The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. Henry Miller

I used to have to setup direnv with a UV_PROJECT_ENVIRONMENT .envrc hook in every #Python project [1]. Today I am so grateful that we now have the #uv preview feature centralized-project-environments! [2] to configure... (contd) [1] vxlabs.com/2024/10/10/u... [2] docs.astral.sh/uv/concepts/...

"The Greeks sprinted in their Olympics, though they had, long before, domesticated the horse. Maybe we too will come to value the sport of understanding with our own brains." -- Harvey Lederman (Professor of Philosophy, UT Austin) in "ChatGPT and the Meaning of Life" scottaaronson.blog?p=9030

ChatGPT and the Meaning of Life: Guest Post by Harvey Lederman

Scott Aaronson’s Brief Foreword: Harvey Lederman is a distinguished analytic philosopher who moved from Princeton to UT Austin a few years ago. Since his arrival, he’s become one of my …

scottaaronson.blog

I've been unsettled lately when reading messages and papers. It feels like I'm dissociating. Everything seems a bit alien, even if it's completely human. I've had a realization: When our simulations finally exited the Uncanny Valley, they brought the Uncanny with them.

Life on the Uncanny Precipice | Naomi Saphra

We were wrong about the Uncanny Valley.

nsaphra.net

Researchers at the Statens Serum Institut in Denmark have conducted multiple landmark, population-wide studies tracking hundreds of thousands to over 1.2 million children using national health registries to examine potential links between vaccines and autism. Every major study found no connection.

Large Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or 49 other health conditions

A new Danish study finds no association between aluminum in childhood vaccines and 50 different health conditions, including autism, asthma, and autoimmune diseases. The findings reaffirm the safety o...

en.ssi.dk

After years of #kindle devices, I got the Boox Go 6 gen1 in July of 2025. This is a fine device, but it can get cripplingly slow due to only 2G RAM. However, thanks mostly to the fantastic #koreader but also to OLauncher, disabling Google sync, 2 day power-off timeout, the #boox is now snappy!

For @obsidian.md on my iPhone, I had unison + fsmonitor running between gdrive and icloud on macbook for a few months. Worked well, except that macbook needs to be up. Decided to get an Obsidian Sync subscription a few weeks ago. Works fantastically, thanks @stephango.com you and team are amazing ❤️

Obsidian 1.13 is now available to everyone on desktop and mobile! - Added search and keyboard navigation to settings - Images are easier to resize and zoom - iOS share sheet lets you save content from other apps without opening Obsidian - Many bug fixes and performance improvements

A study reveals how blind and low-vision users use agentic programming to create personalized assistive technologies, producing 37 bespoke tools to address unmet needs. This approach democratizes technology creation and empowers users to envision tailored solutions. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.21760

Bespoke Visual Assistance: What and How do Blind and Low-Vision People Create with Agentic Programming?

ArXiv link for Bespoke Visual Assistance: What and How do Blind and Low-Vision People Create with Agentic Programming?

arxiv.org

Today during our meeting walk to the beach, @enginerd.co.za and I ran into a Cape dune mole-rat! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_du...

"How We Built Our Knowledge Base" - fascinating post by Cerebras www.cerebras.ai/blog/how-we-...

This is really very exciting, an **open weights** model at this size (2.8T) that scores 57 on Artificial Analysis's combined intelligence index. Congratulations MoonshotAI with the release of #Kimi #K3 and... WHOOOHOOOO!

saberzero1.github.io/motions/ super happy to see this, will try out ASAP and report back! #obsidian #vim

Vim Motions

A polished, Neovim-native experience inside Obsidian. Markdown-aware text objects, structural navigation, EasyMotion, workspace control, and more.

saberzero1.github.io

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... "... health-conscious population, moderate egg consumption was associated with a significantly lower risk of Alzheimer's disease. These findings suggest a potential neuroprotective benefit of nutrients found in eggs when consumed as part of a balanced diet."

Egg Intake and the Incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease in the Adventist Health Study-2 Cohort Linked with Medicare Data

A substantial knowledge gap remains regarding the relationship between modifiable dietary factors and Alzheimer’s disease risk. Eggs are a source of key nutrients that support brain health. The aim of...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Dan Luu is one of my favourite current practitioners of the scientific method in software and tech. His pieces are often built on a core of measurements and experiments, a form I really enjoy!

