I think it's great that people can make a living posting cool stuff online. But I also think we lost something along the way. People started making "content". It's now, more than ever, accepted to treat art as something consumable and easily replaceable. It's how we got into the whole gen ai mess we're currently still living through. It's a sentiment I occasionally see on bearblog as well. For all the high budget, high effort, well produced and polished videos i see on youtube, the most memorable video I've seen in the last few months was a short where a person made a basque cheesecake. It was recorded on their phone, without any editing or fancy camerawork with the only impulse for creating it being that someone in a comment section somewhere told them they should make a basque cheesecake…  ( 3 min )

Gerhard calls Kaizen 20, 'The One Where We Meet'. Rightfully so. It's also the one where we eat, hike, chat, and launch Pipely live on stage with friends.

Bs in Blueberry There were screenshots of a classic LLM issue floating around Bluesky after the GPT-5 launch yesterday, and I asked GPT-5 myself to confirm. Sam Altman touted GPT-5 as a “PhD level expert in your pocket”, but this PhD doubled down on incorrectly answering the oldest trick for LLMs in the book. When GPT-4 launched, I (and many others) believed that GPT-5's launch would be the “AGI moment”. Cherry picking “bs in blueberry” as a failure of the model and declaring that AGI is never coming is stupid. But it leads to doubts. And there was something else in the keynote that was quite a bit more disturbing. Custom Colors for ChatGPT Threads “We’re now allowing you to customize the colors of your chats, with a couple of options exclusive to our paid subscribers” They admitted that…  ( 3 min )

Email threads have got to be one of the worst possible forms of communication. You've been here before. A perfectly respectable morning is passing by. You're working through your items at a chipper pace maybe humming a song you heard on Spotify that morning. Then, the dreaded email thread comes through. Innocently, you click into the top email. The only text is "[Your Name] see below." I hate this and I bet you do too. Suddenly, you're transported into absolute chaos. You're now a corporate archeologist and firefighter all in one. Forced to decode the two week long thread of baloney while being asked to complete some ambiguous task. Well, guess what? I don't read them, not anymore. If an email thread comes in that's longer than a few paragraphs, you're going straight to Copilot. It gets to decipher the weeks long back and forth bickering to get to what I need to know. Please, please - stop email threads. Emails: Written communication that needs to be documentable or a complex task Documentation (Confluence, Word, etc.): Repeatable process and procedures or recordings of key decisions IM (Teams, Slack, etc.): Actual communication Meetings: In the best possible way, arguing. If we meet and cannot possibly disagree, then it should have been an email. Save a vibe today and send an IM instead of an email thread.  ( 2 min )

As part of the #blaugust blogging month of August most people do an introduction in week 1. We are running out of days in the first week, so I think it is time to get to know me. Those who regularly read my blog (thank you) will know some or all of what follows, but there may be a nuget or two that is new. I tend to keep my online life quite generic and I don't share a lot of personal details, but enough to stimulate some interest in Me as a person, rather than a collection of words online. The Basics My name is David, my pronouns are he/him, I am currently 55 years young. In my head I am around 26 but the bag of bones insists I am mid-fifties. I was born in Scotland, and now live my life between Southern Scotland and Southern Spain. I float between the two regularly as my work-life …  ( 5 min )

With the rise of LLMs, I am seeing tech professionals blatantly skipping over the fundamentals. For example, in my world of data analytics, SQL is table stakes. Yet, I see people blindly trusting LLM outputs to develop SQL queries, without knowing how to explain or debug them. I am getting increasingly impatient about how people and organizations are using LLMs. I worry that we are being over sold on a promise that LLMs will magically make up for a lack of proficiency in an area. It can get you to the answer faster, but you still need to understand what is going on, if you want to pass it on as your work. As organizations try to integrate AI into their processes, I hope that the fundamentals are not forgotten. Maybe another industry of cleaning up vibe coded messes will be a thing? :-)  ( 2 min )

⚠️ I tried not to repeat some of the things I said in last year’s intro post, but some parts are inevitable because I haven’t changed that much. We’re a week into Blaugust, and I’ve been putting off writing this intro post for the past few days. I never like talking about myself, which is a little bit odd considering this blog is all about myself, but you know what I mean. Anyway, I figured it’s probably time I re-introduce myself, just in case you’ve stumbled here and are wondering who I am, and what this blog is about. That way, you’ll at least know what you’re getting into if you decide to keep reading or even -gasp- add me to your RSS reader of choice. I’m Jedda, but also known as JC (Probably?). I live in the Bay Area (California, in the US for those less familiar), and tend to write…  ( 6 min )

When I find myself shying away from writing again, I try to go back to my first few posts and remind myself of my reasons for starting. When I first began, I felt incredible: so creative! so excited! & so in touch with a piece of me that I thought had shriveled up and died. Still, life gets in the way and I am - unfortunately - highly susceptible to changes in momentum. It only takes a small stone underfoot to trip me up and send me tumbling back down the mountain of self-assurance, right into the pit of doubt. So, I've been thinking a lot about where the flinch comes in. I could write a hundred thousand posts about the long line of hurdles I place in front of myself in an effort to circumvent disappointment, but in the end it would just be another small way to stall: psychoanalyzing mysel…  ( 6 min )

There is apparently a thing people do where they blog every day in August. Similar to Weird Web October (which I wasn't able to keep up with lmao) or inktober or what have you, I guess. I am excited that some of the blogs I read regularly are trying to do Blaugust. I won't link to them directly because I don't want to add to the pressure, haha, but maybe I'll link to them later??? August is just getting started and people deserve a moment to get going, I think. I have been blogging every day since Cohost announced it was shutting down and I decided to start blogging again. I've already written once or twice about what that's like, but here's an update: I started off with a two-week queue that functioned as a very long, safe buffer for me. I kept this up for about 3-4 months before the queue finally depleted. I currently have very little queue and rarely have more than 2-5 posts in the hopper. Recently, in July, I was in a situation where every single day, I had to write the post for that day. I found that a little unpleasant. I often write multiple posts in advance on the same day when I'm feeling like I have a lot to say. This sometimes, but doesn't always, happen on weekends. I almost never write posts on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, which are my days that I'm Big Busy in my real life. Posting a link roundup one day a week is a great way to reduce the amount of work you have to do to blog every day. Presumably you have an RSS reader if you are the kind of freak who is trying to do this... just tag stuff you like in the reader and summarize it as you go. I build my Sunday link roundup posts bit by bit during the week. Weeks that I miss a chance to do the roundup are weeks where I was too busy to use my RSS reader very much. Enjoy blogging. It is great and good. You don't need to blog every day but I recommend doing it if you think you can. I want to see all your yammering. It's good to yammer. The more you yammer, I find, the more you have to say in general.  ( 4 min )

We're LIVE at the historic Oriental Theater in Denver, CO with Nora Jones. Nora is the founder of Jeli.io, recently acquired by PagerDuty and she's been shaping the way we think about reliability, incident response, and human-centered engineering for years. We get into the real story behind the deal. Not just the headline, but what it’s like selling your company, what it takes to actually integrate a product into a larger platform, how customers responded, what changed for her team, and why her new role at PagerDuty is basically everything she was building Jeli for.

