Good Posts 2025-08-31
Didn't do one of these last week - it was actually a decision though, I hadn't been online much and didn't feel I had much I wanted to share. I've caught up a bit now and I've been having a pretty good week online tbh.
Feels a bit odd to wrap up Blaugust with one of these though. Will have a full retrospective tomorrow.
Decided to stop embedding the videos - it's more work and half of them don't embed properly, and I think there are region issues... Not worth the hassle, and I like the consistency. A to-do list item is to have a better format for these lists.
Posts
I Am an AI Hater - Anthony Moser
A really enjoyable, poetic articulation of my own position. Quite powerful tbh.
I enjoyed reading this so much that I told my partner to stop watching her C-Drama so I could read it to her, and I enjoyed it even more a second time putting a voice to it.
A Price of Commodity - Sciman101
A lovely meditation on the concept of art and commodities and ubiquitous tat, the human cost (literal labour, not necessarily harm) of the manufactured world.
if you love it, download it - erysdren
Useful list of tools and approaches to becoming a steward of your media. This ties into a wider conversation about ownership and fan economies, but I'll keep it brief here. This is really valuable stuff. Start by making a backup of it! I did that with Linkwarden but I should probably get something more robust.
VSCodium: What Constitutes an Alternative? - The Works of Egan
Egan's been killing it this Blaugust. Really enjoyed this, genuinely got me thinking very hard about the blurry continuum a boycott can entail. Also, the whole "we open sourced the tool but bundle it with tracking bullshit if you download the installer" thing is genuinely classic corporate fuckery. Bespoke fuckery.
Learning to see quality - Laura Michet
I've been plagued with this since I was a teenager, and have been teaching myself to stop seeing quality. Part of it is a result of watching a lot of media that's not available in high fidelity, and part is the knowledge that it makes me very annoying to be around. I still reeeeeeally hover over that 4k profile in Radarr a lot though.
Videos
The Hidden Beauty of the Radix Sort - Polylog
Cool video discussing the Radix Sort with some great visualisations - I never previously knew the definition and it's neat to see the tradeoff in time complexity. Kinda funny to me because when sorting big tables of data (as I often do) most software maintains orderings on ties, so I use this exact method to do arbitrary custom compound sorts rather than defining it separately.
Why the U.S. Will Never Be 25 mph Everywhere - Streetcraft
Fun little "alternative history" video exploring a hypothetical where all US road signs mandated a 25mph limit - obviously coming from a very particular perspective and sugarcoating the conclusions a fair bit, but it's wild how many of the comments refuse to acknowledge the concept of a thought experiment.
I’m Not Saying Traffic Engineering Is Junk Science But - CityNerd
Lotta American road stuff this week, huh. I've never even been on one, but footage of them gives me hives. This is a genre of video I really like, talking about a topic that's well covered by other channels ("why so roady" videos like Streetcraft, who I enjoy a great deal) but from the perspective of a genuine professional expert, rather than an enthusiast. It's like algorithm thinks you're ready for the real shit now.