Notes from September 2026
2026-09-01
Meanwhile in Quake. This door opens elsewhere.
Soundbar remote
My dog ate my soundbar remote. It happens with younger dogs. She actually damaged the case only, with buttons and diode and the circuit inside left intact. At least she had that much decency. The remote worked but looked bad. So my wife ordered a replacement. Looks identical but misses the Creative logo. The remote came and it doesn't work. :D Pressing the buttons doesn't trigger anything. Even when I put the batteries in. So I put the old circuit inside. It was my point of interest anyway. Works.
Although. They used some sort of cheap plastic and when I was opening it, I tore off the latches and now it doesn't close fully. I'll need to glue it. I hadn't opened the previous remote and I don't expect this one either. If I ever need to get to the circuit again, I'll just obliterate the case. But I hope the dog will come through.
2026-09-02
A new kind of captcha. It showed me a QR code that I'm supposed to scan and click in the link. I scanned it out of curiosity to see the URL and discarded afterwards. The link was to recaptcha.net. After refreshing the page it showed me the usual "pick up all the bicycles from the images below".
Getting into an Internet discussion with the goal of convincing the other side to your point is a very stupid motivation.
2026-09-04
I gather that ZenDesk's name was meant to be ironic.
2026-09-05
Follow up to "Wikipedia: The bitter end".
I have never read what they replied. I guess I moved on much faster than I though I would have.
2026-09-06
Melancholia
Lars von Trier's "Melancholia" (2011) is a film about the end of the world. Which we learn from the very un-Trier opening, so there is no hope in this regard. Then the usual story of a woman crushed by the society kicks in. Then we move to the second, more private part with only a handful of characters. I was impressed with the astronomic nature of the world-ending event. Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg were good as sisters.
The Whisper Man
My wife wanted to see a typical thriller and "The Whisper Man" just dropped, so we went with it. It's a classic harlancobenesque type of story where each twist dictates the next one and the plot is there to serve them, not the other way around. The only kind of fun here is trying to predict where the story will go. If you guess right, you win. If don't, you have a surprise. But you forget the whole thing as soon as credits starts rolling on the screen.
There's Robert De Niro and Adam Scott, as father and son, and I hope they'll make now interesting films with the money they earned on this one.
But there was one thing I liked. The Girl In The Sweater that the main character's son sees. It's unclear if it's a ghost or a figment of his imagination or what. Because she tells him things that he shouldn't know. It's not explained fully, only hinted where did he took her looks from. But that's not enough to salvage this production.
Foundation (Season 2)
"Foundation" season 2 picks up the moment season 1 ended. Which was over 180 years later after the plot anyway. As for such a big jump, a substantial number of characters make their return. There are new ones too, of course. In general, the first season felt more scientific while the second one is more adventurous. Hober Mallow is practically Han Solo in disguise. It's not bad, just taking a note on the shift of mood.
As I understand, the show takes huge liberties with the original books. But somehow they made it work to the point that I don't see many disowns from Foundation fans. This makes me want to read books more, as I expect to find something completely different to what I saw. We'll see. The five books landed on my wishlist.
The Drama
I thought that "The Drama" (2026) is a sort of cheesy love story and I steered clear of it. But then I read it's a thin veil only and that it quickly becomes something completely different. And it did. It's a fresh thing, so no spoilers, but it was an interesting commentary. However, I don't know, maybe there's something off with me, or maybe it's a cultural thing not relatable to people outside of the US, but I didn't feel Charlie's drama at all. Like, man, get over it.
The wedding part made me wish I've seen this film and Lars von Trier's "Melancholia" on the same weekend. They kind of interlock interestingly.
Aniara
"Aniara" (2018) is a Swedish science-fiction film telling a story of a spaceship that gets off its course and loses its fuel and starts drifting off. Pretty soon it becomes clear that there is no rescue coming and the people on board are on their own. The story is very bleak and has no happy end, but at the same time it has a lot of humanity in it. Thanks to large time jumps, we can follow the overall degradation. Kind of like "Threads" in space. Very much recommended.
The whole setup as well as how it unfolds resembles "Avenue 5" a lot. The show was comedic and focused a lot on corporate aspects, something absent here. But they face similar technical problems. I couldn't find if "Aniara" was an inspiration for the show or it's just a coincidence, but it makes watching both things an interesting experience.
A smart move was to shoot "Aniara" in objects like shopping malls, hotels, or bowling alleys, with only some outside renders of the ship and starts outside of few windows there were. It made the whole thing relatable. Kind of similar to what "Dracula 3000" did.
