2026-04-14 20:19:00
I'm posting this text directly from BearBlog, which is different cos I typically type into Obsidian first, but this is not one of those times.
I wanted to come on here and say was genuinely smiling after reading this post: Bear Blog and the kindness of digital strangers by The Moody Warlock and wanted to share it with anyone who read this blog. This is the exact kind of Small Web culture we need to embrace and strengthen. ■
🎧 Traffic outside my window
2026-04-14 18:39:13
Some days ago, browsing my RSS feed as usual I got some very weird error in a blog I (now used) to read. A few days later the the same happened, but then after the crash appeared a message to disable my adblock.
If they make the webpage crash because I don't allow ads, I'm better not accessing the site anymore.1 I guess the most I lose is access to comments. The most interesting part which was the link collection they posted once in a while can still be read via my RSS reader.
To make things worse, the post-crash page says the ads are reasonable. They are not, they're the same as every other site with ads.
I also got the same error with another site I found while browsing. I guess I don't need to access that one too.↩
2026-04-14 17:51:00
It is, perhaps, a sign of our chaotic times that I wasn't surprised to read a Wired article this morning about numerous MAGA supporters wondering whether Donald Trump is actually the Antichrist. I'd laugh if the state of the world wasn't so perilous right now. I'm quite sure the potential global catastrophe we face is pushing my already high blood pressure to risky levels.
Lets look at Trump, the most buffoonish of figures, through the lens of religious narrative for a moment. If a person was ever going to be the opposite of the Jesus figure, it's Trump - a pathological selfish liar - a thin-skinned grifter - a man so stupid, he continues to tell himself and everyone else that he's actually a genius. If he was just another moronic average Joe on the street corner, you might pity him. But this dangerous fuck - this infantile scumbag - has access to the nuclear codes and a powerful military force.
Every country maintains a mythology ~ stories about foundation, about values that drive its people, about cultural and socio-economic goals that align with grand objectives and religious tales. These things form a kind of cultural bedrock upon which communities are formed. One might believe in the so-called American Dream or the idea that America is so mighty that it can influence events in far-flung parts of the world without consequence. The story of American exceptionalism is strong - the idea that the nation aspires to glorious goals and is exceptional technologically, militarily, economically, culturally, and politically. Such a nation feels justified in exporting democracy abroad and projecting both soft and hard power to influence allies and enemies. Citizens thereby feel empowered and starry-eyed about possibility. They are filled with the kind of hope that tends to obliterate the reality of their own poverty filled lives. These stories also legitimise bloody conflicts to reinforce hegemonic power. The justification is made that bloodshed is necessary because some group somewhere threatens American order, world order, and American supremacy.
These stories are consensually constructed and maintained mythologies that drive human history with momentum equal to their scale and believability. One might truly believe in the power of the individual, possessed by the demon of industry and innovation, toiling away until lifted up by what seems an inevitable goldrush of money and glory. But stories are also illusions. They are two-sided - both empowering and dispossessing. Those that have riches maintain the illusion for fear of losing their wealth and social status, and those who have little are so disempowered that they have no voice. The largest contingent, those in the middle, tend to aspire to the golden dream, fulfilling their function in society as active maintainers of the mythology because they believe it.
Even here in Australia, we've always maintained comfortable mythologies that appease the majority. Whilst a more moderate and less religious culture generally, the Aussie Dream revolves around hard work, rugged individualism, mateship, and egalitarianism. For many Australians, the class system is something that only happens in other countries. The reality is, of course, that powerful interests siphon wealth and influence into their own pockets weekly, and have the ear of politicians. The corrosive factor is familiar: the world viewed through the economic lens, where everything and everyone is divided into consumers and producers - nothing more.
Does Trump's chaotic and disordered administration represent a challenge to the mythology of American exceptionalism? An imbecilic man who grew up with everything and wants ever more has plunged the world into disarray. And all for what? Vanity? Ego? Filling his personal abyss? Or is it worse? Is it a mentally ill cadre of dangerous groupies, loyalists, power fantasists, and religious fundamentalists driving hard to their goal of bringing about the apocalypse? Are we facing an existential threat? Their fantasy of doing God's will and entering heaven in exchange for earthly destruction? Smart science graduates these people are not.
For those who talk tough about nuclear arsenals and nuclear strikes, I can only say this: none of us should want even a single nuclear strike anywhere on this fragile planet ever. If you believe that dropping the atomic bomb on Japan seemed OK and people still live there now, I can tell you with certainty - the nuclear warheads of today are far more powerful and destructive. Even a single strike would wipe out ecosystems and kill millions either instantly within the blast zone or through radiation poisoning. Just a few more strikes will kill untold millions more, and more than this will devastate all life on earth. And there are dangerous leaders out there who have access to nuclear codes.
