Are you familiar with “analogue horror”? It’s a genre of (mostly) video horror that uses video and audio filters that make it look as if it’s shot on a 1980s or 1990s video camera (or even a 1980s/1990s home camcorder.) That sort of style evokes a lot of nostalgia in 80s/90s kids.

It obviously doesn’t add fidelity to the image to use such filters that blur, add white noise, and add video artifacts like you might see from a malfunctioning VHS player. It removes fidelity.

But it adds a “quaint” and sometimes surreal feeling to the media, particularly for folks who have been exposed to a fair amount of that medium of video. Or even folks who have only been exposed to retro recreations of elements of that medium.

I’m sure something similar is already happening to the brains of the younger generation. They’re forming connections to AI slop. And some day, I have to imagine elements of AI-generated video content will be used – on purpose – in new media to evoke a sense of quaintness, nostalgia, and otherwise “mid-2020’s-ness”.

I don’t think they’ll exclusively use “GenAI” technologies (stable diffusion, Dall-E, etc) to give media that feeling either. It’s weird to think about now, but they’ll probably be make ways to add AI-slop elements in novel ways that the actual GenAI technologies aren’t capable of. (Again, making a connection with VHS-looking filters, I don’t imagine most people making things like analogue horror content today are using actual VHSs and vintage camcorders.)

So, I can agree with your premise, OP, but only with the slight addendum of “for now”.

I hate that this is what the mid-2020s is going to be remembered for, but I guess every decade has something to be embarrassed about. NFTs/blockchain/cryptocurrencies, Beanie Babies, The Macarena, gestures broadly at the 80s, etc. But great things have come out of all of those decades as well.

I was at a farmer’s market with my mother, and there was a butcher there called “Raised Right”. We’d never bought from there before, but we looked at the menu and my mother got really excited when she saw they had tongue available. And I’ve got a pretty adventuresome palate, so I was down. We bought the tongue and cooked it up. Ate it with home-made tzatziki and stuff.

Pretty good stuff. A touch bland, maybe, but you’ll never find a more tender meat. And it’s really cheap. I guess just because people are squeamish.

We got tongue from that butcher several more times. It became a pretty regular thing.

Time passed, we got too lazy to get up early to go to the farmer’s market. We got a hankering for tongue again and found one at Walmart of all places.

It was disgusting. Mushy and stringy. Not at all the same as the farmer’s market butcher. We never did a Walmart tongue again.

Probably to be expected. Walmart’s not exactly the place where you would expect to get quality… well anything, really.

You’re not supposed to eat the skin of the tongue either.

• Be me.
• Apply for job listing that requires Python experience.
• /home/tootsweet/python_projects/python_genius.py
• Called and invited to team interview.
• Arrive dressed like perfect corporate cog, leather binder in hand.
• “Do you know C#?”
• Listing never mentioned C#.
• Me: “No.”
• “We’re switching from Python to C#.”
• Didn’t get the job.

Later worked with former employees of $aforementioned_employer. They have a terrible habit of hiring in droves, only to lay off half their workforce every few years.

'Scuse me while I go pirate 1,000,000 copies of “The Return” by Seb McKinnon.

Jesus. I guess we’re going to have to start figuring out how to reverse engineer our keyboards so we can install QMK on random built-in laptop keyboards and cheap Logitech membrane keyboards to repair the damage Microsoft has done to them.

Tacos, anyone?

Not sure I see the point of impeaching Noem when Trump is right there.

Just some examples of things I’ve printed or plan to. Ones marked with an asterisk (*) at the end are ones I largely or entirely designed myself or plan to largely or entirely design myself. Ones marked with a plus (+) are ones that are half completed. Minuses (-) are ones I haven’t started yet but intend to.

• Wall mounts for Nintendo Switch components (dock, controllers, Joycon charger, etc.) Definite space saver. *
• Wall mount for a Raspberry-Pi-based NAS solution. *
• Parts to augment a computer chassis wall mount for my ridiculously-large chassis. (Yes, there’s a bit of a pattern there.) *
• A custom Raspberry Pi case that mounts nicely and nondestructively to my desk.
• A custom adapter for my drill that let me run the drain in my washing machine when the motor was broken. *
• A custom plate to cover my nightstand clock face so it doesn’t shine in my eyes all night. *
• A custom die for a Sizzix Die Cutting Machine for quilting use. (That one took a lot of work.) *
• A custom tool for precisely bending 16mm steel strapping (which I’d sharpened into a blade) in service to the custom die just above. *
• Custom yarn bowls for my crafty mother. *
• Custom stitch markers for my crafty mother. *
• Custom barrel buttons for my crafty mother. *
• A couple of custom mounts for SAD lamps. *
• Custom shelving for a bathroom. *
• Custom mods for some wire shelving in the same bathroom. *
• Custom mount for a reflector mirror to let me see more with the security camera on my front porch. *
• A tool for straightening 3D-printing filament. *
• Spacers for mounting a peg board on the wall.
• I also had a folding door that broke and got kinda janky. I had a few extra of those peg board spacers, and they turned out coincidentally to be exactly the right size to properly shore up that door.
• Custom shelving for DVDs/Blurays and video games. *+
• A custom shelf-drawer for my mousepad. *-
• A custom 3D printed mechanical keyboard… once I’m done writing the program for rapidly prototyping 3D-printed keyboards. *+

I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch. And the above is only the useful things and excluding the mostly art/fun items.

I have in mind to do more 3D-printing of tools. I don’t have much specifically in mind. But that custom steel strapping bender is pretty cool. Also, some of what I mentioned above is available on my Thingiverse.

Check your spam folder. I don’t know that I’ve ever not received an email I was supposed to have received and found that the spam folder was actually the issue. But it’s still a good idea to check it in case that’s the whole issue.

Because fuck you, that’s why.

• Microsoft

Saved you a click.

On the flip side, you’ve probably met someone who has saved a person’s life.

Oh, I didn’t say I knew how to make that happen.

Democrats when they’re in power promoting places like Puerto Rico and DC into states definitely wouldn’t hurt, though.

Also, theoretically Trump getting less and less popular is probably helping its chances.

And more awareness of the existence of the pact is definitely beneficial.

Whether it’s likely to happen even if the above all happens, who knows.

It’s way past time to get the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to 270.

A song for you.

If you’re a software engineer, memorizing an ASCII table (particularly the hex numbers of each character code) is definitely helpful. If for no other reason than so that you can read things that are randomly written in binary without having to consult a table.

Something not really otherwise terribly useful that nonetheless helped me keep my sanity: learn how to convert to base64 in your head. At work, we had really boring 8-hours-a-day training for a couple of weeks. To pass the time, I came up with random strings to base64 encode in my head. “Hat is 48 61 7a. The first six bits are 010010 which in base64 is an S. The next six bits would be 000110 which in base64 is G.” Etc. I’d write down the base64 strings character by character as I derived them and then check my results for errors when I got back to my desk.

How to convert various units of measurement. (Including between imperial and metric.)

2.54 centimeters in an inch. Degrees Fahrenheit is nine fifths of degrees Celsius plus 32. Stuff like that.

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Oh good. Missouri in the national news again. :\