More cyberpunk, but “The Dervish House” was good.

It's true. Parasocial relationships with our favourite podcasters... is on the nose.

Out of masochism - and a desire to stay in touch with “the regular folks” - I still often surf the web without an ad blocker. I’m talking about the Taboola type junk ads.

The first week on my job, browsing the web through a US VPN, I was shocked at the mix of ads I got. I don’t know if it defaults me to the “average English speaker” or to “Silicon Valley male” but either way… wow. The gun ads, the bodybuilding, the drug ads. That said - it has clearly toned down.

Ditto Ottawa! Very helpful for my cellular-watch-maps-only child.

What, you don’t get 20 weapons ads in your feed per day to ensure you know the industry approved naming?

“Yank tank”. I am definitely borrowing that.

Hm, and I guess latitude would be another candidate theory - provided that you accept “north is up” then “distance north of equator” would give y = up for a Eurocentric point of view. Ptolemy, 150AD.

Dammit, now I want to know.

For sure. Maybe someone can chime in with an actual historian. All I have on my shelf is this Playfair one from 1783, taken from Tufte’s discussions on the origins of graphs:

My guess: from bar graphs, where “higher stack” = more, and that probably comes from stacking coins on a table. So y=up might come from gravity, not language?

We got an electric cooler for this purpose, after food poisoning during our last 8 day power outage.

In a city where only 20% blacks out at a time, my car IS my powerwall, and I can drive it a few kms to refill.

Curious about this, though it voids the warranty:
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025...