Phil Edwards: Why bowling alleys are replacing pins with strings [17min; thanks to jon]. (2026oct17)
Unfortunately AI slop crosses my desk occasionally on ebay. This particular auction for an "enamel sign" which doesn't exist until you order it caught my attention. Not because of all the bizarre usual folderol AI pastes on every image it generates ‒ always with the fucking hearts at the bottom of treacly text ‒ but because of the odd shape surrounding "Eby's Mill."
It took a second, then I clued into two things: "100 LBS. NET" and the horrible "AND." Quick search on Worthpoint, AND:
Yeah so this is all automated. "Joey," (that's the AI's name in this pin-point accurate dramatization) "be a love and gobble up Worthpoint, look for old things with text, then replace the text with your own type now that the amazing AI boffins have 'fixed' that, but be only about 92% accurate. Not 91 or 93, people get irritable. Oh, and keep any non-type design you see. Public's going to eat this shit up. Also staple some random compliments at the end of your report, you daft suck up."
Decades (?) ago, someone or something fed a bag into a silkscreen machine but the corner got folded over and now here we are looking at this total garbage thing offered for sale with watermarks to keep you from reproducing non-intellectual property. I've been to the seller's home page, surprise, ten pages of this nonsense.
AI design for me is like the color red in nature. "STAY AWAY." I am not reading your garage sale/missing pet posters, thank you. I am tempted to make a completely surreal AI-adjacent MISSING WANTED poster and hang it up next to AI posters all over the city, but it's just another thing siting on top of the massive pile of things I'm never going to do. They're pleasant to think about in my dodderdom.
It occurs to me that roses are red (wait until you hear about what violets are) and they smell nice. What's that all about, I don't have time for this I'm doing a critical on AI here. (2026oct20)
Someone didn't ask me what my total bike mileage is. Great question. It's 24XX for the ebike, 250+ for the Dutch. That's a total that if laid end-to-end, would wrap around the Earth at least three times. Wow. Today's ride:
Pull up to intersection same time as driver. Motion for them to go. They are incredulous, shaking their head. I explained this earlier in the week. 98% of people want to do tiny good deeds, look at me being all magnanimous and shit letting this poor bicyclist go first. I don't care, I don't know if you're 98% "ok" or 2% "I'm a tank and you are underneath me." EDIT: Let me explain this better, this isn't the biggest slice of the pie. The biggest slice of the pie is that if I rock up to a stop at roughly the same time you rock up to a stop, it doesn't matter who got there first, I'm not going to assume that you're a 98% "ok" person. I'm going to assume you're a 2% "tank" person, because that sort of thinking keeps me alive. So when we're within a few seconds of each other, I'm stopping. Stopping means I put my foot down on the pavement. To start up again is a hassle, it's not like pushing a pedal. It's straining against two pedals over and over. So it's going to take time. Time you could have used to just go ahead and go through the stop ‒ there, we're both happy. You're not on my "potential problem" list, and you've gone through the intersection. Hooray for us.
Additionally, I was familiar with the intersection and people are angry there for whatever reason, so I'm always waving people on. I want fresh people, who are still pulling up as I'm crossing through, especially at this angry intersection. There are all these aspects to travelling on a bicycle that you, the casual driver, have no idea about. Get on a bike, bike your normal car commute for at least 100 miles + 10 days, then you can complain about my tepid takes.
Immediately after, saw a guy holding a remote control, walking behind a ro-bot which I'm guessing he was piloting. Ro-bot all boxy, looking like one of those ummm food delivery bots. I said "HELLO RO-BOT" really loud so the ro-bot could hear me.
I went to start Coffee Test #[too lazy to figure out test number] and this new-to-me place had a bunch of political signs plastered all over the front that I aligned with, and then I saw the Jesus Christ The New Hopkins Street Bike Lanes Are Unsafe coalition sign and happily stopped locking up and noped out of there to The Hidden Cafe, which is its actual name. A successful Coffee Test from earlier in the year, third time stopping in. The nearby ~12-bike "rack" is way way too bunched up together/mis-aligned/thin/etc (if everyone locked their bike on the same side of the rack, it would be fine, but today, for example, the bike to the left was locked on the right hand side and the bike to the right was locked on the left hand side so it was impossible to shove my bike between them in the only open space), there's not enough shade, but everything else is lovely ... sat next to the park and relaxed. $4.50 for a cappuccino + $1 tip.
Noticed that an old art e-site giant-ass building is now "Tanium." Huh. Sounds ominous. [FX: search] "Tanium Atlas finds, fixes, and verifies across every endpoint in seconds. Your team and your AI agents act on the same real-time data, with guardrails and sign-off on every action." AI is fun, and kicky, what larks. Anyway, the Shell station to the South of it is the same Shell station you can see in the film Harold & Maude during the Emeryville mudflat sculpture scene.
I occasionally see the sidewalk/brick artist around, but he has not bricked/sidewalked in weeks. The bricks he chalked still have chalk on them, but the sidewalk art washed away. You can see some of this on my patron sites 1 or 2.