In a previous incarnation on Bear blog, I wrote a couple of posts that ended up on the Discover Trending feed. One post even got up to number 5 on the top 20 page, and as you can imagine, the number of views for that post shot up. Also, the number of likes, or toasts as they call them here, was suddenly huge. (I am using huge there to describe a number more than 50, and once over 100, which was huge for me) But strangely perhaps to some, I wasn't properly comfortable each time it happened at all. I mean, it is thrilling at first—'Wow, people are reading, and liking it' and all that—but then the introverted, private and the not very social—possibly even paranoid—part of my brain pipes up. "Wow, loads of people are reading that, total strangers now know exactly what you are thinking. Are you…  ( 7 min )

This is part 2 of a 3 part series on digital hygiene. I suggest starting at part 1. Over the past few years I've cultivated a decent relationship with my phone. Not a good one, mind you, but one I'm fairly comfortable with. There is a part of me that yearns for a return to simple, black-and-white phones, with Internet access limited to whichever room in the house had the phone line and computer. But there's no going back; and so I had to find a way to live with the Internet (and the hyper-connectivity it entails) in my pocket. Developing a good relationship to your phone is an intentional process. It doesn't happen by accident. All apps and media, by design, are fighting for your attention. I've heard the term "attention economy" thrown around, and I feel like it's an apt description of th…  ( 5 min )

Previously, I wrote about stepping away from technology and escaping the pull of algorithms. But changing habits is harder than writing about them, and my previous attempts have been utter failures. Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that these platforms are undeniably useful tools.YouTube has helped me learn music production. Reddit has pointed me toward better routines, ideas, and insights. But there is a fine line between using these platforms and being used by them, and that line is deliberately blurred as companies spent billions making sure it stays that way. Working in tech myself, I also feel the constant urge to keep up and stay informed, which only deepens the pull. The internet still holds value, but only when I treat it as a tool rather than a default place to pass time. There is no shortage of ideas on what activities to do instead of browsing - at least in theory. Making music, practicing instruments, reading, cooking, walking. But past attempts to change my habits were not mindful enough. I did not give my brain the space to adjust. Without the usual rush of stimulation, frustration quickly set in, and the old habits returned. This time I am starting smaller. The first step is cutting off internet access on my Mac after 22:00. If I want to work on music late into the evening, that is fine. But there is no reason to be online. The ancient Greeks said that night brings counsel. I hope the quiet helps me reflect. YouTube has also been stripped down using the Unhook extension. No Shorts. No comments. No recommendations. If I need something specific, I will search for it directly. I know this will not be perfect. I will probably still find ways to drift. But two steps forward and one step back is better than standing still. I am not aiming for a radical reset. Just small and sustainable shifts. I will check in again after a week. This is not about rejecting the internet. It is about reshaping how I relate to it. Less feed. More focus.  ( 3 min )

So, a couple of days ago I finally finished a blogpost I had been working on for a good while.1 When I published it, it got a total of two views. Bearblog is the first time I've actually been able to share what I write with an audience larger than just my immediate family. At first, I did actually care a lot about metrics. But I can't say I wasn't disappointed when a post got less toasts or did worse than my previous ones had. I think a lot of social media encourages this, in a sense. Likes, shares, views... They all give you that sweet, sweet dopamine, yknow? Humans love watching numbers go up. I should know, I finished cookie clicker. But, you also feel a bit of diminished self-worth when your new stuff isn't doing as good. That's inevitable, to some extent. At least I don't think most p…  ( 4 min )

Lately I've been trying, and failing, to think of what to say when I come back to this blog. I'm not leaving (I like blogging far too much!), but I have made myself rather scarce lately. But what is there to write about? The urge to write comes and goes. I didn't really have any moments that made me stop and think, I need to write about this later. But I started this as a daily life archive, and so it will be a daily life archive. I've been back home, real home, the past few days—and only a few days. I'm going back to the city soon to attend my first ever research conference! It took a lot of convincing my parents, a lot of logistics help from my friends, and a lot of money out of my bank account, but I'm finally going. I feel kind of bad for insisting so hard on it when it's such an inconvenience to take me back to the city, but I really, truly do want to go see how conference presentations work. I'll be working on my thesis soon since it's finally(!!) senior year in a few weeks, so I've been meaning to see for myself what the standards for presenting are. In the meantime, I've been spending lots and lots of time with my family. And my dogs. My mom found my childhood Bible last night and read out my answers to some of the fun pages. I think I did a pretty good job of pretending not to be embarrassed. Apparently I wanted to be a singer as a little kid, which honestly surprised me—it must've been written before I ever learned what self-consciousness was. I hope little Valentine is proud of me, now that I can say that I take every single gig I can for the love of the game. August really crept up on me, too. I still haven't decided if I want to join Blaugust again this year since I'll be busy as hell with the start of senior year, but I'll still try my best to come back here anyway. Here's to a fun August!  ( 3 min )

If you follow me and read this blog then you know that my most regular posts are weekly release lists which I do every Friday. Despite the amount of new music released every week and all the albums that line these humble blog posts, for some reason I am having difficulty recalling anything that has stuck with me at all this year. Usually at this point in the year I have a spreadsheet, or notes app page depending on how disorganised I was earlier in the year, with tens and tens of albums that I’ve really enjoyed throughout the year. All fighting for their place on my shortlist and then on to my albums of the year list which I post online (will be here this year) as well as on the Heavy Matters podcast end of year show. The problem though is that this year, already in to August, there is no such list. Granted I’ve listened to less albums in general but I’ve still been compiling the weekly release roundup, I’ve still been listening to new releases every week and yet I haven’t felt inspired enough by anything to keep a list and to keep revisiting stuff. I’ve been through my Bandcamp purchases and my wishlist as well as my library on streaming as well as the physical releases I’ve bought and there is stuff there, some stuff I really liked and will probably make that list come December. Yet I can’t stop wondering what it is this year that’s different. Is it me? Am I feeling a bit burnt out by it? I have done a lot less reviews this year so that’s a possibility I guess. Is the quality just not there in as much abundance this time around? I’m hesitant to say this is the case but at the same time, there’s not a lot I can instantly recall that made an impact on me. More work is required to go back through and find what I’ve enjoyed as well as to see what good stuff I’ve missed and also hopefully, there will be some great stuff before the year is out. So what do you think? Are you in a similar position or are you flush with albums you’ve loved and wondering what I’m talking about. Please, me know. Hails!  ( 3 min )

Back in December, I wrote about my Seasons of Writing, where I compared my inspiration to write to seasonal shifts and changes1. At that point in time, I felt like I was in a writing winter: quiet, introspective, and a little bit frozen. I tried to be patient because I knew that eventually, spring would arrive for me and I’d start writing again. But honestly, I’m not sure if I ever left winter. A majority of this year has been spent in my own head, similar to last year’s predicament when I talked about living inside my head too much. The ideas are still there, but the words are not quite coming out the way I want it to. There’s always a long list of things I want to reflect on and write about, but rarely does any of it come to fruition. Between wedding prep2, trying to get myself back into…  ( 6 min )

