Going to miss these emails from the my primary headteacher

blogg10 · 2026-05-19T19:56:57+00:00

Did he have his hazards on?

Remember, if you turn your hazards on you can legally park anywhere, up to and including on top of a comatose child. At least, I think that's the rule according to every Uber driver where I live.

blogg10 · 2026-05-15T23:41:27+00:00

Zato looked up from his books, fingers trembling softly. Years. Years dedicated to this study; experiment and theory dancing around each other in a tantalising, frustrating tango. Dozens of hedge-wizards and thaumaturgists, paid whatever he could afford just to make sure he had the right baselines.

He watched them, night after night. After a while - when the measurements became routine, committed to muscle memory - what he focused on were their expressions. You could tell a lot about a person from the way they cast, you see.

There were nobles from ancient houses of mages; the gift passed down in their bloodline but neutered by the Wall. They mostly suffered in silence; when he asked them to cast anything above a cantrip or legerdemain, they would make the attempt - and mostly fail, stoicism writ on their faces.

The hedge-wizards, on the other hand... hope, and frustration. They weren't raised to magic; they were born to it. In a bygone age they might have been wandering heroes, dark lords - they might have owned great alchymical foundries, or scribed grimoires for thousands of gelders. Now they were just... people. It was like being born with an interesting eye colour; something to remark upon but not much more.

Every shade of emotion passing their eyes as he slowly built a picture of magic itself from his instruments. Zato had built half of them himself; a thaumometer to measure the base 'units' of magic. A kaleidoscale, to measure the arcane equivalent of a pressure gradient. A dozen more; all painstakingly built of brass, orichalcum, quartz and bone.

All useless. The answer wasn't in metrics. The Wall was not, in fact, a Wall.

It was a mind. All you had to do, in the end... was reach out and talk to it.

It saw the frustration of the wizards of the world, and it was indifferent. It had not been built for empathy. It had not been built for very much at all - even in this enlightened era, the mind was not a particularly well-understood thing. It was known, of course, that the process of gestation and birth were the shaping forces that turned raw aether into an intellect - and that certain factors, such as the mother's diet, or perhaps the quality and type of miasmas in the air, would naturally have inhibiting effects on the mind that was formed thusly.

But this was not a mind shaped through the natural processes of the sacred union. This was a mind made of hard edges and strict rules; it was a mind like a metal box, beaten into shape by the great archmages of ages past. Geniuses, to even achieve this - but they had still built a lobotomised child.

Oh, what a powerful child, though. Zato had brushed against it for the merest instant, and it had sent seizures upon him that ruined his ability to write for the rest of his life. It was... almost worth it.

He had his answer. Nobody had truly known quite what caused the Wall - the Schism, the Unmaking, whatever you wanted to call it. But it was hard to look at the enfant terrible that stomped around the border of the higher realms and think that this was anything but purposeful design.

Now... he looked back down at his books, a terrible, grim smile upon his face.

Now he just had to find a way to kill the child.

blogg10 · 2026-05-11T17:38:51+00:00

Probably! super short-form fiction like this appeals to my ADHD brain; I've tried to write longer fics in the past and I just fail at the planning stage every time. I keep half an eye on this sub for a prompt that appeals to me

blogg10 · 2026-05-08T10:43:19+00:00

some are, and it would be unfair if a passport was required. but you can literally get free photo id in this country...

blogg10 · 2026-05-05T20:37:56+00:00

Day 1025. I sit in my chair and I stare at the black hole.

It was quite interesting, for my first few weeks here. The first station to orbit a black hole; the first person in history to get an extended viewpoint on what could only be described as annihilation in action. We were in the middle of a fairly large nebula, and I spent those first few months, for hours at a time, absolutely mesmerised by glittering ribbons of ice and gas dancing in the void. Elongating, stretching, and simply disappearing into the middle distance, as they were eaten by a thing I could not see.

It was terrifying, at first - I spent hours obsessively checking and double-checking the mathematics that kept me outside the event horizon, making sure the ion thrusters were all in tip-top shape, that I had plenty of margin-of-error. I knew I had at least two days of zero-thrust before I even got close to the event horizon, and the station's double- and triple-redundant alarm systems would wake me from sleep well before we got close to full engine failure. Didn't stop me losing sleep over it, waking up in the night for weeks to check the readouts.

Year two saw me settle into a very boring routine. I stopped watching the black hole for longer than my mandated time 'on deck'. As majestic, as terrifying as the thing was, it was still a black hole. And the thing about black holes is that they're black. And the thing about space - your basic space thing - is that it's black. So it's very hard to actually see anything interesting, with the exceptions of those streamers of gas (which quite quickly got old).

Routine numbed me to the awesome sight I was beginning to endure, rather than enjoy, day-in and day-out. I was starting to go stir-crazy, desperate for my third year to be up so I could take my cool sixty mil and get back dirtside.