Because the technical aspects were not so relevant here, there just is gravity onboard. This is fine. This kind of story feels more like a spiritual successor to people getting stranded on a sea ship than Star Wars. Which also had gravity onboard, by the way.
While "Avenue 5" felt inspired by covid-times cruisers with people stuck on them for weeks, "Aniara" predates those. I guess there was always a risk that something goes wrong and people cannot leave. We could have seen with the Usonian aircraft carriers recently that you don't need a long time for things go awry. People were suicidal there after "mere" 250 days. Both "Avenue 5" and "Aniara" had months if not years of being stranded. As such, it's a horror story. You don't need monsters.
2026-09-08
On having opinions
Having an opinion is exhausting. Expressing it is even worse, as you end up defending it. And you end up defending it, because if you express an opinion then someone will take it very personally. Only problems with it. So, I'm gonna let the stream of events flow through me and I'm gonna observe it and yes, have some sort of views on those things but not shape them into actual opinions, let alone share them.
2026-09-11
Bloodthirsty chess
This week I won a chess game when the opponent gave up. For a moment it felt fifty-fifty, but then things turned around and I started clearing the board of the other side's pieces. And then, when he had just the king and a rook, the guy gave up. I won, but I was disappointed. I wanted to destroy him. There was a risk that I would blew it, as I still often make stupid mistakes, but it left me a bit discontent with it. An observation about myself.
A novel idea -- an idea coming from a rather short book.
2026-09-12
Clarice
"Clarice" is a series based on Thomas Harris's "The Silence of the Lambs". I say based because it's a sequel to it, happening after Buffalo Bill has been killed. Clarice is assigned to a new taskforce that's supposed to investigate a new serial killer. Only some things don't add up in the case. The show has TV quality and while it was refreshing to see a procedural like that after a while, it was rather a mediocre experience. But they tried.
Due to intellectual property, the creators could not use the character of Hannibal Lecter, just like Bryan Fuller couldn't use Clarice in his "Hannibal". Lecter is mentioned a couple of times, though never by his name, merely alluded to. However, "The Silence of the Lambs" is squeezed to its full extent. All the characters from the book get their roles expanded: Paul Krendel, Clarice's friend, the abducted girl and her mother.
Paul Krendel, who was an asshole in "Hannibal", until his brain got eaten, starts here as rather an unpleasant guy, stiff and prejudiced towards Clarice, but soon turns around and shows many qualities. I found him very relatable to. There are of course many new characters, like an older agent or a young sniper-turned-agent, and they all build a good team. It would be interesting to see how their relations would evolve.
There were some future arcs started, like the disappeared sister of the older agent above or Clarice's friend Ardelia and Black Coalition and how Black people were treated by the bureau itself. But we won't see that. I am not surprised, as the show was a bit uneven and verging on the average. All in all, a fine watch but not much more.
General plot development spoiler: The series was a bit too harlancobenesque for my taste, focused too much on action and less on characters, and sometimes sacrificing them for the sake of twists. It starts as a serial killer, but then it's a hired hitman, and then it's a Big Pharma company -- at which point it resembles series about Oxycontin -- and then it's again more a serial killer just different than at the beginning. I mean, too much. Too much.
But the finale's gruesomeness felt very much in line with Thomas Harris's books. If I only had to give thumbs up or thumbs down, I would go with up. But it would be a very faint up.
And the episode with paralysed Clarice. Adult horror.
2026-09-13
Automata
"Automata" is a 2014 sci-fi film about a very bleak and dystopian future. The world is dying and robots were created to help us with it but they ended up doing work for us. The robots were limited with two principles (inspired by the three laws of robotics), but at the beginning of the film the main character, an insurance inspector, discovers that some robots found a workaround for that. This starts an avalanche of events.
First thing that hit me was that I had no idea this film existed. Here I go having a good opinion about myself and suddenly there's an unknown film like that. It doesn't have very good opinions but that never stopped me from watching anything. I have to agree that it's largely a concoction of motifs from other sci-fi stories. But I'm equally interested in worldbuilding and that is excellent here. It's like Blade Runner but without neons. Everything's just crap. And there's no hope in sight.
The film was shot in Bulgaria and it gave the world kind of brutalistic and kind of post-communist vibe. The colour palette vaguely reminded me of "Immortel Ad Vitam". The story's closer to "I, Robot" though. And the robots here are robots. They're humanoid but don't look anything like Blade Runner replicants. The plot is pushed by the robot producer being concerned that the robots will be able to repair themselves and that will be bad for business.
