Notes from July 2026
2026-07-01
#Mastodon
I wanted to mute the #WorldCup hashtag here but timely, however, I can do this only up to 1 week. Is there a reason why more is not supported? One month would would work better for me. I might forget if I go with forever.
I realised that Fedi is niche enough for Esperanto to be a thing here. I'll start with the hashtag and we'll see.
Creating a custom keyboard layout in Ubuntu -- actually Debian, probably -- looks easy, too. Should be a case of creative copy-paste.
Creating, creative -- you can see what I did there.
That urge to read a book as fast as possible and as slow as possible at the same time.
2026-07-02
It's funny how people can still sense the AI work. It's giving me hope.
"Does it run Doom" is a very special tribute to id Software. It's like a programmatic monument.
If I minimise a window before making it active first, Ubuntu loses which desktop it's assigned to and shows me it in the Alt-Tab rotation in every workspace. Not sure if not a bug. I am pretty certain that it didn't happen before 26.04. But, whatever; now I know, so I can act accordingly.
Act accordingly. That's what I always do.
POLES: "Fuck articles. Just give us more consonants."
Seven likes here. Will I ever top that?
2026-07-03
When the Internet becomes unusable, I will have my collection of books to read, and CDs to listen to, and some retro games to play. I found a niche where I can be a doomsday prepper, too.
2026-07-04
I lost most of my smell during the great covid lockdowns. I'm gonna put it like that in my autobiography.
When I park my car and I'm preparing to get out, I listen to a currently playing song, to time pulling the handbrake and unfastening my belt to the beat of the song. Every single time.
(This is like a post out of @fesshole, to be honest.)
Gemini: The bitter end
A follow-up to this.
After a month with Gemini, I have more insight. And I don't like it in the end. I find it kicking me out of my train of thought. I am thinking about *what* to write when Gemini steps in to tell me *how* to write. Having ADHD, I get distracted with non-essential technicalities. It would be cool if this kind of "help" could be activated later on demand. As is, it sucks. It sucks hard.
2026-07-05
Wikipedia: The bitter end
A follow up to "On Wikipedia donations".
It took me almost a month, but I just wrote them an email. I opened with my reasons. Let's see how it goes.
One day later...
My monthly donation has been cancelled. They replied back to my reasons, but I will read them later to see what they came up with. It's the first time I did something like that.
Well. I once wrote Spotify why they can go bite their own asses, but it was in a resignation form, and there has never been any reaction to it. The response part is new to me.
I realised only now that the first two movies were starting with "The Naked Gun," while the third one only with "Naked Gun." Why? WHY?
I am slowly getting with my website to where I wanted from the beginning: for it to become an ergodic and maze-like network of interconnected pages. I was adding June 2026 notes, and when I finished, I did a couple of jumps between various internal links. I know at least one person that will appreciate it in the future. Me.
2026-07-07
Is there a greater sentence opener than "So,"? So, no, there is not.
I recall hearing on the radio once that China had to scale down their growth before, because they were burning too much coal and it became unsustainable. This was before electricity was invented. And when I see all those data centres still not materialising, then I think we might be witnessing a similar thing with the AI.
On ordering CDs from Bandcamp
A follow-up to this.
An interesting thing: I get emails about it from Bandcamp itself, not the seller.
Another interesting thing: I understood I would get it on July 14th, or earlier, but the email from Bandcamp itself informed me that it's going to be August 17th. Or earlier.
But maybe it was supposed to be sent up to July 14th. No matter. I'm a patient beast.
Bandcamp itself might be playing it safe, because I have just received a tracking link with information that it should arrive within a couple of days. Perfect.
I like pixel art, because you can zoom in and see where each pixel is. It's like being in a museum and getting closer to paintings to see all the brush strokes. I am fascinated with gradients, of course, but a moment ago, I was studying how a towel wrapped around girl's head was done. With just a handful of pixels.
2026-07-08
Potential findings when you walk your dogs
Me and my dogs, we're checking a new route, and there is something wrapped up in tarp there, and the dogs bark at it a lot. It's in a very secluded area, far from prying eyes of any pedestrian, and I started wondering if it's not a dead homeless person in it. Or maybe abandoned drug shipment. Oh, the dilemmas you have when you walk your dogs.
Also: if there is a route, sooner or later, we the dog owners will take it; no dilemma here.
Two days earlier, we saw a fox on that road. It saw us, too, and ran away. Foxes are the rarest to see in the area.
I just checked, and I have seen 58 movies and 32 shows this year so far. That's more than I expected to find. However, only 3 books. I also have notes on 12 games; there were probably more played, because of Pico-8 and modern console games, but I don't have any database to run these queries.
Explain that to me as if I was Michael Scott.
As I was returning from my 4-km morning walk, I was passing a gym and looked at people there, sweating and getting all worked up, and then at me, and I thought that it's like in this "Rogue One" meme. A peaceful life.
Why does the pendulum has to go back and forth so much? But that's a wrong question. Because it will. Always. How to adjust to that? Now, that's the question.
