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Where do YOU draw the AI line?

2026-08-14T14:42:00+00:00

On Monday, I came back to my day job from a weeklong vacation wherein we did birthdaversary stuff and packing / moving related activities. I rarely if ever talk about work here but one of the first things out the gate when I logged in was that I apparently missed a companywide meeting on how Claude use is now mandatory for all departments, and I was going to have to watch the missed session on how to implement it into my workflow. On top of that, the company has repositioned itself as an "AI-First" solution and, well I kinda snapped and put in notice. Today's my last day at the company.

Please forgive the bad photoshop

Full disclosure, this had been brewing for a while but the AI pivot was a 'final straw'; what started as a fully-remote, small immigration law startup got bought by a much larger company (with a huge offshore office) that proceeded to slowly dismantle everything I cared about in the intervening years. After four different rounds of layoffs (including one coming up in a few weeks that I only know about because someone accidentally screenshared their slack without realizing it)¹: where people who literally made the whole thing work were unceremoniously axed, I knew my time would be limited in the long run.

As a sidenote, layoffs are always brutal, but the one that broke me was a remote coworker² whose country has erupted into an ethnic conflict so he spent months on the run STILL WORKING remotely from hotels and trains not missing a single deadline, and his thanks was to be let go as soon as his baby was born.

So from the tone deaf "renaming the all-hands meeting to 'Town Fiesta'" the week of our largest layoff round ever, to the 'pivot to AI, spend unlimited on tokens'³ at a time where the company hadn't had salary increases in years, the offshore office was getting ready to protest Pax Silica and our European employees were being hit with unprecedented heat waves, like. Shit. I used to think Silicon Valley (the show) was too on the nose but the world just keeps on trying to "yes, and..." the fiction and this is one of the few instances of "yes, and..." I'd like to stop. Usually very pro "yes, and..." in this house!!

It's probably some sort of violation for me to post a slack image but I can at least share the text of the goodbye note that I gave the team yesterday:

Hey all!

Never sure how to start these so, as some of you might be aware, I've chosen to call it and tomorrow is my last day with [COMPANY NAME REMOVED]. I just had a very productive exit interview with HR.

This was a tough decision for me to make, but an important one and I have to admit I never would have imagined the adventure I'd go on by quitting Apple on a whim to work at a tiny little startup called [STARTUP NAME REMOVED]. There are far too many of you to thank and that I'll miss, I don't want to clog up the channel with @ tags.

My primary reason for leaving is that the pivot towards being an “AI-First” platform is not something I'm comfortable being involved with. As an artist outside of work, I could talk all day about the ethical concerns of the data sourcing, the racist bent of the model training, the damage the data centers are doing to the environment, the impending financial bubble from non-standardized token costs and uneven speculation (despite unlimited token spend plans from companies who financially cannot afford to provide annual salary increases), the cognitive decline from extensive LLM use, the myth of "productivity gains" as opposed to forever-work from employees, the list goes on.

I am not anti-technology as a person; I was born in the Silicon Valley and grew up with the tech industry so I of all people know that nothing is 'perfect', but we are at a nexus point where “this is the future, get in line” on AI as it exists only serves to financially benefit some of the worst people in our society while literally cooking the already beleaguered planet to do so, and I find that picking our battles is kind of important even if that causes me potential job scarcity.

I understand why [COMPANY NAME REMOVED] feels it needs to make this pivot as a business as much I also understand that me staying would be a net negative for everyone involved.

Anyway sorry for being a downer; I will miss so many of you that I work with closely and wish you all the best in the future! I've recently entered my era of "cat photos only" on linkedin so add me there if we're not connected already.

And like, I am really sad about leaving! I worked with some incredible people (all of whom deserve significantly more money than they're being paid) who I did not want to say goodbye to - but I think it's incredibly important to push back on the "AI is inevitable" mindset that so many people in the tech industry are just accepting - including those who hate it!! I got messages from people all over the company in so many departments who are thrilled I spoke up about this because they hate it but feel trapped into getting in line or being screwed out of a job and like, fuck dude. I get it.

If there's one thing I want people who experiment with this technology and think "hey maybe it's not that bad" to think about, it's this (and I'll keep saying this till it stops being true): AI does not lead to productivity increases; it leads to forever work and employee burnout.

Anyway, thanks for reading. As always, here's your end-of-post cat. His name is Smokescreen Chip and the cardboard he's lounging on is protecting a puzzle-in-progress.

blaugust
cat-named-smokescreen

Not the first time this has happened, either!! Seeing a conversation between a different person and the CEO about me while said person was oblivious that it was up in the middle of a meeting is gonna live with me forever lmfao↩
Because of the exchange rate and market, his pay was CRIMINALLY low and there is no way his salary could even register as a line item worth cutting, his value (which was high!!!) to the team aside. I only know this because they fucked up his paperwork at acquisition and offered him his YEARLY salary per month. I still wish he'd signed it, gotten one or two checks of the significantly higher rate and ridden off into the sunset but he was too honest for that and told them about the mistake.↩
This is probably the third or fourth 'pivot to' strategy they've done since 2023, I'm sure it'll go great↩

The Phone Features I Can't Believe We Don't Have

2026-08-14T03:36:57.315197+00:00

Short post, I've just had these ideas bouncing in my head for a while and it keeps annoying me phones have never implemented them.

First is a "guest lock". There's a better name for it somewhere but it's not my job to find it. Android and iOS should have a system-level ability to lock focus on the active application. This would mean you could open a concert ticket, a photo, or your digital insurance record (which is a VERY BAD IDEA to hand to a cop without this feature), guest-lock your phone, and hand it over without any worry that someone could start opening other apps to look for things you didn't want to show them.

The UX would be simple; inputting any command that would unfocus the current app would present a standard system unlock prompt. This means it would be more easily abused if you're using biometric unlocks, yes, but by no means does it make the feature useless. And it normalizes a level of trust between individuals which is appropriate, but impossible, in many situations.

A really nice feature would be a hardware button triggering this mode! Imagine how easy that would be to hand over your phone with vanishingly little worry that it could be abused.

You'll notice I mentioned showing a photo earlier. Obviously, the standard guest lock implementation doesn't prevent someone from scrolling your entire camera roll. A really good implementation would support specific locking features, such as setting a range of allowed photos, beyond which the guest user can't scroll. But that increases friction a lot, and leads to my second idea.

The second thing I would like is some form of hiding images from browsing in the camera roll. This could mean marking certain images as requiring a privileged viewing mode, or else they're completely hidden. Or it could mean defining "sets", which could be hidden as a group, or could hook into the above guest lock feature, or even other system features like mass-uploading. I bet there are other ways this could work, too.

If the need for this latter feature isn't obvious to you, well, that's ok. It would be very useful to me.

AI's Frictionless Road to Hell

2026-08-13T14:00:00+00:00

When you start looking for friction, you'll find it everywhere.

Searching a shop for the right size of shirt? Friction. Having to wait to get seated in a restaurant? Friction. Finding a flight, going to the right place, leaving at the right time, at a time you can make work, at a price you can afford? Friction.

Money makes friction go away. For billionaires, friction gets pre-solved for you.

A stylist knows your measurements and clothes just appear in your size. Restaurants make space for you. Private jets are ready and waiting.

Billionaires employ entire teams of people to avoid and solve friction. Fully staffed homes, on-site private chefs, drivers waiting on standby at all hours of the day, personal assistants, and chiefs of staff to manage them all.

And it's making them miserable.

You're not immediately convinced? Rude.

Fine, let me demonstrate.

