2025 December❮❮prevnext❯❯

Years ago I had an annual tradition of making "Virtual Advent Calendars" - little toys and games that could run in the browser, one each day for Dec 1-25.

I was heartened to find out that the first years' (which I thought were lost because Java Applets are now deprecated) can be run if you use a Chrome plugin called CheerpJ.

Anyway, here are links to all 7:
2009 (Java Applet)
2011 (Java Applet)
2012 (Started remaking in JS)
2013 (Seasons)
Ed Emberly Animals (plus Santa)
2015 (Games)
2016 (Finale)

Sometimes I miss making these things! It was a fun little tradition, and nice creative outlet.

---

And there are a lot of lessons you could take from that about the nature of getting immersed in a piece of art [by spending 21 hours livestreaming to live a mundane working class week in Cyberpunk 2077]. But for me, I think my main takeaway is something I've always said on this channel. *If you want to get more out of something, put more into something.* This goes for games. It goes for movies and other forms of art. But it also goes for your relationships, your health, and your life overall.

If it surprises you, it's information. If it confirms your bias, it's entertainment. If it makes you hate your neighbor, it's a weapon.

Life is mostly maintenance.
Irrational beliefs come from insisting maintenance should feel like achievement.

It's been a while for me but did anyone else read Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"? Lately I've been thinking of the parallels between the titular Primer and the experience of frequently consulting with ChatGPT via smartphone. (and it's ability to take what it knows about you into account with its answers) 4 star:
* i don't always miss you (Dan Reeder)
* The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Gordon Lightfoot)

3 star:
* Brickyard Blues (Play Something Sweet) (Rita Coolidge)
* Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (2011) (Amy Winehouse)
* Kenji (Fort Minor)
* Itchy Scratchy (Subtronics)

"you're the best thing that's ever happened to me"
"i don't think so much in superlatives but you're right up there"

---

get smarter about the ways money actually warps our politics - it's not about buying votes, it's about buying the process. This concept from Greg Egan's Permutation City (great scifi book, cheap now - best thoughtful study on some of the implications of uploaded selves) has long stuck with me:

[Discussing "The Church of the God Who Makes No Difference"]:

She said, "'God makes no difference ... because God is the reason why everything is exactly what it is'? That's supposed to make us all feel at peace with the cosmos, is it?"

Francesca shook her head. "At peace? No. It's just a matter of clearing away, once and for all, old ideas like divine intervention – and the need for some kind of proof, or even faith, in order to believe."

Maria said, "What *do* you need, then? *I* don't believe, so what am I missing?"

"Belief?"

"And a love of tautology."

"Don't knock tautology. Better to base a religion on tautology than fantasy."

"But it's worse than tautology. It's ... redefining words arbitrarily, it's like something out of Lewis Carroll. Or George Orwell. 'God is the reason for everything ... whatever that reason is.' So what any sane person would simply call *the laws of physics*, you've decided to rename G-O-D ... solely because the word carries all kinds of historical resonances – all kinds of misleading connotations. You claim to have nothing to do with the old religions – so why keep using their terminology?"

Francesca said, "We don't deny the history of the word. We make a break from the past in a lot of ways – but we also acknowledge our origins. God is a concept people have been using for millennia. The fact that we've refined the idea beyond primitive superstitions and wish-fulfillment doesn't mean we're not part of the same tradition."

"But you haven't *refined* the idea, you've made it meaningless! And rightly so – but you don't seem to realize it. You've stripped away all the obvious stupidities – all the anthropomorphism, the miracles, the answered prayers – but you don't seem to have noticed that once you've done that, there's absolutely nothing left that needs to be called *religion*. Physics is not theology. Ethics is *not* theology. Why pretend that they are?"

Francesca said, "But don't you see? We talk about God for the simple reason that *we still want to*. There's a deeply ingrained human compulsion to keep using that word, that concept – to keep honing it, rather than discarding it – despite the fact that it no longer means what it did five thousand years ago."