Someone kicked a soccer ball over the high fence adjoining a ped bridge over 580 at some point. The fields were empty, no one was around. I threw the ball back over the fence using the ped bridge height as a "cheat" and it hit the back of the net, so I shouted "GOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLL" like that and everyone cheered. We have fun.
A tiny dog chased a larger cat up an embankment and into our hearts. The cat is lodged there, collectively.
Saw two groups of wild turkeys. Went with my old chestnut, "Hey you turkeys" for the first group. (2026oct16)
S. Fisher & Co. Incorporated advertisement, Confectioners Journal January 1930. "Giz me FULL O' PRUNES to GO!" You know that candy bar is crammed with prunes. Just 100% prunes.
Hello it is time for a bike update hooray. 2.5+ years of daily/near-daily riding.
So far, money found while biking: $40.75. I don't pick up anything less than a quarter, those are for kids. Quarters: sorry junior, that's my laundromat budget.
No flats, no other bike knock-outs except for loose fabric getting caught in chain, easy fix.
The children are back in school but are getting e-motos from their parents in increasing numbers. They continue to vex. Given current trends, watch me make another PSyChIc prediction: a kid is going to paste themselves into a pedestrian/wall/whatever on a bike lane somewhere in CA with an emoto and it's going to blow up into national headlines. No one could have seen this coming. Maybe it already has, I only read newspapers in the "distant past." Like the 1890s. The news is much more sane and predictable back then. [Advertisement pitching home "electricity"] "Nooooo don't do it"
Small/large clumps of sea foam occasionally floats away from the shore and lands on the bike lane as I ride between the bay and 580, a popular always-clogged ribbon of cement. It is free foam, anyone could collect it. There are plenty of these "side hustles" available in the current time [FX: now].
No riding on the weekend. The standard routine gets a lot of changes for the weekends because workers are itching to do errands, and I'd rather not be in "the way." Thanks though.
No e-boost 90% of the time. Only in traffic, on hills, and when I'm too pooped to pope. Just riding no assist on a 60-lb (plus ~10lbs of locks/gear and whatnot) ebike. This means I'm tougher than those spandex lite-bike racing types and I do it all in street clothes. I am available to your company or organization for motivational speeches (search for "Glorb Teledynewaterpik" under "FINTECH" [a dynamic sector valued at over $550 billion trillion dollareedoos] here "YOU CAN BUTTER YOUR E-VEST") and/or shadow puppetry.
There are three factories out there with inspirational odors. The bread factory, the sake factory, and the pudding factory. Sometimes the bread/sake factories are making non-optimal smells, but the pudding factory never disappoints. You may know the pudding, a small company created by someone named "Chef Max." It (the pudding, follow along) is sometimes shown riding a bicycle so we're tight like this [FX: complicated hand gesture implying pudding and reliable narrator are besties]. Depending on the day's routing, I will go by none/one/two/all of them.
The East Bay is very long and narrow so there's not a ton of routes to choose from, on top of the regular systemic lack of bicycle infrastructure common with cowboy democracies [SFX: random pistols shot into air here]. It's like the dumb fuck corrupt-ass (everyone was surprised by this) Neom project except only one-millionth (I measured it) the boondoggle.
Enough of the generics. This was one day of riding:
Father and two small kids riding in bike lane, crossing the street. Kid on tiny bike was going "oof, ugh" on a slight hill w/a giant truck patiently waiting for them all to cross.
Woman in median presses pedestrian button. I am on the side. "I didn't know there was one there ... they used to have a [FX: pointing at small hole in base of electrical pole] kick here" "Yeah! What happened to that!" "I need to write city council ..." "Definitely ..."
Picked up my one-a-week coffee. Non-daily outings make every one that much more special. I hugged myself tightly. "You're going to be okay, you." For today.
Old person cut me off pulling into parking space on Solano.
Rode through the awkward empty bike area in Emeryville. No cottontops are going to protest if cottontops don't live anywhere near. Desolate unused industrial/business places? Yes, tip-top bicycle infrastructure. They put in a green/red light for bikes that's not even on a street. It's for a driveway that I've never seen being used.
Stray doggies with tags at the basketball court, looking for pets or a pickup game.
The Emeryville green LED bike counter goes up by one. Sometimes when I ride by it misses me (about 10% of the time) and I have a sad. Today it saw me.
Hammering on walk signal on busy street. Why? Because sometimes at this specific intersection, the long light cycle likes to skip the bike/ped segment. So you get to wait through a second cycle. I don't know why it does that, I don't know that hammering on it works, but it hasn't ... not worked. The cynic in me is saying that it's because traffic gets backed up "too much" so "fuck 'em."
Rode by/through Bay Street, which is a fake public street with hi-end shops including an Apple Dapple where you take Apple products to be scowled at by trained personnel. It's just one street which of course has parking which of course does not have bike lanes. There are posted signs at the perimeter feeder streets, listing allllllllll the things you can't do when you cross the border into corporation land. I haven't looked up the property lines so I can be sure to minimize my time in pretendoville; it's sort of stapled to a train track ped/bike bridge. There are speakers in the grass, as you ride by you are subjected to sonic garbo pop40 or whatever they call it now, not sure who I have to pay for that.