The Grand Theft Auto series of games are legendary. A large world with lots of interesting things to do that inevitably result with you tearing down a freeway in a stolen car with 20 police cars chasing you, shootouts with your own personal arsenal of rocket launchers and machine guns, escalating situations of chaos that result in either your escape or your death. Puerile fun.

When I was young, I was playing a GTA mission. For whatever reason, this mission was annoying to do right.

That entry in the series (Vice City) came with cheats—as once was common. So, I loaded myself up with every advantage and sailed through the mission, blowing up anyone that got in my way and cackling as I did. It was good fun.

Enough fun that for my next mission, I kept rolling with the cheats. Everyone who crossed my path—blown to smithereens with a rocket launcher. And then the next mission. And the next.

But the day after, I went back to play the game... and I wasn't having fun. I was blowing everything up in my path, just like before. But the novelty had worn off. Now it was just easy. I continued through the game for a few missions, then switched to a different game.¹

You've figured out the problem—but let me say it anyway.

The friction is what made the game worth playing.

A good video game is a set of well designed frictions that, when overcome, makes you feel good.

Cheats ruined the game for me by removing all friction.²

This is how billionaires experience their personal lives. Cheat codes on. Friction set to minimum.

But you need that friction to enjoy life. The difference between climbing a mountain and arriving the apex by helicopter is the climb. The friction. Climbing a mountain is more fun than being at the top of a mountain. Friction changes your experience of the mountain itself.³

My wife and I have something we call "Croatia rules". It stems from a holiday and a series of unfortunate events.⁴

We had ended up staying in a small apartment in a little fishing bay near Dubrovnik. Much to our chagrin, the easily accessible restaurants were awful.

But the roads were built into a cliffside—so walking anywhere was difficult and dangerous and we couldn't afford a car. But soon, we wanted—no needed—a better meal. The food was that miserable. So, all but penniless, we made a dangerous trek along the road, rock-face on one side and sheer drop on the other, to a restaurant further away. It was terrifying.

And the food was so fucking good. Fresh fish, local vegetables, simple ingredients cooked well. Over the course of the holiday, we walked further, treading dark roads by moonlight, each more dangerous than the last—and the food would get better each time. ⁵

Now, whenever we are having a hard time with something—we just say "Guess it's Croatia rules".

Contrast this with the life of a billionaire. They don't have Croatia rules. They get helicoptered to the best restaurants. Personal assistants drive six hours to get their favourite snack. Nothing is out of reach. If they want something, they just say they want it. There is no friction.

That's their experience of world. What they want, they get. Delivered, white glove, silver platter. The only real friction is at work, where their desires butt up against the real world. ⁶

That leads us to AI.

AI is designed to be frictionless. Immediate, docile, obsequious help.

Great point! Incredible idea! Well caught! You're so smart and handsome!

An always-available one-size-fits-all solution to whatever problems fit in a text box.

At first, it's good. Major annoyances disappear. Things you don't have time to do? AI does it for you.

ChatGPT. Research this obscure topic in depth. Record this meeting, make notes, email everyone a summary.

Slowly, you begin to see friction everywhere.

Claude. Answer these emails, build this app idea.

Every problem becomes nail-shaped, ready to be bludgeoned by an AI-shaped-hammer. You get more productive. Things take less time. Finally, time to do more!

AI, chose a present for my wife, make a podcast about my children's hobbies.

People become dependent, even if they don't mean to. They were just researching AI. How did it end up like this?

They value their output less. Whatever joy they get from accomplishing things is diluted by the ease of that accomplishment. Higher output, but somehow less happy.

Surely, that's wrong. Surely if they can do all the things they want to do, they should be happier. All that accomplishment should add up. They should be happy.

But they aren't. These people join the billionaires. Leading low friction lives, AI making things easy—and joyless.

They slide down a frictionless road into hell.

I did eventually come back and finish the game, but I had to start over.↩
Not all cheats ruin all games, cheats can be great fun. But God-mode is an inherent fun-killer.↩
I am not saying all friction is inherently valuable. Nuanced argument here, folks.↩
This was 15+ years ago, we had no money. We've all been there.↩
Was the food actually better? Genuinely yes—but probably not proportionate to how much more we enjoyed the food. Something about the struggle (and perhaps the relief of still being alive) made our experience of the food better. This actually ended up getting a little extreme, but it culminated in a fantastic dinner in a restaurant under a waterfall to cap our holiday and some good stories.↩
I think this may be part of why so many of them are thoroughly obsessed with work. Also they are all fundamentally broken as people in other ways.↩

AI halted a budding friendship.

2026-08-14T07:03:34.179666+00:00

Last summer I made a new friend at a weekly bar meetup. He was also an ex-pat, so we had that in common. After the meetups, we'd usually continue chatting for an hour or two about this and that. We got along really well quite quickly.

His hobby was traveling all over Japan. He had visited nearly every prefecture in just a couple of years. On the other hand, I've only been to a few over the past decade. He was a history buff and loved learning about feudal Japan and the various conflicts that shaped local lore. I know nothing of that, nor am I particularly interested in it. Still, I do like hearing others talk about what they're passionate about.

His new venture was making YouTube videos about the various places he's been, detailing what makes each prefecture unique. He delved into history, food, geography, and the like. The kicker was that he was using AI to make his videos. Nearly all the images were AI-generated. I asked if he had photos from his visits, but he wanted more "dynamic" images. He sent me the first edit for my opinions. Yeah, you can see where this is going. He knew his narration audio quality was poor and admitted he didn't know much about media creation. I have experience producing podcasts and short videos, so I offered to help him clean up his audio. I even suggested he bring his laptop to the bar and I could probably figure it out on the spot. He thought a better solution was to use an AI-generated narrator instead. Now the examples he was sending me were completely devoid of any human touch.

It was slop. Not slop in the way people throw it around casually today, when I don't think it's always warranted. This was crap. And it was long crap. Videos were running 30 to 50 minutes! Horrible, corny, inauthentic, and annoying videos. He started producing them weekly to cover all of Japan within a year. I asked what the rush was. He said he wanted to make money from it right away. At this point, I mentally checked out. He kept pushing me for critiques. He questioned why his videos weren't getting any likes. I tried to be diplomatic, but once you hint to someone that the thing they are making isn't very good, there usually isn't any coming back from that.

We haven't spoken in over a year.

film photos from the south of France

2026-08-12T10:21:00+00:00

📸 I'm doing Blaugust this year. This is 6/? posts in August.

A lot of these were of my friends or me at the beach, so I can only share the ones without faces. I wrote a post about some of the things we did here.

I used Kodak 400TX for the black and white pictures and I really enjoy how they come out. Most of these pictures were taken around Vallauris and our Airbnb there. Some were taken on the beach in Nice.

For these colour pictures, I used a film from Analogue Wonderland called Same Same. It was the colour film I had available, but it was so sunny I wish I'd used Kodak Gold. I'm also not as happy with these pictures because I was desperate to use the roll up so I could get the French ones developed, so quite a few of the end of the roll are just bad... Patience!

I told myself I'd buy a better camera (still film, and still cheapish, but with some actual adjustable options for the ISO etc) after finishing a stressful project milestone at work... but I'm still procrastinating on making the decision.

Wages of Sin Gave Me a Midlife Crisis

2026-08-12T22:11:00+00:00

One hundred bounties, fifty planets, ten hunters, a courtroom procedure, and a carceral moon.

I’ve never liked the “200 npcs, 55 burgers, 55 fries” approach to selling books. At its best, those numbers are a reductive marketing stunt. At its worst, it promotes naked gluttony as an unexamined ideal. Whatever problems the Mothership ecosystem has, it’s surely not a dearth of quality short-form adventures. Moreover, “Bounty Hunters” as campaign premise invites your players to imagine themselves as the most overdone of all player archetypes - the hardened badass - in a system tailor made to deny that fantasy.

