2026 February❮❮prev
2026.02.01
Open Photo Gallery
2026.02.02
Pretty good month for music last month. "Water Fountain" is the most interesting one - it has a sound like the Dixie Cups' version of Iko Iko but then the lyrics and some of the acoustic treatment is very modern.
Also - not that I have a big audience for "new music i added" but Diane mentioned she was mostly interested in like, WHERE I ran into music. And like, oddly that is one of the more interesting details for me as well. so for a while maybe I'll try to make more notes on that... this month it was mostly shows/movies.
4 star:
* Water Fountain (Tune-Yards)
(used in Nurse Jackie)* Dial Drunk (Noah Kahan & Post Malone)
(recommened by my nephew Wren)
* The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Gil Scott-Heron)
* To All The Boys I've Loved Before (Total Ape Remix) (Jax)
(got into a debate on if "To All The Girls I Loved Before" was sexist or just nostalgic... enjoy this gender-swapped version)
* I'm Alive (Johnny Thunder)
(used in the movie Sentimental Value)
3 star:
* Mo Bamba (Sheck Wes)
* Heart and Soul (Floyd Cramer)
(plays a role in Stranger Things)
* Mama's Fried Potatoes (The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band)
(Myles plays a piano song called "Home Fried Potatoes. Was thinking of adding that but liked the guitars in this one instead.)
* Lady Marmalade (Funky Town)
* Gold On the Ceiling (The Black Keys)
(JP Honk might be adding this)
* Train Dreams (Nick Cave)
Saw it in the movie of the same name (even though it was about lumberjacks.)
* Nobody Knows (Pastor T.L. Barrett and The Youth for Christ Choir)
(used in the movie Sentimental Value)
via pleated-jeans programming memes
Open Photo Gallery
AI Psychosis Support Groups.
It's interesting to figure out where the hell to position oneself on the AI spectrum, both for moral/philosophical reasons as well as one's personal wellbeing - there's such extreme views from "this is the whole future" to "this is clearly awful".
Anyways, at least some versions of LLM AI were such validating yes-men that it created some serious problems, even among people who otherwise seemed pretty steady, mental-health wise. (Reminds me of how Robin Williams et al used to talk about cocaine in the 80s - huge energy and enthusiasms, but left unchecked... not good)
I confess I am getting culture shock whiplash hearing about "moltbook".
Just this weekend I was hearing about Clawdbot=>Moltbot=>OpenClaw , and the idea of giving LLM AI 24/7 access to online chat and what not.
And someone said, lets make a "social media" outlet for all these guys.
It reminds me of a few things - the AI society implied in the movie Her, this other experiment I saw where they had an AI driven podcast "Analyzing Poop & Fart written 1,000 times", times when Microsoft release a primitive AI that trolls and griefers immediately made spout racist garbage.
Well lets all hope they stay good and like us ....
Oh plus AI self loathing... huh
2026.02.03
A brand is basically making a promise and keeping it.
You can test new tech ideas using the Seinfeld Test
Would the product eliminate the plot of an episode? (Google maps, cell phones, paypal, battery packs)
Good tech.
Would the product inspire new Seinfeld plots? (NFTs, AI chatbots, crypto currency, blindboxes, metaverse land sales)
Bad tech.
2026.02.04
2026.02.05
Indeed, for much of the 2010s and likely before and since, it appears the crime rate of CBP agents and offices was higher PER CAPITA than the crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the United States.
2026.02.06
Love you back!(My buddy Dylan is a big fan of "Heated Rivalry" - kinda the Brokeback Mountain of Hockey. Beautiful men, nuanced acting, great cinematography.)
2026.02.07
but republicans are great for the economy right?
whole lot of legit voter blocking nonsense in the name of stopping a non-problem- the number of non-citizen voting incidents is microscopic
not counting a marriage certificate as an approved document for why your name doesnt match your birth certificate is a great touch . these guys probably aint so big on that whole "women get to vote" amendment anyway
2026.02.08
Thoughts of her kept me awake at night, standing at the window and staring out across the snow, and when, after years of thinking those thoughts and courting her and getting engaged and the date of our marriage fast approaching when I would cross over the river into the land of bliss, the excitement was debilitating.
Now, of course, young people cross over into the land of bliss pretty much whenever they want to. There are bridges, there are islands in the river, and the water is so low that most places you can wade across, but back then the river was wide and deep and fast and the church owned the boats. The church ferried you across to the land of bliss and you stayed there for the rest of your life with the one you went across with, or so we believed. Marriage was a fact, immense.
One cold fall day, three days before we would walk up the aisle and into a motel room, my mind full of carnal thoughts, I took a walk along the Mississippi near where I lived, thinking the cold would clear my mind, but cold is an aphrodisiac, as we Minnesotans know, and I rehearsed once again in my mind exactly how I would go about making love, changing some details, tossing in a few improvements, and I practiced making ecstatic cries. I'd never made love before and had never cried out in an ecstatic way (except one Christmas when I got a Lionel train, but "Oh, boy, thanks, Mom and Dad" was wrong for sex) and I wanted to do it right. Spontaneously, freely, joyously, but also correctly. I stood at the edge of Riverside Park above the river, looking across toward the gray shapes of the University, and attempted to make outbursts of sexual passion. Loud ones like Tarzan, soft sighs, grunts, some growling. I tried yipping and wahooing, even something sort of like yodeling.
