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Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

5.3K followers 14K following 5.7K posts

Reading your thoughts, as long as you tell me where you're writing them first this week. https://xoxo.zone/@kevinmarks
Sheffield, UK - Don't try direct messaging as I am blocked by daft UK legislation unless I'm on a VPN.

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Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

Currently: River Sheaf.
Previously: Middle Beck (Tees tributary).
Before that in California: Los Gatos Creek (Guadeloupe tributary)
University: The Cam
Growing up: Kenton Brook (Brent tributary)

January 12, 2026 at 10:40 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

If you go to infinitemac.org/1984/System%... you can run the original Mac on emulation in the browser (they have every system version)

Original Mac Alarm clock with the mailbox flag up

Original Mac Alarm clock with the mailbox flag down

January 12, 2026 at 8:58 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

The @metoffice.gov.uk is going to break your installed app in the next few days unless you turn off auto updates. Here's how to do that in the Google store

January 12, 2026 at 5:17 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

That's also mocked in Politics and the English Language www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-f...

[3] One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.

January 11, 2026 at 12:21 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

Note that @theguardian.com is wrong - grok image generation is not paid account only, they removed the "trigger it by replying" mode but it's still available free if you use the "edit image" menu item on any post with an image.

January 11, 2026 at 11:41 AM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

Example here x.com/kevinmarks/s...

Photo of Musk in Liz Truss's twitter account with "add clown makeup" said to grok via the "edit image" menu item

January 10, 2026 at 4:00 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

If you click on the "edit image" link on a photo post it still lets you talk to grok to edit images, it has just blocked it from replies on the timeline

Twitter screenshot featuring Musk with "add clown makeup" applied via grok using the menu option described above. https://x.com/kevinmarks/status/2009628583363563962

January 10, 2026 at 3:59 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

They didn't make it paying only, just turned off the reply command. archive.is/2026.01.09-1... I made this one without ever paying. x.com/kevinmarks/s...

Liz Truss modified by grok with "add clown makeup" and "add a lettuce next to her"

January 9, 2026 at 4:34 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

#uksnow about 6cm settled S7 9/10

Snow on the back porch railing showing depth

January 8, 2026 at 11:46 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

That reminds me of this sign in a San Francisco hotel. I'm not sure that these things should be combined.

January 8, 2026 at 12:52 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

Rural Northern England you say?

Curried pan fried salmon, Saltburn-by-the-Sea

January 7, 2026 at 4:29 AM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

What — me worry?

Onion clichéd joke as below, but the boy is actually Alfred E Neuman rather than an AI slop looking version and the text now says
”British Teen Returning From Semester In U.S. Regales Friends With Tale Of Joke Five Times His Age”

January 7, 2026 at 3:37 AM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

Mine are my Le Creuset cast iron 30cm shallow casserole and my garlic mandoline

My lovely pan full of rice prawns scallops and fish

January 6, 2026 at 8:22 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

Image summing up twitter's on boarding fame stuffing

Why do I have to say no to Gaga and Bieber 4 times before I get an account, Twitter?
The 4 prompts to follow celebs before I can tweet circa 2012
"start by following 5" :Bieber, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift
"start by following 5": Bieber, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, CNN Breaking News , Kevin Hart
"Try 5 more" : Gaga Perry?, espn sports
"you don't have any tweets to read" : Bieber, Chicago Bulls

January 5, 2026 at 11:05 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

Also Joust. Both the arcade machine and BBC Micro port by Stu

Andrew playing an original 1982 Joust console.

Stu's port of Joust to BBC Micro from 1985 - signed first edition.

January 5, 2026 at 10:41 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

Could someone have concatenated geography to strategy by mistake to make 4347?

Or could they have used the geographic convention where 947 is Russia and neighbouring countries?

Or maybe they meant 355.4743 which would be about German military geography

355-43

Strategy

General military planning. Plan of concentration, arrange-ment and deployment of troops. Strategic lines and bases (see also 355.27 General transportation facilities). Strategy of offensiv and defensiv operations, means of diverting attack of enemy, smoke screens, camouflage, etc. Evaluation of forces, study of terrain, influence of morale, determining proper moment to strike, calculating duration of war, etc.

-44

Siege warfare

Attack and defense of towns, fortified places, etc. Invest-ment, blockade, bombardment, assault, mine warfare, etc. For engineering aspects see 623.2-.3

-45

National defense

Fortified defensiv positions and zones, barrier forts, etc. Military division of territory; distribution, location and placement of troops, garrisons. Defense of industrial areas, fronters, coasts; provision of zones of inundation, flooding, etc.

-47

-48

Military geografy

Geografic works written from military point of view and works on strategic conditions in particular theaters of opera-tion. Preservation of military charts, etc. Divided like 930-999, e.g. 355-4773 Military geografy of U. S.

