Adactio: Journal

adactio.com · English (Ireland)

Adactio is the website of Jeremy Keith, a web developer living in Brighton in southern England.

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Last post: Nov 2, 2026
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Palaces Of The Crow by Ray Nayler
Nov 2, 2026 · original
I really liked Ray Nayler’s The Mountain In The Sea . I also liked The Tusks Of Extinction . But reading those back-to-back gave me pause: At times it seems to relish in describing the worst that humanity is capable of. It starts to veer into misanthropy. I said: I hope that the next Ray Nayler book I read won’t tip over into wallowing in the worst of our species. Well, when I cracked open Palaces Of The Crow , my mind was immediately put at ease. And I mean immediately. Before the story even begins, the book opens with two quotes. One is the closing passage of Darwin’s On The Origin Of Species describing “the war of nature”, but the other quote is from Kropotkin: Mutual aid is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle. That sums up the themes of Palaces Of The Crow . On the one hand, we do indeed get the worst that humans are capable of. But on the other hand, we also get not only the
The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon
Oct 23, 2026 · original
This is an infuriating book. So much so that I didn’t finish it. Don’t get me wrong; I love the idea of The Pirate Queen . Telling the life story of Gráinne Ní Mháille is an excellent premise for some rip-roaring historical fiction. It’s even got an interesting structure alternating between three different parts of her life. I was pleasantly surprised when I cracked open the book to find a small pronunciation guide to some Irish words in the front matter. It would be nice to have some Gaeilge scattered throughout the narrative. But that’s exactly what made this book so infuriating. First off all, by dropping in an occassional Irish word into a sentence, it just made me think, “Wait, what language would these people be speaking?” Usually the answer was Irish. In which case, why translate one arbitrary word? Then there’s the choice of the Irish word that gets dropped into the text most fre
Ranking proposals for Interop 2027
Oct 16, 2026 · original
The Firefox team are asking us to weigh in on proposals for Interop 2027—what features should browsers be concentrating on implementing or improving. Here are my top five : Web app installation via install and navigator.install() . Prompts the user to install a progressive web app. Speculation Rules API . Hints to the browser to proactively download pages in the background so they appear instantly when the user navigates to them. CSS var() in size container queries . Such as @container (width = var(--min-width)) . CSS flex-wrap: balance . Distributes items in a multi-line flex container so each line has about the same number of items. Interest invokers . The interestfor attribute triggers actions on a target element when the user shows interest, such as via hover, focus, or long-press. Those are very much in order of priority. Imagine them following a Pareto distribution ; the top 20% (i
The Tusks Of Extinction by Ray Nayler
Oct 16, 2026 · original
Hot on the heels of reading and enjoying The Mountain In The Sea , I picked up Ray Nayler’s next work, this tightly constructed novella. Once again it deals with inter-species communication. This time it’s de-extincted mammoths. Once again, it’s set in the relatively near future. Many of the same gadgets reappear in this book. It may well be set in the same world. There’s a tangible atmosphere to this story. But despite it’s high-tech premise, it’s not escapist. The narrative is driven by the all-too-real issues of ivory poaching and big-game hunting. And this is where I start to get a nagging feeling about Ray Nayler’s work. At times it seems to relish in describing the worst that humanity is capable of. It starts to veer into misanthropy. If you yourself are misanthropic, it will just come across as realism. But it feels a bit too easy, a bit too cheap. I remember this happening with P
The Mountain In The Sea by Ray Nayler
Oct 15, 2026 · original
Back in 2019 , I read the book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith and said: I really enjoyed this evolutionary tale. It’s equal parts biology and philosophy. I will never look at cephalopods quite the same way again. Reading Ray Nayler’s The Mountain In The Sea reminded so much of that book that I couldn’t resist flipping ahead to the acknowledgements at the back. Sure enough, Other Minds gets a big shout-out. But that’s only part of the make-up of The Mountain In The Sea . There’s just as much William Gibson as Peter Godfrey-Smith. I don’t just mean that the book is an unexpectedly rip-roaring cyberpunk thriller—which it is—but that it’s also got that Gibsonian narrative structure; three disconnected protagonists in three separate stories that you just know are going to connect before the book is done. The great accomplishment
