Year: 2025

Only Forward

Chill Gutter Philosophy

As a wise friend once advised in a different context: there is no going back. If you know nothing else about how history and the evolution thereof functions you must know that any idea of return to the past is an invalid one and impossible due to the nature of humanity and reality itself. Retreating there cannot be done and attempting to do so is a fool’s errand that leads only to ruin.

Railroads didn’t disappear when that bubble popped. Neither did the internet in 2001. AI and all its implications, complications and dislocations will not either when the AI bubble deflates in 2027 or 2028. Quite the opposite — AI will get vastly cheaper as all those data centers are liquidated and it thus will be used far more.

There is no return. The past’s waves ripple outward forever and cannot be un-waved nor thoughts un-thought. Indeed, as an also very-wise cat once observed: what has been seen cannot be un-seen.

Contra Con

Chill Annoying, Clowns, Evil

I think this is accurate. Just as with the clownish anti-vax rightists where anti-vax beliefs can only prosper where there are safe, effective vaccines, the sort of sentiments that Alyssa expresses can only proliferate when people are safe and cloistered from most harms.

It’s a disease of prosperity and safety. In both cases. “Suicidal empathy” like many other symptoms of terminal civilizational decline will be largely wiped out in the world war that’s coming up in the next decade or so.

Everyone buckled in?

Burnt Offering

Chill Annoying, Clowns

Something else I’ve noticed about Gen Z and younger Millennials: they are extremely concerned with their “boundaries” and telling you all about them, but not at all interested in what they themselves have to offer in a relationship.

This is a symptom of how terrified they are of, well, everything and how closed off from the world they are. There is nothing wrong with boundaries as we used to think of them back in the 1990s. However, the version of those bounds now is designed to prevent any risk, stand in the way of closeness, and to forestall even the possibility of vulnerability.

Those aren’t “boundaries,” unless you consider four walls in a 6×8 cell with bars for a door to be a safe haven. No, all they’ve done is created a prison with a more PR-friendly name.

Nuking

Chill Amusing

For the first time, ChatGPT made me laugh. I don’t usually talk with it (rather, I tell it to give me something), and I’ve disabled most of its suggestions and conversationalness. But I started it in this case. And it gave me a response that made me actually laugh out loud. I’m in green above. Below that is ChatGPT.

“The ‘nuke the doghouse’ era is over.”

That’s good stuff.

Chill Links

Analysis of a recent event involving an A320 Family aircraft has revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls.

It was once legal to build almost anything, everywhere. Then, in the space of a few decades, nearly every city in the Western world banned densification. What happened?

Your Phone Isn’t a Drug. It’s a Portal to the Otherworld.

New dark patterns added to Windows 11 in 2025.

Seeing like a software company.

Microsoft had engaged in plenty of anti-consumer action by then, but Clippy wasn’t an example of it.

A ‘great unmasking’ on X is arming Americans with digital borders. The social media platform’s move to show users’ location is a great step toward online transparency.

The common vaccines that can prevent chronic disease or some cancers.

Parent

Chill Clowns, Evil

Mozilla and Firefox dev idiocy example number eleventy billion.

Used to, you could have an extension that allowed the parent menu item in a right-click menu to trigger a click. Extremely useful for a search tool (etc.) that had sub-menus. Saved loads of time and just made things easier.

But not allowed anymore because it might confuse dear old Gramma. Even though she doesn’t know how to use her computer in any other way anyway and this change helps no one. Just another Mozilla dev power trip.

Clown-level crap like this is why Mozilla lost.