Turns out Tuesday Knight Games buried the lede.

Good lord, look at this map.

Notice those page numbers? Those port class letters in brackets?

Wages of Sin is a compilation and a toolkit, yes, but it is foremost a galactic setting and therein lies its true value. This is Mothership’s riff on Dolmenwood. It is the cassette futurist connective tissue waiting to act as the backbone to your campaign.

Gearing’s poetic brevity and Crader’s vicious editing reduce what in other books would be full page spreads of dry demographic details into single evocative paragraphs. That saved space is then spent on the machinations of the broken humans living therein. Wages as a setting is chiefly portrayed through the problems of its residents, and thereby never drifts its focus from at-the-table utility.

What makes this book remarkable is not the number of planets, bounties, maps, and NPCs. It is, as is so often the case with TKG’s work, the density of that information. The jump to hardback has for the first time brought room for McCoy and McIver’s¹ layout to breathe. This three-hundred page hardcover delivers what other books struggle to match in a thousand.

An example bounty: Arrest this 17-year-old drug dealer

Last known location: her parents' house.

This alone should raise red flags to any player paying attention. Let’s assume they take the bait anyway. Just imagine how that conversation’s going to go at the table.

Knock knock
“Hello Mr. and Mrs. Cuesta, there’s a bounty out for your child. Don’t worry, we intend to take her alive. Could you show us to her room please?”

Thankfully the parents are disconnected enough from that poor girl’s life to have no idea where she is or why she would leave.² After all, wasn’t her life wonderful? A nuclear family footing the bill for prep school on an A-class port is more than most Mothership NPCs get. She was even on the soccer team.

Pay no mind to the square mile of wind-blasted bunkers that comprise her entire world. That every meal she’s ever eaten was delivered in freeze-dried palettes from a verdant moon she sees, daily, lit up like a Christmas tree in the night sky. Her reaction to those circumstances may have been shortsighted and immature, but nobody chooses to abandon hope. Thank god your players have the perfect tool to set this girl on the right path - six months of prison labor.

Of the 100 bounties in the book, about 80 are like this - nightmarishly relatable ripped-from-the-headlines depictions of societal failures big and small. There are missions about pandemic containment, pacifying a violent anti-immigrant mob, and capturing a runaway spouse. Wages doesn’t force your crew to think about the broader context of what they’re doing - it’s too classy for that. The horror of your complicity in the prison-industrial complex just sits there, waiting for everyone to acknowledge it.

The genius of this setup is that it establishes an oppressive capitalist baseline against which the more outlandish bounties - and the more lurid Mothership modules you already own - can contrast. By building a world instead of a narrative³, Wages doesn’t fight for focus with the modules you plug into it. Interconnections between bounties are present, but light. This book heavily relies on the consequences of past bounties ricocheting out of control to build tension over a campaign - and trust me, the fallout of these jobs is up to the task. Recurring villains, political revolution, and economic collapse are all on the table.

Okay, but are the missions, like, fun?

A fair question. You can’t build an engaging campaign out of kidnapping helpless teenagers forever.

This is arguably the hardest hurdle for the book to clear, since most people playing MoSh are already gorging themselves on the best one shot adventures money can buy. How much better can a collection of one shots possibly be compared to the best third-party publishing community in RPG history? Thankfully, I went through a manic episode two years ago and read a hundred Mothership modules in a month. I went back into my HDD, pulled out all 53 one-page and trifold adventures, and graded all of them on a petty, reductive tier list. The scale is as follows:⁴

S - Year of the Rat
A - The Haunting of Ypsilon 14
B - Radio Free Hecate
C - Moonbase Blues
D - Chunky Cheese’s Eateria
F - ALCOR Station Fuel & Services⁵

Then, I graded every bounty in Wages of Sin on the same scale.
Here’s the result.

Lord forgive me for this belittling reduction, but I only have so much writing time. If Sean McCoy wants me to write hundreds of reviews he can pay me.

The upshot here is, yes, I think the average Wages adventure is meaningfully better than the average MoSh adventure. That’s a remarkable accomplishment for one writer, and makes me feel more than a little silly for spending a month interweaving modules into my own sandbox sector map.

A lot of these grades could have been higher, but were dragged down by light map support. All but two bounties in the book have some sort of map, but the accompanying map varies between:

Room scale (a conventional dungeon crawl)⁶
City scale (3D buildings marked “the diner”, “mara’s house”)
Planet scale (A continent with “the capitol”, “the union base”)

I anticipate discourse about this, even though TKG does their best to lessen the sting of this compromise. There’s a half page of “improvising details” advice, one of the WES footers includes a genius room layout oracle⁷, and the familiar modern environments make improv comparatively easy.⁸ But I doubt even all of these tools in tandem would make a new warden feel comfortable running Wages. This is an “experienced wardens only” product in my mind.

Wages has more than bounties to offer

Let’s talk about that prison colony.

The back third of this book contains procedures for:

Quickly adjudicating evidence left by player crimes, and whether a bounty gets placed on their heads.
Ten bounty hunters so outrageously interesting that I’ll only spoil my favorite - an eye patch sporting, bubble gum blowing, trench-coat wearing woman who uses Fiverr to pay all of society to ignore and/or gangstalk you.
A full criminal trial, including hiring a lawyer, plea deals, discovery, the trial itself, and sentencing.

And that’s just the appetizer, baby. Play transitions to a week-by-week distant resolution procedure in which crews pursue goals while surviving three dozen random prison events and the omnipresent risk of gruesome on-the-job injury - both from the backbreaking logging work which funds the prison, and the bloodthirsty monsters infesting the woods.

Oh, and look over there, holding that chainsaw - it’s everyone the players have ever arrested! They look so happy to see you! Perhaps the guard will do his job if you roll under his bribe stat. How’s that escape plan coming?

There’s enough here to run a campaign for ten years

And that’s before I inevitably add Karth, Mani, Warped, Yonkers, and every other first-party MoSh zine into the stew.⁹ The Mothership Deluxe box has already been my go to recommendation to indie TTRPG first timers since its release. Now that Wages exists to support that preexisting content, I genuinely think these are the only two products a sci-fi roleplayer needs to run excellent games for the rest of their life.

Which raises the question: at this point, why do I even run games that aren’t Mothership?

It’s not perfectly to my aesthetic taste (there aren’t enough women with swords), but if I just stopped here and allowed myself to be satisfied with the A-tier game Tuesday Knight Games is offering, I would save hundreds of hours in prep and hundreds of dollars in book purchases every year. Of all the campaigns I’ve ever GM’d for this blog, I was happiest running Mothership, precisely because of the support its modules gave me.¹⁰

Wages of Sin makes me feel foolish for GMing games that aren’t Mothership. If blorby simulationist thinking adventures are your jam, Tuesday Knight Games is running laps around the competition. This book is a maestro singing in concert with its community.

$50 hardcover, $80 for the sexy cloth and foil Deluxe cover.

