Thoughts

Had some thoughts on the airplane earlier. Probably won’t post them.
Link 6:15 p.m. Feb 28, 2022, UTC-5

Aahhahhhahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Link 9:37 a.m. Feb 28, 2022, UTC-5

For some reason my phone clears cookies for this site like every time I lock the screen and I have to log in again.
Link 9:37 a.m. Feb 28, 2022, UTC-5

Like, LISP like languages tend to say ‘data are lists and functions are lists everything’s a list’ and they make it easy to change from
data to a function. But in making that transition easy, they emphasize that the transition is necessary. JavaScript doesn’t let you change from data into a function since from the perspective of the JS programer, functions already are data.
Link 9:08 a.m. Feb 28, 2022, UTC-5

One of the things that I really like about JS is the tendency to treat functions as data. Even other functional languages tend to be worse
about treating functions as operators.
Link 6:21 p.m. Feb 27, 2022, UTC-5

Kind of excited to start a new season here, just a couple of days. I’m thinking about changing up the colors. We’ll see.
Link 3:52 p.m. Feb 27, 2022, UTC-5

I really like the zlib license. I might move to that over the Unlicense for my public domain things.
Link 3:48 p.m. Feb 27, 2022, UTC-5

Link 2:55 p.m. Feb 27, 2022, UTC-5

I do not appreciate the loop macro at all. It’s so ugly to me. If functional code is so good, why do you need DSLs?
Link 11:51 a.m. Feb 27, 2022, UTC-5

Some people understand the power words have. Those people tend to be LISP programmers.
“Agree politely, but delete nothing. Never apologize for who you are.”
Link 11:32 a.m. Feb 27, 2022, UTC-5

The K-Pop to international politics pipeline.
Link 9:26 p.m. Feb 26, 2022, UTC-5

“Fall in love with nothing.”
Link 10:23 p.m. Feb 25, 2022, UTC-5

“I could show you incredible things.”
-Blank Space, T Swift of course
Link 5:12 p.m. Feb 25, 2022, UTC-5

Happy snowing
Link 9:55 a.m. Feb 25, 2022, UTC-5

I can’t sleep. There are too many unfinished stories.
Link 2:47 a.m. Feb 25, 2022, UTC-5

I feel like the Hellmouth Sunbeams spend too much time on the “sunbeams” parts and not enough time on the “hellmouth” part send tweet
Link 2:34 a.m. Feb 25, 2022, UTC-5

Just realized that this page has been at this URL for too long and I basically can't ever change it.
Link 8:49 p.m. Feb 24, 2022, UTC-5

Oh my word. Bob Lyon is making live-editor issues like it's 2015
Link 8:29 p.m. Feb 24, 2022, UTC-5

I did end up eating dinner, around 7, so that's pretty cool.
Link 8:19 p.m. Feb 24, 2022, UTC-5

I want to eat dinner tonight but it’s unclear if my executive dysfunction will allow me to. Or if I will be trapped here.
Link 6:29 p.m. Feb 24, 2022, UTC-5

I miss Etho
Link 5:11 p.m. Feb 24, 2022, UTC-5

All I want is for the Lock Picking Lawyer to actually pick the locks. I don't care that you found a lock at walmart that you can open by
shoving a bent bit of plastic into its keyhole. If he doesn't say "little click out of one," it's not worth my time to watch the video.
Link 12:05 p.m. Feb 24, 2022, UTC-5

I think a lot about the decision to add `let` to JS instead of changing the behavior of `var`. That’s what backwards compatibility looks
like.
Link 11:11 a.m. Feb 24, 2022, UTC-5

I hate this but I don’t see how else to do it. That what I need, is someone to show me the way.
Link 3:12 a.m. Feb 24, 2022, UTC-5

A picture of a whiteboard. Overlapping text in different colors reads as follows.
[Black text, not overlapping anything else:] No. I Who is. Your friend. right. Or. Surrender to the system. Become more than yourself. [An untranscribable scribble] U Europa. Somewhere else Someone else Has created And destroyed More than I will ever see. [Blue text, sideways, underneath red text:] Some say Life is about something. They miss that life is everything. This not poetry. This is prose. An essay. Of course [Black text, upside-down, underneath red text:] Pale flowers. Left for hours Sun above A dress. Stress [Red text, written over the last two blocks:] What is this if not me? Who am I if not this? To live for _____ Sorry. This is not poetry This is not art This is some words on a whiteboard. That shouldn't have been written. This is nothing. I'm sorry. Except I'm not And these words are everything These words are poetry and they are art These words are life They're me and you and the connection between us and they matter
Link 2:33 a.m. Feb 24, 2022, UTC-5

The Magician poem
I once saw a man do a magic trick Misdirection, he didn't say He did nothing with one hand that looked flashy While with his other, he suffered So too, these words.
Link 2:22 a.m. Feb 24, 2022, UTC-5

Parker MacMillian the first has unfathomable energy.
Like they just keep nerfing him, we’re on, what, IIIII. And he’s still cooler than he has any right to be.
Link 12:33 a.m. Feb 24, 2022, UTC-5

I feel like it is time for me to rewatch Dirk Gently.
Link 11:13 p.m. Feb 23, 2022, UTC-5

Node.js moment
Also these 3 htop screenshots are from 3 different servers. Also I don't understand what's going on, I don't think node.js is actually using that much memory. A screenshot of htop showing 20 `node main.js` processes, each using 11.3GB.
Link 9:47 p.m. Feb 23, 2022, UTC-5

If it's possible to develop memory-conscious apps in node.js I don't know how. Also, this is why I haven't released Astronomical Theater
yet, this honestly doesn't surprise me. A screenshot of htop running a process "node gemini/gemini.js" In red, the virtual memory usage of the process, 11.8GB.
Link 9:37 p.m. Feb 23, 2022, UTC-5

4GB of swap might have been excessive.
An htop screenshot showing Mem: 100Mb of 2 GB used, and Swap: 0 of 4GB. And a total of like 10 processes running.
Link 9:03 p.m. Feb 23, 2022, UTC-5

AUR is just *down*. RIP.
Link 5:42 p.m. Feb 23, 2022, UTC-5

ES claims to not have aliases, but will do a lookup for variables of the form "fn-CMD" when CMD is run, and replace them if they exist.
So aliases look like: ``` fn-l = "ls" ``` I think they did this so that functions could be syntax sugar for as follows: ``` fn l { ls $* } # Is the same as fn-l @ { ls $* } ``` Where `@ { … }` is already the syntax for a lambda. Still seems pretty bad.
Link 5:21 p.m. Feb 23, 2022, UTC-5

So I theorized about this block-based language. And ES has "program fragments" that are basically just my blocks.
=> https://thoughts.learnerpages.com/?show=55b51146-2a55-471b-8957-6ac3dc929427 ``` { echo "hello"; echo "world"; } # prints "hello\nworld" x = { echo hello, world } $x # prints "hello, world" myfunc $x # Calls myfunc with the block x as a parameter ``` Since ES is a shell, it can get away with doing what I didn't want to do, which is conditionally expand and evaluate the block based on position, since you have to use `$` to reference variables in ES anyways. (ES is based on rc, it's possible rc does the same thing, I don't know.)
Link 5:00 p.m. Feb 23, 2022, UTC-5

Wait, you mean you don't use `es`? => https://wryun.github.io/es-shell
Link 4:37 p.m. Feb 23, 2022, UTC-5

Activity? On the live editor??
Link 2:40 p.m. Feb 23, 2022, UTC-5

I picked up a computer from like 2006, but it's 64 bit, so I can just put modern Arch on it. Which I think is kind of beautiful, and it
makes me a bit sad that things are moving towards Arm. We're in the x86-64 golden age of computers.
Link 11:21 a.m. Feb 23, 2022, UTC-5

Something about Bethesda moving to Steam even though Steam takes a 30% cut. Maybe Apple isn't evil.
Link 10:12 a.m. Feb 23, 2022, UTC-5

I think, that part of the reason that programming languages don't support out-of-the-box exact arithmetic is that it's possible to construct
arbitrarily "complex" numbers. something something Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, "There is no recursively related notation-system which gives a name to every constructive ordinal" -Church and Kleene (from GEB)
Link 8:37 p.m. Feb 22, 2022, UTC-5

I wish I had Thought deleting uh this was a python code example that was wrong sorry Python
Link 6:21 p.m. Feb 22, 2022, UTC-5

Tell me this isn't dumb, I fricking dare you. Defend this behavior, you won't.
```julia julia> parse(BigFloat, "0.1") + parse(BigFloat, "0.2") 0.3000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000017 ```
Link 6:17 p.m. Feb 22, 2022, UTC-5

All I want out of a programming language is being able to add `0.1` and `0.2` and get `0.3`. Is that too much to ask?
Link 6:13 p.m. Feb 22, 2022, UTC-5

"I runne to death and death meets me as fast"
Link 2:40 p.m. Feb 22, 2022, UTC-5

Why does fricking Julia use IEEE floats?
All I want is arbitrary precision numbers and it feels like `bc` is the only language that supports them.
Link 11:10 a.m. Feb 22, 2022, UTC-5

I don’t remember the last time I made a good decision.
Link 6:34 a.m. Feb 22, 2022, UTC-5

I miss seeing people smile.
Link 1:09 a.m. Feb 22, 2022, UTC-5

I’m so lonely.
Link 1:08 a.m. Feb 22, 2022, UTC-5

Has this website peaked yet?
Link 5:48 p.m. Feb 21, 2022, UTC-5

Good morning.
Link 5:48 p.m. Feb 21, 2022, UTC-5

The Italian shadow government that controls me has instructed me to now do things.
Link 5:48 p.m. Feb 21, 2022, UTC-5

The use of "wimdy" to mean a 'an unlikely outcome' is possibly my favorite example of the evolution of language.
Link 2:26 p.m. Feb 21, 2022, UTC-5

All of my clean clothes are on my bed, so I will have to sleep on the floor.
Link 12:11 a.m. Feb 21, 2022, UTC-5

I have decided to make a quesadilla
Link 5:53 p.m. Feb 20, 2022, UTC-5

Why is life so hard? Why am I always hungry?
Link 5:12 p.m. Feb 20, 2022, UTC-5

'Through Jesus, everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses'
-Acts 13:39, paraphrased
Link 10:23 a.m. Feb 20, 2022, UTC-5

Good morning.
Link 9:36 a.m. Feb 20, 2022, UTC-5

The other day I was thinking, 'why did I delete the KA organ harvesting roleplay discord server.' And I just found some chat logs.
Let's just say that I no longer regret deleting it. (Note to self: the transcript is in my DMs with Robert)
Link 12:48 p.m. Feb 19, 2022, UTC-5

Good morning.
Link 9:04 a.m. Feb 19, 2022, UTC-5

This website is actually just an IP-gathering honeypot. If you're not using a VPN right now, I've saved your IP into the Apache log files!
Link 11:28 p.m. Feb 18, 2022, UTC-5

Option number 1: Submit homework assignment I've already done. Option number 2: Eat dinner Option number 3: Play Minecraft
Wanna guess which one I'm going to do?
Link 6:37 p.m. Feb 18, 2022, UTC-5

Why don't stores sell chocolate chip bagels?
Link 10:44 a.m. Feb 18, 2022, UTC-5

Why is it snowing?
Link 10:42 a.m. Feb 18, 2022, UTC-5

I'm unimpressed with alt-j's new album. It feels like it's trying too hard to be deep and emotional. And what I historically liked about
Alt-J was how light their songs were.
Link 1:30 a.m. Feb 18, 2022, UTC-5

The Sphinx vs. The Count of Monte Cristo
Link 11:36 p.m. Feb 17, 2022, UTC-5

Running 100m in 30º weather might not be the best way to stave off an anxiety attack, but it works. My heart is now angry at me for
different reasons.
Link 8:10 p.m. Feb 17, 2022, UTC-5

There's something else, some other problem that I have. Not just the desire for perfection, but some sort of anxiety. I'm so stressed.
It's like my mind and my heart expect or need to be in a fight or flight situation and so when I'm a bit nervous about a group project they're like, 'this is it!' and my heart rate is 103. I think I need to exercise more.
Link 8:01 p.m. Feb 17, 2022, UTC-5

Checking if there are any new Thoughts for me to read.
Link 7:56 p.m. Feb 17, 2022, UTC-5

"No, you're good"
Link 3:37 p.m. Feb 17, 2022, UTC-5

"ONE WAY"
Link 2:29 p.m. Feb 17, 2022, UTC-5

AoT hasn't dropped off yet so I'm basically just waiting for it to end so I can start my anime arc.
Link 10:33 a.m. Feb 17, 2022, UTC-5

Michael M (@MikeMcl on Github, default profile picture, no bio), maintains decimal.js, which has 1.7 million users. XKCD 2347 moment.
Link 10:30 a.m. Feb 17, 2022, UTC-5

This is the death of the author.
Link 7:22 p.m. Feb 16, 2022, UTC-5

AAAQAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHDAWUDHAUOWDHAW DNAWI DANW DAW DAN WDAB WIODNBAIW ONDAOIWN DAIPWND AW DAOIcant'it sall in my head
ajlwdba jlwndk;waln ldjan o;awipnb djnawip odnaipw dnao[wjnd aopinwdalksndklnalknsdklansdklnmklmklmkllkmlkmlkmkmaas alsdmsad mklamwdklm saklmmsakldmlk malkmsdlk malksmd klasmdlk msaklm klmadlkma alksmd lkasmd l/kasmndfl jajlnajklnefbjkaeln kf;anf lkanef ipoj[
Link 6:54 p.m. Feb 16, 2022, UTC-5

"Naughty Programmer's Madness"
Link 12:11 a.m. Feb 16, 2022, UTC-5

I would bet money that Astronomical Theater (my Gemini reverse-proxy/server) has a directory traversal bug.
Link 10:49 p.m. Feb 15, 2022, UTC-5

Every time I think I know Javascript it throws me a curveball.
I expected `[undefined].toString()` to return `"[undefined]"` but it instead returns `[]`. `(undefined).toString()` is an error but `undefined + ""` is `"undefined"`.
Link 4:47 p.m. Feb 15, 2022, UTC-5

I think this is what they call a data crime
I'll give you a hint, the x-axis is unix timestamps A histogram, with x-axis from 1.63x10^12 to 1.64x10^12, and y-axis from 0 to 7000. All the buckets are close to 0 except for the very right bar which extends to the top.
Link 2:32 p.m. Feb 15, 2022, UTC-5

Getting in arguments with people on the internet.
Link 9:00 a.m. Feb 15, 2022, UTC-5

I am still alive, for the time being.
Link 9:00 a.m. Feb 15, 2022, UTC-5

This is my attempt at blackout poetry. It gave me slightly more appreciation for the medium, but I still think blackout poetry is dumb.
The source is some random book. I used exactly one page. I tried to persevere layout when transcribing for this site, but it’s obviously imperfect. “Mutilated and deformed” is the name of the chapter in the book, and I left it in at the top of the page. Edit: uh I forgot the link to the actual post. It’s the one from a few days ago
Link 8:45 a.m. Feb 15, 2022, UTC-5

Don't listen to Watsky, take your meds.
Link 8:18 a.m. Feb 15, 2022, UTC-5

"Sandstorm" by Darude is like unironically a good song.
Link 7:09 a.m. Feb 15, 2022, UTC-5

What happened to "They can never say he sold out"? Bellion?
Link 6:10 a.m. Feb 15, 2022, UTC-5

Thinking about *Check, please* again.
Honestly I probably just need to read more fiction, my standards are so low. But like, so many things don’t meet my standards. Like none of the *Check, Please* characters are great. They’re good, but the story and worldbuilding is amazing. One of very very few non-fantasy stories to do 5-star worldbuilding.
Link 12:15 a.m. Feb 15, 2022, UTC-5

It’s really impressive how much personality Bois gives the satellites in *17776*. He can’t use environment or appearance or actions, really,
to create personality. He has to do it all with dialogue. And he does it so well. *insert Lunchables scene here.*
Link 12:05 a.m. Feb 15, 2022, UTC-5

"You are not God." -Napkin.pdf
Link 9:36 p.m. Feb 14, 2022, UTC-5

I wish I had the Panera bagel toaster in my house.
Link 2:47 p.m. Feb 14, 2022, UTC-5

The legends over at Github looked at Markdown and went, 'nah, not complicated enough.'
=> https://github.blog/2022-02-14-include-diagrams-markdown-files-mermaid/ What is this. This is why we need Gemtext. Like, *Markdown* has feature creep. There's actually a lot I could say here. This ties into *all* of the reasons Gemini is important. This is what I mean when I say you can't embed simplicity inside a complex system.
Link 2:39 p.m. Feb 14, 2022, UTC-5

The colors on my external monitor so fricking washed out. It makes Vivaldi look awful. And I can't fix the color settings because something
magically reverts them every time I do.
Link 1:27 p.m. Feb 14, 2022, UTC-5

Sometimes I forget how much code I've written.
Link 1:26 p.m. Feb 14, 2022, UTC-5

Thinking about the One True Comic
Link 11:22 a.m. Feb 14, 2022, UTC-5

Mentally translating Toki Pona's "o" as "boi, "
Link 6:13 p.m. Feb 13, 2022, UTC-5

CoFH "Don't Be a Jerk" License v2 has shot up my list of favorite licenses.
It's basically all rights reserved, but you're allowed to fork, modify, or use it (but not redistribute it). It allows derivate works, provided they are at least source-available. Basically, it's what people think they're getting when they blindly add an open source license to a project.
Link 5:38 p.m. Feb 13, 2022, UTC-5

I had a bunch of thoughts earlier when I was in church and driving but I couldn't post them then and I don't feel like posting them now.
Link 1:28 p.m. Feb 13, 2022, UTC-5

"Here needs no spies, nor eunuchs; her commit Safe to thy foes, yea, to a marmoset." - Elegy II "The Anagram" John Donne
Honestly, I'm speechless. Donne just murdered her right in front of me.
Link 6:48 p.m. Feb 12, 2022, UTC-5

Donne really said, 'Why'd you let that mosquito stick its thing in you but you won't let me stick my thing in you' except the year is 1590
and it's like 400 years too early to be arguing that virginity is a social construct. There's ahead of your time and then there's 400 years ahead of your time. Legend and a half. One of the things that makes the poem so enjoyable is that you can totally picture Donne's girlfriend smiling and rolling her eyes as Donne explains the grave injustice she has committed in killing the mosquito that he's using as a metaphor. Sorry for Flea-posting again. => https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46467/the-flea
Link 6:17 p.m. Feb 12, 2022, UTC-5

There's totally a line in the Cloudflare WARP FAQ that implies that they're going to selectively give your IP to sites that pay them.
Link 9:48 p.m. Feb 11, 2022, UTC-5

Cloudflare WARP is a free VPN. It seems reputable. It doesn't come up in the VPN conversation because Cloudflare doesn't advertise it as
such, they really don't want to complete with the "VPN" providers for some reason. Edit: Oh so you know what it is. Is they're really focused on encrypting your connection to HTTP websites and running DNS over HTTP. And in some cases, like if a website is hosted on Cloudflare servers itself, then they don't bother e.g. hiding your IP address. So they can't advertise it as a true VPN. But it works for me. No more unencrypted DNS!
Link 9:12 p.m. Feb 11, 2022, UTC-5

0 open tabs on my phone. For the first time in literally years. It feels so good.
Link 2:24 p.m. Feb 11, 2022, UTC-5

Every so often Vivaldi's performance gets worse and I feel like I have to toggle hardware acceleration to fix it.
Link 2:19 p.m. Feb 11, 2022, UTC-5

I re-downloaded Apollo. I have an addiction.
Link 1:32 p.m. Feb 11, 2022, UTC-5

The masculine urge to disconnect from contemporary society and join a Hutterite colony oh my word.
Link 9:35 a.m. Feb 11, 2022, UTC-5

"IT IS STILL 100 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT"
=> https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/ Climate change is as concerning to people now as nuclear war was 70 years ago. The former is much less concerning to me than the latter.
Link 12:53 a.m. Feb 11, 2022, UTC-5

"a sketch of time of a time of dust"
Link 4:01 p.m. Feb 10, 2022, UTC-5

All I want to do is play Minecraft, you know?
Link 3:56 p.m. Feb 10, 2022, UTC-5

"MUTILATED AND DEFORMED"
arguments on justice critique the system based on injustive violating his own Similarly, to parish is violation companies operate "unjustly, capriciously, cruelly," people support the bad and wasteful Similarly unjust "tyrannic disposition" later observes love mortifies inferiors lord over that human dignity vir- tual ubiquity inefficient institution workmen are "always just and equitable" hours allow leisure efficiency issues, prompt masters to rest living stress justice besides cloath lodge share produce themselves Finally,
Link 3:44 p.m. Feb 10, 2022, UTC-5

"nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors"
Link 3:07 p.m. Feb 10, 2022, UTC-5

"Infinity Pools" by The Technicolors is so good. It's not like The Technicolors' normal stuff.
Link 2:28 p.m. Feb 10, 2022, UTC-5

I'm still alive.
Link 2:23 p.m. Feb 10, 2022, UTC-5

"Touch me"
Link 2:08 a.m. Feb 10, 2022, UTC-5

This is the creation of a new thing.
Link 2:05 a.m. Feb 10, 2022, UTC-5

Counselor's trying to diagnose me with fricking ADHD.
Link 1:53 a.m. Feb 10, 2022, UTC-5

I want someone to slap me
Link 11:44 p.m. Feb 09, 2022, UTC-5

What the frick what the actual frick Trazlander is back???? And nobody told me?
A screenshot of TrazLander's Youtube channel, showing (in order) a video from 11 months ago, a video from 1 year ago, and a video from 7 years ago.
Link 9:42 p.m. Feb 09, 2022, UTC-5

Man I wish the Linoleum Club existed.
Link 8:50 p.m. Feb 09, 2022, UTC-5

Absolutely quality HackerNews text posts today.
* A tor link to a black market site literally advertising a hit man for hire. * ‘How do you cope with wasting all your potential?’ …I have an “IQ higher than 99.8% of people”… * ‘How many calories am I burning sitting in my chair writing code?’ * “What’s the ultimate technology stack that top-tier hackers use?” Absolute insanity. Who are these people? Some quality runner ups as well but I can’t post everything.
Link 8:43 p.m. Feb 09, 2022, UTC-5

I deleted Apollo from my phone and like 30 seconds later find myself searching for it because I can’t find it.
Ahhh Apollo is a Reddit client btw
Link 8:20 p.m. Feb 09, 2022, UTC-5

Oh my word I have a bad headache I hate this
Link 6:07 p.m. Feb 09, 2022, UTC-5

I wonder if music is a drug.
Link 4:58 p.m. Feb 09, 2022, UTC-5

An ekphrastic
Corners pieced, stapled, sharp, Threaded, pull taunt, Edges, lines, angles angled corners pieced Threaded, pulled and tied taunt string pulls corners angled corners and lines threaded, tied taunt string slips through corners angles and corners and lines
Link 2:55 p.m. Feb 09, 2022, UTC-5

Me trying to explain to Reddit users why I'm not going to boycott Chick-fil-A because their CEO is homophobic. (Currently at -6 points.)
Link 1:45 p.m. Feb 09, 2022, UTC-5

Hawtie and Hawtey are two different ranked bedwars players. (I'm pretty sure.)
Ranked Bedwars is like such a small community it seems like a wild coincidence.
Link 10:34 p.m. Feb 08, 2022, UTC-5

My finite motivation, when taken in the limit with my infinite mind is non existent.
Link 3:47 p.m. Feb 08, 2022, UTC-5

I'm a big fan of continuous deployment. If you have code available, it should be the same code running in production.
Link 12:24 p.m. Feb 08, 2022, UTC-5

I have complete creative freedom.
Link 9:47 a.m. Feb 08, 2022, UTC-5

Good morning.
Link 8:44 a.m. Feb 08, 2022, UTC-5

I'm on track for most posts ever this season.
Link 11:35 p.m. Feb 07, 2022, UTC-5

This Thought might have been interesting, but my thought process getting there was pretty dumb.
=> https://thoughts.learnerpages.com/?show=e858a7d7-fc3c-41eb-a1a5-5dc4c4a5d4c2 Something about 'humans act like NPCs' But the examples that prompted it were like, someone wearing the same jacket every day, or wearing a T-shirt for the club they were in. Like. I'm not wrong. But also. 'Humans walk places because that's the easiest way of getting there and they're lazy and therefore they are like NPCs.' I think there's something there… But it's not nearly as interesting as I thought at the time.
Link 10:34 p.m. Feb 07, 2022, UTC-5

Today on cursed code with Matthias:
```python def test(value=[]) return value a = test() b = test() a.append(1) print(a) # [1] print(b) # [1] print(a is b) # True ```
Link 8:43 p.m. Feb 07, 2022, UTC-5