We should never ever create systems that allow people like this anywhere near power and influence. Nor should we ever tolerate the casual platforming of misinformation and the voices of profiteering online stars who tell us soporific fairy-tales about power, manhood, and dominance just so they can gain more followers, more power, and more money.
On that point, I have no sympathy whatsoever for anyone who has seen fit to platform misinformation in service of their bank accounts and the political career of Donald Trump. As much as I understand the kind of socio-economic positioning, ignorance, greed, status anxiety, and opportunism that leads someone to favour a person like Trump, I have zero time for their sob stories and possible regrets. I can only hope that a lot of formerly apathetic people learn very quickly the importance and responsibility attached to civic life. But I won't hold my breath.
I have friends who had an opinion on Trump's first term. They viewed him as a fun agent of chaos, an entertainer, and a refreshing change from the stiff political classes who typically hold office. Some people have told me they think Trump needs to go but they agree with some of his policies - usually the kind of America-first programs that promise easy fixes to complex problems. To them, I can only say that even a stopped clock is right two times a day. And Trump is as stopped a clock as any other moronic authoritarian who would destroy the world to feather their own filthy nest.
So, Trump as an Antichrist figure is about as hysterical a characterisation as I'd expect from a political base that doesn't understand politics, certainly doesn't understand the importance of global politics and diplomacy, is uninterested in anything but having their tiny voice heard in a broken system that has systematically silenced it, and is now trying desperately to make sense of the chaos their man has wrought upon their cherished nation. For them, perhaps, the simple story of the Antichrist makes sense because it's filled with both the mythological battle between good and evil and the dread of destruction that their black and white view of the world finds appealing. For the rest, Trump remains the same self-serving, profiteering vomit-sack we saw on The Apprentice, only this time the darkest sections of his diseased personality are thrashing about vainly because Death is atop his shoulder and not even a criminal billionaire can escape it. And he fucking has access to the nuclear codes.
Reply by email: [email protected]. Subscribe to my blog via RSS feed. All words and photos by me - a human. Not by ai.
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2026-04-14 15:55:00
Spoiler note: This post discusses specific themes, character dynamics, and a few scenes from A Transgender Woman on the Internet, Crying. It is more interested in the show’s ideas but may affect your enjoyment of the show compared to going in blind.
I watched A Transgender Woman on the Internet, Crying five times.
That is probably the clearest review I can give it, but it is also not quite enough. After the first night I left thinking almost immediately "fuck it, I’m buying four more tickets so I can make every remaining show I’m able to make".
At first that was easy to explain. I loved the music, the humour and the staging. The hyperpop energy, the internet language and the speed of it all landed for me immediately. It was sharp, funny, and musically strong.
The deeper answer is that each time I went back the show opened into something else. The first time it felt exciting and validating. The second time it felt sadder. The third time it got bigger. The fourth time it got tangled up with my own anxiety. The fifth time it stopped feeling like just a show I admired and started feeling like proof that some other version of life might still be possible.
Before the show had even properly started it already had me. The graffiti-covered set and the hyperpop playing as people filed in set the tone immediately.
The production is also just smart. The lighting does a huge amount of work. The same set can read as one whole environment and then with one part isolated suddenly become somewhere else entirely. The phone and online communication are staged well too. Streams, calls and digital interaction all feel built into the show rather than awkwardly explained.
And the songs are excellent. That was one of the simplest reasons I kept going back. Even once I started having more complicated thoughts about the show the basic fact remained that I really liked listening to it.
Part of what I was going back for was the room itself.
The lighting was dim enough that I was not hyper-aware of how I looked. The expectations on me as an audience member felt clear. The whole atmosphere felt welcoming to trans people in a way that made me relax almost immediately.
That is not always how queer spaces have felt to me. I had been to a drag show before and spent a lot of it feeling on edge, like simply being there was some kind of personal risk. This did not feel like that. It felt safer, smaller, more intimate. More obviously built for trans people rather than merely open to them.
That matters because part of what I kept returning to was the feeling of sitting somewhere I did not have to justify my existence as much.
The first time was the cleanest. I loved it immediately.
A lot of what I normally only think or half-say suddenly existed in front of me without apology. Not passing, being non-binary and transfemme, different transition goals, the pressure to be seen as valid. Even the Grindr material hit something very recognisable for me especially the ugly overlap between sexualisation and affirmation where part of you can still feel seen by something that is also creepy, flattening, or wrong.
