low_delta | Network

It also will not seek any tax abatements or incentives.

Well, that's one heck of a move!

MS has a new "Community First" initiative where it is paying the full costs of its data centers, which will cause no increase in costs for area residents. They have taken tax abatements in the past, that apparently will end. There's a lot of hate for the big tech companies right now, and justly so: "In data‑center hubs such as Virginia, Illinois and Ohio, residential power prices jumped 12–16% over the past year — noticeably faster than the U.S. average, according to U.S. government data — as grid operators scrambled to add capacity for large new facilities."

A certain moron last night spilled the news on his private social media platform and said that his administration is talking to the other major tech platforms about them taking responsibility to eat their own costs, as they should, we shall see what happens. They certainly have the money, but as we've seen so often in the past, it's always been 'privatize the profits, socialize the costs'.

https://www.geekwire.com/2026/microsoft-responds-to-ai-data-center-revolt-vowing-to-cover-full-power-costs-and-reject-local-tax-breaks/

https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/01/13/146211/microsoft-pledges-full-power-costs-no-tax-breaks-in-response-to-ai-data-center-backlash

At least, I found a whole foods supplier which had - among other things like wheatbran which looked like it would not be like the sawdusty stuff Ocado have lately been purveying under that name - things like Medium Oatmeal! Wheatgerm! and POMEGRANATE VINEGAR!!! which I have been complaining everywhere were No Can Haz. Also kasha (I did have kasha but on recently examining the package found that its BBF was way back last summer).

And conveyed to me with remarkable expedition even if I didn't pony up for the expedite delivery option.

Slight whinge at DPD for just leaving it on the step and not even ringing the bell.

Also, I discovered that my library card for Former Workplace expired several years ago. On emailing about renewal (as I have a need to Go In and Consult Things) got a next day response saying they can renew if I send in scan of appropriate ID and address verification, and pick up card when I go in.

This somewhat makes up for:

a) the two reviews I did last year which still sit in limbo with the relevant editors.

b) the two feelers put out for books to review, ditto, such that I am hesitant to put out another for a different book to a different journal in case I end up yet again with stack of books for review.

c) local history society which I contacted last year apropos 2 volumes of its proceedings which are Relevant to My Interests and which after some initially encouraging response has gone silent.

Am still miffed about either inadvertently deleting or not being sent Zoom link for the last Dance to the Music of Time discussion.

and am baffled by the ongoing situation 'The server is taking too long to respond' of the Mastodon instance I frequent, which has now pertained for nearly 5 days.

Public

Back to the Future (1985)

This is a film I might have guessed would score full marks from me. As you can see, it doesn't, because it's just that little bit too problematic when looked at with mid-2020s eyes. Don't get me wrong, this is still a great movie, expertly constructed and supremely watchable. There aren't any real weak links in the acting, and the atmosphere of 1955 America is wonderfully created. Even having a DeLorean break down about every ten seconds is true to life. For what it is, Back to the Future is pretty much spot on at first viewing, and it's strong enough to hold up to being seen multiple times, as indeed I have. That's not something to sniff at.

But those problems? There's the "Johnny B. Goode" scene, though in reality by November 1955 what you might call modern rock'n'roll already existed: Little Richard had released "Tutti Frutti" the month before, even if it didn't chart until December. The Libyan terrorists are comic-book villains and I can live with that. A bigger deal is how the film treats Lorraine. The "unintentional incestuous attraction" joke is slightly overdone, but the real issue is the plan Marty cooks up, which requires Lorraine to be genuinely emotionally abused to set up George's hero moment. Then an actual assault is played more realistically than you'd expect for a feel-good family comedy, yet the victim is completely fine a few minutes later.