Possibly my favorite Javascript feature is this:
```js function foo() { let x = 0; return { inc: function () { x++; }; get: function () { return x; } }; } const obj = foo(); obj.get(); // 0 obj.inc(); obj.get(); // 1 ``` And this is obviously an ugly shim for OOP-style encapsulation that isn't needed. But this is just illustrative of the most common use for this feature. And this feature isn't something that I normally use, or that is good practice to use. But if you couldn't do this in a language, it would just feel underpowered. (This does require functions to be passable by value, which similarly I think it very powerful.) (You actually can do this in Python 3, with the `nonlocal` keyword, fun fact.)
Link 4:30 p.m. Feb 07, 2022, UTC-5

This feels big. I just released the source code for this site.
=> https://tildegit.org/matthias/WhisperMaPhone It's not like totally un-ready. But it has lots of room for improvement.
Link 2:03 p.m. Feb 07, 2022, UTC-5

Okay it's the `syntax` variable not the `:syntax` command. `:set syntax=markdown`. Obviously.
Link 11:57 a.m. Feb 07, 2022, UTC-5

The Vim learning curve is just so unbelievably steep.
I have a file without an extension. I want to tell Vim to syntax highlight it as markdown. In a GUI editor, that would be a button. But I've read the Vim help pages for `:colorscheme` `:language` `:syntax` and `:highlight` and none of them can be used to change the language Vim thinks the file is. (`:language` is for changing the interface language.)
Link 11:55 a.m. Feb 07, 2022, UTC-5

Entertain me.
Link 8:21 a.m. Feb 07, 2022, UTC-5

Wordle would make a good subject for a meta-study of game theory and cheating.
Since Wordle is fundamentally about finding information, and yet, the information is right there in the source code if you're willing to peak behind the veil. So you end up with a whole spectrum of amounts of information that you can convey, in between knowing nothing to knowing tomorrow's word. And it's really hard to define a strict line between cheating and not cheating. Like, is using hints or guides in a puzzle game cheating? I think this gives rise to the more fundamental question of 'what is platonicWordle?'. Since you inherently come into it with knowledge of English words, and yet, everyone has a different list of five-letter English words in their head. Someone who doesn't know English very well is playing the game at a different difficulty. I think what I'm getting at is that cheating, and to a boarder extent, playing, puzzle games is a function of your mind. And no matter how tempting it is to turn the game into a black box of re-playability, that's just not the nature of the game.
Link 1:22 p.m. Feb 06, 2022, UTC-5

I almost want to write a second About page. I like the length of the current one and don't want to keep updating it, but I also feel like
there are a number of important cultural elements that I didn't know or forgot to include. This is impossibly such a garden. This is distributed as an informational message by The Library of Nomad. This is a sparrow, falling.
Link 9:14 p.m. Feb 05, 2022, UTC-5

tenpo pini la mi sona ala e ni: toki pona li musi
Link 8:50 p.m. Feb 05, 2022, UTC-5

It's honestly profound the difference between "nothing can be perfect" and "everything can be better."
Obvious there's an attitude "half-full/half-empty" difference. But there's also logical difference. Saying that something isn't perfect doesn't imply that it can be better. Edit: Similarly, the second also implies a qualitative aspect that the first doesn't. It's not a binary, perfect or imperfect, it's about being better.
Link 5:52 p.m. Feb 05, 2022, UTC-5

Hacker News role-playing Among Us lolol
Link 5:17 p.m. Feb 05, 2022, UTC-5

Focus on pursing excellence. Success and failure aren't ever in our full control. All we can control is what we choose to do right now, in this moment. Focus on better outcomes. Any real situation can always be improved. (Don't worry about making it perfect, that's not possible.) 52% is better than 51%.
Link 5:16 p.m. Feb 05, 2022, UTC-5

"She dwells in puddles for fear of the ocean."
This is a puddle.
Link 3:09 p.m. Feb 05, 2022, UTC-5

Humans have a tendency to act like NPCs, follow social norms, be boring, because it's easier.
Link 11:53 a.m. Feb 05, 2022, UTC-5

I wish I could write a poem to do justice to Matthew 10:29.
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.” ‭‭NIV‬‬
Link 2:06 a.m. Feb 05, 2022, UTC-5

“I choose marble and the Catholic Church because / They say no, to natural beauty that lures us and kills us”
Link 2:00 a.m. Feb 05, 2022, UTC-5

I almost cried looking at /r/Sh*ttyPoetry.
It’s not good poetry. But it’s there. And there’s so much of it. 10 poems being posted a day every day for 10 years. Most with 1 vote. Seen by no one. But that’s not why they were written. No one fishes for popularity on a subreddit with more posters than readers. No one hopes to kick-start a literature Nobel by opening /r/Sh*ttyPoetry. Just people with words filling their heads and overflowing. Just poems, crafted for the art of it, and shared because they could be, and maybe they could mean something to someone else. “But actually flowers”
Link 1:41 a.m. Feb 05, 2022, UTC-5

Siri forces me to say "Non-stop from Hamilton" every single time.
Link 7:57 p.m. Feb 04, 2022, UTC-5

The internet is collapsing into a parody of itself.
Link 5:35 p.m. Feb 04, 2022, UTC-5

I'm starting to think Linus personally dislikes me.
Link 4:55 p.m. Feb 04, 2022, UTC-5

"Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,3)"
Yeah that's about what I expected from dd-ing to the hard drive. Now the question is how to fix it. I didn't think this far ahead.
Link 12:53 a.m. Feb 04, 2022, UTC-5

`dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb`
I know what I'm doing I promise /s I have no idea what I'm doing.
Link 12:47 a.m. Feb 04, 2022, UTC-5

I'm going to start using all-caps more. It's an alternative to markup features, which is nice because it doesn't require markup.
Link 11:30 p.m. Feb 03, 2022, UTC-5

"Do YOU have redeeming social value?"
Link 10:09 p.m. Feb 03, 2022, UTC-5

Can't get over the fact that the Jazz Hands looked at a player named "Zee Phantom" and went, yep, ze/zir pronouns.
Link 12:17 p.m. Feb 03, 2022, UTC-5

I get it, everyone in the world hates me
Link 12:38 a.m. Feb 03, 2022, UTC-5

I am stuck in a world with no responsibilities, no passion, nothing.
Link 12:30 a.m. Feb 03, 2022, UTC-5

I miss the old Matthias.
Link 10:42 p.m. Feb 02, 2022, UTC-5

I’m a real person, I swear.
Link 4:11 p.m. Feb 02, 2022, UTC-5

I exist as a parody of myself.
Link 3:10 p.m. Feb 02, 2022, UTC-5

Sometimes I’m afraid of the music as well.
Link 1:07 p.m. Feb 02, 2022, UTC-5

I guess I'm probably being too harsh, and I'm just not hearing about things like I used to. I found https://colors.withgoogle.com, which is
exactly the type of thing I'm talking about. A fun, marking gimmick. And it seems to have been created less than a week ago. But man I had to look for that.
Link 12:35 p.m. Feb 02, 2022, UTC-5

Google used to publicize their R&D as a form of marketing. You can't do that when you remove the Google branding from it.
You could view self-driving car R&D as a Marketing Expense. Instead it's listed as a loss in the "Other Bets" category of Alphabet's quarterly report.
Link 12:28 p.m. Feb 02, 2022, UTC-5

I think the Alphabet creation/split really killed the culture at Google.
I have no evidence to back this up of course. But it seems like Google had this great culture of experimentation. I'm just thinking back, Google did Google Maps in 2005 at a time when they were a *much* smaller company. Now they have a much larger budget, and they're not doing the same types of things. I think part of that is that Alphabet exists and Google has been relegated to handling the day-to-day operation of existing products. Google's not supposed to branch out and do self driving cars or anything radically different. On the flip side, Alphabet is the *parent* company. They're bigger and so they have to be operated like an investing firm. They don't have a "culture of experimentation"—they're trying to diversify a portfolio. I think Google would be in a lot better place today if they had created an R&D subsidiary instead of a holding company.
Link 12:23 p.m. Feb 02, 2022, UTC-5

I'm a little worried
Link 9:27 p.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

Everything exists to do one thing And nothing does its thing well
The bluetooth won't connect the left earbud is dead the microwave beep can wake the dead The car won't start The house will burn We will all stumble *Who, in the vast domain of humanity,* *Has the power the will the reason to* *Fight the broken dark scary imperfections* There exists more than we can imagine today But it will exist at the end of time The world is full of problems but The world is full of people
Link 3:43 p.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

I'm bad at imagery.
Link 3:33 p.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

Me and Saihttam and God and generic male narrator #1 and [redacted] have lived in together in my head for years but suddenly I realize that
there's a female voice in here with me and I'm going insane. Sexist.
Link 2:07 p.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

Wait let me try a word dump fump liump insanity brains and frycooks and sheep flying through the air at amillion miles an hour. Tuesday is
today and yesterdaya dn rails lines and fear and conjestion.
Link 1:49 p.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

There's a voice in my head that isn't mine.
I'm calling her Mel. I'm think I'm going insane this time.
Link 1:46 p.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

How do you write at all?
Link 1:35 p.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

I can't take it. I want to use simple software but it's like people think simple software means that it's bad or something.
Installed lwm. I can't figure out how to open an application. I don't want a fancy fuzzy-finder application list with professionally made icons. But I NEED TO BE ABLE TO OPEN AN APPLICATION. IT has to be POSSIBLE. So I decided to try to ask for help in #linux on Libera.chat, right. Sounds reasonable. I don't have a window manager working, so I decide to install irssi, which is a very popular terminal-based IRC client. It open with, I kid you not, 'if you're new, open our website to learn how to use irssi' It is inexcusable in my mind to have to read online documentation to learn how to use software, period. I'm not learning a programming language. I'm trying to connect to an IRC server. I don't have a window manager installed. So I open, in `links`, irssi.org (luckily irssi.org doesn't have any JS, so it works), select "Read Tutorials" > "Startup How-To" > "First Steps." We're now a different program and 4 levels deep to try to learn how to connect to an IRC server. IRSSI doesn't *do anything* without walking through this. But it gets worse. It explains that it's configured with some default servers, and gives the example that we can use `/CONNECT liberachat` and `/JOIN #irssi` to join. That sounds great. That's all I want. I close `links`, open issri again. Enter `/CONNECT liberachat`. Doesn't work. Liberachat isn't found. It's not a preconfigured server. And like. I'm using a terminal-based IRC client. I want minimalism. This isn't "Discord is good because it has stickers." I want pure-text communication. And I can't figure out how to use. So I search for liberachat on my phone because I can't remember their domain name. And I open a second tab on my phone with the irssi docs because I now need to add a new server. I try it without the port, hoping that the port is standardized in 2022 but no. The examples given in the irssi docs don't specify ANYWHERE how to add a server including the port, for the record. So I try "irc.libera.chat:6697" and that doesn't work and then I try "/connect irc.libera.chat 6697" and that at least tries to connect but I get 'connection closed by remote peer' instantly. I give up at this point. I use neovim as a my primary editor. I'm no stranger to terminal apps. But I can't guess how to use your software.
Link 1:25 p.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

The biggest IRC server is Libera.chat. Irssi is a very popular terminal IRC client. The default port for servers in irssi is not the port
used by libera.chat. It is virtually undocumented, and certainly unclear to me, how to add a server that doesn’t use the default port.
Link 12:26 p.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

All software is bad.
Link 12:16 p.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

Cannot get over how based bill wurtz is.
“all 16 personalities belong to myers-briggs. depending on which way i answer the questions, i get to read a different one of their personalities”
Link 9:57 a.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

Good morning. A full 3 of my brain cells are awake to greet you today.
Link 9:48 a.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

They’re extending HTTP to add a whole new verb. Absolute nightmare.
I understand the use case. Working with graphQL is currently painful. I just kind of can’t believe that something so fundamental to the protocol is being extended at this point in time. (Gemini is not extendable.)
Link 8:45 a.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

This website plays with boundaries. But it does not try to break or surpass boundaries, because then they wouldn't be there to play with.
Link 12:20 a.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

Words still have power.
Link 12:16 a.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

We just write so much poetry and so little of it is appreciated.
=> https://www.reddit.com/r/nonpoetry/comments/moge74/translation/
Transcript
"I believe there is A divine revelation Happening Between us I believe that We are being Shown Each others words Their power Their intent Their message I believe That there's a Third party Connecting us A spirit of Understanding That moves between our Throat And each others Ears I believe that You and I Have the complete And unwavering Attention And Command Of God Or whoever Allowing our tongues to Wag with Precision And clarity In order to Shatter The barriers Formed by the Limitations Of language"
Link 12:11 a.m. Feb 01, 2022, UTC-5

I've been thinking a lot about mutual respect recently. I realized I don't respect random people on the internet but want them to respect me
A little bit of mutual respect goes a long way, and I think we have way too little online.
Link 9:44 p.m. Jan 31, 2022, UTC-5

"I am addicted to nothing. That is, to being addicted to nothing." I am addicted to being free.
Link 10:57 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

People really just say things don't they.
Link 10:51 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

I forgot how bad my website set up was. The absolute path to the certificate file for the Gemini version of Thoughts is hard-coded into the
source code for MatthiasPortzel.com
Link 10:24 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

Listening to music on wired headphones for the 2018 vibes.
Link 10:20 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

The thing I don't like about writing tests for code is that it's really hard to write good tests and too easy to give yourself a false
sense of confidence. If there's an edge case you're forgetting about, you can write 10 tests covering basic cases ``` assert(sum(1) === 1) assert(sum(1, 2) === 3) assert(sum(1, 2, 3) === 6) ``` And that tells you nothing about the behavior if the last element is `NaN`. And if you think, "oh I wonder if this works with `NaN`" you can try it or look at your code without importing a testing framework. The hard part about avoiding bugs is predicting the edge cases, not testing if it works in the edge cases. I don't know, I don't get it.
Link 10:06 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

I have like 4 things going on, but they're all in my head at once and it's too much.
Link 9:44 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

The Blaseball fan's struggle is to remove the L from the second position of words it belongs in
Link 9:00 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

"but actually flowers"
Link 8:47 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

GoodTimesWithScar is an inspiration. Absolutely incredible.
I don't even watch his videos regularly, but I have a large amount of respect for him.
Link 8:31 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

We live in a purgatory where 97% of text is UTF-8 encoded but we can't write tools that assume arbitrary text is UTF-8.
Link 7:09 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

The C preprocessor will replace `??<` with `{`, in case you don't have a `{` key.
Okay, the C standard requires it. It looks like GCC and Clang actually don't do trigraph replacement unless you request that they follow e.g. `-std=c17`
Link 6:18 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

*Removes banana from the duffle bag on my floor*
Link 5:38 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

Reflexive build word dump brain freeze declogged and free and fly and me and life to the end of the full cup. Inside and outside, behind but
Not before. Meaningless and full despite. Free. Sky above. Me.
Link 4:02 p.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

Now what?
Link 10:53 a.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

Daniel himself has updated my HN username so that’s pretty cool. Might start commenting there again.
Link 12:21 a.m. Jan 30, 2022, UTC-5

It appears that I'm going insane.
Link 3:35 p.m. Jan 29, 2022, UTC-5

Last short circuit the Moist Talkers beat us 18 times in a row *but* we won 2 consecutive games this short circuit, breaking the streak.
"Nobody beats the Jazzhands 20 times in a row"!
Link 11:25 a.m. Jan 29, 2022, UTC-5

The cycles are coming again they're starting over the pain. It's hot in here.
I want to throw up. I want to To quote myself, "Past like 10pm the solution to existential crises is simple; go to sleep, deal with it in the morning." Hopefully I was wiser then than I am now.
Link 11:40 p.m. Jan 28, 2022, UTC-5

Hacker News sorted by new is just some guy, linking his own Medium post linking to a Google Doc describing how Satoshi Nakamoto is Elon Musk
Link 11:34 p.m. Jan 28, 2022, UTC-5

Oh my word so much drama about Python 2 depreciation in 2022. My word.
Link 5:44 p.m. Jan 28, 2022, UTC-5

*The golden age of the Internet hasn't happened yet.*
Link 4:28 p.m. Jan 28, 2022, UTC-5

This is where we are.
Link 4:23 p.m. Jan 28, 2022, UTC-5

Cursed sorting algorithm that always returns a sorted list, but sometimes sorts increasing and sometimes decreasing.
Link 4:07 p.m. Jan 28, 2022, UTC-5

I think the serverless people have some really interesting ideas. I definitely have a lot of respect for them.
Link 8:24 p.m. Jan 27, 2022, UTC-5

Vivaldi crashed on me earlier. Spark crashed just now. This is pain.
All I want is perfect software.
Link 8:02 p.m. Jan 27, 2022, UTC-5

Mutual respect.
Link 8:01 p.m. Jan 27, 2022, UTC-5

I looked at my TODO list and it has things to do. What is this.
Link 7:49 p.m. Jan 27, 2022, UTC-5

"Unlike most IETF efforts, this document is not embarrassed to clearly state that we are simply stuffing more stuff in while we have the
editor open."
Link 3:56 p.m. Jan 27, 2022, UTC-5

When I say it's hard being a perfectionist I mean that I had to unplug my external monitor because the color profile on it was off.
Link 3:43 p.m. Jan 27, 2022, UTC-5

Someone suggested that the interview couldn't have gone any better if Fox paid them off. And like, I could almost believe it.
It has motive, which most conspiracy theories lack. Not just for Fox but for corporate America. That's the angle /r/AntiWork should be taking. Like you could sell that so hard. Ban that one person from the subreddit, and post an announcement about how they were bribed to throw the interview. It's like they haven't even read the instruction manual on how to start a communist revolution. Oh yeah context I guess is important: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/sd9ohb/whats_going_on_with_rantiwork_and_the_fox_news/
Link 2:08 p.m. Jan 27, 2022, UTC-5

*The members of /r/AntiWork are surprised to learn that the subreddit is communist.*