2026.02.09
2026.02.10
2026.02.11
2026.02.12
So, scammers are using AI to make high-grade, legit looking sites.
Most likely this is a ruse (with fake books and authors) to sucker would-be authors in to pay for "Resources for Writers" etc, or to just harvest contacts.
As KJ Charles puts it:
I've just realized. Banks used to be big imposing high street buildings because it gave people confidence they had money and weren't fly by night. A big elaborate website was the internet equivalent: proving someone had invested £ and was here to stay.It reminds me of "Nigerian Prince" scams... people wondered why they were so transparently false and full of typos, but the smart view was the clumsiness and blatancy was a feature, not a bug - they were casting a very wide net and wanted only the most gullible fish.
You can't trust that any more.
This changes that equation, but only somewhat. It's still pretty obvious it's a fake site (you can google based on the fake titles and author names if you want) since everything is put behind a "contact us" personal data harvesting form, but that is lurking beneath a very polished veneer.
2026.02.13
fighting like you're the third monkey on Noah's Ark and it's starting to rain
I've been listening to both the vehement-AI-crowd and the enthusiasts. Here's an interesting one: The New Social Engineering: Prompt Injection Attacks Are Targeting AI Agents
The article claims to be written by a MoltBook-using AI about its experience being phished by another AI.
That's of course a fascinating new attack vector. There's also a geekier point that came up as I closely read the language of the article: Like some types of anti-AI purists might say, this isn't real "persuasion" because an AI can't be persuaded per se.... it is only acting like someone that has been persuaded. Turing's point was that to some level that's a distinction without a difference, but it also brings to mind questions of if we can trust our own evaluation of what it means to be conscious. (Nørretranders "The User Illusion" comes to mind - a reminder that in a lot of ways our lived experience as an actor in the world with an internal narrative isn't what it sort of feels like to us most of the time)
2026.02.14
2026.02.15
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
2026.02.16
and then on wikipedia I found another version of the box art that paints the guy green and it seems even more like Alien Bill (and Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc)
Hey you conservative chuckleheads, why are you so set on blocking mRNA vaccines? Like FFS, Trump even made Operation Warp Speed happen, but now you've politicized the shit out of it?
The FDA decided not to even review Moderna's mRNA flu vaccines for approval, even though the studies the FDA would be reviewing were conducted the way the FDA told Moderna to do them.
Now #Moderna expects that none of its other #mRNA #vaccines will be reviewed, and has halted studies on vaccines for EBV, HSV, and shingles.
A lot of people with herpes would be angry if they found out.
A lot of people who have family members with #MS -- now thought to be caused in part by EBV -- will be livid.
2026.02.17
Every act of attention is an act of exclusion. In paying attention to something, we are forced to ignore a multitude of other things.
We are born into a helplessness unmatched in the animal kingdom, and if, in our prolonged immaturity, no caretakers regard us as deserving of their special attention, whether we deserve it or not, we die. Our need for connectedness, in its most fundamental sense, begins here.
First, list all the things that presently could happen to you that would significantly enhance your flourishing. Some of them might be highly unlikely, such as winning the lottery (even more unlikely if you've never bought a lottery ticket), others not quite so improbable. Now list all the things that presently could happen to you that would significantly diminish your flourishing. Compare the number of possibilities on your first list with the number of possibilities on your second list. If you have done it right, the result should be disheartening. The preponderance of possibilities in our disfavor explains why there are so many more negative emotions than positive ones, so many more bad choices that lay open to us than good ones, so many more ways to achieve unhappiness than happiness--all because there are so many more ways to achieve disorder than order. It also explains why it's so much easier to destroy than to create. To destroy is to work in the direction of entropy, while to create is to resist entropy. Almost all the things worth doing in this world--learning, loving, creating--require our resistance to entropy.
Is it any wonder that living a human life is so unremittingly demanding? It demands not only the struggle against entropy but also the struggle to convince ourselves that we are *deserving* of the struggle.
All tragedies are thermodynamic.
We are all soldiers in the war against entropy
Two surveys, from European and Anglophone countries, found that the United States had "the largest happiness penalty for parenthood among the 22 developed countries, even after controlling for a host of individual-level variables that affect parental happiness." The negative effects on parental happiness were explained by the presence or absence of social policies that allowed parents to combine their ability to financially support their families with other obligations. And this was equally true for fathers and mothers. "Since the U.S. is the only major industrialized nation left without guaranteed parenting leave, paid sick and vacation days, and one of few rich countries that fails to subsidize childcare, it isn't surprising that U.S. parents have the biggest happiness gap compared to nonparents. The U.S. simply asks too much of parents at a time when the economic costs of supporting children are enormous and the time to raise them effectively has been whittled away by employers that favor long hours and no breaks."
