Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/19/anthropic-settlement-information-not-for-me/

The legal firm that is apparently handling at least some of the Anthropic Copyright Settlement case has started sending out notifications of some sort to presumably affected parties. Small problem: Some of these were sent not to the addresses of the presumably affected parties, but to mine.

I have not opened these notifications, as they are not addressed to me, so I don’t know what’s in them or what they say, and I will be henceforth disposing of these notifications unopened. However, if you are Jody Lynn Nye, Sarah Hoyt, Eric S. Brown, Christopher Smith, or the estate of Eric Flint, please be aware that JND Legal Administration is trying to inform you of something (probably that you have works that are eligible to be part of the class action suit).

I have contacted the firm in question and told them about these incorrect addresses and, for the avoidance of doubt, also informed them at no other affected author than me lives at my address. Hopefully that will take. That said, I would not be surprised if I get more notifications, not for me. What a wonderful age of information we live in.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/19/anthropic-settlement-information-not-for-me/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59810

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Got the syllabus for the next symphony season today. The only evident choral works are the Mozart Requiem in October, the Messiah in December, and Holst's Planets in May. Nothing that I haven't done before. Also I would much rather be in the audience for the next Planets performance instead of waiting in the wings to sing the difficult high notes for Neptune and missing out on the rest of the piece entirely. So. I am entertaining other options.

The obvious one is to go back to handbells, especially since our church's handbell group hasn't had enough participants to perform for a couple of years now. If I'm not rehearsing with the symphony on Monday nights, I'm free to rejoin the metro handbell group that I've gigged with in the past. They will definitely want me back if I'm available.

There's also another high level choir that is holding open auditions over the next few weeks. I've heard them perform once before and they're very good. So I'm going to see if they're interested in me. But I don't know yet what their rehearsal schedule is if they are.

Meanwhile, Robby has expressed tentative interest in joining the symphony chorus himself, since the last time he did any large scale singing was in college, and it was the Mozart.

Mood::

thoughtful

There is 1 comment on this entry. (Reply.)

Thursday. Cloudy and cold. Another Chewy box incoming today (Thank you, Chewy, for breaking the Mega Order up into multiple deliveries). Caution tape with affixed message in place across the front steps.

Slept well. Tali was on bed duty last night, and Tali makes for a definite Presence, pressed up against one's side. She also has a nice, deep purr. Breakfast will be the second half of the Farmer's Market Asagio Cheese bagel (Note To Self: STOP buying Maine bagels*. You know they will break your heart. Buy bread. Buy cookies, cake, pie. But not bagels. And if you buy rolls, stop expecting them to be hard, even if they look like hard rolls.), with cheddar cheese melted on top, with a side of grapes. Lunch will be black beans, and leftover pork, and, oh, I dunno? canned tomatoes? and whatever spices seem good. I should have leftovers from whatever that turns out to be, so yay.

Today, she said, boldly. Today! I will finish the WIP. I need to buff, polish, and shine the last two scenes, then I will Print Out the Whole Book, and tomorrow, or maybe Saturday, I'll do a complete read-through. Barring the discovery of any Catastrophic Holes, which this is why we do the read-through, it will be ready to file a flight plan with the tower.

Once it's gone, I can fall on my face (REMINDER: place pillow before falling).

What's happening with you today?
_____
*Exception to the Rule: Sunrise Bagels, which requires me to get up early and go out to buy them, but that's a Me Problem, not a Them Problem.

Today's blog post title brought to you by Cake, "Short Skirt, Long Jacket." Yes, again.

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

John Maraintha wanted to rebuild his life. Instead, he was marooned on a backwater world in the middle of a first contact crisis.

What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed

There are 3 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

There are no comments on this entry. Comments are disabled.

Posted by Girl on the net

https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/my-soul-is-yours/

https://www.girlonthenet.com/?p=30139

It’s rare for a writer to make my heart hurt like this. Please give a very warm welcome back to the fabulous LM, who has shared a couple of snippets of this particular kinky relationship with us over the last few years. Her writing is as poignant as her scenes are kinky, and I’m so […]

The post Guest blog: My soul is yours appeared first on Girl on the Net.

https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/my-soul-is-yours/

https://www.girlonthenet.com/?p=30139

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Today I am thankful for...