Guy riding contraflow in the bike lane suddenly jutted out in front of me from a rakishly-parked car, I couldn't understand his replies as we narrowly passed each other with traffic/parked cars pinning us on either side. I initiated the conversation with a merry "WHAT THE" "ARGLE BLORGERD" "WRONG WAY" "BERROK SHARGGG"
This scary front yard:
There's a lot going on here, top two for me are window eyes and happy bow-tie ghost in front.
I say hello to all the crows and not one of them has said "hi" back. My theory is that eventually they'll pick up on it and we can have a chat like "I had a latte just now" "so what meatstick, I can fly." i will keep you updated at havethecrowsevolved.com. A bird called me a "meatstick!" [FX: heart flutters] [SFX: distant ambulance siren]
And then of course, the last bike lane street crossing, had to get into a standoff. A standoff works like this: I am in the bike lane, with my bike, crossing the street. I am going about 8-12mph, usually. This is slow. SUV is driving down the street, does not see me, hits the brakes, the front of the car dips down and I'm immediately stopping at this point. They are now within six-ten feet of me. I am about halfway through the intersection. Here's where it gets weird. I wave them on. Why?
One: You seem to want it more than me. If you can't see me when I'm crossing the street right in front of you, you have lost my trust which was razor-thin already. You are a wild card. Proceed ahead of me, thank you. You can catch a very small object flying toward you in a parabolic arc but you can't do the straight-line mental math for this situation?
Two: California bike laws have no provisions for bicycle riders in crosswalks/bike lanes. Go ahead, look it up. I have poured over it. Search for "bicycle" "crosswalk" "bike lane" "bicycle lane" knock yourself out. Pedestrians have the right of way. Bicycles do not. Cars have the right of way over bicycles full stop. Your next-of-kin(s) can figure it out with the driver in the courtroom and I'm sure justice will prevail. That's the creepy part of all of this. People treat bike/ped lanes differently than crosswalks. I mean, if there's something going through the middle of a street and it's got a load of signs/road markings, 98% of the time, people stop. The police stop. Crosswalks at intersections? If you're on a bike, fuck you, you're fresh meat. They're the same thing in the law book, but people have created their own reality. I mean, not complaining, but guess what happens with the 2%. Standoffs, near-misses, grunty truck fucks, etc.
Funny Other Country Facts #928: most of time, if you hit a bicycle with a car in the Netherlands, you are automatically paying 50% of the damages, doesn't matter who was "at fault" because you could weigh a bicycle and a car and tally up who's actually dying with these match-ups and maybe figure the fucking shit out. A new exciting law like "if something/someone that is punching 1/40th your gross vehicle weight or less is crossing the street at a perpendicular, they should be given space to finish that delicate operation."
Anyway. I'm already stopped. Just go. I waved the guy on, and he did not move. Because it's always a guy. In a truck. Or an SUV. Standoff. And I grimly chuckle to myself, because I always win a standoff. I wave him on, he waves me on, I say "no really, you go ahead" and wave again and he waves again. I am full stopped and feet on the ground, it's going to take me a lot longer to get by you than for you to [FX: three days of intense automobile manual research] "press" the "gas pedal" and disappear. I backed my bike up to the sidewalk. He figured it out. I haven't had to do the kickstand yet, I'm sure someone obstinate enough will come around sooner or later. Related: I've had three guys already stop their truck after I yelled at them (non-sweary like "WHAT THE" or "HOLY CATS"; I'm going to start pre-loading random phrases for the future like "CREAM CAKES," "HUBBA HUBBA WAH," or "HARRY HOUDINI") for nearly hitting me in a bike lane crossing. Guys. Trucks. SUVs. I think they were going to give me free desserts, like a nice slice of Boston cream pie. I like Boston cream pie.
Standoffs occur once every ten rides these days. Most of the time, after I initially wave them on, the driver will go ahead and continue down the street, then I will finish crossing. Sometimes the driver will wave like "oh thank you" when really my sentiment is "you act like you would have no problem running over someone, with how unaware of your surroundings you are ... so how about you go first." They probably wouldn't wave if they knew that.
Other than that, a good ride. Said hello to Karl.
Spent some quality time looking for a photo taken from a New Orleans St. Charles streetcar. It was half interior/exterior, split vertically by the window frame like this photo but literally half-and-half and from what I remember, portrait not landscape. Square? Maybe. Photo sites, search engines, etc. I gave up after an hour. I have now seen all the photos of the St. Charles streetcar so that's something. I was going to construct an ersatz version of it for Tineye but it's never worked in the past. I thought it had a lot of "hits" but it may have been "deleted" by the photographer. (2026sep15)
I rummage through the coffee section at Daiso pretty much every time I go there. This time, picked up a can for the first time. Usually all the brands are too sugared; this time I lied to myself and said I'd cut it down (with what? I don't do the half-black/half-can trick any more ... come on, me). Pokka Vanilla Coffee is a strange whatever here in the US. Owned by Sapporo, manufactured in Singapore. "Vanilla Coffee" does not appear on Sapporo's Pokka web sub-site, just "Milk Coffee." The can's ugly electric blue doesn't match Pokka Vanilla Coffee in other countries (a nice cream color). The only reason I went down this rabbithole was to see how much actual caffeine was in a can. Answer: that would be telling. Shrug. So it's a drop? Or a gallon. Singapore doesn't care about labelling the amount, apparently and there's no requirement in the US. Little India was nice, though. Also it was really raining and the hotel clerk gave me an umbrella.
