@austern
Computer programmer, ex-physicist, husband and father, reader. I live in Palo Alto and work at Google, where my focus is large scale data. Interested in various things, including science, food and wine, science fiction, politics, and cute cat pictures.
I recently learned that The Turn of the Screw wasn't the only Benjamin Britten opera based on a Henry James ghost story!
The other one is Owen Wingrave. It was written for the BBC, and first performed in 1970. The head of BBC2, who commissioned it, was David Attenborough.
Another big reason obsessive poll-sniffing is silly: “Public opinion” on most issues quite literally does not exist. It is an ephemeral artifact of the process of polling itself. Ask again a day later with slightly different wording & the numbers change radically.
Earlier this week I had a meeting at work where four of the other attendees were named Matt. Yesterday I learned that my employer has an internal mailing list for Matts.
Are there any pest control companies named "Daleks"? If not, why?
Happy Twin Peaks Day to all who celebrate. Have some donuts and coffee.
She is indeed all of those things! Her sister is a pretty shorthair non-dilute tortie.
This is a CAT checkpoint. Show me the most recent cat image on your phone.
This is Quinn, sitting on my lap on a rainy day
(The recipe includes shiitake mushrooms, and fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants.)
Dinner tonight was vegan mapo tofu. (From thewoksoflife.com/vegan-mapo-t.... Recommended.) It reminded me of the funny fact that not all vegetables are plants.
![NENA | 99 Luftballons [1983] [Offizielles HD Musikvideo]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:22qt6jzmwtgyxzft57kvwut6/bafkreig64eacfwoatdgj4leep5zxc375tqgwb332izvx7xxkczvtvwwt2a)
I wonder how many people in El Paso are thinking about this song today.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu5...
Hugo Award nominations now open.
Nominations are now open for the 2026 Hugo Awards!
Emails are going out to eligible nominators (those who became a member of LAcon V by January 31, 2026, or were a member of the Seattle Worldcon 2025) about how to set up their LAcon V virtual convention account.
Huh, I thought we already had copies of all of the books that both of you had published, but apparently I was wrong. Now we do!
Star Trek Voyager scene. We've got Tuvok standing next to Seven of Nine (Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01). She's looking and him, and he's doing a smouldering, eyebrow popping look off into the distance thing. Closed caption reads, "I share your discomfort with social gatherings."
Happy Superb Owl day to all who celebrate.
As Stephen Colbert pointed out, Ian McKellen is arguably the only living actor to have created a Shakespeare role. He starred in one of the first known performances of Sir Thomas More in 1964.
The play was a collaboration of several authors. The speech in the video is believed to be Shakespeare.
Yes, Sir Ian's performance of the speech from "Sir Thomas More" is just as good as everyone is saying.
youtu.be/2l2RqzVG4ag?...
I've always had a different take: it was designed to *flatter* the readers of the time, to tell them they were hardheaded and rational enough to accept the hard truths of the universe, unlike those softy do-gooders over there who don't even know how to use a slide rule.
My January reading list:
• 1/1 John Dickson Carr, The Mad Hatter Mystery
• 1/5 Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
• 1/8 John Dickson Carr, The Dead Man's Knock
• 1/17 Martha Wells, Queen Demon
• 1/18John Dickson Carr, The Three Coffins
Three large artichokes with long stems; three mini-cauliflowers; three honey nut squash; three mini-romanescos (aka fractal broccoli).
The theme of this week's farmer's market trip: single-serving vegetables. The artichokes double as mallets.
Come to think of it, quoting the Melian Dialogue as a good example of how to conduct foreign policy is an awful lot like "At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus."
For those who (like me) wondered which came first, "Battle Hymn of the Republic" or "John Brown's Body", the answer is that "John's Brown Body" came first, by about a year, but the tune predated both sets of lyrics by decades.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...
Salamander versions of Janeway and Paris from the Voyager episode Threshold because that sure is a thing that happened
Oh I almost forgot. Happy Threshold day to those who celebrate.
I’ve seen references to the supposed lost continent of Lemuria since I was a kid, but today I learned why it was called that:
“The hypothesis was proposed as an explanation for the presence of lemur fossils on Madagascar and the Indian subcontinent but not in continental Africa or the Middle East.”
I think I first heard about it from Andre Norton. Very funny to realize that the name really comes from lemurs!
It’s Penguin Awareness Day which seems like a great excuse to post the greatest ever Wikipedia edit.
There is always an XKCD
Good morning.
There was an ancient Greek named Hyperbolus, who got in trouble for hyperbole, but nobody would've said that because the word hyperbole is a 15th century creation that has nothing to do with him. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbo...
Close up of a cocktail glass with a very pale green liquid, sitting at the corner of a stone table, with a cherry on a metal toothpick sticking out of it.
Tonight's cocktail was a Last Word, one of our favorites.
Why studying classics matters.
Trees at the bottom and right, blue sky at the top and left, and a rainbow arcing across that corner.
It was rainy and sunny in Palo Alto this morning.
