Plutonic Rainbows

The new high variant of the o3-mini from OpenAI took only 33 seconds to model this simulation, featuring a hundred colourful balls bouncing inside a rotating sphere. Each ball stores a brief record of its recent positions and draws line segments between them with gradually increasing opacity, creating a graceful fading trail. Collision detection is handled by checking whether a ball’s centre (plus its radius) has moved beyond the container sphere’s boundary, after which its velocity is reflected accordingly. This is seriously impressive stuff.

Today’s release of OpenAI’s new reasoning model offers insights that reveal more about China than the long-established American company. Deepseek has altered the trajectory of progress, impacting both the pace of development and the cost incurred by users.

Offering a generous 150 prompts a day for users on the $20 Plus subscription is likely to prompt many on the $200 Pro subscription to question whether the additional expense is justified.

Bois Talisman, the latest addition to Christian Dior's La Collection Privée, is a unisex Eau de Parfum crafted by Perfume Creative Director Francis Kurkdjian. This fragrance pays homage to Christian Dior's affinity for lucky charms, blending Kurkdjian's personal superstition of carrying a sugar cube with Dior's tradition of keeping a piece of wood for good fortune. The scent features a harmonious blend of cedarwood and vanilla, with cedarwood providing a warm, woody foundation reminiscent of pencil shavings — a nod to Dior's sketching tools — while the opulent vanilla note is expressed through various extraction methods, including infusion, absolute, and CO2 extract, adding depth and complexity. The result is a warm, creamy perfume that offers a unique olfactory experience, embodying the essence of a personal talisman.

The fragrance opens with a prominent vanilla note that is sweet but not overly so, gradually revealing smoky cedarwood as it develops on the skin. This progression creates a balanced composition that is both comforting and sophisticated. Some reviewers have noted that while the scent is pleasant, it remains relatively linear throughout its wear, with the initial sweetness persisting alongside the woody elements. Despite its simplicity, Bois Talisman has garnered attention for its unique inspiration and the quality of its ingredients, making it a noteworthy addition to Dior's esteemed fragrance collection.

Coming towards the end of January. A cold day with no sunshine at all. It put me in the mood for two films I have never seen.

The first, The Reflecting Skin, is a 1990 coming-of-age horror film written and directed by Philip Ridley, starring Jeremy Cooper, Viggo Mortensen and Lindsay Duncan. Set in 1950s rural Idaho, it follows an impressionable young boy who becomes convinced that a neighbouring widow is a vampire responsible for several unexplained disappearances. Described by Ridley as a “mythical interpretation” of childhood, the film weaves together elements of vampirism, surrealism, black comedy, symbolism and religious zealotry throughout its narrative.

The second movie is Twilight, a 1990 Hungarian black-and-white drama directed by György Fehér. Drawing on elements from Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s novel The Pledge, it follows an ageing detective who becomes fixated on finding the murderer of a young girl in a remote, desolate landscape. The film’s slow, atmospheric style and sparse dialogue emphasise the detective’s mounting obsession, highlighting the moral tensions that arise from his unyielding pursuit of justice.