You might want to turn on this Djokovic match -- insanely high level, now in the fifth set.

Almost got hit by a car today. Was crossing the street in Lisbon, where they let both traffic and pedestrian lights stay red for like 5 seconds. IOW, instead of one light going red, and a second later the other one turns green, they BOTH linger red, presumably for extra safety. But because of that, and because I'm a native born New Yorker, when I see the traffic stopped at a red light, even though I too have a red light, I figure I can go, that it'll be another few seconds before the traffic starts. I timed it wrong, lights must have been red for 4.5 seconds already when I darted into the street, and I had to sprint to avoid the accelerating car. But it goes to show that this kind of safetyism, which not only costs everyone God knows how much time in the aggregate, leads to its opposite. I suppose if everyone complies and waits around like an asshole for as long as it takes the light to turn green, it might work, but throw in some non-compliant NY Gen-X types, and it's the reverse of the intended effect. I exaggerate a little that I almost got hit -- I moved so quickly the car didn't even have to slow down. I was prepared to be wrong when I took the chance. But I did have to book my ass off to avoid having the guy screech the brakes and honk at me.

Went through to delete old voicemails on my phone, like 50 of them over the lastt 6 months. Most of them were some kind of tax/banking/loan emergency or cash windfall I needed to follow up on asap. All of them sounded like real people at real companies/government entities. Realized afterwards that if some ACTUAL govt entity or company needs to warn me about something, can't get through on voicemail, I'd never believe it. As AI gets better at these scams, it'll obsolete email and text for that purpose as well. Snail mail is the last remaining refuge for entities like the IRS, and eventually the scammers will probably figure out a way to kill that too. IOW, the scammers will set us free via plausible deniability.

Last night, while reading in bed, heard the faint buzz of a mosquito. Saw it on the wall few feet above. Tried to smash it with my book, but it got away, went up to the ceiling which is like 12 feet high in this old apartment. There was no way I could turn out the lights and go to bed with it there -- it would torment me all night. What could I do? I saw my ragged old Sudoku book, maybe 80 pages, soft cover, 7 inches by five inches, removed the pen, flipped it up toward the mosquito. Just missed. It moved a couple feet away, still on the ceiling. Heather from the other room (it's now 1 am and for God knows what reason she's still working) yells after hearing the book slap the ceiling and wood floor loudly, saying it's waking up the old guy who lives upstairs. But she's not realizing what's at stake. The mosquito is still there, not moving, I pick up the Sudoku book again, flip it harder in its direction. Boom! The outer sheets slap against it, killing it instantly, falls to the floor. Heather is pissed, comes in, "Now you've woken him up, hear him walking around." Tell her she's underestimating the epic and heroic thing I just achieved. She says she doesn't care. But I'm posting about it here because it was in fact fucking epic. I killed that fucker with a Sudoku with hail mary type of throw, and both of us slept undisturbed as a result.

Lyn Alden's sci-fi book (reads like an action movie script) is pretty good. Wouldn't be surprised if someone optioned it for a series or movie.

People just bounce around from meme to meme, talking point to talking point, dominant narrative to counter-narrative, whatever stance is cool in their particular social and professional spheres at the moment, whatever makes them feel good about themselves, feel like they belong.

Friend of mine who is IMO the best documentary-style podcaster on politics around did a deep dive into the Epstein Files. I found it persuasive, answered a lot of questions, surprised me:

Apple Podcasts

AI2026 Ep 3 - Islands in the Information Stream

Podcast Episode · The Arch Independent · May 8 · 1h 47m

It's a beautiful day. Be grateful to be alive, but this price action is fucking bullshit. Fuck you to all the manipulators, leveraged idiots and rehypothecators. Fuck the communists and delusional ass-lickers who think they'll be exempt because they complied. You'll be the first to be executed, you fucking retards. But seriously, it's a beautiful day, live in the moment, don't worry about any of that.

If you want to safeguard a system from AI, exploit its midwit tendency to assume and overrfit, endlessly theorize and speculate in circles. Feel like you could design a trap for it that a human wouldn't fall for. Much harder to design something that could fool both.

AI is just a midwit — all theory, no experience — with infinite information, patience and work ethic. We are nowhere close to super intelligence.

fuckin' Claude crashed my Mac:

If you're waiting for conditions to improve in order to be happy you probably won't be in the unlikely event they actually do. If you are happy under your current conditions, they will probably improve, but it won't change things that much for you.

worst part about vibe-coding with Claude is it'll use an old file, make changes to it, then you upload and replace and don't realize what happened until you're fixing the same bugs you already fixed. Surprised it's that poor at recognizing it.

It's chilly and cloudy out, but I'm going to the fucking track even though I don't feel like it because the GOATs go when they don't feel like it, and I'm the GOAT when it comes to running two 10:30 miles.

Interesting that certain sports can theoretically get stuck in infinite loops. Baseball has two-strike foul balls that can go on forever, tennis can have infinite lets. Like if you simulated an infinite number of games, some would never get past the first batter/point. Would be great to tell thr grandkids you spent a year at the infinite let match.