Colleen, whose birthday was Monday. We had about fifty years together, and most of that time was good. Even the bad times taught me a lot.
My kids, and a chance to sit down with them and eat ramen for lunch. NO thanks to the sushi place that was closed for the afternoon because of a little snow. In Seattle?! Come on!
J, M, et. al., who gave me a place to stay last week. Also, being able to sleep in unfamiliar places. Also, CPAP.
Whales.
Translation software built into browsers and phones. And flashlights built into phones. One less thing to carry.

Mood::

grateful

location: Schildhaven in Den Haag

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

What are you thankful for this week?
· Photos are optional but encouraged.
· Check-ins remain open until the following week's post is shared.
· Do feel free to comment on others' check-ins but don't harsh anyone else's squee.

There are 8 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Posted by TWiR Contributors

https://this-week-in-rust.org/blog/2026/03/18/this-week-in-rust-643/

Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust! Rust is a programming language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software. This is a weekly summary of its progress and community. Want something mentioned? Tag us at @thisweekinrust.bsky.social on Bluesky or @ThisWeekinRust on mastodon.social, or send us a pull request. Want to get involved? We love contributions.

This Week in Rust is openly developed on GitHub and archives can be viewed at this-week-in-rust.org. If you find any errors in this week's issue, please submit a PR.

Want TWIR in your inbox? Subscribe here.

Updates from Rust Community

Official

Newsletters

Project/Tooling Updates

Observations/Thoughts

Rust Walkthroughs

Miscellaneous

Free TokioConf tickets for contributors and open source maintainers

Crate of the Week

This week's crate is grab, a command-line tool to quickly convert CSV to JSON.

Thanks to Gábor Maksa for the self-suggestion!

Please submit your suggestions and votes for next week!

Calls for Testing

An important step for RFC implementation is for people to experiment with the implementation and give feedback, especially before stabilization.

If you are a feature implementer and would like your RFC to appear in this list, add a call-for-testing label to your RFC along with a comment providing testing instructions and/or guidance on which aspect(s) of the feature need testing.

No calls for testing were issued this week by Rust, Cargo, Rustup or Rust language RFCs.

Let us know if you would like your feature to be tracked as a part of this list.

Call for Participation; projects and speakers

CFP - Projects

Always wanted to contribute to open-source projects but did not know where to start? Every week we highlight some tasks from the Rust community for you to pick and get started!

Some of these tasks may also have mentors available, visit the task page for more information.

If you are a Rust project owner and are looking for contributors, please submit tasks here or through a PR to TWiR or by reaching out on Bluesky or Mastodon!

CFP - Events

Are you a new or experienced speaker looking for a place to share something cool? This section highlights events that are being planned and are accepting submissions to join their event as a speaker.

Oxidize Conference | CFP open until 2026-03-23 | Berlin, Germany | 2026-09-14 - 2026-09-16
EuroRust | CFP open until 2026-04-27 | Barcelona, Spain | 2026-10-14 - 2026-10-17
NDC Techtown 2026 | CFP open until 2026-05-03 | Kongsberg, Norway | 2026-09-21 - 2026-09-24

If you are an event organizer hoping to expand the reach of your event, please submit a link to the website through a PR to TWiR or by reaching out on Bluesky or Mastodon!

Updates from the Rust Project

427 pull requests were merged in the last week

Compiler

provide better suggestions for inference errors on .collect()?

Library

Cargo

Rustdoc

rustdoc-json: Add optional support for rkyv (de)serialization

Clippy

Rust-Analyzer

Rust Compiler Performance Triage

Another fairly quiet week, with few changes and overall neutral performance.

Triage done by @simulacrum. Revision range: 3945997a..5b61449e

1 Regression, 1 Improvement, 2 Mixed; 3 of them in rollups 35 artifact comparisons made in total

Full report here

Approved RFCs

Changes to Rust follow the Rust RFC (request for comments) process. These are the RFCs that were approved for implementation this week:

No RFCs were approved this week.

Final Comment Period

Every week, the team announces the 'final comment period' for RFCs and key PRs which are reaching a decision. Express your opinions now.

Tracking Issues & PRs

Rust

Rust RFCs

Add homogeneous_try_blocks RFC

Compiler Team (MCPs only)

Language Reference

[type layout] usize and isize have the same size and alignment

Leadership Council

Discuss travel grants 2026 projections

No Items entered Final Comment Period this week for Cargo, Language Team or Unsafe Code Guidelines.

