Seventy percent of southern Africa's maize comes from South Africa. Drought devastates crops in southern Africa: 'The grain I have is only enough for the next two months' first appeared on The Cool Down. | Continue reading
"It's a labor of love." Homeowner shares stunning progress video of unusual lawn transformation: 'This looks so much better' first appeared on The Cool Down. | Continue reading
This weekend, my Mastodon and Thread timelines exploded with people being locked out of their Apple IDs. While it didn’t happen to me, it did to Michael Tsai: I had another instance of my Apple ID mysteriously being locked. First, my iPhone wanted me to enter the password again, … | Continue reading
I spent the week with ALSAC — the fundraising organization at St. Jude — with half a dozen Relay folks and a few hundred other content creators who are using their platforms for fundraising. View this post on Instagram A post shared by St. Jude PLAY LIVE (@stjudeplaylive) (Most o … | Continue reading
It's important for parents to teach their children to respect wildlife. Video of young girl's attempt to pet wild deer sparks online debate: 'Leave these animals alone' first appeared on The Cool Down. | Continue reading
I’ve seen a disturbing trend recently in public broadcasting and in left-leaning media in general that I think we need to take a deeper look at. While it’s definitely true that we can’t only tackle climate change and other environmental issues with individual actions, I’ve seen s … | Continue reading
The company behind one of the biggest projects in the Fediverse has migrated as an entity to the United States as a 501c3. The post Mastodon Incorporates as a Non-Profit in the US appeared first on We Distribute. | Continue reading
Tokyo Disney Resort has announced the “Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters” attraction at Tokyo Disneyland Park will be getting a transformation with a new “Wreck-It-Ralph” theme. The Details A new attraction based on the world of the Walt Disney Animation Studios film “Wreck-It Ralp … | Continue reading
Climate advocates argued for a national research program as early as 1971 when Richard Nixon was in office. It never happened. The post In 1971, The Nixon Administration Punted On A Revolutionary Climate Study appeared first on CleanTechnica. | Continue reading
I usually can’t write the Tuesday newsletter until I know the image it’s going to start with, but I often start Friday’s newsletter without any idea what’s going to go at the top. Eventually, a theme emerges, or I come across something that will work, like this image of a snail o … | Continue reading
We have a mix of devices at home ranging from Linux workstations, servers, Macbooks, a Mac Mini and a Windows PC. Up until now, I was using Samba for a home “share” folder which was also used to do backups of the Windows PC (family photos and videos). But it was always a pain, sm … | Continue reading
A few months ago, our company won tender in Rome for delivery of 110 mild hybrid buses. In recent days, Solaris has won the order for the delivery of 244 CNG buses for the ATAC carrier in Rome. With the maximum use of options by the ordering party, both contracts ... [continued] … | Continue reading
Fallout’s a pretty good show, and one of the big reasons why is the ever-reliable Walton Goggins. As the Ghoul—or Cooper Howard, once upon a time—he’s a menace to Lucy and everyone else throughout the season, while being enjoyable to watch both in the irradiated present and the p … | Continue reading
The land for Villa Austevoll has familial roots, being owned by the family of Gundersen and Fagerbakke, a couple with backgrounds in engineering and civil engineering, respectively. Continue reading | Continue reading
I've worked out why I don't get much value out of LLMs. The hardest and most time-consuming parts of my job involve distinguishing between ideas that are correct, and ideas that are plausible-sounding but wrong. Current AI is great at the latter type of ideas, and I don't need mo … | Continue reading
"We have to believe, and we have to work." Brazil's environment minister makes incredible strides in restoring Amazon rainforest: 'We need a civilizational change' first appeared on The Cool Down. | Continue reading
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Ten points if you try this. Fifteen if it ruins your relationship. Sixteen if it ruins your life. Today's News: | Continue reading
The Power Rangers have been doing their thing for decades, but recent times have been kind of all over the place. While the Boom! comics have been going for nearly a decade in the Mighty Morphin time period under a rotating roster of creators, Hasbro hasn’t done a lot with the la … | Continue reading
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to evaluate MCMC samplers. A common way to do this is to run one or more iterations of your contender against a baseline of something simple, something well understood, or more rarely, the … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Yeah. I did it again! I’m feeling real good about the 3rd version of my desktop and I’m ditching the project (for now anyway). Clean. Minimal. Usable. Yay! Here’s all three versions if yer interested (the 2nd and 3rd versions are viewable at full resolution): Version 3 Version 2 … | Continue reading
Everything Google's Python team were responsible for Google laid off the majority of their internal Python team a few days ago. Someone on Hacker News asked what the team had been responsible for, and team member zem relied with this fascinating comment providing detailed insight … | Continue reading
A recent video from Out of Spec Dave on YouTube shows us something cool that happened at a Tesla Supercharger: drivers figuring out how to deal with a busy charger on the fly. I don’t mean to bag on the kindness of strangers, because ultimately that’s kind of what makes ... [cont … | Continue reading
The cheapest car in Norway will be electric when the Dongfeng Box arrives later this year. The post Dongfeng Box Coming To Norway, Denmark Introduces Interactive Charging Parks appeared first on CleanTechnica. | Continue reading