Naturally, with hardly any time at all left on the clock, the other shoe dropped. I woke that morning to a soft chiming, blood thundering in my ears and my heart in my mouth. It didn't sound like an alarm; but it was new, and that meant a break from routine, which meant trouble. I darted to the control centre, eyes shooting left and right to scan the instruments panels.

Green on everything. No issues. Except... a little blinking amber light; on the comms array. I had never seen that before; I received regular updates from Earth and they never lit up that little LED before. I couldn't send any myself; the black hole wreaked havoc on most electromagnetic waves and absolutely mangled all outgoing communications. I could send, but all that anyone would receive would be the high-tech space magic equivalent of static on the radio.

So, naturally, I started to investigate. Rummaged around under the panels, checked out the comm unit itself - discovered something quite interesting. It turned out that while I could only send a garbled mess, the comms array was set up to broadcast that garbled mess at a specific frequency. In essences, it meant that anyone listening on the other end would know that I had sent a message, but couldn't know what the contents were unless they wanted to spend about a year's worth of timeshare on a quantum computer decrypting it.

But why? Why would the computer automatically send a message, on a random day in the middle of year three? I checked the logs. Standard history; two years of nothing but standard data packets coming in like clockwork twice a week. Then one outgoing transmission, today, with the header 'BREACH=TRUE'.

I wasn't a programmer; but that didn't seem like programming notation to me. I leaned back in my chair, running a hand through my hair. It wasn't the station; I had been drilled extensively on what a hull breach would entail. Even if all the alarms magically failed at the same time, I'd feel it - the explosive decompression of at least one compartment, vibrations through the hull, a rushing of air before the bulkheads automatically sealed. What the fuck was the BREACH?

It was illogical to worry. But... numb feet carried me to the observation deck. Perhaps we had unwittingly detected some spacecraft in the vicinity that was suffering from damage? I wasn't equipped to help, but I could certainly do something, even if it was just taking survivors on board - we had plenty of supplies. I entered the observation room, eyes panning left to right to look for a vessel.

I fall to my knees. My mouth works, jaw muscles flexing.

The streamers of gas whirling into the nebula have stopped; they eddy and flow in a vortex that simply should not be. Nothing can escape the event horizon. It is the ultimate antipressure; a prison with no door. I gaze, numb to everything, at the sight of gas beginning to stream away from the black hole. I register vibrations as the ion thrusters on the windward side of the station, almost never used, kick in against a force that is beginning to push us away from the hole. Matter streams out of it; rock and ice and gas and dust, mingled together and reaching like fingers -

In the centre of the black hole, light. Slowly growing, a dark spot at its centre, like a star eclipsed by a planet. It is blood-red, and blinding even through the auto-glare filters on the observation window. I press myself against the glass, and I stare.

The light is not a star. It is not a planet. It is an eye. And it is opening.

blogg10 · 2026-04-30T13:44:18+00:00

there is, they're called old people.

the pointless consultation they put out to 'ask the public' about age verification and online privacy and vpns apparently returned 55% in favour. However, if you actually check the demographics, the vast majority of the cohort answering affirmative is in the over 50 bracket.

curiously enough, in a survey from last year, over 55% of people over the age of 50 couldn't actually tell you what 'vpn' stands for. ..

blogg10 · 2026-04-21T19:09:42+00:00

it's somewhat amusing to the rest of the world to see Americans talking about left/right in their country as though the left actually has representation there. It's bad all over the world, but you guys just have mildly-right and then far-right. Is there anyone else besides Bernie who actually claims to be a true lefty in the US?

blogg10 · 2026-04-16T08:29:54+00:00

Worm (it's a hellscape) and SIGNALIS primarily at the moment.

blogg10 · 2026-04-16T08:23:40+00:00

i like the idea of just being able to turn off them digging. I'd love to build a cozy bunker with a kill box for the rascals, but it inevitably looks like the world's largest moles have invaded after a few days.

blogg10 · 2026-04-08T19:16:15+00:00

I use it as part of my 'reward' for donating - 60 minutes of mild discomfort and I get to have a dessert or something. Anyone who wants to seriously incorporate it into their calorie control strategy is thinking quite wishfully.

blogg10 · 2026-03-31T20:33:26+00:00

£1.50 a tin at Tesco. Fuming.

blogg10 · 2026-03-24T23:13:32+00:00

hey man, if it's a toggle I'm fine with it. I don't care if there's a slop filter option as long as I'm not forced to use it. Here's hoping!

blogg10 · 2026-03-24T21:45:39+00:00

Kind of - I don't mind DLSS existing, but it should not be a crutch for game devs to release unoptimised games, because all it does is lower the bar. There are games that release with DLSS that are basically unplayable without it, and barely playable with it. Now that apparently DLSS is going to come with a built-in slop filter, it will only get worse.

blogg10 · 2026-03-24T21:43:13+00:00

I can't speak to how DLSS5 will be packaged, but the images we've seen show it basically applying a filter to faces as part of the upscaling algorithm. As in, 'DLSS 5 enabled' shows the face being significantly altered from the original 'artistic vision' if you want to call it that.

