fizzles

agreed, not a good fruit. tastes of nothing. blueberries - useless. pomegranate why.

amazing. i did not realise this was a thing. last time i went some people arrived who had *booked tickets for the wrong day* and wanted everyone to accommodate them! which they did! huge pre film commotion worthy of the marx brothers at certain points (an umbrella was getting in everyone’s way)

YouTube video by soem studios SCP:GALLIONIC | Official Trailer

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSbP...

i wd put this down to “stochastic parrot” “glorified autocorrect” being aligned with some types of LLM scepticism so people feel a need to break with that view (“no it’s not like what it was when you formed that view - it’s *different*”). plus possibly a sense that next token prediction trivialises.

a great thing about learning a language and having lessons etc is realising that nothing has changed since you were ten and you still leave your homework to the last minute.

wankers.

(in fact the elves of course ran shadow border policy and law enforcement on the Shire beforehand, which I guess may have made it more vulnerable to Saruman's depredations)

the hobbits do when they return to the Shire. As is perhaps evident from his industrial policy and law enforcement teams, Saruman more of a big tax, state investment guy. builds infra. gets things done.

just remembered i had quite a long dream last night where i was on a little runaway train in the netherlands that crashed through everyone's carefully manicured back gardens before heading out into the countryside across fields and roads before plunging into a canal.

yeah, lambeth have made things v hard for themselves. 2025: “without these you can’t have the lambeth country show!” 2026: cancels lambeth country show, keeps festivals. lot of ill will, as is visible from space as festival season hoves into view.

one of those things where the opposition is unified, until you ask “what *would* be ok?” and it fragments into a billion conflicting opinions…

will they be able to hit their KPIs in the first year? (Kill-Plunder Indexes.).

i grew up in the 80s and there were still rag and bone carts in the early part of that decade.

one of the finest songs there is. balloon.

was there last year. v 60s/70s british science fiction vibe.

this is good to hear because im really struggling with enjoying anything at the moment to the extent im thinking it must be me - irretrievably picky and indifferent. as with a friend who enthused passionately the other day about three books she’d just read, it brings hope and some inspiration.

Reposting for the late shift: my best books of 2025 round-up, over at @ds228.bsky.social's blog:
eigermonchjungfrau.blog/2026/02/14/j...

v good beer iirc as well!

i sympathise, but questions of alignment and decision making capabilities mean it’s v hard not to find yourself walking in some areas that are far less well defined than they were even a few years ago. eg role of language in constituting self an intelligence. and those questions *are* interesting!

YouTube video by Evan Royalty SCP: OVERLORD

it’s worth exploring! but not sure meaningfully more so than just, say, reading qntm stuff. fertile space for ideas though. ymmv but i enjoyed SCP: OVERLORD for instance, Lovecraft cult meets modern militarised folly. youtu.be/EOxarwd3eTs?...

also - touch of the loony tunes about it all which i find quite appealing.

reverse for me but yes, the qntm stuff, and that in particular is just great. doesn’t quite stick the landing imo, but it’s enormously enjoyable to read and SCP stuff generally feels appealing for our <extrème french voice> current conjuncture

this guy is obviously a stratospheric version of this.

that is not to say it’s a majority at all. but. i’ve met too many who when you talk to them you think “you are deeply unpleasant”. incredibly thin set of “beliefs”. just unpleasant.

i find it upsetting and insane how often the best description of c-level and board level people in business i’ve encountered for whom the best description is “psychopathic cunt”.

we have so many sci-fi stories about alien and artificial intelligence as a byproduct or function of consciousness, but it's hard to think of examples that concern language/intelligence *absent* consciousness... what else is out there besides peter watts' blindsight?

also middle of winter obv. “i shall set out now”. “ok captain oates”

this skeet vividly bringing back memories of walking across the sizewell wetlands deep in the gloaming and realising there was no way i was going to get back to aldeburgh before dark, and having to navigate my way along an indeterminate coastal path using the “light” from my nokia phone.

that’s right i think. its cheap alternative being the “sockful of shillings”.

Of course I only twigged it was Bandcamp Friday just now but here are some recommendations I made earlier