Weeknotes 2025 W01: New Year

Happy new year!

I celebrated the end of the year quietly by myself, which is exactly the way I want to spend it. Grab brunch with friends, then head home and remain inside until the damn fireworks are over.

The fireworks, ugh. The air pollution makes it hard to breathe, the trash it leaves behind is vast, the experience is traumatizing for animals and even people, and of course it absolutely is dangerous for people and illegal bombs can cause serious damage to buildings. Yikes. And there were still fireworks going off til yesterday evening (January 4th).

Quick bits:

• With the recent macOS update, it seems like the Shortcuts app now finally works properly. Previously, I wrote about how unreliable it was.

I wrote my 2024 in review. It’s been a good year overall.

I also wrote up my expenses for 2024. I’ve been successful at keeping my expenses down in 2024, made necessary by months of unemployment.

For 2025, I’ve been wondering what to do in terms of goals. I’ve decided to take it easy and use CGP Grey’s approach of specifying a theme. But not even for all of 2025 — just the first quarter.¹¹1 I’m not calling it “Q1” because that sounds far too much like work.  And so, this is the start of my Season of Writing.

Practically, this Season of Writing means that a big focus for this quarter will be on the following:

• My Book: Writing an Interpreter book
• Articles
• Short stories

There are also the week­notes and my morning pages, but I don’t consider those to be a focus of the Season of Writing.

The interpreter book has seen some progress. I think I’m about one third through the first draft. It’s good to be working on it again.²²2 It is difficult for me not to work on anything at any given time. I can’t work on zero things; I get restless if I try. But I also can’t effectively work on multiple things at the same time. 

2025 is the year of the math nerd! Here’s the proof!³³3 I am rather proud — as you can probably tell — of the math support on my web site. 

$$\begin{aligned} 2025 &= \sum_{n=1}^{9} n^{3} \\\ &= 1^3 + 2^3 + 3^3 + 4^3 + 5^3 + 6^3 + 7^3 + 8^3 + 9^3 \end{aligned}$$

Here is more proof!

$$\begin{aligned} 2025 &= \left(\sum_{n=1}^{9} n\right)^2 \\\ &= (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9)^2 \end{aligned}$$

Or even this!

$$2025 = (20 + 25)^2$$

Entertainment:

• I Saw The TV Glow⁴⁴4 I Saw the TV Glow, written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (A24, Fruit Tree, Smudge Films, 2024).  is memorable.

  I went to see this at a cinema within walking distance from where I live (that I didn’t know existed until last month). 30-something minutes in, however, there was a power outage at the movie theatre that couldn’t be recovered from, so I got my money back and returned home. That evening, I rented it on YouTube (my first YouTube rental ever), but at the 90% mark, my Internet stopped working and I had to take a break before I could finally finish the damn movie.

  But it was worth it. It is a challenging movie; unsettling, though not horror (and no jump scares). Even though this is quite clearly a film with a trans metaphor at its core, I too found it to be relatable. The ending scene had me breathing heavily. Worth a rewatch.

• Scanners⁵⁵5 Scanners, written and directed by David Cronenberg (Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC), Filmplan International, Montreal Trust Company of Canada, 1981).  is very cheesy ’80s science fiction. It’s definitely not high-brow, definitely silly, but also certainly entertaining. Still, Cronenberg’s later film Dead Ringers⁶⁶6 Dead Ringers, directed by David Cronenberg, written by David Cronenberg, Norman Snider and Bari Wood (Téléfilm Canada, Mantle Clinic II, 1988).  left much more of a mark.

• High Life⁷⁷7 High Life, directed by Claire Denis, written by Claire Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau and Geoff Cox (Alcatraz Films, Andrew Lauren Productions, Arte France Cinéma, 2019).  bored me, unfortunately.

Links:

• This open problem taught me what topology is (3Blue1Brown)

• The Word “Men” (watchfulcoyote)

• Sweaters In Movies – What They Mean And Why They Matter (Patrick (H) Willems): Cozy!!!

• Cox–Zucker machine: No, not the cocksucker machine. Perv.

• Generative AI is a Parasitic Cancer (Freya Holmér): Hear hear. (One of the bonkers aspects is that LLMs that provide sources, like Bing and Gemini, actually provide sources that… themselves are AI generated.)

Tech links:

• Toolbar Guidelines (Mario Guzmán): In my treasure chest this goes!

• CSS multicol level 2 changes (Rachel Andrew): Ooh! This will make it easier to build horizontally scrolling multi-column layouts, something I still really like but is unfortunately still impractical.