None of this destroys the movie as a whole. Michael J. Fox is excellent as Marty, even if a little gratingly cool at times for these British sensibilities, and Christopher Lloyd is suitably manic as Doc Brown. Lea Thompson must also get a mention for a really fine turn in a tricky role as Lorraine, while Thomas F. Wilson's Biff manages to pull off both "comedy class bully" and "genuinely dangerous predator". The clock tower scene, the other callbacks, most of the humour, and the way it never lets up from start to finish make it a very fine film to this day. Still an easy four-star movie – but looked at through today's eyes, I can't quite see it as the near-perfect picture I'd half-expected. ★★★★

Current Mood: hungry

JOE: We're gonna have to live with them eventually.
HARRY: Who?
JOE: The Protestants, Harry. The other half of the population.

Watching a film set in the Troubles on the eve of travel to Minneapolis and after doing some reading about Palestine may not have been the wisest course. Then again, maybe it was. No time like the present.

"The Boxer" is mostly about Daniel Day-Lewis and Emily Watson's characters' relationship, but there's a lot of focus on Harry the IRA warlord and Joe the more political-minded IRA leader as well.

HARRY: And what are you offering, Joe?
JOE: Peace, Harry. Peace.
HARRY: Well, I'm sure you can deliver.

I'll be doing bus-stop watch for a couple of days, making sure kids can get home from school or seeing where they get taken if they don't. It's scary out here.

If yesterday was an edge case, this one’s completely off the edge — when I was compiling the week’s words, I failed to notice this one is not Polynesian but Micronesian, and while the two groups do make up the Eastern branch of Oceanic languages, it’s still off topic. My bad. Especially as the history is too interesting to give up:

bikini (buh-KEE-nee) - n., a close-fitting, two-piece women’s bathing suit that does not cover the midriff.

The history is easier to explain in chronological order. One of the northernmost of the Marshall Islands is a coral atoll called Pikinni (stress on the first syllable) in Marshallese, from pikin, flat land +‎ ni, coconut, so (is)land where coconuts grow. When the Marshall Islands were part of the colony of German New Guinea, the German adaptation was Bikini (still stressed on the first syllable), it became known by that in English (stressed first syllable) and French (stress typically on the second syllable, following that language’s norms). Japan took over the Marshall Islands in 1914 at the start of WWI, and the USA took it over following WWII, and from 1946-1958 they test-fired 23 nuclear weapons on Bikini Atoll. [Sidebar: They relocated the ~150 inhabitants first, and since in traditional Marshallese culture wealth is based on how much land your clan controls, this impoverished them.] Four days after the first test-fire on Bikini in July 1946, French designer Louis Réard introduced a new midriff-baring two-piece swimsuit, which he named bikini (stressed second syllable) after it, the idea being that it was just as much a sensation. Um. Yeah. [Sidebar²: Thanks to the swimsuit, the atoll now is just as likely to be pronounced with stress on the second syllable. Second round of Um. Yeah.]

---L.

13. January is the best time to see the bright gas giant planet Jupiter in the sky – have you ever seen it?

Not sure that I could really spot it with the naked eye, but a few years ago we looked at it through our neighbor's telescope.

Current Mood: annoyed

It was raining in Seattle when I left and is a little drippy here this morning.

The Seattle airport, SeaTac, was weirdly a bit of a mess. The security set up was not nearly as efficient or as well equipped as the one in Austin. To get on the plane we had to go outside on the tarmac where the jets were taking off and landing (far away from them but still on the same ground with jet fuel and noise and fumes) then up a set of ramps to get into the plane. I can only assume they are doing lots of work somewhere and this is the temporary result of that work. But the difference between the Austin airport and the Seattle airport was striking. We'll see how temporary that is in five months when I do it again.

The flight was uneventful. I was wearing my hoodie and put on the Bose sound killing head phones, flipped up the hood, put on four or five episodes of Pluribus, and disappeared from the world for a few hours. I've got a routine. Crawl into my cave and return when the metal tube has deposited me near where I'm going.

All is well here, nothing went amiss while I was gone. Beaux is very happy to have me back and I was thrilled to see him. Similar experience with Dana and Toby but in Beau's case lots of enthusiasm and body wagging.

My weight is unchanged after a week of different eating and everything else and no exercise. So that is encouraging. It will be nice to get back in the groove with measured food and pickleball. Time to get serious about losing that last ten or fifteen pounds. I've already reached my initial goal only to find it is not actually the one I want. But I'm happy with the progress and ready for more.

