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An Abridged History of China, Part 3
Wang Mang was a man of very literal thinking. He thought his surname "Wang" (lit: king) meant he must be a descendant of a king. Logic. He literally named his new dynasty the New dynasty. The Xin dynasty. He also loved renaming things. He renamed the…
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Interview with Sam Conman
Host: Welcome to the second episode of our fictional show! Today, we have a very special guest, Sam. Sam, could you introduce yourself to the audience? Sam: Hi, I'm Sam Conman, founder and CEO of conman.ai. I am a serial killer-entrepreneur, TEDx speaker,…
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Oh Yasuke
So Yasuke Simulator is going to have its first DLC. Yasuke Simulator was created by someone who saw the controversies with Assassin's Creed: Shadows and decided to capitalize on it. Just look at the developer name: HistoryAccurateDevelopers. At first I…
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An Abridged History of China, Part 2
It only took Qin 10 years to conquer all of China. The Qin king thought he was even better than gods (like the ones we skipped in part 1), so he invented the word "emperor" and called himself that. He confiscated weapons and reforged them into something…
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Is This Cat AI
Pasi Salenius, on Mastodon: I really don’t know what it is I’m doing on Mastodon anymore. Might as well quit this thing. Whatever I post here makes me lose followers. I get no replies or boosts which lets me believe nothing I post interests anyone. It…
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I Tried Claude Code
A friend asked me to help him port an old PHP app to Rails. I told him I have no interest in looking at old PHP code. But we kept talking, and he brought up the possibility of using Claude Code. I had no experience with these AI coding tools, so out of…
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An Abridged History of China, Part 1
People say China has 5,000 years of history. But we're going to skip the first 2,000 years, which was basically gods fighting other gods. So we skip forward to the Shang and Zhou period. The Zhou king blitzed the Shang capital while Shang's main army was…
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Neijuan
There's a common theme if you frequent r/singapore. Whenever a restaurant closes down (and there have been a lot of closures in the past few years) someone will comment: a Chinese mala restaurant will open in its place. I first learned about the…
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Spring Cleaning
Sorry if some older posts are showing up in your RSS feed. I just deleted some of my older posts (particularly those I’d cross-posted to andadinosaur.com).
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The Mythical Machine-Month
Have you heard of The Mythical Man-Month? It's supposedly[^1] a must-read for managers. The main thesis: adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. [^1]: Because everybody quotes it and few people follow the advice. Similarly, I think…
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The Greatest CEO of All Time
Hello and welcome to my talk at CEOConf today. As CEOs, we have one job: help our shareholders make more money. And nobody did this better than one man, Jack Welch. *audience cheers* Yeah, he's great. I love him. I have his portrait on my nightstand. Jack…
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Ensheinification
Tech is too depressing, so I stayed away from tech for a while. It turns out real life is depressing too[^1]. [^1]: I did just spend a few days writing about something that made me happy. Now back to my depressing self. Recently my shoes broke, so I went…
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Ikoku Nikki Watching Notes, Part 5
Asa auditions for the school concert and gets in. She still hasn't finished her lyrics. Makio can't remember the writing advice she gave Asa a year ago. Asa thinks about asking whether her mother's diary contains lies, whether the beautiful words in it…
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Ikoku Nikki Watching Notes, Part 4
Asa needs to write lyrics for a school concert. Makio's advice is "write with the intent to kill". Asa hears this and it might as well be a foreign language. The show cuts between three different conversations across November and December. Makio with a…
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Ikoku Nikki Watching Notes, Part 3
Asa and Makio visit the grandmother. She used to be fierce, but after her daughter's death, she became a lot nicer. Upstairs, sitting in her sister's old room, Makio tells Asa to keep liking the mother she knew. Don't let other people's opinions rewrite…
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Ikoku Nikki Watching Notes, Part 2
One of the first things you learn about living with someone after a death is that even the most basic interactions become minefields. Asa's friend Emiri sends her a LINE message. Just a normal "how are you?" But how do you reply to that? Is it sympathy?…
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Ikoku Nikki Watching Notes, Part 1
In a season with big names like Frieren and Oshi no Ko, Ikoku Nikki came out of nowhere and became my favorite. The premise is simple: a 15-year-old girl named Asa loses both parents in a car accident. Her aunt Makio, a reclusive novelist, takes her in.…
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Yet Another AI Post
Unpopular opinion: I think the price[^1] of LLM tokens will go up in the future, not down. Because almost everything else in life (groceries, housing, cars, clothes, video games, streaming services, GPUs, RAM...) has gotten more expensive over…
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When You’re No Longer One of Us
When Reddit forced Apollo to shutdown, its developer, Christian Selig, was one of the most beloved figures in the Reddit community. But after the shutdown, the tone shifted. The same person who had been celebrated for years was suddenly seen as a greedy…
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We Can’t Have Nice Things
"Pffft a subscription app. I'd buy it if it were a one-time purchase." "Pffft a paid app. I'd download it if it were free." "Pffft proprietary software. I'd use it if it were open source." "Pffft the developer still hasn't shipped my feature despite the…