FeedCity

I posted something to my linkblog this morning that really should have been on my blog. Here's what it said. "Every blog should have a nice search engine like mine. I can search for ideas and it creates a story, like this search for 'Madison' where I had love, fun, creativity, friends, youth, music, strength, health, sex, and could see the future clearly. Best time of my life, I had everything anyone could want. Pick another term get another synthetic story." Ironically, since my linkblog doesn't flow through the search engine, I would have lost this post. Which makes a bigger point. All the ideas we throw into the silo'd social web are basically trash, not part of our collection, that we might use tools in the future to find value in (as my Madison posts surely did, for me at least).

Reading The Last Song Of Penelope by Claire North.

Watched the penultimate performance of Elektra in Brighton this afternoon, before it transfers to the West End. Dense dialogue compensates for the short running time and an abrupt ending, yet the play is undermined by needless and nonsensical gimmicks (effect pedals, a random blimp, ink guns). Larson gave a forceful performance though, and was an absolute pro dealing with a mid-performance interruption (a cup fell from an upper circle).

[David Marchese in The New York Times] This profile of Curtis Yarvin in the New York Times (paywalled, probably for the best) is far softer than it should have been, with far less formal fact-checking. It is of the moment, though: this guy’s writing is highl...

Last week when ChatGPT added scheduled tasks, I set a task to write a haiku for me each morning based on Hayao Miyazaki movies. It has been a fun experiment. Whenever I get one of the haikus, I smile, which was what I hoped would happen.

Here are the first four:

Through forest winds soar,
A catbus hums in the night,
Magic fills the air.

Beneath soft moonlight,
Spirits dance on quiet hills,
Dreams take gentle flight.

Sky castles arise,
Whispers of the wind bring tales,
Nature’s heart beats strong.

Howl’s voice on the breeze,
A lone castle seeks the stars,
Love breaks every curse.

I also like that even for a business-y “scheduled tasks” feature, we can squeeze a little creativity out of it.

[Oliver Milman in The Guardian] Car culture isn't just physically bad for us, it affects us mentally too: "The car is firmly entrenched as the default, and often only, mode of transport for the vast majority of Americans, with more than nine in 10 household...

If ever there was a litmus test about who to avoid, it’s the people who see the language of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 21st Century and think, “oh, that’s problematic”. Here is the full text: SECTION 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged ...

Explore our hand-picked collection of 10,046 out-of-copyright works, free for all to browse, download, and reuse. This is a living database with new images added every week.

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The Level Up is a LOOSELY video game-themed indie improv showcase! Come and see some of the freshest talent in the New York indie improv scene!

Come support Michael as he dons his hosting-duties cap for these exciting indie teams:

NAP TIME
BIZZO
IMPROV DOT GOV

I’ll be playing in with Michael and the rest of the Level Up!

Looking forward to it! And to seeing you there!! (Yes, you. Come on out!!!)

Magnet Theater 254 West 29th St (btwn 7th and 8th Ave.) New York City, NY 10001 Tickets $10: https://magnettheater.com/show/59154/

Magnet Theater

Against all odds the house is still standing!!!

Another shot of downtown and the sky with fewer clouds, from across the river.

Custom printing code for Mac apps is a lost art. Nice work by @danielpunkass in the latest Black Ink.

I’ve never had a problem with Mac app notarization until today. Usually it takes just a minute. This new build is stuck “processing” for 20 minutes now. Not as bad as human review taking days, but on principle I don’t like that Apple is the bottleneck.

Lady Bird Lake and downtown Austin from the pedestrian bridge.

I've come to the conclusion that you can't really use ChatGPT as a programming partner. It doesn't understand the big picture, and if you try to explain it, it probably isn't getting it, and if it does, it will forget it quickly. It's basically fairly stupid, but a way better search engine than Google. Also, it never says it doesn't have enough info to answer the question and then an hour later you figure out the answer it gave you just doesn't work. I still think it's an incredibly useful too, just not as great as I used to think. In a couple of years it has never asked for more information before it answers. That's a clue.

Pretty sure there's no supportable reason to ban TikTok, any more than banning Facebook or Twitter would make sense.

My newest server was down for an hour due to hardware problems at Digital Ocean. It appears to be running again. Please don't judge the new search feature, it was caught up in this outage. Oy.

Video demo of a the new searchbox on Scripting News.