2026-07-09
It is uncanny to me how much I absorb the writing style of books I read at any given moment. It feels weird when I read my old notes later and they're like written by someone else, stylewise. I always have this temptation to edit it to match The Current Style. But I refrain myself, as the whole point is to preserve the style too, not only notes. The medium is the message, or something like that.
I feel like I'm overusing "so" as a sentence opener. I will work on it now.
Perhaps, I could swap it to Maltese "mela?" If they can get away with it, then so can I.
When I see what Cormac McCarthy is doing with language in his latest book, I find it comforting. There are no rules. You set the rules. As long as people understand you, you're good to go. The rest is a personal flavour. A watermark.
The 2020s: A Decade When We Finally Forego Series Finales.
2026-07-10
I think I should join a webring. With my smolweb homepage, I feel it would be a great match for my presence on the Internet. I'm lost to Google and others, anyway.
One hour later...
Season 4 of "Halt And Catch Fire" covered the early Internet era, before there were search engines. Gordon and Joe's company was trying to build a catalogue of new pages that were popping up every day. They failed, but when I was watching it, I thought that in the world of slopified search results, it could catch up again.
Well, guess what. Someone did it. Here: https://earlyweblinks.com
Initiatives like that give me hope for the future of the Internet. Our Internet.
I submitted my page. I'll need to check this webring kind of thing later.
Bonnie Tyler passed away yesterday.
A side-note: I learned about that from trending hashtags here, which would mean that Mastodon becomes more useful news-wise. Good.
In Polish media, in news about someone's death, they always use black-n-white photos of that person. As a result, whenever I see someone's black-n-white photo, my first thought is that they died. Works for avatars, as well.
Are those Meta glasses doing well sales-wise? Or is it another dud like their VR system?
This new translation of "Odyssey" looks pretty approachable. I might buy it.
(New as in, Emily Wilson's from 2017.)
"Send me your prompt instead."
2026-07-11
Corridor
"Corridor" (2010) is a Swedish low-budget thriller about a young med student who gets into a relationship with his neighbour upstairs. What he doesn't know is that her boyfriend's part of the package. The early-digital quality reminded me of music videoclips from the early 2000s and David Lynch's "Inland Empire". Technology marched on and this kind of picture is no more. Maybe it'll return, like pseudo VHS did. I liked that the student wasn't playing a hero; it made him more relatable.
Akira
"Akira" (1988) got a 4K version and returned to cinemas, and I couldn't let it pass. It's been years since I saw it last time, and the memory distorted. Even the hospital scene with plush toys terrorising Tetsuo played out differently. This time I appreciated the soundtrack and the world-building more. The world's very bladerunneresque. Cyberpunk scenery-wise but without hackers. The plot also got old pretty well.
An after reflection is that "Stranger Things" borrowed a lot from "Akira," as well. Gifted children with numbers on their arms held in a military research complex? Yeah, it's all here.
Maybe I should read the manga.
Amateur
"Amateur" (1994) is another art-house movie with Martin Donovan and Elina Löwensohn, very much like "Nadja" from the same year. I suspect a collective here. Anyway. An amnesiac wakes in an alley and walks into the first café where he meets a former nun living from writing pornographic stories. She takes him in to her place and starts helping him. At the same time, a porn actress trying to get away from the industry tells us the opposite site of the story.
What I found interesting was that while the movie has all the elements of a thriller -- a troubled main character with a dark past, a femme fatale, two killers, and a bunch of typical subplots -- the way it's all shown makes it something uniquely different.
Plot-wise, it fell along the lines of "The Tourist", a show about a man waking up in Australia and having no memory of himself. Or anything else, for that matter.
2026-07-12
I requested to follow someone here a year ago, and now I got thumbed-up. I left a personal note with the date but not the reason. And now I don't remember. Kids, always note the reason down. Otherwise, you'll be dying of curiosity.
Of course, not literally die.
2026-07-13
And my first Bandcamp CD has arrived.
And they managed before July 14th.
Pink Floyd tribute band concert
Yesterday we went for a concert of Im-Pulse, a Pink Floyd tribute band from Spain. I counted 11 different guitars, which was an indicator that they're gonna be good. And they were, reproducing the sound as close to the actual thing as possible. I didn't have a Pink Floyd concert on my bingo card, so this was really nice. You could hear the vocalist's thick Spanish accent when he was talking between songs, but it was completely gone in songs.
At one point, big but light balls were released into the audience, and people were bumping them between each other.
I am on the fence with animations played in the background, as they were AI-generated ones and from the bad ones. Like DALL-E but animated. At times it would create surreal vibe, which was kind of fitting, but they would often slide into cringe. At the end, I was not looking at them at all.
Apart from all those guitars, they also had a keyboardist, a saxophonist, and two chorus girls. The saxophone allowed me to predict when are they going to perform "Money". We could say I was right on the money with that one. The girls mostly did backing, but they really showed their lungs in "The Great Gig In The Sky".
