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Delicious

How delicious it would be to have a world that did not require all this thinking — where instinct and emotion were enough to carry civilizations from birth to death — where guns and brawn were acceptable in the face of disease — where fear of the unknown was codified into quick and dirty law […]




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Hello my fellow children

Hello my fellow children



View Comic!







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[tasty review] United Tastes of America by Gabrielle Langholtz, Jenny Bowers, and DL Acken

  Feeling a little peckish? What’s your pleasure? If you’re craving something savory, perhaps we should zip on over to Illinois for some deep dish pizza and pierogies. Something a little more substantial? Well, we could feast on chicken fried steak in Oklahoma and bison burgers in Wyoming, before topping everything off with a platter … Continue reading [tasty review] United Tastes of America by Gabrielle Langholtz, Jenny Bowers, and DL Acken








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Selective Functors

From Andrey Mokhov's twitter feed:

Is there any intermediate abstraction between applicative functors and monads? And if yes, what is it? In a new paper with @geo2A, @simonmar and @dimenix we explore "selective functors", which are essentially applicative functors with branching: https://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/andrey.mokhov/selective-functors.pdf

We've implemented selective functors in Haskell: https://github.com/snowleopard/selective, OCaml: https://github.com/snowleopard/selective-ocaml, and even Coq: https://github.com/tuura/selective-theory-coq (the Coq repository contains some proofs of correctness that our selective instances are lawful). And there is also a PureScript fork!















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173 gestrande Belgen eindelijk thuis na quarantaine in Tenerife: “Regering liet ons aan ons lot over. We hebben twee maanden op ons terras moeten doorbrengen” - Het Laatste Nieuws

  1. 173 gestrande Belgen eindelijk thuis na quarantaine in Tenerife: “Regering liet ons aan ons lot over. We hebben twee maanden op ons terras moeten doorbrengen”  Het Laatste Nieuws
  2. 173 gestrande Belgen eindelijk thuis na quarantaine in Tenerife: “Regering heeft te weinig gedaan!”  Het Laatste Nieuws
  3. Na quarantaine in Tenerife: 173 Belgen eindelijk weer thuis  De Morgen
  4. Belgen die vastzaten op Tenerife charterden zelf vliegtuig naar huis  De Standaard
  5. West-Vlaming regelt repatriëring gestrande Belgen  Focus en WTV
  6. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws










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The Mysteries of the Faceless King

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Coming soon from PS Publishing is The Mysteries of the Faceless King, the first of two volumes collecting the best of Darrell Schweitzer's short fiction. Beautifully made, with a cover by the estimable Jason Van Hollander.

Also, an introduction by (cough) me. Here's how that begins:

Once upon a time . . .None of the stories collected herein begin with those words, though some come close. But they might as well. For Darrell Schweitzer writes a very traditional sort of story. His fiction is almost always fantasy, which is a mode nested deep in the roots of Story; usually horror, a mode as old as nightmares; and very often weird fantasy, a much more recent mode but one that is dear to his heart. Most could have been written a hundred years ago—or, with equal ease, a hundred years in the future. This is not a criticism. Timelessness is precisely what he is after.

PS Publishing has posted the entirety of the introduction online, preparatory to publication of the book sometime this month. So if you're curious as to what I said, you have only two options. You can buy the book. Or you can read the intro online for free.

But if you don't buy the book, you won't get the stories. You're in a quandary.

You can find the entire introductory essay here. Or you can just go to the PS Publishing website and wander about, marveling at how many of their books you want by clicking here.


And I should remind you . . .

The ebook of The Iron Dragon's Daughter, the first of three stand-alone fantasies in the Iron Dragons Trilogy, goes on sale tomorrow (Wednesday, April 1, 2020) for the one day only for only $1.99. That's a good deal. But only tomorrow and only in Canada and the US.


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Zero Notebook 7: Helen

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Introducing Helen. There's more to her than meets the eye.

Written upside-down--so they won't necessarily be taken as gospel by any readers are three quick notes scrawled to myself:

Mother as Mind Spider

Storyteller as Spider & Weaver

Chrone as Spider

I apologize for the misspelling of "crone." But I was writing (and thinking) too fast to care much for accuracy.


