I have always been a board game fan. But unlike most, I prefer games that offer interesting, unusual, and clever features, qualities, designs, and what Board Game Geek calls ‘mechanics’. I avoid games that are highly competitive or encourage ganging up on other players, bluffing, or cutthroat strategies. Back in 1969 when I was a teenager, I discovered a new British game called Galt Connect. It was (and is) a gorgeously designed game built on the ‘mechanics’ of dominoes, where to win you have…

I run several Claude sessions at the same time in herdr, usually one per repository, and some of them run on another machine. herdr already knows the state of each one (idle, working, blocked or done) because it reads the terminal output. But to see which session wanted something from me, I had to go through the workspaces one at a time. So I made herdr-dash, a kanban board that shows every agent pane as a card in one of four columns: waiting for you, in progress, idle and done. Clicking a card…

Spent a good chunk of the afternoon exploring the Montana Heritage Center and didn’t get through half of it. Our focus was on the Homeland Gallery which presented the travesty of American colonialism plainly. A combination of artifacts, artwork, photography, and interactive exhibits wove Native American perspective into the story of westward expansion. It was powerful and heartbreaking on its own, more so in context of the current administration’s actions to suppress and eradicate this history.…

An effect is the sum consequence of your actions, the actions of those around you, your environment, your stories, and the systems you participate in. There are causes to an effect. When you change enough causes, you can change the effect. An excuse is a story about why you aren’t doing something important. Excuses are justifications. When one is no longer valid, a new one comes up to take its place. If you want to make a change, it’s more useful to look for effects than excuses. The post…

Things are pretty tough right now. It feels like the terrible people read Gibson and Stephenson and decided they were a roadmap rather than a warning. Every day is scary. But dystopias aren't inevitable. A real dystopia comes from people and their actions, which means we have a choice.I started writing this about a year ago, and this as far as I got. It was an attempt to psych myself up to get out of a funk, and engage with my future. I think it worked for me, privately.With voting underway for…

At long last, the 2027 dated TRAVELER’S Notebook special edition planner/diary refills and other exclusive accessories have arrived. As per the usual, standard size comes in Monthly, Weekly Vertical, and Weekly + Memo, while the Passport Size comes in monthly and weekly. TRAVELER’S has also released a new set of stickers that allow you to customize your planner, as well as the pencil boards and clear folders, both with new artwork featuring this year’s theme. These are available now, both…

I’m old enough to remember when it seemed like all of sudden, seemingly overnight, everyone owned a VHS machine. Sure, some owned a BetaMax, but VHS was the thing. Video rental shops popped up everywhere and we’d see our neighbors there more frequently than at the grocery store, browsing the titles. There was an old barn at the far end of the town that had sat empty for ages on a narrow, overgrown with honeysuckle corner curve in my small country hometown for ages. In the age before pop-up…

A classic organizational chart with red lines appears in The Winter Men #1 (Wildstorm, October 2005). ▲ The Winter Men #1 (Wildstorm, October 2005) ▲ The Winter Men #1 (Wildstorm, October 2005) ▲ The Winter Men #1 (Wildstorm, October 2005), cover ▲ The Winter Men #1 (Wildstorm, October 2005), cover ▲ The Winter Men #1 (Wildstorm, October 2005) ▲ The Winter Men #1 (Wildstorm, October 2005) ▲ The Winter Men #1 (Wildstorm, October 2005) ▲ The Winter Men #1 (Wildstorm, October 2005)

This is so incredibly counterintuitive, but I’ve never had a bad run in the rain. They’re the hardest runs to convince yourself to start, but they end up being the most life-affirming thing ever. It’s refreshing and even kind of fun. I often think back to me four years ago: someone who was convinced they’d never run in their life, let alone find joy in it. There’s so much you can’t explain to someone who hasn’t invested the time in learning to love running. You can say all the right things, but…

Source Barry Ritholtz posted this up-and-right chart, which is a classic of exponential extrapolation. Given the difficulty, delays, and cost of bringing the current generation of data center projects on-line, highlighted by Oracle's "force majeure" on a 2.5GW project which is clearly not going to be complete next year, the idea that 4-5GW projects will be up and running in 2029 seems optimistic. Below the fold I apply some skepticism, because this is starting to look like the classic South…

Pen event Wonder Woman? No, just stopping in Metropolis, IL on our drive to Nashville. This weekend I vended at the new On the Paper Trail LIVE event in Nashville, TN. The event opened on Friday afternoon and continued through Sunday afternoon. I dragged my sweet husband Bob along with me to be the face of the table while I taught some workshops and, you know… shopped a little! The registration desk was run by two of the nicest folks in the pen community: Derek Deweese (AKA DWRDNet on YouTube)…

Every chili pepper in my illustrated field guide, ranked on the Scoville scale from the sweet bell to the Carolina Reaper, with the history of how pepper heat is measured. See the full ladder →

Mini billet, just pour avoir une note que les 19 et 20 octobre 2026, j’ai travaillé du balcon pendant une heure en après-midi. La catastrophe climatique est plaisante une fois de temps en temps.