A week off from exercise is too long. I can feel it. And the immediate snap back to form that I enjoyed when I was younger isn't going to happen now. I'll need to put in a lot more effort and focus to get back to where I was a week ago. It slips away so quickly.

I do miss being able to go down to the Timber Ridge library at 6AM and read the physical WSJ paper with one of the residents. He never even looked up when I arrived but acknowledged me on his way out. Companionable silence, coffee, and someone to have the paper ready.

But I trade it off for quiet house and morning coffee and feeding Beaux.

I've got lunch today with my networking group but that's it. Such a nice schedule. A couple of other things to do with scheduling later in the week and accounts of one kind or another but nothing pressing.

I do kind of like my schedule.

So I wait for a couple of days to be sure I didn't pick up any virus during the travels. Finger's crossed. I didn't notice anyone who looked sick and did spend some quality time washing my hands in the airport.

Time to walk the dogs.

I had completely forgotten about this old workaround until today, and honestly, it's a lifesaver in my loud office workplace. Since my iPhone doesn't allow me to charge and listen simultaneously without a bulky dongle, I finally remembered I can just tether it to my computer via a USB cable. By opening iTunes, I can access my entire library of 2,000+ tracks directly from the phone while it stays at 100% battery.

The real winner in this setup is my Etymotic IEMs. In our noisy workspace, their passive isolation provides an epic level of noise reduction. It's actually more effective than active noise cancellation (ANC) because it blocks out office chatter and high-frequency sounds.

I'm finally back in my high-fidelity bubble.

things melted last week and everything was mud, so I got a couple days break from spreading straw. weirdly, my problem elbow hurt more when I wasn't using it constantly than when I was. Not sure what's up with that. The temperature dropped again, so the ground froze again. Did another load at dawn this morning but discovered a belt had worn weirdly on the shredder, so I need to run to town today and get a new one before we shred more.

The pottery class I was going to take isn't actually available on Wed, their only evening hours are mondays from 5-8 and they only just updated that on facebook and haven't emailed me back. I'm busy that night, so that's out. I could theoretically do day classes but with how short the days are, any daylight is needed for work hours especially if I need extra warmup time between morning and afternoon. ETA: I found another studio with wed classes and easier signup procedures. done.

I did go to spinners guild on sunday and it was a gosh dang delight including one of the longer term guild members coming this time who is queer in so many ways and everyone was lovely to him. It was so so so nice and relaxing. I think for the next meeting I'm going to get either my electric wheel battery up and running or take my smaller wheel and start an alpaca spin on it. My CPW is too big and loud for the space we've been meeting in. I got there right at 1pm and was still one of the later arrivals, so clearly I need to get there even earlier :)

We have started the wood stove indoors back up, so that's nice. I missed it. We ran out of wood that size and it had gotten warm, so there was less point in running it. Dad got on the roof and cleaned the chimney out while it was off, so that was nice and split some of the wood at the rental into wood stove size for both their house and mine.

I did kickstart my parents into doing work on their house! I sanded their office floor and then mom cleaned it and we sealed and finished it together. Definitely one of those times where it would have been faster with just one person, but so be it. My dad has been working on their living room wall drywall which is next in line. They do have renters moving into the rental Feb 1, so there is painting to be done there, plus some other small misc stuff. Parents' house also needs paint so I will be helping with some amount of painting. I didn't do drywall in my upstairs bathroom yet as expected, but I'm planning to later this week when dad is around to help me move the drywall outside to cut and then upstairs to get in place. They do have an extremely firm deadline of house renovations of June when my dad's college buddies are coming to visit, so there's that. We did discover that nice foosball tables are extremely heavy and it would be good to have more than two people to get it in a bilco basement door. I didn't get squished but it was very very heavy. After we got it down there, my dad said, you know, I think it did say something about being over 200lbs. hmm. thanks dad. Although we would have had to get a cousin or something to come help, which my parents are slightly allergic to asking for help, so I dunno if that would have happened anyway. We do have a vague plan to get the floor done which is good and there is progress happening. Given my parents hated the smell of the seal and finish, we are waiting to move them into the house until the living room/dining room/kitchen are all sealed and finished.