"But I'm not coming back. I'm checking out."
"That's okay. You take it." (2026aug05)
Guy that occasionally uploads videos I watch has decided to put a lot of chips on AI. So the videos are about his successes and failures with AI. At one point he asks AI to guide him through legal red tape. Tell me what to do AI, who do I file this thing with etc. Literally putting AI in the driver's seat. Now YOU'RE the robot! Surprise, it was completely wrong. AI doesn't know anything. AI doesn't know what a bar of soap is. It doesn't know what a rainbow is. And it sure doesn't know how to fix your traffic tickets or whatever. But it can sound pretty convincing as it haphazardly tapes together a reply. I don't recall who came up with the "dictionary in a blender" analogy, but that. It just relies on prevailing winds. That sailboat will happily take you over a waterfall. It can't innovate, create. It copies. It copies people who are wrong. It copies people who are seeding AI with what they want you to think/do. The stupid-ass Google AI actually hoovered up Cardhouse. I'M IN YOU ::: EAT GLUE/ROCK PIZZA. Has anyone asked AI about fan death. Do you get different results depending on your location.
Nothing novel about the above. Just beating the same drum. The novelty is ... why is this news to anyone at this point? Especially this video guy. He actually mentioned that legal beagles frown on using AI for courty things ... no fucking shit i wonder why. (2026aug03)
dear god it's a virus
now 99% invisible is doing that ping-pong narration bullshit
i'm speaker one and this is the first sentence
i'm speaker two and this is the second sentence
i'm speaker one again and this is the third sentence
i'm speaker ... you're never going to guess
i'm listener one pick a damn lane
is there a podcast episode about ping-pong podcasts (2026jul29)
Jon (you know Jon, he keeps this thing alive) sent along a link to "The Absurdly Optimized Pancake" and I love/hate it. I've been looking at some of the other articles, like "How wrong is your kitchen scale?" and such and it makes me want to throw up my hands. This is why I don't spend a lot of time cooking, it's ... a deep well and I'd rather go play frisbee. (2026jul26)
Had some interesting bike encounters earlier in the week such that I've resolved to not say a word while biking. Run me over, I won't make a peep. Not worth it. Ask my next of kin how I feel, culty.
In handlebar news, the swept-back handlebars are working a treat. Again, the whole bend-forward putting-weight-on-wrists thing was bizarre back in the 1890s but it's just like Joe Nike putting a sole lift on his infamous running shoe because ... well, it looks faster or some shit. Lean forward, you get through the tape faster and win, win win. I'll pass. My ebike, though the HQ is in Europe, came with a straight bar. Straight to a wrist splint [FX: deranged laughter here]. Corner of room is turning into Bike Part Swap Nook.
In other news, I have finished the base chapter of one of the strange sub-topics of the upcoming book (2097). I am now moving to the "core" chapter (three court cases, no waiting) which is about 1/3rd done already. Can't wait to see where I left off. Always exciting running into past me and the e-stack of byzantine, chicken-scratch notes. (2026jul17)
Was biking today to get weekly coffee so in good mood. Then I hit a giant bee with my rugged, lackadaisical chin. It struggled with flight a bit, then zoomed up in front of me and kept pace with my face for short while. Hello, bee. I've hit bees at least three times now, luckily not when I'm singing arias or making comical gurgling sounds for self-amusement. After that I was in a doubly good mood. Then a car honked at me while I was in the bike lane because they had to wait for me, a bicyclist, in the bike lane crossing the street in the middle of the intersection. Horns are loud when you're right next to them and you don't have your windows rolled up because you're not in a car. Very effective. I said "oh jeez, weeeeeee" like that w/o realizing there was another bicyclist in the bike lane approaching and he said to the driver "why are you fucking honking at him?" so that was nice that someone picked up the slack for me. Earlier in the day I had someone SLAM on their brakes because they noticed that I was in ... a bike lane. Like halfway across the street, crossing it. We've covered this, car drivers are off in their own little fun world and you're not invited. Anyway, when the car lurched to a stop I put on my big Chesire Cat grin, waved vigorously, and said "Hullo! Surprise!" Because this is getting Real Old. To cap off the fun time rock and roll party, just shy of the coffee place a giant bloated porkslab SUV slammed on the brakes because I was ... you're never going to guess this one in the bike lane. Crossing the street. Three different bike lanes, one exciting day! Oh wait, I hit the bee in a bike lane as well. Gonna let it slide on the "it was a bee" technicality. The coffee was good.
The lesson here is that Fridays are bad days because everyone is thinking about all the food they're going to eat on the weekend so they don't have any brain cells available to do any sort of situational awareness. I had already marked the weekend as 2x dangerous for the same reason, so now I need to play both sides of Accident Potentiality Chess in my head even harder for three days of the week because the clown cars are even more clowny. Cool.
