TURNABOUT

Another Thorne Smith novel. This one significantly more risque.

Comic fantasy. An ancient Egyptian god swaps the bodies of a bickering married couple, Tim and Sally Willows. The resulting chaos includes social disasters, workplace mix-ups, and (while Tim is in Sally’s body) a pregnancy.

Later adapted into a 1940 film and a short-lived 1979 TV series.

Published: Original hardcover 1931 (Doubleday). This Pocket Books edition is 1947.

In better condition, I'd ask $15, but this copy has a cracked spine and pages that will (but have not yet) come detached.

$5 + shipping

MASTERS OF THE VORTEX

Space opera set in the Lensman universe. Neal “Storm” Cloud pilots the Vortex Blaster to track and destroy deadly nuclear vortices threatening planets across the galaxy. Originally published as The Vortex Blaster. Cover by Jack Gaughan.

Published: Probably 1970 paperback edition. (original hardback 1960)

$8 + shipping

While I was needlessly fretting over the potential outcome of last nights elections, I made a holiday wishbook for mountain town industries.

This is really just a working draft, and not the finished catalog, and I really should have done this back in October so I could have been passing it out during Apple Festival, but ... here we are!

https://ajroach42.neocities.org/Mountain-Town-Toys-Compressed.pdf

@foone Uh, yeah, back in the day I didn’t trust them for 36 HOURS…I always had at least one physical backup copy (2, if it was something actually important to deliver/print…)

@cvvhrn Terrain says more mountainous.... but not in the trees. Aboveground poles, so probably not close to town. Narrow valley... big street that doubles as the main road. This looks more likely to me to be Santa Clarita than San Jose.

One commenter says custom Tonies go for about $8 apiece for up to 90 minutes of your own audio, and another points out the Yoto has an API. Aubry put Marelleo under the MIT license, so anybody can build their own.

The README on GitHub says an NFC sticker goes under each figurine and the stories live on a microSD card, with no screen, account or subscription, and nothing that leaves the house. You send files from a web page and pair them with a figurine, or give a figurine a web address and the box plays the stream without storing it. Five assembled boards ran about 160 euros from JLCPCB.

If you're staring at a shelf of Tonies, I'd read the Show HN thread, which drew 177 points on Hacker News.

With the Lunii, the Yoto and the Toniebox, every new title is a purchase from a catalog he doesn't choose, on an object he doesn't control, which is why he calls them a subscription dressed up as a wooden toy. Hackaday already wrote up a dad named Mario who built Boxie to replace his three-year-old's Toniebox, which needed internet and had limited media.

His box runs on an ESP32, a microcontroller with WiFi that sells for a handful of euros and still decodes MP3.

A Dad Built a Story Box That Plays When His Kids Set a Figure on It...

Arnaud Aubry built a story box for his three kids, and three months before that he knew absolutely nothing about electronics. A child sets a figurine on top, and the box plays whatever story goes with it. He named it Marelleo, after marelle, the French word for hopscotch, and after Marceau, Ella and Léonie, the kids it belongs to.

On his blog, Zebra Rodeo, he lays out why he bothered, and I was nodding the whole way.

Apple has cut the daily AI spending cap for its engineering teams from 300 USD to 200 USD, with some allowances dropping to 100 USD and limits as low as 25 USD considered elsewhere. The move follows the tokenmaxxing wave, where employers pushed staff to use AI heavily until the bills arrived. https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/04/apple-is-reportedly-cutting-budgets-for-its-internal-ai-usage/ #AIagent #AI #GenAI #AIenterprise

@mrcippy Yep, happening on my Anker desk charger too. I wonder if I have a dud.

the sam altman quote cottage industry has grown to incredible levels

@mrcippy Well that’s interesting. My previous was an S10 and I never heard this. Belkin seems pretty solid IMO, but maybe the battery could be going. I’ll test another charger.

Anthropologist Tom Boellstorff, author of the 2008 field study Coming of Age in Second Life, met Ryan Schultz in-world for an hour-long interview. He began fieldwork in 2004, when Second Life had 2,500 residents, one continent, one island and hourly grid-wide announcements. https://ryanschultz.com/2026/11/04/a-conversation-with-anthropologist-tom-boellstorff-about-second-life/ #Metaverse #VR #AR #SecondLife

@lisamelton Want to collaborate with a fashion brand? 🤝 DALMORY FASHION is open to collaborations. Send us a DM!

Hundreds of thousands have signed this petition to get @HouseDemocrats to pick a new speaker @MarkRuffalo just shared: www.change.org/p/house-demo...

@Sludge on who funds @RepJeffries (see also: Schumer): readsludge.com/2026/11/04/t...

every character is written as a different genre of fantasy dipshit this is great

@mcc this is my read too, but we appear to be in a minority.

qemu is also inscrutable, I've had to read the source, step debug and ask on crusty mailing lists about things that are ostensibly fully documented.

agh, since apparently Michigan is now under shawarma law, I keep seeing folks post delicious shawarma with chicken and toum and pickles.

I'm especially weak to the ones where they wrap up the pita and toss it onto a flat top to toast for a bit. There was a place in Birmingham, MI in 1997 - Pita Cafe - that had those crispy shawarma and turkish coffee. I can taste it to this day

I feel like we've yet to find suitable shawarma in oregon. Where is it? Tell me of your favorite shawarma. I need it

@chartier have this sound with several different third party Apple Watch chargers. Never been able to figure out why