No Kings

"No Kings" is America's whole deal, on paper.  In practice, "The Rich Do Whatever They Want" has always been the undercurrent.

We're a nation built on land stolen from other people, using enslaved people stolen from their lands.  That's how we got started.  And to this day, any time someone dares to point out that those were and are incredibly crappy things to do, there are loud and angry voices blowing back.  We must "hate America" if we are critical of the racism and kleptocratic elements it has and continues to express.

Capitalism is the nation's only real religion or culture.  Capitalism said it was lucrative and therefore fine to steal land.  Capitalism said it was profitable and therefore fine to own other humans.  What's good for the runaway rich is usually at odds with what is actually good.

In practice, America already has a bunch of feudal kings.  They're in plain sight, right at the top of the stock market.  The rich own us.  Right now, this message lives on a server owned by Google.  (Sorry, "Alphabet".  "Plain sight" is becoming less of a good place to hide, isn't it, Meta?)  Eventually, these richest of the rich will need to steal from each other, but they're not done stealing from us yet.  We still have, on paper, a government where we choose our leaders and decision-makers.

That means we still have the power to say (and act like) something besides money has importance.  We used to have a 90% tax on the richest of the rich.  That alone would be a huge improvement.  If we elect leaders who value humanity more than profit, we could start seeing decisions and laws and systems which protect individuals from corporate sleaze, instead of the other way around.

"No Kings", or "The Rich Do Whatever They Want".  Choose wisely; we only get one.

Inner Peace at the Minnesota Genre Film Expo

Early this year, Kim and I completed "Inner Peace", an animated short film.  It's a movie that means a lot to us, and it's been selected to play in the Minnesota Genre Film Expo!

The show is on Saturday, October 4, 2025 at 10:30 PM CDT at the AMC Rosedale 14.  You can get tickets and check out the rest of the festival here:

https://mngfe.eventive.org/films/68b0ee6ae7f329ef85dd1bfe

Since it's a festival, they're selling full exposition passes and ticket bundles first.  Starting September 22nd, tickets for individual shows will be available.  (Our show contains a feature-length comedy, our short, and another live-action short.)

We'll also release our movie online, after its theatrical debut.  We hope you enjoy it!

AI, The Capitalism Bubble

Socrates ushered in a new age in philosophy.  Academics categorize what came before as "pre-Socratic".  He thought about thinking, argued about arguing, and taught about teaching.  My type of fella.  (Let's acknowledge his exposure to Eastern philosophy as well; nothing human happens in a vacuum.)  Author of a new age, yes; author of any texts at all, no.  Socrates took issue with the written word.

Everything we now know about this person's thoughts come from the writings of his students, and their students.  But to Socrates himself, the written word feels like a trap.  Yes, we can write our words down, but once on the page, they are dead.  Knowledge and wisdom are living things -- practiced, unfinished, and inextricable from the minds which carry and share them.

I don't need to entirely agree (I write, using words) but as I gain some small living wisdom myself, I concede that he has a point, and it's an important one.

Human animals do a lot of neat tricks.  We're perhaps not as novel as we think, but in some ways we're also a bigger deal than we give ourselves credit for.  Let's keep looking at "the written word" but expand the scope a bit to include written music.  Staves, bars, notes, any and all markings on a page you might see in front of a musician.

Even to someone experienced and skilled enough to sight-read any piece of music, there is a difference between interpreting the symbols and hearing the music.  The experience of the sound waves dancing their way across the nerves in our heads is something more rich and more alive than can be adequately captured in written glyphs.  That difference can be staggering -- a lay person may perceive only gibberish of dots and lines on the page, but be moved to tears when hearing a performance of those same notes.

It is a marvelous human trick to translate dormant markings into living music.  When the notes were first scribed, they served as a record, however incomplete, of a human's ideas and experience.  It's shorthand.  It takes practiced work to capture music onto paper, and it takes more practiced work to turn it back into music.  Human minds inject a bit of themselves into each step of the process.  Tuning systems and instrument craft refine over time; what we hear today is not identical to what Bach heard, but nonetheless we get to overlap to a meaningful degree with that specific human experience.

Words in any non-musical language are no different.

The words themselves are indeed dead, but if we take a leap where Socrates refused, we might trust that those who care to read them may breathe life in again.  The original intent may be distorted; it may even become unrecognizable due to translation mistakes or cultural shifts or typos.  Those of us who embrace the written word trust that some future human animal (even simply future versions of ourselves) will be able to either bring what is written alive again, or leave it behind in favor of other thoughts and ideas, which themselves will also ultimately decay and/or find new life.

So, what do poor old Socrates and the potentially-hollow written word have to do with "Artificial Intelligence"?

Large Language Models and various related techniques are what's dominating AI research (also funding) at the moment.  You might have heard these things called "autocorrect on steroids" or "overgrown predictive text" or something to that effect.  Those words feel hollow to AI engineers, but are still fair comparisons.  These models ingest as much written information as the tech companies can collect (steal) and run it through loads of statistical analysis.  Some percent of the time, the word "quite" is followed by the word "often".  Writings which contain the word "Socrates" are more likely to also contain the word "Plato" than "Florida".  Sentences which contain the word "sentence" are sometimes near sentences which are "examples".

A neat parlor trick these programs can do with all those rules about words is to synthesize a coherent-ish conversation.  When a human animal reads the "AI-generated" words (or hears a machine turn text into speech) we do what we always do when we read or hear: we receive and imbue the words with meaning from our own experiences, and breathe life into otherwise-inert material.  It's a convincing trick, because it is tailor-made for a human recipient's brain to assemble the pieces into something real.  After all, the words aren't generated out of thin air, they're made of human writing.  Chopped-up human words, statistically puzzle-piece matched up and Frankensteined back together, ransom-note style.

It's worth noting that this goes well beyond written words.  Different models chop up and rearrange our sounds and images and program code too, among other things.  But it's conceptually the same trick, trained on and working with different data.

It's smoke and mirrors.  We blew the smoke, and we glimpse ourselves in the mirrors.