听人说：「人生如建塔。」刚开始还觉得浓浓的「鸡汤」味道，却又越咂摸越觉得有道理。 可不可以这样说，我们每个人，从出生那一刻起，就成了一个建筑师？只是，这个建筑师有些特别：工地是预先划定的，材料是随机配发的，工期是不确定的，而图纸，需要自己去画。 这让我想起十多年前接表弟放学时，他向我分享在学校玩积木的心得。有的小朋友分到的乐高，色彩鲜艳，形状规整；而有的只有几块磨损的木头，边角都不太齐整。但奇怪的是，最后搭出来的东西，精彩程度往往和材料的好坏没有必然联系。有人堆出平庸的方块，有人却搭出了奇妙的结构。 在人生这场建筑游戏里，什么是我们能够掌控的，什么是必须接受的？ 显然，有些东西是改不了的。基因决定了我的身高上限，出生地决定了我的母语，时代背景决定了我会遇到战争还是和平。这些就像地基，我可以在上面建造，但不能把它们挖掉重来。 但同样明显的是，有些东西是可以塑造的。例如，知识可以学习，技能可以训练，性格可以打磨，关系可以经营……这些就像可以自由使用的建材，虽然获取它们需要努力，但至少努力是有用的。 更有意思的是那些介于两者之间的东西。比如童年经历，它已经发生，无法改变，但我对它的理解和诠释却可以不断更新。父亲曾语重心长地说，同样的贫困童年，有人看到的是匮乏，有人看到的是简朴；有人记住的是饥饿，有人记住的是分享。记忆的砖块还是那些砖块，但可以选择用哪一面朝外。 说到选择，这可能是整个建塔过程中最关键的部分。因为塔可以有无数种建法：可以建成碉堡，坚固但封闭；可以建成灯塔，高耸而孤独；可以建成钟楼，定点报时；也可以建成了望塔，专注远方。 选择建什么样的塔，本质上是在选择什么样的人生。而这种选择，往往通过我们的价值观来体现。 我曾问过一位耄耋之年依然勤奋工作的科学家：「您到这个年龄了，为什么还要这么拼？」他想了想说：「年轻的时候没有赶上好时代，三反五反、文革，耽误了太多时间。现在我头脑…  ( 2 min )

Alex Kondov knows when you've been vibe coding. (He can smell it.) our friends at Charm release a Go-based AI coding agent as a TUI, Jan Kammerath disassembled the "hacked' Tea service's Android app, Alex Ellman made a website that provides up-to-date pricing info for major LLM APIs, and Steph Ango suggests remote teams have "ramblings" channels.

Emacs Carnival 2025-08: Your Elevator Pitch for Emacs - Take on Rules (@takeonrules@dice.camp, Irreal) Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): EmacsATX: Emacs Social https://www.meetup.com/emacsatx/events/308826076/ Thu Aug 7 1600 America/Vancouver - 1800 America/Chicago - 1900 America/Toronto - 2300 Etc/GMT – Fri Aug 8 0100 Europe/Berlin - 0430 Asia/Kolkata - 0700 Asia/Singapore Atelier Emacs Montpellier (in person) https://lebib.org/date/atelier-emacs Fri Aug 8 1800 Europe/Paris Emacs.si (in person): Emacs.si meetup #8 2025 (v #živo) https://dogodki.kompot.si/events/660761d6-862d-43a1-9fb4-955d4e3e1066 Tue Aug 12 1900 CET OrgMeetup (virtual) https://orgmode.org/worg/orgmeetup.html Wed Aug 13 0900 America/Vancouver - 1100 America/Chicago - 1200 America/Toronto - 1600 Etc/GMT - 1800 Europe/Berl…  ( 3 min )

2025-07-31-10 July 2025 #monthly #review Text from sketch July 2025 Summer! Park playdates, swimming, exploration 🎇 Swimming, poi, fireworks 🏊 High Park pool 🥖 farmers market bread 🎮 Minecraft at the park 🏊 somersault, somer-pepper 🎮 Stardew Valley Expanded 🏖️ sand restaurant; supermarket sims 🦈 more diving toys 🛍️ errands: clothes, books 🗘 poi 🧺 snacks 🏊 3 breaths while swimming 🂡 card games 🏊 swim checklists, lessons 🏊 deep end test, water slide 🏊 needs more practice to pass 🪄 LEGO Glinda and Elphaba's dorm 🤖 LEGO Mindstorms ⚔️ lightsabers 👕 clothes shopping 🥣 mulberries 🤖 LEGO Spike Prime 🚴 bike playdate 🏊 last swim lesson; Sunnyside party 🏊 doing our own thing at the pool 😃 Biidaasige Park, ziplines; Korean BBQ 🏺 KidSpark; potter…  ( 19 min )

At 30, I've realized the internet isn’t what it once was. Growing up, being online meant proudly identifying as a nerd, forming genuine friendships through forums, games, and self-hosted servers. It was a community built around passion, not profit. Today, algorithms dominate our digital lives, prioritizing outrage and endless scrolling over meaningful interactions. Social media and platforms like YouTube push promotional content, burying posts from friends I genuinely care about. Even gaming, once about enjoyment and camaraderie, now feels overly competitive and validation-driven. Yet I find myself caught in the algorithm too, spending far too much time online, despite no longer truly enjoying it. Reflecting on the Chinese term Jishu (技术), meaning technology, I've recognized it’s time for a change—not by trying to reconnect digitally, but by consciously stepping away. My new goal is clear: spend more time offline and use technology intentionally, as a practical tool rather than a source of distraction and dissatisfaction. This blog marks the beginning of my journey toward reclaiming control from technology and rediscovering life beyond the screen.  ( 2 min )

I am a little mad at the false expectations that AI hype and marketing have fostered. Sure, that’s marketing for ya, nothing new, right? But I’m bothered about the way this impacts my work. My boss has started this project of optimizing the process of generalizing certain documents, meaning: there’s an original and we want the copy to have no corporate design, no brand names, and other specifics missing and if needed, placeholders.1 Additionally, some minor edits are supposed to be inserted as well. Of course, the hype has infiltrated my place of employment too, so instead of this being done by hand like it always was (much of it via finding and replacing in Word), they want AI to do it in one fell swoop instead of a human doing this for weeks as the documents are not that small and other …  ( 9 min )

Photos by Zoe Larkin I recently mentioned that I got married. This is the start of a (probably more than) 3-part series where I’ll talk a bit about the vendors we used for our San Francisco City Hall elopement, along with other details that may help anyone considering getting married there. How We Found Our Photographer Applying to Work With Zoe Pre-Wedding Support & Planning The Elopement Day What Comes Next How We Found Our Photographer Shortly after LC and I got engaged in 2023, I casually started looking for a San Francisco wedding photographer. We never planned on having a big wedding. From the start, we knew we wanted something small and intimate. I’ve never wanted to be the center of attention, and neither does LC. Around that time, we also heard about how grand San Francisco City H…  ( 8 min )

Ethical AI is an obvious goal to strive for, however it is far more complex than most give credit to. This is the first in a series of short posts which explores some of these rough edges. What is ethics anyway? Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with moral principles and values, wrestling with what is “right” and “wrong”. To attempt to evaluate what is “right”, several ethical frameworks offer useful lenses. Consequentialism judges actions by their outcomes. For example, a firm adopts sustainable practices because the benefits (lower emissions, reputational gains) outweigh the costs. Deontology focuses on duties and rights, regardless of consequences. For example, a company refuses to sell user data, not because it’s illegal, but because it’s the right thing to do. Virtue ethic…  ( 7 min )

You don’t rest — you disappear: scrolling until your thumb aches, binge-watching until your eyes give out, lying there marinating in the anxiety that comes from avoiding the very thing your nervous system is begging for — nothing. Real nothing is an act. A refusal — to let each moment justify itself through output. It’s a rejection of the idea that the animal inside you should be treated as if it were a machine — expected to keep going simply because it hasn’t broken yet. Every act requires practice. You can’t suddenly decide to stop performing and expect your body to remember how to exist without function. Start stupidly small. Find a corner of your space — one that doesn’t scream productivity. Not your desk. Not facing your vision board. Definitely not anywhere your phone can make eye co…  ( 7 min )