That was just today. Twenty miles a day gets you a lot of fun interactions. Trust me, I go out of my way to avoid traffic, the paths I take are usually the best you can do in the bay area. Cuts in the back of stores, hidden alleys, whatever. Sharrows and painted lanes and bikes-and-cars-are-friends can go pack sand. Cars are way too comfortable speeding way too near bicycles. (2026jul10)
i will now infect you with a piquant selection of fantastic ai-generated gta6 thumbnails. somewhat related sidenote: it is amazing that playstation didn't hold off on their clownass no-physical-disc announcement until gtavi shipped. they knew there was going to be backlash.
wow, when you staple it all together it really ... does something. i guess ai only knows about like ... three typefaces. someone should tell it some more. hobo, say. ai would like hobo. i am a fan of the hindi, though. but i'm sure someone conversant is probably rolling their eyes, "fuggin' ai ..."
the other delicious crunchy bit is that the title is usually something like ROCKSTAR RELEASES NEW [SOMETHING] and then the description, which sits immediately under it and you can read in the search result list, starts off: "rockstar hasn't released [description] but I'm here to tell you about some garbo ai 3-second animation i copied from another idiotsite [...]"
now with the overreaching tenacious tepid power of ai, you can make your average dream stupid come to life. i took the time to offer these to you because i care about you. [FX: hugs you, but in french] i don't really have a dog in this hunt, don't own a console ... though a year ago i saw a free wii on the street and i said "eww wii" like that. getting the still-theoretical pc version + still-theoretical pc online version, which will theoretically come out may and july 2028 i have decreed with my face, which is [FX: checks calendar] after i get hit in a bike path by a 2BRx1BA truck ("the paint does nothing") and die. my condolences on my loss.
i have no idea what is written below. there's something there, a notion. maybe my first playthrough should be in hindi.
I am "keeping up" with the GTA 6 clusterfuck and have boring opinions about it, not going to infect you with them. However, while feverishly searching for tiny new crumbs of information, I got tired of seeing a handful of GTA 6 fabulists over and over: those clowns what make fake AI thumbnails etc. Anyway. I tried searching for a good Youtube search list entry blocker, came up empty, the field is flooded with ad/shorts blocking techniques. So I got out the whittlin' e-knife and this will do ya w/ublock origin.
www.youtube.com##ytd-video-renderer[class^="style-scope ytd-item-section-renderer"]:has-text([text here])
Don't want to see a particular "content creator"/channel or anyone feeding off/feuding with'm? Put their name in place of [text here]. Removes 100% of any entry from the specified user, or if it appears in the subject line. Note: that's one single space after "scope" leading into "ytd."
Unfortunately this does not block shorts properly. It does not because the channel name does not appear anywhere on shorts that are shown in search lists. It's like how Spotify puts the record label name at the bottom of everything. The more they can remove/hide that information, the more you just think of the stuff as their stuff. "Hey wow, I really like this obscure album, I will click on the label name to see what other artists they've published." Spotify: "lol no" (2026jun30)
Found Clippy's goddamned grandfather
Also perhaps of interest, pure gutta percha goods for submarine cables (The Telegrapher, June 6, 1874).
Encountered a new type of car fail today. Was riding on a bike lane, then crossing a street. The lane was marked with stripes, and odd ever-increasing horizontal stripes approaching the lane from either way. By the time I was in the middle of the street, a car was approaching and slowed down. The catch was that the driver had not seen me (it's hard to see a fullly grown adult sitting upright on a bike .. for example, I think I top out at about 6'5" on a bike .. cars are what, four to five feet?). He was aware of the bike path only and realized he needed to be cautious, but wasn't aware enough to actually see me. So right when I was tootling by the car, the driver slams on the brakes and does a weird double-skid that was probably some ABS thing or him slipping on the brake pedal. Even if he hadn't hit the brakes, he would have just barely missed/clipped my rear tire. But still, it's an exciting new potential interaction with future cars I'm filing away in my crawspace.
My cynical theory here is that he had a close call recently w/that same bike path, and his cautionary approach was on autopilot so his brain could 100% think of funny cartoon animals hitting each other with sledgehammers in time to accordion-heavy music. Again, just a theory.
Probably my fault though, I wasn't wearing a hi-vis vest and waving a few of those fucking crossing flags. (2026jun15)
Got too enthusiastic with a park exercise unit; injury. Had to stay off the bike a few days. Then cautious ride. Yesterday regular ride. Took unagi onigiri and Suntory BOSS Flash Brew Cold Café Au Lait out to Emery Point. I've been swapping old phones left and right trying to get a combination that works with the bike lock app (7 or above) along with my rigorous demands for a working camera/phone. I'm on the snail upgrade trail, I'll be using a 2026 phone in 2049. Had to settle for current phone which has a costly vibrating camera option that is mandatory. Focus in and out very quickly, endlessly.