Winter is one of those times where I am just sleepy a lot, so I do accept this as a fact of life but also am fully aware that I am relatively isolated from the local area. In NY, I had an established friend groups, I had places I could go when I wanted a little socializing or crafting with folks, all sorts of things. Here I don't have any of that, so I'm trying to find something. Over the summer, I was so busy with the farm that I didn't really notice, but now I really can tell. To be fair, I have three nights a week where I have weekly social opportunities, but they are all digital. I know I need to push myself and get out there but it's hard and farm work is a bit unpredictable with when we need to run for straw and things. So spinners guild was excellent. I'm hoping to go to a meetup this saturday, although I'll be missing gaming with Jade that night for it. I need to do something thur/fri nights. And maybe some saturdays during the day. Hmm.

'There's such a thing as chemo hair,' said the hairdresser some time back, despite me repeatedly trying to tell her that what I had was radiotherapy, not chemotherapy. 'Same for your hair, almost,' she said. I don't think it is, but she was on a roll. 'When your hair first grows back, it's going to be strange. Still got the chemo in it you see. Might as well shave it all off, the next growth is better.'

I ignored her because I am not shaving my head for someone who tells me chemo and radiotherapy are effectively the same thing. So it has grown. And I have to admit, it's not great. The trouble is knowing the difference between ageing hair, treated hair, radiotherapied hair, cancer hair and whatever the hell else is going on. Also, it itches, the colour doesn't last, and the last time she coloured my hair it burned my scalp. I had to stop her.

Right now it looks dry, brittle. There is some shine, but not my normal shine. The nurses were a bit more useful. 'It's going to change, they said, 'colour change, texture change, maybe it will start being wavy.' I asked them if I should shave my head. 'That's up to you,' they said, 'but you don't need to.' I told them about the hairdresser. They tried to be polite.

Now I have seaweed shampoo and conditioner. Let's see what happens.

Yesterday I did stuff that needed doing and took effort, today I started one thing, ended up doing two others, more productive than I have been but.. truth is that by 11 I am done. If I am to get anything really sorted I have to get up early in the morning and do it straight away. And yet, how true is this, really? I stayed up late doing the place plan. That wasn't creative as such, it was recording, taxing in a different way and once I finished it I collapsed into near torpor for weeks. Let's be honest, I couldn't do it again.

The whole after cancer thing is driving me mad. I'll talk to the doctor soon. This fatigue is just ridiculous, the depression less insidious because I know its cause but still damaging. All they are going to say to me is that we can try Tamoxifen, but its rep for side effects is worse than Letrozole, and it took me long enough to get used to the latter. Ten years like this? I know, time to be grateful, make the best of it, people are facing much worse. If I can cover my head in kelp I'm doing OK.

Where, oh where, did I go wrong?

I think by picking up the wrong travel brochure in Bardo.

Clearly, I was reaching for the glossy folder emblazoned, Enjoy your next incarnation as a veterinarian in the 1930s & 1940s Yorkshire Dales!

Instead, my astral fingers fumbled, & I picked up the one labeled, Be Cassandra while Western Civilization collapses around you! (Note: This material contains themes of intense sadness, depression, hopelessness, and emotional distress.)

###

Anyway, yesterday I did regain a modicum of sanguinity: It was a bright, sunshiney, though intensely cold day & I shot the shit with a couple of my fellow tax-preparing wage slaves at the Schlock office who laughed at all my jokes and told me they never peddled product unless the client was clearly on the verge of being swept up in a financial maelstrom. Their eyes widened with admiration when I went into my patented rant about how companies bloated with middle management always update their perfectly functional software & support documents every year because that's the only way middle management can justify its existence.

I am a mouse trained on scraps! The things that keep me happy are so small! All I really need is an audience for an hour & a chance to show off how much I remember from my university economics classes.