So I've said before that Reddit is a left wing cult. I retract that statement. My new theory is that the vast majority of Reddit users are moderate/centrist, but lack the critical thinking skills to realize that there are members pushing an incredibly left-wing agenda. "I checked out the sub a few times, and I didn't realize that it was supposed to be anti-work (against work) [I thought it was just people talking about] bad bosses, bad companies to work for, and advice for people that are facing conflict" (+389) You joined /r/AntiWork, and didn't realize it was about the abolition of work? They're not exactly subtlety about it. The description of the subreddit is "A subreddit for those who want to end work." The sidebar links to /r/Anarchy. And they get publicity, they get a radical leftist on TV making communist talking points, and suddenly, the subreddit backtracks? Why? This goes back to me taking everything literally. If you say you want to abolish work, I'm honestly surprised that you have a job at all. Next you're going to be telling me that Tumblr user @death2america doesn't want to abolish the United States.
Link 1:49 p.m. Jan 27, 2022, UTC-5

Socialist revolution has turned to anarchy and infighting and it hasn’t even started yet!
Link 1:17 p.m. Jan 27, 2022, UTC-5

The key to understanding the Trolley Problem is that there's implicitly an antagonist who is responsible for constructing the hypothetical.
Link 9:25 a.m. Jan 27, 2022, UTC-5

If this is what that looks like, then I’m not interested.
Remind me to decline if I’m ever offered a Nobel prize.
Link 12:13 a.m. Jan 27, 2022, UTC-5

Blaseball on one screen, Minecraft on another, just vibing.
Link 9:59 p.m. Jan 26, 2022, UTC-5

I still can't get over the quarter that Apple made up over 100% of the mobile phone industry's revenue, because Samsung recalled all the
Note 7s and posted a huge loss for the quarter. So Apple made more money than every phone company (including Apple), combined.
Link 9:49 p.m. Jan 26, 2022, UTC-5

Culture is a flat disk.
Link 9:34 p.m. Jan 26, 2022, UTC-5

Writing code for me is like a jigsaw puzzle. If I see two pieces that connect, I'm going to grab them off the table and put them together,
even if I don't have anything else that they connect to. So it's really weird to do code analysis on my programs before I'm done writing them, because they're not complete, and they're not even internally consistent. (I don't want to sound like I'm the only one that thinks this. There's some really interesting work being done to try to design editors and type checkers around "holes." But it's all experimental for now.)
Link 6:48 p.m. Jan 26, 2022, UTC-5

You don't understand how hard it is to be a perfectionist.
Link 6:43 p.m. Jan 26, 2022, UTC-5

I'm like almost ADHD when writing code. I'll start writing something, and be half way through a line, but my mind has been working on the
next line, so I jump down and write that line before I forget it, and then I go back and finish the line I was originally working on. I think this is why I get so frustrated to with like anything that tries to analyze my code as I'm typing, either to give syntax errors, or even auto-indent it. Like your auto-indenter is going to be wrong if I took a break in the middle of writing my function, and I'm writing the line that calls the function. I don't mind it if I can fix the indention obviously, but like some editors *force* indentation, and I have to go back and add closing brackets to the function declaration above.
Link 6:43 p.m. Jan 26, 2022, UTC-5

You can't embed sanity within an insane system.
Link 6:16 p.m. Jan 26, 2022, UTC-5

*Ben Shapiro voice* 'Curious how your blog post about how Gemini is good, is shared over HTTPs.'
It's like these people have never read https://gemini.circumlunar.space. Which opens with 'Gemini will not replace the web.'
Link 1:52 p.m. Jan 26, 2022, UTC-5

I can't be. The person I want to be.
Link 3:29 p.m. Jan 25, 2022, UTC-5

It's hard to teach tech because you want to start with simple, older technologies, because they're simpler, but they're also bad.
Like how do you teach someone about HTTPs and not HTTP? But you also have to make clear that websites in 2022 probably shouldn't be using HTTP.
Link 1:17 p.m. Jan 25, 2022, UTC-5

Aaahhhaaah
Link 1:13 p.m. Jan 25, 2022, UTC-5

How is this the first time I'm reading Steph Week's wiki page?
"Weeks is readily identified by his nine eyes and nine hands, each carrying a bat. The bats are named after the nine days of the week"
Link 11:13 a.m. Jan 25, 2022, UTC-5

Jands really put all of the chaotic energy into one player. Munavoi is the chaotic scapegoat of the team.
Link 11:06 a.m. Jan 25, 2022, UTC-5

The thing about Blaseball is that it's not a game, it's a cultural event. And as long as you know about it, you are participating.
Confused? So is everyone else. You can learn more about Blaseball, but it's structured such that you're pretty much always confused. The people that don't know what Blaseball is, provided they know *of* it, are just as much participants as anyone else.
Link 10:38 a.m. Jan 25, 2022, UTC-5

'Just write simple HTML' *Simple HTML is 100X more complicated than Gemtext!* *Markdown is 10X more complicated than Gemtext*
Link 11:38 p.m. Jan 24, 2022, UTC-5

Gemini gets so much hate for being different. I can't take it.
And like, since there's so little substance to Gemini, you really can't criticize it for anything but being different, but man, people do. Like, there's no argument you can make against Gemini that you can't make against either a) Twitter having a character limit or b) any protocol that is not HTTP(s)+HTML.
Link 11:37 p.m. Jan 24, 2022, UTC-5

Is it time for something different?
Link 9:34 p.m. Jan 24, 2022, UTC-5

I wish I had a flying desk.
Link 5:35 p.m. Jan 24, 2022, UTC-5

I should totally start a crypto/Web3 arc. Ah! Matthias with an NFT profile picture, I can see it.
Link 11:41 p.m. Jan 23, 2022, UTC-5

"I know I'd rather lose my life / than have to lose myself"
-Chemical Angel, Watsky "But baby maybe it's a problem when you got a problem / and you get addicted to the cure" -Tears To Diamonds, Watsky Anti-anti-depressants is such a take.
Link 10:50 p.m. Jan 23, 2022, UTC-5

“This is not an endorsement of arson.”
Link 6:28 p.m. Jan 23, 2022, UTC-5

Blaseball is back bay-bee
Link 4:47 p.m. Jan 23, 2022, UTC-5

Best sub-league again, Bop.
Link 4:47 p.m. Jan 23, 2022, UTC-5

Re-reading "On the Arbitration of Self" which I haven't read since I wrote it, and like, wow. Rhetorically I'm off the wall.
"Though intuition cries out in protest, logic ignores it." If I forgot that I wrote that, and you showed it to me, I wouldn't believe you that I wrote it. It does not match any writing style that I've used for anything else as far as I can remember. => https://rigby.krikorian.ca/post/8410098d-b13e-44e2-a244-b59fdaf080cc (Let me know if this link breaks, I have a backup.)
Link 2:54 p.m. Jan 23, 2022, UTC-5

"What's bigger than Everything?"
-Only Connect - Series 10 - Episode 5
Link 1:11 p.m. Jan 23, 2022, UTC-5

"Are we back?" The start of The Incomparable 2021 Clip Show is so good. They just open with the clip loop. Off the bat.
Link 12:34 p.m. Jan 23, 2022, UTC-5

I'm so tempted to do it. I'm so tempted to just do it. To just drop $60 for Audio Hijack.
Link 10:26 p.m. Jan 21, 2022, UTC-5

It's interesting, since I've added a search page here, I've started to use this more as a personal knowledge repository. Which was really
not how it was built, but like, if it functions like "for free," then why not?
Link 10:20 p.m. Jan 21, 2022, UTC-5

Writing a LISP in Vim. Feels wrong somehow. And yet, so right.
Link 9:53 p.m. Jan 21, 2022, UTC-5

I’m firmly in the lowercase “into” camp. I think they decided on the wrong way.
They decided on following the capitalization of official media, but no other Wikipedia page follows “official” portrayal over rules of grammar. See, e.g. the Wikipedia page of any band or company that stylized their own name in all lowercase. But like, I’m sure there’s a reason that they decided the way they did and I haven’t read the 40,000 word argument or the Wikipedia style guide or anything.
Link 8:18 a.m. Jan 21, 2022, UTC-5

For some reason it’s easier for me to compliment people in Toki Pona. Normally I’m not very good at complimenting people.
Which is kind of ironic, since TP is supposed to be “polite by default.” Like, I don’t need to end all my sentences with “sina pona” but I want to. sina mute li pona.
Link 7:53 a.m. Jan 21, 2022, UTC-5

My generation has an interesting relationship with poetry.
This post brought to you by /r/nonpoetry
Link 7:07 a.m. Jan 21, 2022, UTC-5

You can’t tell me e e cummings wouldn’t use neopronouns. Like the type of person who always wrote his name in lower case would totally be on
board with more interesting pronouns. (Unfortunately, I’m not about to guess what pronouns, that’s a slippery slope to retconning the gender of historical figures.)
Link 7:07 a.m. Jan 21, 2022, UTC-5

People explaining UDP/TCP are like, 'TCP orders your packets, UDP doesn't. UDP stands for Unreliable. UDP is bad, TCP is good.'
*Always more nuance.*
Link 1:17 p.m. Jan 20, 2022, UTC-5

Like if you get a 100% on a test, you're not just perfect, you've transcended the level of the material being tested.
Link 10:51 a.m. Jan 20, 2022, UTC-5

I don't just want to be perfect. I want to *transcend.*
Link 10:47 a.m. Jan 20, 2022, UTC-5

You can't run from your typographical responsibility.
Link 10:47 a.m. Jan 20, 2022, UTC-5

I hate time I hate the concept of time I hate entropy I hate that everything falls apart if I don’t actively hold it together.
Link 2:59 a.m. Jan 20, 2022, UTC-5

I can't control what I think about.
Link 2:44 a.m. Jan 20, 2022, UTC-5

I'm playing chess but everyone else is playing checkers. But like, the game is actually checkers and I'm just overcomplicating it.
Link 1:11 a.m. Jan 20, 2022, UTC-5

If I had a shovel I'd go make an igloo right now.
Link 12:59 a.m. Jan 20, 2022, UTC-5

I'm infinite people and none of them are real.
Link 12:56 a.m. Jan 20, 2022, UTC-5

And now, for something different.
Link 10:00 p.m. Jan 19, 2022, UTC-5

Even the Brandon Sanderson fans don’t like the *Rithmatist.*
It’s not that they don’t like it, but Sanderson just has written so much that there has to be something missed.
Link 9:46 p.m. Jan 19, 2022, UTC-5

There have been days that have seen me better.
In other news, I crafted a master infusion crystal.
Link 8:06 p.m. Jan 19, 2022, UTC-5

There's this guy on Youtube that posts railcart videos, and the comments are all "is this safe?" and like, your alternative is trainhopping
Link 1:07 p.m. Jan 19, 2022, UTC-5

Okay going to bed.
Link 1:59 a.m. Jan 19, 2022, UTC-5

Down to 18 open tabs in Safari on my phone. I haven’t been at 0 tabs for as long as I can remember. I was at 150+ just a couple weeks ago,
I’ve been whittling them down.
Link 12:54 a.m. Jan 19, 2022, UTC-5

Muted the Vivaldi Discord server. We had a good multi-year run, but I don’t check Discord enough anymore to stay on top of messages there.
Link 12:52 a.m. Jan 19, 2022, UTC-5

Like, my brain has so many sources, so many pieces of media that I've consumed, that like, I could never come up with an original idea for
the rest of my life and just pass of things I've read on the internet as my own ideas. And like, I'm not Googling the question and copying an answer. I mean, I saw someone discussing this point on the internet 4 years ago and internalized their opinion and I honestly don't know if their opinion is mine or not because I haven't researched it myself but I somehow know enough to have a conversation about it. Like, I could pitch you 30 different video games, which are just blatantly stolen from Khan Academy, but I know that the original programs were unpopular or deleted and the games have taken on a new life in my head. If I wrote a cross-over fan fiction between two works that have probably each been read by ~1000 people, and I change the names of the characters, at some point does this become an original work? If every line of my poem comes from a different Reddit comment, is it my poetry?
Link 9:51 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

It is difficult to understand the mood that I am in.
Link 9:41 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

There were a lot of scenes in *Polar Express* that pushed the boundaries of how I conceptualize human interactions.
Link 9:38 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

Turning on Tap-To-Click (I'm lazy)
Link 9:32 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

Blorbo from my shows.
Link 9:32 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

Thinking about *Check, Please!*
Link 8:19 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

Man Covid is really going to screw up a generation. It’s going to be wild.
Link 6:03 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

I just know that if Donne was alive today he'd have a fricking baller Twitter account.
Link 3:53 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

Donne really said, 'why do girls never go for nice guys but let themselves be used by mosquitos.' In 1590.
Link 3:46 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

I think one of the things that makes the flea so iconic to me is that it's like satire. Like it's not only funny, and the time period and
everything, but also, it implies the existence of a very different poem, which makes more legitimate arguments. And Donne didn't write that other poem. possibly the GOAT.
Link 3:40 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

It's been 400 years and "The Flea" is still so funny to me. What a meme of a poem.
Link 3:18 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

Hit 1,000 notes.
Screenshot of the sidebar of Apple Notes, showing 1,000 total notes.
Link 3:01 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

Throwback to that time in 2018 when I went through a limerick phrase.
Link 2:51 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

Something about poetry.
Link 2:31 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

Big fan of the Great Fire of London. 1666 was a good year.
Link 2:06 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

I microdose insanity to keep me sane.
Link 12:54 p.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

Reddit /r/dataisbeautiful users absolutely visceral upon encountering someone who tithes.
Link 1:38 a.m. Jan 18, 2022, UTC-5

The problem with IQ is that it's one dimensional. (Aside from other obvious problems.) I think a 2-dimensional IQ test could be really
interesting.
Link 7:02 p.m. Jan 17, 2022, UTC-5

Maybe it's a good thing that I don't know how to use Wattpad.
Link 6:20 p.m. Jan 17, 2022, UTC-5

Ok hear me out, Agan Harrison Outskirts head canon.
Link 5:32 p.m. Jan 17, 2022, UTC-5

Made banana bread around 10 or 11 today. It’s all been eaten.
Link 5:24 p.m. Jan 17, 2022, UTC-5

“where does the photograph end?”
Link 4:40 p.m. Jan 17, 2022, UTC-5

It's not that I'm ignoring you, it's just I'm not paying attention to you right now.
Link 3:54 p.m. Jan 17, 2022, UTC-5

Processing is still something else. Writing p5 is kinda fun.
Link 2:44 p.m. Jan 17, 2022, UTC-5

I love browsing Hacker News by new. The front page tends to be the same topics, but New gets weird. Not least because of the "Ask HN" posts.
There are a lot of Ask HN posts made, most of which seem to take Hacker News as a divine bestower of knowledge. It's like Quora but a super specific demographic. Ask HN exists to function like Ask Reddit. But it gets used like StackOverflow or worse, /r/Relationship_advice. 'Ask HN: How to deal with join pain?' 'How to stop people from stealing my SD cards' 'Should I buy my 4 year old color blind glasses' A whole bunch of questions that technically fit because they're tech, but should really be Google searches. 'Where to buy cables?' 'What YouTubers make JS tutorials?' Ah. The internet.
Link 12:21 a.m. Jan 17, 2022, UTC-5

Not me, trying to make playlists.
Link 9:43 p.m. Jan 16, 2022, UTC-5

Let's go!
Link 9:40 p.m. Jan 16, 2022, UTC-5

Maybe arrays were a myth the whole time.
Can you imagine if we didn't have arrays?
Link 9:07 p.m. Jan 16, 2022, UTC-5

Can't believe they delayed the Blaseball broadcast. I'm so excited. I want Blaseball to be back.
Link 9:01 p.m. Jan 16, 2022, UTC-5

Feature creep turns things that are boring into things that are bad.
For an example, let's say Mark is working as an engineer adding a smart assistant to a microwave. Mark has been effected by the disease of feature creep. (Whether Mark uses his own product, or is passionate about microwaves, or particularly cares about his job doesn't matter.) When most people see a normal microwave ("base" microwave), they're bored by it. They've seen it before. When Mark sees a base microwave in his friend's house, because he's been effected by feature creep, he thinks "this microwave is bad because it doesn't have a voice assistant." I'm being very particular with my wording. It's possible that Mark uses and loves his voice assistant microwave. But it's possible he doesn't. It's possible that he would be legitimately inconvenienced by the lack of a voice assistant. But the "feature creep" disease doesn't care about practicality. It effects the way Mark thinks about his friend's microwave, which Mark has never used. It's not about liking features or missing them. You can be a smart-home enthusiast, of the opinion that all microwaves are best with voice assistants. But if you don't spend all your time around voice assistant microwaves, like Mark does, you can walk into your friend's house, and see a base microwave and not think anything of it. Feature creep isn't about wanting more features. That's the other point. Mark doesn't want a camera or a TV or a laser projector in his microwave. Feature creep doesn't make you want more features. Mark isn't dumb. Mark knows that not everyone has a smart microwave. He still calls a base microwave a "normal" microwave. It's not that the goalposts have moved. But a voice assistant microwave is not impressive to Mark anymore. And a base microwave is actively unimpressive. Like, a golfer who starts passionately playing golf, practicing every day, and getting better, still knows that par is the standard, and knows that they're getting better. The first time they get better than par, they get a certain rush from it. The 100th time they get under par, they still know that they've a good job, but they don't feel the same way. It's not an addiction either. Addictions cause you to suffer withdrawal or negative effects. Feature creep doesn't have negative mental effects, not really. It's just desensitizing you to existing features.
Link 6:49 p.m. Jan 16, 2022, UTC-5

Feature creep fails to convey the need.
Link 5:49 p.m. Jan 16, 2022, UTC-5

Working on my A* implementation again. https://ourjseditor.com/program/t462QC
Link 2:40 p.m. Jan 16, 2022, UTC-5

I'm so fricking slow I have to go non-stop if I want to get anything done.
Link 2:39 p.m. Jan 16, 2022, UTC-5

"How do you write like you're running about of time?"
Link 2:03 p.m. Jan 16, 2022, UTC-5

I think Gemini could have benefitted from more creativity in its medium. More than just a blog, while still being minimalistic of course.
Like this website, for example. Is pretty simple, but is also more interesting than a blog.
Link 12:13 p.m. Jan 16, 2022, UTC-5

This recording is from like 4 months ago. Apparently my standards for readings were higher than or something, so I didn't post it.
I've had "nothing means, nothing only means" stuck in my head for days. Source is https://www.reddit.com/r/seventhworldproblems/comments/pisi8g/runprotocolsoul_mate/hbsprqo/
Transcript
I was unprepared to see it. This scene, although chronologically in the middle and unimportant, serves to convey a defining tone that sets fire to the frame. To reveal what became, a man claiming to be the son of the atheist, master of the lost road west, to nowhere, nothing means nothing only means, a sketch of time, of a time of dust. I waited by the last standing pillar. She's haunted me half my life. Nothing came. Some external words, or other, profane, but the text must be legible. I might do why not? Might take a chrysalis form, a germ plasm, and then and again, one might hazard, reorganized, a bloody ghost when I arrive.
Link 12:11 a.m. Jan 16, 2022, UTC-5

Did the universe just come into being a minute ago?
Link 9:52 p.m. Jan 15, 2022, UTC-5

"ERROR: We've reached an unreachable state. Anything is possible. The limits were in our heads all along. Follow your dreams."