The idea of the “perfect trans girl” landed immediately too. On that first viewing I understood it mainly as a critique of passing politics, of palatability, of becoming the kind of trans woman cis people can tolerate because she is polished, legible and easy to explain.
The non-binary transfemme representation mattered more to me than I expected. Often I feel like the only person on earth who identifies that way, still wants to take significant steps in transition and also likes girls. When you do not see that combination reflected back at you it becomes easy to think maybe you are doing something wrong. Maybe you are just embarrassing.
Most of my friends are cis, mostly straight, mostly men. When transness comes up in my actual life it often feels like I have to carve out just enough room for it. Enough to say something real, not enough to make the atmosphere strange. This show did not feel like that. It felt like it was naming things completely.
That alone would have been enough to make me love it.
And when I left that first show, I did what people do when they know they have found something rare. I bought more time with it.
The second time, my reading of the show started shifting.
By then the “perfect trans girl” material already felt less simple. I started seeing more of the shame sitting underneath that character. More fear, more of the desperate logic of trying to become safe by becoming understandable. It stopped feeling like a clean divide between the right trans politics and the wrong ones. It started feeling more like a story about what different people do when they are forced to survive under the same hostile standard.
Some people get moulded by cis expectations and try to become the perfect trans girl because that seems like the safest path. Some people do not fit those expectations neatly and end up having to fight harder for their experience to be treated as valid. One of the ugliest things the show understands is that the people most shaped by those expectations can end up reinforcing them against other trans people.
That is part of what made the scene where trans people cancel another trans character online as transphobic so important to me. It complicates any easy reading where cis society is the only source of pressure and trans people are simply united on the other side. The show knows that trans people can police each other too. It also knows that this policing does not come from nowhere. People can think they are defending trans people and still become cruel, punitive and flattening in the way they do it.
What I took from that was not that one side was correct. It was that the standard itself was doing the damage.
By the third viewing, one phrase had started sticking in my head:
being read versus being understood.
That is the clearest way I can explain what the internet side of the show was doing for me.
Online you can present yourself more deliberately. You can choose your words, your photos, your communities and the parts of yourself you highlight. You are not always dealing as directly with people who knew you before transition or with the immediate weight of the cis gaze in a physical room. That can make understanding feel more possible online than offline.
But online also makes misreading scale.
You can present yourself more honestly and still get flattened into a trope. You can be sexualised and get a gross little flicker of affirmation from it. You can try to explain yourself and find that people prefer the easier version of you.
One of the sharpest examples of that in the show is the way one character gets categorised as a “heteroflexible boy toy.” That label does a huge amount of flattening in very little space. It turns a person into a role in someone else’s story. It rewrites desire, gender, and subjectivity all at once into something legible, jokey, and consumable.
That stayed with me because it felt very close to a logic I recognise in myself.
Not the exact label obviously, but the compromise underneath it.
Maybe it is fine if people call me a femboy. Maybe that is close enough. Maybe that gives me enough room to wear what I want, to be softer, to be prettier, to move through the world in a way that feels less suffocating. Maybe it does not matter if they do not acknowledge that I actually want to be a woman. Maybe I can keep that part private and still take what I can get.
That is not the same as being understood. It is being read in a way that hurts less than some of the alternatives.
And that is part of what the show got right for me: compromise can feel survivable while still being a loss.
This was also the viewing where the followers started to feel bigger than literal followers. I had started reading them as a representation of society at large speaking through followers. Mostly cis people rewarding a whole package rather than one trait: passing, palatability, straight-coded femininity, respectability, and being easy to understand from the outside.
At the same time the show leaves room for another version of online life too: smaller forms of trans connection that feel less like audience and more like actual understanding. Friendship where you do not have to justify your existence as much. Friendship where you are not immediately being converted into a role.
That distinction mattered to me a lot.
Not every viewing deepened the show in a satisfying way.
By the fourth show, I was so aware of myself being there that I could barely enjoy it properly. I was sitting at the back and every time an actor looked off into the distance it felt like they were somehow looking at me. I know that sounds irrational, it was irrational but it changed the experience completely. I stopped watching the show and started watching myself watch it.
Part of what made that so uncomfortable was the fear of how I might be seen for coming back so many times. I started worrying that the cast might think I had some kind of parasocial attachment to the show or that I was being greedy by taking up space at something other people wanted to see. Rationally I knew I was just behaving like an audience member but emotionally it felt much harder to believe that.
That ended up mattering too.
It stopped being just about a brilliant production I loved. It became tangled up with embarrassment, scarcity, anxiety and the fear of wanting something too much. Even something good can get distorted once you become too conscious of yourself in relation to it.