###

Came home & realized that Chapter 4 in the Work in Progress would be wayyyyyy too long if I followed my kinda/sorta outline. Really, I need to split it into a Chapter 4 and a Chapter 5!

And Chapter 4 has to end with an elliptical, evocative, & allusive conversation with the New Millennium Kingdom girl—

And here, I totally ran out of steam.

Because while it's staying light till 5pm now, it's still midnight at 6pm, and I can't work at night.

Which is weird because I'm perfectly capable of working at 4 o'clock in the morning when it's just as dark.

###

So! Notes for the final climactic Chapter 4 WiP scene, which hopefully, I can polish off before I toddle off to the gym:

Brief review of the revolving signage on the New Millennium Kingdom table: COVID is God's Down Payment, The Blood of the Lamb Works Better Than Purell, etc, etc, etc.

One time I asked her (your enigmatic question & response goes here)

Another time I asked her, "But what did you do before this?"

She laughed and said, "I was a broker at Goldman Sachs."

Work Buy the dip, short the godless index into the dialog somehow.

Has to be some ruminations about the Universe's plan & the very last line will be the girl laughing at Grazia, Didn't we already decide that?

For your lost love. Maybe it wasn't real, maybe it wasn't lost, but mood is mood.

https://open.substack.com/pub/smokingboot/p/eros-and-psyche?r=1r9jj7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

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Posted by Remy Porter

https://thedailywtf.com/articles/a-pirate-s-confession

Today we have a true confession from Carl W. It has the benefit of being in R, which means that at a glance, I just assume "eh, looks fine to me." I guess I'm turning into Jimbo.

But let's dig into it. Carl's first snippet is this:

for(kk in 1:length(thematch)) {
	if(length(thematch)==0) break
	# actual code
}

"What WAS I thinking?" Carl asks.

You were thinking two things: you were thinking you wanted to iterate across a list, and you were thinking you didn't want to do anything if the list was empty. That these wires got crossed is natural- but sure, this isn't something that should end up in production code. The WTF is less the code itself, and more whatever allowed it to get released.

Carl's next snippet is described as "Yes, let's invert logicals as many times as possible."

	 slice <-rep(0,length(newxx))
	 slicelog<-as.logical(cuts[j]<=newyy & newyy<=cuts[j+1])
	 is.na(slice)<-!slicelog

Because R is weird, <- is one of the assignment operators (it also uses =, but for different purposes, and don't ask me to explain the difference), and because people like to have fun, it also has an -> operator (so the assignee is on the right side of the expression), and <<- and ->> versions which muck with scope in interesting ways.

In this example, the rep function replicates a value (0, in this case) length(newxx) times. So that gives us an array of zeros.

R supports broadcasting operations, so cuts[j] is an array and newyy is also an array (vector, if we're using R parlance), and by comparing two arrays we get an array of boolean values. Which we then pass to as.logical which converts an array into an array of boolean values.

Finally, in R, the NA value is their version of null. Thus is.na returns an array which is true if the original input held a null at that index, and false otherwise. Which is definitely going to be an array of falses, because slice holds an array of 0s. We just made it. Then we assign to the return value of that function. This is syntactically valid, but as you can imagine, it doesn't actually make sense- we just discard the result, at least based on me trying this in an R REPL.

Carl writes:

While the function containing these snippets was definitely a victim of "code it and design the requirements later," I can't believe that even Beginner Me wrote stuff that horrifying. But, it works perfectly so it ain't gonna get fixed.

Ah, that last sentence there, that is a dark truth. And it's important to note, it works perfectly: for now. But the world and runtime environment change. And someday, another developer will receive this code, and wonder, much like Carl, what the hell was going on when it was written.

In any case, Carl, consider yourself absolved. If it's stupid and it works, well, it's still stupid, but these WTFs are small and mostly self-contained.

Remember: code is a liability and starts accruing cruft and tech-debt the instant it's released. The functionality that code delivers is the asset, but that asset is inextricably tied to the code, which encodes assumptions about the world which, even if they were true to begin with, become increasingly false as the world changes.

