Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 20/09/2026Saw a radio station with the tagline ‘Satnav for your soul’, and the more I think about it the more sinister it gets: “follow our directions to our choice of destination without having to think about what you’re passing through” 010
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 18/09/2026I am not at all sure that reading What We Are Seeking and When There Are Wolves Again in parallel is quite the path of wisdom. 020
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Great, this error message from Apple setup is, being interpreted, ‘do not try to set up your new phone on the day iPhone 18 Pro becomes available’ 010
Reposted by Thomas WomackBela Lugosi's Dad 🏳️⚧️ 🇵🇸 @belalugosisdad.bsky.social · 15/09/2026I mean, I wouldn't pick that fight anyway because I'm not a transphobe, but doing it with the guy who has spent his life min-maxxing his Stength and Charisma stats and is married to literally fucking Xena the Warrior Princess seems absolutely fucking insane to me. 9108280
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 14/09/2026At any reasonable valuation of time, spending 20 minutes a week chipping a bucket-load of ice off the inside of the freezer that doesn’t close properly is a better deal than buying a replacement freezer. But when I’m standing with a bucket and cold hands it doesn’t feel that way. 000
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 12/09/2026Is ‘I am not willing to pay a penalty fee for not paying an invoice for the wrong rental term which I never received’ an unreasonable way to interact with a landlord? 201
Reposted by Thomas WomackH R Pickens @hrpickens.bsky.social · 09/09/2026This is a terrible time for everyone to be losing their shit about migrants. We're headed full-speed into an epoch that's going to be defined by enormous flows of migrants fleeing climate disaster. Everyone ought to be thinking about how to maximize the number of people they'll be able to rescue. 3275
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 03/09/2026Does anyone else have the thing where they wake up thinking they’ve slept like Rip van Winkle and it must be at least supper time, and it’s actually 0930? 000
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 01/09/2026I have been shown a receipt for my grandfather buying some furniture for 47 pounds on 12 September 1945. He was a flight lieutenant: would he have been demobbed by that stage, and how would demob pay for someone that rank have worked? 101
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 30/08/2026I am certain this sandwich shop knows what it’s doing 030
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 29/08/2026‘Chime Street was in an area that wasn’t exactly poor but was close enough to a poor neighborhood that there were a great many ostensibly decorative iron fences’ 000
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 29/08/2026‘There were stories about what happened if you turned a stranger away. They were the sort of stories that ended with “And you can still see the blasted stones to this day.”’ Enjoying the new @tkingfisher.com very much. 224424
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 27/08/2026(seen on the Adafruit blog) Putting surprisingly clear images into readable QR codes by convincing the reader to use only the centre of each 3x3 pixel block, then error-diffusing the forced colour of those pixels into the underlying grey-scale image. www.andrewt.net/dithered-qr-...andrewt.netDithered QR code generatorMake QR codes with photos in them 031
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 16/08/2026The three hour line to get through customs at Calais and onto a boat is less of a delight, also the way the road to the port is lined with tall concrete fencing topped with razor wire 100
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 16/08/2026Personal automobiles are quite spectacular if you push them hard: Nantes, Zaragoza, Andorra and the Puy de Dôme inside a week #roadtrip 120
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 14/08/2026Five sorts of fruit at breakfast and then ham and cheese baguette and a cafe au lait for the other two meals is a reasonable nutrition approach, no? It’s one that the aires de service on French autoroutes seem to suggest 260
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 14/08/2026Making a small vow that the next time I drive straight over the Pyrenees will be in a car with more than homeopathic quantities of torque. My darling 998cc Dacia Sandero was really struggling up some of the hills at 15mph in third. 000
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 14/08/2026The bar and shooting range also offers axe throwing. I am distinctly surprised to have encountered this in Europe! 020
Reposted by Thomas WomackFoz Meadows @fozmeadows.bsky.social · 13/08/2026I recently watched Iron Man (2008) for the first time in over a decade, and it's a real lightbulb moment to realize that every executive, business bro and tech guy currently obsessed with using ChatGPT or Claude or whatever thinks they're like Tony Stark talking to Jarvis 141247296
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 11/08/2026I had not quite realised quantitatively how much less efficient it was to drive fast in the heat. 47.4 litres (at €2.19 ≈ £1.88 per litre) for 333 miles on 80mph French péages, while Kirsten’s road trip to Cornwall and back at the end of April in the same car used 34 litres for 360 miles. 110
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 10/08/2026Marvels of French culinary innovation: ice cream sold with a spoon cast out of waffle-cone material that you can eat afterwards! 061
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 09/08/2026More than 10% of the way to Zaragoza (via Calais and Nantes). I wish there were a slightly clearer statement of when we needed to drive onto the ferry … 000
