Weeknotes 2026 W03: Rather spooky

Quick bits:

• It’s been an exhausting week. I suspect the news has something to do with it.

• The temperatures have risen above freezing, finally. This might’ve been the toughest winter I’ve had in Berlin.

• I am dealing with a bizarre new issue with nanoc live where it just stops running. It just shuts down! Randomly! Properly even, as if I pressed ⌃C. I am very confused.

• For now, I am still stuck on Tarmak-3. I’m getting the hang of it, but I am still rather slow. The cost of progressing to Tarmak-4 is high, but I’ll get to it soon.

• There was no train service on the U4 this week. Oh, U4, how lucky I am to have taken you for the first time last week.

• After living in Berlin for over twelve years, I finally realized that the Dildoking logo — practically advertised on every street corner in Berlin for decades — is meant to be a crown made out of dildos. Dildoking. Ohhhh, it makes so much sense now.

• Speaking of dildos: Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has died. What does he have to do with dildos? Listen to Behind The Bastards’ episode on Scott Adams to find out.

• I picked up a bunch of free potatoes and turned them into a gratin. Have you picked up yours?

• I have discovered new light switches in my house. They’re in a very convenient place. I’m assuming they’ve always been there, and I’ve just been inattentive. The alternative… is rather spooky.

Shower thoughts:

• For how long can I get away with pronouncing TTRPG as “titty RPG”?

• What is the age of blood? What happens if there is week-old blood from my stinky toes that makes it into my brain? Is this why I’m having a slow day today?

• With 2D printers being invented around the year 1000, and 3D printers around the year 1984, through linear extrapolation we can predict the arrival of 4D printers in about 950 years. It’s a matter of time.

• I’m very close to making a decision on whether I want to consider making a decision to think about starting to think about going to the gym.

Random work bits:

• I’m remarkably happy with Linear. It is maybe the first issue tracker that works for me. (It could also be that everything else is just so bad that Linear looks amazing in comparison.)

• I caused my first outage! Fortunately for an internal-only system.

Sometimes, there are clear signs that indicate where in Berlin you are:

• Do you see a Rue Ambroise Paré? A Rue René Laennec? Maybe a Rue du Dr. Roux, or an Allée du Stade? You’re in the former French sector.

• Are you at Lewishamstraße? You’re in the former British sector, mate.

• Do you find yourself on Stalinallee I mean Karl-Marx-Allee? You know where you are.

• What about Clayallee and Marshallstraße? Offensichtlich the former American sector!

History can be quite visible.

I’ve been remarkably unengaged in my acting work for the last two weeks. It’s like I’ve suddenly lost all interest in it.

Perhaps it is because I’m bringing my own writing to class. It’s not bad writing, I believe, but I’m feeling quite self-conscious about it. I haven’t been able to take “the writer is in Canada” to heart just yet.

I also miss finding and working on texts that I haven’t written. Part of the fun in acting classes is digging my teeth into new work that I’m unfamiliar with. Maybe that’s something I need to pick up again, alongside writing.

Links:

• The Honey Scam is Worse Than I Thought: PayPal is doing some evil shit here.

• A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet (Cory Doctorow at 39C3)

• Furious AI Users Say Their Prompts Are Being Plagiarized (Joe Wilkins for Futurism): This is very funny.

• Bandcamp’s Mission and Our Approach to Generative AI: I greatly welcome Bandcamp’s stance here.

Tech links:

• Just the Browser: Ooh, I love the idea of using policies to disable AI features. Good riddance.

• stop-tahoe-update: Another neat idea of using policies. I would like to never upgrade to macOS Tahoe (it’s dreadful), so this configuration is quite welcome.

• Square Sketch: This looks rather cool. I haven’t tried it out, and I wonder whether it’d satisfy my needs. In any case, I don’t need it, as I have multiple vector drawing programs that I am already comfortable with.