In general, you could hear they've been doing it for a while and that they have utmost respect for the source material. I can watch tribute bands like that any time of a day.
I could also write about cockroaches.
(If it feels random, don't worry. It's a message for myself when I'm copying my posts to my page. I will find it then and create a more persistent CTA.)
Sam Neil passed away.
Sometimes I will say that something is very brave, but what I will be really thinking is that it's stupid.
I was writing about my previous dog yesterday. And today, in the morning, I had a dream where I was leaving him, alone, outside the house, because I had to drive somewhere and I couldn't take him with me. The plan was that I would come back for him when I could. Then I woke up feeling genuinely devastated, as if I really abandoned him. Funny how grief works.
I think now that in the dream, he looked at me with a mix of uncertainty and anxiety in his eyes, but also with hope that maybe he's misconstruing it, as if it was all a misunderstanding.
2026-07-15
Hydrozagadka
For a hot Summer Sunday, I decided to see "Hydrozagadka" ("Hydro-Riddle," I think I saw somewhere), a superhero pastiche from 1971. Ace is tasked with finding out what happens to disappearing water which leads him to a Bond-villain-like plot from Doctor Stain and maharajah of Kabur. The funniest thing is its atmosphere; though, you gotta know the realities of the 1970s Poland.
The creators didn't have budget left for credits, so an actress reads them in a theatrical manner at the beginning.
I downloaded the movie from YouTube and I wanted to link it now, but it's gone. Remember, kids, to always download movies from YouTube. It saves you ads and sometimes the movie itself, as we could see now.
The Great (Season 3)
Season 3 of "The Great" is its last. The show was cancelled after that. I have to admit that the beginning was dragging a little, but midway through it turned around. Count Orlo was literally shot off in the first episode and some new characters were introduced (like the new head of army; excellent pick). Doctor Vinadel and Maxim, Marial's 12-year-old husband, got more screen time and expanded arcs. The ending is not a cliffhanger this time, so it makes sense to watch the series till the end.
Special credits go to Belinda Bromilow for her role of Elizabeth. She was amazing as this aloof yet savvy aunt who survived the court for decades. And the actress definitely had fun playing her character. As the other actors too, e.g, mentioned earlier Henry Meredith, who marvellously played Maxim, and Jacob Fortune-Lloyd who effortlessly gives us Petrov. I don't think you can make a show like that if you don't have fun with it.
In the Hand of Dante
"In the Hand of Dante" (2026) is Julian Schnabel's adaptation of Nick Tosches' book of the same title. It tells a story of a heist to steal the manuscript of "The Divine Comedy". The modern times are in black-n-white 16:9, while Dante's past is 4:3 and in a deliberate palette of colours. I liked Nick's voice-over, which gave me hints that it's gotta be based on a book. The heist part is there and all the elements are there, but it feels more like a pretext for another story.
The name of Julian Schnabel didn't tell me anything at first, but then it sounded familiar, so I checked and found that he was behind "Basquiat", which I've seen this year. He might have known Nick Tosches, too.
I liked Gerald Butler as a mob hitman. The actor definitely had fun playing him. If anything, he reminded me of a character from a stage play, not movie.
And because the action is partially set in Italy and revolves around art, the black-n-white section reminded me of "Ripley."
30 Rock (Season 1)
When it came to picking up a new comedy show for my weekend coffees, "30 Rock" dropped on Netflix. I've seen the show in various screenshots over the years, so I decided to close the knowledge gap on it. A story about producers of a live show, which generally reminded me of "Seinfeld's" premise, that is comedians doing their things. A good sitcom requires good characters, and I liked them all, but mostly Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) and Kenneth. Alec Baldwin is having a field day here.
Kenneth might turn out to be a black horse of the show. It is hinted by Donaghy himself who says at one point that, "this man will either be our boss or kill us all."
And it's interesting to see Jane Krakowski. I didn't think she did much after "Ally McBeal." Well, she did.
However, the mainest character is Liz Lemon played by the show creator, Tina Fey. It's the first time I see her. She creates a relatable character, probably more than Jerry Seinfeld, who didn't have much actual drama.
Project Hail Mary
"Project Hail Mary" (2026) tells a story of a scientist stranded on a rocket far away from Earth; to not give away too much. I managed to not know anything more than that, and it gave me a couple of surprises. As based on a book from Andy Weir of "The Martian" fame, the movie has a strong scientific backdrop. It is my kind of science-fiction. For most of the time, it's Ryan Gosling's monodrama; kind of topical to this writer: a single hero, alone, in space.
When I saw the tags attached to the movie, I was a bit concerned about it being "heartwarming", as often it's a cheap cliché in the spirit of Hallmark, but I'm glad I didn't get discouraged. Yes, it was heartwarming, but in a good way.