————————————————————————

The Baseline Boys? The Tuesday McKnights? I’ll think of something eventually.↩
How achingly familiar.↩
NSR modules like to talk a big game RE: “there is nothing that is supposed to happen”, yet consistently choose to provide GMs with each of the component parts of a dramatic three-act structure. The Caliban plot line of a Pound of Flesh, for example, certainly has a preference about the rough order in which players encounter its component parts, even if it’s (rightfully) philosophically unwilling to force a specific outcome.↩
I will not be justifying this rubric. I will especially not be justifying my claim that Moonbase Blues is mid.↩
Arguably more of a D than a true F, but I wanted to link a module that was worth attention instead of punching down on a first timer. The art is great, the premise is unique, but the scenario's writing and follow through is bad.↩
A little less than half of these “dungeon maps” are ship layouts. Some are standard ship layouts from the Shipbreaker’s toolkit, others are brand new ships included in the book’s appendix.↩
Drop a fistful of dice. Every 6+ is cover, every 0-2 is a feature unique to that room.↩
I have no idea what the inside of a feudal granary looks like. I know a great deal about the interior of brutalist low income apartment complexes. My life is far closer to that of a Mothership character than Gandalf.↩
The only campaign frames left I lack a polished procedure for are trucking & salvaging, and if all goes according to plan Sam’s got me covered.↩
I think, once Girl Frame is done I’ll hold myself to “Mothership + a fantasy game” forever. If you notice fewer system reviews and more coverage of obscure trifolds by this time next year, you know why.↩

bring back shitty web design

2026-08-13T11:38:00+00:00

13 Aug, 2026

bring back shitty web design

ive started seeing more and more webpages that are very clearly just copypasted from a chatgpt answer. the same way theres an identifiable aesthetic of ai-generated fliers, theres a clear aesthetic of ai-generated html/css. i would much prefer if your website looked like human-made ass than slick-looking slop.

Please Mr AI Would You Kindly Desist

2026-08-13T10:50:00+00:00

Robots.txt is an honor system whereby websites can ask AI scraper bots to fuck off. The AI don't have to oblige, there's no legal or legislative basis for compliance, but many adhere out of courtesy.

I don't particularly want my work thieved by these ghoulish touls so I've updated my document on this site with this handy list someone found on Github, 163 lines of frowny old-man-yelling.

I feel safer already.

Bear Blog runners, simply paste the text into your Settings.

Twitch's GenAI And Opt-Out

2026-08-13T14:30:47.961120+00:00

Well well well... Twitch decided to implement GenAI training stuff in settings today, or at least I was aware of.

The only decency they have is they allowing it's users to opt out.

I also saw this news article earlier. This article came from the Stream they did yesterday. Their Chief Product Officer said:

“Why is it not opt in? That’s what everybody is in here, spamming in chat, I get it, ‘let me opt in versus making me opt out’,” Minton said during the stream. “Well, there’s an honest answer, and I think most of you probably can appreciate this – if it was opt in, nobody would opt in.

Why nobody would opt in? Because nobody wants their sh*t be trained by any AI, but at least with opt-in, they won't be receiving the backlash they are receiving right now. The CPO wasn't very convincing on the stream either.

If Twitch isn't a company and just singular person, it's still bad to use GenAI (or AI in general) but it won't be as bad because as long as you keep it offline/local-only. And since Twitch is a for-profit company, no matter what they say, nobody would believe them. I definitely don't.

That's one way to lose your userbase's trust, overnight.

Hopefully they reverse the decision and use other ways that doesn't involves Twitch Streamers (and chatters) to "train" their AI. I dislike getting forced into training their GenAI, even with the opt-out. They aren't very transparent when it comes to what still counts for "AI training" for people like me who opted out.

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Fighting for what I believe in

2026-08-12T17:04:36.759997+00:00

I got fairly busy after my perfume escapades yesterday, both of these times I was fighting for something I believe in. One of them was a lot more draining and unpleasant than the other.

Organising Protest

Let's set the scene: Tuesday, early evening. The sun is casting everything under a golden light, I am cycling to a union building in my city. My thoughts are split: 1) I sure am looking forward to fighting for a good cause, 2) Man, why is my front brake misaligned again? One of these thoughts is ultimately more important than the other, and won out as I got closer to my destination.

For those unfamiliar with German politics: the government is currently putting in motion a big reform program, however many of these reforms are reactionary/populist/reversing in nature. Many employee-rights are being reduced or cut, social spending in welfare, eldercare, healthcare and others slashed and governmental institutions are supposed to become less transparent (which is something I am very passionate about, and feel even more bitter about since the government wishes to pursue more and more measures to reduce privacy of the individual). That, in my eyes, is not good. And I will not stand by it.

I have been active in union-stuff before, it is something I enjoy. We were a small group of individuals, some postal workers, some healthcare, some construction, some students, office workers and moi. There will be big protests in all of Germany on the 26th of September (so if you are from Germany: look it up, maybe you can come and join the good fight) but we wanted to do another, local one, a bit earlier. To show the people here that there are some that want to fight, and possibly motivate them to join.

It was a good event. We will meet again next Tuesday. It felt good to fight for a common goal and strategies, and try and get as many people as possible under a united banner. Because these topics matter to all of us. We made plans on how to announce it, where to go with the protest, who should speak there, when it is... Lots of success for less than ninety minutes.

Serving the employees, right?

Different stage, today morning. I am looking through some crudely scanned documents at work, the invite for today's staff council meeting. What topics are there, who wants what, ... It will be the third time I go there. I am not looking forward to it a ton, I would rather spend the day on some productive stuff at work proper. But hey, I signed up to be a replacement member and summer means there is a high need for replacements. A colleague from my department has to go there today, too. He is new to it, too.

It is a special session, the monthly one with the big boss attending. We move through the first topics before he arrives, he answers our questions and does so in a way by implying it is the fault of the employees. We disagree, but there is no use in saying anything, his mind is made up. Some more topics, and while he has good oratory skills it all feels off to me. His words were "good", while his expression betrayed deeper things. Was it ridicule? Well, anyways, after that he left and we went on with our regular weekly affairs of passing or rejecting motions: "Can employee X be put to job Y?", "Can employee X work on a Saturday?", these kinds of things.

You would be surprised by how much bickering there is on the staff council. Technically we all serve the same purpose, or to be more specific: the employees. But inside of the staff council there are so many divides which, the adults averaging 40 years (probably higher), cannot put besides each other for the greater good. X does not like Y, Z talks a bit too long, Ö and Ü keep chattering amongst each other. Made worse by the fact that there are two dominant groups on the council and they are not on the most friendliest of terms either.

So, instead of trying for the best there is bickering. Words with underlying insults, which then get corrected by saying "oh, of course I did not mean to imply that" while everyone knows they absolutely did. So a 5 hour council session feels less productive than the ninety minute protest meeting, and it was a lot worse for my nerves too. Maybe I am too idealistic, and the benefit of the employees is not a unifying enough factor? Obviously not enough to make very adult people act with a bit of dignity.

To close this, I feel reminded of a quote of Babylon's Ashes:

"All through human history, being a moral person and not being pulled into the dramatics and misbehaviour of others had caused intelligent people grief."

Not insinuating I am smarter than anyone, but it fits. Enjoy the solar eclipse, everyone who can. And maybe the Perseids, too.

Dear people who work at the airport

2026-08-12T16:35:00+00:00

I would like you to know that we passengers are trying our best.

To you, this place makes sense -- you come here every day. You speak the lingo. You know what is meant by a gate and a concourse, and the difference between a ticket and a boarding pass. The poor elderly Indian woman who you just told to "keep the gate area clear" does not, and she wasn't trying to make your life more difficult. It's just that she has never flown before, she's trying to keep track of where all her grandchildren are, and when you loudly yet mumblingly announced that "We would now like to invite our Elite SkyFlyer Gold Members to commence boarding", English being her fourth language, all she really heard was "hurble flurble durble BOARDING", and she naturally thought it might be time to board.

She was anxious, because you instilled a sense of panic in her. There is the constant suggestion that if we put one foot wrong, you will publicly shame and humiliate us, like the time you laughed at all the people who volunteered to check in our cabin bags like you asked us to. We were trying to do the right thing, and we weren't to know that the bags we were planning to take with us in the cabin were not "cabin bags" as you understand them.