Let us know if you would like your PRs, Tracking Issues or RFCs to be tracked as a part of this list.

New and Updated RFCs

Upcoming Events

Rusty Events between 2026-03-18 - 2026-04-15 🦀

If you are running a Rust event please add it to the calendar to get it mentioned here. Please remember to add a link to the event too. Email the Rust Community Team for access.

Jobs

Please see the latest Who's Hiring thread on r/rust

Quote of the Week

What we collectively build, beyond the code artifacts that the compiler+tools are, is a group of people who come back, who learn, who share their understanding, who align their tastes, who take input from the community, etc etc. Merging an LLM-generated PR feeds only the “we have code that works” part of the Project; it’s not participating in all the other feedback cycles that make the project alive.

– Nadrieril on the Rust Project Perspectives on AI

Despite another week without a suggestion, llogiq is pleased with his choice.

Please submit quotes and vote for next week!

This Week in Rust is edited by:

Email list hosting is sponsored by The Rust Foundation

Discuss on r/rust

https://this-week-in-rust.org/blog/2026/03/18/this-week-in-rust-643/

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

This year I'm doing Community Thursdays. Some of my activity will involve maintaining communities I run, and my favorites. Some will involve checking my list of subscriptions and posting in lower-traffic ones. Today I have interacted with the following communities...

* Posted "Tutorials" on

getting_started.

* Posted "Gaming" on

girlgamers.

* Posted "Ostara" on

goddessfolk.

* Posted "Birdfeeding" on

birdfeeding.

Mood::

busy

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260318.html

A lone tree stands in a quiet meadow in

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260318.html

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

soc_puppet has posted "Finding Friends and Things to Do on Dreamwidth" and "Uploading Images to Dreamwidth" on

newcomers.

Mood::

busy

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Would it be possible to "Wrongfully Attributed" added to my entry?

There are 4 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

The internet (or, well, maybe, mostly social media) is quickly becoming unusable for me because of the rampant amounts of antisemitism literally everywhere. It is honestly worse than my experience with transphobia online and I say this as a trans person.

My other thought right now is about the indieweb as an alternative and there seems to be significant problems to the point that I'm thinking of writing an essay. As with most things in tech there seems to be a major disconnect in what people want and what tech people want to do. So much of the face of the indieweb is retroweb material built by high school and college kids who can design beautiful retro aesthetic layouts because, frankly, they have so much free time on their hands and no real responsibilities. We know right now probably more than ever that grown up adults with jobs and such have interesting things to say and especially because the indieweb does not generally have straightforward monetization opportunities, they should be able to publish simply without sacrificing all of their precious free time.

And in saying this I think there needs to be more focus on really simple text-based websites that people can just bang out if they have something to say and just need somewhere to put it. The competition with non-indie sources is really fierce for this niche but I think at least some people can be pulled, especially given the privacy garbage happening on social media. While I know the back end of, for example, Ao3 is quite complex, the front end being well-formatted text shows that sites that are simply well-formatted text are worthwhile in themselves. I feel like Zonelets is probably the most complexity one can realistically ask of people, and even that might be too much because it is still Javascript. But still having packages like that for people who aren't super tech-minded to be able to deploy simple, text-based static websites that are usable on mobile to a host of their choice should probably be the priority.

Music:: "Dawn over the Metropolis," 猫シ Corp. & t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者

There are 6 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Because Becky Mahoney and I know each other, I boosted a Bluesky giveaway for her upcoming vampire novel Thrall (coming out next month!) in the spirit of friendship and then was somewhat surprised to discover that I had in fact won the giveaway -- surprised but delighted, obviously, since I've loved all of her previous books even when they weren't LUCY CENTRIC DRACULA RIFFS!! focused around a COLLEGE PIRATE RADIO STATION!!!

The central character of Thrall is Lucy Easting, who has just transferred into beautiful, isolated, mountainside Rollins University from community college, in a bid to get away from her stressed and depressed mother and live a life she's excited about for a change.

Alas! her first college party results in a couple of neck puncture marks, a marked tendency to experience severe migraines in sunlight, and a tragic susceptibility to the ominous vampire voice in her head that occasionally takes over her consciousness and directs her towards uncharacteristic action.

