Time for my annual kvetching about product manuals printed too small for me to read. This photo shows a US quarter for scale.

The Christmas Bat is now a beloved holiday tradition. Rankin-Bass stop-motion animated special is great.

Given Christopher Nolan's well-known preference for realism and practical effects, I expect the runtime of his film "The Odyssey" to be ten years.

A Lord of the Rings cover band called The Jackson Five.

I'm switching to Waterfox, a fork of Firefox that reportedly removes the tracking and AI features. I hope Waterfox doesn't change their non-AI policy, because that would leave just Airfox and Earthfox. I don't know what I'd do if they adopt AI too. (j/k)

Movie you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (either War or Trek), LOTR, or Marvel

Reading about TOON (Token-Oriented Object Notation) as an alternative to JSON. Every time I read TOON, I think of the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988). The slogan for TOON should be, "I'm not bad, I'm just formatted that way."

News: Marjorie Taylor Green announced she will resign from Congress Jan. 6, 2026. She assumed office Jan. 3, 2021. It may not be a coincidence that members of US Congress who participate in the pension system are vested once they have been in office for five years.

"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." — Thucydides, 5th century BC

Every time I see the word "inveigle" used, I imagine it's what the Hamburglar does.

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." — George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)

Ownership, yes, but IMO there's another necessary aspect: Team leads must feel safe to make decisions, which means they must trust that their peers and managers will support them. No blame, no kibitzing, no second-guessing. Mistakes and recovery are inevitable. Support must include that.

My takeaway from the release of Google Gemini 3 is that Two-Face is no longer interested in stealing it.

The Pragmatic Bookshelf has 50% right now on almost every title in the store, including mine: pragprog.com/titles/mfjet... Go support great people; authors and company included. Pragmatic is people doing things the right way, reward them for that. Code's save50 media.pragprog.com/newsletters/...

How much is your company spending to support the Python Software Foundation? For comparison, how much do they spend for tips on expensed meals? The PSF runs PyPI, where pip installs from. You depend on PyPI. Fund the PSF. Tip your server! www.python.org/psf/sponsors...

A new AI startup is named after Prometheus, the character from classical mythology — who was also known primarily for stealing intellectual property.

My position on the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) hasn't changed since it was enacted in 2010: The ACA should be repealed and replaced. Instead, the US should have single-payer universal health care.

Even if they're sued for zero damages, merely requiring them to remove the IP from the OpenAI models will cost them billions. It'd be like asking a metalworker to remove one metal from an alloy. They'd just have to scrap the piece and start over.

Setting aside for a moment how ridiculously poor that password choice was. It also makes me SMH that the password — even if it had been a strong one — was documented in plain text *anywhere*.

I'm still amused our 2002 Halloween costumes were copied by celebrities Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner. Even the wood paneling in the background!

FYI, if you're on a Mac and you find your mouse refuses to highlight text in Microsoft Word or other apps — Reboot. That's what fixed it for me.

I don't know why no one has thought of this before.

The logo graphic for the Governors' Public Health Alliance reminds me of the movie logo for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. This suggests the Public Health Alliance sees themselves as the rebellion, which I think is apt.

One year for Halloween I dressed as Aquaman and went to a costume party. A drunk guy asked, "hey where's your sidekick?" I said Aqualad is not speaking to me, because I kept calling him "chum."

I saw "The Addams Family" musical at the Mountain Community Theater in Ben Lomond, California. A treat! I saw it elsewhere a few years ago and I thought it was kind of meh, but this performance was way more charming. They nailed the musical numbers, and IMO the cast had better chemistry. Worth it!

Got my performance review.

Rudimentary Microsoft Word to Markdown converter. Developed by me in about an hour using no LLM.

subtly downgrade a band 9,800 Maniacs

Sunset at Ragged Point, California, 2025-09-18.

Pragmatic Bookshelf publishes great books on technology, and this week (Sept 18-20) they're having a 48-hour flash sale. My book SQL Antipatterns, Volume 1 is among those on sale. Both print and digital edition. Use promo code "flashsale" for the 40% discount.

Robert Redford, 24 years old, guest stars in a Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Treacherous Toupee" (1960).

Thinking on 9/11 about the twin towers of the WTC, where the Emerald City scene in "The Wiz" (1978) was filmed. This musical number is about trends and fashions that change rapidly, and people would rather be seen than have their own values. This is fitting for social media.

People are surprised that Disney tends to ruin things to make money. Disney was driving lemmings off a cliff to make "White Wilderness" in 1958.

AI technology will be used to allow evil-doers to escape accountability. "The computer told us to do it" will be the new version of "I was just following orders."

I tried to ask a woodworking forum to give me some drilling tips, and they said, "first of all, they're called bits."

Theory: During the summer, the marketing for OpenAI and other AI corps slowed down as people went on holiday. Posts about LLM failures got more attention b/c they weren't drowned out by relentless guerilla marketing. I expect the news to make ChatGPT 5 sound a lot more successful in September.

Thinking about what is the proper past tense of "slay" in this context. Past tense of slay as in kill should be "slew," but for slay as in succeed it's "slayed." If one succeeds by killing performance overhead, which is it?

TIL the genus for poison oak is "toxicodendron." That's what I'm going to call that plant from now on.

It’s good to see me, isn’t it? 💜✨ Yes, yes, the rumors are true — we are OFFICIALLY launching here on Bluesky! In case you forgot, we’re a place to buy books online where every purchase supports local bookstores, not billionaires. Thanks for being here 🙌🏽

The thing I liked about coding from childhood is that once you had a computer, you could write as much code as you want. There were no ongoing costs for materials, or tickets, or memberships. With imagination and a bit of time, you could create a world. Well, those days are apparently over.

What's up with the popularity of baby named derived from "Oak"? Why not other trees? Ash, Willow, Myrtle, or Cherry have been used as names. I can understand why one wouldn't name a baby Walnut, Dogwood, Hemlock, Locust, or Birch. 😬 How about Cedar? Hickory? Elm? Hawthorn?

My wife said, "I have a Tom Jones song stuck in my head. I don't even own any Tom Jones albums. Isn't that weird?" I replied, "it's not unusual." @dadsaysjokes.com

It always surprises me how inconvenient it is to inspect a PDF document to find out what fonts are used. Dump the file with `strings' and then grep for 'FontName'. Really???

Prediction: before the end of 2025, malware will exploit AI agents, make your computer log into payment apps, and drain your savings. Crypto transactions will make the recipient untraceable. #ButlerianJihad

I have a joke about Icarus, but I think it'd go over your head.

My high school US History teacher, Mrs. Nash, insisted that history papers in her class be hand-written. I used a word processor, and I wanted to type my papers, but she refused to accept them in that form. She said she only wanted "hand-crafted" papers. It's significant that was born in 1928. 1/2

Even without the profit angle, I could say I wrote my book to help people understand one skill (in my case SQL), so they could think how to use it to solve problems. Not for a social media oligarch to manipulate opinions and spread misinformation. It's like the opposite of why I wrote my book.

Writing a book (as I am currently working on) is like planting tomato seedlings in a garden where you can see the gophers watching eagerly, holding tiny knives and forks in their paws.

This must be the section of the Death Star run by Admiral Wonka.