"And you know perfectly well where that compulsion comes from! It has nothing to do with any real divine being; it's just a product of culture and neurobiology – a few accidents of evolution and history."

"Of course it is. What human trait isn't?"

"So why give in to it?"

Francesca laughed. "Why give in to anything? The religious impulse isn't some kind of ... alien mind virus. It's not – in its purest form, stripped of all content – the product of brainwashing. It's a part of who I am."

Maria put her face in her hands. "Is it? When you talk like this, it doesn't sound like you."

Francesca said, "Don't you ever want to give thanks to God, when things are going well for you? Don't you ever want to ask God for strength, when you need it?"

"No."

"Well, I do. Even though I know God makes no difference. And if God is the reason for everything, then God includes the urge to use the word God. So whenever I gain some strength, or comfort, or meaning, from that urge, then God is the source of that strength, that comfort, that meaning.

"And if God – while making no difference – helps me to accept what's going to happen to me, why should that make you sad?"

Can't believe I never blogged about it before, because the church name and concept (sometimes I misremember it as "The God That Doesn't Matter") has really resonated for me, right up there with Vonnegut and Bokononism.

---

It's either made-up trans bullshit, or made-up immigration bullshit.
Either way, none of it affects my life. It's the economy stupid.

The party of "fuck your feelings" has so many fucking feelings.

---

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaha

---

vocal reads

---

I think of of my favorite lines in pop music is still "suckin' on my titties like you wanted me". It's just so damn jaded. (ever since i heard it the japanese strip club scene in Lost in Translation)

---

amusing to no one but me, the little pile of stuff i often move from downatairs up to bed - laptop, ipad mini reader, phone (and today two ipads... i'm using the large one to read a PDF scan book that would otherwise be hard to read on a smaller screen) - I always think "my tech stack" and get that little glint of amusement

---

---

ahahah say what you will about Times New Roman vs Cabrini, Trump labeling "The West Wing" "The Oval Office" with titles bearing the name... reminds me of how with alzheimer's patients sometimes they put big labels on things like a drawer labeled "pants" or "shirts"

---

Mario and Luigi lizards via

They looked like a wet cat, which is to say refusing to acknowledge their situation with such rigid dignity that it almost feels foolish to bring it up.

---

cool design examples

---

JFC... RIP Rob Reiner and Michele (and possibly killed by their son, yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes)

---

---

"Scrambled eggs/Oh, my baby, how I love your legs/Not as much as I love scrambled eggs/Oh, we should eat some scrambled eggs."

I have a list of people I don't want at my funeral. If they weren't there for me during life I don't want them there at death.... my funeral will have a bouncer.

---

technically true jokes

---

via

---

What's lamer and more dictator-y... an "emergency" 20 minute poltical ad on the major networks or his handpicked board renaming the Kennedy Center after him?

---

(Or putting a newly made up "peace prize" from a sports organization that want to suck up to him on his own neck. Man. This stuff is beyond parody.) The other day, I was listening to a guided meditation that had the sound of waves, and had a weirdly strong-yet-vague sensory impression of standing lakeside at the Salvation Army's "Long Point Camp". Like I don't think Seneca Lake is known for a lot of waves. But I remember learning about skipping stones there at the stony lakeside. Or I think I do at least. Memory is so fickle. I've been thinking about Albert Ellis and "Rational-Emotive Therapy" (one of the things that went into the mix of what is now usually called Congnitive-Behaviorial Therapy.) I read his "How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable about Anything--yes, Anything!" a while back.

The idea is, thoughts drives feelings, and if you really dive into the sentences you're telling yourself about situations you have a hope of reprogramming yourself and resetting your mood.

I'd like to think that I'm pretty well positioned to apply this idea, because I tend to be gated and analytical. I can unpack why I get so anxious about stuff, the consequences I'm so afraid of, the assumptions of self worth implicit in it all.

The idea is to open a higher quality of life, and to paradoxically use logic to create more space for joy and love feelings. Here's hoping.

---

For no matter how honestly and authentically you experience intense feelings, they don't prove holy

---

Worry, believe it or not, has no magical quality of staving off bad luck.