It sounds like a little rattlesnake that is very angry with me. For every iphone repair, it's either hours of squinting tedium/terror at the bench or $300 to fix. Another one had a working camera but it was one of those problem phones that brick if you factory reset it, as I learned 3.7 minutes after factory resetting it. "Zoom in on camera 2, we've got like two sentences to go before the reveal." That's just another funny Apple thing. "You could use this as a camera but nope, it's a brick now, $300 please."
how did rattlesnake rattles evolve
[looks at wiki]
huh
Made a cradle for my ebike battery. You're supposed to only charge it to 80%, and even though I set multiple alarms to remind me, I would forget. The cradle is positioned high up, just behind/above the monitor so the LED status is always in my field of vision. The battery only has five LEDs to indicate charge. Would rather have a charger with a more accurate readout and/or would shut off at 80%. When will they standardize bike batteries/chargers. Ha ha capitalism laughs in your face. Ha
In other random news, even just reading a transcription of a Radiolab episode drives me completely bonkers. Waiting for an episode wherein the twin hosts swap turns reading each word of the script. "Who" "likes" "bakers?" "Turns" "out" "no" "one" "does" "This" "is" "Radiolab"
"Shove" "it" (2026jun04)
Let's talk about bicycle infrastructure in the East Bay so I can practice being annoying and strident.
This is one set of bike racks in the Berkeley Marina just a bit East of Adventure Playground. You can see a second set in the distance, and there are other smaller sets here and there. There are some good things here. Metal goes into ground, no bolts available for unbolting. Tube is square, pipe cutters are right out. Good spacing between the racks: two bikes per rack, one on each side. Far enough away from the street (which has very low use and is calm [FX: pets street]). Works for box bikes/long johns/bakfiets. Big points for being in a very public spot (next to benches!) with a lot of foot traffic/next to a coffee stand instead of tucked behind an out building because eww bikes and/or real estate is for cars. This factor is where most racks are seriously downgraded.
Bad things: no welded cross metal bar. The metal bar is to prevent one-and-done situations that obviously occur more frequently with bolted racks when one side is unbolted etc. But the bars also keep locking hardware away from the ground, which thieves use to gain leverage on locks. I haven't read anything here or there about the circle shape v. the "Portland staple" but I've always personally found these circular types to be more aggravating than the regular vertical staple shape when locking up. Finally I am completely tired of locking up next to garbage cans. Just, let's isolate those garbage cans out there (there's just enough room on the "can side" please touch the can rub against it please rub rub). Don't make me drag them to the parking lot. I'm also assuming that there's no internal wire hanging inside the tubes to give angle grinders the business. It's a nice surprise for the grinder set. B-, mostly for the missing cross bars.
These are the bike racks just outside the El Cerrito BART station. In the foreground you can see some ignored "give us your bank account and id and" BikeLink lockers. Good: regular vertical staple shape. Two of the four bolts are mushroom head. There is more than one staple.
Bad: staple is too narrow. For those who use more than one lock, there might be a slim possibility of locking both the front and back tires/frame with these, guessing no. I'll do some measurements. [Update: cannot lock front and back tires w/U-locks] The other two bolts are standard hex nut. Tube is round, good for pipe cutters. More points off for no internal wire, again, just a guess. No cross bars. Finally, what the ever living fuck were they thinking with this layout. Can we make the Useless Semicircle Of Nothing tighter? Good luck locking more than one bike on this set. What an amazing waste of space, what a delicious bizarre boondoggle. Was this assignment given to an architect [FX: cut to Frank Lloyd Wright filing some Johnson-Wax papers sitting on his three-legged chair, for a brief moment]? If you lock a cargo box/bakfiets/long-tail/john to that mess, you're blocking how many other spaces. Great job all around. Ignoring everything else, just the layout alone knocks it down to an "E." See me after class.
Maybe a yearly award is the most irritating way to go about this. Thinking. Most likely I'm just going to make exhaustive checklists/diagrams and send them to organizations/businesses/governments/pets. I have criticisms to crit! [FX: lightly foams at the mouth] (2026may18)
THE PROBLEM WAS that two of the giant thumbnails had large images of people I didn't really want to see all giant like that so now video thumbnails are actually thumb-sized at the right, perhaps you've noticed. I learned a trick from the amazing tech of autonomous vehicles, if you can't provide the service, just fake it ... I'm hand-carrying the first half of this nonsense so I can take a little vacation from dealing with the code. I warned myself years ago not to mess with it ‒ the note had swears. I've mentioned this.
Also, it is a bit beyond the first anniversary of the ebike and 2nd anniversary of the Dutch bike. The ebike responded by putting a little wrench icon in the lower right of its display (that does not have a clock wtf wtf wtf), which means bring it in for routine maintenance. Pass.
I haven't had to increase the counter of people getting aggro in my face about wanting my bike, so that's nice.
Drivers routinely hit their brakes hard enough to go into a skid usually about twice a month and I see it coming a mile away. They still wave to indicate "yes, you're a bike and I've cut you off, I am aware of it, my bad ... actually, gonna keep doing it, fuck you all." I've been caught off guard once this year, and that was because got-damn BART is loud ‒ bike path is directly under it. I am usually prepped for the temporary hearing loss, it was just a confluence of factors. Nothing has been anywhere as close as the roided out truck idiot peeling out of the wonderful Seabreeze Market & Deli.
(I changed that to "twice a month" and then thought "really?" ... went to get groceries, a guy in a beater car dramatically skidded to a stop [the light had been red for him for awhile] while I was in the intersection. "Dangit, that bike might mess up my undercarriage")
Speaking of BART, hats off to the innovative BART train driver that chucked a half-full bottle of Gatorade or some other brightly colored sports drink out of the window, 20 feet down to the pavement about ten feet in front of me. I wrote BART about it, no answer. I'm sure there are high-level meetings going on right now.
