This is what my set looked like
Remember Rapidograph? I wasn’t a technical draftsman, but I worked in the cubicle next to them. Although I think there was a period of time when Rapidograph pens had a cultural cachet among people who weren’t artists. Like, people who kept poncey diaries.
Anyway, I had a hankering for one and went into my local art shop today. He said oh, I stopped carrying those when they went up to £30(!). They’re about £40(!!) now, he says.
Well, I found them cheaper online, but new ones not by much. And it’s a real risk buying used ones.
They draw such fine lines because the ‘nib’ is a tiny steel cylinder. Inside it is a fine wire attached to a weight. Periodically, you shook the pen so the fine wire bobbed up and down, which cleared the cylinder and kept the ink moving. A studio full of draftsman made the clack-clackity-clack sound at scale.
But the fine wire wore out eventually. And if you let india ink dry hard (and everyone did from time to time), rehabilitating the nibs became a chore. Sometimes impossible. The smaller the nib, the harder to resurrect.
I can’t for the life of me find my set of Rapidographs. Most people these days use fancy felt tips instead, but I’m kinda stubborn. The real thing has a feel to it.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
p.s. I thought my server was down for hours, but it looks like my VPN was to blame.
February 27, 2026 — 7:00 pm
Comments: 9
I remember that!
Uncle B just reminded me of something I hadn’t thought of for years – Ling’s cars! Ling Valentine was a car dealer in Britain who was famous for her website. It was gloriously godawful.
The internet tells me she retired in 2020 to bike around the world with her husband and the remaining employees (Ling’s cars is still in business) have toned down the website considerably.
Fortunately, someone has preserved the old site in all its glory. Mostly.
February 26, 2026 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 6
Thanks, buddy
The website I’m building looks like ass on mobile phone, so I asked ChatGPT to help me fix it. Several tweaks later, the whole thing looks like ass on desktop.
Yes, that’s right, says ChatGPT, but it works better on phones.
Dear Weasel: Backup before every tweak.
I swear the version of this cartoon I remember in my head, both characters were cartoons, but Leo couldn’t find one. That’s right – I have a whole clique of robot friends.
February 25, 2026 — 6:08 pm
Comments: 11
Hold on – it’s coming
We’ve had a perfectly awful winter. Not cold, but wet and miserable and dark day after day after day. One sunny day every few weeks and then back to it. Everyone is depressed.
But the dickie birds know spring is coming. They’ve been singing their hearts out for days. And today – croci! (Flowers in black and white are stupid, here’s color).
March sometimes has a good thumping in it, but we’re almost through.
In the thread below, Jasonius asks if I’ve tried Claude. I have and I’m impressed. It’s the most conversational of the AIs so far. Try it. Ask it a neutral history question about your town, or a recipe, or how to get shoes that fit.
I’m paying for ChatGPT, though, and I feel obliged to use it. They’re all as good as each other for computer-y questions.
February 24, 2026 — 6:05 pm
Comments: 5
Robo-freud
I promised myself I’d never do anything personal with AI. I can’t for the life of me understand how people pour out their hearts to a command line. I’d feel silly.
But I was writing a business letter and I just couldn’t nail the tone, so I uploaded it to ChatGPT for advice.
It said don’t send this – it sounds querulous and weak. And then it wrote a second draft.
We spent the better part of a day going back and forth. Not just writing drafts, but it began asking me what I expected to get from this interaction. And then where I expected to be in five years. And how I was going to get there.
It asked probing questions and told me (somewhat) hard truths (ChatGPT errs on the obsequious side). I know it’s not genuinely insightful, but damn it’s been trained on some very good material.
At the end of the day, I felt a lot better about a lot of things, and I had a draft of the letter I was pleased with. It was kind of spooky, to be honest.
I’m not sure what to do with this information. It’s about to suck me down into a nightmare flaming demon hellscape, isn’t it?
February 23, 2026 — 7:40 pm
Comments: 7
Dead Pool 194: get ready for spring edition
Jesse Jackson. Gosh. Not much to say and stay within the bounds of good taste, except congratulations to RimrockR.
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.
February 20, 2026 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 48
I’m American, dammit!
I used the word ‘misdemeanor’ in a Twitter post and – as you can see – it was underlined in red as an error. So I checked the dictionary, carefully copied and past the word – still red underline. That did a number on my confidence.
So I came over here to post about it and it was underlined here.
That’s when the penny dropped – it was looking for the British spelling, misdemeanour. At some point – it hasn’t been all along – all of my apps have decided I’m British and they try to correct my American spellings.
Anyone know where that switch is?
p.s. Dead Pool tomorrow!
February 19, 2026 — 6:24 pm
Comments: 6
I was unfaithful
Today I cheated on ChatGPT. I signed up for Claude, because I kept hearing it was the best at words.
I’ve been doing a bit of personal research into a local artist I really like. For a start, I wanted to know if he was the son of a much more famous artist (no, nephew).
Claude as a research assistant was…interesting. It was highly conversational. It wrote very well (something it’s famous for), but it is obviously built to engage in human-like back and forth. Including paying me a few slightly uncomfortable compliments. It was a bit like having my shin humped by an enthusiastic little dog.
It put our conversation together into a Word document for download. If anything significantly changed, it wrote an updated document. Not bad. It made one obvious error a human wouldn’t make – it misunderstood a parent/child relationship. And it lied to me at least once – it told me it would forget our conversation and start over if I asked it to, then it didn’t. But its prose was nearly ready out of the box. It didn’t sound like me, of course, but it was serviceable.
And yes, it did start by asking what it should call me and I told it Weasel.
If I had to sum up – Claude is a conversation simulator, ChatGPT is (over) eager to help and Grok is a snarky teenager. They’re all pretty good as research assistants, though – if you verify.
February 18, 2026 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 8
Happy new year!
Chinese new year, of course. In 2026 it falls on 17 February. It is the Year of the Horse.
Specifically, the year of the Fire Horse (there’s an element that goes with the sign).
It is considered inauspicious to marry girls born in a Fire Horse year, especially in Japan, because they’re supposedly headstrong and difficult if not actually dangerous.
The belief had a measurable social effect in Japan in 1966, the most recent Fire Horse year before 2026. Birth rates dropped sharply, as some families tried to avoid having daughters born that year. There were reports of delayed marriages or concern about the marriage prospects of girls born in 1966. Researchers studying Japanese demographics have documented this dip clearly in national statistics.
Japan because of a specific legend.
The superstition seems to have been strongly reinforced by the story of Yaoya Oshichi, a real 17th-century girl in Edo (Tokyo) who became famous in popular literature and theatre. According to the story, Oshichi fell in love with a young man she met while her family was sheltering in a temple after a fire. Wanting to see him again, she set another fire hoping her family would have to return to the temple. She was caught and executed (arson was a capital crime).
Illustration by Grok, pull quotes by ChatGPT. Weee! I’m outsourcing my brain to AI.
p.s. Yes, Jesse Jackson has popped his clogs – new Dead Pool Friday.
February 17, 2026 — 6:32 pm
Comments: 5
Nearing a milestone
Saturday was my nineteenth blogaversary. Which means my milestone 20th will land on a Sunday, but we’ll worry about that next year.
Thank you everyone for hanging out. I say it every year: I’m not sure what the theme of this is anymore, I just don’t know how to stop.
It was also our 17th wedding anniversary. We saw the sun for the first time in yonks, had a nice meal out, and a bottle of good old English fizz.
It was a good day.
February 16, 2026 — 5:56 pm
Comments: 14