Edit: Happy Blaugust 2025! I miss the days of cool, translucent colors in all sorts of electronics from the 2000s, along with unique phone designs, headphones, mp3 players, computers. Remember Apple's iMacs and iBooks? My Tumblr is dedicated to reblogs of retro tech and electronics that hit my nostalgia so good. Earlier this year I started looking at tech blogs again (trying to escape a bit from the real world) and discovered Nothing, a company out of London who's mission was to make tech fun, just how it was about 20 years ago. I really liked the look of their earbuds and line of affordable-yet-futuristic looking mobile phones. I thought to myself "I'll bounce back to Android since I'm getting bored of Apple's sameness", plus, with the new iOS 26 of "liquid glass", I wasn't a fan since i…  ( 13 min )

I don't typically participate in month long challenges in this blog, but I figured this would be a good way to motivate me to publish more photos in the month of August... so here we are! Hello Blaugust, it's nice to meet you. Please enjoy my (almost) daily photos in August. Expect lots of photos in the Bay Area (California) and beyond. First up is the Embarcadero in San Francisco, CA... it's one of my favorite places to be. ♾️ Related: Iconic Landmarks in San Francisco  ( 5 min )

🎈 Oh hello, August! (aka my birthday month) A year has come and gone, which means it's time for another round of Blaugust. This will be my second year participating, and I’ve honestly been looking forward to it all year. I’m hoping it gives me the push I need to write more, especially since I’ve been stuck in a writing slump ever since I shared about being in my slow season back in December. 1️⃣ What is Blaugust anyways? (& when does it happen?) Blaugust is an annual blogging event that happens in August. It was originally run by Belghast, but this year it's being hosted by the community, as mentioned in this post by Nerd Girl. The goal is to challenge yourself to publish a post every day throughout the month, with weekly themes available if you’d like to follow prompts. I didn’t really s…  ( 6 min )

Adam & Jerod (plus zero other randos) dig into Stack Overflow's 2025 developer survey results. We discuss SO's decline, the desire for younger devs to have real chats with real people, the rise of uv and more Python winning, why people are frustrated with AI, and more.

After abstaining from social media for three days, relapsing on the fourth, and using it in limited bursts on the fifth, I’ve started to realize that social media is like cigarettes. When I was spending 50 hours a week on social media, it felt like chain-smoking. During those three days of abstinence, I craved a hit of social media content every hour. To cope, I turned to chess.com, focusing on playing rather than winning. At first, playing against bots and learning was satisfying, but soon it only felt fun when I was competing against real people. Now, as I use social media for a few minutes whenever the cravings hit, my interest in chess has vanished, and something feels lost in my mind—like a sense of control or mental discipline. Using social media like a cigarette every hour or so is making me feel aloof and less driven. I believe social media should be classified as a controlled substance.  ( 2 min )

I haven't yet written about the whole Collective Shout/Visa/Mastercard adult art censorship thing currently roiling Games World but: it's fucking stupid you can't buy whatever legal porn you wish to buy. It's particularly stupid that itch.io, of all places, ended up at the heart of all this. It's home to raw human creation, which means that a lot of the most "objectionable" material on that site is laughably-amateur, absolutely not-worth-discussing porn games exactly like No Mercy, the one which kicked off this whole chaotic mess. You can see a censored, no-visible-nudity example of its first 20 minutes here. If you're curious, I do recommend checking it out, if only to see for yourself how profoundly amateur and pointless it was. You can see the whole thing sampled in a playthrough here..…  ( 7 min )

Still a ton of things to process, a lot of behind the scene photos to review before we get the official ones from our photographer, and memories to reminisce on. I'll probably write something in the near future when I've processed everything but for now, this will have to do. I'll be writing about these vendors later but... Hair / Make-up by Rebecca Beardsley of ShineForth Salon Floral / flowers by Momo's Flowers & More  ( 5 min )

Every day I like to check the news in the afternoon for the latest, and though it does get tiring, I think it's worth being up to date on the things going on around us. You'll see the sort of daily or trending headlines surrounding Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, Iran, Yemen, parts of Africa, and all these conflict zones competing for the front page alongside other noteworthy updates on what Trump is babbling about today, how the economy is doing, or insane natural disasters. For some, a lot of these things are quite distant from us. For others, these are things that are affecting your daily life. For this post, I will refer specifically to conflict zones. I have the privilege of belonging to the former camp where I live in a fairly peaceful part of the world with little worry to about beyond my…  ( 3 min )

It took me four days to relapse into using social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and X, primarily to cope with feelings of depression. Fortunately, I kept the duration limiters on my iPhone, restricting each app to 30 minutes. After using them, I felt slightly better. However, over the past three days, my productivity in research work was exceptional while avoiding social media, averaging about 10 hours per day. Today, it will likely be just a few hours. I plan to go cold turkey again and aim to surpass my previous three-day streak. This experience highlights the need for an alternative leisure activity to keep my mind occupied and distract me from life's challenges, as social media isn't a sustainable option. I tried using eBook reader apps, but they feel clunky and cumbersome.  ( 2 min )

Greg Osuri, Founder and CEO of Akash Network joins us to share the backstory in his testimony before congress on the energy crisis and what it's going to take to power the future of AI. From powering datacenters, to solar, decentralized AI compute, to zombies in SF.

我们要去走一条路 木栈道已经建好 但是草木疯长 像是很久都没有人从这里走过 – 我们用手掌拨开两米… Continue reading 彩虹 →  ( 20 min )

Anyone can generate an app now. You open Cursor, describe what you want, and out comes clean, well-formatted code. It even has comments. It runs, and the linter’s happy. You scroll through the code and think, “Yeah, this looks right.” So you pat yourself on the back. You built an app. Except you didn’t. You built something that looks like an app but doesn’t behave like one. It ignores the messy reality of systems, users, failures, and edge cases. You haven’t tested it against the world. It’s just a convincing guess. The problem is, it feels real. The structure, the syntax, the polish all trick your brain into thinking the hard work is done. But you're seeing what the model guessed you meant. It’s pattern-matching, not understanding. The illusion is powerful because it runs. Because it doesn’t throw errors. Because it looks right. In the real world, writing apps is an interaction between what you think the system should do, what it actually does, and what you observe when you try to make it do that thing. You write code, you run it, it breaks, you fix it. Through that loop, your mental model gets refined. You stop guessing. You start knowing. AI shortcuts the loop. It gives you code that seems finished, so you skip the part where you question it. You don’t test strange inputs. You don’t simulate failure. You don’t push the system to its edges. You just trust the vibes. That’s vibe coding: building on a model’s guess and assuming it works because it looks good. Eventually, something breaks. And when it does, you won’t know why. You never touched the system deeply enough to understand how it behaves. You weren’t building an app. You were reviewing a guess. Vibe coding feels fast. It feels clever. But it skips the part where apps becomes real. Real code gets tested. It fails. It surprises you. And through that, it gets better. If you’re not in the loop, you’re not building. AI can write code. But only you can make it work.  ( 3 min )