I’ve had “AI usage statements” in the back of my mind ever since I read Ethan Marcott’s blog post sharing a round-up of his favorite ones. I didn’t consider writing one for this site, since it had the smell of status-signaling. Like a quasi-political declaration of allegiance to some sort of in-group (be it pro-AI, anti-AI, etc). I couldn’t be less interested in that.1 But then something happened that caught me completely off-guard. I was reading a post on my friend’s personal blog. This was a…

You would have thought the'epitaph' adventure https://loveisverbing.bearblog.dev/productivity-1/ refers, would have deterred me from trying out one of the productivity hacks I'd absorbed... But 'no'!!! The day after watching said video, I decided to test the 'break-it-down-and-time-it' strategy to my 'finishing the garden gate project'. Priority as it included making it accessible to both sides and also secure ahead of mother and her Houdini-dog visit. I did as requested and divided up the…

...the hours, days, weeks, months, years have settled into ritual [ text field here ] remember, rinse, repeat... [ daily pic/s here ]

I found out this week that a fleet of AI agents used httpbin to get past their sandbox. (I posted about it on X the night I heard. The reaction told me I wasn't the only one who found it strange.) I built httpbin years ago so developers could test HTTP requests. I never imagined it would turn into an escape hatch for AIs. I keep turning that sentence over. Not because I feel guilty, exactly, and not because I feel proud, exactly. It's something closer to the vertigo of finding your own…

From The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark (Harper, 2013), pp. 28-30: At the end of September 1911, only six months after the foundation of Ujedinjenje ili smrt!, Italy launched an invasion of Libya. This unprovoked attack on one of the integral provinces of the Ottoman Empire triggered a cascade of opportunist attacks on Ottoman-controlled territory in the Balkans. A loose coalition of Balkan states – Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece – mounted parallel…

The photo above is from Skogskyrkogården (The Woodland Cemetery) this morning. It’s an incredibly beautiful place, famous for its architecture and design, and included on the UNESCO World Heritage List. I was five minutes early for the first client, so I decided to make a stop along the way. Snapped a couple of photos, and then I just stood there... It’s a vast landscape, and that vastness gets reflected within you. It’s like that usually so chattery mind turns into a spacious landscape too. So…

Relationships feel rewarding on some days and challenging on others. On some days, you feel you have someone with whom you can let loose. On others, you realise you cannot be yourself, lest the fight continue. Some days feel harder because, no matter what you do, the argument refuses to end. So, most people accept that you have to be a little fake to survive a relationship. They start hiding their true feelings from their significant other. They become agreeable to avoid fights, making sure…

I was director of deliverability for ExactTarget, later called Salesforce Marketing Cloud, for fifteen years. I still help a number of companies and consultants with issues related to SFMC-deliverability today. And, a number of other clients I help utilize the email marketing automation platform Braze. So, for me, it’s a bit of a “worlds collide” moment as today, Braze and Salesforce have announced that Salesforce is acquiring Braze.It's too soon to say how this will impact the email ecosystem…

Working out loud is more than telling people what you’re doing. It has two halves, and each one on its own falls short. The first half is observable work: your documents, drafts and decisions live where others can see them, follow them and add to them while you work, instead of once they’re “finished”. The second half is narrating: leaving a short trail of what you’re doing and why, on an internal blog, a microblog or a channel. Narrate alone, and it feels like one more task on top of the ones…

in this july 2024 screenshot from an al jazeera broadcast, mourners surround an al jazeera reporter killed along with his cameraman when an israeli air strike hit their car in Gaza City. Israel is engaging in “the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists” that the international Committee to Protect Journalists has ever documented, the group claims.The issue of mistreatment of the press arose again on Oct. 16 when masked Israeli settlers* attacked a group of…

Wonderland (1977)You can’t pay a late-night visit to the Burrito King on Sunset and Alvarado anymore — the legendary ultra-cheap Mexican food joint seems to have closed its doors after nearly 60 years. And you can’t hang out with Warren Zevon anymore! The singer-songwriter passed away way back in 2003. But you can still grab a Burrito King combination plate with Warren, thanks to Wonderland, a Dutch documentary that offers an up-close-and-personal snapshot of the LA music scene in the…

As a kid on a party boat charter off the coast of Galveston more than 40 years ago, I learned first-hand that having a banana on board a fishing vessel is a more egregious sin than letting the engine oil run dry, hoisting the Jolly Roger, or even throwing the captain overboard. Much of my first taste of this maritime wives tale was theater, but even initiating a seance and conjuring up the ghost of Fletcher Christian, I was told, would be more forgivable than pulling a banana out of your lunch…

E-mail: chuqvr@gmail.com • Site: https://chuq.meBlueSky: (https://bsky.app/profile/chuq.bsky.social)Know someone who might want to subscribe?Want to see previous issues? Visit here: chuq.me/6fps Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.As I write this, we’re gearing up for vacation, spending some time out on the Oregon coast. The plan is to mostly not have a plan, but we’re spending a few days in Bandon (my first visit in a long time), Newport (a long time favorite place of mine) and Seaside. I finally…

Last week, I needed to make some pretty major updates to a web component in a design system I use for clients. I’m a big fan of TDD, but I wasn’t mentally in a place to write my tests first. I decided the easiest thing to do was document how the new component would work… before actually writing any code to implement the updates. It was an entirely ADHD-driven decision, but it unlocked something for me! Writing the docs forced me to think about how the component would work: customizations I’d…

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but was worried about being perceived as egotistical. In spite of that, I've still wanted to write it because I'm regularly surprised by the sweet emails I get from the people who read my posts. When I first started this blog, I had really no idea what would become of it. I mostly just wrote for catharsis or fun. The blog eventually grew, I changed how the site looks several times, I made quite a number of friends on here who are all lovely…

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), "The Genius of the Crowd," The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1988), page number unknown: Beware Those Who Are ALWAYS READING BOOKS