonus for me was a few other programs like Borland's Turbo Pascal used the WordStar command set.  The company which made WordStar created a new version called WordStar 2000 which had a number of interesting features but ultimately failed because it couldn't read files created by the older versions of WordStar.

I also used Brief for a while after I got my first Mac.  I chose it because it ran on multiple OSes/machines.  That didn't last since Brief was a bit expensive and most companies I've worked for have been unwilling to spend money on tools for software engineers.  I also tried Emacs but it was so feature rich that the executable size was too big for most personal computers of the time.  In contrast, I think the first vi clone I used on an IBM PC was only about 40K and fit easily on even the smallest floppy disks.

So I continue to prefer using Vim.  Most of the time I prefer the GUI version which is sometime referred to as GVim or MacVim.  It allows me to resize the Windows which makes it easy to tailor my workflow to how many windows I need access to at the time.  GVim supports X11 which gives me the ability to log into a Linux system via ssh and display the editor window on the Windows laptop I'm forced to use at work by running VcXsrv (a version of the X11 server compiled with Visual-C for better Windows compatibility. At home, I can do the same thing by running the Mac version of X-11 server.

 

link dump #17

I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you can see, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

We live on former farmland which gives us some lovely views of the sky.  Here's some interesting clouds from yesterday morning shortly after sunrise.

 

AI modified photos from houses for sale would irritate me were I convinced to spend time looking at a house with features which didn't really exist as shown.  I've also seen some terrible close captioning on Youtube which was done by AI.  I make notes of creators who use that and don't watch their content a second time.  It irritates me more than a misprint in a book which is saying a lot.
https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20260623-generative-ai-impossible-homes/#gsc.tab=0

My stepfather died of ALS ten years ago.  Since he came down with symptoms, I've followed technologies which could have helped him like the brain-computer interface described in this article.  Unfortunately, it wouldn't have helped Pop for very long since he had a faster progression of life threatening symptoms than many do.
https://health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/brain-computer-interface-enables-independent-accurate-communication-for-man-living-with-als/2026/06

I don't think I'd want to drive a vehicle as distinctive as this banana shaped car if it meant being inconvenienced by frequent traffic stops.
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/06/18/giant-banana-pulled-over-in-montana-driver-says-cops-have-stopped-him-100s-of-times/ 

It's been a while since I've heard about races on Pikes Peak.  It's kind of cool that Corvette has the record for the time being since I've had a few Corvettes in the past when I used to drive fun cars.  I opt for boring but comfortable cars these days which are easier on my aging knees.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/06/pikes-peak-2026-was-a-battle-of-propulsion-with-an-ev-and-a-hybrid-winning-out/

Sid Caesar is considered to be a comic genius and assembled one of the finest comedy writing rooms of his or any other time.  There's a new book about his career in comedy which looks like something I'd enjoy reading.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n11/john-lahr/relatable-as-a-jellyfish

When I first heard about drones using fiber optic technology to prevent their radio signals from being jammed, I was skeptical but apparently fiber optic cable spools really work.  To disable one of these requires severing the connection or a direct hit of some sort.
 https://www.army.mil/article/287737/fiber_optic_drones_posing_a_significant_c_uas_challenge

Apparently I could take a more natural approach to my soldering tasks if I wanted by making my own resin flux.
https://northcoastsynthesis.com/news/homemade-traditional-resin-flux/

I found this article about early attempts of shrinking transistor radios fascinating.  The ability to listen to music outside the home has made life more enjoyable for most of us.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/in-1954-engineers-shrank-a-transistor-radio-into-something-people-could-carry-and-music-stopped-staying-at-home/articleshow/131742031.cms

I've backed several of Cory Doctorow's books via Kickstarter including his latest, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI.  This article features an interview with Cory about his new book.  He's a thoughtful analyst of technical topics and one of my favorite authors as well. 
https://jacobin.com/2026/06/ai-bubble-layoffs-workers-copyright

I have fond memories of ThinkGeek.  This Stonehenge pocket watch is something which fascinated me but not quite enough to want to carry.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060627053213/http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/7d2b/ 