Felt like writing a little summary with pictures about what I've been up to recently. ---.𖥔 ݁ ˖ 𖥔 ˖ ݁ 𖥔.--- My guest post at Steven's is out! It's about my favorite in-game homes. So, if you want to see my Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley and Palia homes, you should go check it out. I've also started playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure and greatly enjoying it. I'm 50 hours in now, and I often play it while on my indoor bike: I also got a cute Cinnamoroll to attach to my bags: I love Mocha and Big Challenges the most, but they don't really get merch, so Cinna it is. In the meantime, I've also published two more translation/summaries to GDPRhub. I have three wiki entries up now, currently working on a fourth. There's also been a lot of MtG lately, especially in the LGS. My wife was at an Edge of Eternities Prerelease event (I love the set, but I suck at Limited, so I avoid that). I still need to pick up my two Commander set preorders. But look at this cool card she pulled: After my rough day earlier this week1, she was so sweet and got me flowers and gifted me a Normandy brick set <3 It lives next to my screen for now. By the way, she left a glass of water in the freezer for a little too long and it resulted in this whacky looking ice mold of the glass she was able to pull out of it: As you can see, she's been heavily into painting her minis lately. My coworker also had too much zucchini in his garden and gifted me two massive ones, totaling 2.5kg. Here's one filled with minced soy, rice and vegan cheese: And finally, I've made a meme to make fun of me hitting Bearblog's anti-bot protections every now and then by accident. Thankfully, Herman is always so patient with me and my blog shenanigans. (based on this song by PinkPantheress. Epilepsy warning starting at 0:22.) Reply via email Thank you for all the kind messages :)↩  ( 5 min )

Tired of this constant barrage of censorship hidden under the guise of protecting children, MasterCard/Visa monopoly setting the global standard of what is and isn't acceptable, and frequent attacks on encryption in EU law as well. Being online isn't worth all that. You aren't getting my ID for services like this. And I wish more big services would just pull out temporarily and geoblock instead of bending the knee - would love to see the hell the MP's would be living in if Meta, X, Google, Wikipedia, XBox, PlayStation and more would just not be a thing anymore in the UK for now, even rendering devices near useless. Boycott that shit! Let them squirm and undo it under pressure. The UK isn't even that huge of a market compared to others. All companies get by complying with it is suddenly hav…  ( 8 min )

This past month I stumbled upon a desire, or really a fixation, on watching a movie every single day for the entirety of July. Initially it was a coincidence - we just happened to watch a movie for the first 3 days of July and as someone that averages only about 4 movies per month for the past few years, it spurred a single stray thought that changed the entire month's trajectory. Movies 1-3, not including the special In The Mood for Love 2001 short that followed the screening. Here are a few things I learned, about myself or in general, throughout this month of watching a movie every day. It is actually extremely hard to watch a movie every single day for an entire month. Maybe this isn't news to some people. Maybe it's not even news to me, given that I'm not a huge movie watcher in the…  ( 6 min )

I was email chatting with B, and she brought up a really cool question about online zine clubs. I shared a few places where I hang out online for zines, but there isn't really a little "club" that I know of to chat all things zines. Like: tools, questions/feedback, sharing process and pics, or bouncing ideas off each other. Sometimes zine making can feel a bit lonely, so feeling a part of a group can be really fun, and encouraging. There are a few Discord places and Reddit channels that I like, but they sometimes feel a bit busy/big that my introverted self gets a little shy about sharing these types of things. Writing on my blog and on my Kofi page is still a way I love to share, but when it comes to gathering like-minded makers, I feel like there are no simple platforms for this. Tumblr has "communities" now, which actually could be fun. Like a tiny Bearblog zine space? Hehe. I'll have to think about it. If anyone has any ideas/feedback or knows of any online "club spaces" that are low-pressure, pls email me :) I added a digital version of my zine How To Share Your Zines Without Social Media in my Kofi shop. I like to send extra little treats through the mail with my zine orders, but I know sometimes it's just easier to print them at home!  ( 4 min )

Contributing to open-source projects is a goal of many programmers. Issues tagged with "good-first-issue" is one way to find something to work on. When newcomers (people who never contributed to the project) browse issues in a repo, GitHub will hit them with a banner "If you're ready to tackle some open issues, we've collected some good first issues for you.", which will take you to an issues page filtered with the label good-first-issue. Think of this page as a landing page for your repo to newcomers, since it's pretty much the first thing someone will look for when they're looking to contribute (most repos will also link this page in CONTRIBUTING.md). But I've found this page to be downright unhelpful in most cases. Usually it's filled with issues which fall into one of these buckets: Stale Issues The implementation is no longer required, but no-one bothered to update the issue. Unattended Issues There is a PR (or multiple) linked to the issue but no one has attended to it. Ambiguous Context The issue is written as if the newcomer is supposed to understand a lot of context. Someone has asked a clarifying question, no one has answered. Issues is not the way work is done is repo Usually the most pertaining factor, because GitHub issues suck. There are tribes of developers working on something off GitHub (Discord/Email/Whatever) and issues is where end users come and report bugs or feature requests. I don't know what is the best way to start contributing, maybe it still might be browsing this page, I just wish more projects took the time to making this page more useful. When you create a "good first issue", think of it as paying it forward. You enter a contract with a fragile newbie; be precise, helpful and unassuming.  ( 3 min )

EmacsConf 2019 (Nov 2, online): Propose a session: https://emacsconf.org/2019/cfp (before Aug 31) Share ideas: https://emacsconf.org/2019/ideas Emacs configuration: (emacs-init-time): what's your emacs init time? hardcoremacs: �� A lightweight emacs config cus-edit+ - Let Customize know about changes made outside it {emacsmirror/GitHub} (Reddit) What are the worst default emacs bindings that we usually don't change? Emacs Lisp: Perceptron: a Lisp, Elisp, Clojure, Scheme implementation tutorial Comparison between Magit's 'transient' and 'hydra' prism.el: Highlight Lisp forms according to depth makem.sh: Makefile-like script for building and testing Emacs Lisp packages Emacs development: Instructions on how to test the portable dumper with Spacemacs. The portable dumper is a feature…  ( 3 min )

Help wanted: EmacsWiki: Carnival - looking for a host for August (@ctietze@mastodon.social) #123 - Reader stutters and consumes high memory on High res scaled display - divyaranjan/emacs-reader - Codeberg.org (@divyaranjan@mathstodon.xyz) - help wanted testing high-resolution monitors with fractional scaling Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs Berlin (hybrid, in English) https://emacs-berlin.org/ Wed Jul 30 0930 America/Vancouver - 1130 America/Chicago - 1230 America/Toronto - 1630 Etc/GMT - 1830 Europe/Berlin - 2200 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Jul 31 0030 Asia/Singapore M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Fri Aug 1 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1500 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2030 Asia/Kolkata - 2300 Asia/Singapore EmacsATX: Emacs S…  ( 4 min )

Jono Alderson takes aim at SPAs thanks to modern CSS, copyparty turns almost any device into a file server, Ernie Smith honors the Game Genie's 35th anniversary, Anthropic shares how their teams use Claude Code, and Drew Lyton tells why he believes the future is NOT self-hosted.