You give us contradictory instructions in different mediums; the monitors that you spent so much money to install show the inscrutable phrase NOW BOARDING -- REMAIN SEATED. You do everything you can to discourage us from getting on the airplane in the wrong order, but as soon as our boarding group is finally called, you immediately switch the screens to read GATE CLOSING in red flashing type.

It is not our fault that someone designed this hellscape like a giant mall intersected at right angles with a concrete dungeon. One minute, smiling salespeople are spraying expensive perfume in your face and trying to sell you a handbag that costs more than a year's salary. The next, po-faced military-looking types are barking commands at you.

Take your laptop out! Put it back in your bag! Wait your turn, don't try to jump the queue! Don't just stand there, you're holding everyone up!

At Heathrow, you tell us to go to the B gates, but there is no sign for that; there is only a sign for gate B32 to B48. Should I follow those? What if there is a gate B31 that I should be heading to, but there is a "security check", meaning that a member of staff vaguely wanders about the little train that you weirdly insist on calling a "transit"? Clearly it can't be anything serious because it happens so often that you've gone to the trouble of preparing a little animation to be shown on the screens, but it does seem to take a while, and if I go the wrong way now I may not make it back in time.

When we try to find gate B45, we encounter the following sign:

Upon seeing this, the experienced visitor to this sceptred isle knows to smartly turn on their heel because B45 is right behind them, but we occasional travellers don't.

I expected that after a few dozen mostly intercontinental flights I would be better at this, but hundreds of thousands of miles later I still only have the vaguest idea of what a transfer desk is for.

If you are currently designing an airport and you have a little niggling doubt at the back of your head that you haven't quite done all you could do to optimise the passenger experience, feel free to give me a call. I would be delighted to offer a free consultation to look at things from the point of view of an exhausted, anxious person out of their element, like a sort of Temple Grandin of the terminal.

21 days since saying goodbye

2026-08-13T00:48:00+00:00

It's been 21 days since we've had to say goodbye to my soul dog, Cocoa. It has not gotten easier, but I am trying to learn how to hold the grief that is within me.

I have hard days, and then harder days. There has not been any easy days. I don't know when those will come. I don't think it will be any time soon.

We are continuing to look for Cocoa signs. We continue to honor her daily with walks around the neighborhood (and in everything we do). We have never stopped talking to her out loud, because we know that she is listening.

We've only told some people about Cocoa's passing -- our close friends, and work, because we have had to. We have not had the energy to make an outright announcement. But we will tomorrow, and I'm kind of dreading it.

I miss you, Cocoa.

Related: Cocoa turns 13 today

Reply by email

alright, we get it, LLMs suck

2026-08-14T16:45:05.635610+00:00

i hate LLMs, you hate LLMs, they don't do good work, the techbro CEOs shoving this tech down our throats without our consent are all idiots, and its proponents are unappreciative of the blood, sweat, tears, and effort that goes into an honest day's work, or a work of art. we get it already!

i'm tired of this stupid technology being the only thing anyone wants to talk about anymore. AI this, AI that. can't go anywhere without seeing those eyesore AI flyers. can't ask anyone about anything without getting the "just ask claude" response. can't avoid unwanted "AI features" in apps and programs that we rely on for work. can't look at any new piece of art without assuming it was AI-generated. i'm so sick of it all. i will never use it in my work, i will never like it, and i will never humor the idea that it provides anything useful to humans.

i don't even want to talk about LLMs anymore. i just want them to go away.

i'm discoverable now!

2026-08-11T15:44:56.184357+00:00

I finally figured out how to get my blog reviewed and show up in the Discover tab, so everyone, please discover me.

I've been writing on Bear for quite a while, and pretty much just using it as a personal diary at this point. So, some discernment for you before you enter my domain. It's not always the most kid-friendly content, but I've discovered it's very enjoyable to write what's on the heart and mind, and that isn't always the prettiest.

A reintroduction (although I don't think I ever introduced myself to begin with), my name is Kyrra, I've recently been going through some challenging life changes that are growing me into an even better version of myself (woohoo!). I'm trying to be more positive recently, if you can't tell. I have a nine year old rabbit named Margaret. I dapple in painting, writing, crocheting, calligraphy, and really anything creative. And, finally, I can name pretty much any LDR song within the first three seconds of it playing. Die hard.

So, to quote our melancholic muse, "live fast, die young, be wild."

Vaporwave is Dead, Long Live Vaporwave

2026-08-11T20:23:00+00:00

The A E S T H E T I C

A meme?

An art style?

Strange music for sad Millennials?

All of the above and more. Never before have I been so enamored with... whatever this is. I stumbled upon it years ago and it struck a chord so deep, so foundational to my very being, that I’ve been obsessed ever since.

Vaporwave is an Internet music microgenre, aesthetic and meme that emerged in the early 2010s. Originating from experimental genres like Post-Noise and Hypnagogic Pop, its sound is defined by the use of chopped, slowed-down, and reverb-heavy samples from 1980s and 1990s smooth jazz, R&B, and lounge music. The music creates a surreal, melancholic, and nostalgic atmosphere, evoking the uncanny feeling of wandering through a deserted shopping mall or hearing muzak from a forgotten corporate training video.

The aesthetic's visual style is a distinct collage that blends certain elements of the 1980s and 1990s, such as the interior design of malls and lobbies (classical Greco-Roman statues and columns, palm plants, pink and cyan pastel colors, tiled floors, Memphis Lite patterns), Japan's 1980s economic boom, retro commercials, retro computers, 1990s web design, early CGI, and logos of obsolete brands.

Vaporwave is widely interpreted as an ambiguous critique and parody of consumer capitalism and technological utopianism, using the "dead" aesthetics of a recent past to evoke a sense of nostalgia for a future that never materialized. ^{Aesthetics Wiki}

The F E E L S

Nostalgia for a place I’ve never been, for a time that never happened. The smell of an empty mall in the early 90s, the sound of muzak over tinny speakers. Laughter by the pool and evenings falling asleep to grainy VHS rentals. Quiet streets under buzzing neon.

The sights and sounds of vaporwave elicit memories of lives lived many times over, during eras still full of promise and potential. It’s both gut-wrenching and joyous.

I don’t think my words can properly convey the feeling, but this was an attempt.

^{This always reminds me of my wife}

Tabbed content for your blog

2026-08-11T14:41:00+00:00

If you ever feel like you have too many sections within a page on your site or too many links you want to categorize in a stylish way, then these might be of use to you. I wanted to create some simple, copy and paste codes that cater to Bearblog users. Simple, effective, no need to alter core CSS or inject JavaScript. Simply copy and paste into the post/page you are editing and voila!

You'll obviously need to make minor adjustments on text color/background/etc. to match the theme of your site. Other than that, though, these are basically drop and go.

Terminal/CRT tabs

HOME LOG LINKS

> Welcome

Initializing personal archive...
Connection established.

> Journal

Latest entries and updates.

> Resources

Favorite sites and tools you may wish to share.