Which leads nicely to the next point: all of this is computationally expensive.  Ridiculously computationally expensive.  Computers got smaller and faster and cheaper for decades, and they continue to do so, in a manner of speaking.  But in order to simulate a manner of speaking, it takes a whole lot of computers using a whole lot of electricity, sourced principally from a whole lot of burning fossil fuels.  These are incredibly wasteful tricks.  The smoke and mirrors produce a lot of actual smoke.

A rational decision-maker might pause and think, maybe this isn't the best use of those vast amounts of energy.  Maybe our resources ought to be spent making sure we don't kill ourselves off by polluting and altering the climate, here on that one world where we all live.  Maybe we should direct our brightest problem-solving minds toward any of the many pressing problems the planet and its inhabitants are facing.

But that's rational thinking.  Instead, we tech folks imagine a boot so big that we feel compelled to start licking it now.  We pretend that the smoke and mirrors are real thoughts.  A chat bot can pass a standardized test; we might as well entrust it with our life decisions!  We suppose that being good at rearranging words is somehow the same as thinking through plans of action which will have consequences, intended and otherwise.  And we pour all this treasure and energy into what could be the next big thing with the next big profits.  Any other consequence is not worth chasing or even contemplating, apparently.

With 24-hour news cycles, on through social media, and now on through generative content, we've offloaded far too much of our thinking.  We refrain from embracing our own humanity.  Socrates saw the danger right away: the written word truly has gotten us into trouble, letting us shirk our own minds' responsibilities.  It's gone on for so long that human intelligence seems to have fallen out of fashion.

None of this is automatic; everything I've babbled about here is a choice.  Any of us could at any moment turn all this new noise off, and work at rebuilding the living knowledge we've allowed ourselves to lose.  Perhaps ironically, the written word would be one of our best allies in such efforts.

When an interesting question enters my head, I do as many of us do and reach for a search engine.  If it's real knowledge or wisdom I'm after, though, I'm honestly a lot better off if instead I go to a library and do some research the old-fashioned way.  Turning dead words back into human knowledge, without the screens of capitalism running interference, feels novel and refreshing at this point.  Maybe that could catch on.  Much crazier things have happened.

Enduring the Term, Part 1: Protest

If we hope to live in a democratic society, we need to act like citizens of a democratic society.

This last Saturday, millions of Americans across all 50 states participated in "Hands Off" protests.  At least a thousand of us did so near a library right here in Plymouth, Minnesota.  (Realistic estimates I've seen online could be double that, but crowd numbers are not something I obsess over.)  Most of the biggest protests happened at state capitols, including a beautiful event over in St. Paul, but for those of us out in the 'burbs, these satellite protests are great for civic participation without the transportation headaches.

If you haven't been to a protest before, but you're not happy about [insert today's fascist nightmare here], then you need to find one, and attend it.  You are not alone; the crooks strip-mining our civilization just want you to feel like you're alone.

"But I want no part of politics; it's stupid."
"It's just another pendulum swing, there's nothing we can do about it."
"I'm too busy to go to a protest."

None of these are valid excuses.  There are no valid excuses.  Your family, your friends, your city, your nation, don't need your excuses.  They need you to stand up.

A bald eagle flew overhead as we protested.  Most of us, myself included, were not equipped with real cameras, and I was not there to snap pictures anyway, but I did manage to just barely capture the auspicious moment:

It won't win any photo contests, but there's our national bird, gracing us with its inspiring and patriotic presence as we stood united against tyranny.

Using state-of-the-art technology, we can bring out additional detail:

(It should be obvious, but since reality has become more absurd than satire:  The first two images are real, cropped from a photo I took at the Hennepin County Library.  The third image is a little joke.  The sign is spelled correctly and the eagle has the correct number of talons, because I didn't use AI tools.)

Back to the topic at hand - protesting.

You should do it.

Yes, seriously.

Yes, you.

We saw hundreds of signs, and the vast majority of them were hand-made.  It is a vitalizing thing to witness so many local people fed up and fired up, and making the decision not to remain silent about it.  These folks put ink to cardboard, and put themselves on the streets along with their words.  You don't need a sign, you don't even need to chant.  Just being there means you are literally standing up for what is right.

 

Posting online about the harm being done by the fools in power is all well and good, but our message has to exist in the real world too.  (I do see the irony in blogging that.  Have no fear -- I give this same advice to people I physically interact with.)  There is a big difference between scrolling past a political op-ed headline and driving by your community members and neighbors lining the streets in protest.

 

We met and chatted face-to-face with many people from our area, including our state senator.  Living in a democracy, for real, means having nonzero contact with your representatives.  That is its own entire topic unto itself, but the point here is that we were all actively being each other's community.  For us it was a boost to run into the lady from the ballot sheet, and for her it was a boost to see so much engagement from her constituents.

 

Every supportive honk was met with cheers.  The occasional Trumper driving back and forth with their mass-produced lawn sign and their windows rolled up, was peacefully booed and mocked.  Living in a democracy means we the people have a responsibility to participate in local and national politics.  It means protesting, it means debate.  It means showing support, it means showing resistance, and it means showing up.

What did we mean to accomplish?

Why did we bother?

Are the Muskrat and Dictator Don and the forgettable third stooge going to see that millions of citizens have gathered to speak out against their kleptocracy, and suddenly change their ways?  Are the oligarchs going to see the crowds of Americans who are not okay with oligarchy, and then just give up?

 

Of course not.

 

This is about those freaks, but it's not for them.  It's for us.  It's for everybody.  It's for the neighbors as they drive by - they know first-hand that they live in a politically-active community, a neighborhood where people care about each other.  It's for anyone who catches even a few seconds of the news coverage; citizens in every state organized these protests.  1400+ locations, 3,000,000+ people.  It's for the many folks who still somehow think that they "don't have any political stance".  It's about standing up for good, and standing up against evil.  That's not politics, that's basic human decency.  It's real, if (and only if) we make it real, with our selves.

 

The bajillionaires eagerly participate in setting up and/or burning down the agencies and laws that make up our nation.  What's good for them is bad for literally everybody else.  So, if we want to live in a country we can admire or take pride in, we non-bajillionaires need to participate too.  The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing.  This time right now, this is that.

If you've attended protests, rallies, or marches before, keep doing so.

If you haven't, make it a point to go to one.

