Jim Van Verth

@cthulhim.bsky.social

Woodworker, musician, co-author of Essential Math for Games, host of The Vintage Gamer, occasional gad about town. Formerly: GPU Engineer for the Skia 2D graphics library; game developer for Red Storm Entertainment and Insomniac Games. He/him.

Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

There are two wolves. One always lies. One controls the lever of trolley track. They're in a state of superposition inside a box. On the trolley are infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters going to an infinite hotel. The trolley must first travel halfway, but before that a quarterway, and so on...

I’m pleased that our dog has recovered from her snake bite, while simultaneously annoyed by all the mosquitoes buzzing around because the rain. It’s been a month for scalars and vectors.

Hey folks. If you've got a WordPress site, you need to check what version you're on. There's a critical vulnerability for versions 6.9.0 to 7.0.1. Update immediately. Like put your phone down now & do it. Not tomorrow. Complete compromise & remote code execution are possible w a simple script

Technical Advisory: wp2shell — Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution and Full Site Takeover in WordPress Core

Threat actors are actively exploiting two vulnerabilities in WordPress Core. The vulnerabilities carry a combined CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10.

businessinsights.bitdefender.com

A quick word on Taco Bell: That's where we found the suspected lettuce, and it's not bc Taco Bell is gross. It's bc Taco Bell is REALLY GOOD at tracing product! Keeping track of exactly where they got their ingredients, & exactly what restaurants each shipment of ingredients went to!

“Who knows what other childhood curiosities are quietly growing into world-changing ideas right now in bedrooms, backyards and notebooks across the globe? The next big breakthrough might not come from a high-tech lab. It might come from a 10-year-old who just can’t stop wondering about butterflies”💖

Photo of 10 year old Japanese boy, Jo Nagai, with a black and white swallowtail butterfly on his jacket collar and another one on his index finger as he smiles at camera. Caption reads:

A Japanese boy noticed his butterflies seemed to recognise him. He spent two years designing an experiment and proved that metamorphosis does not erase memories formed during the caterpillar stage.
Oisín McGann@oisinmcgann.bsky.social · 3w ago

I don’t know why this post doesn’t give his name, but it’s Jo Nagai. This is a true story. medium.com/@zehraanjum2...