Agentic test processes, LLM benchmarks, and other notes on agentic coding from Galapagos Island: danluu.com/ai-coding/

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled. -- Plutarch

#microsoft is really going through a sad phase. Here I am trying to report the same outlook.com spam that I've reported 5 times over the past weeks (the spammer just does not stop) via their website. Guess what: It force-opens #Edge from my Chrome browser and then, adding insult to injury, fails!

New #blog post: I've updated (only in my fork, PR is up) the #TelePi telegram bridge for the #Pi coding agent with Telegram's new Rich Message support, so you get #markdown with headings, tables and more. charlbotha.com/2026/06/28/t...

Based on what I'm saying with GLM 5.2 implementation inside DwarfStar, there is 90% of probability I'll merge the branch I'm developing. Right now it is probably the best model available to run on a 512GB Mac Studio system.

Had to check after a lovely Father’s Day lunch with tiramisu dessert: Can boozy food take you over the limit? I used tiramisu, trifle and a Breathalyser to find out www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle... @theguardian.com

Can boozy food take you over the limit? I used tiramisu, trifle and a Breathalyser to find out

A new study has warned that consuming some foods can make people unsafe to drive. But how risky are they really? One writer arms himself with liqueur chocolates and a ton of pudding …

theguardian.com

If you know you know... It only took me half a century and some change. 🥹 Thank you friends.

Look, I really love #databricks but I'm finding it hard to deal with the fact that they shipped Lakebase apparently without the ability to control which workspace users can or can't create 💰-guzzling Lakebase compute instances! community.databricks.com/t5/lakebase-... #dataengineering

How to prevent users from creating Lakebase compute?

Dear community, According to [1] and other sources, all workspace users are assigned `CAN_CREATE` on lakebase projects, and this permission "can't be revoked". The problem is that such a project comes...

community.databricks.com

Muve to the beat. Muve the conversation. Muve mountains. Today @eurosky.social announces mu.social, a new microblogging app to experiment with the future of social! 🪩💖

#TIL: the word "doofer" in British #English. (Covered by Simon Pegg and Henry Cavill in one of those fun YouTube segments) - basically a "thingamajig". I'm definitely going to start using that down here! www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/e...

DOOFER definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary

Not standard a person or thing forgotten or unknown to the speaker.... Click for English pronunciations, examples sentences, video.

collinsdictionary.com

As long as you live, keep learning how to live. -- Seneca (when you live past the half-century mark, this reminder is most welcome)

Download and read the new open access Databricks handbook "Databricks Data Intelligence Platform: Powering the Agentic Era" as PDF or epub! link.springer.com/book/10.1007... #dataengineering #databricks

Databricks Data Intelligence Platform

Use this Open Access book to master Databricks, with guidance for building GenAI solutions, managing data workflows, and scaling AI applications.

link.springer.com

Now I too have a #blog with #bluesky comments! charlbotha.com/2026/06/14/b...

A chaotic little story (from a teacup!) about overwriting my hobby #linux server (old laptop) ubuntu 22.04 with debian trixie charlbotha.com/2026/06/13/o... #blog #ubuntu #debian

Here's #blog with a neat little #ssh trick to give things (like agents) programmatically specified (limited) access to tools on other systems, e.g. container agent safely(ish) using tools on host: vxlabs.com/2026/05/30/s...

SSH authorized_keys command restriction to isolate container access to host functions

Preview This post documents how you can use a lesser known authorized_keys config to give AI agents (or anything else) programmatically designed and limited access to any resources and tools on a diff...

vxlabs.com

Hugo the brilliant static website (and #blog !) framework has just merged #AVIF image processing support! The issue github.com/gohugoio/hug... and the commit github.com/gohugoio/hug...

Add image processing support for AVIF · Issue #7837 · gohugoio/hugo

AVIF is a new image format (based on the open AV1 video format) that has the potential to produce significantly smaller file sizes than existing formats, although with different tradeoffs. I find d...

github.com