I think I have a better photo of the mountains around Grenoble. This one is a panoramic photo over a 180° arc, taken from the Bastille, an old fort on a mountain close to the heart of the city.
That mountain is to our back, and as you can see, there's no direction in which there are no mountains.
I'm trying to get a photo where you can see just how Grenoble is surrounded by mountains on all sides.
Unfortunately the tall mountains behind it are so vague and hazy they don't really show on the photo, so this is the best I can do. But I assure you that there are mountains everywhere around it. What looks like sky in the distance is still mountains. (Might be the Mt Blanc even; not sure.)
In a magical world, there are definitely ways to explain the temperature difference. But then how did Gandalf know the ring would be cold and the script visible, when his research suggested it would either get hot or not hot enough to show the letters?
But even if Tolkien had thought of this, I'm still incredibly impressed that my son noticed this detail. He might just be a future Tolkien scholar.
My son found a mistake in Lord of the Rings.
I've always read to my son before bed time, and one book that I loved to read was The Hobbit. It was originally intended for Tolkien's children, after all. Started when he was 5, and read it several times over the years. When he turned 11, I felt he was old enough to read by himself, so I stopped, but possibly due to his dyslexia, he barely reads, and I missed it too, so we started again. But I wanted to read something more ambitious, so I started on Lord of the Rings.
Honestly, I often wonder how much he really picks up. I'm often not even sure he listens, and maybe he just likes the sound of my voice.
But this week, we read The Council of Elrond, in which Gandalf explains the entire history of the Ring, including what Isildur wrote about it. Isildur wrote that is was hot, but cooling now that it was off Sauron's burning hand, and as it cooled, the writing on the side slowly disappeared.
But that's not right, my son said. Because when Galdalf threw it in the fire at Frodo's house, it was cool to the touch, but still showed the writing. So does the ring get hot or not? Does the writing appear when the ring is hot, because of the presence of fire?
I don't have an answer for him. I think he's right: this does sound inconsistent. I've never noticed it, and I've never heard anyone else about it, but surely he can't be the first to notice this discrepancy?
It seems everybody is upset about Microsoft firing hundreds of developers from the many game studios they apparently own. Except for Fallout fans, who are celebrating, because control of Fallout was taken from Bethesda and given to Obsidian, where it belongs.
(I still hate Microsoft for everything else they've done and are doing, but this one thing is a good decision.)
This will be of interest to all game designers, even if you've never played OSR, early editions of D&D, or any tabletop games at all.
https://therpggazette.wordpress.com/2026/07/10/race-as-class-and-the-quiet-death-of-a-design-idea/
We're having a massive thunderstorm here. It's not unwelcome after a week long heatwave, but it's a very unusual thunderstorm. I'm used to lighting flashes happening occasionally, with a minute or more in between. This thunderstorm has lightning flashing continuously. Every second, or less than a second. Non stop. And for several hours now. I've never seen anything like it.
(I recorded part of it, but the upload keeps falling. Maybe there's a size limit?)
"when did Star Trek get woke??"
In the very first episode of Star Trek: the original series, we see a white Captain reporting to his black Admiral boss, a black woman on the bridge just a couple years after Jim Crow was abolished, wearing a short skirt (a symbol of feminist liberation at the time), a Japanese helmsman on the bridge only 20 years after the internment camps, a Russian crewmate on the bridge during the Cold War [edit: actually did not appear until Season 2 but the point stands], and the foundation of the modern concept of queercoding.
In the very first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we see male crossdressing crew members, a female officer on the bridge in charge of security, a literal ship's counselor stationed at all times on the bridge, a single mom raising her teenage son on her own while juggling a full career in medicine, a blind mechanic whose "disability" is shown to be a strength, and an angry, all-powerful godlike being who is revealed to be simply a petulant child masquerading as a deity.
In the very first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, we see a black man gain a powerful command position, respect the hell out of the customs of a religion he didn't understand, show respect and equal treatment to members of three other alien races he didn't understand, appoint a female guerilla fighter who defeated imperialist fascists to a position of authority within his administration and defer to her judgement in areas of her expertise, accept his friend's gender change, and tell his son he loves him.
Star Trek has always been woke. You just grew up to be a bad person.
The summary is: power corrupts. It's bad for you. Spend too long with too much power, and you lose your empathy.
There need to be limits on how long someone can wield that kind of power, whether it's political, economic or otherwise.
I think it's good that I didn't know upfront how much work it was to turn a raspberry pi into a media server, or I might never have tried it at all. But I'm glad I've done it.
Kodi frontend, Jellyfin in the back. Still figuring out how to get YouTube and Nebula working, but I'm getting there.