Nelson's Linkblog

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Plotter calibration

Artist's DIY method for making sure pens line up in his plotter

2025-06-10 plotterart • plotter • art • calibration • axidraw

Minimalist init for containers

2025-06-09 unix • init • docker • lxc • proxmox

Kumiko patterns

Gallery of designs and finished works of the Japanese wood craft

2025-06-09 art • japan • kumiko • woodworking

Kumiko Designer

Online tool for designing intricate Japanese woodworking patterns

2025-06-09 art • woodworking • japan • kumiko • tool • webapp

63 Chinese Cuisines

Fun tour of regional foods in China. It's a bit ropey (and by a Westerner) but still informative and interesting

2025-06-09 food • china • cuisine • culture • tourism

New platformer game with a fun premise: steal back cultural artifacts stolen by imperialists

2025-06-09 repatriation • games • platformer • blackpanther

Dyeing patterns

Collection of Japanese illustrations of patterns for dyeing fabrics

2025-06-09 via:hackernews • art • japan • dyeing • pattern • plotter

Visiting Edmund

Lovely personal memory of Edmund White's generosity to a young author

2025-06-08 gay • lgbt • edmundwhite • writing • chelsea • newyork • books

Documenting one of the methods to get tweet data without an API key

2025-06-08 twitter • archive • backup • socialmedia • hacking

Details on the man who almost murdered Donald Trump. There's been a conspiracy theory about how we've heard nothing about him: NYT's reporting gets to details

2025-06-08 uspol • politics • trump • murder • assassination • mentalhealth

DOGE AI munching

Analysis of the error-filled software the Republicans used to attack the Veterans Administration

2025-06-07 uspol • politics • ai • doge • llm • healthcare • va

DOGE contract prompt

Example of elaborate prompt engineering, applying LLMs in an entirely inappropriate way to disrupt the US government

2025-06-06 uspol • doge • ai • llm • promptengineering • prompts

Excellent new music video for the classic Talking Heads song

2025-06-06 music • talkingheads • video

Edmund White on SilverDaddies

The author had a profile on a gay hookup site and by all accounts was quite successful meeting men with it. His profile includes a nude photo of himself, but it requires a paying login to see.

2025-06-06 gay • lgbt • edmundwhite • silverdaddies • hookup • sex • pride • nude

Yiyun Li on Edmund White

Sweet rememberance from a friend and fellow author

2025-06-06 lgbt • gay • edmundwhite • yiyunli • memoir • tribute

Geoengineering works

Details on how India's pollution and irrigation makes for lower temperatures. It's unintentional, but it is applied geoengineering for global warming

2025-06-05 india • globalwarming • climatechange • geoengineering • pollution • health

Edmund White remembered

More writers talking about what he meant to them

2025-06-05 gay • lgbt • books • edmundwhite

Michael Carroll

A profile on Edmund White's husband: an important part of White's life, but he kept that part of himself private

2025-06-05 lgbt • gay • edmundwhite • books • obituary

Edmund White's gay life

A nice appreciation of what makes his writing so special

2025-06-05 lgbt • gay • edmundwhite • obituary • culture • books

Edmund White - Butt

A fun interview from 2006

2025-06-05 gay • lgbt • edmundwhite • buttmagazine • butt

The Stuff 4K UHD

Classic 80s horror film is getting a high quality digital remaster

2025-06-05 movies • thestuff • cultfilms • schlock • horror • 80s

Dupont Circle shutdown

National Park Service is shutting down Washington DC's big gay park in the middle of the gay neighborhood as a way to disrupt Gay Pride

2025-06-03 lgbt • politics • dc • washingtondc • gayrights • protest • gay • dupontcircle

Complexity podcast

Santa Fe Institute has a podcast. Season 3 is Melanie Mitchell on AI, should be good material

2025-06-02 podcast • ai • computing • complexity • complexsystems • sfi • santafe

A web page saver system using AI to help search pages you've squirreled away

2025-06-01 bookmarks • ai • llm • linkblog • search • pinboard

Andor cinematography

Nice technical description of filmmaking

2025-06-01 andor • tv • starwars • cinematography • movies

David Bowie started an ISP in 1998 and ran it for several years

2025-05-31 history • internet • davidbowie • bowie • isp • via:metafilter

Queer Nevada City

Nice National Geographic feature on where I live and its LGBT history and community

2025-05-31 nevadacity • lgbt • history • gay • grassvalley

Color blindness simulator

Takes an image and shows what it looks like with varying vision. This one has academic citations for the simulation filters

2025-05-31 colorblind • colorblindness • images • accessibility • web • color

Scroll down: CO2 growth chart styled after Hokusai's "Great Wave" painting

2025-05-31 co2 • climatechange • visualization • hokusai • greatwave • art

A term to describe your lover's lover.