That is part of the honest version of this story. I did not simply love it five times in a row, at one point I got too in my own head to digest it properly at all.
The fifth viewing was different. I took Valium before going and actually enjoyed it again.
That was also the viewing where some of the family material hit me hardest. One character talking about conservative parents and constant misgendering and the way the other characters supported her was incredibly moving. It made me want that kind of community more than anything else.
It also left me with a simpler thought than I usually allow myself: who gives a shit how I look in a skirt if it makes me happy?
That sounds small. It did not feel small.
A lot of what the show stirred up was already there. It did not invent it. It just made it harder to ignore.
It also made my longing for trans friendship more obvious. Not vague community in the abstract but friendship with people who understand certain things without me having to soften or translate them. Friendship where my existence is not always slightly up for debate. Friendship where I do not have to wonder which box someone has silently put me in.
That part hit even harder because all of my close friends are cis-het. I care about them but it often feels like I have to delicately carve out room for conversations about transness. Sometimes it was nice to go with different friends and point out the little in-jokes or references. Sometimes it was nice to let the show explain something by proxy that I would otherwise have had to explain myself. While waiting for one show, a friend misgendered me while we were in line, and later the show touched on the way non-binary transfemme people can get assumed to be trans women in ways that miss something important. It was a relief not to have to carry all of that explanation alone.
The family material got to me too. One character having non-accepting family and another seeming to have something more accepting or at least more workable made me think harder about my own family secrecy. I know it would go badly but it has become clearer to me that keeping everything in the dark is not neutral. It is one of the biggest things limiting what more visible steps in my transition can even feel possible.
After the final show I thanked one of the actors. I was awkward (as I usually am in social situations) but it still gave me some relief. It reminded me that a lot of the anxiety had been mine, not something actually coming from outside.
The simple answer is that I watched A Transgender Woman on the Internet, Crying five times because I thought it was excellent.
That answer is true, but incomplete.
I watched it because after the first viewing I wanted every remaining chance I could get to experience it again. I watched it because the music and performances were good enough to justify that impulse. I watched it because each return made the show feel deeper, sadder, more complicated and more important. I watched it because for a few hours at a time I could sit in a room where my version of transness still counted.
That feeling did not survive intact once I went back to normal life. It lasted a few hours, sometimes into the next day and then ordinary life closed back over it again.
But it was real while it lasted.
And that has made some things harder to ignore. The desire for trans friendship. The desire to dress more freely. The frustration of family secrecy. The possibility that I might be happier if I stopped treating every step toward being myself like something I need to defend in advance.
So yes, I watched it five times because I thought it was excellent.
I also watched it five times because for a little while it made a different life feel close enough to touch.
2026-04-14 14:07:00
I have been doing bug bounty since 2013. Back then, everything was manual. I used to write my exploits line by line, document every step, and build reports from scratch. It was not easy, and honestly, I did not enjoy writing reports, especially the complex ones. You had to simplify everything clearly to avoid endless back-and-forth during triage.
I have also been on the other side, managing bug bounty programs at companies I worked for. It was easy to tell who was serious and who was not. And to be honest, I learned a lot from good reports. People from all over the world come up with very creative approaches.
Now things are changing fast with AI.
Skilled security engineers are becoming much more productive. AI helps a lot with code review, searching across different sources, and spotting patterns that lead to interesting vulnerabilities. But this only works well because they already understand what they are doing. They know what to ask, and how to ask it.
Even report writing has become easier. You provide context, and you get a clean, structured report. You can refine it, simplify it, and make it easier for triage teams to understand.
But there is another side to this.
I am starting to see people relying too much on AI. Instead of thinking, they expect the model to do everything for them. There is a clear lack of fundamentals, especially among newcomers. And those fundamentals are exactly what you need to write a good prompt.
For example, this kind of prompt is weak:
“Here is a file. Find me a critical vulnerability.”
Compare that to something like this:
This code is part of an authorization flow in a multi-tenant application.
Assume an attacker is an authenticated user trying to access or modify another user’s data.Analyze the code for:
- Missing resource ownership checks
- Trust in client-controlled input such as user IDs
- Horizontal or vertical privilege escalation
The difference is clear. In the second case, you bring your understanding of security into the prompt. You guide the model instead of expecting it to guess.
On the program side, I still manage bug bounty programs, and the amount of low-quality reports is growing fast. Many people are spamming with things like missing headers, calling them critical without any real impact, and expecting rewards. When rejected, they get frustrated.
We see the same trend in open source projects with random pull requests that do not add real value.
