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ISO Standard for Today: ISO 8601. Today is: 2026-06-13. Valentine’s Day is on 2027-02-14. Only P246D away. ISO 8601. The authoritative dating standard.

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If she has one fatal flaw, it is her obtuse refusal to use ISO 8601; I, being consent-minded, acquiesce, and fall back on the barbarian convention of ante and post meridiem out of punctilious respect for her.

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Her: "By June 30th, I was emphatic." Me "I mean, our June 26th call already felt pretty emphatic to me." Her: *rustling noises* *sigh* "Fair." She's one of **very few** people I've ever met whose documentation & note-taking pathology rivals, perhaps at times eclipses, my own.

Friend at UK BigLaw sometimes helps us out pro bono & she is my bureaucratic soul mate. Her: "I first told you so on [...]" *paper rustling* She & I, at same time: 21st of February, 2025, [her:] just before tea/ [me:] around 7pm your time, [both:] via Signal."

Jens Wiechers @j.wieche.rs · 12/06/2026

New idea to expand my ISO Standards bit: ISO Standard for Today. Starting, of course, with ISO 8601. *The* ISO Standard for *Today.* Today is: 2026-06-12 Valentine’s Day is on 2027-02-14. Only P247D away. ISO 8601. The authoritative dating standard.

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Reposted by Jens Wiechers

Tom Dannenbaum @tomdannenbaum.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

New per MEE: -Only application filed is for Smotrich (2 April): war crimes (displacement, transfer of settlers into occupied territory)+CAH (displacement, persecution, apartheid) -Last wk, prosecutors reviewed 2 more, incl Ben Gvir, but they have yet to be filed www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusi...

middleeasteye.net

Exclusive: ICC prosecutor's office seeks arrest warrant for Israel's Smotrich

Charges sought against Israeli finance minister over West Bank occupation include crime of apartheid against Palestinians

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Jens Wiechers @j.wieche.rs · 18/05/2026

I would quibble with a few details here, but excellent article nonetheless.

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(I also just get through an awful lot of audiobooks and regular books, since reading (and listening) has become my biggest hobby by time commitment again over the last couple of years — and I also frequently listen to light audiobooks I know well while I work.)

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And I did consciously look for other cat-themed books after listening to the first two one after the other by coincidence.

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Well, to be fair, all of these are books I've previously read. I don't think I'd suggest this as a listening order for anyone but me. I generally do oscillate between very whimsical, LitRPG, more traditional sci-fi, fantasy, or novels, and more high-brow literature fairly regularly, though.

I actually wondered about that. My hardcover is somewhere in a mover's box, but I was confused about the second "the" there. :D Recently got the audiobook because I'm relistening to some old favourites. :>

Jens Wiechers @j.wieche.rs · 15/05/2026

I contain literary multitudes. ... They *may*, admittedly, tend towards being cat shaped.

Screenshot of an Audible library on a phone, dark mode, showing six audiobook entries:
1. The Book of the Night with Moon by Diane Duane — currently playing, 4h 8m left. Cover shows a black cat under an ornate title.
2. Starter Villain by John Scalzi — Finished. Cover is a close-up of a grey tabby's face. Tagged "LESEN & HÖREN" (read & listen).
3. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip G[abriel] — Finished. Cover is a stylized illustration of a figure with an umbrella above and a cat walking below, split across pink and green panels.
4. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt, new translation by Michael Karpelson — Finished. Cover shows cartoonish figures including a large black cat holding a pistol.
5. Kitty Cat Kill Sat by Argus — Finished. Cover shows a cat in a spacesuit-style frame against a starfield.
6. The Book of the Night with Moon again, shown as the currently-active player entry at the bottom.

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Jens Wiechers @j.wieche.rs · 09/05/2026

I mean, I could really use that course, but... steep price. :S

Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 09/05/2026

Reposted by Jens Wiechers

Keir Starmer's fundemental problem is that the most realistic gains to be had in terms of the UK-EU relationship were in just not being fucking weird and pointlessly antagonistic... and Rishi Sunak kind of did that already. Everything else is long, slow, complex, incremental and politically hard.

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Jens Wiechers @j.wieche.rs · 09/05/2026

The two kinds of reaction(mass)less pseudo-drives: fans & scales Electrostatic lifter? Fan. EmDrive? Scale. Mach-effect thruster? Scale. Q-thruster? Usually scale, occasionally fan. One kind of idiot forgets what they're pushing against. The other builds a shitty thermometer.

