Weeknotes 2025 W09: Barbara & Kenneth

Quick bits:

• Ramadan Mubarak.

• I asked Fastmail, my email provider, whether they had plans to set up a data center outside of the US. There are no plans for that, they replied. This is unfortunate. Do I stick with Fastmail, or move elsewhere?

• At work, the test data for my unit tests now includes the names “Barbara Millicent Roberts” and “Kenneth Sean Carson Jr.” How long will it take for my coworkers to catch on?¹¹1 Those are Barbie and Ken’s official names! 

• I’ve been increasing my coffee intake — I got some nice specialty coffee — but now I find that my skin smells of coffee. Is this normal? Not that I think it’s a problem — just a little… odd?!

My current acting course has come to an end.

I had picked up a new monologue for class about two weeks ago (quite soon before the end of the course) because I felt I was getting diminishing returns working on the previous monologue which worked rather well. This new monologue, though, is considerable trickier, and I wish I had a few more classes to iterate on it. (My goal wasn’t to perform it, by the way — just have it as practice material.)

One thing that I have integrated lately: in a text, every single word matters. Each word needs to be real, as does every sentence and sentence fragment. It can be a ton of work: there is a huge difference between reading a text plus memorizing the words, and to truly understand it. There are no shortcuts.

I don’t have anything else lined up just yet! More classes would be good. But perhaps a little break first?

There really is no substitute for acting classes. You can’t learn acting by practicing by yourself, or learning from a book. Maybe the only book that has really been worth it is The Power of the Actor,²²2 Ivana Chubbuck, The Power of the Actor (East Rutherford: Penguin Publishing Group, 2005).  but even that one needs to be put into practice.

Eventually, I’d like to put something on the stage for an audience. But who knows where or when?

Entertainment:

• I’ve finally made it to the end of the Blood And Wine expansion of The Witcher 3³³3 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt Red, 2015), published by CD Projekt.  and achieved the best possible ending. I had to go back and redo the boss fight at Tesham Mutna, which I strangely enough beat quite quickly last time around, but now took me forever. I admit I cheated in the end. But hey, I beat him fair and square the first time around.

• Slow progress with The Man in the High Castle⁴⁴4 Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (New York: Putnam, 1962).  but it’s still a good book.

• I watched Lost Highway⁵⁵5 Lost Highway, directed by David Lynch, written by David Lynch and Barry Gifford (CiBy 2000, Asymmetrical Productions, Lost Highway Productions, 1997).  for the first time in the theatre. This film might be starting to make sense. Dick Laurent is truly dead now.

  The audience was bizarrely disruptive though — the lowlight being twenty minutes in, some woman in the audience shouted “Don’t be frightened! There will be a murder!”

• I bought the Space Age DLC for Factorio.⁶⁶6 Factorio (Wube Software, 2020), published by Wube Software.  I’ll try not to let it take over my life.

Links:

• The Uncomfortable: Delightful!

• The Forgotten Story Of The Largest Stadium Ever Constructed (The Tim Traveler): Neat — but I regret to inform you that the word “slet” is a rather inappropriate slur in Dutch.

• Content Moderation (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver)

• Can I Revolutionize Coffee? (James Hoffmann): I am absolutely stealing the phrase “I haven’t broken [it] — I’ve just increased its need for maintenance.”

• Where Do Red Dead Redemption 2’s Rivers Come From? (Any Austin): Asking the important questions!

• Humans are Bags of Meat (in Games) (Jacob Geller)

Writing links:

• Is He Protagonist Material? (LocalScriptMan): I don’t have a burning desire to watch the new Captain America movie, but this analysis makes a lot of sense to me (and lots of good insights on this channel in its entirety, too).

• How to spot a villain (according to Shirley Jackson) (Books ‘n’ Cats)

Tech links:

• Algorithms are breaking how we think (Technology Connections)

• I’m Tired of Pretending Tech is Making the World Better (Joan Westenberg): Very much relatable.

• “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” - A “Study” (James Pae)

• AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism (Gareth Watkins)