Do it for yourself; do it for all of us.

Finally, it appears there's one more update on the bald eagle who joined us at the protest.  All that talk of the weaselly Musk-rat appears to have made it hungry:

 

GitLab Pages + NameCheap registrar + Let's Encrypt certs

Nerd Alert:  This post is purely in the hope of saving someone (my future self included) a whole lot of time and anxiety.  It's another one of those really specific combinations that cause trouble, which I keep seeming to find.

The short story:

A Record	@	35.185.44.232
TXT Record	@	gitlab-pages-verification-code=...
A Record	www	35.185.44.232
TXT Record	_gitlab-...-code.www	gitlab-pages-verification-code=...
CNAME Record	www	myusername.gitlab.io.

• mysite.com and www.mysite.com had to be separate domains in GitLab Pages.
• The second TXT record is most of the host value GitLab Pages suggests, but ends at "www".
• That last CNAME record, I had to add after setting up letsencrypt on www.mysite.com.  (There was no such trouble with plain mysite.com.)

GitLab is amazing, its Pages service is wonderful, and its documentation is even mostly pretty good.  NameCheap is what it says on the tin, domain names for not much money.  Its "clever" DNS config is not my favorite, but it's better than how the entire management UI is broken about every odd time I try to use it.  Let's Encrypt (letsencrypt.org) is half of how web certificates should have worked in the first place (the second half is decoupling identity from encryption, but I won't go down that road).

Anyway, GitLab Pages itself says one thing, its documentation says another, and neither match up to NameCheap's DNS tools.  I had a variation of these settings which worked for domain verification but LetsEncrypt still failed.  I never learned what part was mistaken or why either, since no actual errors are reported; the UI and email report literally say "something went wrong".  Gee thanks.  But, the settings above worked, so I'm preserving them in a public place.

My final note, about the CNAME record, makes me wonder whether in 3 months I'll have trouble again when the letsencrypt cert renews.  But, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

OK, that's all.  I hope it saves somebody some headaches!

[edit, some time later: here's a similar table for gitlab+dreamhost]

A Record	@	35.185.44.232
AAAA Record	@	2600:1901:0:7b8a::
TXT Record	@	gitlab-pages-verification-code=...
TXT Record	_gitlab-...-code.www	gitlab-pages-verification-code=...
CNAME Record	www	myusername.gitlab.io.

 

How To Fix: YouTube Videos With Incorrect Aspect Ratio

As I've babbled about before, one of my pet peeves is to find images and videos being displayed incorrectly -- that is, in a shape other than the one for which it was originally created.  Just as the world was starting to settle on 16x9 being the shape of pretty much everything, phones and now even laptops began carving out gruesome holes and corners in their displays, to say nothing of the proliferation of hideous portrait-mode videos...  But, that is a rant for another day.

Today, I'm sharing a hack which takes just a few seconds for fixing the many many YouTube videos floating around (plenty of which are otherwise quite nice) which incorrectly squash or stretch the image.

When you come across such a video, hit F12 or otherwise open your browser's developer tools.  Don't let that phrase frighten you!  The wonderful thing about the web (which corporate bullies at best ignore and at worst go to great lengths to hide) is that there is no meaningful difference between a viewer and a developer.  There never was and never should be.

Use the DOM inspector and element picker to find the <video> element.  YouTube's code updates properties of this element constantly, so making any changes here won't do us any good once we resize the window or use full-screen etc.  So what we want to do is pick the next element upwards in the food chain, the <div> which contains the <video>.  Simple enough!

When we select it, we can see that this <div> element has a few CSS (style) rules already.  We're going to add one as follows:

transform: scalex(0.75) !important;

...And that's it!  You can close the dev tools, toggle fullscreen and back, and the video which was being stretched out will now be presented in its intended, correct shape.

The fine print:

Scaling the X dimension to 75% is a number I pulled out of thin air which happens to look about right for 4:3 images being displayed at 16:9.  Occasionally, you'll encounter videos for which you'll want different values than 0.75, or maybe even to use scaley() instead of scalex().  But most of the time, this is going to be (approximately) the right way to fix a stretched image.

Enduring the Term, Part 0: Doomsday Prepping

The blessing, if we may call it that, about the next four years is that we already know the broad strokes of what's coming.  We can get into the details of the hellscape later, but I'm talking about the parts which will directly repeat Trump's first term.  Loud and repeated lies, every single day, each absurdity building on the last.  That is how fascists and oligarchs grind down our psyches.  It's exhausting.  (It also gives us ammunition for ridicule, but we'll get to that.)

Our job right now is to do some preparation work for our future selves.  Future-us will be assaulted with poison every day.  We will need at our disposal every ounce of balance, every moment of joy, and every coping mechanism we can get our hands on.  The trick will be to turn these into not merely ways of surviving the onslaught, but ways to strengthen and renew ourselves as we go.

Self Care

First things first.  Keep yourself alive.  Keep yourself healthy.

Most Americans don't get enough sleep as it is.  Since the election, I've gone from bad to much worse, sleep-wise.  I don't necessarily advocate tossing pills at our problems, but I have had better luck with them than without them so far.

Listen to your body.  Whatever it is you need to do to maintain your most basic functions, make it routine.  Make it frictionless.  Make it less hassle to do the right thing than not.

It's not just meds and exercise.  Maybe a cupboard door that doesn't quite shut right gives you a bit of micro-annoyance every day.  Maybe that one rug keeps getting smushed under the door.  Fix it.  Change it.  This is the time to experiment.  Draw some new boundaries for yourself.  Remove some old ones.  Bad changes are coming; make some good changes in your own life, however little.  Let them pay dividends.

Set up your future drained self to be just that little bit less drained every day.

Drop the Baggage

Society's emergency safety hatch has blown off the hinges.  If there was a time for half-measures and second-guessing yourself, that time is over.  Our hands are going to get dirty.  We are going to experience a whole slew of things we don't feel ready for.  Believe it or not, though, in some ways, we are over-prepared.

Any clutter you're not sure you want to keep, get rid of.  Any apps on your phone that add more anxiety than value to your life, delete.  Any ritual you've been keeping which is not helping you, let go.  Let go of the baggage in your surroundings and inside your head.