Link 7:27 p.m. Jan 15, 2022, UTC-5

My ideal web browser would be Safari with mouse gestures.
Link 3:07 p.m. Jan 15, 2022, UTC-5

One of the things that I can do with this website that I can't do with most other mediums is pretend that my experiences are shared or
understood by everyone here, while acknowledging that they aren't universal. I'm not describing that well, but it makes sense, trust me.
Link 12:08 a.m. Jan 15, 2022, UTC-5

I want friends but don’t want to talk to people. I just want to listen to them. It’s a struggle.
Link 6:03 p.m. Jan 14, 2022, UTC-5

I still live in 2012.
Link 3:18 p.m. Jan 14, 2022, UTC-5

Am I supposed to have friends?
Link 3:17 p.m. Jan 14, 2022, UTC-5

Working on my new Mira Cole head canon.
Link 2:44 p.m. Jan 14, 2022, UTC-5

Everyone else is only a single person, but I am the conglomeration of infinitely many people.
Link 11:23 a.m. Jan 14, 2022, UTC-5

I just have to write a web server. How hard can it be?
Link 10:26 a.m. Jan 14, 2022, UTC-5

My real problem with editors is that I am unable to write code with any theme other than Atom One Dark.
Link 10:51 p.m. Jan 13, 2022, UTC-5

I'm Matthias.
Link 5:58 p.m. Jan 13, 2022, UTC-5

Definitely a fun reading, will hopefully revisit it in the future. (From last night, edited to remove a break.)
Transcript
E. E. Cummings Introduction to New Poems The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople– it’s no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than the squarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings;mostpeople are snobs. Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to mostpeople? Catastrophe unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked out of his hyperexclusively ultravoluptuous superpalazzo,and dumped into an incredibly vulgar detentioncamp swarming with every conceivable species of undesirable organism. Mostpeople fancy a guaranteed birthproof safetysuit of nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they’d improbably call it dying– you and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough. We are human beings;for whom birth is a supremely welcome mystery,the mystery of growing:which happens only and whenever we are faithful to ourselves. You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming. Life,for eternal us,is now’and now is much to busy being a little more than everything to seem anything,catastrophic included. Life,for mostpeople,simply isn’t. Take the socalled standardofliving. What do mostpeople mean by “living”? They don’t mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science,in its finite but unbounded wisdom,has succeeded in selling their wives. If science could fail,a mountain’s a mammal. Mostpeople’s wives could spot a genuine delusion of embryonic omnipotence immediately and will accept no substitutes. -luckily for us,a mountain is a mammal. The plusorminus movie to end moving,the strictly scientific parlourgame of real unreality,the tyranny conceived in misconception and dedicated to the proposition that every man is a woman and any woman is a king,hasn’t a wheel to stand on. What their synthetic not to mention transparent majesty, mrsandmr collective foetus,would improbably call a ghost is walking. He isn’t a undream of anaesthetized impersons, or a cosmic comfortstation,or a transcedentally sterilized lookiesoundiefeelietastiesmellie. He is a healthily complex,a naturally homogenous,citizen of immorality. The now of his each pitying free imperfect gesture,his any birth of breathing,insults perfected inframortally milleniums of slavishness. He is a little more than everything,he is democracy;he is alive:he is ourselves. Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn,a human being;somebody who said to those near him,when his fingers would not hold a brush “tie it to my hand”– nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false,nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or extraordinary,nothing emptied or filled,real or unreal;nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening,innocent spontaneaous,true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden,but actually flowers which breasts are amoung the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted;brain over heart, surface:nowhere hating or to fear;shadow,mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making;only each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno,impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong;never to gain or pause,never the soft adventure of undoom,greedy anguishes and cringing ecstasies of inexistence;never to rest and never to have;only to grow. Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question
Link 4:16 p.m. Jan 13, 2022, UTC-5

The SCP wiki has started fricking adding all sort of JS and cosmetic weirdness. The content! It's not about anything else!
Link 4:04 p.m. Jan 13, 2022, UTC-5

Poetry attempts to capture That emotion which surrounds us. It tries to describe. It tries to portray. The world and ourselves. The world.
Words in a loop like a lasso attempt to capture leaves. The words describe ourselves, Evoke emotion unbounded And feeling and meaning. Pain and joy alike Poetry is words given power, words brought to life.
Link 3:36 p.m. Jan 13, 2022, UTC-5

Winter 2021 Hytale update is all "we're far from done" & "we've been prototyping some fairly dramatic changes." I'm moving my release
estimate from late 2022 to 2024. Oh my word I thought that was conservative. But somewhere else on their website they say "we no longer expect to be ready to launch Hytale before 2023 at the earliest, and it could very well take longer." They were acquired by Riot in 2020, and the FAQ says > Will this acquisition delay Hytale? > We’re still aiming for Hytale to be playable by everyone in 2021. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the acquisition has delayed Hytale. We'll be lucky to see it before 2025 at this point.
Link 2:23 p.m. Jan 13, 2022, UTC-5

Can you imagine the person from Hypixel that had to explain to the Cloudflare engineers that their users have the server ping displayed on
the screen at all times and that if the latency increased by so much as 30ms, users will notice and complain. Network engineering nightmare.
Link 1:45 p.m. Jan 13, 2022, UTC-5

Uh. If I’m not on drugs, why do I feel so much?
Link 9:45 a.m. Jan 13, 2022, UTC-5

Apparently *Sky* and *Journey* are different games.
Link 9:32 a.m. Jan 13, 2022, UTC-5

Good morning!
Link 8:32 a.m. Jan 13, 2022, UTC-5

I tried to do a reading of "Introduction to New Poems". The piece has so much energy and such a quick tempo, while also
being a total tongue twister. I was proud of it after finishing, I only really paused once, but listening to it again, I end up hesitating on every fifth syllable because cummings has invented a word. Might post it tomorrow if I remember.
Link 12:07 a.m. Jan 13, 2022, UTC-5

"You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming."
Link 11:35 p.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Everything I've ever written is poetry.
I talk to myself a lot. And even if I'm not talking out loud, I have a constant narration in my head. And so almost everything I write is first said, and so is intended to be said.
Link 11:26 p.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Oh, you know what else won't hurt me? Only Connect!
Link 10:21 p.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Link 9:45 p.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

My problem is that I am on anti-drugs. That is to say, I am doing not every drug. Which is kind of a lot. Possibly an uncountably infinite
number of drugs that I am not doing.
Link 6:28 p.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Link 12:00 p.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

I've editing some old posts to fix some super minor typos, but they're things that have been bothering me for a while, so it's pretty nice.
Link 11:22 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

That's a lie. I do care. I care about everything. I want this website to be perfect. But I don't know where the 500 errors are and I don't
like Google and I have other things to do so I'm going to try to convince myself that I don't care, so that I can move on.
Link 10:54 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Google has emailed me to inform me that this site is returning 500 errors and will be downgraded in search results. I don't care.
Link 10:49 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Muffins are like fruit created by humans.
Link 10:46 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Blorbo Tumblr is on like 4 levels of irony.
Link 7:13 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

It would be so cool if I could compile my code.
Link 5:52 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

.
Transcript
“A wave. A great and terrible wave of darkness will swallow us. Eternal night. An end to hope. Where do you hide from a shadow bigger than the world? Can we fight the night? Can we outrun darkness? The wave looks over all, growing as it consumes, engulfing everything.”
Link 5:46 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Now that I have editing on here, it's weird because I have to make a bunch of decisions about what gets edited and what doesn't.
Let's say, I can fix typos. Because that's why I added editing. And I can edit content with a disclaimer (like "Edit:" or "Edited at [time] for [reason]"). And I can edit stylistically/formatting whenever I want. (Like if I invent a custom markup format I might need to go back and update links that are currently Gemini or markdown formatted). I'll try to avoid editing content.
Link 5:44 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Kinda missing the expansion era NGL
Re-reading the Blaseball wiki page for the Turntables mod. "Any Win earned from a non-loss during the Regular Season will be converted to an Unwin." One of the most beautiful things I've ever read.
Link 5:27 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Apparently, WILLOW is Willow Smith, Will Smith's daughter, and made "Whip My Hair" back when she was 10. Doesn't change the fact that
"Transparent Soul" fricking slaps.
Link 5:20 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Tom Scott's "gamer-adjacent culture" Twitter thread lives in my head rent free.
Tom Scott on why he won't make a video on a video game: > I'm not writing off video games. I was on a charity Among Us stream yesterday, it was fun. But I am writing off that gamer-adjacent culture, and trying to avoid the perception of even being _remotely_ connected to it.
Link 5:18 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Nate Ruess just does whatever the frick he wants.
Link 5:10 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

I really just say things on this website don't I
Link 5:06 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

It's if day for Winnipeg
Link 4:52 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

After my last Thought, I immediately went to bed. So I guess my sleep schedule looks like this now.
Link 3:14 a.m. Jan 12, 2022, UTC-5

Why can’t I keep my eyes open?
Link 8:11 p.m. Jan 11, 2022, UTC-5

Chilling at inbox zero. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Link 5:52 p.m. Jan 11, 2022, UTC-5

Oh yeah I forgot to mention that I finished my re-read of Five Kingdoms on the 9th. It was very good. Definitely an epic story.
It also partially inspired a lot of the previous Thoughts, but that should go without saying.
Link 3:37 p.m. Jan 11, 2022, UTC-5

So.
This is the end of an age. I want my life to mean something. Not to other people, but to myself. I want to have meaning. But I don't want a small meaning. I want an infinite meaning. I want the world in the palms of my hands. Or at least to be a finger of the hands that hold the universe. Every moment has meaning. Would it really be worth it, to save a world if I couldn't remember it? Would I go home? "Do you fear being shaken by the shoulders like an etch-a-sketch. Being mugged for your memories? I do. They are my first most prized possession." I want my memories to be valuable. I want to see the stars. "Do you feel it in your bones?" Not 'what do I want'. I want everything. I want infinity. I want infinite perfect worlds with infinite perfect things and infinite perfect people. But who do I want to be? Do I want to be a god? Do I want to be more? Anything I create will be less than me. And I am imperfect. I want to be perfect. I want to spectate. I want to fly. I want to be Matthias. I want to be weird to be memorable. I want people to remember me. But who do I want to be. I want to know. I want to know what I am doing. I want to have confidence that I am right. Not to fly, but to fight. For a cause. For the right cause. I am nothing without other people. "He just needed saving from himself." I want to be powerful.
Link 3:33 p.m. Jan 11, 2022, UTC-5

Thinking about becoming an English teacher just for the aesthetic. The vibes.
Link 2:40 p.m. Jan 11, 2022, UTC-5

I am filled with anxiety.
Link 2:29 p.m. Jan 11, 2022, UTC-5

Checking if there are any new posts on my favorite website, Thoughts Learnerpages
Link 11:33 a.m. Jan 11, 2022, UTC-5

My `git` pager is screwed up again :/
Link 8:57 a.m. Jan 11, 2022, UTC-5

"Was somebody saying something?"
Link 8:51 a.m. Jan 11, 2022, UTC-5

Reporting bugs in open source projects 🥰
Link 7:46 a.m. Jan 11, 2022, UTC-5

I had a fricking bracket in the directory name so of course it didn't build. This is the first and last time I use special characters in my
filenames.
Link 6:57 a.m. Jan 11, 2022, UTC-5

I don’t know what Wordle is. I feel out of the loop.
Link 5:56 a.m. Jan 11, 2022, UTC-5

I have failed in my attempt to compile code for my ESP module.
Link 11:19 p.m. Jan 10, 2022, UTC-5

Fairly big update today. Everything looks exactly the same, except for the few things that don't.
Link 10:24 p.m. Jan 09, 2022, UTC-5

toki ala toki e toki pona?
Link 12:52 p.m. Jan 09, 2022, UTC-8

“A wave. A great and terrible wave of darkness will swallow us. Eternal night. An end to hope. Where do you hide from a shadow bigger than
the world? Can we fight the night? Can we outrun darkness? The wave looks over all, growing as it consumes, engulfing everything.”
Link 12:30 p.m. Jan 09, 2022, UTC-8

“I found out / your like, the real Matthias / wow”
Link 11:53 a.m. Jan 09, 2022, UTC-8

What’s wrong with me?
Link 9:17 a.m. Jan 09, 2022, UTC-8

My concern with the metaverse is not that it's impossible to make, but that you would end up making something like EVE Online.
Link 8:48 a.m. Jan 09, 2022, UTC-8

Rigby really is dead. RIP.
Link 12:10 a.m. Jan 09, 2022, UTC-8

I think part of my problem is that I wait until I’m quite tired to do anything.
Link 11:31 p.m. Jan 08, 2022, UTC-8

“My sorrow is an ocean without shores”
Link 10:22 p.m. Jan 08, 2022, UTC-8

mi wile moku
Link 7:12 p.m. Jan 08, 2022, UTC-8

I finished my re-read of the fourth Five Kingdoms. (I think this was my 3rd time through it, I reread it right after I read it the first
time.) It looks like I won’t be able to read the 5th book before tomorrow, unfortunately.
Link 7:06 p.m. Jan 08, 2022, UTC-8

How do you explore the vast world that is humanity?
Link 7:01 p.m. Jan 08, 2022, UTC-8

“You could see your surroundings best during the day, but when could you see the farthest? At night. The stars.”
Link 5:37 p.m. Jan 08, 2022, UTC-8

My life doesn’t have a villain, a plot. This is the same problem I face in my writing.
Link 12:03 p.m. Jan 08, 2022, UTC-8

One of my personal mottos is “always more nuance.” Truth is fractal, and the more detail you can provide, the closer you get to the truth.
Link 12:00 p.m. Jan 08, 2022, UTC-8

I was born at the wrong time, but like, by a couple of years. If I had been born 5 years earlier I would be such a chad.
Link 11:46 a.m. Jan 08, 2022, UTC-8

I’m stating the obvious but Toki Pona has a tiny vocabulary. If I want to say “good morning” the closest I can get is “tenpo pona”
Link 11:37 a.m. Jan 08, 2022, UTC-8

Good morning!
Link 10:24 a.m. Jan 08, 2022, UTC-8

*Wait a minute!* Toki Pona is just Lisp without the parentheses.
Link 11:10 p.m. Jan 07, 2022, UTC-8

Why don’t we slow down and make software that works?
Link 4:07 p.m. Jan 07, 2022, UTC-8

There’s like no cyan on the About page, it’s kind of lame.
Link 3:27 p.m. Jan 07, 2022, UTC-8

Ah
Link 3:26 p.m. Jan 07, 2022, UTC-8

Just learned about vim easy mode (`-y`). All the people are Hacker News are just being mean, but I'm about to fricking us it as my default
editor. After I configure some iTerm key re-mappings so I can use command instead of control.
Link 6:55 a.m. Jan 07, 2022, UTC-8

I feel guilty and stressed and sick and unhappy and I don’t know why.
Link 6:41 a.m. Jan 07, 2022, UTC-8

My brain has decided it is time to be awake.
Link 6:04 a.m. Jan 07, 2022, UTC-8

After the Dragonwatch 2 twist I protested Mull for a couple of days, but I can’t last long. I have an addiction, you see. I just got to the
Hunter reveal in the third Five Kingdoms. It happens way later in the book than I expected (still not at the very end like in Dragonwatch, though *glare*.)
Link 10:14 p.m. Jan 06, 2022, UTC-8

Thinking about HvZ again.
Link 6:33 p.m. Jan 06, 2022, UTC-8

This is “camels, microscopes, yams, hydrogen, coral reefs, mannequins, poems, comets, mousetraps, sarcasm, cacti, labyrinths”
“Contains less than 2% uranium, cyanide, cobwebs, magma, polio.”
Link 6:14 p.m. Jan 06, 2022, UTC-8

Official Blaseball Discord server banning MEE6 5 seconds after MEE6 teased NFTs. Iconic.
Link 4:45 p.m. Jan 06, 2022, UTC-8

"I would fight a duel for a trifle, for an insult, for a blow;"
> understand me, I would fight a duel for a trifle, for an insult, for a blow; and the more so that, thanks to my skill in all bodily exercises, and the indifference to danger I have gradually acquired, I should be almost certain to kill my man. Oh, I would fight for such a cause; but in return for a slow, profound, eternal torture, I would give back the same, were it possible; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as the Orientalists say,—our masters in everything,—those favored creatures who have formed for themselves a life of dreams and a paradise of realities. -The Count of Monte Cristo
Link 2:37 p.m. Jan 06, 2022, UTC-8

Okay this is authorization attempt number 3.
I got rid of the code referenced in my second ever Thought. => https://thoughts.learnerpages.com/?show=d90ad16e-df3a-437f-b4fc-be2c9539b9d2
Link 12:10 p.m. Jan 06, 2022, UTC-8

I shouldn't have technical debt on this website; it's like 500 lines of Python. And yet, when I rewrite the 10 lines that control
authentication, suddenly I can't render UTF-8 characters. \*sigh* A screenshot of some timestamps from this website, but what should be the bullet point separating the timestamps from the permalink is instead rendered as "a euro-sign cent-sign"
Link 11:43 a.m. Jan 06, 2022, UTC-8

"Damn kids. They're all alike."
Link 11:27 a.m. Jan 06, 2022, UTC-8

*And we're back!*
Bit of downtime there, I got frustrated. I tried to move the login page to HTTP Basic auth, and it worked locally, but on the server didn't authenticate me, without any error messages. So I took the website down for a bit out of frustration. I've reverted to a working state. ``` Why the fricking hell is logging with Apache so fricking bad! So me the fricking error log!? What the frick? 18:33 Sorry for the downtime. I'm not smart enough to make a website I guess. Sorry. 18:33 AAADAHWDUAHDAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHHHAHAHHHHHHHH 21:18 If you have an endpoint that returns 401 Unauthorized and a Basic Auth prompt, Firefox doesn't log it in the network console. 21:24 "You need a plot. What you wanna witness with this life you got?" 11:14 ```
Link 11:24 a.m. Jan 06, 2022, UTC-8

I'm so fricking glad Gemini doesn't have forms. No-JS forms are such a pain.
Link 4:43 p.m. Jan 05, 2022, UTC-8

I really wish Lite or Lite XL was good. The problem is that they start by building the UI/rendering from scratch, and it's just not polished
Link 4:41 p.m. Jan 05, 2022, UTC-8

I want NOTHING highlighted, VS Code. Unless I select it by dragging my mouse, there should not be any highlighting happening.
I click on a word and VS Code is like 'Oh! Let's make that word a different color! And we can highlight every other instance of that word! And let's highlight the enclosing brackets! And make the indent-guide for the current indentation level a different color! And draw a box around the current line!' Me: "Please move the cursor and then stop!"
