You don’t realize how fast time flies until 1Password tells you it’s been two weeks already and you need to manually type in your password again 😵‍💫

This robot is being controlled by a King oyster mushroom

When the researchers shined a UV light on the fungus, it triggered an electrical impulse that quickly sent a signal to the motors and actuators in two custom built robots.

This mostly feels like “powering a lightbulb with a potato v2.0” but the goal is to one day use fungi to monitor soil health. The robot thing is kinda click-baity but it’s cool they’re able to do something using electrical impulses from a mushroom. Reminds me of how they can “play a synth”

We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world

I like this guys’s take on defining what addiction and trauma are and how they correlate. Gotta figure out who you are before the healing starts 🧘

I love brutalist design. Especially when it’s something useful, like the Brutalist Report. I don’t remember who showed it to me, who runs it or how I even found it, but it’s a really good no bullshit way to get all the top news stories for the day

Live for today

I saw an ancient meme on Reddit the other day, something along the lines of “in 10 years you’ll want to go back to now because the good old days are happening and we don’t even know it.”

Read More →

I quit energy drinks

I’ve been drinking at least one 12oz Redbull a day since somewhere around 2010. Right after high school, I was doing a lot of manual labor jobs so the extra energy boost really helped. Especially after partying all night like college kids do.

Read More →

Little white lies about blue light

The frequently cited 2013 study about blue light and its affect on sleep had just 5 participants and questionable methodology…Melatonin levels—not sleep quality—were measured before and after the 30 minute experiment. There was no control group.

a 2021 study with 167 participants that tracked actual sleep quality between 3 groups of people…concluded there was no observable benefit from using Night Shift.

Reminds me of when Bionic Reading was going viral. It sounds like it makes sense but its probably just a really good placebo effect

The Internet Archive just lost its appeal over ebook lending

The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in a fight to lend out scanned ebooks without the approval of publishers. In a decision on Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that permitting the Internet Archive’s digital library would “allow for widescale copying that deprives creators of compensation and diminishes the incentive to produce new works.”

Honestly I’m a little surprised physical libraries haven’t been outright banned at this point 🤦

Labor Day is the dumbest holiday. Let’s honor the working class by making all of their checks a day late this week 😫

Thoughts on AI to help with little bits of code

I know AI in coding is a touchy subject, but I’ve been learning a lot using Claude to help do things I otherwise had no idea how to do. I still have to know what I’m trying to realistically accomplish and what code I need to change, and how to shoehorn it into the rest of the code it without breaking everything.

Read More →

In honor of bleptember 🫡

A gray cat is sleeping on a piece of furniture with its tongue sticking out.A gray cat is sleeping with its tongue sticking out, resting on a cushioned surface.

It's ok to disagree

I was talking to a coworker about his experience buying a car recently. Every time the salesman would suggest something, he’d push back like “eh I don’t like that color” or “yeah I don’t really like that brand.” Then the salesman would cave and agree like “oh yeah; that’s an ugly color. I hate Chevys too.”

He got annoyed and bought a car somewhere else. Don’t be a sycophant. It’s okay to have your own opinions, even if you’re a car salesman.

I thought I had this profound thought about picking the people in your life, etc then I realized it’s already a thing:

If you can’t change the people around you, change the people around you

Cheesy? Maybe. But I like it 😜

New VWs will answer some of your questions with ChatGPT

I was just reading about how people don’t want fancy tech packages in their car if it raises the price. Then I saw this article from The Verge:

Drivers in cars that support ChatGPT will need to be subscribed to VW’s Plus Speech with AI service to get it

…the company says when drivers ask for things like restaurant recommendations or for the chatbot to tell you a story, that will go to the cloud

It’s like onboard navigation. A shittier (paid) version of a free thing your phone can do and probably no one wants built into their car

Revisiting why I quit social media

So a couple weeks ago I decided to get rid of social media. I deleted my Mastodon account permanently but only deactivated Bluesky. I couldn’t help myself. I logged back on the next day. I do like it there. It feels less radical than Mastodon and more like how old Twitter felt way back in the day.

Read More →

A skydiver is captured mid-air with a parachute strap, set against a backdrop of landscape and sky. He’s only using one strap on the backpack thing so he looks cool

From The Onion

I like Obsidian but I’m realizing I don’t use any of its unique features really. I only use it for post drafts and simple notes. I cancelled my sync subscription and I’m going to try using Strata instead for a while

Found an old promo copy of The Final Cut at a used record store the other day and I can’t stop listening to it 🫨🎵

NaNoWriMo Says Condemning AI Is ‘Classist and Ableist’

Daniel José Older, a lead story architect for Star Wars: The High Republic and author of multiple series including Outlaw Saints, posted his resignation from the NaNoWriMo writers board

I agree it’s dumb to allow AI in a writing contest but there’s been such an uproar from high profile writers on X. You can’t complain about how bad AI is for the planet and how it’s just a grift when you’re posting from Elon’s hellsite lmao it literally has a LLM built in and it’s ran by an actual supervillain. you’re directly supporting that if you use X