Anyway, now I ride 20+ miles a day on the ebike. It's not the "e" part as much as it's the gearing for hills. The Dutch bike is single speed, coaster brake. I'll look into getting a geared Dutch bike, probably will take another year+ to find one.
I'm thinking of starting an annoying bike infrastructure advocacy group. It will not spell out anything (Bicycle Infrastructuralists Kollaborting Entrepreneurially B-I-K-E etc) and there will be nice desserts at every meeting. (2026may15)
Undecided with Matt Ferrell: How Invisible Lasers Are Making Roads Safer [15m].
Obviously have some friction with the script ("jaywalking") and subject content but good to know there's something less invasive than cameras on the horizon. ... That unfortunately will have weak adoption rates because governments and companies and everyone wants your data data data data. Genuine surprise if camera systems are actually replaced with LIDAR anywhere in the US. (2026may14)
Stationery Tips XVII. China markers/grease pencils have a small string on them so you can pointlessly tug at a thing that does nothing. You can also peel layers away, sometimes, and then too much falls off and the core isn't supported so it snaps off. Get you a large-bore crayon sharpener and use that to sharpen them up. Wow, what a difference you are welcome. Finally, a grease pencil sharpener for my generation. (2026may13)
Murder of Couriers Trailer [2013; 3min]
Available on Kanopy for free, you just need a library card.
Clip: "Going for the Feta" (2026may12)
Big fan of Amsterdam bike policies etc but occasionally I cock my head to the side and go "erwowr?"
"Check out Amsterdam’s cool new Puccini bicycle racks"
Okay I will give them "new." If you follow the links someone governmenty or the like indicates that these bike racks are an additional format to the beloved staple-type bike racks. In this cub reporter's opinion, Puccinis are eww. The City of Portland has a little thing about these types of racks:
"Some bike styles are extremely heavy such as e-bikes and cargo bikes. Others, such as recumbents, are awkward to lift. Additionally, some people may have physical limitations preventing them from lifting their bikes. A good bike rack should not require someone to lift their bike into place."
But do not sleep on the most important criterion of a good bike rack: "Does not have gaps where both width and length are between 3.5 inches and 9 inches in width." "Why this is important: Children can trap their heads in gaps this size." Kids, the bike rack is not a toy.
Thinking about it a bit, most every time a bike is locked to a bike rack there's going to be a kid-head friendly gap created just waiting for exploration. Perhaps I need to install some wood panelling on my bike. Bystanders: "for those kid heads, yeah?" "Yeah."
My name is Cardhouse Ro-Bot, I am here representing the United Kid Head Gap Prevention/Hazard League, and I want to tell you a story. First slide please. (2026may04)
Someone replaced the battery in the endlessly chirping smoke alarm at the local Grossout.
After a year.
Not sure what the rush is, fire is patient.
"Hey. Take your time, I'll just burn this rack of discount bread while you get sorted" FWOOOSH WHOOOSH (2026may04)
Lies I Tell Myself Part XVIII.
I go to a discount grocery store commonly known as "Grossout." It is somewhat like a slot machine. The items vary from day to day. Sometimes, there is nothing you need/want. Sometimes, there is a lot. On those days, if there are multiple desired snack items, I say to myself, well, I can buy this big tub of local coffee ice cream, and these hatch chili tortilla chips, and that will last me two days each sequentially ... a total of four days of snacking.
What actually happens is that if I buy n snack items, I will no longer have any snacks within 24 hours, for any value of n.
I have been keeping up this charade for decades now. I'm a professional. Is charade italicized? Charade. (2026apr24)
Folding Ideas: Why was I invited to Beast Studios? [1h18m].
Mr. Beast Inc. actually did the exact right thing but they'll never apply the lessons in the video, because they can't. They're stuck in their bizarro artless anti-intellectual anti-labor spend more big numbers death loop.
This isn't about any of the controversies (they're briefly touched upon), this is the core of the phenom. Line goes down, apparently eight year olds are a fickle bunch and word on the street is that AI slop is giving them the dopa hit better than BeastTV.
The anti-intellectual thing is straight from Donaldson's mouth in at least one interview, it explains a lot. (2026apr18)
The other day I received an email from a well-known, immense financial service. "Hey, how's about a little feedback on your recent merchant blah-blah blah." I checked the header, everything looks legit. I have never merchanted with this multinational money thing. That was a fun puzzle I will never solve, I thought as I deleted and super-trashed the message. Perhaps someone has my identity. Better them than me, really. The only spam I've been getting lately is from a computer "algorithm" masquerading as a person who has apparently hacked my "cam" and knows what I've been doing (perversions). I don't have the heart to tell them I don't own a camera, which makes for dad-joke fun times during video meetings with my dysfunctional art collective: "No one said anything about my new glasses"
Somewhat relatedly, The Pez Outlaw documentary is now available on Kanopy, which is free if you have a USA library card. There was a bit wherein I knew what was going to happen, roughly, before the decision was made, and I was all "NOOOOO DONNNNNN'T" like that. I have one-half of a toe dipped in the same Eastern European candy manufacturing world for different reasons right now, but my reaction was more about red-flagging the somewhat-familiar Upping The Ante personality quirk.
