2026-04-16 13:02:04
weather: ☀️ no complaints
critters: monarchs; mourning cloaks
during COVID, S told me he blocked all instagram ads and sponsored posts on sight. the more he blocked, the weirder the ads became, until he got ads for things like sex toys and mexican dwarf wrestling. "that one almost got me," he said.
my baseline for determining whether the algorithm knows anything at all about me is cat content. if the thing doesn't know i'm a cat person, we're not on speaking terms. i think sometimes we're encouraged to personify the algorithm as a semi-friendly wizard's daemon (or some of us get notions). i have made a game of guessing what the algorithm is "thinking" when it does something weird. i've never gotten ads or content as weird as what S gets from his carpet-bombing campaigns, but some of the daemon's thoughts give me a little pause.
strange algorithm decisions ranked in order from most to least explainable:
not so strange--'tis the season. turbotax delenda est.
i hate cleaning, but this one might just be about being in my thirties. a certain gerard donelan comic may also apply if i think the algorithm is being rude.
the robot wants me to buy tools every day of my life. and at the rate i lose line levels, maybe i should.
the machine knows vaguely that i enjoy this stuff, but it also seems to know my clicks almost never lead to a transaction.
i choose to characterize its ongoing push of such content as hope. it waits for me to have mediterranean cruise money, and it hopes.
i wouldn't say i'm interested in ghosts or crime or conspiracies on their faces, but on a meta level, i absolutely am--i like to think about the meaning-making in which they're all engaged. why do people want to believe in things that scare and disgust them? what are the sociological reasons some ideas stick in the public mind for decades? what is the role of paranoia, or the role of insider feelings? do these things inevitably lead to witch hunts?
certainly the audiences for these things have overlap with gossip, which is what i'm actually interested in. anything about the latest fifteen-minute celebrity or bizarre scandal that requires three explainer videos and one google doc to fully elucidate. but it needs to have a gloss of intellectualism and CuLtUrAl cOmMeNtArY or i feel icky and close the tab. the algorithm must never make me confront my voyeurism, nor my snobbery...never!
algorithm has detected a male. beep boop, now serving a silly old spice ad. wait. female. beep boop, now serving a makeup tutorial. wait. a queer? beep boop, now ✨SERVING💅 a makeup tutorial, drag edition, sandwiched between trixie and katya clips. wait. johnny depp dior sauvage ad? wait. glossier ad? wait. low-cost PrEP? ED pills? tampons? wait. algorithm almost has it. please give algorithm a minute.
the daemon mistakes my play for affection.
despite being in southern california, just about every ad i get is in english. the only spanish-language ads i get are for booze.
the vibe is a little like adults trying to be circumspect around dogs by spelling out W-A-L-K. "watch out," says the machine. "he can't know about cerveza."
me and homestuck fans are gay on the internet. other than this, we seem to live in completely different worlds.
i've played deltarune. those guys play deltarune, right?
is this because i'm american? i'm gonna throw the algorithm into boston harbor.
2026-04-16 04:25:00
"You just describe what you want built. It literally writes the code and builds it for you."
or
"It's like having a junior developer on call 24/7. You give the brief, they build it. Simple."
Whew. Now, that's a great way to sell somebody a course on vibe-coding in a week. Who wouldn't want to create another clumsy, bug-ridden tool for themselves, right?
Except, none of these courses—or people parroting about how cool vibe-coding is—are tell the whole picture: that they won't teach you thinking, the most important piece of the puzzle.
Learning to "code" was never a problem, not even before LLMs. It's the same issue over again as with those JavaScript & web-development bootcamps that promise to get you going faster than the speed of light.
The hardest thing about doing development is not using the tools. It is to think. And so far, I have not seen a single course on thinking.
2026-04-16 01:52:00
People always talk about themselves generally in a negative way, saying they're their own worst enemy. I say it doesn't have to be that way.
I think we are so accustomed to being mean to ourselves that it starts to become this self-fulfilling prophecy. You start to see yourself as worthless, lazy, incompetent, whatever. We tend to not be very nice to ourselves, and it deteriorates our own mental state.
When we don't value ourselves, we tend to also devalue others. When we speak negatively about ourselves, we are essentially calling people who are about us liars. And we start to put ourselves in worse relationships because we don't also value ourselves. We stay in bad spots because we feel it's what we deserve. But I think you deserve better than that.
I'm an only child. I got pretty accustomed to being by myself for long stretches of time. I tended to be on the outskirts of most social groups for a long time, and often found myself with only me and my internal monologue. So, I would just go do stuff by myself.
I take myself out to lunch, to dinner. I go out and see movies by myself. I go out and do things and enjoy my own solitude. I make jokes at my own expense. I think we can see a lot of benefit in romanticizing a relationship with ourselves.
When we see ourselves as someone we care about, we hold ourselves to a higher standard. We begin to value our worth more. We refuse to settle for people who try and diminish that.
I feel like if you have a good relationship with yourself, you tend to stop and wonder. You want better for yourself, like you would for your close friends. If you're in a relationship with someone who doesn't value you or isn't good for you, it becomes easier to recognize that. It's no different than if your friend was in a toxic relationship and tried to help them see that they deserve better.
I'm not saying be an egoist and think you're hot shit. I'm not advising you to be like Narcissus after discovering himself. You don't put your friends on a pedestal, so you shouldn't do the same with yourself. Just be real with yourself.