Ninja Kamui (Season 1)
"Ninja Kamui" is an Adult Swim anime about a dystopian world where technology meets ninjas. Ninjas understood as members of a very specific ancient organisation. It's 6/10 for me, with unevenly delivered plot. It starts okay, then it seems it's mostly fight, then it gets better, but the ending is again average. I had to force myself a little to finish it. It does have some nice moments, but it takes determination to get to all of them. There is going to be seasons 2 and even 3, but I might skip it.
However, there was an interesting thing. While "Lazarus" felt like a 1990s cop show, this anime was like a videogame. The excuse of the plot but with strong characters and over-the-top action sequences. This was all like a game. A particular game. "Furi". To which I returned by episode 8, I think. Therefore, I don't regret watching the anime.
The funny thing is that there is a game set in the show's world, but it's a 2D game in likeness of "X2: Wolverine's Revenge".
Dekalog
Inspired by the "Three Colours" trilogy, we continue with Krzysztof Kieślowski. This time we went with a series based on the Decalogue. An anthology set in the late 1980s in Poland that tells 10 different stories relating to the Ten Commandments. And because each episode is its own thing, I decided to treat it like 10 short movies. Which they are.
Hence, a thread.
Playing LinkedIn games at the doctor's waiting room. Someone checked my profile, and I wanted to see who, and I stayed playing their games. I used to play them regularly, but they kept adding them until it was too much. There's like six, seven? I know I don't have to play them all. But still. It made me lose interest.
But in actuality, it was when they added sudoku mini, and that one game could have been played elsewhere, so I ended up playing a full 9×9 sudoku for the next couple of months.
A post from Rob Ricci
Release version 1.0, cowards
2026-07-16
I stopped following news recently. I could stand almost everything without emotional burden, but when things started to get too stupid, that was too much for me. I watch videos about astronomy and architecture and retro-gaming and Doom; not necessarily in this order. I realise that it's a comfort that not everyone can afford -- not following the news -- but not much stems from my watching anyway.
"You can skip reading news and be uninformed or read them and be misinformed." (Denzel Washington)
Well, I do follow the topic of AI. It's as stupid as politics but also work-related. So I have to.
A post from Izzy
This is how I work
2026-07-17
Note: There was a repost from Dave Rahardja here, but in a form of four images and I decided to extract the text from them and store here: "PLEASE USE AI".
Claude writes code for us and CodeRabbit reviews it. It feels more and more unhinged with every passing day.
#MastodonApp
It would work for me if my post was not published immediately but displayed to me as a preview. I could spot stuff to fix and post it only then.
I recall this idea from Bluesky, from a discussion about why there was no edit option there. To some, it's a dangerous tool of abuse. Never happened to me, but I'm not a target of abuse to anyone. Anyway. Someone said in the discussion that editing typos is a thing, and someone else replied with that idea.
Why there is no edit option on Bluesky? Because it would break the blockchain. This is what happens when crypto people design a social network protocol.
I just learned that the theory where originally people were used in "The Matrix" as processor units and not batteries, and that it was dropped after unsuccessful test screenings, is just a rumour. But I would like to see it as evolution of the story. As in, 27 years later, we know that the battery explanation could be improved. It's a new context. It would also explain some stuff better.
2026-07-18
Dracula 3000
"Dracula 3000" (2004) is a B-horror which is a loose adaptation of Bram Stoker's book but set in space. In the year 3000. Let's admit it: it's a bad movie. The production is low-budget, the plot is so-and-so, one-liners are beyond salvage and additionally butchered by the cast. And yet. I had fun. I heard it was not "so bad that it's actually good", but in my opinion it was bad enough to become good on its own terms. If you're a movie buff, you might get something out of it.
(Well, well, well. Nobody used the #Dracula3000 hashtag before me here. And by here, I mean my specific combination of federations. Fedi is big, so who knows.)
The movie is so bad that I'm not gonna mark most of the spoilers.
The outline of the plot is not that bad. A salvage ship with a crew of six gets a signal from an abandoned ship. They dock to it and go aboard and start finding out what happened. It looks like the action is anchored in the sail journey from Transylvania to England from the book. There is no crew whatsoever, which would be a creepy setting in a good movie. Not here though. Even a shadowy figure moving fast in the foreground didn't help.
An interesting solution that must have been cost-saving was using a real *sea* ship for the shooting. On one hand, it doesn't look anything like a spaceship; there are even bottles, etc., that probably were there. On the other hand, it doesn't look as cheap as made-up scenery with their budget would have done. And they had a lot of corridors to shoot. And a ship that was lost for 50 years would be in a rather desolate state. So, overall, I think this one's on the cooler side.
Despite its B category, there are actually four big names here. Sort of big. The first is Udo Kier who is the original captain and he's present in the action through his video logs; logs that the salvage crew doesn't really see that much. Then we have Casper Van Dien, of "Starship Troopers" fame, as a descendant of Abraham Van Helsing. Thirdly, there is Erika Eleniak from "Baywatch." And finally, Coolio the rapper as a notorious drug user. And yet, they act as if they didn't care, save for Kier.