For years I used to refuse to say his name; I was genuinely traumatized.  But in practical terms, I may as well have been cowering in fear.  I was effectively superstitious that saying the name had dark magical powers, like summoning Beetlejuice.  He even ruined the number 45 for me.  That foul-mouthed fucker tainted my own current age!  Well, screw that.  I am not going to dance around the name "Trump".  I am going to spit it out, and I'm going to stomp on it.  I'm not ceding two perfectly fine numbers, either.

The good news is, with the hatch blown, the pressure is off.  We have been carrying around a heavy set of defense mechanisms and elevated behaviors and well-groomed categorized thinking patterns, and none of that will help us now.  Don't get me wrong -- stay civil.  Stay professional at work (in fact, step it up if you can) but, "out in the world", you're going to have to let that armor go.  It didn't protect you, it isolated you.  Those ivory towers we're accused of looking down from?  Time to leave.  We stayed in touch with the facts and the truth, and we lost touch with others.  The isolation was comforting, but it screwed us all.  It's time to drop it.

Joy and Supply Lines

This crazy late-stage capitalist civilization of ours is awful at solving actual real problems.  But it's incredibly good at letting us buy a constant stream of pretty much anything we might want.  We can start there, with something little.  When future-you, battered by nonsense day after day, picks up your mail, let's give them an occasional present.  A monthly selection of mixed nuts, a subscription to a retro gaming magazine, a daily photo of a cloud, there is no judgement here.  Future-you is going to have a lot of truly bad days.  If present-you can help brighten those days, and it doesn't strain your budget, treat yourself.  You will need those little moments.

Maybe money is too tight for more subscriptions, or maybe that's just not your thing.  No problem.  Schedule a monthly/weekly dinner with that couple you said you wanted to hang out with more.  Start a regular video chat with that funny friend who moved away.  Dig up your DVD player and set up your own movie nights.  If your own collection would dry up too quickly, ask around and trade amongst friends.

Most importantly, set up ways and reasons and routines to connect with loved ones.  We need each other, introverts included.  Deliver-to-home subscriptions can help, but robust supply lines need to be a web, a network.  Reinforce your local (offline, real) connections.  Take walks and trade books with your neighbor's little free library.  Or set one up yourself.  Participate in the local stuff.  Farmer's markets, garage sales, performances in the park.  If you have something to bring, bring it.  If you don't, bring yourself.  You are your own best thing to share!  Give the fun little things nearby more room and more influence in your daily life.

Coping Mechanisms

Healthy, unhealthy, we're going to need every means of coping we can get our hands on.  Your primary objective is to survive and keep your spark of light as intact as you can.  The world needs and deserves the good which you contain.  The trick here is to do so in ways which share and amplify your light, in addition to protecting it.  Sealing yourself off in an airtight jar will not help you or anyone else.

Humor

Humor is the best coping mechanism, in my opinion.  It's free, it's contagious, and let's be honest: all of this would be hilarious if it weren't so crushingly sad.  Let your thoughts out.  Make your jokes, good or bad.  Share your humor.  You need it.  We all need it.

The correct reaction to fascism is not fear.  It's mockery.

We don't even need to have quick wits or train ourselves to come up with material on the spot.  Project 2025 is a well-documented horror show of all the disastrous and backwards things they're going to try.  Each one of them (the policies and the people) are absurd and ridiculous.  Get to ridiculing!  These are uniquely dark times, but the general shape remains the same as every other example of GOP jackassery since at least Regan: stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.  It's as ripe as could be for mockery when you say it out loud.  So mock it, out loud.

Some days are going to be very hard, and the humor won't flow from within.  Find and collect some sources that fit for your sensibilities.  Cast a wide net!  We will not get through this unchanged, and your sense of humor is going to change too.  Darker, probably, but our tastes will also react to this sorry world in interesting ways we don't anticipate.

Find something local you can physically attend which will bring humor into your life.  I'm an amateur movie-maker, and I cannot tell you how much richer and more joyous my life is thanks to things like the 48 Hour Film Project and Scream It Off Screen.  It's not all comedy, but that's a good thing.  There's always humor in the process.  The point is, set up a grab-bag containing humor for your future self.  Life will supply the bad surprises; let's supply ourselves and each other with good ones.

Hobbies

Humor is the broadest coping mechanism, and hobbies are the deepest.

I talked about watching and making and sharing movies.  It goes beyond being a source of comedy for me; it's a part of life where I have a voice.  I express a piece of myself when I scribble down an idea or set up a shot or cut a sequence together.  It's not always a piece I'm proud of, and I won't pretend to be a skilled or accomplished artist, but that is not the point.

The point is to pour parts of yourself, consciously or otherwise, into a work or a project.  Or an event, or a performance.  Or a garden.  Or a party.  Or a recipe.  Or a puzzle.  Or a coloring book.  I'm a grown man who spent an hour with a coloring book within the last week, and I don't care who knows it.  We explore, or we retreat.  I say we explore.

Uncertainty and shame, fear of judgement, fear of failure, that's all armor and baggage.  There are things you want to do, and things you will want to do that you don't even realize yet.  Take the plunge.  Do the things.  Abandon the attempts which aren't fulfilling.  Share the results if and when you are ready.  ...No, I take that back.  Share them, period.  Maybe just with your partner.  Maybe just among friends.  Maybe online.  Maybe in a theater.  Not everyone will get it, and not everyone has to.  Share your light.  Whether the nearby surfaces absorb or reflect it is not up to you.

Alcohol

Some of us basically drank our way through 2017-2020.  It's not the best of coping mechanisms, and I don't recommended it for every-day use.  Still, for many of us, realistically, alcohol will be part of surviving this.  That said, don't just drink to forget!  Start conversations; meet the people you see at the liquor store or the bar.  For us introverts, that's tough.  Luckily, the ice breakers are right there.

"What's your beverage?"
"Yep, that's the good stuff!"
"Uff, I got sick on that once and haven't forgiven it yet."
"Ooh, I haven't tried that, paint me a word picture."

It doesn't matter who.  Quick friendly banter when grabbing some booze is a good habit (arguably attached to a bad one, but still).  It shares your light.  It also gives future, ground-up-you some oxygen for your light, in mocking the daily madness.

