We’re living in a golden age of vibe-coded fairy-gifts, marvels appear hourly which are not the product of any human mind. They may do more or less what’s promised, though may blow up in weird and random ways or have stupid bugs, inefficiencies or security holes that no thinking author would have signed off on. Eventually, like all fairy gold, they turn to straw: if they don’t fall apart under use, there’s no way to update or improve a dense blob of LLM-extruded code when specs or requirements change, so you just throw when away and implore the LLM fae to send a new one.

They left out the cigarettes.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer company

Remortgage your house now.

Also, scientific papers would be as likely to be published in German or French as in English, and when computers appear, technical terms and keywords would probably not be in American English. This universe’s equivalent of FORTRAN or the UNIX command line may be based on German grammar.

“Cat/dog dad/mom” implies that the pet is forever a child, due to their species. rather than a fellow adult equal (species differences notwithstanding) in dignity. I prefer to think of them as chosen family, or possibly the weird housemate.

The earth is flat; it’s just space that’s curved.

Traditionally Islam prohibited the depiction of any living forms (Allah’s copyright or something like that), which is why traditional Islamic art and architecture lean so heavily into geometric patterns.

That’s their lesser-known offshoot, Girl Special Forces

They’re two completely different species. The one with the O is North American, and the other is Australian. They only got the same name because people are lazy.

“I have a sportsball team I support, and I like watching TV”

I prefer “don’t renew your library books”

I’ve only seen one episode, the San Junipero one. I can’t wait to watch the rest. I do love some cozy, optimistic sci-fi.

The related program to control the venomous spider population was a failure because they couldn’t find a scientist who could imagine being here to fuck spiders

It was patchy, especially in the middle of season 2, and somewhat compromised. The studio forced Lynch to name a killer (he wanted to keep the mystery open, as he would have in a film), and sometime after that it sagged into soap-opera tropes. On its own merits, it is a mixed bag, and if judged as “high-quality TV drama”, it’s middling.

Though its main impact was the shows that followed. Before it, TV drama was mediocre soaps and sitcoms with formulaic plots, of the sort that didn’t aspire to be more than chewing gum for the eyes. Twin Peaks and its success showed that TV could aspire to be more than that. If it hadn’t had its cultural impact, there’d have been no X Files, Sopranos, West Wing, Breaking Bad or similar series, just more variations on General Hospital, Hill Street Blues, The Young And The Restless and so on.

if people will wear Crocs in public, I wouldn’t rule it out

Surely the army would conscript them to a cybersecurity red team?

Looks like AI slop to me.

Nature is healing

Surprised to not see Portland, OR here