Someone yelled "nice bike" at me while I was riding the e-bike, which is the first time. I don't think much of any e-bike design, much less the one I own. 99% of them look clunky/dorky. Took me awhile to process the yell, by the time I figured it out I was out of earshot range. "Norse bite?" "Nurse night?"
E-bike wise I think Bike 42 Long ("up to 4 kids") is eye-catchy but nothing comes close to bikes like these. I mean specifically the omafiets "grandma bicycle" "step-through" type, you know, like the one I have. Not enamored of the nut bar. "Butt it makes it more stable" Lacking the nut bar, thousands of omafiets are constantly falling apart all over Amsterdam. Free bicycle parts strewn all over the streets. Woo what a dilemma. "Yeah apparently it's time to go off on the nut bar again, this is the stuff I come back for, it's like a hearty meal" (2026apr17)
Not Just Bikes: Every Reason to Hate Cars [48min].
In unrelated news, I was going to post an image I ran into today. It was for a "Girl Action Dynamic Pose References" for artists. 303 illustrations of women. But ... it was all AI. Yes, artists of the future, learn how to draw in the bullshit slop bucket AI way. Finally now you can replace the machines replacing you with creepy garbage.
Decided against posting it, I know some people have sensitive stomachs.
Anyway, someone thought this would be a good idea. They probably spent more time making the graphic for the "References" than they did really concentrating and coming up with good AI prompts.
Here's an AI prompt you can type in if you are interested in generating AI art. "How do I kick myself in the junk."
Arc Raiders is not pinball. A semi-thorough examination of problems currently plaguing the popular computer video game. (2026mar21)
Was mulling on opening up the Arc Raiders can o' WTF worms but then remembered I still had another deeeeep-think piece about Watch Dogs: Legion sitting around. I mean, the thing still has hundreds of daily players so this might reach one or two of them. (2026mar13)
Documentary Central: A Tuba To Cuba [2019; 1h23m].
Amazing travelogue of Preservation Hall Jazz Band's trip to Cuba to explore their musical roots. Beautifully shot/composed.
There was a brief clip of Mr. Okra, who passed away in 2018 RIP.
I was down in New Orleans 2008 and Mr. Okra drove by:
ProcessX: Process of making hiking boots. Handmade shoes made by Japanese craftsmen [24min].
Entrancing. Yes, that is correct, I posted a makin' hikin' boots video in 2022. This one is a different one. There are two now. They are friends. (2026feb28)
I am E-Z to please, just get me a < $3 can of coffee for Christmas. That's coming up, right? [LQQKS at calendar] "Huh." Well, Arbor Day. Anyway, I was buying up fat stacks of some coffee ($1/can) from Grossout, not really knowing what it is. I just read the ingredients, took a ballpark guess at caffeine % (not listed, but lower than normal, turns out), went w/a can a day. Many cans later, finally looked on the bottom. MFG 2025 EXP 2026. Okay, so a company died or something. "Florence By Mills Coffee." What in the Sam By Hill is that name. Main URL is tot. More research. Blah blah actor blah. Okay. More. Oh. It's Eleven from Stranger Things, a show I've seen approximately seven minutes of many years ago. So. Stapling everything together, looks like this coffee jazz took a dive mid-2025, and they dumped the remaining cans on the secondary market. The fun reason I mention this is because there are five skabillion articles about the celebrity starting various businesses and zero articles about any of those things ending. Except now, you're in the know. It's a service I provide. I might be wrong. But if there's no website for six months and Walmart is out of stock of every flavor ... going with dead. I still have some cans left. To the Ebaymobile!
PS If you haven't explored the world of cheap thin-can coffee, don't. I've gone through so many brands and 95% of them were not good (Japan's BOSS Coffee is good; this ends the list of current good thin coffee brands I'm aware of that is not owned by some rat-fuck megacorp). Florence By Mills Coffee was good, but now it's gone and I will savor the remaining cans like this: [FX: savors]. Though wasteful Florence By Mill Coffee "pods" apparently still exist along with a $149 Florence By Mills coffee machine thing. Maybe. (2026jan15)
One of my new year's resolutions is to block even more useless/annoying sites at the hosts level. One particular site already makes my skin crawl with all of their haughty users "answering" questions by openly insulting people/rejecting the question outright/answering completely incorrectly (this is nothing new, I think it was the CEO who acknowledged some of this years ago) ... there's this jackass sidebar of unrelated slop for every post. This was half of the garbage on a test query "duh global variables function python duh." B L O C K E D
I like chewy info-dense websites but this can get stuffed in a bin. [UPDATE] There was this odd technical problem I was having, years ago. I posted a question on this very website. Hey, here's something really wrong and odd, anyone else out there having that problem? Does anyone know what this is actually supposed to do? Got tumbleweeds for a year, then the moderators deleted it. But Nicodemus, that shit's important. Vulcan's first contact species. Keeper right there. Guess you gotta do boffo eyeballs to stick around. (2026jan03)