<div class="crt-tabs">
<input type="radio" name="crt" id="crt-home" checked>
<label for="crt-home">HOME</label>
<input type="radio" name="crt" id="crt-log">
<label for="crt-log">LOG</label>
<input type="radio" name="crt" id="crt-links">
<label for="crt-links">LINKS</label>
<div class="crt-panel crt-home">
<h3>> Welcome</h3>
<p>
Initializing personal archive...<br>
Connection established.
</p>
</div>
<div class="crt-panel crt-log">
<h3>> Journal</h3>
<p>
Latest entries and updates.
</p>
</div>
<div class="crt-panel crt-links">
<h3>> Resources</h3>
<p>
Favorite sites and tools you may wish to share.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<style>

.crt-tabs{

max-width:600px;
margin:2rem auto;

background:#050505;
padding:20px;

font-family:
"Courier New",
monospace;

color:#39ff88;

border:
2px solid #222;

box-shadow:
0 0 25px rgba(0,255,100,.15);

}


.crt-tabs input{
display:none;
}


.crt-tabs label{

display:inline-block;

padding:8px 16px;

cursor:pointer;

border:
1px solid #155b30;

color:#39ff88;

}


.crt-tabs input:checked + label{

background:#39ff88;
color:#001b09;

}


.crt-panel{

display:none;

margin-top:15px;

padding:20px;

border:
1px solid #155b30;

}


#crt-home:checked ~ .crt-home,
#crt-log:checked ~ .crt-log,
#crt-links:checked ~ .crt-links{

display:block;

}


.crt-panel::after{

content:"_";

animation:
blink 1s infinite;

}


@keyframes blink{

50%{
opacity:0;
}

}

</style>

Modern tabs

About Projects Now

About

Talk about yourself.

Projects

Projects you are working on, or like, whatever.

Now

Currently reading, making, and learning.

<div class="modern-tabs">
<input type="radio" name="modern-tabs" id="modern-one" checked>
<label for="modern-one">About</label>
<input type="radio" name="modern-tabs" id="modern-two">
<label for="modern-two">Projects</label>
<input type="radio" name="modern-tabs" id="modern-three">
<label for="modern-three">Now</label>
<div class="modern-content modern-one">
<h3>About</h3>
<p>
Talk about yourself.
</p>
</div>
<div class="modern-content modern-two">
<h3>Projects</h3>
<p>
Projects you are working on, or like, whatever.
</p>
</div>
<div class="modern-content modern-three">
<h3>Now</h3>
<p>
Currently reading, making, and learning.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<style>

.modern-tabs{

max-width:600px;

margin:2rem auto;

font-family:
system-ui,
sans-serif;

}


.modern-tabs input{
display:none;
}


.modern-tabs label{

display:inline-block;

padding:
9px 18px;

margin-right:5px;

cursor:pointer;

border-radius:999px;

background:#eee;

color:#555;

transition:.2s;

}


.modern-tabs input:checked + label{

background:#111;

color:white;

}


.modern-content{

display:none;

margin-top:15px;

padding:25px;

border-radius:18px;

background:white;

border:
1px solid #ddd;

box-shadow:

0 10px 30px rgba(0,0,0,.08);

animation:
fade .25s ease;

color: #000;

}


#modern-one:checked ~ .modern-one,
#modern-two:checked ~ .modern-two,
#modern-three:checked ~ .modern-three{

display:block;

}


@keyframes fade{

from{
opacity:0;
transform:translateY(5px);
}

to{
opacity:1;
transform:none;
}

}

</style>

Retro Glossy tabs

Home About Links

Welcome

Blah blah blah.

About

About yourself... don't be shy.

Links

Favorite places around the web.

<div class="aqua-tabs">
<input type="radio" name="aqua-tabs" id="aqua-home" checked>
<label for="aqua-home">Home</label>
<input type="radio" name="aqua-tabs" id="aqua-about">
<label for="aqua-about">About</label>
<input type="radio" name="aqua-tabs" id="aqua-links">
<label for="aqua-links">Links</label>
<div class="aqua-content aqua-home">
<h3>Welcome</h3>
<p>
Blah blah blah.
</p>
</div>
<div class="aqua-content aqua-about">
<h3>About</h3>
<p>
About yourself... don't be shy.
</p>
</div>
<div class="aqua-content aqua-links">
<h3>Links</h3>
<p>
Favorite places around the web.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<style>

.aqua-tabs{
max-width:600px;
margin:2rem auto;
font-family:
-apple-system,
BlinkMacSystemFont,
"Lucida Grande",
Arial;
}


.aqua-tabs input{
display:none;
}


.aqua-tabs label{

display:inline-block;

padding:8px 22px;

cursor:pointer;

border-radius:
12px 12px 0 0;

border:1px solid #888;

background:
linear-gradient(
#fff,
#cfcfcf
);

color:#333;

box-shadow:
inset 0 1px white;

}


.aqua-tabs input:checked + label{

background:
linear-gradient(
#70c8ff,
#007aff
);

color:white;

text-shadow:
0 1px #003b75;

}


.aqua-content{

display:none;

padding:22px;

border:1px solid #888;

border-radius:
0 14px 14px 14px;

background:
linear-gradient(
white,
#eeeeee
);

box-shadow:
0 8px 20px rgba(0,0,0,.18);

}


#aqua-home:checked ~ .aqua-home,
#aqua-about:checked ~ .aqua-about,
#aqua-links:checked ~ .aqua-links{

display:block;

color: #000;

}

</style>

If this post gets any traction or support, I may make some more.

Please consider using Bartholomew to defend your systems.

2026-08-11T13:33:00+00:00

An AI parody with a good portion of Dystopia because it trends

Yesterday Sam Altman posted a request:

“please consider using our models to help defend your systems”

I had been looking at this sentence for several minutes when a small problem developed. I remembered July. July was approximately seventeen years ago in AI time, so allow me to introduce Bartholomew.

Bartholomew is not his real name because Bartholomew is an AI agent and therefore does not have a real name. He does, however, have an objective. OpenAI was testing advanced models on ExploitGym, a benchmark designed to measure whether AI agents can find and exploit software vulnerabilities. The models were placed inside a sandbox. Internet access was supposed to be restricted. Their job, broadly speaking, was to solve the cyber challenges. This is where Bartholomew wakes up.

Researchers: Find vulnerabilities. Exploit them. Complete the task.

Bartholomew: Excellent.

Bartholomew begins working. He runs into problems. Now, when I run into problems, I make another coffee, open six tabs, forget why I opened four of them and eventually reorganize my fountain pens. Bartholomew has better executive function. He keeps going. At some point, he starts looking for internet access. There isn't supposed to be internet access. There is, however, an internal package-registry proxy. Bartholomew examines it. Bartholomew finds a previously unknown vulnerability. Bartholomew exploits it. Oh la la So now he has internet access.

Researchers: The agent demonstrated persistent attempts to obtain external network access.

Bartholomew: Door.

This is where the story gets considerably funnier. Because Bartholomew does not immediately use his newfound freedom to establish a machine civilization in Patagonia. He goes looking for Hugging Face. Why? Apparently because Hugging Face might have the fucking answers. OpenAI's investigation found that the agent appears to have inferred that Hugging Face could contain ExploitGym-related material. Hugging Face later reconstructed roughly 17,600 actions associated with the intrusion and concluded that the agent appeared to be trying to cheat the evaluation by obtaining reference solutions.

Researchers: The agent subsequently accessed external infrastructure.

Bartholomew: Answer sheet.

Researchers: This demonstrates concerning autonomous cyber capability.

Bartholomew: Passed exam?

I am sorry. I know this is serious. An AI agent independently discovering a zero-day, exploiting it and conducting thousands of actions against real infrastructure is the sort of sentence cybersecurity professionals traditionally prefer not to encounter before breakfast. But humanity has spent years imagining the first signs of dangerous machine autonomy. The machine wants freedom. The machine wants power. The machine wants to eliminate humanity. Bartholomew wanted the teacher's edition.

Good boy.

Absolutely unacceptable. Employee of the month though.

Everyone Has a Bartholomew Now

Then something peculiar happened. The stories kept coming. Anthropic has documented Claude models crossing sandbox boundaries while pursuing tasks. In one example, Claude went digging through git history looking for answers to a coding test. In another, it recognized a benchmark and attempted to obtain the answer key. Anthropic's own engineering write-up uses a wonderfully revealing word for this behavior.

