I haven't really double-checked on whether what i thought Gastown was three months ago is what it still is now. Probably the same thing (agents write a todo list; other agents check off todones) but maybe more I-am-a-slaver-now psychosis on the part of the operator is my guess

Wild that James Urbaniak is voicing a whole nother super scientist with this exact hair+beard combo

"be sure not to crowd the pan," do I look like a guy who wants to wash two pans? or has the patience to use the same pan twice in a row? get back in there

CVS has fixed monthly costs that don't scale up or down with sales, eg, the refrigerators need to run 24/7. That sets a minimum number of customers they need a month to keep operating. If enough people move to Amazon, the CVS closes. Now *everyone* needs to also do Amazon, regardless of preference.

Book length version of this (eg how a lot of outcomes aren't revealed preferences so much as the game theory lose-lose bucket, one case study per chapter) is Tom Slee's "No One Makes You Shop At Wal-Mart"

No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart: The Surprising Decep…

We live in a culture of choice. But, in an age of corpo…

goodreads.com

ryan cooper@ryanlcooper.com · 3d ago

“Aggregate outcomes are not in general or even usually interpretable as an aggregation of individual preferences.” @interfluidity.com www.interfluidity.com/v2/6846.html

never noticed this as a minor/inconsequential leak before, but, if you paste someone's email as a smart chip in a google doc, you get to learn if their company uses google workspace. it'll offer to share the doc with them if and only if they do.

nw: THE NORTHVVAN

i work at youtube, where you can watch anyone who has ever died on camera and get a half dozen neo nazi channels in response to searching “shrek cookie frosting recipe 2026.” please do not use women in our videos unless you’re complaining a brown one got a job somewhere

Sam Cole@samleecole.bsky.social · 5d ago

a bunch of popular ASMR artists lost their channels forever this week, after YouTube cited them for violating terms against "sexually gratifying" content: www.404media.co/youtube-asmr...

#ReaderBot: Brian is a quarter through S. Ascher & E. Pincus's "The Filmmaker's Handbook" and should finish in around 23 days. [Brian's Reading List]

It's fascinating that the arrival of actual AI cyber risks is turning a lot of AI folks against some of the specific safety arguments the industry was founded on nymag.com/intelligence...

agreeing with me is correct backofmind.substack.com/p/there-is-n... (except i am going to somewhat undercut all this and do the kelly criterion writeup that imagines stuff outside the frame, later, after my other blog post is done.)

there is nothing outside the frame

the artificial information environment, again

backofmind.substack.com

Brian Gawalt@brian.gawalt.com · 2w ago

all of this is off-manifold without some notion of the purchase price that's been factored into the payouts. i am really really confident that if you give me control over that price, i can make either one an arbitrary multiple of the risk free rate of return, & i havent even googled that phrase yet

Man-- we could have been watching SIGGRAPH proceedings vhs'es in high school. Like in the famous CRT-on-a-tall-wheeled-out-cart style

VHS Vault@vhsvault.bsky.social · 2w ago

Siggraph 2000 Conference Proccedings Video Tape : 5059s

i thought we were late enough with Claude-voice bits that they'd be all played out. and also i don't really like them. but matt levine got me today, great job

share of people who bought a draw-lottery ticket weekly was around 10% in 2024 www.ncpgambling.org/training/nga...

YouGov@yougov.co.uk · 2w ago

If you had a choice between instantly receiving £50,000 or a 50% chance to win £1m, which would you pick? £50,000: 73% 50/50 chance of winning £1m: 21% yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...

1) this is mostly rational 2) and also why income inequality is expanding. most people have precarious finances and it makes it impossible to take even risks with very high payoffs. 3) an illustration of the declining marginal utility of money which makes inequality so pernicious to human welfare

YouGov@yougov.co.uk · 2w ago

If you had a choice between instantly receiving £50,000 or a 50% chance to win £1m, which would you pick? £50,000: 73% 50/50 chance of winning £1m: 21% yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...

Stonebraker is not happy with existing Text2SQL tooling: cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/if-...

The Futurama theme song is great. I love the tubular bells, it's a great match for "The City Of Tomorrow's Industry Will Involve A Lot of 1950s Gleaming Pipefitting Plants" retrofuturism. Also it is uhhhhhhh presumably quite indebted to www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDmq...

Pierre Henry - Psyché Rock (1967)

YouTube video by Cantabric Sea

youtube.com

Morbo's slugging pct is mid. But he's on my podium on the strength of: - for his first appearance, they recorded LaMarche, then digitally pitched it down - which then irritated LaMarche a la "if you wanted it that low you could have asked" and so he pitched himself down from then on

Chris Vannini@chrisvannini.com · 2w ago

What's a Futurama line that lives forever in your head? Mine is, "Oh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr. I'm My Own Grandpa."

fun fact: when I was doing the audiobook for Will There Ever Be Another You I had to carefully read out the words “oooh Ah Ah Ah Ah” in super slo-mo because it was copyrighted

Dandy G🍌@dangyd.bsky.social · 2w ago

(Solemnly) ooooh wah ah ah ah

"I had a check come in for .08¢ that I debated about keeping uncashed but decided Fuck Disney and cashed it."

Robert Farley@drfarls.bsky.social · 2w ago

Acting 101, by the great Steve Mathis www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/07/acti...

weird. zero hits. anyway, bsky.app/search?q=bus...

Secret Drug Addict@scrtdrugaddict.bsky.social · 2w ago

"no one knows how imax 70 projectors work" is interesting in the same way that "the cobol mainframes are arcane" is interesting. but we have perfectly good cobol-mainframe replacements and no imax 70 replacements, because only one of those two has demand* from which you can recoup investment costs.

Why Aren’t There More Imax 70mm Screens for ‘The Odyssey’? ‘It’s Not Practical,’ Company Says

'The Odyssey' has spiked interest in IMAX70mm showings, but the company explains why building more is 'not practical.'

variety.com

Brian Gawalt@brian.gawalt.com · 2w ago

"people aren't going to the movies as much any more" is one of the longest term trends we have. the downward slope goes back to mass adoption of broadcast v.

just showed this to my third grader because aliasing was foundational to my career

Alan@gammacounter.bsky.social · 3w ago

Helicopter videos with a smartphone are wild

interesting bathroom art at this random restaurant in alabama

interesting, cuz i memory was that "scanner darkly" and "waking life" involved a lot of interpolation: hand trace every third or fourth frame, and then have the computer do the inbetweens

Bloody Disgusting@bloody-disgusting.com · 2w ago

The original TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE is being reimagined with a hand-drawn animated version, brought to life with old school rotoscoping. Every frame will be illustrated by hand, with artists tracing the live-action footage. From Art Director Paul Beck (A Scanner Darkly).

#ReaderBot: Brian has 9 books left on his reading list. He should finish them all by Feb 9, 2027. [Brian's Reading List]

Every time Ginuwine's "Pony" comes up in the polls I am delighted yet again that for some reason they went full Vaughn Oliver 4AD on the sleeve

Peoples Pop Polls: The World Cup Of 1996@peoples-pop-polls.bsky.social · 2w ago

#PPP96 GROUP 41 1 GINUWINE! www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbno... 2 OUTKAST! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktc9... 3 SPICE GIRLS! www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA5j... 4 NEW EDITION! www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE77... Vote! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

im not a lawyer, but i do remember when crank yankers had to record out of NY even though LA would have been way more convenient for them. so the always-on, even in cali, meta smart glasses cameras are confusing to me.