2025-05-30 queer • relationship • language • polyamory

Article about the gay slang that shows up in the English localization of the game Dragon Quest Builders 2

2025-05-30 games • dqb2 • polari • slang • gay • lgbt • dragonquest

Musk's drug habit

New reporting on his personal problems: heavy ketamine use, other recreational drugs, all sorts of baby daddy problems

2025-05-30 elonmusk • politics • drama • drugs

A collection of prompts to LLMs to change their output

2025-05-29 llm • ai • chatgpt • awesome • github • prompts • promptengineering

Walt Whitman's Boys

A consideration on Whitman's queerness and its meaning in modern times

2025-05-29 gay • lgbt • whitman • poetry • history • america

London Backstreet

Appreciation of a now-closed fetish bar

2025-05-28 gay • lgbt • fetish • leather • london • nsfw • culture

The Who Cares Era

On American mediocrity and AI

2025-05-28 america • ai • effort • culture

Funny comic about the angels and devils on our shoulder. (Note: two panels)

2025-05-26 funny • gaming • comic • gay • lgbt • switch

A free image vectorizer that works quite well

2025-05-26 art • vetorize • svg • images • plotter • plotterart

Husbands Out to Wives

Online support group for non-traditional relationships

2025-05-25 marriage • lgbt • gay • community • support

Claude 4 prompt

Simon Willison breaks down the details of an LLM chatbot's system prompt

2025-05-25 ai • llm • prompt • programming • claude

Tying your shoes

You probably tie your shoes wrong, with a granny knot. Use a square knot.

2025-05-24 shoes • knots • ted • tying • funny

Senate Twink's story

Interview with the guy who filmed himself having sex with another man in a Senate hearing room and shared it

2025-05-23 uspol • politics • gay • lgbt • begaydocrime • sex • senate • therapy

Fakespot shutdown

Mozilla is killing fakespot, a useful tool for finding fake reviews of Amazon products

2025-05-23 fakespot • review • mozilla • shutdown • shopping • internet

First album in 15 years from the shiny electronic pop group

2025-05-23 music • stereolab • electronica

Trump's cryptocorruption

Detailed reporting on all the various ways Trump is selling access to power and enriching himself and his family by billions of dollars. And helping the cryptocurrency grifters.

2025-05-22 corruption • politics • trump • gop • crypto • cryptocurrency • a16z • fraud

Details of a Korean artisan who makes fermented condiments: soy sauce, gochujang, doenjang

2025-05-22 via:hackernews • food • fermentation • korea • jang • jinjang • gochujang

Joshua Schachter on his mini-fame with videos of computer plotters being forced to do annoying things

2025-05-22 funny • art • plotterart • plotter • joshu • tednext

AI and energy usage

Deep new reporting on how much electricity AI datacenters are using, how they generate the power, and what impacts that power usage may have

2025-05-20 ai • power • energy • climatechange • llm • datacenter

Whitman's self promotion

America's famous 19th century poet was a hustler

2025-05-19 whitman • poetry • history • audaciousness • publishing • advertising • literature

WSL open source

Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source. Article includes a nice project history.

2025-05-19 linux • windows • wsl • wsl2 • vm • hypervisor • opensource

Partagaz / Krennic

Slash fanfic for two Andor villains

2025-05-19 fanfic • starwars • andor • lgbt • gay • romance • ao3

Country music 2025

Cultural criticism on how country has a resurgence in the US but on two axes

2025-05-18 music • beyonce • culture • country • racism

Details of Heritage Foundation's propaganda campaign to discredit anyone voicing any support for Palestinian human rights

2025-05-18 israel • politics • uspol • propaganda • heritagefoundation • trump • palestine • america

A programming language based on magical-looking sigils and signs

2025-05-18 via:metafilter • programming • alchemy • art

Defector: civil servants

Interviews with people fired by the Trump administration, very personal and direct

2025-05-16 politics • uspol • trump • interview • civilservice

The First Homosexuals

Museum exhibition about the construction of homosexuality as an identity 1869-1939

2025-05-16 gay • history • lgbt • museum • chicago

Whitman, Alabama

Interpretive program evaluating Whitman in the modern context

2025-05-16 poetry • poems • whitman • english

Calamus Project

Presentation of Walt Whitman's classic gay poems, with readings and commentary

2025-05-16 poetry • writing • english • whitman • gay • lgbt

New tool for protecting web servers from badly behaved scraper bots

2025-05-16 web • ai • llm • webserver • capcha • dos

Nevada County archive (2)

More information on the archives going online in my local California historical society

2025-05-16 archive • california • library • nevadacounty • nchs • domlindars

Nevada County archive

California historical society archive is online with a great search interface

2025-05-16 nchs • nevadacounty • history • library • domlindars

What is HDR, anyway?

Excellent discussion of dynamic range in imagery, in practice

2025-05-14 hdr • images • photos • photography • exposure • via:hackernews

Little Dig Game

Cute incremental game with a bit of story and graphics

2025-05-13 games • incremental • clicker • via:metafilter • via:waxy

Modern alternative to Electron: build native apps with web technologies but not as bloated .