And then, at some point, finally, Dracula shows up. He's named Dracula in the ship computer, but he introduces himself as Orlock. Like in "Nosferatu." But he's not bald. In fact, he looks like from a cartoon, in a cape with a collar up and black hair licked to the back. And he speaks theatrically. Granted, I don't know how I would behave if I was hundreds-years-old, but still. Not something you'd expect to see in space.
And speaking of Dracula -- spoiler ahead! -- there is no final fight with him. He chases the characters around the ship, killing two thirds of the already skeleton crew, but they manage to reroute the ship to fly into a sun instead of heading towards Earth. Very honourable. Two characters decide to have sex while waiting for that to happen [sic!], and the next thing we see is the ship exploding very briefly, immediately followed by credits. :D
There are two twists, though, that I can appreciate. First, when it turns out that Dracula didn't change Aurora (Erika Eleniak) into a vampire, she's incapacitated until she admits that she's actually a narc robot sent to investigate the crew. And second, when Abraham Van Helsing gets converted into a vampire and killed soon after. You'd think he and good ol' Drac would like to settle some unfinished business. But not in a B-move, they don't.
And that's it. I drank three beers during these 83 minutes and I had fun. Wait till the very end, because there is a scene after the credits. A cherry on top. An icing on the cake. Fitting the whole movie perfectly.
There's no good way to translate "Evil Dead" into Polish, so what we have is basically "Dead Evil" translated. Martwe zło.
Spanish cinemas are loud. Not only do people eat crunchy stuff, but the movies' volume is high. I left the theatre after "Castle in the Sky" fatigued and decided on the spot that I would get professional noise cancelling headphones. Like ones they use on construction sites, etc. I have already seen "Akira" like that, and it was fantastic. I am sitting in a cinema now, waiting for "Odyssey," and I put the headphones on, and the sensation is amazing. So soothing. Relaxing.
A post from Fesshole
Small developer with quite a well known hardware product. I occasionally release optional firmware updates that have no changes, as no fixes are required, just to appear like we offer good end user support, release notes claim performance improvement or memory footprint reduction
2026-07-19
The Odyssey
"The Odyssey" (2026) is an epic adaptation of the famous Homer's epic poem. Apparently, Christopher Nolan wanted to do this film for 15 years. There are a lot of famous actors here, but somehow those are the same names as in another movies. Kind of a sad spot we're in. But anyway. I liked the non-linear structure and the sheer scale of it all. It really is epic. I've seen a lot of criticisms about the movie, and they're all stupid. Go see it for yourself. Now I want to read the book.
Just hours before seeing the film, I've read that the odyssey has been done as if it was a Viking saga. And I couldn't unsee it. The colour palette is indeed closer to the North of Europe than the Mediterranean Sea. With exception for Calypso's island maybe. I am not bothered by it in the slightest, as I consider this an adaptation of a myth, so any historic accuracy is just icing on the cake. And I'm there for the cake in the first place.
Some stupid things that the movie was criticised with: that the language is too modern and they should use the 19th century English, as if it was closer to the 8th century B.C.; that Elliot Page is not warriory enough; that Helen is black -- this might be the stupidest of them all, but it's funny how we're all, collectively, arguing again about Helen of Troy :D; that there are no gods, apart of Athena who might just be Odysseus's hallucination. There's probably more. But, fuck the critics.
As a side-note. I liked the Trojan horse. They usually make it stand on all four legs and a bit crude in shape, which I can understand for practical reasons. But here it's on its hind legs and really beautiful. And that makes much more sense for something that's supposed to be a gift. Why would Troy accept this clumsily made horse? But this one here? Easily.
And finally, the film's Argos resembled my dog that died this year, so scenes with him, especially the one where Odysseus returns home and greets his dog which recognises him and dies, landed really heavy for me.
The Public Woman
"The Public Woman" (1984) from Andrzej Żuławski is a film telling a story of a woman who acts as a nude model for hire but moves to acting. Then things got weird. I had trouble following what the plot is about. Midway through, a criminal subplot emerged and it was somewhat more comprehensible. I learned from the Wiki after the movie that it was about losing track of what's real and what's not. In that aspect, they succeeded. :D
I really liked this blurring of reality and fiction, though. Yeah, I caught that to a degree on my own. So, there is a number of scenes where characters talk to each other and we suddenly learn that this was a movie being shot, because the camera zooms out and shows in-story camera and crew.
Also, an observation. The main character spends a lot of time naked, almost as if this was some sort of the director's fixation. While some of it might be explained, a lot cannot. Oh Andrzej, you dog.
GOG Patrons
Yesterday, I found out there is "Furi" demake as an 8-bit 2D game. Sadly, it only has the first boss, but it was so cheap that it doesn't matter. Also, I realised after buying it. Maybe one day they will make all. Anyway. I bought it on GOG and noticed there's "Electro Man" for free. I used to know it as "Electro Body" and played a lot on my PC, so I took it. Then I noticed "Citadel" remaster for free as well and took it too. And this started something.
