Mike Hicks

Day 7: Dividing by 10 compiles to... no division at all!

How does the compiler pull this off? Magic constants, bit shifts, and a clever arithmetic trick.

xania.org/202512/07-di...
youtu.be/V9Pvv1tkocM

#AoCO2025

The maintenance continues (fiber link). Just waiting for it to finish

A bunny steps out of their suburban home, looking out on a snowy street. There is still snow falling heavily, and a snow plow (driven by another bunny) is visible in the distance

Daily bunny no.3161 hoping for a snow day

The new E Line gets you a direct bus ride from the U of M through downtown, Uptown, and this pile of snow in Edina.

When Minnesota Republican elected officials can’t condemn what Nazis take credit for and celebrate, we have a big problem.

Day 6 of Advent of Compiler Optimisations! Divide by 512—just a shift, right? But the compiler adds extra instructions. Why? A subtle difference between what you asked and what you meant!

xania.org/202512/06-di...
youtu.be/7Rtk0qOX9zs

#AoCO2025

If you have a problem with Mamdani proposing 5 city owed grocery stores but don't have a problem with billionaires wasting more money than a small nation's GDP on a pet project, you might need to reevaluate your life.

And we’re off! The first-ever METRO E Line trips departed a little before 4:30 a.m. this morning! No fares are required to ride the E Line today until 10 p.m. thanks to our sponsor, @minneapoliscollege.bsky.social. Check the schedule and plan your trip here: www.metrotransit.org/route/eline

Union Pacific (modern descendant of Southern Pacific) today: electrification is impossible.

I NEED YOUR HELP AND ITS REALLY IMPORTANT‼️

Seriously. Let’s give it a break. It’s tired and boring. 🥱

Exploiting fears on safety and misleading community for political benefit—it gets in the way of us actually coming together on community safety and care.

Dude. Yes. Alito and Thomas are of course the standout examples, but all of the Republican justices have tells in their writing and their questioning indicating that they are, to varying degrees, marinating their brains in dumb bitch juice

Image from MURDER, SHE WROTE of Jessica Fletcher in a VR headset and gloves

Remember that MURDER, SHE WROTE when Jessica Fletcher fought the Lawnmower Man?

Couldn’t Sam Altman just ask ChatGPT how to make itself profitable

The Minneapolis Police Department overspent their budget by 20 million so far this year, according to a discussion among council members during today's budget markup session.

city bus interior

Final ride on the Metro Tranit (Twin Cities) Route 6. Nice crowd of U of MN types, probably 25 of us early in the route. Tomorrow the replacement E Line bus rapid transit bus starts. Tonight as always I will be getting off at a stop that the Route 6 honors but the E Line will not.

Robert De Niro in Casino. He’s wearing a bright coral jacket, pink shirt and pink tie, with cream trousers, an outfit reminiscent of those worn by Michael Portillo in his BBC train show.

Michael Portillo getting off the train in Barrow on his way to film another series of Great British Railway Journeys

YouTube video by Arch2O Frank Gehry as featured in The Simpsons

Here's Frank on the Simpsons, which he voiced while I worked for him. I can not tell you how often I walked around the Gehry partners office saying "yo Frank Gehry, like curvilinear forms much" after this aired www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MyT...

A close-up of the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota. It is a lot of curved shapes with sharp corners made out of stainless steel.

The actual local angle:

Two 6x11 mailers, one shows New Ulm main Street and is headlined "Angie Craig has an unbreakable commitment to Minnesota." The other shows a combine dumping corn into a wagon and is headlined "Angie Craig Always Fights For Minnesota."

A blue-dog PAC that gave $ only to Republicans in 2024 has mailed us two flyers so far this week on behalf of Angie Craig. They were sent from Piscataway Twp, NJ.

Graphics feature rural touches and pictures of the main drag in New Ulm. We live in Minneapolis.

2/2

To say this for the 50th time, for anyone who doesn't know:

Three young conservative lawyers were part of the GOP "Florida recount" team that led to GWB becoming president, via Bush-v-Gore.

They were: John Roberts. Brett Kavanaugh. Amy Coney Barrett.

Small world.

SEPTA to miss latest FRA repair deadline because of wire shortage - Trains PHILADELPHIA — A shortage of thermal wire will prevent the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority from meeting a deadline today (Dec. 5) for ongoing repairs to its fleet of Silverliner IV ...

I have bought
all the wire
that was in
north america
and which
you were probably
saving
for transit
www.trains.com/pro/passenge...

I hope next year’s Pantone color is BLAZING JUSTICE

There's a right-wing group led by Randall Terry currently trying to break in and blockade the Planned Parenthood location in Memphis, TN. This morning, they tried to drive through to the employee entrance, but my dad, who is volunteering with a local activist org, stood in the way of their vehicle.

A totally workable antitrust policy in the United States would be making it illegal to buy Warner

It's good—very good, and very important—that district courts keep issuing these 100-page rulings upholding the law. It must be incredibly dispiriting to see them overturned in a two-page, lawless, unsigned order, but please, keep them coming. They expose SCOTUS' corruption like nothing else.

Lyric to "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News with "Don't need no credit card to ride this train" highlighted

With changes to transit payment systems, I wonder how long it will be before people are literally boasting about not needing a credit card as Huey Lewis foretold in 1985

Cover of a U.S. Department of Agriculture report showing large grain silos along a river, titled “Potential Effects of St. Lawrence Seaway on Costs of Transporting Grain” from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Marketing Service, Marketing Research Division.

🎶nobody told you space was gonna be this way🎶