Fortunately! the college is full of prospective allies who are willing to take a chance on Lucy despite her regrettable thrall situation, including but not limited to the host of the local college late-night radio show, who has been a target of the vampire since her sophomore year and has been using the airwaves to try and fight back; Lucy's RA, a determined young woman with very nice arms, who came to the school to investigate after a terrible fate befell her high school ex-boyfriend Jonathan; and the very nice, normal party host who has no previous vampire experience but feels just terrible about the whole situation and is not about to relinquish responsibility for sorting the situation out! it was her party!!

It's a really charming book on a number of levels, but my favorite thing about it as a Dracula riff specifically is how much it's thematically invested in Lucy as a side character -- the narrative is consistently very clear that the vampire is not particularly interested in Lucy; he's obsessed with Athena the radio show host and everything else he's doing is part of his elaborate cat-and-mouse game with her, including incidentally overturning Lucy's life as a by-the-by -- and how Lucy makes the book her own story anyway by sheer force of determination not to be cut out of it. Lucy's energy really drives the book: she wants to live, and she wants to live a life on her own terms, and she's not about to let one horrible encounter take that away from her.

Also, I think it's not a huge spoiler ( but I guess is technically a mild one: lesbians! )

There are 17 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

I would like to have more high-protein snacks on hand, and the usual suggestions don't work for my digestive system (nuts, soy, dairy, beans). Does anyone have recipes to recommend? I'm thinking something like mini-frittatas made in muffin cups. Some kind of meatballs would be an option, but I'd prefer something that was less fuss to make. Thanks!

I did a quick search before posting and found this recipe: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/231480/muffin-pan-frittatas/ Looks reasonable, although I wouldn't put in milk or cheese. At least it gives me proportions and baking time.

There are 11 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/18/here-have-a-nice-little-sunset/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59806

Spring will be here soon! I can tell by the sun!

(No, seriously, I can)

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/18/here-have-a-nice-little-sunset/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59806

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Earth's changing climate is harming crop diversity exactly where the security of global food production needs it most

A new study warns that if global warming surpasses 1.5°C, vast regions could lose critical crop diversity, heightening the risk to worldwide food security.

Researchers predict that about one-third of global food production may be in jeopardy due to higher temperatures, underscoring how climate change is expected to reshape agriculture, especially in vulnerable low-latitude countries.

You know what? I think they're barking up the wrong tree here. Humans have done FAR more damage to the foodstream than climate change has so far. I'm sure climate change will get around to that, but it's late to the party. Humans have already discarded many traditional crops because they don't lend themselves to commercial growing, drastically limiting the typical diet.

( Read more... )

Mood::

busy

There are 9 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

I left so many things out of the zoo post on Saturday (that I have still not gone back to add in) but the one I am telling you about today (aside from the dwarf mongeese, which I mention only in passing) is Snake, But What If Unicorn:

( Read more... )

This Creature is Gonyosoma boulengeri, the rhinoceros ratsnake. The accompanying distractions included, gloriously,

The function of their majestic nose-points is unknown as we still have a lot to learn about these beautiful animals.

There are 5 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Posted by Daniel Lemire

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/03/18/how-many-branches-can-your-cpu-predict/

https://lemire.me/blog/?p=22543

Modern processors have the ability to execute many instructions per cycle, on a single core. To be able to execute many instructions per cycle in practice, processors predict branches. I have made the point over the years that modern CPUs have an incredible ability to predict branches.

It makes benchmarking difficult because if you test on small datasets, you can get surprising results that might not work on real data.

My go-to benchmark is a function like so:

while (howmany != 0) {
    val = generate_random_value()
    if(val is odd) write to buffer
    decrement howmany
}

The processor tries to predict the branch (if clause). Because we use random values, the processor should mispredict one time out of two.

However, if we repeat multiple times the benchmark, always using the same random values, the processor learns the branches. How many can processors learn? I test using three recent processors.

The AMD Zen 5 processor can predict perfectly 30,000 branches.
The Apple M4 processor can predict perfectly 10,000 branches.
Intel Emerald Rapids can predict perfectly 5,000 branches.

Once more I am disappointed by Intel. AMD is doing wonderfully well on this benchmark.

My source code is available.

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/03/18/how-many-branches-can-your-cpu-predict/

https://lemire.me/blog/?p=22543

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21 1	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

A Bug's Life

September