---

Admit, by all means, that you feel needlessly fearful; forthrightly tackle your silly worries; but don't waste a minute beating yourself over the head for making yourself anxious. You have much better things to do with your time and energies!

---

Always remember, in this connection, that you remain mortal; that humans have innate limitations; that they don't completely overcome groundless fears and anxieties; and that life continues as a ceaseless battle against irrational worries. If you fight this battle intelligently and unremittingly, however, you can almost always feel free from almost all your needless concerns. What more can you ask?

---

Accept the fact that your past significantly influences you in some ways. But accept, also, the fact that *your present constitutes your past of tomorrow.*

---

What we usually call *loving* or feeling *in love*, as opposed to desiring to get loved, constitutes one of the main forms of vital absorption. In fact, the three main forms of vital absorption comprise: (a) loving, or feeling absorbed in other people; (b) creating, or getting absorbed in things; and (c) philosophizing, or remaining absorbed in ideas. Feeling inert, passive, or inhibited normally keeps you from getting absorbed in any of these three major ways-and hence from truly living. Living essentially means doing, acting, loving, creating, thinking. You negate it by prolonged goofing, loafing, or lazing.

Not sure I'm fully into the negativity on goofing loafing and lazing. I'm much more concerned with how it's negated via avoidance strategies such as doom scrolling.

---

I like these two from 40 Vintage New Yorker Christmas Covers That Nailed The Holiday Spirit

---

In case it isn't obvious, they are still hiding huge swaths of the Epstein files. Case in point, image 468, the one involving Trump... and entire documents - like 119 pages of grand jury testament, wiped out.

---

A peek behind the curtain of some of the cooler muppet effects - kind of like magician's spoilers, so be warned. One book that made a big impression on me as a kid was "Run, Robot, Run" by French astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Petit. It was an illustrated introduction to basic ideas of robotics. I think I may have gotten it at the now (sadly defunct) Boston Computer Museum. I really liked the simplified-but-with-interesting-mechanical-details robots. He opened sourced all his educational books and you can see this one at Internet ArchiveHappy Late Solstice! Nice to be on the other side of that but it will be a while before it kicks in.

---

This video on leveling up your Claude AI game was recommended to me... Scott made this pomodoro timer. He said the technique has been powering him for 20 years. Also he indeed grabbed the timer sound from "60 minutes"...

---

Speaking of 60 Minutes...

Here's the 60 Minutes segment on "CECOT" the prison Trump exported Venezuelans to, that was pulled down before it could be generally broadcast.

These prisoners did nothing that would deserve the kind of torture they faced. Half of the men had no criminal record; less than 4% had any kind of violent crime charge.

---

I had ChatGPT remake an old Markov-Chain-to-make-love-poems program I made, using content from my old Blender of Love site) - Markov Love.

It's interesting how it's just a supersimplified version of how today's LLM's work, though the LLM's sense of how phonemes-words-concepts are linked is incredibly richer. We went to Jordan's Furniture and stopped by the "Enchanted Village" displays - light animatronics in holiday scenes. People were really finding a lot of photo-ops in front of them, but mostly I enjoyed the creepy vibe of the figures. Also, one of my coolest christmas gifts this year (albeit one I had to help with), a super comfy quilt with the top using a bunch of old t-shirts...

[The Haggunenons of Vicissitus Three's] genetic structure, based on the quadruple-striated octo-helix, is so chronically unstable, that far from passing their basic shape onto their children, they will quite frequently evolve several times over lunch. But they do this with such reckless abandon that if, sitting at the table, they are unable to reach a coffee spoon, they are liable without a moment's consideration to mutate into something with far longer arms - but which is probably quite incapable of drinking the coffee.

This passage came to mind as I was pairing up with CoPilot to make a throwaway change to code. It's a different vibe when generating code had more of a cost - it's great to make a quick targeted solution but I don't trust it as much as the handrolled stuff. BONUS:

via

and

---

2025 December❮❮prevnext❯❯