But what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?

The influence of Louise Bourgeois is pretty obvious here. Late in life, she created those wonderful, terrifyingly realistic giant spiders with long steel needles at the end of their legs and said that they were all about her mother. Who made a living repairing tapestries, using long steel needles. So it's not the slap in her face it might seem.

I liked the spider representing the archetypal woman-as-maker, which fit Helen right down to the ground. I was also fighting a fight all the way through with received archetypal images of women were were almost all pretty or dainty or passive. I wanted to get at that primal fierceness that lurks inside us all.

And, ounce for ounce, you don't get much fiercer than a spider.


And tomorrow and Friday . . .

There will be news.


Above: Seventh image. Three to go.


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The Postutopian Adventures of Michael Swanwick

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Look what came in the mail! My contributor's copies of The Postmodern Adventures of Darger and Surplus. Which I can now honestly tell you are beautiful books. Marianne--owner, reditor, and sole entrepreneur of Dragonstairs Press, remember--especially admired the texture of the endpapers.

This is the first Darger and Surplus collection of short, and it collects everything except the two novels. But I should caution you that it is a slim book--five previously published stories, four related short-shorts, and "There Was an Old Woman..." a story written expressly for this collection.  Bloated this volume is not.

Subterranean Press has created, as I said, one lovely volume. It costs $40, because it's a high-quality collector's item, published in a limited edition of one thousand. But for a high quality collector's item, published in a limited edition of one thousand, that's pretty cheap.

Here's the table of contents:

Introduction:
  • Mother Goose’s Errant Sons
Stories:
  • The Dog Said Bow-Wow
  • The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport
  • Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play
  • Tawny Petticoats
  • There Was An Old Woman
  • Appendix:

  • Introduction to Appendix: A Little Smoke and a Mirror or Three
  • Smoke and Mirrors: Four Scenes from the Postutopian Future

If you're interested, you can buy a copy of the book here.

Or you can buy an e-book version for $5 here.

Oe you can simply go the the Subterranean website and poke around here.  Mine isn't the only book there you want. Far from it.


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Zero Notebook 10: Helen

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Our revels now are ended. These our images, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air...

But before we go, one more page, the back inside cover to be specific. It contains two more images of Helen. One is a publicity shot from a period she was going to leave out of the autobiography she never wrote, when she made a brief, ill-fated stab at acting. The other is from a dark period in her middle age.

She was far better-looking than she'd ever admit to being.


And what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?

To find that out, you're just going to have to read The Iron Dragon's Mother, now aren't you?


Above: Tenth image. Tout finis!

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Mixed feelings around hockey about holding NHL draft early

Mixed feelings around hockey about holding NHL draft early




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Analysis: Tennis pros' US return amid pandemic no true model

Analysis: Tennis pros' US return amid pandemic no true model




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Dux Bellorum Saxons

 Remember these guys, well they finally made it to the flocking stage. Like the ECW forces, I based these as if on a rough field so hit them with the layers of brown flock. I was hoping the long green grass will make up for the lack of base detail. Although saying that, I did sprinkle a few pinches of rough sand onto the glued base before the flock, this did give it some stoney detail. This seemed to work well so next time I will add a little more.

I want my units in Dux Bellurom to be quite large so I increased the base size to a whopping 120x80mm. This should give enough room for nice dioramas and cavalry formations. I love this era and it’s nice to have burning away on the back burner.
 I still need to touch up the banner a remove the grass from the figures, but now they are done and can make room for others.
 




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First Wargame, well, kind of.


 The little chap enjoyed his game with my old Britain’s figures, so I thought I would get him his own.  A big bucket of soldiers from Amazon was just the ticket!
I chose the Americans and He chose everything else, including all my heavy weapons. He loved them!

















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Elf Army so Far

I’ve gone back over these guys and painted their helmet feathers black, they were left bronze before. I have done this so they will tie in better to the Oathmark Elves. More on this to come.
















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Mordor Shield and Banner Designs


These were gathered from everywhere from many different references. A lot of the bottom ones I created to be designs orcs themselves could have come up with, rough and crude.