Because of this, filtering becomes necessary. You need to raise the bar. Not every report should even reach the triage stage.
I do believe AI has a lot of value in this field. The potential is real, and we are only getting started. But along with that, there will be more noise.
Do not get distracted by headlines saying everything is changing overnight. We will still need engineers. We will still need people who understand systems, think critically, and use these tools properly.
Keep learning. Stay curious. Be creative. And enjoy the ride.
2026-04-14 13:39:00
i love the idea of double features and constantly wish they were not a thing of the past. more than just a two-for-one deal to save a couple of bucks, the appeal of the double feature to me is seeing two different movies and — in scorsese's words — putting them in conversation with one another. it's a great way to see the same themes through different lenses. sometimes the beauty is in one picture being inspired by another; a sort of love letter or homage. sometimes it's in how two vastly different films will arrive at the same point. other times it's an inexplicable "just vibes" kind of thing.
in the spirit of bringing them back (albeit at home instead of the cinema), i have compiled a short list of movies that i personally think would make pretty neat double features and included a blurb about why i think so down below!
i'm a huge fan of screwball comedies so i figured i'd start off the list with two that i find quite delightful. both movies have the same plot: a dopey, nerdy male lead is in an unhappy relationship with an overbearing woman and is relentlessly pursued by the also overbearing, but far more whimsical female lead who has fallen in love with him. as you can imagine by the theme i've used to tie these two into a double feature, this goal of mutual love is achieved by inconveniencing the male party. bringing up baby was a direct influence for what's up, doc? and bogdanovich was kind of a nostalgiapilled director during his working years, so his film was paying respects to hawks. despite having the same initial set-up, both films make the farcical situation it thrusts both its leads into their very own.
as a lover of noirs and procedurals, both rififi and le cercle rouge couldn't be more up my alley. the two films tackle the nitty-gritty of heist planning and french criminal underworlds with an aesthetically subdued but incredibly tense atmosphere that never lets up, amplified by half hour long heist sequences done in total silence. interestingly, rififi was originally meant to be directed by melville who instead gave the directorial role to dassin, blacklisted by hollywood at the time and in desperate need of a gig after having relocated to europe. le cercle rouge, i think, is a great follow-up to see how rififi would have been handled had the project been in melville's hands.
i mentioned earlier that one of the fun ways to tackle double features is through two movies with identical messaging but a dissimilar approach. i think a more standard companion for his girl friday would be the front page (1931) while sweet smell of success' would be ace in the hole (1951) — but the truth is that the compliments i have for sweet smell of success can be said just the same for his girl friday, making me think they might work as a jarring, tonally opposite pairing. together, the two movies dissect the immorality and corruption of the press and how reporters will do just about anything to spin a story the way they want it told; with both films being known mostly for their immaculate screenwriting. his girl friday features rapid-fire1, witty banter between grant and russell that often overlaps (you may want to watch this one with subtitles) while sweet smell of success has some of the sharpest and tightest dialogue work i've seen — seriously, not a single line is wasted. the key difference is in that the former is a screwball comedy, and the latter is a noir and thriller.
if there's a role that involves a man in the throes of a difficult situation that imposes on his desire to be a good person, henry fonda's going to have it. although 12 angry men has certainly received its flowers, the ox-bow incident remains largely unknown despite their similar themes. this pair of films feature fonda as a protagonist struggling to reason with a mob over an accused party's potential innocence. while both movies share a similar premise, it's in how they tackle the influence of fonda's character over the group that differs. the ox-bow incident is far more bleak in displaying the hopelessness of a single voice getting lost in a crowd, while 12 angry men shows how that single voice — if heard — might lead others to rationality. they're both great movies steeped in rich dialogue.
although il sorpasso and hud share overall themes of societal critique, the sort of sameness i'm banking on is that of an upright, earnest, young man being corrupted by an older man with a passion for being a hedonistic asshole. just like one of the previous examples, they're tonally different in that il sorpasso is a comedy and hud is a drama. it's also interesting to me that both of our young protagonists recognize the inherent shittiness of the older ones, but find themselves charmed anyway. it makes the growth of these protégés all the more engaging as they're caught in between giving in to and resisting such influences.
that concludes my short list! if you give any of these a shot, let me know how they turn out. tell me if you liked them or not, if you think another film might have been a better pick for a double feature, or if you have any other suggestions for a double feature for me to try out. i'd love to hear from you!
typically, one page of a screenplay lasts about 1 minute. at 92 minutes, his girl friday's screenplay should have roughly 90 pages. instead, it has a whopping 191 pages meaning that its dialogue goes by twice as fast as the standard movie!↩