First I played "Citadel" a bit. I was upset there was no gamepad support, but it turned out that the PlayStation Classic gamepad I had already plugged in took over from the Xbox one that I connected later. BTW, playing with keyboard and mouse feels so weird for me now. I don't wanna return to that. The immersion sucks. It also felt like an Amiga FPS. I played 5 of them a month ago and I didn't realise they had so consistent vibe until I saw "Citadel."
But to the point. I noticed that the game was made "2026 Ready" as a part of GOG Patrons programme. Now, I heard about it before. There is this game titled "Perfect Assassin" which is bad by all accounts but I really like it. I played it once and I've seen walkthrough on YouTube a decade ago and I started watching blind playthrough of another YouTuber recently. And then I found there's a preservation entry for this game on GOG Patrons. I left my story there and forgot about it.
Some time later, I got an email with appreciation of my story and a proposal to join GOG Patrons to help with this whole preservation. But, as said before, "Perfect Assassin" is a bad game and I doubted it would get enough votes. No way. I still doubt it. So I dismissed it.
But now I got "Citadel" for free and the game gave me fun despite confusing mazelike levels, so I decided to become a GOG Patron. I had freed funds from supporting Wiki after their shenanigans, so why not. If I'm to get more "Citadels", I'm up for it.
My computer froze, the graphic card again, while I was typing my previous message here. After restarting the computer and opening Mastodon, the message was there. I don't know who to thank, Mastodon itself or Firefox the browser, but nice.
[edit] Since publishing it, I had to delete and re-draft the message, as the tag was wrong, so at this point, it's the next message. Thank you and sorry for any inconvenience.
#MastodonApp
An idea for improvement. When I click "Add personal note" and it opens the modal, the focus should be on the text field. Like, I opened that option to type the note.
#Pico8 #Mastodon
It would be cool if Mastodon web client, and possibly others too, would allow embeding Pico-8 games. After all, they're saved as small-sized images. Sharing your game here would be childishly easy.
2026-07-21
Situation: You username is taken.
Centralised social media: That's it. Game over. Add numbers to your desired username. Or an underscore.
Decentralised social network: Go to another instance where the username is free.
2026-07-22
Enjoy your meal
"Enjoy your meal" always sounded to me like a vaguely concealed threat. Enjoy your meal 'cause it might be your last. So usually I don't tell people to enjoy their meals. "Bon appétit", however, works for me sometimes if I have to wish it to anyone.
There is a stoic angle to it, though. Enjoy your meal, for it may be your last. It reminds me of these Zen monks who would turn their teacup upside down before going to sleep, because they had no certainty they would wake up the next day and they would have no use for the cup. A meditation on your own death. But this is not something that should be enforced on people.
2026-07-23
Maybe I'm a slow reader, but those time-to-read metrics attached to many articles are just way too low. I would have to rush or even skim through the text to make it in this time. 🤷♂️
2026-07-25
Emmanuelle (2024)
"Emmanuelle" (2024) is a film from the series about *that* Emanuelle. It is, however, a reboot, so no need to see any earlier films. Alright, so this is an erotic movie. Right? Well, in a very ancient sense, it is. Emmanuelle has some erotic encounters, but few and in between of weird, Lost-in-Translation-like wandering here and there, mostly in the hotel that she's auditing. As for an erotic movie, there is surprisingly little sensuality. It is a movie for nobody.
I have seen only the 1974 "Emmanuelle" before, so I could compare it only against this film. There is a sex scene on the plane, though plays out differently. It's probably the only scene I remember, apart from the one with an Asian stripper smoking a cigarette with her butt, a scene which is absent this time. A shame, really. But even by the year 2000 standards, the 1974 movie was not very exciting. It was the first porn in cinema, as far as I remember; otherwise, it would be forgotten.
Alright. But can a movie buff can take anything out of it? Are there any redeeming qualities? Well, yes. If we forego that it's supposed to be an erotic movie -- or even a romantic drama [sic!] as HBO Max tags it -- then it's not as terrible. Emmanuelle has this washed-out inertia about her where she lives a comfortable life but finds herself not really up to it. Judging from her call with her mother where she tries to convince her daughter that she has a good life, it has been going on for a while already.
And then, the setting. There is something about hotels. Let me paste here a quote from a material about liminal spaces that I have seen in August 2024:
"I really enjoy just existing in hotels. The Long Identical Hallways. The Soulless Abstract art, the Weird noises the air conditioner makes. Strange City Lights in The Window. Six Stories off the ground. Strangers chatting in the hall: Nothing in the dresser. No past, but an infinite present."
If Emmanuelle was auditing hotels for living, then she might have felt trapped in this tasteless infinite present. When she finally -- spoiler alert! -- breaks out of it, she goes to the opposite scenery. Chungking Mansions. Tight, intensely dense habitation packed with people. She's finally free. She's outside. This marks two parts of the story: she starts trapped in liminal space and ends in the messy but real world. There was a potential for something else, but they tried to make it erotic. :D
I don't think that the director intentionally tried to allude to liminal-space aesthetics. It's just that liminal spaces extract this vibe from hotel-like places. A coincidence. That said, there is one scene where Emmanuelle tries to follow a man she's fascinated with and she ends up in a hotel pool that looks like taken out of the Poolrooms, one of the sub-aesthetics of liminal spaces. One scene wonder, really. But fits perfectly.
