Years ago I watched this video that demos old iron smelting technology in Burkina Faso, and these people get farther. They have better natural iron deposits (also lots of people working together helps).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ

He did end up making a small blade at some point, but it seems like the process of getting iron ore from bacteria is excruciatingly slow. If he was in my area he’d be walking around in full plate armor by now.

I knew a C-level who had a social media presence but the company just paid some media manager person to handle it. He had a linkedin, facebook, and a blog. It was all ghost written. He didn’t even read it.

They really desecrated Dungeon Keeper. IIRC it was so filled up with mobile game, microtransaction garbage you couldn’t even dig blocks of dirt more than once a day without buying “gems”.

Same as Rhipsalis_baccifera.

I always liked the Salem’s Lot vampires for this reason.

• Repelled by the faith in the power of good behind the symbols, not the symbols themselves. Catholic priest who is a broken man tries it with a cross but his faith fails and he gets rekt.
• Must be invited in, but really good at hypnotizing people especially if they are asleep. Also, once they become vampires they go after their own family first, who are more suggestible (“I had a dream our boy was still alive…”).

I live in the middle of nowhere in Eastern North America. Saw some growing all by itself in the middle of the lane. It never came back in that spot and I’ve never seen any other plants. The seed pods are really spiky and light, they must hitch a ride on stuff.

I decided not to try it after reading a few “trip reports”.

Something I’ve noticed is when untraveled people in the USA try to contextualize themselves with other countries they pick the worst examples they can think of. Favelas in Brazil or slums in South Africa for example. We do this to the point where our entire conception of countries (or in the case of Africa, continents) is the worst imagery we can think of. I think they genuinely don’t believe that, for all their troubles India, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, etc also have smartphones and big buildings and libraries and universities and laboratories, and educated people living decent lives.

They also can’t see how the overcrowded jails full of pretrial prisoners, the barefoot children carrying buckets for water in Appalachia, the rundown schools full of illiterate kids, the impunity of rich private interests, the corrupt sheriffs and judges, and on and on, puts us in the company of the “third world countries”. Yes we have nice places too, but SO DO THEY. A broken society in the 21st century isn’t people living in mud huts, it’s children shitting in the street next to a glass skyscraper with LEED Platinum certification.

I love it when the story people just let shit happen off screen so the audience can fill in the blanks themselves. Like how eventually Max’s car is gone and he’s leading a camel. No need for 20 seconds of expository dialogue explaining where the iconic car went. Shit’s just fucked.

I’m nobody important but I’ve been in some story meetings on some pretty big IP’s where the director didn’t respect the audience. Or rather, it’s more accurate to say the attitude was, “we’re spending so much money we can’t afford for half the audience to not get something.” Fuck that. It’s cowardice. The product ends up being so bland just so it’s palatable for everyone.

It’s like chipping all the hard edges off a sculpture so nobody gets cut. Cool, cool. Now our sculpture is a big lozenge that looks like nothing.

We never got the “Taco Trucks on Every Corner”, another failed Biden promise.

I’m not really into Vtube stuff, but I like rigging and face tracking, and this is very cool!

Blows my mind someone will leave the enshittified capitalist slop trough because it sucks, which is directly attributable to systemic reasons, and then come to the place Marxists made on a volunteer basis specifically to overcome the shortcomings, and then get mad because there’s Marxists. So they make “Marxist free” instances which inevitably enshittify because of systemic reasons…

Yeah, Zip disks suuuucked. I always had to carry two for redundancy because they failed to read so often. Even having every second or third CD burn fail, because you looked at it wrong, was more reliable than Zip disks.

Pre-COVID. I wonder what it’s like now. Anecdotes from people who work in education seem to say it was pretty devastating for child development, but it’s hard to tell if it’s above and beyond the perennial “this new generation is totally fucked” sentiment.

Just planting seeds… just planting seeds.

Firewatch. I liked the visual style but everyone raved about the writing specifically and I thought it wasn’t great. I don’t want to shit on them too hard because they did try, and you can’t control how other people hype your work, but I found the characters really flat.

Just change the sign and get back in there: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/shopping/2025/10/21/spirit-christmas-opening-stores/86817296007/

If a real excavator is too pricey you can always get a mini: https://www.amazon.com/HY12C-Excavator-Hydraulic-Certified-Landscaping/dp/B0F4JLSVKN

The Great Male Renunciation is the historical phenomenon at the end of the 18th century in which wealthy men of the Western world stopped using bright colours, elaborate shapes and variety in their dress, which were left to women’s clothing.