There's something grotesque about the way we expect other people to be convenient for us. We want people to be emotionally available, yet low maintenance — like a houseplant that texts back promptly and never makes things weird. What we’re really after is connection without complication — the sanitised version, the one that doesn't require us to bump into the messy subplot of someone else's emotional arc. I was in line at an organic grocery store in Ubud. A woman was paying at the only register, casually asking the cashier a couple of questions about those impulse items near the counter — stuff designed to seduce you while your card is already in hand. In front of me, a guy in yoga wear exhaled hard, then cut her off with a sharp “Are you buying or not?”. My first instinct was to tap him o…  ( 7 min )

I recently read Ralf Jung's blog post "There is no memory safety without thread safety" which mentions that Go is not a memory safe language in the presence of data races. "But Go comes with a built in data race detector1" some might say. This reminded me of a quirk in Go's dynamic data race detection that causes it to miss data races in executed code that could easily be spotted by a human2. Here is the code the data race detector struggles with: package main import ( "fmt" "sync" ) var counter int var mutex sync.Mutex func increment(wg *sync.WaitGroup, id int) { defer wg.Done() mutex.Lock() counter++ fmt.Printf("Counter: %d\n", counter) mutex.Unlock() if id == 1 { counter++; } } func main() { …  ( 5 min )

[drawing from 2008] So the "jetgirlart" screen name came about during college... 22 years ago. I got a bachelor's in fine art and used it to get various graphic design jobs here and there between having kids. I kept the screen name for all my social media and games but after college I didn't really keep up with making "art". In college they taught us all the techniques and such to get your work into juried shows or galleries. That's what a fine art degree does vs a graphic design degree. But the problem I instantly ran into was that I wasn't good enough to get into those shows. I didn't have a personal style or theme that set me apart from the other artists. That is a huge deal and you need to figure that out asap when you start wrapping up your fine art degree. I didn't, and fell out of t…  ( 6 min )

There’s been posts in other places I read recently that made me sad. They all had one thing in common: Defeatism about changing anything about tech use. They treated apps as universal, specific companies as a must-have. And sure, I get that perspective; I myself have made the connection between Google and utility services. However, it was all woe is me. “No one is going to stop using these apps anyway.” “I know no one cares about this.” “I know it’s unrealistic to ever switch.” “It’s hopeless.” And I just wanna grab them by the shoulders and shout: “No!!! I’m here! So many people are here and doing just that! See, we’ve done it and we’re willing to share how and what we’re doing instead! We care, just like you! Look around the world. While someone in the US thinks iMessage and Facebook Mes…  ( 5 min )

My phone just chimed, notifying me that I spent an average of 8 hours of screen-on time last week. When I checked what I was spending most of my time on, I noticed that Instagram, X and YouTube were my most frequented activities on the phone. In fact, I had spent an average of 51 hours on these media apps over the last 3 weeks. This is alarming and seems to be an indicator of my loneliness or other issues. I have decided to take drastic action and cut these off completely by setting time limits on my phone and browser on my desktop. I know conventional wisdom says that stopping cold turkey doesn’t normally work and that it’s best to wean off these gradually, but I don’t think I can manage that. Once I open them, I think I won’t be able to stop. The drawback is that I won’t be in touch with the news, but I realize that most news websites report everything from social media anyway, so I can stay apprised of the news without these apps. This also explains why I haven’t been making progress on my research work. It brings to my attention that if I spent this much time on my research work, I would be making considerable progress. The thing is, spending 50 hours on social media has nothing to show for it. It’s not like I’m creating content on these platforms—just consuming them.  ( 2 min )

We should all have a digital space of our own. It should be a place where we own our data, cannot be easily de-platformed, and where we can be ourselves. When you routinely only post on X/Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, what-have-you, you are at the mercy of that platform. The platform might allow you to export your data, but you need to remember to do so regularly, and if you're caught with your pants down because of a ban, you'll lose your presence. Bans can happen for any reason. It's not just people who are trolls or hateful. I recently tried to create a Bluesky account to see what all the hubbub was. I created my account and didn't do anything else. When I went on the next day to start using it, I discovered I was banned. I don't know why. It won't even let me stay on the screen long enough to click the appeal button. This is my last attempt at using traditional social platforms. I'm going to only use my own from now on. Can you imagine if I had put years and years into Bluesky before this arbitrary ban? That would be soul-crushing. I will continue to only use my own space, so I can be in control.  ( 3 min )

current mood: nostalgic I've grown up hearing the cautionary tale that "anything that goes on the internet is forever!" I'm sure you've probably heard something similar, to dissuade you from posting party photos on Facebook which would put your future hire-ability in jeopardy. I understand the sentiment, and while perhaps true in some ways, I have been increasingly frustrated with just how much this is not the case. I wish I could look back to see all of the things I created online so many years ago. I wish they were still forever. When I was a kid, I made my own website. It was on piczo. I still remember the username, and my best friend's too. I remember how we sepnt so much time curating our websites, hanging out, chatting on MSN. I must have been 11-13 years old. That was the beginnings of me learning about css and html. I can barely remember what my website looked like. I suppose it was probably similar to what you might imagine a 12 year old creating in the early 00s (I'm thinking flashing graphics, guests books, everything I love when I find a new blog on the indie web). I would love to see it again, see if it is still as cool as my mind remembers it. But piczo fully closed down over 10 years ago, and all of those memories are long gone. So many things disappear, evaporate over the years, and dissolve into our distant memories. I wish I could find them again. I wish I could browse my younger self’s internet history the way I like to look through old photo albums. reply by email  ( 4 min )

so you want to know about digital piracy huh? buckle up because this rabbit hole goes deep. before we start, obvious disclaimer: this is just educational stuff about history and how things work. im not telling you to go pirate things or break laws or whatever. just sharing some interesting tech history. the early days (1970s-1980s) digital piracy is actually older than most people think. back in the 70s and 80s, when personal computers were just becoming a thing, people were already copying software. the whole thing started pretty innocently - friends sharing floppy disks with cool programs they found. no big deal right? except software companies started getting mad when they realized people werent buying their stuff. fun fact: the first major anti-piracy campaign was by bill gates himself…  ( 5 min )

I've been enjoying reading people's responses to the Emacs Carnival July theme of writing experience. I know I don't need complicated tools to write. People can write in composition notebooks and on typewriters. But I have fun learning more about the Emacs text editor and tweaking it to support me. Writing is one of the ways I think, and I want to think better. I'll start with the kinds of things I write in my public and private notes, and then I'll think about Emacs specifically. Types of notes Emacs News Bike Brigade newsletter Tech notes Life reflections Monthly and yearly reviews Book notes Emacs workflow thoughts Types of notes 2025-07-25-05 What kinds of posts do I write? How? Improvements? #writing Text from sketch What kinds of posts do I write? H…  ( 11 min )

Today I took my family out for a good meal and end the evening with a good movie. No one said anything about my birthday. They have probably forgotten about it. Having the opportunity to spent time with them is already a gift. I rather have their company than cold birthday messages. As a man, I work hard to provide for the family. Having this responsibility is a privilege. Nothing last forever and my days will come to an end. What is important is not the number on my lifespan, but whether I have truly lived with the people that I love.  ( 2 min )

I am 48 years old today. Time has slipped through my fingers. I thought I have a lot of time left but I am wrong. I still remember my first day at school, I cannot wait to grow up. When I was at school, I thought I will be happy when I finish my exams. When I started university, I thought I will be happy when I graduate. When I started working, I thought I will be happy when I get promoted. Somehow, all my happiness are in the future. Our happiness should not be in the future but now. Looking back, I have achieved far more than I have imagined. Yet, I never really gave myself any credit for it. I always think I can do more and be more. As of today, I probably have less than 50% left of my life span. If I am not happy now, when I should be happy? I am grateful that I am healthy. I have a good legal business that I can support my family. All my family members are healthy. There is really nothing more that I should ask from life. I am 48 years old today. Let me enjoy my moment and the passing of time. Life should not be feared but cherished. We all will reach our destination and disembark from life. Until then, please let me enjoy the journey of my life.  ( 2 min )

Welcome back to #define, our game of obscure jargon, fake definitions, and expert tomfoolery. This time we're joined by three Changelog++ members, to see who has the best vocabulary and who can trick everyone else into thinking that they do.