Zero
Oct 14, 2026 · original
The term “no-brainer” refers to a suggestion that is so compelling that it would be foolish to even consider not doing it. I came across a no-brainer recently, thanks to Matt Hobbs: Make all UK Government websites free to access without mobile data charges. When I was done slapping my forehead at how obvious this proposal is, I signed the petition . If you’re a UK resident, you should do the same. And then spread the word. This is the kind of proposal that I imagine any politician would be happy to support, regardless of party affiliation, so don’t be shy about contacting your local MP. I guess in theory this could be opposed on the grounds that it technically violates net neutrality, but I would hope that the obvious societal benefits would outweigh that objection. Like I said, a no-brainer.
Lake Of Souls by Ann Leckie
Oct 6, 2026 · original
In some ways, the short story is the ideal format for science fiction. If science fiction is all about ideas, a short story is a way to take an idea and play it out without any obligation to build a bigger world around it. But short stories can work the other way too. If you have a bigger world that’s been established in full-length novels, a short story can be just the right format for exploring another corner of that world. In Lake Of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction by Ann Leckie, you get both. The stories are split into three categories. The first has standalone stories. The second has stories from the universe established in the Imperial Radch series. The third has stories from the world of The Raven Tower . In my opinion, the standalone stories are really good. The Imperial Radch stories are also great. But the stories from world of The Raven Tower are best of all. Something abou
Twenty five years of writing on adactio.com
Sep 30, 2026 · original
On this day, twenty five years ago, I wrote my first journal entry on this website. Twenty five years! A quarter of a century! That’s a significant portion of the lifetime of the World Wide Web itself. Actually, this site did exist before September 30th, 2001 but it was very different. You can still look at the very first version of adactio.com if you want to wallow in the glory days of framesets and DHTML. But it was twenty five years ago that I started publishing my thoughts here, making adactio.com my online home. The funny thing is, I distinctly remember when I started writing that I was getting into this whole blogging thing really late. So many others had been doing it for a while at that point. Now there aren’t many of them left. It’s not just the journal though. At some point I added the links section . Later still, I added notes . Between those three sections, I usually end up p
Think local
Sep 25, 2026 · original
If you’re anything like me, you’re sick of hearing about so-called “AI”. We are not a fringe. The majority consensus amongst actual regular people is that this is being forced down our throats and stuffed into our eyes and ears. That’s why it pains me that I’m about to add more fecal matter onto the ever-growing pile of shit by writing yet another hot take related to large language models. If you stop reading now, I don’t blame you. In fact, I applaud you. Anyway… The last time I made the mistake of writing about large language models , I set out my stall thusly: Software is almost certainly the killer app for large language models. I think the artists, writers, and musicians will be okay, or at least as okay as they ever were. It turns out that humans like things made by other humans. And y’know what? If I had to choose which endeavour I’d rather see automated away—programming or art—it
The summer of ’26
Sep 24, 2026 · original
It was the autumnal equinox a few days ago. For a moment our planet was balanced perfectly, with everyone experience twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness. Here in the northern hemisphere, the days will get shorter and the nights will get longer until the winter solstice. Summer is officially over. I saw it out with my now-annual trip to Spain for the Cáceres Irish Fleadh . It was, as always, great fun. Nothing beats playing loads of tunes into the early hours while sitting outdoors in a beautiful old town. I visited some lovely places this summer. A trip to Greece . A trip to Italy . Even my trip to Cork was blessed with bright sunshine. But I think the highlight was the three weeks I spent in the north of Ireland . It helped that being there meant I escaped the worst of the heatwave here in England. All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable summer filled with travel, mu

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