I also want to make the point that it's helpful to be outside of yourself too, generally to avoid having your mental state do one of those horny eagle death spirals. It's no different than any other relationship really. You go to your mom for certain things, your partner for others, and your best friend for other things. Variety is the spice of life. Balance. Yin and Yang. All that good stuff.
What I'm trying to say is, just be nice to yourself. Learn to enjoy your own company. Be happy to see yourself in the mirror like you would a friend. If you are struggling, see it like watching a friend struggling and help them get out of the pit.
Take yourself out on dates. Go for walks. Watch movies. Take yourself out to lunch/dinner. Learn how to enjoy your own company, get to know the real you.
Why be your own worst enemy when you could be your own best friend?
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I decided to take work off today. I didn't sleep super well last night, so when my alarm rang, I said "fuck it" and took the day off. Might go to Olive Garden later, might bring my daughter with me if she wakes up from her nap with enough time before she leaves with Grammy.
I beat the MW2 Remastered campaign last night. I procrastinated on beating "Loose Ends", that mission still fucks me up. Now I'm moving onto the CoD 4 remaster. Going for getting all the intel.
2026-04-15 16:51:00
Who doesn't want to be brave and honest?
If you want to live a life according to these values, there is always a price you have to pay — and keep paying.
A subscription fee, if you will.
The currency? Pain, and the high probability, if not inevitability, of getting hurt or hurting others.
And when it's time to pay, it's not fun. It hurts. It sucks.
It's what makes living this way so hard. It's why many fail and even more struggle to stay on this path.
It makes you question the whole thing.
"I didn't mean this to happen."
I know. It hurts.
It may not feel like it in the moment, but remember: It's not a sign that you did something wrong. It's the opposite. You are on the hard but right path. You can't have it any other way.
At least, you shouldn't.
Because the alternative is much worse.
It's the easy path. Where you never hurt anyone or allow yourself to get hurt. There are no subscription fees and no commitments, or so it seems.
But it's not a free version, either.
Oh no.
Make no mistake, there is a cost. But instead of a visible subscription fee, it's like having an open tab; it grows and accumulates in the background. Out of sight, out of mind.
But you will get the check. And it will come at the worst time: when you're about to leave. When it's too late to do anything about it.
So you must pay with regret.
You don't want that.
Pay the subscription fee for courage and honesty. It's worth it.
2026-04-15 06:34:11
He called himself "Spachey's Unofficial Grandpa". But to everyone, he was the Official grandpa.
Jon was a retired chef in his 60s. And a self-proclaimed "pothead", trying new cannabis flavors and products then reporting on them. He spoke in detail about his arthritis and hip problems, so I'm sure there was a correlation. Jon also had a new bunny tattoo that we all got to see! His fascination with bunnies came from a childhood nickname; bunny rabbit.
In his bulletins, Jon talked extensively about his mother, who's in her 90's. It was obvious that he loved her and took care of her along with his siblings.
Jon also made it a point to wish people a happy birthday when he could. Sometimes it was a "Happy Birthday" sometimes it was a "Joyous Natal Anniversary."
It's been confirmed and I looked it up and confirmed it myself.
I was on the site on and off this year and felt that it was weird that his daily bulletins weren't showing up as usual. I was in denial for a while, and even messaged him telling him that he should come back and give an update if he can. He was active daily for four years.
One time in a bulletin I talked about potentially being a sugar baby for a cheap man (my posts were all crass like this, long story), and he said that I'm being "undervalued" and to "milk the guy for everything he's got". It was so funny coming from a wholesome guy with a bunny profile picture.
"What do you know about sugar babies, Jon!?" I replied sarcastically.
Then he revealed that he is not innocent and is indeed a grown man with grown man experiences.
It's weird. I didn't know him. But I knew his presence. Everyone did. If you go to his wall, you can see that so many people were worried when he went quiet.
I thought it odd that people would cry over a grandpa that wasn't theirs, but once I got over the initial denial phase, I had my moment as well.
I'm aware that we don't know who he was in real life, but from our point of view, he was good. I miss him. This internet stranger. He influenced people to keep going all the time. The only influencer I liked.
I was very stressed in November. I made a very emotional blog post about it, and despite me turning off the blog comments to avoid unsolicited advice, he still commented on my profile:
This was his last interaction with me. I feel like I missed an opportunity to say thank you to him.
I can't go back on that site. I have this involuntary wave of sadness when i see the interface. If you can't tell, I have been lucky enough to not experience much loss up till now. Greif gives me a pit in my stomach.
This just goes to show that just being there for people will cause a community to gather around you. Some people might forget him, and that's okay. But I will never forget him.
2026-04-15 01:08:00
You’re right, your life and ideas probably aren't that interesting.
The number of people who care to know what you’re doing, thinking, and feeling? Very few.
But consider this: historians and scholars today nerd out over old written artifacts. It’s a clean window into the past. Official accounts of the past are often produced with a particular point of view, the heavy hand of the state or the victor looking over the author’s shoulder.
But you? You are free to look and describe things as you see and understand them.
It’s not clear how much that’s on the Internet will persist, or for how long. But there’s a decent chance that your individual perspective could survive centuries even though you're “just a common person.”
What you wore, where you went, how you spent your time, what you worried about, how you lived—all straight from the source, as a gift for posterity.
If nothing else, the people of the far future will be thrilled to hear from you.