Link 1:02 p.m. Jan 05, 2022, UTC-8

Turning off every VS Code auto-code writing feature. I need no distractions.
Link 12:57 p.m. Jan 05, 2022, UTC-8

Screw it I'm installing VS code. It's getting uninstalled the first time it crashes or freezes though.
Link 12:48 p.m. Jan 05, 2022, UTC-8

I can't build Xi because it's 2022 and it hasn't been updated in 2 years.
Link 12:47 p.m. Jan 05, 2022, UTC-8

Atom is being so laggy as to be unusable. I'm looking at close to a second of input delay after my keystrokes.
I'm seriously about to switch back to fricking Xi because all I want is syntax highlighting and the ability to type and have my letters show up.
Link 12:38 p.m. Jan 05, 2022, UTC-8

I hate bedwars but at least it distracts me from how much I hate myself.
Link 12:01 p.m. Jan 05, 2022, UTC-8

Do you it live in a. Constant state of fear. ?
Link 1:45 a.m. Jan 05, 2022, UTC-8

I just can't bring myself to advertise. I can't do it. RIP.
Link 1:44 a.m. Jan 05, 2022, UTC-8

I’m tired. I wish I could go to sleep.
I can’t remember why I can’t go to sleep. Hm.
Link 12:18 a.m. Jan 05, 2022, UTC-8

One of these days I'm just going to snap and make my own font. It's going to be beautiful.
Link 10:33 p.m. Jan 04, 2022, UTC-8

Okay so I almost have the post page working without Javascript. But I need to ask the user for the timezone. Hm.
Link 10:25 p.m. Jan 04, 2022, UTC-8

My computer has broken in more interesting ways now. It really is messed up.
Link 8:01 p.m. Jan 04, 2022, UTC-8

Me: I just want software to work. My computer:
A picture of my computer screen with half of the macOS application switcher (cmd+tab) drawn on the screen, and the other half just not rendering. The menu bar is also glitched (not being drawn).
Link 7:39 p.m. Jan 04, 2022, UTC-8

~starbreaker quoting The Count to describe his political beliefs. Iconic. Iconic.
Link 6:11 p.m. Jan 04, 2022, UTC-8

WiFi really is an underappreciated invention. I'm outside on my computer!
(At least Linux users don't take WiFi for granted.)
Link 4:07 p.m. Jan 04, 2022, UTC-8

I think about the Pit of Success a lot.
=> https://blog.codinghorror.com/falling-into-the-pit-of-success/ The idea behind the pit of success is there's some metaphorical "gravity" pulling you down, analogous to doing whatever is easiest, and in some programming languages that pulls you down into traps, and in other languages that pulls you into the best possible scenario. The Pit of success wasn't meant to be graphed. But I like to graph things, so let's make some tweaks. ```Graph of Quality vs. Effort, showing a hill-shape Q u a / - \ l / \ i / \ t __/ y Effort ``` Suddenly, instead of a pit of success, we have a hill of success. This way of graphing things makes sense Quality is the dependent variable. "Gravity" is pulling us left, towards as little effort as a possible. What makes the pit of success really interesting is that you end up in a place where spending more time leads to a worse product. And this way of graphing make this really obvious. Increasing effort, past a certain point, gives an actually worse product. This might be hard to believe, but it's because we're really good at recognizing when there's not sufficient payoff and not continuing to work in that way. The basic example is re-implementing some library yourself. It takes more time and you likely end up with a worse result, when compared to using a pre-existing library. The further point to make is that most languages and programming environments don't look like this. They don't have a pit of success. Instead, what you often see is *diminishing results* for increasing Effort. So instead of this nice peak, that gives you a nice stopping point, you end up with a flat area. And this where a lot of projects die. When you get to the point where it doesn't make sense to continue putting in effort. But! There's an even worse scenario! In the case that an environment is very developer hostile, it looks like a logarithmic graph. There are no local maximums, no nice stopping points. It's always possible to make your product better, but more and more effort is required to do so. This is why creating Minecraft maps is hell.
Link 2:03 p.m. Jan 04, 2022, UTC-8

This site is awful because I never end up writing blog posts.
Link 1:29 p.m. Jan 04, 2022, UTC-8

I haven't written a computer program in months. My brain has rotted. I have forgotten how to write code.
I still think about code, of course. I'll never stop thinking about it. But writing it? Oooh, I don't know.
Link 11:58 p.m. Jan 03, 2022, UTC-8

O, I should watch *Firefly*.
Link 10:39 p.m. Jan 03, 2022, UTC-8

What was I thinking this looks so ugly. Well. We're riding with it until like March.
Link 5:17 p.m. Jan 03, 2022, UTC-8

Oh yeah just so it's clear, every time I say "I'm on drugs" I'm joking. I've never done a drug in my life.
Link 4:40 p.m. Jan 03, 2022, UTC-8

I am on so many drugs, and so to reflect that, I'm updating the color scheme again, to back to the prototype color scheme.
Link 4:38 p.m. Jan 03, 2022, UTC-8

Uh, here's my reading of the about page.
I'm sure it's garbage and there's a reason I didn't publish it earlier, but I want to do something, you know.
Transcript
Just me reading the text from https://thoughts.learnerpages.com/about
Link 3:20 p.m. Jan 03, 2022, UTC-8

I just, I feel sick.
Link 1:01 p.m. Jan 03, 2022, UTC-8

I am so screwed up. Screw it, I'm giving the second *Dragonwatch* 3 stars out of spite. Please. My characters.
Link 11:30 a.m. Jan 03, 2022, UTC-8

“Do you fear being shaken by the shoulders like an Etch A Sketch? Being mugged for your memories? I do. They are my first most prized
possession”
Link 10:37 a.m. Jan 03, 2022, UTC-8

Nope, I’m still traumatized.
Link 9:30 a.m. Jan 03, 2022, UTC-8

All I'm saying, is that at the end of the fifth *Fablehaven*, when Venessa says, "The only way to be safe from the Sphinx is if he ceases to
exist" maybe someone should have paid attention…aside from making a comment about her appearance. Might have been a good idea…
Link 1:05 a.m. Jan 03, 2022, UTC-8

Just skimmed a re-read of the first *Dragonwatch*, then finished the second. What the fricking hell?
I was under the impression, for some reason, that *Dragonwatch* targeted the same, younger, demographic that *Fablehaven* does. (Maybe because Mull has said as much multiple times. Honestly, that's part of the reason that I didn't read *Dragonwatch* earlier.) But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first book is pretty bad. I gave it like 4 stars when I first read it, but 4 stars for Mull is embarrassing. That's like, he's in exactly the genre that I want to read, but he's writing too poorly to get 5 stars. (Everything else by him that I had read was 5 stars.) What the frick happens in *Beyonders* that this is less scary? I'm terrified of the end of this second *Dragonwatch*. This is a nightmere twist ending. This is like, 'Mull got bored and got Brandon Sanderson to ghost-write' levels of twist ending. Like, I never expect or enjoy brutal twists at the end of books. But I really don't expect it from Mull. Wow. I guess there are some brutal betrayals and twists in *Fablehaven*, but those feel largely foreshadowed, don't effect the main cast of characters, are largely actionable (the characters can do something about them), and! they don't! happen at the very end of the book! This is honestly feels like Brandon Sanderson. What the hell. I am *so glad* I didn't buy the second Dragonwatch at publication, because I would have been traumatized. Still, traumatized is better than bored. Might just be because I've been re-reading, but I did appreciate the increase in action. I'm going to wait until morning to rate it because maybe this isn't actually a horror-story, and I'm just tired. but man!
Link 12:57 a.m. Jan 03, 2022, UTC-8

Mull just can’t let Patton go. We’re on our 4th time-travel-Patton.
Link 10:55 p.m. Jan 02, 2022, UTC-8

Quick test post to see if I've fixed a permissions bug.
Link 4:39 p.m. Jan 02, 2022, UTC-8

I take it back, you can still create an awful website without ads.
A screenshot of a full screen popup inviting me to join Consumer Report's mailing list for "weekly tips to help you stay safe, save money and more!"
Link 4:21 p.m. Jan 02, 2022, UTC-8

You don't even know how tempted I am to subscribe to *Consumer Reports* magazine. I can't handle the internet.
Link 4:11 p.m. Jan 02, 2022, UTC-8

I was like "how on earth can the Dewey Decimal System be homophobic?" but then
"topics relating to homosexuality were first added to the system under 132 (mental derangements)" Oh.
Link 1:17 p.m. Jan 02, 2022, UTC-8

"the spacious days of the stately three-volume novel seem very remote indeed…both opportunity and inclination are now lacking for such
extensive indulgence in the printed page." Me who binge-read 5 *Fablehaven* books in the last 5 days. Uh.
Link 12:20 p.m. Jan 02, 2022, UTC-8

I want to punch the person who wrote the Translator's Note for the abridged version of *The Count of Monte Cristo* so badly.
Background info, TLDR, there's a "standard abridged version" of The Count and it sucks. => https://abbreviatedmontecristo.blogspot.com/2021/08/section-one-supplement-how-to-identify.html
Transcript
"The prevailing taste for brevity has made the spacious days of the stately three-volume novel seem very remote indeed. A distinct prejudice against length now exists: a feeling that there is a necessary antithesis between quantity and quality. One of the results is that those delightfully interminable romances which beguiled the nights and days of our ancestors in so pleasant a fashion are now given no more than a passing nod of recognition. Unfortunate as this is, one has to admit it with as much philosophy as may be available for the purpose. Life then had broader margins, and both opportunity and inclination are now lacking for such extensive indulgence in the printed page. This, then, is felt to be sufficient apology for the present abridgement of one of the world’s masterpieces. It has been the object of the editor to provide the modern reader with a good translation and a moderately condensed version of Dumas’ narrative. This, while omitting, of necessity, some of the beauties of the original, has conserved the essentials of the story and condensed the incidents within what will be, from our point of view, more reasonable proportions. So the reader will miss no material part of that entertainment which the author, after his more leisurely fashion, intended him to enjoy."
Link 12:09 p.m. Jan 02, 2022, UTC-8

I had a dream that my AirPods Max were a unicycle
Link 9:08 a.m. Jan 02, 2022, UTC-8

The problem with design is that, by definition, you are creating an experience. And yet, it is impossible for you to control every aspect of
that experience. The most obvious example in the digital age is screen size. Designing something for multiple screen sizes is next to impossible, and yet, has to be done. How can you do that? Design a piece of art with the knowledge that the user can come along and resize the window to literally any size they want, from 50-pixels wide to 5,000 pixels? You can't. So so often you see webpages or apps that only look good at a certain resolution, and you know, oh, that's how big the designer's screen was.
Link 8:55 a.m. Jan 02, 2022, UTC-8

I am a sheep in a wolf’s body.
Link 2:28 p.m. Jan 01, 2022, UTC-8

Is this what you wanted?
I'm bad at knowing what I want. That's interesting. Hmm. Is it true? No one knows.
Link 1:43 p.m. Jan 01, 2022, UTC-8

Some of the early color-schemes for this site were fricking wild.
Like, this was the original color scheme during my first dev sprint ``` --background-color: #2E2A39; --text-color: #E3D096; --accent-color: #53929B; ```
Link 1:37 p.m. Jan 01, 2022, UTC-8

Django has built-in Pagination. Which I didn't know, but I'm glad I didn't use, since it's very different from what I have here.
Link 1:21 p.m. Jan 01, 2022, UTC-8

Finished the fifth Fablehaven last night at 3am. It's pretty dang good.
Vanessa is one of the best characters from any piece of media. Icon.
Link 1:19 p.m. Jan 01, 2022, UTC-8

I'm so confused.
Link 1:18 p.m. Jan 01, 2022, UTC-8

“Vasilis, the Sword of Light and Darkness”
Link 3:01 a.m. Jan 01, 2022, UTC-8

Are not the shells of men, who disagree with their past selves and the rest of society, as beautiful as humans who are complete?
Link 1:14 a.m. Jan 01, 2022, UTC-8

Merry Christmas!
Link 12:03 a.m. Jan 01, 2022, UTC-8

Okay going back to reading Fablehaven now.
Link 9:19 p.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

Okay pagination is fixed.
If you're not able to guess, all the issues arise from the fact that we'll be in "Winter 2021" until March, and there were still a couple of places where I was using the year of the last Thought, without adjusting for that 2-month offset.
Link 9:19 p.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

Okay, let's do the 2021 music roundup.
(I'm not excited about it. Make anything a requirement and I run from it.) (Then maybe I'll fix the front page so it doesn't show "Winter 2022.") * AJR * Sylvan Esso * HONEYMOAN * half•alive * They Might Be Giants * The Regrettes * twenty one pilots * Jars of Clay * Saint Motel * Imagine Dragons No real surprises here. The first half of the list preforms well on plays/day, releasing hits like "Monday" that I listened to often. The last four artists contribute more of my hours of listen-time, but I rarely seek them out. AJR, of course, is an outlier by both metrics.
Link 9:04 p.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

The thing about the shortcuts app is that you can't actually use like a scripting language, because it's so fricking slow. It takes ~1
second to walk through the `for` loop, complete with graphical animation, for every one of my 1000 songs. So like it's not an alternative for cheap scripting in this use-case, or I imagine, any with more than ~100 items, at which point, why not do it by hand.
Link 8:51 p.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

Some Technoblade fans are wishing Techno more subscribers. ('Here's to 11 million.') They don't understand. Unless I'm mistaken, if Techno
continues with Youtube, it will be either because of his love of it or for the money. Not for further subscribers. He'll give us the second elbow reveal, but I suspect he'll take a long break after that.
Link 8:14 p.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

My love and fear of the unknown grapple with each other. I exist in the space in between them.
Link 8:10 p.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

Okay I found it, it's glorious. => https://youtu.be/0xdWpkc9TyY?t=150
From 2017 > People laughed at me when I said it four years ago. We're going for ten million. Okay. That's always been the dream. People laughed at me four years ago. They'll probably laugh at me now. I'd laugh at me now. It's a pretty stupid goal to have right now. 'cause you know, I'm at 100 thousand. > Not saying we'll hit it tomorrow, or this year, or the next three years, but possibly the fourth year, if I'm really lucky. The future is bright, who knows. We'll get there eventually. We've made it. He's there.
Link 7:51 p.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

'grats to Techno on 10 million. The man has legitimately aiming for this since he was like 15. He can do anything he sets his mind to.
I want to see if I can find the video where Techno hits 100,000 subscribers and says "only 1% of the way there." But I don't *really* feel like binging all of Techno's Skywars content tonight.
Link 7:27 p.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

Homepage is broken. It's not handling the year change well. (Server's time zone is of course UTC, so it's 2022 already, even though I
have another 5 hours.) Ah.
Link 7:21 p.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

Finished the third Fablehaven yesterday, and the fourth today. I might finish the fifth tonight, but probably not.
Power was out for a while, most of today.
Link 7:20 p.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

It's nice to have this as a kind of journal. For now, I can mostly keep everything in here in my head—there are certain Thoughts that still
echo in my head incessantly, even after I've posted them. But eventually, in the future, I won't be able to remember, and then I'll have this record. I might shift tone slightly, being more factual, instead of cosplaying as an immaterial being like I normally do on here. It also lead to me adding an option to post privately, something that I've avoided, since the whole point of sharing is kind of lost if it's not public. But if this is for, not an audience, but myself in the future, then private Thoughts is a good idea.
Link 7:19 p.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

It is I, Matthias.
Link 7:16 p.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

Oh yeah I re-read the third Fablehaven. The series exists somewhere between quality and meaninglessness. Like a dry bread.
Link 1:17 a.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

.
Transcript
"There must have been a moment at the beginning, where we could have said no. Somehow we missed it. Well, we’ll know better next time."
Link 1:15 a.m. Dec 31, 2021, UTC-8

I haven't like really thought about a hard problem in a really long time.
I do tons of thinking, but it's pretty light thinking. Like the difference between re-reading a middle-grade fantasy novel and reading a non-fiction book on the brain. I do lots of the former, thousands and thousands of words a day. But I've been stuck on the same brain-books for a year.
Link 12:03 a.m. Dec 30, 2021, UTC-8

Re-read the second *Fablehaven* book today. Vanessa is an iconic character.
Link 11:53 p.m. Dec 29, 2021, UTC-8

I was on top of the world.
Link 11:51 p.m. Dec 29, 2021, UTC-8

Oh also I started reading *Pawn of Prophecy,* but I don't know if I'm going to be able to force myself through it. It's so fricking slow and
the main character is doing nothing and has no idea what's going on. It's technically a re-read, I read it when I was probably in middle school, but remember nothing. Then again, that might be because there's nothing to remember.
Link 4:39 p.m. Dec 29, 2021, UTC-8

(Business card with frustratingly little information) is such a great trope. Iconic.
Might take my phone number off of my business cards so it's just "Matthias Portzel • MatthiasPortzel.com"
Link 4:37 p.m. Dec 29, 2021, UTC-8

Look at all these writers coming up with original characters lol
Link 4:31 p.m. Dec 29, 2021, UTC-8

I no longer know who I am supposed to be.
Link 11:55 p.m. Dec 27, 2021, UTC-8

"Do things that don't scale"
Link 9:20 p.m. Dec 27, 2021, UTC-8

Adding "Gemini Server" to my resume.
Link 6:02 p.m. Dec 27, 2021, UTC-8

Culture really is a wild thing. SCP-3999 is one of the primary inspirations for my About page. But to understand SCP-3999 I think it helps
to understand the other SCPs, including series 1, and the 4chan culture that produced them. And like, that's only one of a dozen bits of culture and media that I reference in the About page.
Link 1:52 p.m. Dec 27, 2021, UTC-8

I have a YouTube video with 22,000 views and I feel nothing.
Link 1:29 p.m. Dec 27, 2021, UTC-8

I just want this website to be accessible from every device and it's failing in the experimental browser in my 2012 Kindle.
Link 6:00 p.m. Dec 26, 2021, UTC-8

The good news is that I'm now less sick, so my brain has enough energy to blame me for all the world's problems. Still not enough energy to
fix them, but maybe we'll get there eventually.
Link 5:56 p.m. Dec 26, 2021, UTC-8

Do other people not feel the need to fix all of the world's problems? I suppose not. I suppose they blame the problems on other people. Well
the buck has to stop somewhere. It might as well stop with me. It might as well all be my fault. It's probably not, but some of it is my fault. I can't fix all of it, but I can fix all of it, and I need to fix as much as I can. And I can't do that so I guess it's my fault.
Link 5:54 p.m. Dec 26, 2021, UTC-8

It's like, when I created *The Imperfections* except I can't even bring myself to break down the problems. It's just, the first item on my
TODO list is: "Make every piece of software in the world perfect."
Link 5:47 p.m. Dec 26, 2021, UTC-8

I can't bring myself to do anything.
Link 5:41 p.m. Dec 26, 2021, UTC-8