Speaking of watches, I've had several smartwatches but ultimately abandoned them for a more traditional analog watch.  The smartwatches require frequent charging and those which monitor your health typically need to be worn tighter than I find comfortable.
https://www.engadget.com/2197565/reasons-why-people-ditch-smartwatches-something-simpler/

I've heard from multiple sources that using AI is degrading our skills and causing stress to people forced to use it often like software engineers being strongly encouraged by company management.  It makes me happy that my impending retirement will let me avoid it completely soon.  I've had to watch while a coworker tried to get ChatGPT to recommend changes to some low level code I had written and the process was painful.  A few of my colleagues send me little snippets of commands which ChatGPT tells them should work which rarely bears more than a passing similarity to something which would actually work.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01947-1

Apparently Massachusetts has legalized haggis since they're hosting Scottish soccer fans for the World Cup.  Who knew it wasn't previously legal?
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/haggis-massachusetts-legal-scotland/

 

 

link dump #16

I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you can see, I find a dizzying array of topics interesting.

We live on former farmland which gives us some lovely views of the sky.  Here's a particularly nice sunset from a few days ago.

 

My second job in the computer industry was as a field engineer at a company which maintained systems built around the DEC PDP-11.  During the 7 weeks of training, I found that I loved the instruction set of the DEC PDP-11.  At other jobs, I discovered the Motorola 680x0 series of CPUs which had a very similar instruction set.  Both machines have orthogonal instruction sets.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/a-brief-tour-of-the-pdp-11-the-most-influential-minicomputer-of-all-time/

I was surprised to read that Apple AirPods may cause cardiovascular implantable devices such as pacemakers to malfunction.  Apparently AirPods create a magnetic field strong enough to affect pacemakers and other implantable devices.
https://www.engadget.com/2193554/airpods-pacemakers-magnet-interference/

Stronger magnets are also harmful to other types of electronic devices.  Since I've been working with computers for so long that I keep my devices away from magnets primarily out of habit.  Apparently there's good reason to do so with some types of devices.
https://hackaday.com/2026/05/21/magnets-are-bad-for-hardware-again/

I enjoy watching Rick and Morty because their humorous takes on science and science fiction make me laugh.  One of their episodes features a lightsaber which was dropped with the point down and which proceeded to burrow its way through the Earth.
https://laughingsquid.com/dropping-light-saber-vertically/

I've been finding the growing number of terms which end with "maxxing" such as "sleepmaxxing" annoying.  I'm glad to see others feel the same way.  I ignore the output of influencers but it becomes hard to do when it gets embraced by popular culture.
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/p/just-be-normal-about-st

I've been a fan of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings books since high school 50+ years ago.  That caused me to find the fact that a newly discovered species of cricket has been named after the Balrog amusing.
https://thedebrief.org/you-shall-not-pass-scientists-identify-new-balrog-cricket-species-in-greek-island-tunnel/

I'm not at all surprised that listening to music promotes mental health.   I find listening to music while I'm working helps me to achieve a deeper level of concentration particularly when audio distractions are present.  It only works that way if the music is something I'm quite familiar with.  I also watch videos of live musical performances regularly.
https://www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/newsroom/news/news-article/article/is-there-a-link-between-listening-to-music-and-mental-health.html

In modern military conflicts, GPS jamming and spoofing is becoming increasingly common.  It's also being used as a form of economic warfare since it's so disruptive.
https://boingboing.net/2016/08/04/spoofing-gps-is-surprisingly-e.html

I've long felt that most technical interviews are a terrible way of choosing talented engineers.  Bad technical interviews are something I'm happy that I'll never face again since I'm so close to retirement. 
https://fagnerbrack.com/technical-interviews-reject-the-wrong-engineers-a8e78ca04b2e?gi=46f57f353ef1 

There's a new proposed theory for how the objects commonly known as black holes form.  I'm not sure I can get used to the term gravastar.
https://thedebrief.org/black-holes-arent-real-astronomers-propose-elusive-formation-mechanism-for-gravastar-alternative-that-is-easier-to-accept/