Also, if you haven't figured out the headline, and because jokes are funnier when you explain them, this is clearly about a pirate's second favorite programming language, ARRRR. Why their second favorite? Because their first love will always be the C.

[Advertisement] Keep the plebs out of prod. Restrict NuGet feed privileges with ProGet. Learn more.

https://thedailywtf.com/articles/a-pirate-s-confession

Public

This spring's Senedd election looks like being an interesting one. Right now if I had to put money on any particular outcome, I'd go for a minority Plaid administration. I don't think they'll get anywhere near the number of seats they'd need to get a majority in the Senedd, which will now have 96 members. Probably a final seat count somewhere in the low-mid 30s. Reform are on their heels but seem to be slipping back a little very recently, so I'd suggest mid-high 20s for them. Quite possibly every other party, including incumbents Labour, in single figures.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Happy birthday,

alexseanchai,

altariel.

chance and

rembrandtswife!

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

Top 10 challenge

I'm onna train, so here are 10 railway stations I like. In no particular order, and for various different reasons.

1. Frankfurt Hbf. This was where my international rail travels began. Standing on the concourse, looking at the departure boards (getting slightly earwormed by Stuttgart and Fulda), realising that I could get pretty much anywhere from here...

2. London St Pancras. It's beautiful. It's not actually a terribly pleasant experience getting a train from here (maybe the East Midlands and South Eastern platforms are better) but from the outside it's a fairy tale castle.

3. Stockholm. Rolling in, bleary eyed, off the sleeper from Malta, through dingy orange lights, and then suddenly you're in this marble palace. (I got chugged in Stockholm station. I don't know what I was doing to look like a Swede with disposable income rather than a discombobulated tourist, but there we go.)

4. London King's Cross. Never mind all that wizard nonsense, it has a fully functional platform zero. Also the toilets are free these days.

5. Liège Guillemins. Just glorious.

6. Ryde Pier Head. When it's operational and when you don't just miss the train because the catamaran was thirty seconds late. But there's still something fun about a station in the sea.

7. Dawlish. Train to beach in under a minute (your mileage may vary, as may mine considering I haven't been there in about a decade).

8. York. Never mind a pub in the station, it has one on the platform. Lovely stained glass, too.

9. Norwich. Light, gracious, makes you glad you've arrived.

10. Luxembourg. Stained glass again - and just time for an ice cream before the train.

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oof, another 2 day gap in update.

Was it only yesterday that we had the taiko new year's? Spouse woke up early to make food, and then we went to rehearsal, followed by mochi making, followed by performance. Around 2pm was when I hit a wall re: energy and ability to People, so 2-3pm was pretty miserable because I was still trapped at the taiko thing and there was still more socializing to do. I crashed after I got home, and then crashed even more at night. But at least the event was done, and I got to have freshly-pounded mochi in ozoni soup, which is the best thing ever.

Today was the first day of the semester, so there was a lot of running around getting curriculum pulled together, but tomorrow should be more relaxing because it's doing stuff I've already done before. Whew! Really looking forward to a morning where I get to slow down and plan for the semester and send some emails and update some google forms. \o/

I should also: clean up my car (long-overdue), and get to drawing my comic again.

I think when I'm more tired I can hear more of the electricity in the lights

( Hiding bad formatting again... )

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low_delta

January 2026

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Page Summary

thewayne - Microsoft says it will pay the full energy costs for its new AI datacenters!
oursin - Sometimes things actually work
loganberrybunny - Film post: Back to the Future (1985)
jazzfish - with their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns
prettygoodword - bikini
lizzybuffy2008 - January 13, 2026
bill_schubert - Brought a little bit of rain back with me
soemand - Tunes
unicornduke - muddling through winter
smokingboot - Hair
mallorys_camera - Be Cassandra While Western Civilization Collapses Around You!
smokingboot - An old poem
falkner - An everything amnesty! [2026 edition]
the_daily_wtf_feed - CodeSOD: A Pirate's Confession
loganberrybunny - Quick Welsh election thoughts
oursin - (no subject)
shewhostaples - Snowflake Challenge: day 6
james - Days off: Project!
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