In a future where the rich kids are being raised with a digital Cyrano beside them to sweet-talk their way into the best jobs, four friends train together for a battle to prove that other kinds of minds might still have the edge.

My new story “Understudies” in Clarkesworld.

Link: clarkesworldmagazine.com/egan_…

If you like this story — or any of the other stories in Clarkesworld — please think about subscribing if you can. Clarkesworld pay their contributors and staff for their work, and money doesn’t fall from the sky.

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy

Understudies by Greg Egan

^{Clarkesworld Magazine}

I think I’ve finally worked out what really bugs me about Meson subprojects. It’s the fact that they can be used to force you to become the packager of your entire dependency stack.

A seemingly-harmless “can you add x as a subproject because it’s not widely available” then turns into “you need to make sure x is statically linked” and “you need to audit what files get installed as a result of x” and so on.

subprojects solve a problem, and I don’t have a better solution, but I get irked.

Unsatisfied with the lack of clarity in her answer, Douthat pressed, “OK, let me try that again: If a president defied the Supreme Court, what would you do?”

Coney Barrett then admitted that the court’s hands would largely be tied because there is a limited enforcement mechanism at its disposal.

“Well, as you say, the court lacks the power of the purse. We lack the power of the sword,” she conceded. “And so, we interpret the Constitution, we draw on precedents, we have these questions of structure, and we make the most with the tools that we have.”

The court lacks the power of the sword? What? Yes they absolutely do have the power of the sword. She's parroting something from Hamilton in the Federalist papers which makes sense because she identifies as an originalist. But we've had the Court already cover this and announce their authority:

The ability to punish disobedience to judicial orders is re-garded as essential to ensuring that the Judiciary has a means to vindicate its own authority without complete de- pendence on other Branches. "If a party can make himself a judge of the validity of orders which have been issued, and by his own act of disobedience set them aside, then are the courts impotent, and what the Constitution now fittingly calls 'the judicial power of the United States' would be a mere mockery." Gompers v. Bucks Stove & Range Co., 221 U. S. 418, 450 (1911).

They have the power to deputize anyone they want to enforce their orders. If they needed to they could call up private militias, local and state police from anywhere, even veterans give them the power to enforce their rulings. Funding and supplying them might be tricky, but not impossible.

She's just capitulating. Either the Court is co-equal or it's not. Cowards.

My wife told me today as she left for work that if she died at this point in her life it would be okay because she has had the fortune to live a life free of war, famine and control, allowing her to live a happy and largely care-free life.

After she left, I started wondering how many of us from the richer countries are starting to realise how good it has been.

It has been good. So good. I don't want war, suffering and disease. It's not acceptable!

I want the life I've had for everyone!

#AndroidAppRain at apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/?radd=1… today brings you 22 updated & 1 added apps:

* Call Limiter: lets you set time limits for specific contacts and let the app automatically hang up when the limit is reached 🛡️

RB Status: 731 apps (57.1%)

Enjoy your #free #Android #apps with the #IzzyOnDroid repo

IzzyOnDroid F-Droid Repository

This is a repository of apps to be used with your F-Droid client. Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg).

^{IzzyOnDroid App Repo}

There is an issue with Firefox under KDE not getting KDE's custom keyboard shortcuts to work so I can META+C / META+V for almost everything... except Firefox. Which is annoying.

why not ctrl+c and ctrl+v? try using ctrl+c in your terminal and see what happens instead of copying :)

the default of ctrl+shift+c and ctrl+shift+v is insane finger gymnastics to me

If you’re enjoying the Matrix Conference, we owe the organization to the two people on the right!

@HarHarLinks and @braid are the most organized troublemakers I could find (or who found me?)

10/10 team, would recommend, would do it again.

#matrixConf2025

Was würdet ihr tun, wenn nach 14 Jahren nun doch mal ein neuer Linux-Rechner dran ist? Wie aussuchen? Wo kaufen? Worauf achten?
Office, Bildbearbeitung mit GIMP und Raw, gelegentlich Filmschnitt. Komplexeres muss er nicht können, aber das möglichst noch in 10 Jahren.
Desktop oder Notebook mit Docking Station - bin noch nicht entschieden...

#followerpower
Gern boosten!

@cpm

Fun Fact: Claire has an old Altec/Lansing Three Channel with the Floor Bass? You now the cheap one that could get you evicted from an apartment complex? THAT one.

I'm so amused.

в руки источников #пездуза попал черновик плана по завершению войны в Украине. Он состоит из 21 пункта. Вот основные этапы:

- прекращение огня
- обмен военнопленными и телами погибших
- начало поставок в рф гуманитарной помощи
- разоружение российской армии
- ввод в зону конфликта вооруженных сил арабских стран
- отстранение единой россии от власти
- начало восстановления рф
- создание временной администрации рф из числа палестинских технократов
- проведение демократических выборов

Ah yes, the Conservative government we elected will be tough on crime, and hire more RCMP agents!

Oh wait

--

“This is how the federal government can help municipalities and provinces get criminals off the streets, disrupt and dismantle criminal networks, reinforce the justice system with tough and comprehensive bail reform and build a stronger, safer, more secure Canada,” the prime minister said.

Carney also said that tomorrow he will be making make “an important announcement on border security.”

#cdnpoli

ctvnews.ca/politics/article/ca…

Carney reveals details of bail reform and crime crackdown plans, promises to hire more police

Next week, the Canadian government will bring forward a new bail reform bill aimed at cracking down on violent and repeat offenders, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Thursday.

^{Rachel Aiello (CTVNews)}

This is fantastic news! 🎉

Lit remains the gold standard in “I want to author #WebComponents but I must have DX I'm already familiar with”. It's truly an incredible project. It powers the best UI framework (imo) in the biz, @webawesome. It was used to build Adobe Photoshop for the web. It was used in Reddit's latest redesign.

Wonderful to see it's been gifted to the community and is no longer a “Google” project. Here's to many more years of being Lit! 🔥

lit.dev/blog/2025-10-14-openjs…

Lit is Joining the OpenJS Foundation!

Lit is officially joining the OpenJS Foundation as an Impact Project!

^lit.dev

STEM, STEM, STEM. Stem voor bomen, bloemen, bijen. Stem 29 oktober voor alles wat leeft. 🌳🌸🐝

Stem Partij voor de Dieren. ✏️

Sensitive content Reveal/hide

#MRMCD25 Tag 32, Check In Done

@MRMCD

Tak už je to tady - moje přednáška o @MapComplete je součástí programu #konference @openalt 🤩
talks.openalt.cz/openalt-2025/…

#MapComplete #OpenAlt #OpenAlt2025 #Brno

Objevujte a vylepšujte mapu z pohodlí domova s MapComplete OpenAlt 2025

Přednáška navazuje na moji loňskou přednášku o StreetComplete. Opět se dozvíte, jak vylepšovat mapu OpenStreetMap, tentokrát ale s webovou aplikací MapComplete.

^{talks.openalt.cz}