Guest video by from Welch Labs

2025-07-23-02 Finding the shape of my thoughts #writing Text from sketch Finding the shape of my thoughts 2025-07-23-02 I have a hard time following a thought from beginning to end. Some people are like this and have figured out things that work well for them. Challenges: too much or not enough one more thing; rabbit holes dangling thoughts shape of thought topics? enough? flow? metaphors, visual frameworks? zooming in? links? text boxes? outline, snippets, placeholders outline? short dictation? Keyboard? fleshing out: code, links, etc. Zettelkasten? editing audio braindump? managing idea pipeline? leave TODOS, mark them Develop thoughts in conversation Use the constraints Get the ball rolling The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (2023): …  ( 7 min )

Sugu Sougoumarane, creator of Vitess, comes off sabbatical to bring Vitess to Postgres. We discuss what motivated Sugu to come off sabbatical, why now is the time, the technical challenges of doing so, the implementation details of Multigres (Vitess for Postgres). We also discuss the state of Postgres at scale.

the internet is getting weirder and weirder everyday. micro communities online - including booklandia - are becoming strange distortions of epic proportions that would, quite honestly, make alien earth landing reels less jarring. the internet is, to echo what everyone with a pulse understands, going to hell, and not the nice kind with hot satan and chanting and cloaks. in an effort to take back my brain, my books, and my ever-loosening grip on reality (please read every word I write here with a touch of sarcasm), i've created this minimalistic beautiful bear-y blog. what on earth will you find inside? no ads. few photos. aside from on my about page, perhaps I will keep the selfies at a minimum, too? perhaps. updates on books, writing, and what i'm reading. rants on the downfall of society. nostalgic entries on the rise of blogs like these. magic spells, because why not? i'll see you soon. love, kali / kv  ( 2 min )

hey bear-ers, i know there are many developers here who appreciate open source as much as I do, so i wanted to share something i'm excited about: the oss hackathon 2025 (September 1-7). too many essential tools are locked behind paywalls or simply unavailable as open source alternatives. this hackathon is an attempt to grow the ecosystem of open source alternatives to popular tools. the format is fully async, so you can participate from anywhere without mandatory check-ins or zoom calls. just build something real that helps the community. prizes vary from a herman (hehe, herman) miller chair, framework laptop, all the way to xm5's. tldr: build something useful, make it open source, win prizes, and help others break free from vendor lock-in.  ( 3 min )

TLDR: I trained a Flappy Bird world model to run in your web browser, try out the demo here! Flappy Bird world model running in Safari on iPhone 14 Pro Recently, I’ve been pretty interested in world models, which build on video generation research to create real-time simulations based on a user's input. I’ve seen them being applied everywhere from creating environments for autonomous vehicles and robots, to video games that can generate the physics, rules, and graphics without embedding any of the traditional game logic into the program. Decart’s viral AI Minecraft project, Odyssey's interactive videos, Runway's general world models, and Google’s Genie 2 are cool examples of this being applied to the gaming/film industry, and I think there will be a future where people can generate and re…  ( 11 min )

I am job hunting for an entry-level position as a process engineer. During last year's internship, I built meaningful connections with important people within the industry. Since I graduated, I countlessly thought of reaching out but hesitated. Something about sending an unsolicited email of I am looking for an opportunity . . . felt painfully exposing. Actually, it felt embarrassing. I felt embarrassed. Now I know cold emails aren't the only route to employment, but I noticed a pattern: I shrink in the face of anything unfamiliar, unpredictable, or remotely outside my comfort zone - especially when it risks embarrassment. It was the same when I started Bear. Clicking that Publish button for the first time was terrifying. Embarrassment is the price of entry. Not just when writing or sending cold emails to recruiters — but anything you find worth doing. The first time you work on a dream project, pitch yourself, or ask for what you want will feel humiliating and uncomfortable. But there's no way around it, really. You can’t sidestep the sting of being unpolished, unready, or simply seen. There is no secret route that leads to growth while letting yourself remain hidden. If you are never embarrassed, chances are you're not trying anything new. Just orbiting that same small, familiar territory and mistaking your safety for progress. Those willing to be embarrassed are the ones who go furthest. They are the ones who cross thresholds and shape meaningful lives. I will send that email, after all.  ( 2 min )

When I watched Ozzy sang "Mama, I'm Coming Home" at his Back to the Beginning gig I had this foreboding feeling. While this man was pulling off the last thing he ever wanted to do before he passed, he must've already knew the end was nigh. Then this morning, the news came. Ozzy Osborne dead at the age of 76. But this post isn't really about our rock legend, it's about what happened. And what will happen. Death. The one thing that often passes through my mind is the death of my mother, whether near or far, it's something that'll inevitably happen. It's this sort of dreadful feeling whenever I see the wrinkling deepen on her features or how she's no longer the speed demon she used to be when I was younger. The list of little things that continue to grow everyday only impress upon you how lit…  ( 3 min )

Aditya Chopra picks a boy from the Sandeep Reddy Vanga Universe, puts him in Mohit Suri’s world of love, and gives it an Ashiqui-esque backdrop! That’s Saiyaara! A pack of love wrapped in fire!! Saiyaara is opening crowds from corridors that will surprise many, even the best of trade analysts! The movie should be covered on three fronts: 1. The genius that Aditya Chopra is! Written off half a decade back for Befikre, the 55-year-old gives love cult to GenZ — a genre both Aditya Chopra and Yash Raj had given up on after the 90s! This movie feels a lot less like a Yash Raj movie and a lot more like a Mohit Suri movie — where the melodrama is not soft, every expression needs BGM, and there is a pace in how emotions move through the storyline. Yes, none of it is the trademark YRF — and yet it worked! That’s the genius of Aditya Chopra. This time he was not creating the Raj and Rahul (The touch of which faded in 2000s), neither he was creating a Suri. Aditya Chopra was out and out dead sure about the paradigm shift in the male protagonist that was needed for this story to land. 2. The writing of Krish Writing the beast as it is — unapologetic, clear. This character doesn't need an explanation — even though it had one. That’s how well it was written and, more importantly, played! Krish carries the story so well, that beyond a point, to the audience, his unpredictability becomes predictable. When Krish runs for his love, you are both scared and looking forward to it! 3. The Crowds are back! There is something about Bollywood and love stories. Bollywood just owns this genre boldly! On a Monday evening, the occupancy rate was over 80%. So much so, in the middle of all the conversations happening about the sinking box office, future of mainstream cinema, fading star culture — we don’t know what’s the ultimate writing on any of these fronts — but we do know that something in Saiyaara is about to work, and work wonders.  ( 3 min )

I want to make it easy to write with more hyperlinks. This lets me develop thoughts over time, building them out of small chunks that I can squeeze into my day. It also makes it easy for you to dig into things that pique your curiosity without wading through lots of irrelevant details. Looking up the right URLs as I go along tends to disrupt my train of thought. I want to make it easier to write down my thoughts first and then go back and add the URLs. I might have 5 links in a post. I might have 15. Sounds like an automation opportunity. If I use double square brackets around text to indicate where I want to add links, Orgzly Revived and Org Mode both display those as links, so I can preview what the paragraph might feel like. They're valid links. Org Mode prompts me to create new head…  ( 5 min )