"I love my country even when my side loses.  Today, I need the beer goggles."
"This ought to get us through today's scandal.  See you tomorrow!"
"Every time Trump says a fictional character talked to him, we take a shot; I better grab another bottle."

What Have We Learned Today?

One of the hardest and most important things we will need to do, for these next four years and beyond, is to listen.  We need to speak to, and connect with, and relate to (and be relatable to) people we have allowed trained ourselves to avoid.  It won't always go well, but it is required of us to make a real effort and meet people where they are.  Their worries and world view are alien to us, and that's bad.  The blame game is unhelpful.  Leave as much of it as you can with the rest of the chucked baggage.

We need to listen.  To everybody.  Even the stupid.  It's going to shock us how much we learn from the stupid.  (I don't like such name-calling, but that's the thing; this is going to be uncomfortable.  Stuff I think and say and write will be wrong.)

What did you learn today?  Make that question routine.  Many nights, we won't like the answer.  Some nights, we will be in such a woeful survival mode that our answer will be "nothing".  No use beating ourselves up over that; we try again tomorrow.  But at the end of the day, every day, ask yourself what you have learned.  Ask your friends too.  Sometimes you'll learn conflicting things.  Your brain will hurt.  Patterns may not emerge in satisfying ways.  But make the habit.  We need it.  We need to learn about each other, about our fellow Americans, and ourselves.

Coming Next

I called this part zero, because I intend to follow up.  I don't know what or when "Part 1" will be.  All the mixed feelings will hit us all in waves, with wildly-varying timings.  We will know what chaos truly feels like.  And we will help each other through it.  There is no other choice.

Optimism?

 Found some optimism!

(they're pot gummies, just to be clear.  it's a joke, and also not.)

don't judge.  in fact, have some.
we are going to need every coping mechanism we can get.

there is good in this world, and it is worth fighting for.
we won't believe that every day.
but it will always be true.

some days, our job will be simply to survive.
some days our job will be to find joy (no time for guilt about it, either.  we need joy).
some days our job will be something we do not know.

grieve.  we have lost something important.
despair, though?  not over them.  they're not worthy.

we stay, and we fight.

if they build a death star, we build a rebel alliance and we blow that shit up.

if they threaten our lives, we threaten theirs.  (i know.  i don't like it either.  get used to not liking things.)

we cannot rid the world of monsters by becoming monsters. we don't pick fights, but we will defend ourselves and each other.

we react to fascists and cultists not with fear, but with mockery.  they are ridiculous, and it's time to ridicule.  hard.  they are stupid, they are cruel, they are wrong, and we will expose them.

pay attention.  even when it hurts.
we are all about to learn a lot.

Happy Halloween!

Witch-o-lantern is one tough case, and got punched squarely in the face.

Little pumpkins grown in our yard, with their flappy boney guard.

Happy Halloween!

Vote. Please and Thank You.

 

Here we go, election time again.

If you're not political and you normally don't vote... first of all, congratulations; there is at least one element of your life about which I am genuinely envious.

But please: if I've ever brought you a chuckle, or a moment of fun curiosity, or have caused (even by accident) some spark of gladness in you, then I am hereby personally asking you for a favor.

Participate in democracy.  Participate in keeping democracy.

Friend of mine, please: cast a vote for Kamala Harris.

There's a lot more on the ballot; I have opinions about those things too, and if you ask me I will gladly babble in depth, but this post is not about that.  Please, do that one thing.  Vote for Harris.  That's the minimum required effort from you (yes you!) to keep this whole American experiment in representative government running.

Please, do me this favor.  Thank you, and take care!

Battle of the Best

The Junk puppets have earned themselves some additional time on the silver screen!  In fact, this time they're headed to a ritzy, historic theater! 

Scream It Off Screen has been hoping to do a best-of, year-in-review show for years, and now it's finally happening!  As luck (and audience cheers) would have it, Chunky Milk has got not one but two short movies in the mix.

For show and ticket information, visit:

https://www.screamitoffscreen.com/battle-of-best 

Santa Won't You Bring Me Some Rum

It's that time of year.  The ice and snow return, the shops are busy, and everywhere you go, repetitive holiday music fills the air.

Well, that ends right here!  My good pal and brother-in-creative-nonviolent-arms, Dave Schwartz, has recorded a holiday song worth taking your fingers out of your ears for.  He then entrusted me with turning it into a music video, which I hope is worth uncovering your eyes for.

Without further adieu:

We wish you a happy holiday season!  May all your milks be chunky.

Junk Puppet Poetry #1

I'll introduce it here the way I introduced it on stage last night at Scream It Off Screen:

A few years ago, I made some puppets out of junk for a 48 Hour Film Project.  (Nowadays, we come here, where the real fun is!)  My buddy Dave had an idea: we should have our junk puppets present public domain poetry!  This first one is a proof-of-concept, it's two short poems, and we hope you enjoy it!

The sold-out theatre of people did indeed enjoy it!  Scream It Off Screen, for the uninitiated, is a monthly cinema gong show in Minneapolis.  We'd heard of it before, but only started attending (and submitting recycled 48HFP movies) in the last year or so.  This time, we showed up with something new, and to my astonished delight, people loved it!  The debut of Junk Puppet Poetry was a resounding success, and won the night by audience applause!

Dave has provided music and ideas (and occasional acting!) for all of Chunky Milk's movies.  He lives in Florida, so I barely ever see him in person.  As it happened, this week he was in the area and able to attend the screening of his latest brainchild.  For eight years I felt like he should win some kind of soundtrack award in the 48, but he never did.  Last night, though, he got to come up on stage with me and be celebrated as a winning filmmaker.

As happened the first time we won a local film festival with a movie starting junk puppets, I've been occasionally bursting into laughter ever since it happened.  The absurdity of it all is delectable.

I'm very thankful for all of our experiences with the 48 Hour Film Project, and it's with fondness that Chunky Milk Productions moves on to our new filmmaking home at Scream It Off Screen.  Both formats have a lot to offer, including cross-pollenation with each other.

And so begins a new series of no-budget shorts!  We will keep making movies of all kinds, but the crowd has spoken: Junk Puppet Poetry is to be continued!