  • lord Of The Rings

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A new comic (in 2 languages) about Ig Nobel Prize winners

A new comic strip—in Russian and in English—about some of the curious characters who have won Ig Nobel Prizes. The series appears on Instagram.




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The automatic diaper-changing machine is now in development

BabyWasher, the automatic dirty-diaper-changing invention, honored by the 2019 Ig Nobel Prize for engineering, now has a name, and is now undergoing intense development. You can follow the progress by visiting the inventor’s new web site, BabyWashers.com.




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Perils of topic modeling

Today's xkcd illustrates why topic modeling can be tricky, for people as well as for machines: The mouseover title: "As the 'exotic animals in homemade aprons hosting baking shows' YouTube craze reached its peak in March 2020, Andrew Cuomo announced he was replacing the Statue of Liberty with a bronze pangolin in a chef's hat." […]



  • Linguistics in the comics

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A Metaphor for our Television Addiction

From the submitter:

So I get up today and the kids are up before me watching TV. That's fine, it Sunday, got to sleep in, figured I go check my email and puts around online for a few. Later I go into the living room, to turn the TV so I can start watching Game highlights before the Super Bowl, but can not find the remote. I mean I searched everywhere. The usual places... In the couch cushions, under the couch, behind the couch and behind the TV.... nowhere to be found.




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Well, There's Your Problem

Submitter Denene's mechanic took this photo.






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Sally Forth Week: Say Hello to the Folks




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Terminator Drop The Bombshell

One of my favorite bands from the 90's is Powerman 5000. My favorite song of theirs is Drop The Bombshell, a really fast paced song that I thought would be a perfit fit to the Terminator movies




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Terminator Samson And Delilah

This is the last video I created using Windows Movie Maker before switching over to Adobe Premier Pro CS3. It's the first Terminator fan video I created where I used all four Terminator movies




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The Book Of Eli If You Tolerate This

A lot of people didn't like this movie because of the religious overtones throughout the movie. I'm not one who's particularly religious but I thought this was a brillian movie and a welcome change to the post apocalyptic genre




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How To Make A Link Wheel

When it comes to getting your site indexed and noticed by search engines everyone unless you’re absolutely brand new to the internet knows that in order to get noticed you need other sites linking back to yours. One method you might not be aware of is to use a link wheel. So What is a link wheel? Unlike the traditional back link or reciprocal links from other sites, a link wheel is a collection of web 2.0 sites that you create. Link wheels can range in size from a small handful to several dozen, and each site has relevant content to either your main website or blog, or to a specific page you’re trying to promote within your main site. In short your link sites are being used to give your website more authority and trust for a specific topic. This in tern gives you a better SERP or search engine ranking position. It also helps drive targeted traffic to your website.




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Battle Los Angeles Movie Review

There’s an old saying “Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one” This couldn’t be more true of all the Battle Los Angeles reviews I’ve seen online. It’s seems to be a mix of positive acclaim, comparing it to Independence day, and comments like this one made by Robert Ebert on his website “Battle Los Angeles is noisy, violent, ugly and stupid, it’s manufacture is a reflection of appalling cynicism on the part of it’s makers” Well that’s nice Mr. Ebert, but then who really cares what you have to say since you think movies like the Assaination of Richard Nixon is a great movie. So with all that out there I thought I’d throw my own review into the mix.................. Now if you haven’t seen Battle Los Angeles it’s nothing like Independence Day, which in my opinion went way over the top with American pride. Hey nothing wrong with being American but the rest of the world doesn’t need it shoved in its face. This movie closer to Saving Private Ryan, but with aliens instead of Nazi’s.




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Optimizing Your YouTube Channel And Videos For Traffic

YouTube is one of the most important marketing tools out there when it comes to getting the message out about your business or your website. It’s currently the second most used search engine behind Google (which owns YouTube by the way) and is the biggest video sharing site in the world. Like it or hate it having videos on YouTube is a good way to promote what you have. But just having videos isn’t enough to get a tonne of traffic; you need to know how to optimize your YouTube channel and videos to get more traffic......................