Last October, I visited Chicago and stopped at the American Writers Museum, a small museum which seems oriented mostly at school groups. It focuses less on artifacts related to writing and more on basic education about the history of American printing and literature... and information about writing craft generally. They had an exhibit about games writing. I can't overstate how much I disliked it. I've been meaning to blog about that exhibit for months now, and I figured I should finally get around to it. Part of the reason I put off writing about this exhibit for so long is that it was created with the support of a panel of consultants who are all basically my peers. I really do not know how the materials were created, what it was like working with the museum as a stakeholder, or who actua…  ( 10 min )

I want to start this post saying that I am very thankful for having the hair I have; it's healthy, plentiful, and I even have a good hairline, which seems to be a rare thing nowadays. Now, the explanation: I have the pretty average straight hair of a Western man; the issue I have with it is that it's so healthy and strong that I struggle with keeping it looking neat for formal occasions. It grows really fast, at least for my standards. Back during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was finally confirmed that most of us would end up spending at least a whole year inside our houses, I decided to shave my head, thinking it would be a great time to finally listen to the voices in my head begging me to just shave the huge ball of hair on top of my head. Another thing is that it's so healthy and strong, that it's crazy difficult to comb into a nice office-friendly shape, and then keep that shape during the whole day, especially if I have a meeting in a different part of the city and I have to walk. Winter wind? Summer sweat? They're gonna get my hair and give it a beating. A funny thing is that, even when it's so difficult to give it shape, hats still beat it. My hair is always gonna take that hat style and keep it until it gets wet. It's so bad that when it's a "hat day" during summer, I have to prepare mentally to know that I'm gonna keep that hat on ALL DAY. That's pretty much it for today, a little rant about my hair that I love with all my heart, but wow it can be a pain to deal with!! That's all! I hope to see you again soon! ★ ◀ ▲  ( 3 min )

You know that thing you're not doing? That conversation you're not having, that boundary you're not setting, that creative risk you're not taking? What’s stopping you isn’t laziness or lack of time or bad circumstances. It’s your relationship with discomfort — specifically, your fear of feeling it. Most of us have turned discomfort into the enemy, as if being uncomfortable were a moral failing. We've created elaborate systems of avoiding it: comfort foods that make us sick, entertainment that numbs us into forgetting what we actually want, purchasing decisions that promise to solve problems we can't even name. We scroll when we could be reading. We busy ourselves to postpone making meaning. We perform productivity instead of engaging with what's right in front of us. But what if discomfort…  ( 7 min )

Sometimes I just want to quickly get to a blog post by title. I use consult-omni for quick web searches that I can jump to or insert as a link. Sure, I can limit this search to my blog by specifying site:sachachua.com or using the code I wrote to search my blog, notes, and sketches with consult-ripgrep and consult-omni, but the search sometimes gets confused by other text on the page. When I publish my blog with Eleventy, I also create a JSON file with all my blog post URLs and titles. Here's how I can use that data as a consult-omni source. (defun my-consult-omni-blog-data () (let ((base (replace-regexp-in-string "/$" "" my-blog-base-url)) (json-object-type 'alist) (json-array-type 'list)) (mapcar (lambda (o) (list :url (concat base (alist-get 'permal…  ( 2 min )

Przemysław Dębiak beat an advanced AI model from OpenAI in a 10-hour head-to-head coding marathon, Linux breaks 5% desktop share in U.S., Stefano Marinelli is writing a series on making your own backup system, César Soto Valero switched to Python (and is liking it), and Charlie Graham thinks it's rude to show AI output to people.

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs APAC: Emacs APAC meetup (virtual) https://emacs-apac.gitlab.io/announcements/ Sat Jul 26 0130 America/Vancouver - 0330 America/Chicago - 0430 America/Toronto - 0830 Etc/GMT - 1030 Europe/Berlin - 1400 Asia/Kolkata - 1630 Asia/Singapore Emacs Berlin (hybrid, in English) https://emacs-berlin.org/ Wed Jul 30 0930 America/Vancouver - 1130 America/Chicago - 1230 America/Toronto - 1630 Etc/GMT - 1830 Europe/Berlin - 2200 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Jul 31 0030 Asia/Singapore M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Fri Aug 1 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1500 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2030 Asia/Kolkata - 2300 Asia/Singapore Emacs configuration: Customizing the Emacs Help Menu (Reddit, Irreal) Suppressing war…  ( 3 min )

My usual route for commuting has been painfully disrupted recently and will stay like that for longer. It now includes almost an hour of riding the bus - hot, sticky, stinky, getting shaken by the driving style so hard that I got carsick every time. That is, if I take the stop closest to home. But walking for half an hour to a different route saves me from the bus ride. I have always avoided this because my chronic illnesses made me so, so tired in the past. Everything hurt and I had to save my energy. But now, with no choice except enduring extreme nausea for an hour, I tried again and was pleasantly surprised. Not only at the lack of pain and exhaustion (meds and gym paid off!) but how much I enjoyed the scenery and have unknowingly missed it. Instead of walking through the cement jungle, passing shops and gas stations, I walked past huge, beautiful historical buildings, a lush forest and a botanical garden. I used to visit them a lot while on walks with my dog, but not nearly as often since he died, and never through my commute. It made me remember how beautiful this place is and why I moved here. Maybe I am even a little grateful that this diversion opened my eyes to this beauty again, and the realization that I am not as fragile as I used to be. It made me enjoy my way to work for once. Reply via email Published {{ post_published_date }}  ( 5 min )

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hanover, germany. 9:08 pm before i came to france, i had all kinds of ideas about what it would be like. some were based on movies, others on stories from people around me (talking about history o colonisation we know ach kayn, btw ma3ndich mea fronsi hh) and you know the kind of talk that your uncle hit u with: “oropa mab9a fiha mayddar a weldi, don't come, there's nothing left there.” but i’ve always believed you can’t fully know something until you experience it for yourself. so when i got the chance to do my internship in nantes, i said yes. i didn’t know what to expect. and that was the best part. spoiler alert 3la stage: great atmosphere, great supervisor, great collegues, 10/10. one of the first things i noticed in france bdebt f nantes was how many people read. like, actually read …  ( 4 min )

We are under constant cognitive assault. Buying plane tickets is navigating a minefield - one misclick blows a hole in your wallet. Resolving a mistake on your utility bill is a tactical operation: dodge hold music traps, outwit the chatbot, then convince the agent you shouldn’t need to pay your neighbour’s bill. Our decisions aren’t shaped by direct threats or outright lies. Governments and corporations work together to overwhelm our cognition and they benefit from our weakened state. Everyday activities require more and more thinking. That's bad. And computers made it worse. That’s computational tyranny. The tyranny distilled Computational tyranny is the rapidly increasing complexity in all areas of life where we bear the costs (in time, money and sanity) and where we are exposed to larg…  ( 8 min )

We are under constant cognitive assault. Buying plane tickets is navigating a minefield - one misclick blows a hole in your wallet. Resolving a mistake on your utility bill is a tactical operation: dodge hold music traps, outwit the chatbot, then convince the agent you shouldn’t need to pay your neighbour’s bill. Our decisions aren’t shaped by direct threats or outright lies. Governments and corporations work together to overwhelm our cognition and they benefit from our weakened state. Everyday activities require more and more thinking. That's bad. And computers made it worse. That’s computational tyranny. The tyranny distilled Computational tyranny is the rapidly increasing complexity in all areas of life where we bear the costs (in time, money and sanity) and where we are exposed to larg…  ( 8 min )