There are interesting characters in the film. But not too many. There is the hotel manager (Naomi Watts) who's doing her best. There is an escort girl using the hotel as her hunting ground; with a tacit permission from the said hotel manager. And then, there is a mysterious man whom Emmanuelle saw on the airplane in the beginning. She has quite interesting interactions with all three. And really, there was the potential there.
This falls under an observation that I've read a couple of years ago. Films don't really need erotic scenes. There are a couple of exceptions, but largely, just don't. In the 1970s, maybe there was room for groundbreaking in these regards, but the revolution happened, even followed by evolution. We have porn streaming services and whoever wants to see some action can do that. Emmanuelle without erotic scenes sounds like out of place, but this is where we are.
And finally, the finale felt random and abrupt. In the light of what I just wrote and read at the same time, I can see what it tried to achieve, but no. And the funny thing is that on paper it doesn't sound bad: Emmanuelle has sex with Kei's (the mysterious man) friend, who doesn't speak English, so Kei needs to translate for Emmanuelle. She tells what the friend should be doing to her and Kei repeats that. Reminds of a similar thing from James Ballard's "Crash".
So, to summarise. There was potential, there were solid characters, there were really carefully selected visuals and aesthetics, but in the end it was a dud. Not sure I can recommend it. The movie has its appeal, but not the way it intends.
2026-07-26
Kiki's Delivery Service
"Kiki's Delivery Service" (1989) is Studio Ghibli's anime. 'Nuff said. The plot follows the structure that we could have seen in "My Neighbour Totoro", with a very long introduction taking almost the whole movie and the action starting only for the finale. I suppose it works better for kids. There is no villain here and instead we have an accident with a zeppelin. It's a very comfy watching. I wasn't planning on seeing it again, but you don't say no to Ghibli in cinema.
For some reason, Kiki has been renamed in Spain to Nicky.
If you're interested in an adult movie with a very long introduction, compared to the actual action, go see 2000's "Sexy Beast". But, like, not *adult* in this sense. It's a gangster movie.
But, coming back to Kiki and Studio Ghibli, I have to remark how marvellously they catch the essence of Europeness. The buildings, the clothes, the vehicles, etc. All that screams Europe to me. And yet, it doesn't resemble anything specific. The town from "Kiki's Delivery Service" feels vaguely Portuguese, but this could be because I've never been to Portugal. Kind of sad that this kind of external perspective on something is dubbed appropriation and fought off these days.
One moment later...
Now I'm reading that it was supposed to be Stockholm. :D In my defence, I have never been to Sweden either, let alone Stockholm. But the point still stands. They know how to capture the spirit of the place with an outsider eye.
Node activated. Level complete. #TheChaosEngine
2026-07-28
There are a couple of movies that I saw in just the right moment of my life to like them more than their quality would justify this. Kind of fascinating. We know there is no objective way to rank movies, because a lot depends on the viewer, but it's not only person-dependent but also time-dependent.
I suspect that a lot of so-called hidden gems, as well as many movies with cult following, are just movies that landed slightly before its time. All more reason to reach out for older and less known films. You never know. This also makes reviews at-the-time less valuable. I like to read them *after* seeing the film to compare how perceptions changed.
Spider-Man
For reasons that are not important now, I have avoided Spider-Man movies for years. Decades even. I made an exception for 2012 and 2014 movies. And then there were MCU movies where he guest-starred. But generally, I was in the dark. This changed this week, because my daughter asked me to take her for the newest one to cinema, and I decided that I don't wanna go blindly.
Hence, the thread.
2026-07-29
GOG is coming to Linux, and I might try it on my work laptop.
I read that the AI companies buy old books and scan them while destroying in the process. So, rare books are now disappearing irreversibly, because they will be accessible only through AI slop that was produced with them. This saddens me gravely. At the same time, I cannot do anything about it. Which further overwhelms me.
(They destroy books because it's faster like that. There is no intent, but this doesn't change how I feel. On some levels, it's even worse. But on other, equally evil levels.)
As IT support at my company, I am often a password manager to the people I support. They keep losing them all the time.
2026-07-30
Superman (2025)
"Superman" (2025) is another attempt at bringing the Man of Steel to the big screen. I think it's a difficult character to adapt, because Superman himself is a bit of an outdated boy scout. But James Gunn knows his shit. The film starts in medias res; there are no origins or anything. Even the subplot with stopping the war is served to us in a dialogue. After a bit wonky opening, the film gets better. It strongly feels like old DC comics. Which I can appreciate.