I'm frozen. Paralyzed. I must understand the entire system to interact with any part of it.
Link 5:34 p.m. Dec 26, 2021, UTC-8

At least, once again, all I need is time.
Link 5:33 p.m. Dec 26, 2021, UTC-8

Sometimes HN is so good and so proud of citing primary sources, and other times @foone's summary of something someone said on Tumblr makes
it on the front page for some reason?
Link 5:33 p.m. Dec 26, 2021, UTC-8

I’m the same as I’ve always been.
Link 2:08 p.m. Dec 26, 2021, UTC-8

Hey Siri, what I want is a friend.
Link 2:08 p.m. Dec 26, 2021, UTC-8

I wonder why I enjoy reading so much. I wonder if understanding that would help me understand other parts of who I am.
Link 12:58 a.m. Dec 26, 2021, UTC-8

At this rate, I’m going to end up reading sappy romance novels by the end of 2022.
Link 12:48 a.m. Dec 26, 2021, UTC-8

My problem is that I do not have a Santa hat.
Link 4:00 p.m. Dec 25, 2021, UTC-8

"2022 will be the year of Linux on the desktop" Like 3 levels of irony.
Link 2:53 p.m. Dec 25, 2021, UTC-8

Merry Christmas to everyone who is still alive.
Link 10:10 a.m. Dec 25, 2021, UTC-8

Mull really is a good writer. The Five Kingdoms books weren't perfect like I remembered them bing, but they were still easily 5 starts
compared to other books. Makes me want to Rereead Beyonders honestly. to see how good those were.
Link 11:17 p.m. Dec 24, 2021, UTC-8

This sure is something.
Link 11:16 p.m. Dec 24, 2021, UTC-8

I am Matthias. My mind is awake but asleep. Or, sleepy. Or insane.
Link 11:16 p.m. Dec 24, 2021, UTC-8

Thinking about it, I also just had a Tylenol, so that might be effecting my typing ability.
Link 11:15 p.m. Dec 24, 2021, UTC-8

I finsihed the first two Five Kingdoms books. I realized I had 4/5 of them so I decided to re-read the series. I was orignally going ot skip
the third since I don't rememeber particularly likin it but I think the Hunter reveal happens in it and I'm kind of lookin gforward to that. The Hunter was mentioned a couple of times in the second biook, whihc I cdon't know if I picked up on my first time through. SDo now I have to decide if I'm finding a copy of the third book or skipping it or just giving up on re-reasing the series since tommorrow is christmax. Also I'm still sick so you don't get any spellchecking sorry.
Link 11:13 p.m. Dec 24, 2021, UTC-8

The End Of The Age.
Link 9:53 p.m. Dec 23, 2021, UTC-8

“I’m sick like Chucky was sick.”
Link 9:51 p.m. Dec 23, 2021, UTC-8

Sorry about the triple-post last night. Had a bug with the search index.
Link 9:51 p.m. Dec 23, 2021, UTC-8

Added a search page at /search. Still needs some polishing.
Link 11:50 p.m. Dec 22, 2021, UTC-8

Added a search page at /search. Still needs some polishing.
Link 11:48 p.m. Dec 22, 2021, UTC-8

Added a search page at /search. Still needs some polishing.
Link 11:35 p.m. Dec 22, 2021, UTC-8

"How do I explain that the power to imagine a future is essential to creating it"
Link 10:11 p.m. Dec 22, 2021, UTC-8

I really like Watsky's music. It's a shame he's so explicit.
Link 3:24 p.m. Dec 22, 2021, UTC-8

I forgot how many times I've changed the colors of this site. Both the light and dark themes have gone through 2 major revisions and at
least a couple minor tweaks.
Link 1:16 p.m. Dec 22, 2021, UTC-8

Based on a million different things at once.
Link 1:08 p.m. Dec 22, 2021, UTC-8

Vivaldi just crashed. Please I just want software that works.
There's no crash report. At least my screen is fixed.
Link 12:20 a.m. Dec 22, 2021, UTC-8

"I urge you, in view of God’s mercy: offer your body as a living sacrifice. This is your true and proper worship."
- Romans 12:1, paraphrased
Link 11:53 p.m. Dec 21, 2021, UTC-8

I still know who I want to be but I don't know who I am.
Is there perfection? Is there imperfection? Is it minimalism?
Link 11:49 p.m. Dec 21, 2021, UTC-8

This is the perfection of a new age.
Link 11:09 p.m. Dec 21, 2021, UTC-8

Thinking about the hubris with which Gaiman and Pratchett declared Pestilence dead.
Link 7:33 p.m. Dec 21, 2021, UTC-8

It's so nice to have my keyboard back. I'm going to end up writing a fricking novel.
Link 4:40 p.m. Dec 21, 2021, UTC-8

Okay, one more Thought on *Fat Vampire*, Adam Rex, before I stop posting about it.
A lot of the times when I read a bad book, I start thinking about ways to improve it. But the premise of *Fat Vampire* is so problematic that there's just so little you can do with it. The premise is basically: "sucking blood from someone is sexual. Wouldn't it be screwed up if someone who doesn't have sex, like a 15-year-old nerd boy, got turned into a vampire?" And the problem is that you end up with this incel-like prompt where sex is basically required for this 15-year-old to live. (He can suck blood from animals, and does for a while, but it leaves him very weak, not able to live a normal life. Now you might be thinking, "is sucking the blood from animals not-sexual." And of course it is. He's unwilling to suck blood from a pig, but enjoys sucking blood from a deer a lot because a deer is sexy.) I can't do a logical breakdown of this book. Every person and thing that he sucks blood from throughout the book is problematic. There's no good way out. Honestly, screw it, the one thing you needed to change was to make these adults. He would still be a jerk and the characters would all still be dumb, but like at least then it's an adult abusing his girlfriend. Instead of a 15-year-old abusing another 15-year-old. I don't know what Rex was going for. Okay okay. The inside flap calls it "satirical." Maybe it's a fine book and I'm just operating on a level far beneath it. I guess? Like, maybe the point is that the main-character is a jerk and you should use him as role model as how not to live your life. And it's a satire of incel-culture. In which case I'm having exactly the reaction I'm supposed to. But there's nothing in there that implies that the author disagrees with it. It's not overboard enough to imply to me that it's clearly all a joke. This is seriously the best I can do. The best way to fix this book is to make it worse so you can justify the satire label. Maybe it's a satire of *Twilight* and I haven't read *Twilight*. Aging up the characters also would have helped my expectations a lot. It's described as Young Adult, but it has a *lot* more language and other adult themes than most stuff in that category. I just read a couple of Goodread reviews. Most of them agree with me that it's bad, but one or two mention the "second level" that I missed. That is to say, the book tees up to be about a nerdy, awkward, boy gaining confidence and getting a girl. And it fails if you expect that. But there's another view that the main character is an unreliable narrator, and the story is actually about how he goes from being a weird jerk to be a bully. Which is certainly an interesting perspective. But I think Rex lays it on too thick, and it comes off as "nice boy is suddenly being mean to everyone for no reason." Honestly, I don't think Rex knew what he wanted to do with it. I think it's like at half a layer of irony. He's kind of aware that what he's describing is weird, but he's not willing to commit to it being a weird book. So it all just comes off as awkward. It's like he thought that by writing a bad vampire book he could attract both people who liked vampire books and people who didn't.
Link 4:40 p.m. Dec 21, 2021, UTC-8

Guess who got their computer back, baybe‽ It's me. I now have a computer.
Link 3:50 p.m. Dec 21, 2021, UTC-8

Finished the book. I’m giving it 2/5 but I’m looking for reasons to give it less. Like, it’s not that bad. It’s 2/5 in all categories, but
there’s also nothing good. There are a few funny jokes. There are other books that I’ve given 2 stars to because they only get 2 stars on the things that I care about. But normally those books have something else going for them. I don’t enjoy tragedies, so when I’m rating books I don’t take into account how good of a tragedy it is. And *Fat Vampire* (Adam Rex) is a tragedy so it gets rated the same as other tragedies, but it’s bad. It’s a bad tragedy. Also, somehow the ending is more homophobic than the rest of the book. Which is kind of impressive. It is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. The first half is bad and funny, so at least I had things to say about it. But the second half is bad and not funny. I don’t read books this bad unless there are unusual circumstances. I don’t understand how Rex turns it around and writes one of the best books I’ve ever read 3 years later. I guess this is a romance and a tragedy strung along by jokes. And Cold Cereal is an adventure and a comedy. And Rex is a lot better at one of those things than the other. I don’t think this book would have been published if it wasn’t in the middle of the Twilight movies coming out.
Link 10:19 a.m. Dec 21, 2021, UTC-8

Sometimes you can write broken characters in such a way that their brokenness compliments each other.
Rex is not doing that in this book. He does in some of his other books, but in this book everyone is screwed up and they’re only hurting each other.
Link 9:32 a.m. Dec 21, 2021, UTC-8

I have no idea what Rex is doing at this point. I don’t see a way for him to salvage this.
Link 11:50 p.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

I can’t keep summarizing this book. I can’t take it.
There’s a whole paragraph in here about how he’s not homophobic he just thinks there are too many gay characters in comic books these days. This is the main character, ostensibly a 15-year-old in 2010. Who used the f-slur to describe umbrellas earlier in the book. To Rex’s credit, we made it half way through the book before there was a “lesbian porn” joke, so that’s better than some things. I just. I thought this was supposed to be about vampires why are the characters debating the quality of Neil Gaiman’s comics?
Link 11:20 p.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

Maybe I’m just not a theater kid. Maybe I just don’t get it.
Sorry for spam-posting. I’m just trying to cope with this book. I’m not even half-way through. I might just go to bed.
Link 9:02 p.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

Help, we are on page 4 of Rex describing the characters in the theater watching *The Rocky Horror Picture Show.*
If someone later in the book pulls out LSD, I think the score goes negative, wraps around, and becomes a 5-star book, for the meme.
Link 8:56 p.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

If you ever need help installing Linux, ladies, just let me know.
Link 8:39 p.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

Girl in the book just asked for help installing Linux. The year is 2010.
I’m howling. I’m now reading to see how bad this can get. The insane thing is that Rex did characters well in Cold Cereal Saga. Two years later and he can write characters super well. But in 2010 he thinks normal flirting is asking for help with Linux. (This is not like an especially nerdy girl. The guy is established as a nerd. But the girl is described as a theater girl. Maybe 2010 was just a different time.) There’s a lot more I could say I’m not getting into everything. I’m so bored of the book at this point, nothing has happened. But I don’t have my computer and I kind of want to finish it now so that I can rate it, because it’s on track for like 2 stars.
Link 8:35 p.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

Okay the thing is I haven’t finished it and it’s quite possible that the story arc is actually about him coming out as gay, but like, is
that better? The main character’s attempts at flirting are so bad that the best case outcome is that he comes out as gay.
Link 7:42 p.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

I feel like Rex would delete *Fat Vampire* if he could. I’m kind of glad you can’t delete books.
Link 7:39 p.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

I’m sorry Rex but this is bad. I still don’t understand where he’s going with it, but like, what?
Bare minimum context: I’m reading *Fat Vampire* by Adam Rex. The central conflict of the book is that the main character, a vampire, needs blood. But for unexplained reasons sucking the blood from someone is a sex act and the main character is very homophobic.
Link 7:35 p.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

I honestly cannot tell if Rex spent a lot of time on Tumblr in 2008 or if he’s never used Tumblr.
Link 7:16 p.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

Still can’t handle Adam Rex. My word.
He introduces 5 characters in 60 pages and all of them are insane.
Link 7:05 p.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

In like 2 years I’m going to end up with a switch and a copy of SMO and 880 it.
Link 10:31 a.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

Do you not frequently think about topology?
Link 9:45 a.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

It is muffin time!
Link 9:45 a.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

Good morning.
Link 9:45 a.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

I wish “I hear voices in my head that sound like radio commercials” had made it into the About page here. It’s a good quote.
Link 12:20 a.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

I’m again amazed that someone else writes in that style.
That post is long, but the rest of their posts are short. Someone else creating a Thoughts page. Although they may fall outside of a standard deviation of the mean.
Link 12:18 a.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

> Freedom is a concept. Freedom from wanting to be free. > Freedom to experience. Freedom to experience confinement. > Freedom from the concept of freedom. > The rain sings songs of longing as it hurls itself towards the hard rock asphalt. The heat from the road evaporates blissfully with each drop of moisture. Each drop of molecule, a world within itself, experiencing the bliss of being a drop of water, embracing the the heat of beingness.
Link 12:13 a.m. Dec 20, 2021, UTC-8

Using `more` because `less` complains about my terminal.
My computer is in the shop so I'm using a web terminal on a computer that I can't install things on.
Link 1:36 p.m. Dec 19, 2021, UTC-8

Trying to edit a file in the terminal :|
A screenshot of vim with a status bar on every other line.
Link 1:20 p.m. Dec 19, 2021, UTC-8

On a wide monitor, this page is super off-center. Hm. Might need to move that.
Link 12:34 p.m. Dec 19, 2021, UTC-8

Aaahhahhaa!
My problems are inside my own head
Link 10:38 a.m. Dec 19, 2021, UTC-8

Just finished *Code Name Verity*, which I had previously read half of and given up on. It gets better in the second half, so it could
scrape 4 stars. Probably 3 though. Very good as far as books go, just not my style.
Link 4:56 p.m. Dec 18, 2021, UTC-8

Thinking a lot about the Tumblr post, ‘we basically live in a gasoline-punk society, where nuclear energy has been available for decades’
Link 10:27 p.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

I used to say that I think in code. But that's not accurate anymore. As I learned more about code I understand that code is an analogue for
my thought, and not the other way around.
Link 8:14 p.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

Joey T Badger is the type of person that I want to know IRL
Link 7:40 p.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

Twitter systematically ratio-ing every celebrity who shills for NFTs is something else.
Link 4:05 p.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

What if instead of Reddit or similar, where you have a parent and then replies, you have something more like a forum, with a topic and posts
, but nested infinitely. So you see the headline on Reddit or HN, but clicking comments shows another list of headers ("Jokes", "Off topic", "Refutations", "Context", etc). (And then maybe you click a joke and it has sub-threads for "more jokes" or "anecdotes.") The obvious con being that most posts don't have enough to say about them for that to make sense. But it would theoretically help me navigate the conversation in the direction I want, and avoid some of the frustration that comes as a result of the comment section taking the conversation a completely different direction than I want.
Link 4:04 p.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

Does a perfect Gemini site mirror its content to HTTP? does it respond to HTTP at all? Does it serve different content to Gemini and HTTP?
Link 3:40 p.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

I just can't imagine myself being not insane. (How do I denote a screech? It's not "Aaaahhh" but like "Eeecheexxxe". Yeah that's how I feel)
Link 1:18 p.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

I wish I had a blank wall I could stare at. My ceiling has a 4-bladed fan.
Link 12:28 p.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

One of the hand-waves that Gemini does is assuming that the other side of the pit of success doesn't exist.
Link 12:27 p.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

I have no doubts that I would not have these problems if I was a different person, but I do not want to be a different person.
Link 12:07 p.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

There is the potential for uncountably infinite ideas inside my head.
Link 11:51 a.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

I am still insane.
Link 11:42 a.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

One of the interesting things about learning toki pona, since I don't know it yet, is that since it's vague, it's easy for me to justify
a translation making sense.
Link 11:42 a.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

Last night I made an appointment at the Apple store to get my screen fixed because it has been showing these black bars of dead pixels.
And today I open my computer and it's working fine, no issues with the screen. No joke I have lived without a tenth of my screen for 3 months, and as soon as I make an appointment it fixes itself. It'll probably break again in a minute.
Link 10:59 a.m. Dec 17, 2021, UTC-8

So roughly 1/2 the reason I want to learn toki pona is jan Misali, of course. And part of the reason is jan pona Alex.
But a part is jan Tepo, who is apparently active in the toki pona kulupu (community), but who I on follow on Twitter because of their work on iSH (an emulated Linux terminal device for iOS).
Link 9:11 p.m. Dec 16, 2021, UTC-8

So Misali uploaded a toki pona lesson and since I'm subbed to them I guess that means I'm learning toki pona now.
My brain hurts so much and I've learned like "pona" and "sona." Here, let me try to say, "I'm learning toki pona": "mi sona toki pona." Woohoo! I'm so good. Edit (Apr 10, 2022): That translation is wrong, it should be "mi sona e toki pona"
Link 8:57 p.m. Dec 16, 2021, UTC-8

Did things use to be better? Did the web used to have fewer bugs? Am I just hypersensitive?
I'm typing this from Firefox. But like nothing fixes the fact that my screen is physically broken. I feel like I'm surrounded on all sides by pain and bugs.
Link 7:06 p.m. Dec 16, 2021, UTC-8

Quizlet has 500 employees and they can't make a website that loads.
Link 7:00 p.m. Dec 16, 2021, UTC-8

Yeah, so if you don't have an adblocker Quizlet just loads ads infinitely, throttled by your internet or CPU. I'm at 100+ MB of ads.
I hate the web. Quizlet is literally unusable without an adblocker. I don't get it. How is that good for business? Is it that hard to load a single ad?
Link 6:46 p.m. Dec 16, 2021, UTC-8

Girl Quizlet in Safari is so laggy as to be unable.
Link 6:26 p.m. Dec 16, 2021, UTC-8

Like I paid thousands of dollars for this computer and I would pay thousands more if it didn't have any bugs.
Link 6:10 p.m. Dec 16, 2021, UTC-8

I would switch to Linux if it was better but it's just not. I'm leaning more and more towards making my own OS.
I think not having the ability to support any "normal" software and expecting everything to be designed as an integrated part would actually be really interesting. That's what Apple software is supposed to be but in practicality that advantage is lost by the time you're using Vivaldi and and Atom and Python. In particular, what leads to 95% of bugs in software is the exponential number of configurations. Every setting increases the number of possible combinations of settings exponentially. So if I didn't have any settings and only had to support one configuration—my configuration. I think I could eliminate a large number of bugs. Of course, it's next to impossible to get there, but that's a different point.
