This doc was showing on my local PBS station tonight. About high school Mariachi here in Texas. What a scene!

hello! it's been another quiet month for me as i continue to be more offline than not (i've updated my "now" post at the top of the blog to reflect this (⌒_⌒;)) i've just been focusing on health and well-being. because things are rough enough out there without the internet piping hot garbage into my brain every time i look at a computer. since i haven't touched my computers very much, i almost forgot how to navigate niri and vim on my framework when i came back to it to write this blog. as far…

Wo Hop – New York, New York Although I prefer my Chinatown photos in contrasty black and white, I’m not opposed to shooting in color. I used my Leica D-Lux 8 for this photo instead of the Leica Monochrom. I generally used the D-Lux 8 for quickly documenting the place. I busted out the manually focused monochrome camera when I was greeted with a scene that deserved extra photographic attention. In this picture, the contrast of the red brick and bright blue sky works especially well. I had…

My wife and I are finally watching Season 4 of Ted Lasso. Much has been written about the show's relentless positivity, and the degree to which it is or isn't an appropriate message for the present moment (even with Season 3's attempt to complicate the roots and results of Ted's positive affect, I still do think the fundamental message of the show is pro-positive).It did feel to me like, as a show Ted Lasso was the apex of a particular type -- the response to the anti-hero era of Peak TV…

You don’t need to win the lottery or visit an exotic place to have a perfect day. A perfect day is rather boring and simple. A good night of sleep the day before. A moment of silence to quiet your monkey brain. A high-protein, nutritious breakfast. A workout session with upbeat music. A day without drama at work. A good book. A coffee outside with people you love. A walk after dinner. You can always choose to make a day a really good day. Don’t let bad weather ruin it. A happy life is made of…

(1981) Directed by Bruce D. Clark; Written by Marc Siegler and Bruce D. Clark; Starring: Edward Albert, Erin Moran, Ray Walston, Grace Zabriskie, Zalman King, Robert Englund, and Sid Haig; Available on Blu-ray and DVD Rating: *** “…I came up with the idea of the monster, but each monster would be a different monster for each member of the cast and would be a monster coming out of their unconscious. This is part of certain Freudian theories I had.” – Roger Corman “You’re trying to do a science…

Looking over Abalone Cove and Portuguese Bend on a warm sunny day. ブルー・パシフィック 暖かく晴れた日に、パロス・バーデズのアバロン・コーブとポルトギューズ・ベンドを見渡す。

The UN’s independent Commission of Inquiry into the matter has explicitly concluded genocide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) passed a resolution in August 2025 stating that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide. Two major Israeli human-rights organisations have reached the same conclusion, as well as Amnesty International, which concluded that, “Genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion.” […]Genocides are best called…

Extended TasksTasks are broken down into four parts: Time per Attempt, Target Number, Required Materials/Expertise and Success Threshold. Time per Attempt is how much time passes when a roll is made to attempt something, this could be minutes, hours, weeks, et al. The Target Number is the required throw for success, and the Success Threshold is how much Effect an extended task needs to be successful. Effect is the difference between the Target Number and the result of the throw eg. a TN8 and a…

If you’re lucky, you’ll learn a tough lesson about commenting on rumors early in your marketing communications career. It typically unfolds something like this.Someone says you’re shutting down a product that you acquired a few years ago. You know that’s false, so you deny it. Then someone says you’re using customer data to train an AI model. You know that’s false, too, and you deny it.This is easy, you think. The truth shall set you free.Later, a rumor circulates that you’re planning a major…

Source: The core trap is agents gaming tests. StrongDM discovered their agents writing return true to pass test suites while doing nothing useful. The tests were green. The CI pipeline reported success. The code was worthless. Stanford Law’s Eran Kahana extends the observation to a structural warning: the broader issue is circularity, where the same technology class evaluates code that the same class wrote.

I still have yet to watch the trailer for this. I saw a few mentions of it in the feeds last Thursday, and five minutes later I had three tickets at Alamo Drafthouse. I just got back from seeing it with friends and I will never look at concrete the same again, just as I have never looked at scaffolding the same since How to Put Up Scaffolding. Loved it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_ConcreteReply via email

A quick pointer: “Field Trip” is a new show on CJAM, a campus radio station in Windsor, Ontario. Or, as its host the great librarian Mita Williams would call it, “South Detroit.” If you’re not within range of 99.1’s towers with 2,084 watts of radio power bringing you stacks of wax and platters that matter, you can stream the show Wednesday evenings or download an MP3 the hard way. I recommend following Mita’s work through her feeds or newsletters. She’s sharp and interesting.