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 08/08/2026Fortunately I double-checked what was being requested, because I think fried breaded prunes in a salt, pepper and chilli spice mix with noodles would be unusual if you meant prawns. Though now I am thinking of devils on horseback and Zwetschgenknödel and actually it might work … another time :) 340
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 02/08/2026FIVE? What sort of heretical un-Lego-like number is FIVE? 100
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 02/08/2026(u^2-2*u-2)^4+(u^2+4*u+1)^4+(2*u^2+2*u-1)^4 = 18* (u^2+u+1)^4 I wish I could construct more of these with less than O(n^9) runtime - there are O(n^3) quadratics with terms less than n in absolute value, and so O(n^9) triples of them to examine (6*u+3)^4+(u^2-2*u-8)^4+(u^2+4*u-5)^4=2*(u^2+u+7)^4 110
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 30/07/2026“140 football pitches” may in fact be the stupidest way to say “one square kilometre” (140 x 105 x 68 = 999600) 010
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 29/07/2026Watching Great British Sewing Bee en famille. My six year old daughter just came out with ‘that is super duper cottagecore’ ! 010
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 29/07/2026My, using locally-hosted LLMs gives you a better appreciation of what lengths the Big Companies have to go to reduce hallucinations. LLAVA is sure that my picture of a tern is a seagull; and when I tell it it's not a gull, it informs me it is a heron standing on floating debris! 000
Reposted by Thomas WomackNed Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 28/07/2026Emily Wilson's latest translation is a prequel to The Odyssey. But since the original already covered the Trojan Horse, this one is all about a fight between two minor characters that Odysseus encountered in Hades. Embarrassing cash grab, milking that IP for all it's worth. 211712
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 26/07/2026The HS2 works as you head into and out of Birmingham New Street are really quite impressively monumental. Though I’m a little surprised how rusted the brand new bridge frames look - I guess they’re COR-TEN and it’s deliberate to save the cost of keeping them painted. 000
Reposted by Thomas WomackThe Rt Hon Jess Phillips MP @supermickychow.bsky.social · 26/07/2026 0117314573
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 26/07/2026Looking at what Dinomania can do today, and at the current Chinese focus on biomechanical-inspired robots, I expect an entirely plausible baby triceratops petting zoo event at Universal Studios Beijing by 2040, with a plausible T Rex roboting around in the background #dinoconuk 100
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 25/07/2026The arc of shops with the walkway in front of the artificial lake: #dinoconuk definitely setting itself up for the Jurassic World fans. Lake so far appears mosasaur-free, and a reassuring absence of large pterosaurs. 020
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 25/07/2026Would it be possible to make a Prehistoric Planet-like thing set in the actual Jurassic, or would anyone with the money to produce it reckon that they could not risk the audience reaction when so many people have Cretaceous favourite dinosaurs? 000
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 25/07/2026Usually convention hotel clashes are hilarious, but here we have fifteen hundred dinosaur enthusiasts at #dinoconuk in green lanyards and a comparable number of people in red lanyards from the Midlands Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon, and I don’t think this will be the cause of any whimsy at all. 040
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 25/07/2026#dinoconuk haul from @introvertebrates.bsky.social, www.patreon.com/SpeedThief, and Gert van Dijk of planetfuraha.blogspot.com 251
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 25/07/2026Impressive animatronics and large-scale costumes walking the halls at #dinoconuk 031
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 25/07/2026Waiting for the opening ceremony. Truly spectacular selection of dinosaur T-shirts here at #dinoconuk : the hot pink “Big Bony Club” ankylosaur my favourite so far. 120
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 13/07/2026“Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will be designated a threat to national security” - surely anyone actually involved with national security has treated them as such for forty years! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...bbc.co.ukUK government proscribes Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard CorpsShabana Mahmood will use new powers to ban support for the group, which has been linked to death threats and intimidation on British soil. 000
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 11/07/2026I am wondering if the semiotics of this went beyond ‘it is exciting football time: what in our store is round?’ 010
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 11/07/2026Just watched Toy Story 5; I watched Toy Story 1 as an eighteen-year-old maths student amazed by the computer graphics, I watched Toy Story 5 as the dad of a six-year-old girl and was in tears for most of it, particularly the toys explaining their purpose in entirely parental terms. 010
Thomas Womack @fivemack.bsky.social · 08/07/2026"The legal test for misconduct in officers' use-of-force cases has been raised to the same used in criminal law, meaning conduct that would not amount to a crime should not amount to misconduct either" seems entirely wrong-headed www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...bbc.co.ukLaw change may end misconduct case over Kaba shooting in StreathamThe police watchdog says it will decide soon if Sgt Martyn Blake will face a misconduct panel. 000