Link 4:12 p.m. Dec 16, 2021, UTC-8

UTC-8 is a drug. My mind is a drug. Insanity is a drug.
Link 4:04 p.m. Dec 16, 2021, UTC-8

Screw it, I'm switching back to Safari as a default browser. I can't take this. I just want perfection.
Link 4:04 p.m. Dec 16, 2021, UTC-8

I think it's impossible to do anything.
The Orion people are like, 'let's make a web browser that's exactly like Safari.' And it's like, so buggy. I'm not trying to diss them here. I think that's a great goal and I think that that should be achievable. But it's really not. Like, what is this? Why is there a black bar here? A screenshot a macOS dark theme app with an awkward 3-pixel-wide black bar in-between two panels. (Instead of 1-pixel like it should be.)
Link 3:53 p.m. Dec 16, 2021, UTC-8

I feel for people that like listen to community feedback about their products.
It just looks painful. This guy's like 'I think this app should look like the Notes app did in OS X Lion.' Okay. No one else agrees with you, I'm sorry.
Link 3:47 p.m. Dec 16, 2021, UTC-8

I miss the Blaseball wiki. I wonder if there's something like wiki but with a better or different interface.
Link 9:52 p.m. Dec 15, 2021, UTC-8

So one of the things that I want to add here is search. And it was originally supposed to happen before pagination. But search is
suprisingly difficult. I want to be indexed, right, for that sweet, sweet O(log n). And there like theoretically are libraries to do it for you. But I search for “GEB” and get posts about “Algebra.” And I have to figure out how to update the index when I make a new post and it’s kind of a mess. I might just throw away the index and say O(2000) is fine. Because it would be. But the binary search!
Link 8:59 a.m. Dec 15, 2021, UTC-8

I almost forgot about that time everyone used 🅱️ in their memes for like months until the mods of /r/dankmemes got sick of it and banned it
Instantly 🅱️illed the meme.
Link 6:54 a.m. Dec 15, 2021, UTC-5

I lost my hat in the past 2 days. No idea where it is.
Link 5:31 a.m. Dec 15, 2021, UTC-5

I have been trying to start packing since 8p. I can’t function as a normal person.
Link 1:45 a.m. Dec 15, 2021, UTC-5

The more I think about it, the more I want to find a way to dump all of my old Tweets on to this website. Because while they were certainly
posted in a different context, most of them came out of the same mindset that led to this site (quick meaningless thoughts). And it would be nice to have them all in one place.
Link 12:22 a.m. Dec 15, 2021, UTC-5

Even in the areas where I may not be an order of magnitude off of society's expectations, I'm an order of magnitude off of my own.
Link 12:20 a.m. Dec 15, 2021, UTC-5

In high school, I would make myself get up and drive to school and be there by 7:15, even if my first class wasn't until the afternoon. And
people would ask me, "Matthias, why do you get here so early." And would reply to the effect of "because otherwise I would always be late." And I was right. Routine really was the only thing keeping me on the tracks.
Link 12:20 a.m. Dec 15, 2021, UTC-5

I don’t have any brain cells. Please help me.
Link 12:15 a.m. Dec 15, 2021, UTC-5

This is a circle in which a robot spins. This is the attack of the bees.
Oh yeah, I made a Rigby post earlier today with something I had posted here.
Link 10:50 p.m. Dec 14, 2021, UTC-5

I am on anti-drugs. It turns out, if you go too long without consuming any drugs, your brain just pretends like it's on drugs anyways.
Link 10:49 p.m. Dec 14, 2021, UTC-5

Creating software (or even hardware) that works is one thing. But to create anything that is "ergonomic, natural, intuitive, and user
friendly" is hard. Really hard. And like, that's the criteria. For whether your software actually gets used.
Link 5:26 p.m. Dec 14, 2021, UTC-5

I have made lots of bad decisions. But! I have made some good decisions. I don't remember them, actually, but um, they should be there.
Link 12:07 a.m. Dec 14, 2021, UTC-5

Commenters on Hacker News defending W3Schools. Look at this => https://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_eval.asp
I quote: > No NOT use eval() > Executing JavaScript from a string is an BIG security risk. > With eval(), malicious code can run inside your application without permission. > With eval(), third-party code can see the scope of your application, whitch can lead to possible attacks. Okay; so, I try to avoid mocking English-second-language speakers on here, it's one of my off-limits topics. And I don't know the context of the person who wrote that. But read that excerpt again out loud. Yeah. And this is published content acting as an authority on the subject. I expect better from this page than from a random person or internet comment. The MDN's page is a little long-winded, I'll admit. There are some phrases in the middle of the MDN's description that could be misleading. But there's so much more useful information in there. Performance, comparisons to `JSON.parse` and `new Function`, the behavior when `eval` is given a non-string object. Etc. Like, I don't know how to respond to people on HN that are just wrong. > [W3Schools is] criticized by the vocal newbies who are chasing the newest and shiniest. Really? Then why is there an open letter from 2011 saying that "their faulty information is a detriment to the web"? => https://web.archive.org/web/20110412103745/http://w3fools.com/ Which has since been rescinded because W3School has improved on the addressed issues. => https://w3fools.com (They went from not mentioning that eval could be harmful to "No NOT use eval()".) I don't get it.
Link 11:45 p.m. Dec 13, 2021, UTC-5

"We flip the switch, and it releases the bees. *Not the bees!* Yes the bees."
Link 10:23 p.m. Dec 13, 2021, UTC-5

I am on five levels of irony. You don’t even know.
Link 2:46 p.m. Dec 13, 2021, UTC-5

It is once again time for one of the best Youtube videos of all time. => https://youtu.be/ywWBy6J5gz8
Link 1:58 p.m. Dec 13, 2021, UTC-5

I would win a skipping race.
Link 11:08 a.m. Dec 13, 2021, UTC-5

I may not be as smart as Hofstadter but hell I’m close.
Link 11:08 a.m. Dec 13, 2021, UTC-5

Apparently what I and Thu call "single-instantiated-types" are actually called singletons.
Link 7:37 p.m. Dec 12, 2021, UTC-5

I am inside the jaws of the lion.
Link 5:52 p.m. Dec 12, 2021, UTC-5

I'm frozen. I'm numb.
Link 5:44 p.m. Dec 12, 2021, UTC-5

People get so fricking ticked-off about Safari on iOS only kind-of allowing you to side load apps. And they compare it to IE. And it's like
you clearly have never designed a website for an IE version before 9. Oh no! Safari's IndexDB implementation isn't spec-compliant (as of 2016). I have to use a library to store large amounts of data persistently on my user's devices. My website can't send phone users background notifications! What ever will I do‽ And Firefox gets a pass because they invented tabs 10 years ago.
Link 3:25 p.m. Dec 12, 2021, UTC-5

This is why I love anecdotes about the past. You read documentation or people connected to the matter, and they're talking about random
stuff, feature support or some weird bug or something. But the anecdotes give you gold like: > [Firefox] was quick, it was simple, it was much more standard-compliant, and absolutely none of that mattered. > No, Firefox really got a foothold because it had tabs. IE 6 did not have tabs; if you wanted to open a second webpage, you opened another window… > Firefox wasn’t the first tabbed browser, of course; the full Mozilla Suite’s browser had them, and the obscure (but scrappy!) Opera had had them for ages. But it was Firefox that took off, for various reasons, not least of which was that it didn’t have a giant [censored] ad bar at the top like Opera did. In 2021, talking about why Firefox is losing marketshare, no one points out that the reason it gained market share in the first place was tabs. Like. That's very interesting to me. => https://eev.ee/blog/2020/02/01/old-css-new-css/
Link 2:50 p.m. Dec 12, 2021, UTC-5

Every time. Every time I think I have a handle on how broken the web is, something comes up that's worse.
Link 2:41 p.m. Dec 12, 2021, UTC-5

I still hold irrationally strong feelings about characters from Brandon Mull’s Five Kingdoms.
I’m almost angry at the AO3 authors paring Mira/Jace. You’re wrong and you do not understand the characters the way I do. Mira/Cole is still my OTP.
Link 12:45 a.m. Dec 12, 2021, UTC-5

Finished *Without Bloodshed*.
He does a *lot* with the worldbuilding. I don't love Sci-fi, so I don't love it. I think he either should have toned it down a bit (e.g. cut a lot of the pure sci-fi: AIs, maglev's, etc. that don't effect plot), or else put it on a planet that's not Earth. Because half the worldbuilding is technological, but there's also a cultural element to the worldbuilding. And the culture of the people in the book really is not the same as Earth today. So it might have been helpful to separate that. Like, there was some big event, "Nationfall" that pushed their society to the way that it is. But Nationfall is never discussed, he's too busy discussing other elements of the worldbuilding. Yeah. There was an apocalyptic event that happened during the lifetime of some of the characters in the book and it's only ever alluded to. He's too busy talking about the history of the band or the symptoms of being a cat-person. Luckily for him, weird worldbuilding doesn't effect my enjoyment of the book. I actually really like the pacing of the book. The characters are always under a little bit of tension, but still find to stop and chill. And that has a lot to do with writing style. The book takes place over a couple days, and most books with that timeframe are too fast-paced for me. But he does a good job of varying which character is under stress, for example. Or making short interludes time-wise, feel longer for the reader. I'm neutral on the characters. Which is really the shame. He tried so hard, and I kind of see what he was going for. But like, 3/5 characters. All the characters except Morgan feel shallow. And he does a good job of developing Morgan over the course of the book, but it almost happens too quick for me to appreciate. I feel like we needed an extra bit at the start to introduce Morgan to me before Morgan starts to question everything. Plot is fine. No complaints really. He tees a sequel pretty aggressively, which I don't love because I don't think I'll read a sequel. But he ties up enough for me to feel satisfied. Oh, he does this interesting thing with a bunch of "string-pull" characters. They don't add anything. Doing string-pull characters is really hard because kind of by definition they aren't interacting directly with anything. And because of that it's hard for me to care about them, even when they're interacting with the story indirectly, or else interacting with each other. Like you could have cut all of the parts from the perspective of the devas and just told it from Morgan's perspective and I think it would have been fine. But that's the part that I think is just setting up the next books. I think some of these points, where like I don't appreciate the characters or the world in the way that the author does, is a result of this being the second book written. But the website requests that I start here and not with *Starbreaker* so that's where I am. Overall, 4/5. Weakest bit is the characters. Which again is a shame because I love the characters, but the book just doesn't use them very well. (Matthias's book rating scale reflects *only* my enjoyment of the book, not my evaluation of the book's quality.)
Link 8:44 p.m. Dec 11, 2021, UTC-5

I just don’t see any way out except straight forward and I don’t know if I can keep doing it.
Link 7:15 p.m. Dec 11, 2021, UTC-5

I won’t allow myself to talk to anyone unless they’re perfect.
Link 7:15 p.m. Dec 11, 2021, UTC-5

I don’t see any way that I’m not lonely for the rest of my life.
Link 7:12 p.m. Dec 11, 2021, UTC-5

Oh my word. Not-resonant voice Tom Scott is something else. I can hear it. My word. => https://youtu.be/2QKPQ6JYVhU?t=265
Link 11:17 a.m. Dec 11, 2021, UTC-5

Waiting for Rigby posts.
Link 11:00 a.m. Dec 11, 2021, UTC-5

Had a nightmare about time travel. Watching *Primer* was a mistake.
Link 2:42 a.m. Dec 11, 2021, UTC-5

The world is just so big. I’m hiding under my bed again.
Link 10:26 p.m. Dec 10, 2021, UTC-5

I still don't understand myself.
Link 10:17 p.m. Dec 10, 2021, UTC-5

My obsession with social media and internet communication is really just a result of loneliness.
Link 9:54 p.m. Dec 10, 2021, UTC-5

“I miss people. The human interaction. Seeing the emotion in their face.”
Link 9:48 p.m. Dec 10, 2021, UTC-5

It's not fun to troll anymore
Link 6:21 p.m. Dec 10, 2021, UTC-5

Inside I'm crying.
Link 3:54 p.m. Dec 10, 2021, UTC-5

Creating lists in React: `key={Math.random()}`
Link 3:27 p.m. Dec 10, 2021, UTC-5

It is my impression that this has profound implications in our understanding of machine learning.
Link 3:05 p.m. Dec 10, 2021, UTC-5

Is it not cold outside?
Link 2:22 p.m. Dec 10, 2021, UTC-5

Oh yeah I was reminded of that because Wesley is on the first page of Hacker News. This is what I mean by infinite connections.
Link 1:49 a.m. Dec 10, 2021, UTC-5

Wesley never replied to my email. I still check thoughts.page. They seem like they’re doing well.
Link 1:48 a.m. Dec 10, 2021, UTC-5

I just finished a 2 pound container of trail mix that I bought on the 7th.
Link 1:24 a.m. Dec 10, 2021, UTC-5

I just watched *Primer*. I think the XKCD describes it better than I could. Wow.
Link 10:35 p.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

Gemini needs the web.
Link 10:35 p.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

"Pointers are far too slow."
Link 7:33 p.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

Microsoft is in a weird position because they own a lot of random things that I tangentially interact with, but like, if they tried to get
any money from me I'd run in the other direction. I own Minecraft from before Microsoft bought it. I use Atom as one of my main editors. They own Electron, of course, which I can't escape from. And of course, Github. But I would stop using any of those if Microsoft tried to make a penny off of me.
Link 5:57 p.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

It's fricking wild to me that Vim is the best editor in 2021. I mean, that's subjective obviously. But like, I use Vim. In 2021. And I don't
particularly like it. But if you look at time to start, cross-platform availability, and syntax highlighting in a variety languages, Vim has Atom beat by a factor of 2 it feels like. And those are the only constraints I care about. Vim does lose major points for not supporting normal Mac keyboard shortcuts. Maybe I'll make a list of Matthias' Requirements for the Perfect Text Editor.
Link 5:55 p.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

If there is a God, I am not Him.
Link 5:50 p.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

There are no sad people or happy people. There are no people. This is an anomaly.
Link 2:21 p.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

Hot take: You should be able to fit your program into a single file.
Link 2:00 p.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

Jon Bois has single-handedly made Google Earth one of the greatest mediums.
Link 12:08 p.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

At a high level JS is just so wickedly flexible. IIFEs are still like magic to me.
Link 11:32 a.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

Why isn’t this open source yet? Oh yeah the About page is in the source. Hm. Might just do it.
I don’t know, like this site is where I want it to be for myself, but if I want someone else to run, or it I was going to run it for somewhere else, I’d target a different set of features. Like, not add additional features but remove features like Gemini support or tweak settings. Maybe I’ll open-source it as is, with a heck ton of disclaimers, so people can take inspiration from it but like, I’m not giving you setup instructions because you should make your own site.
Link 3:19 a.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

Oh shoot someone remind me to post the reading of the about page or I’ll never get around to it.
Link 3:16 a.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

Why does *The E.N.D.* bop?
Link 3:10 a.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

I’m going to finish *Without Bloodshed* because I can’t stop myself. I’m addicted to content consumption.
Not tonight though. I’m about 2/3 through it, just got to chapter 19.
Link 2:38 a.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

I might have to stop reading *Without Bloodshed* because it’s like this libertarian cyberpunk fantasy.
I’m like halfway through the book. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great. But it’s like so unrealistic that it is breaking my immersion. Like full on, hacker girl protected by an international online anonymous decentralized organization. Private organization that makes money selling sex drugs which it uses to finance city operations so that they can be spared from the theft of taxation. But it’s not like he intro’s with that. The world building is very good. You’re like a quarter of the way through before he describes “congenital pseudofeline morphological disorder” and you have to realize, wait. This is just an excuse to introduce cat-girls.
Link 1:15 a.m. Dec 09, 2021, UTC-5

You know it's serious because I'm double-`.bind`ing a function, once to bind its `this` and once to pass a property.
Did you know that `func.bind(null, a)` doesn't set the `this` value to `null` if the function already has a bound `this` value; it won't overwrite it.
Link 10:59 p.m. Dec 08, 2021, UTC-5

I really need to play around with non-linearity on here. Clouds and networks of Thoughts.
Link 10:41 p.m. Dec 08, 2021, UTC-5

Moon big.
Link 10:26 p.m. Dec 08, 2021, UTC-5

Oh my word I've consumed so much content that I can't enjoy consuming anymore but I can't stop.
Reading an /r/WritingPrompts thread that alludes to fricking Roko's Basilisk. And I'm cursed in that I know what that is. And I know that Elon Musk and Grimes met because of it. And I can't take this. My mind is a network of ideas and all I do is run this O(n^2) operation to look for links between them and it gets harder and harder. But I'm also more and more likely to find links which makes it so much more satisfying. I'm addicted.
Link 7:11 p.m. Dec 08, 2021, UTC-5

Nano also has mouse support off by default. Invoke it with `nano -m` or add `set mouse` to `~/.nanorc`. I'm extremely disappointed.
I get it, you think you're a terminal-based editor. Here's the thing. The single biggest frustration for me getting used to the terminal was that the mouse did nothing. And in 2021, terminals support mice. For `vim`, sure, there's some random backward compatible reason. But Neovim and Nano aren't supposed to be bogged down in that. Your system will have a POSIX compatible `vi`. If someone's opening Nano it's because they want a better experience than that. I'm extremely disappointed.
Link 5:19 p.m. Dec 08, 2021, UTC-5

Vim tip! In 2021, Vim and neovim come with mouse support disabled by default. Run `:set mouse=a` to turn it on!
Add `set mouse=a` to your "~/.vimrc" for vim, or to "~/.config/nvim/init.vim" for neovim to persist this setting. I cannot comprehend why this is off by default. They have support! It's compiled in most of the time? Why not turn it on? Also! If your "vim for beginners" tutorial starts with "use hjkl to move around" instead of "use `set mouse=a` to turn on the mouse," you need to make sure that you are very clearly disclaiming that you are teaching a harder way of doing things in exchange for incredibly small productivity gains that will be realized years in the future, if ever.
Link 5:13 p.m. Dec 08, 2021, UTC-5

I cannot take this. I am addicted to content consumption. I cannot stop myself from opening Youtube.
Link 4:12 p.m. Dec 08, 2021, UTC-5

So I like was bored a bit ago and impulse-read the first third of *Without Bloodshed*. But now I need to decide if I'm invested enough to
force myself to finish it. It's fine, the problem is that I was reading it online on my phone. Not exactly the best experience.
Link 1:36 p.m. Dec 08, 2021, UTC-5

One of the subelties that I missed in my post on a block-based language earlier is that `while` statements in C-languages are weird.