$A tweet from Deep Tech Week (@deeptechweek) dated May 9, 2026. The text identifies Dr. Charles Buhler, Lead Scientist of the NASA Electrostatics Physics Laboratory and CEO of Exodus Propulsion, presenting a discovery of a "new force" behind the Biefeld-Brown Effect and "Non-Newtonian propulsion" at an event in NYC. The accompanying image shows Dr. Buhler on stage next to a technical slide titled "Possible Explanation of the generation of Force: Classical Theory." The slide displays a series of equations involving potential energy in electrostatic systems (U = \frac{\epsilon_0}{2} \int E^2 \, d\tau) and the chain rule for derivatives. It concludes with a formula for Force (F) that splits into two components: "Electrostatic Pressure Force" and a highlighted box labeled "DiVinE Force ('Divergence in E')." The bottom of the slide includes a "Confidential and Proprietary" watermark for Exodus Propulsion Technologies Inc.$

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Jens Wiechers @j.wieche.rs · 09/05/2026

Now you made me spill my morning tea! :p

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Reposted by Jens Wiechers

We haven’t even begun to understand the Pandora’s Box that this war has opened. @cfr.org www.cfr.org/articles/aft...

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Jens Wiechers @j.wieche.rs · 04/05/2026

I still find physical marking & reviewing has a quality all its own and helps with understanding/commenting/perhaps writing something supplemental (especially if you need/want to doodle maths or code).

The image depicts a workstation during an intensive editing or research phase. The focus is on the stack of papers, which appears heavily organized or cross-referenced with many colorful tabs—a typical sight when working on manuscripts, legal documents, or academic research.

SwiftOnSecurity @swiftonsecurity.com · 02/05/2026

Reposted by Jens Wiechers

Solidarity with the Spirit Airlines planes who I will remind you are not unionized

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The solution space where anyone at all dies only becomes meaningfully operative if you *choose* to try to make it so. Otherwise, unless the vast majority of the world is incapable, you're causing the very risk you argue you're protecting yourself from. That's parasitic bootstrapping. Sorry.

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That's of course perfectly fine (if not "rational" in an optimisation sense) in principle, but when playing the game with a fraction of humanity that votes randomly ("everyone", including toddlers and the otherwise incapable) Red is actually the only active choice. And you're choosing murder.

Blue is *always* strictly Pareto superior and the only way Red ever becomes weakly dominant/rational as a strategy is if **and only if** you yourself try to make it true on the basis of *extradecisional* assumptions about the choice architecture of yourself and others.

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There is actually zero intradecisionally *rational* reason to ever choose Red. The payoff for Red and Blue is, for each of the two unanimous Nash equilibria cases, identical, assuming you're playing exclusively with competent voters and no one makes a mistake: you survive. End of story.

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Jens Wiechers @j.wieche.rs · 28/04/2026

The Red Button/Blue Button discourse on Twitter is so annoying to me, especially since far too many people just very obviously don't understand that you cannot parasitically bootstrap the intradecisional rationality of your own choice. Then again, *stares at Iran* Oh. Oh no.

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My glasses invited me to start vibe coding on them using something they call "OcuClaw." ... I mean, we sort of bring this onto ourselves, but also... Once again seriously considering an isolated alpaca farm.

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Reposted by Jens Wiechers

Rhianna Pratchett @rhi.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Happy birthday, Dad. Wish you were here. You’d know what to do. Or at least you’d know what to write. ❤️

Terry and Rhianna Pratchett dressed up for the launch of Dodger in 2012.

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Reposted by Jens Wiechers

Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 22/04/2026

In honor of #EarthDay, here is a reminder that there is a bot account that posts a photo of the whole Earth from a million miles away, taken by the Deep Space Climate Observatory, several times daily. You can view all the images (and zoom in) here: epic.gsfc.nasa.gov

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I won't be producing any award winning pieces of astrophotography, because for me, it's something I really like, but not my defining hobby. I can look at amazing pieces & if I, really, *really*, want to, I can plan a weekend trip. 99% of time, though, it's just about brief (shared) experiences.

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Are its images kinda shitty compared to the proper telescope and Sony camera? Sure. They're complete dogshit, but within what I expect from a tiny box like the Dwarf3? They're amazing. And ultimately, that counts a lot more for a hobby, I think.

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Dwarf3? Eh. The whole thing is $500. Not nothing, but if it falls, it falls. Zero attachment (okay that's of course not true, but a lot less than to a camera I've used for years etc.). Also, it doesn't feel weird to just put it on our balcony. That's what it's for.

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And the one time I tried to be spontaneous about it, it turned into a disaster during which I broke one of my expensive camera bodies and a lens by slipping and faceplanting into loamy mud.

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So for *years* I have had a setup with telescope, camera, and lenses comfortably breaking 10k USD and I've used it... exactly four times. I've used the telescope with an iPhone camera a further six or so times. The images came out amazing, but it was a whole thing: trip planning etc.

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Technically, a lot/all of that is true about the "real" telescope as well, but it weighs almost 20kg and it just "feels wrong" to put it on our balcony in this light-polluted neighbourhood... it should stand on a field in proper darkness. Yes, that's dumb, but it's what my head throws out.

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A lot of it is really just "I can take this small thing outside, put it on a simple tripod, eyeball equatorial alignment, and then look through a catalogue what to shoot today, add a few things and then let it work. 5 mins, tops.

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Setting up the big telescope & programming it takes, like, 45 to 60 minutes. I sometimes loved doing that, but most days, I just don't have the time energy. It's images are of course massively better than those of the Dwarf3, but I so rarely even went out and captured some. Now it takes 5 mins.

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