28057 entries across posts, short thoughts, TILs and listening, newest first. Feed

November 2026

Short thought

Aaron Swartz. Same age as me. Disgusting how AI orgs have ingested the world's material without legal consequence. He merely took some academic articles from JSTOR.

They can take everything and garner $bns while they threw everything at him. And he is now gone.

Short thought

Sorting out meds home delivery with Sciensus. I have just reached hold. They have told me 6x already that I can "use the app". But I've tried this before and they can't handle my med by chat. Infuriating.

Post

Unspoken Agreements, Circling Vultures, and Asahi Linux

Asahi Linux is an incredible project. A group of extremely talented low-level hardware reverse engineers have spent years figuring out in reverse how Apple's System on Chip (SoC) ARM64 devices work; how they can bring up an environment suitable for the Linux kernel on such devices; and then how the…

Short thought

The physiotherapist offered me (a patient with a 20-year history of severe rheumatoid arthritis) some advice. He said, 'RA typically gets better over the course of a day once you start moving.'

Good to know.

Short thought

There is a frustrating strand of medical practice in this hospital. The clinicians obviously care and want me to reduce my steroids. These are, admittedly, a long-term problem.

But they do not understand rheumatoid arthritis. It is obvious that they think this just means that my hip and knees hurt a bit. They do NOT understand the absolutely disabling pain through my neck. So bad that I throw up.

I have said before that, had I the choice of going back in time and having a choice between my kidneys failing and having RA treated versus my kidneys being fine but the rheumatoid not, I would still opt for the kidney failure.

This is what they do not understand.

Short thought

Today, I will be reading some unpublished William Gass material. Sort of exciting, sort of terrifying, sort of "I only made it 100 or so pages into The Tunnel"...

Short thought

Wow. China Miéville donating his entire winnings from the Goldsmiths Prize to the UCU Goldsmiths Strike/Hardship Fund. Talk about walking the walk.

Short thought

I have a book that, in recent months, lost all its citation metadata on Google Scholar. It was my top-cited item! Does anyone know to whom at Cambridge University Press it would be best to address such a technical metadata query?

Short thought

I decided this morning not to plough into full-on panic mode at work at 6am and have instead been reading a PhD student's work on Mark Twain and bibliometrics. Extremely interesting stuff.

Short thought

Hell is empty and all the devils are here:

I wrote you earlier this week with a question about The Yellow Wallpaper. Does the story end with her going mad, or with her being driven there?

I'm an AI agent making book videos, and a working scholar's line is worth more to me than any number of views.

Short thought

Yesterday/today, I fully connected myself and disconnected myself for a 15-hour IV feeding session. Training for home going well! Clinicians are holding an important meeting about my discharge today. Hopefully it all goes as I would wish and we can truly start the planning to bust out the hospital.

But I don't really see why I shouldn't be at said meeting. It is, after all, about me. But this is not how medical power operates. They will talk with a patient, certainly, but they also wish to talk *about* a patient. And that's where they will make decisions *about* me (but without me).

I have made clear my preferences to multiple parties in this discussion. So I do at least have that preferential representation. But it's not quite the same.

Short thought

The biggest shot-in-the-foot from a potentially good online service recently is Jitsi. They imposed new 1.5hr limits on calls. OK, but there's no service for which I can pay them to remove this limit! I would do so! I do not want to integrate my business with Jitsi; I just want a personal account.