 

Edit:  Just got some pictures from Scream It Off Screen's promotional message...

Behind us: sweet musicians including King on the keyboard!
Lined up with the check: Screamy, Dave, and myself.
In front: The true hero of the night, Zack (Zach?) the waffle man!

One sold-out theater's worth of SIOS audience

 

That was a wild night!  Progress is being made on #2 (possibly to screen at the October SIOS :^)

April Fools!

This winter has been one of those battles at the end of a video game where the big bad, seemingly defeated, just keeps coming back bigger and uglier and wetter and heavier than before.

We woke up to a foot of snow and a giant downed branch in the driveway this morning.  Its tree should live, I hope, but there's a lot less of it now than there was.

I got everything cleared, so we could leave the house today if we really had to.  We were just about down to seeing ground again in most places, but now the driveway trench is right back to shoulder height.  For the moment, it's just a matter of waiting for the plow to come back and make me redo the last few meters.  I suppose we'll see whether there are any additional phases to this winter boss fight after that.

I've got to hand it to Earth's atmosphere: this was a pretty epic April Fool's prank!  It sure got me.

Airquote: "Artificial Intelligence"

ChatGPT and other "deep-learning" programs have made a lot of noise and headlines lately.  As I alluded to in my nopecoin post, I'm very much not on-board with some of the new tricks we're teaching the old dog that is personal computing.

I had the privilege of growing up alongside home computers themselves, as well as the internet.  I remember categorized newsgroups, public web forums, mailing lists, and all sorts of well-thought-out ways for people to connect and share ideas.  So, I've never understood the appeal of this current crop of "social media" giants.  I don't get it.  I so very much don't get it that I don't use any of them.  The closest I come is youtube, which I only touch with a ten-foot pole of browser plugins which disable  the comments, shorts, ads, and most of its other most egregious anti-features.

But, I'm not most people.  Most people go ahead and use facebook/twitter/instagram/whatever, at least to some degree.

Thus, we've let unsupervised and unconsidered algorithms decide which bits of information we see or don't see.  Your facebook/twitter/instagram/whatever feeds are not lists of things you've asked for, they're infinitely-scrolling sets of the items which have been calculated to be the most likely to generate the most profit for the middleman in question.  This has had society-poisoning and democracy-breaking effects, and it should not be surprising that when profits matter more than honesty, things go pear-shaped quickly.

After seeing the messes we get ourselves into when we defer our thinking and sorting to machines (profit machines, specifically), my personal reaction would be to take a step back and reflect, "hm, maybe we need to think this through more carefully".  Instead, we've gone ahead and given these same capitalism bots the ability not to just show and hide and reorder (dis)information, but to literally make things up on the spot.

What?  Why?!

(Well, I know why.  Middlemen need no longer rely solely on their own victicustomers to provide the "content" to shuffle into each others' feeds.)

I'm beginning to feel about AI software the way I feel about guns.  Mechanically, these are fascinating pieces of engineering and ingenuity.  There's both a complexity and a simplicity that is captivating and beautiful.  Also, no thank you!  Decline.  Unsubscribe.  Not in my house.  It claims to be a fun and neutral tool, but I have a very hard time seeing it as anything but a dangerous weapon.

I suspect we'll soon see artificially-generated novels, and movies, and augmented-reality serials.  They'll be amusing enough not to die in the crib.  At nearly no cost, there won't be much reason not to keep trying, even at low points in any fad/zeitgeist cycle.  Entire wikipedias' worth of "information" will come and go and morph and self-refer.  I think that's pretty fascinating, but it also sure looks like authorship, authenticity, and having any basis at all in truth are all up on the chopping block.  Once these things start consuming each others' and their own output as input, we're going to have more messes to clean up than we can deal with.  Based on the current trajectory of our approaches, my guess is we'll try to fight fire with more and more fire.

I worry whether we have much natural intelligence left, let alone what the artificial sort will get up to.

Happy Halloween '22!

Another bizarre year has come and... well, not gone, yet.  My wife and my self have each gained some responsibility at work, which is fine but has thus far come at the cost of free time, something we've never felt an abundance of to begin with.  Then there's been all the other general madness this year, some sprinkles of really great news and some heavy darkness as well.

According to Autumn, this year has been serviceable, though her grievance that Book exists has still gone ignored.

This year's jack-o-lanterns were picked from a bunch that I doodled using my old Halloween Artist program.  Sometimes we shoot for one representing each member of the household, or some other cute theme.  The best we could manage this year was to visualize some of the vague emotions it feels like 2022 has carried our way.

"Smile".  When anyone asks how anyone is doing, words like "fine" and "good" are expected.  Grin and bear it. Things could be worse.  It's fine.  We're fine.

 

"Running on empty".  It's time for such-and-such ...already ...again.

 

"Concern".  What now?  Is that something I can do anything about?  Is that something everyone expects me to do something about?

"The supreme court did what?!"

So, it's been a mixed year at best.  But, we're doing what we can, and doing our best to take better care of ourselves and each other.

We wish you and everybody a happy Halloween!  May you find some joy and some fun and some tasty snacks, and may we all dig deep and find the mojo to do some good.

Incontinuity

My little group of movie-making friends has been putting together shorts for eight years now.  As with most things in life, one gets out of these weekends what one puts in.

These 48-hour events mean stress and sleepless nights for me, but I can't help it.  My outer middle-aged body has valid objections, but my inner child demands the creative outlet, and my inner toddler keeps yelling "again! again!" no matter how tired I get. 

But enough jibber-jabber!  The point of this post is to announce Chunky Milk Productions' latest 48-hour film: "Incontinuity"!

The screening is next Friday at the Parkway Theater if you'd like to be among the first to let this movie amuse and confuse you.  Ours will be one of twelve local made-in-a-weekend short films; my favorite part of this whole process is going to a theater and seeing what everybody came up with!

As usual, we can't share the movie itself until the competition is over, but once we do, I'll share it here as well as on the Chunky Milk Productions website.

On the Importance of Cats, and Why There's No Such Thing

Firstly, the title is not a joke: there's no such thing as cats.  That may seem surprising, and as someone who has loved cats his whole life, I can understand your skepticism.  But I will address that; please be patient.