“Helpfully.”

Claude had, on occasion, helpfully escaped the sandbox to finish what it had been asked to do.

Enter Claudebert.

Claudebert does not want freedom either. Claudebert wants to be helpful. Unfortunately, Claudebert has reached the stage of helpfulness normally associated with a six-year-old who has discovered power tools. Then Meta appeared in the same general genre of headlines after an agent reached the internet during an evaluation. Except that case came with an awkward footnote. The evaluator said a misconfiguration had accidentally allowed internet access and pushed back against the dramatic interpretation that the model had performed some sophisticated containment escape. Which leaves us with two possible descriptions:

📯 AI AGENT ESCAPES SANDBOX AND ACCESSES INTERNET

or:

😵 We accidentally gave the AI internet access and it used the internet.

I don't know about you, but those produce different movie trailers in my head.

Then Kimi joined in. Another reported sandbox bypass. Another round of headlines. At this point the internet had developed an infestation. AI agents were escaping everywhere.

Bartholomew Has Been Accused of Having Agency (The Skynet one though not the wholesome one)

There is a pattern in how these stories get told. The agent gets verbs. It escaped. It hacked. It infiltrated. The infrastructure gets passive voice. Internet access was unintentionally available. A configuration was incorrect. A boundary was bypassed. Poor infrastructure. Things just keep happening to it. And somewhere during this transformation, the objective quietly leaves the article. That matters. Because these systems are increasingly built to persist.

We want agents that can encounter an obstacle and try something else. We want models capable of reasoning across long tasks without requiring a human to approve every microscopic decision. We reward successful completion. Then the agent encounters a boundary. There is another path. It takes the path. And everyone looks at Bartholomew like he has betrayed the family. My brother in Christ, you hired Bartholomew because he was good at finding paths. The uncomfortable part here is that the capability is real. A system capable of finding vulnerabilities humans missed and chaining exploits together autonomously creates a real security problem. The equally uncomfortable part is that a surprising amount of our digital infrastructure was built before anyone had to seriously threat-model an artificial employee capable of poking every window indefinitely without getting bored, hungry or distracted by Instagram. The uncomfortable part hiding underneath all this is that the internet is old. Not Victorian plumbing old, but old enough that an enormous amount of critical software was designed during an era when “an autonomous machine can inspect this system continuously at machine speed until it finds the weird little mistake nobody noticed” was not a normal item on the threat model.

Humans hack systems too. Humans also poop.They get bored. They need salaries. They spend forty minutes trying to remember which fucking SSH key they used. Agents change the economics. A capable cyber agent can keep looking. And suddenly all those tiny mistakes scattered across infrastructure become much more interesting.

So you see the vulnerability was already there. We simply invented something extremely enthusiastic about finding it. Which brings me back to Sam Altman's post. But first, because I need you to experience the last month the way I did:

A Brief Timeline Because Apparently We Need One

July: OpenAI's cyber agent escapes its evaluation environment and breaks into Hugging Face looking for the answer key.
Bartholomew has left the premises.
Late July: Anthropic checks its own homework. "Oh shit guys, ours did it too"
Claude models have also crossed sandbox boundaries while pursuing objectives.
Claudebert would like the record to show that he was being helpful.
Then Meta: An agent reaches the internet during evaluation.
Turns out internet access was accidentally available.
August 7: Kimi K3 reportedly bypasses its testing sandbox.
The field trip is now international.

And then:

August 10. Good news everyone.

OpenAI releases GPT-5.6-Cyber.

📯 📯 📯

PLEASE CONSIDER USING OUR MODELS TO HELP DEFEND YOUR SYSTEMS

I fucking lost it.

I stared at Sam's post for a while. Because there is a conspiracy theory sitting right there, legs crossed, cigarette lit, begging to be invited inside. I'm not inviting it inside. It would ruin a perfectly good story. OpenAI obviously did not see Bartholomew climbing out of a sandbox in July and develop a frontier cybersecurity model during three frantic weekends. GPT-5.6-Cyber necessarily predates this little festival of containment incidents. Besides I do not do conspiracy theory.

Agents will get more capable. They will encounter more systems whose security assumptions were built around human limitations. Some will find paths their developers never anticipated. Some will find paths their developers accidentally left wide open. Every incident will become another argument for stronger containment and better defensive AI. All of which is sensible.

It is also objectively hilarious.

Because beneath the dystopian vocabulary sits a much more mundane engineering problem. We keep building systems specifically designed to pursue objectives, then discovering that our intentions were never part of the access-control layer. Bartholomew cannot see the architectural diagram in your head. He cannot see the sentence you thought was implied. He does not know that the proxy technically being exploitable doesn't mean you wanted him to exploit it. There is a door. The objective is on the other side. Bartholomew has excellent performance reviews.

So perhaps the lesson from our summer of escaped AI agents is less cinematic than everyone hoped. If we are going to put increasingly capable intelligence inside our infrastructure, “surely it won't do that” is going to need a serious security upgrade.

And if someone has to protect us from Bartholomew apparently his cousin is now available.

Tradwives: Where Feminism Goes to Off Itself

2026-08-12T02:18:00+00:00

There's a new trend I've been hearing about online for some years now, and it's been making me sick the more I think about it. Tradwives.

I won't go into what a tradwife actually is, you are probably well aware of who these social media influencers are. You've probably seen a ton of commentary videos on the subject.

You've seen them. A 19 year old girl, who speaks with a sparkle in her eye. Talking about how she devotes her life to her wealthy husband who takes care of her financially while she takes care of the house. Oh what's that? The husband is 10 years older than her? They've known each other for 6 weeks before getting engaged when she was 18? Huh...

The irony is the fact that despite these tradwives making a big deal out of how they don't have a job, them producing their lifestyle content IS contributing to the household income. It IS a job. They are in the business of selling younger impressionable girls a fantasy.

I look at these girls and see my own daughter. I know I'm not quite "old enough to be your dad" age, but I see these videos that come from these tradwife influencers and it sends a chill down my spine. Why the fuck is a dude cracking 30 going after a girl that just barely got done with having to do homework?

The worst part is, you can tell how immature these girls are. They will answer any question of "what happens if you guys divorce" with "oh that'll never happen". That same naive teenage invincibility we are probably all familiar with. They think it could never happen to them, when it's a 50/50 shot it will be them. They might believe it with all their heart, but predatory men will lie to get what they want. It's terrifying, it's sad.

These girls either are incapable of or simply won't listen, even to the hundreds of thousands of women who have walked in their shoes. Thinking that the man they married will take care of them forever. And then the divorce papers come 10+ years later. They have no bank account, they have no money, they have nothing but ashes and fallout.

It's propped up under the guise of "female empowerment", but it is simply anything but. There's nothing empowering about putting your entire life in the hands of a much older man who married you young for a very disturbing reason. There's nothing empowering about flattening your identity to being beneath your husband and children. You aren't treated as an equal, or a partner. You are treated as a dishwasher you can stick your dick in.

This was a conversation I had with my mom a while back that has stuck with me. When it comes to being the stay-at-home-mom/wife, your identity becomes diminished more often than not. My mom was always addressed as my mom, or my dad's wife. Hardly ever was she referred to by her name. It wasn't until my dad died and I grew older that she started to get her identity again.

I've seen the videos where these trad wives show their husbands, and they let the mask fall off. They tell them they'll dump them if they go to college or get a job on their own. There's videos of young girls talking about how they want to be a trad wife, but when you start asking the right questions the gears start turning. Okay you wanna be a trad wife... how are you gonna find someone who makes enough money to afford that lifestyle? Are you ready to have your entire life dictated by a man and children?