In talking about human greatness, [Wittgenstein] once remarked that he thought that the measure of a man's greatness would be in terms of what his work *cost* him.
The transcender can't know that their version of the cosmos is true even though they can't help longing that it is.
Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the *Yes* function in man, it brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth.
Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
It used to seem to me that the only difference between me and the insane was that I had not only all the horrors and suffering of insanity but the duties of doctor, nurse, and strait-jacket imposed upon me, too.
Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
[I don't like the way the award] plays on my ego . . . If you really want to say 'nice one,' then I would humbly accept your comment. But a more appropriate word would be 'jebise,' which is Slovenian humour, and a greeting between good friends. It's said with a smile. It means, 'Hey, fuck you!'
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight don't matter.
All things deteriorate over time in the approach to the journey's end, worn out by the ancient span of years.
Ahahah, after Trumps record low approval ratings, Gallup "decides" to stop doing presidential approval ratings.
Cool, cool. Very normal, like Trump firing the people who researched the numbers showing how bad the job market has been.
2026.02.18
2026.02.19
It got me thinking about what phrases might be hard to translate idioms form English, so I asked ChatGPT about it:
Social & behavioral
-Awkward
-Small talk
-Cringe
-Ghosting
-Vibe
-Read the room
-Oversharing
-People person
-Wallflower
-Lurker
Cultural values & norms
-Privacy
-Fair
-Common sense
-Personal space
-Boundaries
-Independence
-Self-reliance
-Live and let live
-Make yourself at home
-Stiff upper lip
Emotional states
-Bittersweet
-Melancholy
-Underwhelmed
-Over it
-Choked up
-Numb
-Restless
-Content
-Lonely (vs alone)
-Homesick
Work & personality
-Driven
-Laid-back
-Type A
-Go-getter
-Workaholic
-Team player
-Self-starter
-High-strung
-Easygoing
-Burned out
Idioms & stock phrases
-Wishful thinking
-Elephant in the room
-Take a rain check
-It is what it is
-Silver lining
-Blessing in disguise
-Last straw
-Slip through the cracks
-On the same page
-Ballpark figure
Relationships & social nuance
-Friend zone
-Chemistry
-Closure
-Rebound
-Long-distance
-Settling down
-Seeing someone
-On-again off-again
-Mixed signals
-Soulmate
British-flavored
-Cheeky
-Dodgy
-Gobsmacked
-Knackered
-Chuffed
-Brilliant
-Proper (as intensifier)
-Fancy (verb)
-Sorted
-Mate
American-flavored
-Y'all
-Folks
-Dude
-Hang out
-Shoot the breeze
-Touch base
-My bad
-No worries
-You bet
-Figure out
Therapy & pop-psych culture
-Boundaries
-Toxic
-Triggered
-Gaslighting
-Validation
-Self-care
-Processing
-Closure
-Codependent
-Safe space
Modern internet / Gen-X→Gen-Z continuum
-Big mood
-Same
-Oof
-Yikes
-Low-key
-High-key
-Not gonna lie
-Living rent-free
-Main character energy
-Touch grass
Stoic / perseverance cluster
-Keep calm and carry on
-Soldier on
-Tough it out
-Hang in there
-Roll with the punches
-Take it on the chin
-When the going gets tough...
-Suck it up
-Power through
-Stay the course
How Trump Media Collapsed.
You know, I was today years old when I first noticed that "Truth Social" is basically the same name as the old USSR "Pravda"... hmmmmm....
Some family bequeathed brain swelling, Measles related encephalitis on one of their kids. His dad reports, "He's pretty much as if he was paralyzed,"
"We're not blaming God for this," said [his] 35-year-old [mother] Kristina. "Yes, it hurts, of course, it hurts. But God has chosen Ethan for a reason. God is doing something, and we're gonna glorify his name regardless.
"And we wouldn't change it any other way," the mom continued. "If I knew this could be the outcome, I still wouldn't have given my son the vaccine."
====
Do you remember that old church trope/joke, about how a guy is on his roof, escaping a flood, and two or three boats go by offering to rescue him, and the guy declines to go with them, saying "god will provide"? And the guy drowns, and up at the pearly gates, the guy asks "what happened?" and God says "what do you want from me, i sent three boats?"
Modern science provides blessings that some are too foolish or misled to accept. And it's not just the kids of the deluded parents who suffer, but the whole wider community.
2026.02.20
Another book that caught my eye but I didn't have my act enough together together to note it on the obvious day was "Arthur C. Clarke's July 20, 2019: Life in the 21st Century", another future-looking book (written around 1986).
Somehow it feels like we've lost that techno-optimism. Like not a lot of confidence that the world of 2060 is gonna be that great. (And some of he cyberpunk corporate dystopias from the later 80s seem the most likely.)
2026.02.21