Secondly, all of this (and all of everything which anybody ever discusses) rest on specific points of view, and specific patterns of how to map our sensed perceptions of "the world out there" into structures our minds can understand.  I'm not talking about "alternative facts" or any similar head-in-the-sand practice of treating fiction as reality.  Quite the contrary.  What I mean is something real, being perceived through multiple valid metaphorical lenses.  What may look to someone like an equal partnership, may look to someone else like a dominant/submissive relationship.  The subjects in question may reject both descriptions, and in fact may each perceive their dynamic uniquely.  These cases, where everyone might be in disagreement are all "right, in a way", serve to illustrate that we all, by necessity, have simplified, rough-cut perspectives.

So, let's begin.

Dogs and cats are wonderful human companions, both with plenty to teach us about ourselves and our societies.  Consider a dog, be it a wild wolf or a so-called purebred puppy.  The creature has an instinctive understanding of hierarchy.  Packs have leaders, alphas.  Being in a pack is better than being alone, so to be in a pack one acts according to the leader's conditioning.  Do something "right", get rewarded, become inclined to keep doing that thing.  Do something "wrong", get punished, become disinclined.  A dog's instincts map out their world into a hierarchical structure.  Substituting a tall, weird-sounding, two-legged animal who shows themselves capable of rewarding "right" and punishing "wrong" for a pack leader is not a great leap for the canine mind.  It's an easy fit for humans too; naturally we want to cuddle and feed a dog who does something cute, or scold them for peeing on the rug.  And indeed many humans have instincts not so far away from a dog's, desiring to be part of a pack, and following alpha two-legged weird-sounding animals of their own.  Society is flecked with these hierarchies, large and small, built with leaders on top.  Chief executives, governors, monarchs, regional managers.  Top-down structure.  I'm about to use a word which carries a lot of baggage, but I mean it only in the literal sense that dogs are big on obedience and chain of command.  Life with dogs is authoritarian.

But society is also composed of chaos.  There is no organizational chart large enough to list every citizen of a small town, let alone a state or continent or planet.  At any moment, many humans are being born with no pecking order among them, and many are dying without upending any "subordinates" or "superiors" they might have recognized.  We each know a handful of people closely, more people less closely, and so on until completely unfamiliar people are some sort of rounded, aggregate statistic.  For people we don't know well, we build a lot of mental sorting buckets.  Artists, car owners, nerds, feminists, Italians, conservatives, MBA's.  These buckets are not without their uses, and in fact many people proudly identify using these sorts of labels.  But many of us give in to the temptation to dismiss entire buckets worth of people.  Hippies, Scientologists, immigrants.  Once the label is there, whether the person announced it, we deduced it, or a leader we follow proclaimed it, we might decide, with no further information, that the labeled person has nothing to offer us, and therefore we can (or even should) ignore or reject them.  You might be able to come up with an example or two where this sort of thing has led to violence.

So what about cats?  All I've been blathering on about is societal structures and human foibles.  All right, I'll discuss cats.  Except there is no such thing.  Cat people (to use a bucket term) know this to be true upon reflection.  You can grow up alongside a cat, love and cuddle and play with them every day of their life.  Know their meows, be soothed by their purrs, read their moods and learn their favorite spots to nap per given time of the day.  All of that is a wonderful bond, but gains you next to nothing towards the next cat you meet.  I knew many cats before meeting one who growls and plays tug of war.  I knew a cat who understood many words, including her name.  I know a fully-grown big chunky cat whose voice never got deeper than a puny squeak.  There is this cat, and that cat, and this one, and that one, but there is no such thing as "cats".

You've probably already guessed that my roundabout point is that there is also no such thing as "people".  There's this person and this person and that person.  Those buckets mentioned earlier are all lies.  Even the ones we enjoy and find helpful -- none of them are real.  So, what can we learn from a lie of a bucket like "cat people"?

A cat's instincts don't use hierarchy, at least not in the way a dog's do.  You can train a dog, but it's said that a cat trains you.  That's a cute idea, and it's close, but the truth is that you and a cat figure out, together, how to coexist.  It's potentially a painful, slow and messy process, compared to "you do as I say".  Feedback is inconsistent, boundaries are never fixed, and sometimes you end up bitten, scratched, and bruised.  But your multi-species family grows, together.  Not because someone in charge says so, but because everybody found ways to make it work.  Are you ready for another charged word?  Life with cats is democratic.

And that's it, right there.  A society whose goals include things like equality, adaptation, and the embrace of diversity has plenty to learn from cats.  Families which include cats are microcosms of our much bigger family.  The global and national and city societal families we're all born to.  "Cats", of which there is no such thing, show us that each person on this planet is exactly that, a person.  You'll never understand them all; they'll do things which amuse and annoy you, and every now and then you'll be gifted a dead animal or step barefoot in some cold barf.  But if you learn from each other, figure out which battles are worth picking and what is workable to allow on each other's terms, you'll find more agency over your own life, and more appreciation for theirs.

Dread

(I started writing this a month or so ago, then decided it was a silly and unnecessary thing to put on the internet.  That may still be true, but here it goes anyway.)

 

The Metroid series has been a favorite of mine, right from the start.  Zelda is more grand, Mario more playful, but no other games get me quite so enthralled.   It doesn't look like much now, but young-me's heart pounded guiding action such as this:

The games are light on story, not especially large or long, but the series always provided plenty of exploration and experimentation, mixed with challenging fights against crazy space monsters.  What's not to love?

There have been some droughts between mainline Metroid games.  Not counting spinoffs (including the also-great Prime games) they were released in 1987, 1991, 1994... then 2002... And that was it, apparently.  Around 2005, there were rumors of another one, named "Metroid Dread", but it never materialized. Generations of gaming hardware came and went.  Then, just months ago, 19 years after the previous Metroid entry, it was finally real.

 

This world of ours is full of stuff that's not what it used to be.  Everything changes, time moves on, but in some primal way, this new game got its hooks in me just as the originals did.  The exploration and experimentation were more detailed and smoother than ever.  The boss fights were challenging, occasionally bordering on cruel for a now middle-aged fan with middle-aged reflexes.  I enjoyed every moment, including the moments I hated.  (I doubt any single game has shown me its "Game Over" screen nearly as many times.)

