Mark Eichin

the machine does not know what it is doing to you the machine does not know what you are using it for the machine does not know who you are the machine does not understand you the machine can only say what you want to hear the machine is controlled by men willing to risk your children's lives this is how we destroy ourselves narcissus and icarus in one, agreeing ourselves to death

6-fold ward against AI-induced psychosis

YouTube video by Linus Tech Tips Building the PERFECT Linux PC with Linus Torvalds

Heh, Linus (Sebastien, of Linus Tech Tips) finally got up the courage to email Linus (Torvalds, of ... you know) and they just posted their collab video www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0... There is a *lot* of corny fanboi-ing but it's adorably earnest, much less cringe than I expected.

I just don't need to know what the Telegraph has written about Dungeons & Dragons. It's a newspaper for people who are frightened of samosas.

I actually saw it catch fire live-on-stream one year :-)

Gavlebocken receives a few finishing touches. Red bows around the middle and legs are added.

Gavlebocken stands proudly in the center of wooden fencing after receiving some upgrades.

The Goat received a few finishing touches overnight 🎁

Didn't realize it came in kit form (Ikea GÖAT :)

A friend of mine got some and we did a "tasting"... they were at least all distinct, the cranberry was the one that was actually *interesting* (very tangy) all the flavor was in the coating, the oreos inside were plain so I don't think they'll pop up out of season.

Actually cleaning up leaves? Or as a turbocharger stage in a turkey fryer that the fire department will be by to "help" with later

WKRP In Cincinnati: Season 01 Episodes 07-08 Turkey's Away/Love Returns : WKRP IN CINCINNATI: THE COMPLETE SERIES : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive SONGS: DOGS - PINK FLOYD (RESTORED VHS VERSION PICTURE FILM UNCUT/DVD (NON-SHOUT FACTORY), FUN TIME - JOE COCKER, IT CAME OUT OF THE SKY - CREEDENCE...

Oops, forgot the link
archive.org/details/wkrp...

"Gonna tell the grandkids this was The Metaverse" </meme>

And the movies! like "Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter" - clearly the Canada Council For The Arts has a valuable role in keeping art students busy so they don't go feral :-)

Lawn Dart

Yeah, definitely one of Cat's projects

Ooh, I hadn't considered *smiting* as a solution to the genAI problem, but it is sounding good...

Palm "abacus" wristwatch, 2x2 grid of apps, plugged into power but held in my hand. Apps: address, calc, datebook, hotsync. Brushed metal case, leather band, rubber buttons.

I still have an Abacus in my collection (and the weird MiniUSB cable to power it :)

This reminds me of the man who was asked, "Have you read every book in your library?" and replied, "No, and I have not opened every bottle in my wine cellar, either."

yeah, a previous startup got a cheap dark-fiber gigabit link from our convenient but under-airconditioned office in cambridge to our well-connected (but annoying to get to) shared data center in boston - we'd never have been able to *build* it, but once it was in the ground...

When the utility tech on holiday duty showed up he seemed pleased that it was an *interesting* problem, he'd spent most of the day dealing with "idiot driving into telephone pole" outages :-)

At least in the US, ovens are connected across two phases to get more power. A squirrel made a Thanksgiving Snack out of one of the two phases, out on the pole, upstream of the house; the streetlight was downstream, so one phase fed the other *through* the oven... but only with the thermostat "on"

Amazing stories here; my personal worst was the oven failing to get above 250f or so... and then we noticed turning the thermostat knob caused the streetlight to go on and off :-) (The meal ended up fine with some help from the neighbors.)

YouTube video by Alton Brown Alton Brown Cooks Food | Episode 1: The Big Bird

Oh hey look, Alton Brown literally released something _today_. (It's really good. It's Alton, after all.)

youtu.be/hdUXDhIBxis?...

Huh, I was only aware of "Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House" (Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, 1948) but apparently there were a bunch of horror movies (no, I'm not from Maine) added in the last 20 years.

19th-century pieces of wood are forcing a ‘huge’ train shutdown in Boston. MBTA officials explain why MBTA leaders shared more details with MassLive about why they are shutting down a broad section of the Green Line through the heart of Downtown Boston for half of December.

"The T needs to replace a 130-year-old piece of the Green Line tunnels that houses the trains’ overhead wires. Described as a wooden “trough,” it has been there since the line was first constructed in the late 1890s."

www.masslive.com/boston/2025/...

I feel seen, I feel slightly mocked, and I am going to call Neal and ask for a hug.

Burundi Hafi Station About this coffee The remotest of the remote! That's often where you find the prize. In the hills of Muyinga Province, the farmers of Hafi coffee would face more than a day's journey if they tried to ...

newharvestcoffee.com/products/bur... comparing keywords to my notes from last years coffee advent calendar, this will likely be in the "interesting but still tastes like coffee" category :-)

Nine birds stand on a log in the river. Eight black Double-crested Cormorants and one white Great Egret. They seem to be getting along.

COEXIST poster of the day 🪶

It's impressive how *sometimes* a house makes a good bird blind - and sometimes it *completely fails* - I once had a run of pictures of cardinals in a tree in my back yard where the *second* shot was always the cardinal staring at the photographer :-)

("Microsoft [et. al.] are making Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III available under the MIT License" - not to ignore the work of the enormous interactive fiction and emulation community, but *my* nostalgia is attached to the TRS-80 and Osborne builds :-)

GitHub - historicalsource/zork1: Zork I (Microcomputer Version) by Infocom Zork I (Microcomputer Version) by Infocom. Contribute to historicalsource/zork1 development by creating an account on GitHub.

Eeeee! github.com/historicalso... (source: opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2025/11... ) I am fond of zork 1 in particular because, in high school, it was one of the few computery things that involved *talking to other people* rather than just talking to/fighting with the machine itself...

dscn100-4392 From a distance I thought it was acting like a cygnet but it was way too small - probably a hooded merganser? that was just coincidentally nearby.

www.flickr.com/photos/eichi... (halfway across the river from the heron) a hooded merganser, swan "for scale"