Punkins!
Spotted on the way to a farm shop today. Well, of course it doesn’t look like anything – it’s a field of pumpkins. Here it is big and in color.
We had a nice long drive down country lanes today. I’m here to tell you – it’s fall!
September 24, 2025 — 5:33 pm
Comments: 6
Wooden computer goes for half a mil
Okay, it was the wooden-cased version of the Apple 1. They made fifty, they think nine are left, and this one is a very good example. It works. It’s got all its bits, including monitor and tape drive.
And they have the provenance: the first female graduate of Stanford Law School, a woman named June Blodgett Moore. I tried to find out more about her, but didn’t have much luck.
They estimated it would go for $300,000 but it finally sold for $475,000. I guess nostalgic geeks are all growed up and have money.
September 23, 2025 — 3:52 pm
Comments: 4
Oooh! New time sink!
Lookit the time waster Uncle B found! It’s called Every Noise at Once (URL everynoise.com). It’s a giant color-coded map of very musical genre on Spotify.
Every Noise at Once was a long-running attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 6,291 genre-shaped distinctions at Spotify through 2023-11-19. The calibration is fuzzy, but in general down is more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier.
Click anything to hear an example of what it sounds like.
Click the » on a genre to see a map of its artists.
It’s actually ten years old and is static now because the creator got laid off from Spotify. Click the name of a genre to hear a sample; click the right arrows after the genre to see a map of the artists associated with the genre (who can also be sampled).
Very cool.
September 22, 2025 — 4:35 pm
Comments: 4
Cheating!
This is Google Gemini‘s image creation mode, Nano Banana. I don’t know if it’s new or improved. I’m not sure how you normally invoke it; I followed a link from a promotional email.
I clicked the link and it had already filled out the prompt: First ask me to upload an image of myself. Then add a realistic looking alien doing a peace sign to my photo.
I mean, did it not trust me to come up with an idea on my own?
I gave it exactly the Miss Muffet prompt I gave MidJourney yesterday, and here is what it gave me back. It seems to have peace signs on the brain.
Good weekend, all!
September 19, 2025 — 6:21 pm
Comments: 4
Oh, c’mon…
The dude in the inset is Thomas Muffet, a 16th Century physician. He was one of the authors of Insectorum sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum (Theatre of Insects), a big book on bugs, that wasn’t published until some years after his death in 1604. His speciality was spiders.
Wikipedia – that killest of killjoys – says there’s no proof of a connection to Little Miss Muffet:
It has been suggested that Muffet’s stepchild, his only daughter, Patience, is the subject of the nursery rhyme ‘Little Miss Muffet’. Although the name and subject fit the verse, there is no clear evidence of a connection and the verse was only printed in 1805.
*eyeroll emoji*
I like MidJourney’s Miss Muffet and googley-eyed spider. I had to cut off some AI weirdness on the righthand side, though. (That round thing in the bottom right corner appears to be a bowling ball).
September 18, 2025 — 6:22 pm
Comments: 7
Artsy
I was bone idle all day. Nothing to say for myself. So please enjoy this unremarkable photograph of rusty chains I took at Dungeness.
No, wait – it’s rubbish day! I took out the garbage!
September 17, 2025 — 6:23 pm
Comments: 5
Revenge of the earworm
Another successful gym session. I don’t suppose I’ll end up a jacked old lady, but it is making a positive difference in my day to day function.
One unexpected downside of the gym has been the loudspeaker playing Top 40 radio. They’re still playing junk from MY childhood. I remember all the lyrics to songs I haven’t heard in forty years. Songs I hated then and hate now – but by god I know the words! It’s evidence of how they’d play those things over and over and over until they were burned into your braincell.
I remember one day in the Sixties on my rather long commute to school our local station played “Cherish” seven times in a row. We always assumed the DJ lost a bet.
Funny, I never realized how much of our pop repertoire was Elton John songs.
September 16, 2025 — 5:26 pm
Comments: 8
Slippery weasels
I’ve been good about the gym. Twice a week is all I reckon I should do at my age, to leave plenty of recovery time, and I’ve hit it every week but one. I’ve been at it a couple of months now and I think I’ve developed…a muscle!
So I was puffing away on the shoulder press and a member of staff sheepishly approached me and said, “I’m sorry – the manager sent me up here to tell you you can’t wear jeans in the gym.”
!
So it’s slippery spandex for this little weasel. I hate it. Can you imagine a weasel in spandex? I asked Grok to, but I don’t think it really gets lycra. Cute that it signed its work, though.
September 15, 2025 — 4:23 pm
Comments: 9
Dead Pool 189: closing in on 200
Mrs Carl takes it with the Katharine, Duchess of Kent. The papers were full of her good deeds. She taught music at the elementary school level for years, where the little Britlings only knew her as Mrs Kent. For a while, after the death of Her Maj, she was the oldest living royal.
And with that, let us get down to business. Ready?
0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar. Also, please don’t kill anybody. Plus (Pupster’s Rule) no picking someone who’s only famous for being the oldest person alive.
1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).
2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.
3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.
4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay? Also, make sure you have a correct spelling of your choice somewhere in your comment. These threads get longish and I use search to figure out if we have a winner.
5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.
6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.
7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you’ve won before, send me your address again. I don’t keep good records.
8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.
The winner, if the winner chooses to entrust me with a mailing address, will receive an Official Certificate of Dick Winning and a small original drawing on paper suffused with elephant shit particles. Because I’m fresh out of fairy shit particles.
Note: I am woefully behind on dick deliveries. If I owe you one, you’ll know how long. I ain’t gived up, but I haven’t drawn much since lockdown. Some day, your heirs might hear from my heirs.
September 12, 2025 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 45
See you tomorrow
I don’t post on 9/11.
RIP Charlie Kirk.
September 11, 2025 — 5:34 pm
Comments: 2