It’s Friday the 13th and I’ve just been lorem ipsum’d in the face. I’ve always preferred the textual rickroll while researching (quick & painless gotcha). Since 2023, I’ve mostly stopped reading articles.

The time saving trick now is to look at title dissimilarities and speed-read lightly. The new lorem ipsum is a thick labyrinth of maze like semantics that looks amazing, says nothing and something, and may violate simple laws of physics.

There are mistakes in places where they shouldn’t be and unfortunately I can’t play industrial scale spot the difference.

I’ve been slowly trying to fix one of my aggregators. I ended up discovering (quite happily) that Saint Lucia eventually caught up, and that there’s a neat book written about that scheme.

Now I’m tempted to compare notes with the hyperreality (for science). Anytime I mistakenly read into stuff, the situations are even more absurd than I remember. Getting scammed enough times is a viable short cut to Kant’s enlightenment (or something).

I actually peeked at that social media data. And it’s surprisingly good. I’m still questioning if it’s worth tracking the election this time round (no guarantees). The 2026 election doesn’t feel like it’ll be as interesting as 2021 and the hard part is researching candidates.

It turns out that I actually saved my copy of 2021 polling data, but of course the incumbents redrew the boundaries to make it extra fun.

Bonus: I didn’t notice before, but there’s also data on generative AI use worldwide and locally.

The happy new year is here. I was conversing offline with individuals about courses a little ways back in time. And, if it’s any solace to anyone online deathly afraid of the future, keep reading?

Fun fact: Many seemingly think that I’ve used generative models to build this inert static site (hoho). How would you know the difference? And can you fully trust it?

There are a collection of poems called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I saw references to one of its four liners in a random video clip of a show. That’s unexpected.

Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain–This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

The translation on the third line is especially spiffy, and the fourth, sufficiently crafty (at least in my opinion).

I’m remembering something kind of amusing. I used to be big on portable documents until I discovered the ultra hard way how cryptic everything was underneath the hood. They’re good enough, but have any of you ever heard of the cracked WWF format (not wrestling)?

It was an encrypted portable document where the defining feature was to make printing technically impossible to save the world. Good thing it was .wwf and not .wwe. This might sound fantastical, but maybe it was really true.

There’s truly nothing more liberating than deleting all of your work by mistake (or having it deleted). That’s why it never hurts to have multiple distribution (and backup) strategies. A newer way is invented every day:

gcc -o delete-this-file.c

I came across an interesting site publishing social media trends. There are many countries in there, but that first link is for The Bahamas.

I run across sites where I wonder if a time travelling comedy bit is happening. Check the dates on those cards.

This article from the year 2057 was actually useful. I was messing around with Python the other day.

I recently heard about the Ladybird Browser. Those of you who are slightly younger or older may not have realized this.

But, the (secret) final step in making your browser boat float upright on the mainstream (after keeping up to spec speed) is crafting your very own anime. I wish I were joking, kind of (these are real):

• Internet Explorer
• Google Chrome

And, that’s how they got us in high school. Take and do note that Firefox and Safari are missing.