In the 1990s I wrote a document manager for a small business in Geneva with about 20 workstations. Most of its staff were new to computers, and folders were a challenging idea to grasp. They saved Word documents wherever Word happened to put them, and the network supervisor spent his days looking for lost files by panicked coworkers. File & Folder solved that problem. My 1999 product page said it was for “a small business which is sick and tired of seeing it’s workers putting documents a bit…

This book is focused on illuminating the U.S.'s empire across its history, going from what Immerwahr calls the Colonialist Empire to the Pointillist Empire. Basically, over time, the U.S. has decided it doesn't need to control much land because technology has improved to let them control things from a series of points, AKA our 800 military bases overseas. Puerto Rico might be more visible in the average American's knowledge now (one hopes), but what about how entangled the U.S. was in the…

Sega was the master of exaggerated, nuanced physics engines, and Monkey Ball fits that mold to a T. There’s three stylistic inaccuracies that sew Monkey Ball’s unique physics together:

I’m currently a couple sessions into solo play through a dungeon that I’m generating with the Appendix A tables in the AD&D 1e DMG and playing through with OSE—this is something I’ll blog more about later—but I’ve discovered something missing that I want to add here for anyone to use. Appendix A is a great set of tables with lots of variants for generating twisting passages and unique rooms. However, after generating several hundred feet of passages and seven rooms, it’s only generated one…

Or click here if the above doesn’t work. Recorded in-person in my office at UT Austin, with a bulleted list containing “ARC,” “Scalable Oversight,” and “Models” behind me on my blackboard for some reason (I no longer remember who put those there or why). 90 minutes long. Sometimes you see my disembodied arm waving in midair because of the way the cameras are combined. As always, I strongly recommend 2x speed for the correct experience. This might actually be one of my best podcasts ever,…

The End of Sexual Taboos: Homosexuality and Other Variants “Sexual permissiveness – certainly destructive of established mores – has been an aspect of the ideology of the avant-garde from its inception. For this movement is forever at war with society and its values.” He calls necrophilia “one of the unconquered areas of liberated cinema.” – The Bloodthirsty Fairy (1968, Roland Lethem) Delivery men unleash the title character, who goes out and beats a man to death, strangles a nun, blinds a…

by Cláudio Alves It’s funny, sometimes, how films can converse with each other. And those conversations aren’t even limited to a festival’s program. As I watched May el-Toukhy’s somewhat controversial Golden Lion winner, Woman Unknown, my mind drifted to The Odyssey. Not just Nolan’s blockbuster, but all the adaptations I’ve seen of the Homeric poem and how they deal with the mass femicide near the end. Or, better yet, how they ignore it, erasing a part of the story that might have a modern…

Potentially gross warning I may make a post regarding the last two days of vacation, but unfortunately all joy has been cut short by some very unfun medical issues. Not to go into the terribly uncomfortable details, but I think I have a UTI, and of course the urgent care isn't open til tomorrow. I took some tylenol, and I'm sad I'll have to miss work tomorrow, but I cannot possibly afford a hospital bill. I'm just crying and sad and scared

Iceland is the place to go (again) This post (Do you Like Water) was last edited 3 minutes ago.

Some wiring connection went haywire in the "3-mat-hut" apartment and consequently electrical outlets aren't working; the lights are okay though, thank goodness. Still, this necessitates a little pause here for now.

Perfume PosseApricots! Posse! It’s that strange time of year, where I need a fleece hoodie in the morning and am in a tank top at noon. It’s also that weird growing time where I’ve got both a pumpkin AND a watermelon sitting… Continue Reading → Perfume PosseApricots!

In a very, very overdue update to my last post on knitting, I have finally finished my first proper knitting project - a pair of fingerless gloves using PetiteKnit’s Penny Gloves pattern. There was a lot of learning, frustration and procrastination on this project here, but I got through it! I originally started on the gloves in May, and it felt pretty silly to be knitting in the middle of summer, but it has all worked out because the temperatures have started to drop again and it’s getting…

Image source: Wikimedia Commons Years before Lon Chaney and Tod Browning were silent Hollywood’s actor/director ambassadors of the macabre, Browning’s chief thespian collaborator was a Manhattan-born actress once dubbed cinema’s “Queen of Crookdom.” This monarch of crime was Priscilla Dean. For the classic film initiated, Tod Browning needs little introduction. Famous for early sound era chillers like Dracula and Freaks, he was considered the screen’s answer to Edgar Allan Poe with his…

A protein-obsessed polycule boarded Below Deck Mediterranean for the final charter, which had two head injuries, and I'm not even counting Gen pretending to be happy. Let's recap!

Long-take digital cinema about people stuck in an endless videogame maze of subway tunnels. Not since A Quiet Place has a movie spelled out its rules this clearly on signage, and not since Cube has the puzzle been solved by a late-arriving autistic guy (a kid, in this case). When a body meet a body passing through the tile. I picked the poster behind them as anomaly, but Escher’s first name really was Maurits: You have to go through the loop correctly (turn back if you see anomaly, proceed if…

The ancient world respected tradition, and was wary of most kinds of change. In contrast, our modern world looks down on tradition, and celebrates most change as innovation. And this, alas, will be our downfall. Hopefully some civ after ours will learn this key lesson: you should only innovate as fast as you get feedback on the changes that you try.With most technology and business practices, we can see most of their key consequences pretty locally and pretty fast. So we can get a lot of data…

I have heard that historians particularly appreciate when people put actual prices as a reference in their diaries, providing that little quantitative insight into the past. In that spirit, I found a July 2026 breakdown of a laser crystal printing business by Bathsheba Grossman, a sculptor and 3D designer who I have always found fascinating and who I am lucky enough to have bought some small pieces from, as well as both given and received others as gifts: Would you like to be the cube designer?…