This brewery is unapologetically playing straight through OK Computer. I’m loving it, but it’s most certainly a choice.
Reading
How to Take Smart Notes
Sönke Ahrens
Write about the future you want - daverupert.com
I don’t have to look far to find people around me who have inspired me by writing about the future they want.
Writing isn’t the only tool—building is a an important one too—but it is a tool, and it’s …
I am about halfway through Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom, and I have just realized that it is the same conceit as the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. Which is a far more adult novel/series.
I hope the second half shows I’m right.
I continue to appreciate my my new home airport. It was more crowded today than I’ve ever seen it, but I still got through TSA exactly 41 minutes after my Lyft picked me up.
The only way to make it better would be not flying to Miami during ski …
How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills:
Here, AI creates a potential tension: as coding grows more automated and speeds up work, humans will still need the skills to catch errors, guide output, and ultimately provide oversight for …
Daring Fireball: Taegan Goddard: ‘There’s No Going Back’:
The only way to counter “move fast and break things” is to move fast and fix things.
Brent Simmons shared a great, and terrifying, and hopeful, email from his family living in Minnesota, about what’s happening there.
books
Finished reading: A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna
Another nice cozy story. Includes a nice little riddle near the beginning that’s fun to piece together yourself.
The ending is a little too telegraphed for me, and …
Seventeen People is a perfect use of the Web.
I wish to put things like this into the world.
books
Finished reading: Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz.
Cozy restaurant with robots, set in a speculative future where California has violently seceded from the US.
It’s pretty short and rapid-fire. Which makes the bingo card of San Francisco …
Year in books for 2025
Here are the books I finished reading in 2025.
Observations: I was aiming for 24 and ended up with 16, 7 of which were audiobooks, all completed during road trips. Only one “growth” book this year: Tiny Experiments.
Best book: The Book …
books
Finished reading: The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
A cozy bit of magic, with raspberry jam.
Plays a little fast and loose with the timeline, and I had trouble envisioning the myriad nonhuman characters because only exceptional bits got described. …
books
Finished reading: Cursed Charm by Jali Henry
Could have been a fun fantasy read: vampires versus witches. Instead, the very special girl is saved not by relationships or character growth but by learning she’s even more special!
Also: hamfisted race …
Lego Gingerbread AT-AT: all done and lovely. The interior got a wreath!
Lego Gingerbread AT-AT: bag 4 gives it frosted feet. Which I assume means that, in this universe, canonically, Hoth is not an ice planet but an icing planet.
Lego Gingerbread AT-AT: Bag 3 gives it some form. This guy is a lot more stable than they look in the movies…
Lego Gingerbread AT-AT: Making progress… bag 2 is also full of whimsy. Whoever designed this set loved Lego and Star Wars and Christmas. What a treat.
The Lego Gingerbread AT-AT has more Christmas, more story, and more satisfaction in Bag 1 than that entire Advent calendar did.
Posting an interior photo now because I bet this entire milieu gets covered up in the final assembly.
books
Finished reading: Captain Kidd by Samuel Marquis
An opinionated, thoroughly researched biography of history’s most notorious pirate. Turns out most of what I “know” about Kidd was British propaganda to save the king substantial embarrassment.
Even …
books
Finished reading: SPQR by Mary Beard.
A long history of Ancient Rome, ending abruptly a few centuries after Christ. I learned a lot from this book, but the author does you no favors to help keep straight dozens of similar names and timelines. (She …
books
Finished reading: Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Amazing, creative, interlocking far-future stories structured after the Canterbury Tales.
Fascinating, but reads more like an anthology of short stories rather than a novel. Definitely want to read the next …
Got home from family Christmas last night; finished Lego Star Wars Advent calendar this afternoon.
Pretty disappointing; just a bunch of mostly unrelated builds that just barely tell a story.
Oh well. On to bigger and better builds later today.
I’m Kenyan. I Don’t Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.
Interesting perspective.
I was taught these same things in my English classes in several east-coast US states. I don’t think my writing sounds like ChatGPT at all, but it …
versenotes
Doing some research for Advent of Carols, I came across a review of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in The Atlantic that calls it a “Hegelian dialectic.”
Seriously.
The same paragraph confuses “e.g.” with …
I love size comparisons like this. This new one has beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and some interesting inclusions.
Size of Life by neal.fun.