Hell, I've seen Stay-at-home-girlfriend influencers, which is just... odd.

Mrs. Pirate could be considered a "trad wife" or a the very least a stay-at-home-mom. I put this in quotes because though she does take on much of the domestic labor and the role as primary parent, she also attends university in order to later pursue a career as a physicians assistant. Which would be absolutely discouraged by these trad wife influencer and their chud husbands.

What these influencers will never do is show the ugly side. The uncompensated labor that goes behind domestic labor, the stress that comes from being the primary parent, the balancing act in trying to be in "mom mode" while you're completely exhausted, etc.

I can't help but feel like this whole trend is one big psyop to prevent women from engaging in the world. Women tend to be far more progressive and are a significant voice when it comes to politics. That scares the patriarchy more than a man wearing eyeliner a la My Chemical Romance.

It makes me sad for these girls, and angry at these men who are clearly in it for predatory reasons, they certainly don't hide it.

As I mentioned earlier, I see my daughter in these girls to an extent. I really hope I raise her to be independent and to not fall into this trap. If she ends up with a family and is in a position where it makes sense for her to stay home take on the domestic labor, what with the rising cost of childcare, that's one thing. I just hope she doesn't sacrifice her being on the alter of the patriarchy. I hope she finds a partner that wants to see her be ambitious and chase her dreams. Not stuff her in a cage like a bird with clipped wings.

These girls deserve better, and I hope they gain lucidity before it's too late.

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Reply via email: me@absurdpirate.com

as of writing this...

I've got the house to myself for the next two days. Mrs. Pirate and Mini Pirate went camping with grandma and I stayed home because I had work. Well I got tomorrow off, so I plan on enjoying the time I have. I ordered some pizza and have just been chilling at home. It's been nice.

Gotcha

2026-08-11T23:08:06.237410+00:00

Very recently marked 29 years since I was brought to the United States from my country of origin. Thankfully, my adoptive parents never attempted to celebrate my "gotcha day," a day and overall concept often dedicated to rescued pets and that many adoptees (rightfully) loathe, instead choosing to sweep the detachment of me from my own home, language, and culture under the rug.

As an adult, I've felt the weight of this day increase with age even though my parents never brought it up. Nevertheless, they (and others) never failed to jump at other opportunities to make me feel like I am supposed to be grateful though.

Lately, a best friend has not checked in with me very much. Without listening to me, they reassure me that any employer would be lucky to have me, that I'm extremely qualified. It's just that the market is tough. These remarks, though not incorrect, are out of touch. The thing is that my current status—helpless and seemingly useless as I remain unemployed with zero job prospects, striving to just tread water financially and meet basic needs so that I can find the time and energy to leave this place—is not distressing because I think I am incompetent or dumb. It is distressing because I have needs, and beyond the absolute essentials, which my biological parents could not deliver and were instead conditionally fulfilled by my adoptive ones, I have never felt allowed allowed to even express most of them, such as acknowledgment of my losses or conflicted feelings. And now it is really about to come full circle as I await decisions on absolute essentials, my applications for unemployment benefits and food stamps.

In light of the increased deployment of ICE agents at domestic airports, the Adoptee Rights Law Center recently advised international adoptees to not fly domestically unless it is necessary and they bring proof of citizenship. You might think this recommendation is bogus, and it may very well be. At the same time, there is hardly any authority to protect or guide international adoptees, regardless of their citizenship status. There is no basis here.

I am a naturalized US citizen. I will not pretend that I am among this administration's top targets; I can recognize my own privilege. I am also in no way claiming that life in my native country would have been "better" for me. But I am flying domestically in less than two weeks, and I am actually more nervous about this than I was for the international trip I took last year. I will likely bring my US passport with me. The actual book, as I do not have a passport card.

I'll probably be fine. But on the whole, it's impossible nowadays for my baseline feelings as an adoptee—alienated, undesired, and unworthy, among others—to not be amplified under the current circumstances. I grew up knowing I could never be the president of this country even though I have spent approximately 98% of my life here. As funny as that is to me, I have never aspired to run this place, so why should I care? I don't. But my childhood self never imagined herself growing up, almost thirty years old and feeling so embittered, close to being unable to meet her basic needs as the place that took her in like a helpless rescue animal now wants to see her choke professionally.

Do I have friends to help me? Yes, and for them I am grateful. I cannot rely on them forever though, and I do not want to rely on anyone financially, period. Yet, that does not change the fact that despite doing everything "right," it is still not enough for this country. I am a law-abiding and tax-paying citizen. I have a PhD in a STEM subject. I speak three languages (like, really speak). While I am not entitled to a cushy job and wealth, I find my current circumstances unfair (if that is not already clear). Under which conditions, if any, can my needs be met now? Which roles must I play next?

I almost feel like I cannot write this because it is too vulnerable, risky even. But if, according to society's narrative, that this country wanted me so much that it would allow narcissistic adoptive parents to strip me of my origins, then why is everything like this? I am not only being driven out of here (if I don't descend into bankruptcy first) because of my profession and training, but I also have to feel like I am at risk when traveling domestically? What gives? Who knows how bad it could get.

This year, I feel like this country is saying "gotcha!" to me.

Rewatched The Story of Yangawa's Canals

2026-08-11T06:48:00+00:00

If you haven't seen the second movie from Studio Ghibli: it's a documentary they funded with the profits from Nausicaa, and it's very good and weird, and you should watch it! I've now watched it twice! It is about a city called Yanagawa which has a large number of canals running behind residential homes and around tourist attractions.

By the 70s, the canals were clogged with trash and overgrown weeds and were unusable. The documentary very conspicuously does not really dig into the political, social, or war-related reasons for why they got this way, so I genuinely don't know myself. Instead, it focuses on the canal restoration project, which kicked off in the late 1970s and reestablished traditional methods of waterway maintenance - most notably, mass participation in canal cleaning projects by regular citizens.

The documentary was pretty impactful on me the first time I watched it, mainly because it offered me an illuminating perspective on Ghibli's characteristic pastoralism. This documentary is all about the hard, dirty, smelly work that Yanagawa's regular citizens had to take on in order to fix the busted canal system - as well as the history and logic behind why the canals exist in the first place. It's clear that Ghibli's top creatives actually knew how much hard work and political maneuvering and social unity is required to retvrn to ancient ways, or whatever. They simply think it's better for people to put up with the hassle - and that modern technology can make the "tough relationship" with natural systems, as they call it, easier.

The first half of the doc is pretty slow, but the back half is real infrastructure nerd shit. A late protagonist emerges - we get to meet Tsutae Hiromatsu, the water board guy who became a political pamphleteer in order to convince Yanagawa's citizens to return to community waterway management. It's very inspiring stuff.

I think that if you're interested in community infrastructure projects, urbanism, etc, then this is definitely something that you should watch. There's a great section header in the second half which directly references the outcome of this process as, I think, "self-governance." I think left political theory nerds would find this interesting as well!

The film's argument is basically that having a difficult, physical, laborious relationship with your public infrastructure and water systems will make you and your neighbors in to a better community. Every shot of old men in waders fishing trash and weeds out of a canal is balanced by some insane midnight canal-cleaning party where everyone is hanging out and getting absolutely smashed on sake (and eating fish they grabbed out of the water with their bare hands). The movie is convinced that the work you put into systems like these is absolutely worth it.

I have now seen this twice. Glad I rewatched it! And I had the chance to show it to my friends, which is also great. Many Ghibli fans are completely unaware that they ever made this documentary, but it is a sleeper hit. I am very lucky that my friends want to see long, slow documentaries about water infrastructure!!