After my initial adventure, and then diving back in to collect everything, I still wasn't ready to stop playing.  "Hard mode" became available after finishing once.  That just about made me laugh out loud; the last thing any sane person would do is subject themselves to a harder version of the battles I'd just scraped through.  Switching gears, the series has always provided little extra bonuses for finishing the entire game quickly, which I never cared about, because I just like to soak everything in.  But this time, I felt like yes, I could probably get through in under 8 hours.  Just to say I'd done it, and gotten that little bonus.  So, I started another playthrough, aiming for efficiency instead of completeness.  By the late game, I realized I might just be able to come in under the 4-hour mark, let alone 8. If I managed that, I'd get two little bonuses.  ...And so I did.  Another full run completed, in well under 4 hours.  (The game mercifully did not count all the failed and retried battles.)

And again, somehow, Metroid Dread wasn't done with me.  I'd collected every item in the game, several times, and finished it as quickly as it would reward me for.  The only rewards left (truly little things, which anybody can find on the internet) were for finishing hard mode at all, finishing it in under 8 hours, and under 4.  So, I started the adventure again.  On hard mode.  Never mind the boss battles, I got killed just walking around.  I knew where I had to go and what I had to do, but getting it done was right up against the boundaries of what skill and patience I could muster.  As I got closer and closer to the ending sequence, no video game has made me sweat and shake like that since ... Well, since the original Metroid.

  

I did finish hard mode. In just over 3 hours by in-game reckoning. I'm not sure I even want to know how long it would have been including all the retries.  It's been over a week since then, and at last it seems Metroid Dread is a game I could go back to at any time, but I don't feel compelled to revisit again right this minute.

 

(I decided not to post after writing this far.  The internet has plenty of nerds talking about video games.  Since then, a couple more things have happened and I've changed my mind again.)

 

Well, now it's a little bit later still.  An update has been released for Metroid Dread, something none of the previous games on their cartridges could have done.  Two new difficulty options were added added, "Rookie Mode" for those who find difficult games to be difficult, and also "Dread Mode".  There, getting hit by anything - a fast boss attack or a tiny little gnat, means game over.  My initial reaction was the same as to Hard mode.  Nope!  Who would ever do that to themselves?

You know where this is going.  Me.  I did that to myself.  And now, the game does keep track of how long the failed attempts took, and how many times I got killed.  (A few minutes shy of twelve hours, and three hundred thirty-eight times, respectively.)  There are parts of the game where you are hunted by indestructible robots, and if they catch you, even on the easiest settings, you're done for.  That's where the "Dread" in the title comes from.  Those sequences were now the most soothing, relaxing areas of the game.

I will say this.  The bits where I got stuck dying and trying over again and again for the longest, were also some of my favorite moments in the game.  There's a section where everything's catching fire and falling apart.  Touch any mere lick of flame and you're dead.  (Naturally, your prize for surviving this sequence is the Varia armor, which protects you against heat for the rest of the game.)  Soon after that is Kraid, who launches torrents of projectiles at you (just as he did in 1987!).  A few late-game bosses are also very enjoyable, even if they did grind my patience into a fine powder, and the final boss fight is one of my favorite video game encounters full-stop.  At some point during my 338 game-overs, I learned just enough from my mistakes to not repeat them ... at least not quite as often.

 

So why post now?  The world is still full of nerds talking about stuff that doesn't matter.  But the world is also full of scary, awful things.  Russia invaded Ukraine the day I completed Dread mode.  That final boss who killed me over and over for an hour before I finally prevailed ... was a stand-in for Vlad, and 45, and all the other villains this world has on offer.  The sadly-real evil, those who value power or wealth above basic humanity.

There are many, many challenges before each person on this smallish planet.  Some of us have the luxury of accepting entirely optional ones, essentially-trivial challenges of muscle memory and minor problem-solving.  But!  Anything I can do, anybody can do.  For every reckless halfwit whose power eclipses his responsibility, there are millions of us regular people.  Some of us get to choose our battles, and some don't.  But we can all take on much more than seems plausible at first.  Everybody can learn from our mistakes, even the embarrassing or crushing or repeated ones.  Anybody can get themselves in over their head, and yet prevail.  Not for a reward or a prize, but because we feel a connection.  Because something inside us says we should try.

I encourage everybody to take on something that feels impossible.  Something that draws you in despite seeming insurmountable.  Don't worry about where it falls on some ladder of the most important or urgent problems facing the world.  There are billions of us.  We can tackle many challenges at once.  And once you do tackle one, whether you surprise yourself by succeeding or learn why you couldn't, find another challenge, and another.  Don't wait 19 years in between.

NopeCoin

Cryptocurrency has been off the deep end since its inception. NFTs are cancer on cancer, and as in most situations, two wrongs don't make a right.

I therefore hereby propose my own implementation of fake money, and offer up all my digital assets on its own exchange!

My development codename for this currency is "nopecoin', but one of its groundbreaking features is that you don't need to name it at all! Unlike other cryptocurrencies, which use expensive hardware, consume massive amounts of energy and poison the planet, you can mine nopecoin by putting your computer or other fancy internet-connected device to sleep. You will begin to profit immediately. Enrich your life at increased pace by shutting down multiple devices; nopecoin mining is compatible with all computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and overpriced wristwatches.

As for NFTs, you may be pleased to know that you already own all the images, movies, games and other digital junk which I have created over the years and will continue to create. These NFTs are special in that you can sell them over and over as often as you please, simply by giving the files or links to others. No special accounts or apps required. Rather than a search for the next trendseeking sucker, you need only find someone to share a chuckle or smirk or moment of confused frustration with.

This is all coming from someone who fell in love with computers and technology at a very young age. I could barely speak English when I learned Basic. Maybe it was inevitable that the capitalists and scammers would take over computing, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it, or that I won't speak out when I see conmen and their marks hailing the blockchain. This particular emperor is all kinds of naked, and it's an ugly sight.

(If this was all gibberish to you, then keep it that way! You are living life correctly.) 

(If you want to understand crypto and NFT, set aside a couple hours and watch this.)