Neil C. Young makes music together with his brother Richard Young, as well as good friends Alan Whitham and Ben Gonzalez. When together, rather magical things tend to happen in the lines of "I don't know what exactly is happening, but I like it!" | Continue reading
Sending a message, or two, then back on page. Thinking over and over about some things, what I […] | Continue reading
4-27-24 In my head. How can I not be. I write. Leaning on the latte, and sparkling water […] | Continue reading
Michael Tsai: I had another instance of my Apple ID mysteriously being locked. First, my iPhone wanted me to enter the password again, which I thought was the “normal” thing it has done every few months, almost since I got it. But after doing so it said that my account was locked … | Continue reading
You’ve gotta hand it to Marvel Studios: it sure knew how to make its movies feel like big events back in the day. After the original Avengers dropped in 2012, nearly every entry aimed to be bigger in some way, like the entire enterprise was obsessed with topping itself. Sometimes … | Continue reading
It took a very long time to finally add a new entry in the personal phone history matrix, and I’m quite proud of that. My last smartphone, a hand-me-down Sony XZ1 Compact, was eventually rooted and flashed with LineageOS, significantly prolonging its lifespan. In fact, the phone … | Continue reading
It was a typical April week. I can’t remember exactly which day it was, but on one of them, we experienced sun, rain, snow, and hail, all ending with sunshine again. I started watching Fallout but didn’t have much time for it, so I could only watch the first episode. I’m definite … | Continue reading
The move will come after Congress failed to act to approve the measures. Biden plans to bypass Congress to protect thousands of acres with one action — here's why it matters first appeared on The Cool Down. | Continue reading
There's an old lady somewhere in Brazil. She's not dying, but she's probably close, and she lives in a nursing home within sight of both Christ the Redeemer and the Atlantic Ocean. Let's call her Alice. Alice doesn't have any close relatives, but according to ancestry.com, she sh … | Continue reading
Scott Alexander on Wednesday: I’ve spent fifteen years not responding to [Hanson’s medicine] argument, because I worry it would be harsh and annoying to use my platform to beat up on one contrarian who nobody else listens to. But I recently learned Bryan Caplan also takes this se … | Continue reading
Following my earlier thoughts about Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings, I have been planning an Old Dominion force for Conquest. The developers of the game, Para Bellum, have made, what I think, is a clever decision to create a skirmish game, First Blood, that provides you with … | Continue reading
A few years ago, minimalism was all the rage. Marie Kondo was on every TV, The Minimalists were in everyone's podcast feed, and I found myself confused, regretting not having started a blog or something years ago. I've always been a bit of a minimalist myself, and it had never oc … | Continue reading
Japanese police placed fake payment cards in convenience stores to protect the elderly targeted by tech support scams or unpaid money fraud. [...] | Continue reading
modelsof-color: Liya Kebede by Alexei Hay for ELLE Italia Magazine January 2010 | Continue reading
Chocolate + peanut butter forever. READ MORE... | Continue reading
The lover I had back then,from the prelude before my lashes fell,back when my lips’ dew was innocence, I met a boy, a man todaystill remembered by my maiden heart,the boy of still eyes as thoughhe was a man many colours couldn’tencase, When I called him in my crawling voice,he’d … | Continue reading
The previous snowfall had melted down to almost nothing but we knew a bigger storm was coming. It started sometime during Friday night and by the time I woke up Saturday morning there was a brand new coating about eight inches deep. Although I have plenty of battery power, and I … | Continue reading
I do this manually at the end of each week: collating (and sometimes lightly editing) most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. Some end up on Disquiet.com earlier, sometimes in expanded form. These days I mostly hang … | Continue reading
I recently finished The MANIAC, a concise novelized biography of John Von Neumann bizarrely bolted onto a history of computer programs that dominate chess and go. Somehow the combination works! What I hadn’t realized was how quickly programs that play chess and go can evolve when … | Continue reading
"The banana skin wasn't enough packaging, apparently!" Customer shares photo of frustrating produce item found on grocery store shelves: 'Probably done to raise the price without you realizing' first appeared on The Cool Down. | Continue reading
This week, Disney Imagineer and Art Director Sylvie Massara was honored at Disneyland Paris with her very own window. The Details Sylvie Massara began her Walt Disney Imagineering career during the construction of Disneyland Paris back in 1988, when it was Euro Disney, working ma … | Continue reading
Target is offering the Kobo Nia for a nice $89, which is $20 off the regular price. This makes it the cheapest that the entry-level Kobo has ever sold for, LaptopMag reported. What’s more, both Amazon and Walmart too have joined in on the fun and are offering the Kobo Nia at the … | Continue reading
Kingom of the Planet of the Apes is one of this summer’s big blockbusters, and with its release in a few weeks, that means its time to up its promo game. We’ve gotten plenty of trailers and posters, and there are standees in theaters, but that’s apparently not enough. 20th Centur … | Continue reading
Plugin vehicles are all the rage in the Chinese auto market, with plugins scoring 743,000 sales (in a 1.7-million-unit overall market). That’s up 29% year over year (YoY). Looking deeper at the numbers, BEVs were up 16%, while PHEVs did even better, jumping 62% in March. Breaking … | Continue reading