Military history

Tecnical accounts and analises of special wars, campains, battles and military events; including similar discussions of imaginary wars and battles. In general preferably clast with wars to which they belong in 930-999

January 4, 2026 at 6:04 AM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

This is fascinating for me because Cloud used to mean "a shared abstraction that you don't worry about the details of" - TCP/IP as opposed to proprietary networking specs.
I made presentations about The Social Cloud 20+ years ago docs.google.com/presentation...

Internet in a cloud
Quote from Tim Berners-Lee:

instead of having to navigate phone lines from one computer to the next, you could write programs as though the net were just one big cloud, where messages went in at your computer and came out at the destination one.

The realization was, "It isn't the cables, it is the computers which are interesting".

The Net was designed to allow the computers to be seen without having to see the cables.

Thought bubble with Internet in

Kevin Marks:
My generation draws the Internet as a cloud that connects everyone.

The younger generation experiences it as oxygen that supports their digital lives.

The old generation sees this as a poisonous gas that has leaked out of their pipes, and they want to seal it up again

January 3, 2026 at 6:08 PM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

From our end we also get the Steel River view over Middlesbrough that inspired the look of Bladerunner

Middlesbrough skyline in orange fog showing cooling towers etc

Middlesbrough skyline showing cooling towers and the transporter bridge

Middlesbrough skyline at Night showing a gas flare

Crack in the sky making the horizon look like the Tyrell building in Bladerunner

December 23, 2025 at 11:56 AM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

I'm not technically in Nunthorpe Village, but greater Nunthorpe by the station. Can still see Roseberry Topping though. My wife was technically a Stainsby girl as she went to Acklam College.

Roseberry Topping covered in snow doing its best Matterhorn impression.

December 23, 2025 at 11:39 AM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

Posters from BT Martlesham archives

WONDERS OF THE TELEPHONE

1.-The Genie of the Ring

There it stands on desk or on table, a shiny black tube with a gaping mouth, as ordinary a feature of your daily environment as the inkpot or the door-handle, and taken just as much for granted.

You lift the receiver to "ring up" some body. And lo, like the hero of some Arabian Nights' story you have released a power that is constrained to obey your command. The Genie of the Ring" is at your instant service to annihilate distance for you, making far things near and in a moment you are talking to Mears. Jones about their incomprehen sible letter of yesterday's date of instructing Mesars. Brown to thos Oil shares, or telling Margaret Out you have two stalls for the theatre this evening And the voice they hear in your voice, just your natural vores carried a thousand yards, or maybe thousand miles-by some magic/

But do you, do they, realise the wonder of it? Do you, or they, ever give a moment's thought to the forces which work this magic, literally at the lifting of your hand? Never for an instant, "Hullo," you say, and later, "Good-bye:" and unless some hitch occuts as is bound to happen occasionally-you never give a second thought to the telephone service sery

Next time you lift the receiver, let your mind's eye take a peep behind the scenes. Picture for a moment the orderly maze wires, the army of workers, the vast mechanical organisation, the huge intri cate system that never sleeps-all yours to sommand.

There's a £70,000,000 machine at your service That little act of taking your receiver off its hook makes you its master.

TDA

THE TELEPHONE DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION

The Docker

The flor

The Box Office

WONDERS OF THE TELEPHONE

IIL-The Happy Eyes of the Telephone-Wife

They twinkle and glow, those clear bright eyes of hers, be cause they are the windows through which all the sunni-ness of her nature shines out -unclouded by the worries of domestic life.

For her, one simple contrivance has reduced those worries to insignificance.

She is the Telephone: Wife, the wife for whom a thoughtful husband (or her own mother-wit) has provided a telephone, It is her ally and helpmeet to cope with harassing occasions.

That womanly feeling of loneli ness! Thanks to the telephone, husband or friend is ready at hand.

That fear of burglars at night, or of fire, or of sudden sickness! Down the telephone lies the quickest path to aid.

For those workaday affairs-whether with butcher or baker or candlestick maker for social occasions, foreseen or im promptu, whose going right means pleasure and wifely pride, whose going wrong means worry and the shame of failure the telephone is her standby.

Her servant in big things and little, a breaker of isolation, a leaper of distances, a link with powers greater than her own the telephone gives her that sense of care-free-dom which her cheery eyes reflect

TDA

TELEPHONE DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION

Banish Boredom

AR REN'T there sometimes moments during your day when time hangs heavily and you would simply love to have a chat with Muriel? The latest gossip-even a bit of mild scandal, perhaps the fashions, the play you are going to see, the possibilities of the Bargain Sales. there's plenty to talk about if you've got the thing to talk with.

Women like the telephone: and women, as we know, are nearly always right.

YOU need it.

By the way, when you've got it, you'll find it preferable as a rule to listen with the left ear and keep your right hand free to jot down a name or an address, a number or a price

December 23, 2025 at 9:12 AM

Kevin Marks

@kevinmarks.com

Abigail is chilling in her nest. She's calm there even if I go out now, as long as @bbcradio3bot.bsky.social is on, but as it's mostly carols today, I switched to Radio 3 Unwind, which is effectively Radio 3 lofi beats.