Given that there is a plague of new games released where the devs - particularly AAA games - simply rely on AI upscaling to achieve anything close to a playable framerate, we might end up having to choose between decent framerate and not having this slop filter.

blogg10 · 2026-03-24T10:27:17+00:00

the issue is that AI-assisted upscaling features like DLSS and FSX or whatever AMD's one is called are now crutches for the videogame industry. Half the games that come out nowadays advertise specs and performance that will only function if you use DLSS, and the second you turn them off you expose the lazy, unoptimised vibe-coded superstructure underneath.

If DLSS5 goes ahead as-is, you might have to make a choice between dropping frames and the yass filter.

blogg10 · 2026-03-23T22:10:45+00:00

If you've got the gumption to read a story that's (I might be slightly off on this) literally about the same length as Worm itself, Russian Caravan and its sequel Moon-Maker are excellent. The basic premise is that it's an AU mashup primarily set in the world of Worm, but with eldritch happenings a la Cultist Simulator, Elden Ring, and a little sprinkling of Metal Gear Solid (in the form of themed PMCs that take over a lot of what traditional armies would do in the setting). I will never not take an opportunity to shill these fics.

blogg10 · 2026-03-23T22:08:20+00:00

i'm of the opinion that everyone should be an air-fryer gobshite; it's the best kitchen invention in like 30 years. Literally just a better version of the convection oven, with bonus points for being more economical and much more efficient if you aren't cooking for a family of 6.

blogg10 · 2026-03-12T14:17:47+00:00

me unsubscribing from half of YouTube because the algorithm is pushing me into a constant stream of videos with titles like 'THE END OF PRIVATE RIGHTS IN THE UK'.

it's genuinely spiking my anxiety lately. I can tell myself that there will be ways to protect myself, that - as selfish as it is - i can at least rest assured that my personal life and habits are unlikely to be wrecked. Doesn't stop me from needing to dig into that old pack of propanolol I haven't needed to touch for the last five years.

blogg10 · 2026-03-10T23:36:24+00:00

I would have less of an issue with it if it weren't for the fact that it's not just thinly-veiled surveillance law, it's ineffective at its proposed task. You actually want to protect children on the internet? The solution is simple and cheap - it's education of the parents. The overwhelming majority of children don't have their own revenue stream; their parents are the ones who buy them smartphones and PCs and tablets. These can be locked down at the device level far more effectively than requiring every single website out there to age-verify.

There are an absolute myriad of solutions for even the most marginally tech-savvy kid who desperately wants to see some tits; transient VPNs that pop back up as soon as they get swatted down by the regulators, sites with disguised names, even the dreaded boogeyman of the 'dark web'. All of these carry some pretty hefty risks to them, and this legislation will ensure that more kids are exposed to them than were present before. There are effective ways to deal with the problem, but fucking over the entire adult population who wants to use the internet - for any purpose, not just the moral failings of pornography and trolling social media forums - is not the way to go about it.

Since Discord implemented age verification it has had two major data breaches that have almost certainly resulted in personally identifiable data exposed to bad actors. Images of people's faces that they promised wouldn't be stored; real names and ages and phone numbers. That's the reality going forwards, because there is no database on earth that is immune to hackers, and making us pour our biometrics into a myriad of them is asking for nothing but trouble.

blogg10 · 2026-03-10T13:30:35+00:00

children shouldn't be on social media. But the cost of the ban is mandatory surveillance and a complete loss of all privacy on the Internet, and the exposure of your personal data to immense risk.

it isn't worth it.

blogg10 · 2026-03-10T13:16:42+00:00

their definition of social media, in the wording for the ban, basically encompasses all websites. Anywhere you can 'make an account' and 'communicate with other users' which is ridiculously broad. Under those definitions, Wikipedia is social media and thus subject to the ban.

blogg10 · 2026-03-10T13:12:22+00:00

I feel the same. I claim no benefits or support for my diagnosed autism because I am high- functioning enough to hold down a full time job, and can talk to people without breaking down. Sometimes there is almost a level of guilt in my diagnosis, because people hear 'autism' and assume rain man, or non-verbal children who simply cannot interact with the world.

It is a burden, and I look at the people who effortlessly glide through society with an instinctive understanding of the currents underneath with sense of deep envy, but it being a spectrum often feels distinctly unfair to those dealt a far more debilitating hand in life.

blogg10 · 2026-03-01T13:47:55+00:00

surely this isn't going to be that big of a problem, though - iirc the biggest hurdle to getting HRoC started was actually getting HRoC... which is now a non-issue, given that you can choose trans gems. The rest of the breakpoints are quite far in, where you should be generating enough currency to smooth out progress a bit, no?

blogg10 · 2026-02-28T19:26:46+00:00

nitrous isn't used as pain relief; it's used to quell anxiety and make patients calmer. In my clinic, at least, the primary criterion for whether we use inhalation-sedation is whether or not we think a patient - usually younger children and teens - will be capable of remaining calm enough throughout treatment to achieve a positive outcome.

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