I was not that eager to see it, but I saw Krypto the dog on a trailer and this got my attention. Generally, by the late 1980s, DC killed off all these Super Dogs and Super Boys and Super Girls that were plaguing their comics. Since then it was mostly Super Man. There was a smart introduction of Super Girl in "The Flash" (2023), but Gunn was like, "Fuck it." And he went with an actual dog in a cape. Bold move.
Watching the film side by side with Tom Holland's Spider-Man allowed me to see the difference between Spidey and Supe. DC seems to be more detached from our world. They have their own countries and metahumans are centered less about mutations. Their powers are often inherent, which places them closer to the European comic. Only a little, but still.
David Corenswet as Superman looks very much like Henry Cavill, just younger. Not necessarily a bad thing. It looks like Superman has a very distinct looks which are not subject to any modernisation. Even the suit is blantantly 1940s, with red underpants slightly loosely hanging off the rest. As shameless as Krypto.
Nathan Fillon plays a jerky-idiot version of Green Lantern. Zero respect here, but somehow it makes him more realistic?
I didn't know Mr Terrific, and it's such a good character.
Lex Luthor is played by Nicholas Hoult whom I just saw in "The Great", and he kind of plays a similarly grandeur character. Although, Lex Luthor is more competent. The opening where he dictates Ultraman what moves to do to successfully fight off Superman was a brilliant way of showing his obsession with Supe.
Ultraman's initial look reminded me of Doomsday when he showed up first in the 1990s. Defo not a coincidence.
Do I recommend the film? Hell no. It's a classic comic-book adaptation and it's done craftly, but I feel as if I outgrew this type of stories. If you like it, you don't need my recommendation. If you don't like it then go watch something else.
Now I am curious about the follow-up "Supergirl", because it's set in space and reminded me of "Guardians of the Galaxy", James Gunn opus magnum. And we're gonna get Lobo too. So. I needed to see this film for the broader context.
Because yes, Krypto is Supergirl's dog. Which I found a smart way of introducing it to the film without making it too campy. Krypto's just passing by.
I am glad that neither Tom Holland's Spider-Man, Robert Pattinson's Batman, nor David Corenswet's Superman have their origin stories shown. By now, it should be common knowledge enough, and it allows plots to jump into more interesting stories than retelling the same old shit every reboot. Yes, they all lost their parents or parent figures and it shaped them. But you can show it indirectly. And so is done in those newest movies.
The Sandman (Season 2)
"The Sandman" season 2 picks up after Dream recovered symbols of his office and the realm, but it kicks off new stories. Season 1 was a bit mediocre to me, which is why it took me so long to get to this one. And how wrong I was, because season 2 is better in my opinion. I really liked the visual side of the world created here. I wish I could write more, but I realised that it's so good that you just need to see it.
Kudos to Tom Sturridge for playing Morpheus. Since season 1, I liked his soft-spoken way of delivering all the dialogues. I couldn't really pinpoint the specifics of it. Until it hit me in episode 3 of the second season. Dream is like a spoiled brat. His voice is not accepting no, which makes it hard for him to talk to his peers. Then Dream matures, however, to surprise of everyone and his own denial.
I'm glad the Corinthian returned. He always had this laid-back vibe to him. And this time he's a good guy.
The interpretations of the Endless, Dream and his siblings, reminded me of Jeff Goldblum's Grandmaster from MCU. How do you play someone who's centuries old? It would seem that they're old. But if you're that old, then we're off any point of reference. And let's not forget that a lot of old-age behaviour is due to body getting old. If you could maintain a thirty or 40-year-old body, how would you behave at age of thousands years? Anyone's guess's good.
I once wrote a book and the style and type of plot was compared to Neil Gaiman, which probably explains why I feel so much like at home with his creations. Therefore, I can strongly recommend it but probably shouldn't. It's like my personal favourite food.
Too bad that all the shows were cancelled now due to the allegations. I checked on the Wiki that nothing has materialised from those. But the shows are gone.
Trip to Pueblo
Yesterday, we drove to our pueblo to visit a shop with geek stuff. I don't know how to describe it otherwise. A lot of Funko Pops but also actual old toys dating back to He-Man. There are also actual console games, on cartridges and CDs, which I missed the first time I was there. I'm something of a retrogamer myself now, so this interested me more. But I don't have devices. Nor time to play. But actually, I think it's about priorities.
On the way back we stepped into a shop with hats and caps like older men used to wear to their suits. And also T-shirts, because hats are not enough in the Summer. One T-shirt caught my eye. New Order. Blue Monday. I really love this song. The T-shirt's from this breathing material used for sport clothing. Unusual choice. And there's a typo, too: "How dose it feel?" But in total, it charmed me. "Excellent choice," the middle-aged shop proprietor told me as I was paying.
2026-07-31
I survived three nights at Freddie's. Then I had to drive to the airport.
A post from Roland Meyer
Ideologically, generative AI is a 19th century technology: the flawed dream that once you have assembled a supposedly total archive of culture via technical media, you can use it to statistically derive new meaning from patterns of the past