2025-05-12 development • apps • electron • frontend • javascript • rust

Atavistic project to bring back old style UUCP email but with modern protocols and tools

2025-05-12 internet • uucp • history • email • nncp • networking

Queer history, the origin of the sunday afternoon gay dance on Fire Island

2025-05-11 lbgt • gay • history • fireisland • teadance

A history of men imprisoned for loving other men

2025-05-10 alcatraz • history • sanfrancisco • prison • gay • lgbt • sodomy

Gates' philanthropy

Long interview with Bill Gates about his charitable plans

2025-05-09 charity • philanthropy • gatesfoundation • billgates • giving • health

Pope Leo XIV vs. LGBT

Various vile comments up to about 10 years ago

2025-05-08 politics • vatican • church • pope • lgbt • humanrights • catholicism

Barry Diller comes out

Media mogul comes out as gay. He is also in a high visibility celebrity marriage with a woman and is unapologetic about it.

2025-05-08 gay • lgbt • marriage • bisexual

US weather forecast failing

GFS, the world leading weather prediction model, has started getting significantly worse in the past couple of months. Possibly a direct consequence of the Republicans defunding NWS and NOAA.

2025-05-07 uspol • climate • weather • gfs • noaa • nws • politics

Gorgeous short film in 4 kilobytes of code, for Revision 2025

2025-05-06 demoscene • demo • art • movies • 4kdemo

WorldCon followup

A few days after posting an explanation of ChatGPT use they posted a followup saying the explanation was not complete.

2025-05-06 ai • chatgpt • worldcon • hugos

ChatGPT for WorldCon

Controversy over the folks putting on the scifi convention using ChatGPT like a search engine. Their use of it seems 100% reasonable to me.

2025-05-06 ai • chatgpt • hugos • worldcon

AI spirituality

People are talking to ChatGPT, etc and convincing themselves they are finding deep meaning

2025-05-05 ai • religion • spirituality • loneliness • culture

1985 project to create an online community of people with AIDS

2025-05-03 gay • lgbt • aids • history • bbs • socialmedia

Tomb's letters were chiseled with equally spaced letters instead of proper typgraphy

2025-05-01 pope • vatican • religion • via:kottke • typesetting • kerning • design

An alarm app / monitoring service that works across many devices and companies

2025-04-29 alarm • monitoring • home

Matt Haughey on Slate truck

Matt knows a lot about trucks and EVs

2025-04-29 mathowie • trucks • cars • simple • slate

2024 US election data

Presidential election results broken down by congressional district

2025-04-26 data • uspol • politics • voting • election • gerrymandering

County judge arrested

FBI arrested a local judge because she wasn't helpful enough when ICE tried to arrest someone who had shown up to court

2025-04-25 uspol • politics • fascism • immigration • civilrights • judiciary • fbi • trump

DHS doxxes victim

Wife of the man illegally transported to El Salvador is now in hiding after the federal government shared her home address on X

2025-04-24 twitter • fascism • government • dhs • ice • uspol • politics • immigration • civilrights

2024 article about the word "dolls" as applied to transgender women

2025-04-23 slang • lgbt • trans • dolls • protectthedolls • ballculture

How reinforcement learning leads to AIs that act obsequious

2025-04-22 ai • training • llm • rlhf • chatgpt

Turn a Raspberry Pi into a serial console with Internet access

2025-04-21 internet • tcpip • server • console • serial • hacking

Python t-strings

Language support for templates in a nice way, an evolution of f-strings

2025-04-21 python • code • template • programming

Ostentatio Genitalium

A detailed analysis and rebuttal of the portrayal of the adult Christ's penis in art

2025-04-20 art • religion • christianity • penis • christ • renaissance

Gay men subreddits

A nicely organized list

2025-04-19 gay • lgbt • reddit • community

Obscure English word for a shriveled old man

2025-04-18 words • language • english • applejohn • slang

Heartfelt status report from the 10+ year public payphone project

2025-04-18 futel • karl • art • telephony • portland • pdx • payphone

Juan Carlos Gomez-Lopez

Natural born US citizen being detained by US ICE agents

2025-04-18 ice • politics • uspol • immigration • civilrights • trump

An LLM frontend that allows a lot of customizaton, RAG, etc

2025-04-17 ai • local • llm • selfhosted

Family's neighbors in Tennessee physically protect a man from being snatched by immigration

2025-04-16 immigration • politics • uspol • ice • neighbors • community • resistance

Musk's personal eugenics program

Long, well researched WSJ reporting on Musk and the women who are having babies from his genetic material. CW: really gross.

2025-04-16 elonmusk • eugenics • spermdonor • genetics • whitesupremacy

Hertz data breach

Yet another disaster of a major consumer site

2025-04-15 hertz • privacy • breach • badtech

BG3: The Final Patch

Fun animated short celebrating the last major content update for the popular RPG

2025-04-15 games • baldursgate3 • bg3

Very serious hack: hosting account compromised, users and moderators doxxed, source code released.

2025-04-15 4chan • hacking • badtech • security • rightwing

Open source tool for developing videogames that are accessible to people with color-blindness

2025-04-15 games • ubisoft • color • colorblindness • shaders

Another legal US immigrant disappeared by the Republicans, this time as he was on his way to a citizenship appointment

2025-04-15 civilrights • trump • politics • uspol • immigration • student

Svalbard population map

Finally a population density map that's easy to read

2025-04-14 maps • svalbard • norway • arctic • funny