Here, what if you wanted to create an infinite loop if x was less than 5, and not run your code if x was greater than or equal to five. `while (x < 5) {…}` You couldn't do that in one line, you would need to store the result of `x < 5` into a variable outside the loop. There's no way to tell the language, "evaluate this expression once, please." In that sense, `while` loops are a kind of macro in that they define a syntax that doesn't exist anywhere else in the language. (And mean, they're not a "macro", that's just a language feature, but it's still interesting.)
Link 1:23 p.m. Dec 08, 2021, UTC-5

Oh my word I just fricking love words.
Link 1:13 p.m. Dec 08, 2021, UTC-5

“Welcome to the future.”
Transcript
“Welcome to the future.”
Link 12:57 a.m. Dec 08, 2021, UTC-5

Bored but not sarcastic, sincere but not enthusiastic.
Link 12:53 a.m. Dec 08, 2021, UTC-5

I am addicted to content consumption.
Link 4:41 p.m. Dec 07, 2021, UTC-5

Still wish I had pants made of light cotton or silk. Like material bedsheets are made out of, but pants. So that don’t have to wrap a
bedsheet around my waist and confuse my roommates.
Link 11:58 a.m. Dec 07, 2021, UTC-5

I have a new theory for the origin of my insanity. To skip the explanation: the world is too large and I’m not going to read anything that
doesn’t directly pertain to me, for a couple of days at least. No more Twitter, HN, Reddit, Blaseball. I’m never bored anymore.
Link 11:41 a.m. Dec 07, 2021, UTC-5

Hacker News comment comparing Tilde users to the unabomber. Not even sure if it’s intended as an insult.
Link 7:33 a.m. Dec 07, 2021, UTC-5

If there is a God, I am not him.
Link 7:32 a.m. Dec 07, 2021, UTC-5

Maybe I just want to be a horse girl.
Link 11:56 p.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

The thing to recognize about web3 is that the transactions require transactions fees. Because of the way that the networks currently work,
the price of bitcoin or ETH increasing means that transactions are more expensive. This is also inherit in all systems—more transactions means more computing power needed. So as the price of bitcoin or ETH increases, moving small amounts of cryptocurrency is disproportionately discouraged. This creates a conflict of interest where an increase in web3 users is not always a bad thing. Most of the time, an increase in popularity is good for crypto people, but there is a downside. The thing to watch out for is Crypto becoming a luxury product. In practical terms, this will look like when an asset (that is legitimately "valuable", by some definition of that term) is locked behind a crypto transaction fee that is prohibitively expensive. This is one success pathway for web3. But it's really hard to do that and also prey on people with less money. In order for web3 to succeed in the other sense, where it becomes used more popularly than the web, then the price of ETH and BTC need to go down* so that normal people can actually afford to interact with it. *Of course, people are trying to come up with other solutions, like side-chains or just super low transaction fees, but like, it's basically impossible to avoid richer-people having more control in your decentralized system, which ends up hurting poor people in one way or another. I feel like I'm not explaining myself very well because I'm relying on implicit assumptions that I'm not stating. Hm.
Link 10:37 p.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

Why do all Podcasts have fire intros?
Link 10:25 p.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

The year is 2021 and we have a dedicated podcasts app on Mac everybody.
Link 10:24 p.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

"Do tape recorders ring a bell?"
Link 9:42 p.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

I can't believe Biden is president. What is this?
Link 9:15 p.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

Also possible current tensions resolve themselves economically instead of politically, in which case we end up with a stock market crash in
the summer of 2038. Down 24%.
Link 7:42 p.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

2024: Democrat 2028: Democrat 2032: Republican 2036: Democrat 2040: Republican 2041: War
Welcome to, Matthias makes unsubstantiated long term predictions about the future. 2041 seems pretty soon, but that's the way the elections shake out. I feel like it might be closer to 2040: 3rd party, 2044: Republican, 2048: Democrat, 2052: Republican, 2053: War. But that's way too long. Also unclear if it will be a civil war or a world war. I don't think it will last very long. In the case of a world war, 6 years, civil war could be 2 years though.
Link 7:38 p.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

Pure components and React state. OR Storing state in a global Iterator that is called every time the component is rendered.
Update: I can confirm that the second one doesn't work.
Link 2:29 p.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

Slept for 12 hours last night. AAaaaahh
Link 1:39 p.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

That’s what’s so weird, is that there’s not a catalyst. I wish I had something to blame but for myself.
Link 12:30 a.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

Oh yeah, Blaseball is back by the way baybe
Link 12:28 a.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

Huh. I wonder if drugs are just a placebo.
Link 12:26 a.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

I’m just wasting my life.
Link 12:21 a.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

I’m like someone who is climbing a flight of stairs. And stops and stands up still on one step.
Link 12:20 a.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

I’m just so weak. My mind is so weak.
Link 12:19 a.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

I didn’t go to church today lol who would’ve guessed.
Link 12:18 a.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

I’m afraid that I’m actually going insane this time. My desire to form coherent English sentences is deteriorating.
Link 12:17 a.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

Okay, let me see if I can string together I am home. I am home. String else is outside. If there is a who’d I am not him okay that looks
like it’s going to be a know baby her sheep. Wow. Okay. So this is where we are. My brain is a network of ideas and connections between them. 12 is a number but is perhaps not the number that it appears to be. Oh my word. Uh
Link 12:16 a.m. Dec 06, 2021, UTC-5

I wish there was like a pay-per-post option for online news sites. Because paywalling your content doesn't make sense when I've clicked a
single link from Reddit or Hacker News. I want to read that one article, not sign up for a re-occurring monthly subscription. The issue is that in order to do this, you also have to offer me a good user experience. You can't open a full-screen popup after I've scrolled half-way down the page. It needs to be more pleasant than reading the site with ads (because ads are the other option for monetizing drive-by users.) The thing news companies need to recognize is that they can't do content curation anymore. Like, the music industry did an amazing job in letting Apple sell individual songs for the iPod. We're skipping that for some reason, and trying to jump straight from "buying physical collections" (records, or newspapers) to fragmented subscription marketplaces. Apple Music/Spotify works because a, both platforms have all music, and b, people already know what artists/songs they want to listen to. The news industry right now looks like if the free tier was Pandora with ads, and every record label has their own subscription service. Unfortunately, this is also how streaming video platforms look right now. So I don't have a lot of hope that news will figure out how to fix it.
Link 11:11 p.m. Dec 05, 2021, UTC-5

My butt is so sore from the unicycling I did earlier.
Link 12:29 a.m. Dec 05, 2021, UTC-5

Maybe nothing matters.
If nothing mattered, if I were an atheist and a nihilist, I think I would build a tower. Or maybe a tree house. I'd run into the woods somewhere and build a tree house. And I might die but that would be okay because nothing would matter.
Link 11:43 p.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

One of these days I'm going to go on a walk and I'm not going to come back.
Link 11:35 p.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

The floor is uploading Conlang Critic
Link 10:49 p.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

In the Python REPL. "inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation" Oh No. What a fricking bad language.
Link 9:58 p.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

Every so often I re-invent Haskell.
Link 9:52 p.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

Ooooohhhh cursed language idea. Okay so you know how JS has Instantaneously Evaluated Function Expressions? I like them because they offer a
nice mix of encapsulation without having to create a dedicated value. What if you had "blocks" as one of the only first-class language constructs. Okay I'm thinking about it more and I think what I'm describing is just a function with scope. But let's re-invent it anyways. So a block defines any variables it needs at the top, and then runs a bunch of code after that. Like counting to 5 would look like ``` {int i; //other variable declarations up here somewhere while (i < 5) { i ++; } } ``` No C-style for loops. Obviously this is weird because what is the {} brackets after the while if not a block? Maybe that is a block with scope? I think we need to be weirder, more fundamental, I don't think the while loop works as-is. But we need some fundamental constructs. How do we call a function? There are no functions, only blocks. Blocks can be nested. Blocks can be nested by name. Oh this gets good. Blocks have a return value. The only 2 types of expressions in the language. Creating blocks and inserting blocks. Blocks can be inserted literally (ie nested) or by name (think, calling a function, but merely referencing a block's name executes its code and returns its value). Blocks have a return value. Variables are nothing but blocks that only return their value. Wait a minute, all variables are functions? Functions are called without parentheses? This is just Haskell. Wait! Ok so the question at this point is just, are blocks values? That is, can I pass a block by value to be executed later in time? Well, that's assuming that blocks are actually functions and that they can take values. Uh. The alternative is saying that there are special `macro` blocks. And what this would do, is that, for example, ``` //option 1, blocks are a 1st-class type: while {x < 5} { console.log x; x = (x + 1); } ``` ``` //option 2, there are special macro blocks while {x < 5} { console.log {x} x = {x + 1}; } ``` So to clarify, in option 2, `{}` are used just like grouping. You can nest them without any consequences. `x = x + {1}` creates a block that returns 1, executes it, takes the value, and adds it to x. For something `while {x < 5}`, `while` is defined as a macro, so the language knows not to execute `x < 5`. In option 1, `{x + 1}` creates a block, always, and only executes it if it is the first thing on the line. So for example `x = {x + 1}` would break, since it would create a block, and then assign x to the block. That is to say, it would be equivalent to the JS `x = (_ => x + 1);` This sounds like LISP. Hm. Hmmmmmm. So the question, really, is when are blocks evaluated. Because in normal languages (JS), functions are values, and they're evaluated when you parens after them. And what I'm trying to do here is hand-wave something, to make these blocks sound like they're not functions, and a lot of that is that you don't put parens after them. So we have to decide when to evaluate a function based on other things. I think option 1 is the way to go. So that a given snippet is unambiguous. Because in option 2, you have to know whether `while` is defined as a macro or not to know how it will evaluate. So to "implement" an example, let's write a Fibonacci generator. (Oh yeah, this should go without saying. If not mentioned (e.g. no functions), assume JS. So we have native lists, objects, strings, booleans, etc.) ``` while = block (conditionBlock, execBlock) {…native code...} if = block (conditionBlock, execBlock) {…native code...} console.log = block (value) {…native code...} etc. values = [0, 1]; while {true} { // Could values.push (values[-1] + values[-2]) in a single line { //Define variables as the first thing in the block lastValue = values[values.length-1]; secondLastValue = values[values.length-2]; values.push lastValue + secondLastValue } console.log values[values.length-1] } ``` This is kind of a boring example because everything just works. The key thing to recognize, that makes this radically different from JS, is that the first block on each line in implicitly executed. And that's the only way to execute blocks. Which makes this language literally unusable because there's no way to get the return value of a block. (e.g. `.push {add a b}` would push an unevaluated block on to the end of the list.). So I'll need to go back to the drawing board, but not tonight.
Link 9:48 p.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

On Hytale: "it's dropping in like 200 years I'm so hyped" Honestly same
Link 9:00 p.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

Imagine a world here.
Link 3:00 p.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

There's no way around this popup. I can't finish exporting my documents from Craft without first restarting it. What if I was in the middle
of writing a sentence? I don't think it would care. A screenshot of a popup with the Craft logo and "New version available" / "An updated version of Craft is available and the app has to be restarted." A single button reading "Restart App"
Link 12:51 a.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

I love talking to people after 9pm because I can use “I’m going to bed” to end the conversation. Normally I hate ending conversations.
Link 12:14 a.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

I had a thought. Something about oh yeah
Link 12:14 a.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

The instrumental intro to White Flag, Gorillaz is fricking amazing.
Link 12:13 a.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

Hello. My name is Matthias.
Link 12:12 a.m. Dec 04, 2021, UTC-5

Does anyone else read this website? (This is a parody of awful "does anyone else" questions.)
Link 9:55 p.m. Dec 03, 2021, UTC-5

I have a complicated relationship with Vim.
Link 7:18 p.m. Dec 03, 2021, UTC-5

I think about the success of Flappy Bird a lot.
Link 2:31 p.m. Dec 03, 2021, UTC-5

Hacker News comment defending that goats are less than 2 feet tall.
Because if you Google “goat height,” it gives you the Wikipedia page for Pygmy goat. Googling “duck height” gives you the height of the tallest ever duck, 30 inches. And now since Google is an authority, people are using and defending those numbers. I’m having none of it. Pygmy Goat height and Indian Runner Duck height is completely irrelevant to the conversation. I mean a normal duck and a normal goat. And if you think my definition of a duck is wrong, you can argue with me, but don’t pull in Google’s Wikipedia scraping algorithms to do it.
Link 11:58 p.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

Why are there so many mountain emoji? 🗻🏔⛰ 🌋 🌄🏞 And no muffin emoji?
Link 11:43 p.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

I am metaphorically on so many drugs.
Link 11:38 p.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

Perhaps no one else warns about the dangers of Universalism because no one except me has embraced it.
When I say Universalism, I mean attempting to bifurcate the word into things that are true and untrue, in the philosophical sense, but also in a more practical sense. I think about things that are "popular" or "unpopular" or "known" or "unknown" or "good" or "bad" or "meaningful" or "meaningless," by some objective, universal criteria. Like, maybe the formula for determining whether someone is a good person is lenient. But it's hard. Because I want to be a "good" person in some un-arguable way. And I really want my life to be "meaningful" in some objective sense.
Link 11:23 p.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

I feel like GEB would be extremely cringy, like unbearably awkward, if you were smarter than Hofstadter. Luckily, none of us mere mortals
have to worry about that.
Link 10:44 p.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

HackerNews is fricking brutal. You call these 2000 pixels Waldo and the comment is "[you've] misidentified Wanda as Waldo."
A super blurry picture of a person wearing red and white. There are a couple of pixels of hair by her shoulders.
Link 5:04 p.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

How much do I have to pay you for a computer that works?
Link 3:17 p.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

"Say something"
Link 3:08 p.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

I have not yet seen many denounce universalism.
Link 3:03 p.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

I love Hacker News because the people are like 'this is all obvious because of the concept of reincarnation.'
And the reply is 'what scientific evidence is there for reincarnation?'
Link 2:20 p.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

Libertarians using Libertarian as an insult is so iconic.
Link 2:05 p.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

I miss sub-pixel antialiasing.
Link 8:48 a.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

This website is an entry in the Beauty Pageant of Life.
Link 1:23 a.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

Did a reading of the About page. Took over 11 minutes my word.
I stand by that length, the About page, like this website in general, is supposed to be a little awkwardly long. But man, it is awkward to read.
Link 1:14 a.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

Titles are for those with the huburis to think that they know what they are going to say before they have said it
Life is a finite cube. I am a red pulsing box. The end of the age may come soon, but probably will not. There is only doom.
Link 12:53 a.m. Dec 02, 2021, UTC-5

One of these days I'm going to get my screen fixed.
Link 9:06 p.m. Dec 01, 2021, UTC-5

I'm ready for another leap year.
Link 8:58 p.m. Dec 01, 2021, UTC-5

"Hands Down" by Brandyn Burnette et al. is fricking good.
You'll be glad to know I consulted Merriam-Webster for the correct usage of `et al.` there.
Link 8:12 p.m. Dec 01, 2021, UTC-5

People talk about how little functional programming is used in the "real-world," but I don't think they realize just how functional React is
Like there's the first-level, obvious things, like React being declarative instead of imperative, and emphasizing pure components, but Facebook recommends avoiding any class inheritance, and straight up defines functions that return components. Wait a minute, functions that return other functions are a hallmark of functional programming. What the heck.
Link 8:07 p.m. Dec 01, 2021, UTC-5

This is code
Link 5:34 p.m. Dec 01, 2021, UTC-5

"The Energy Never Dies"
Link 5:27 p.m. Dec 01, 2021, UTC-5

I'm going to hold off on posting my 2021 music roundup for another week or two. I don't think it will change much, but it's possible.
Link 5:21 p.m. Dec 01, 2021, UTC-5

I am being attacked from all sides simultaneously.
Link 4:47 p.m. Dec 01, 2021, UTC-5

I think I should think more about local maximums. Quality is rarely monotonic.
Link 2:17 p.m. Dec 01, 2021, UTC-5

I have hours
Link 2:14 p.m. Dec 01, 2021, UTC-5

Oh you know I did test it. But it uses UTC times so I think it’s extremely difficult to change. Call it intended, it’s December in London.
Link 8:30 p.m. Nov 30, 2021, UTC-5

I still have not found a situation where it makes more sense to use a `switch` statement than a bunch of `if`s.
*Maybe* in Java if you can switch on the values of an Enum, that's kind of nice. And of course I love pattern matching in functional languages. But C-style switch statements are ugly. (I think they're only there because some instruction sets have assembly instructions for switching, but I hope you'd never have to worry about that.)
Link 7:36 p.m. Nov 30, 2021, UTC-5

`w /= 4` Readable code.
Link 7:36 p.m. Nov 30, 2021, UTC-5