Quick bits:

• Preaching to the crowd here, but: we don’t need artificial intelligence. There already is an abundance of non-artificial human intelligence. What we need is good working hours and good pay and a high standard of living.

• I’m participating in a two-day acting workshop this weekend. I’ve not done too much acting in 2025, so this is a welcome addition!

• Even though I bought the ZSA cards ages ago, I’m only now starting to use them in my writing. They’re good. And pretty.

• The batteries in my Braun hair clipper are officially dead.¹¹1 See Week­notes 2024 W42: Fidelity and Week­notes 2024 W52: On hold.  I can’t even cut my hair anymore! I ordered a replacement hair clipped — corded, because I do not need batteries.²²2 I might still want to look into replacing the batteries, but I’m lazy. 

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This Thursday was another public holiday. This time, I took Friday off, too, which meant that I effectively had a four-day weekend. Nice!

I was OOO on Thursday and Friday 00:00:00–00:00:00 which made for a rather funny StandBy mode display:

000OOoooOO000oo.

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I found The Curse of Knowing How, or; Fixing Everything to be particularly relatable (ouch!).

I’ve got a rather big list of Ideas for software projects and it’s not shrinking. Some of these ideas are huge. And I keep adding to it. Making all the ideas on that list a reality could be a full-time job for the rest of my life.

I have written software out of spite. I’m not particularly proud of that (even though I’m happy with the outcome).

I do need to learn how to let go.

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Speaking of writing software: I finished the ddenv introduction video. Take a look!

It is 75 seconds long, and I think that is a sweet spot.

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Here’s a take on generative AI that I haven’t seen before: generative AI is a modern form of divination.

For unimportant reasons, I got interested in the I Ching (易經, Book of Changes). I am not a spiritual person, but I nonetheless found that there is a practical purpose to divination that I can’t quite put into words; something about breaking your thought patterns out of its constraints, and seeing what was hidden before. (If this sounds like nonsense, I can recommend trying it for yourself.)

The thing about divination is that the answers it provides still fall to you for interpretation.

A bit like generative AI, you know? The results that generative AI spits out are not generally directly usable. But what if we treated the output as something that sparks your thinking and leads you on a path that could lead to more “true” answers — if you are willing to put in the work?

But of course, that is not what generative AI models are marketed as. Or what they are used for — at all.

If you are going to use generative AI — which I strongly believe you shouldn’t³³3 I’ve covered the reasons against generative AI extensively before — like exactly a year ago. Also: if generative AI becomes a form of divination, then there certainly are more ethical and ecological ways of divination.  — then you’d at least benefit from treating the answers that it provides as if it were the outcome of divination.⁴⁴4 Divin-AI-tion, am I right? Hoh hoh hoh! 

Food for thought, perhaps.

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Entertainment:

• I replayed Dex⁵⁵5 Dex (Dreadlocks Ltd, 2015), published by Dreadlocks Ltd.  and it’s still a fun game. It’s certainly not without its flaws, but something about this game just works rather well.

• I picked up Roadwarden⁶⁶6 Roadwarden (Moral Anxiety Studio, 2022), published by Assemble Entertainment.  again… and then dropped it. I can’t quite get into it; it is too slow and dreary for me.

• I’ve lost my appetite for Mask of the Rose.⁷⁷7 Mask of the Rose (Failbetter Games, 2023), published by Failbetter Games.  It’s an odd one; the dating simulator aspect I do not care about, and the game feels slow and the stakes don’t feel high enough to me to really care enough.

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Links:

• Improper nouns (siderea): Food for thought. Connected, tangentially, to my Naming principles.

• Introduction to Native American History: Ep 1 of Crash Course Native American History (Che Jim for CrashCourse): This series just started and I’m looking forward to learning a ton from it.

• The Thing I REALLY Dislike About Mistborn (TheBurgerkrieg): Ooh, this makes a lot of sense. The world of Mistborn exists purely for a story to be told in it, and that makes the world feel more like a theme park.

Ian Danskin links (this is a category now I guess):

• Adventure Game Tier List 17: Broken Sword (Ian Danskin / Innuendo Studios): All of the entries on Danskin’s Adventure Game Tier List are great. I am looking forward to the entire Adventure Game Tier list being available to the public — but it’ll take a while! (Nebula link)

• Help Ian Pay Off $87k of Debt: Ian Danskin has done some phenomenal work, for me most notably on The Alt-Right Playbook which is worth watching and re-watching. He has reached his funding goal by now, but he still deserves your financial support.

Tech links:

• The little editor that could (Kay Lack): Nice! I’ve always known ed existed as a program, but never bothered to figure out how it worked.

• Apple Turnover (John Siracusa)