Even in the end-of-the-world capitalism, the greatest sin you can commit is being bad for business.
Cast is nice: Antonio Banderas, Robert Forster, Melanie Griffiths, and the voice of Javier Bardem. And some English goons for the enforcers.
I like the motif where the robots would take off their face/mask as a symbol of shedding off their role of being a tool for humans. And AI evolving to the point where people can no longer understand it and have to shut it down got old quite well.
While it starts like a dystopian sci-fi, the finale in the desert had strong Western vibes. A Western but with robots. And not like Westworld.
Blow Out
"Blow Out" is a 1982 thriller from Brian De Palma. The idea was inspired by "Blowup" where a photographer accidentally took a picture of a murder. Here we have a sound technician recording wind for a film (within the film) who captures an accident. Or was it an accident? It's a pretty faithful homage in spirit, although the story was expanded and with more characters. There was some silliness by today's standards but generally it's a solid position.
There were some points of interest here.
Firstly, due to the sound technician job character, we can see a lot of details of filmmaking process. Mostly around the sound aspect. We can see how the sound technician records them, how he stores them -- there's a huge cabinet of tapes, as well as a lot of equipment used. For people interested in filmmaking itself it's a bit of wow. Especially that it's no longer done like that. It doubles as a history trip.
Secondly, there is a character of Burke who is a cold-blooded killer orchestrating bad things in the film. He reminded me of Anton Chigurh to an extent. Also because he goes off the script on his own. I always keep in mind that "No Old Country For Old Men" was conceived as a screenplay and it would be unlikely to see a Javier-Bardem-like characterisation of Chigurh had the film been shot in the actual 1980s. John Lithgow's performance gave me an idea about that.
Criminal Law
"Criminal Law" is a 1988 thriller with Gary Oldman and Kevin Bacon playing, accordingly, a lawyer and a serial killer. It's not a spoiler, because the killer admits it pretty early in the story. Then he drags the lawyer into a weird game. Not a bad idea, but the film is not good. Gary Oldman shows class and Kevin Bacon is good too. But in the end it doesn't really click. It reminded me of "Body of Evidence" with Madonna and Willem Defoe. A reminder that that past hides some more "Whisper Men" than we remember.
Remember or are aware of. I really like Gary Oldman and I was surprised that I have never heard of this one. Turns out it's just bad. I still had fun but because I am a film maniac so it's really hard to put me off completely. And then I started thinking that if a film was bad then, back in the days, it wouldn't be played in TV. If I choose to see it now then that's on me. But if they played it in the primetime back then, that could cost TV stations ad revenue or something. And so, many films were lost.
Tardy
"Tardy" is a short adventure game that looks like inspired by old, probably Sierra games. To be honest, it's more like a game with series of puzzles wrapped into adventure game's clothes. Which I'm fine with. We follow a series of places -- or rooms -- and we have to solve all the puzzles in each to move to another one. We never go back. That's why I thought of Sierra games. Not that I played them, only know it from other people's recollections.
Audiovisually it's very appealing, with lovely pixel art and relaxing electronic music. Playing a point-and-click game with a gamepad was new to me -- if we don't count a beginning of "Perfect Assassin" -- but it was fine. The strangest thing is that it wasn't really that needed. You can walk but there's no reason to. Each point of interest has an icon and we can rotate through them with D-pad. So I guess it's there for the climate. :D
The plot is maybe a bit standard one but it served its purpose. A space rascal, hibernation pods, a war between Empire and Confederacy, a hologram of a girl. It's all there. (No spoilers!) While I was figuring out the main twist and got quite close, it still managed to surprise me.
The game is quite short. Some reviewers held it against it, but I needed quite a short game so it worked for me just fine.
Sea of Solitude: The Director's Cut
"Sea of Solitude: The Director's Cut" is an indie game about emotions. I think. We play as Kay who is, save for red eyes, completely black and dressed in a fur-like or feather-like clothes. We start in a boat and we sail to a submerged town centre where we have to relive scenes from her life presented as monsters. Makes more sense in the context. It's relatively short and straightforward. Not necessarily my thing. I bought it primarily for my daughter. But it was okay.
I would say that treating "Sea of Solitude" as a game is probably doing it a bit of disservice. While nominally there are game mechanics here, I would treat it more like an experience. Indie creators sometimes call it mood pieces. It also falls in line with Kitty Horrorshow idea for games. But maybe it is my concept of game that is too narrow, while games are evolving into something more. Anyway. There are some challenges here, but they aren't that challenging. You might die but you get respawned very close and lose no progress. If anything, it reminded me of "The Stanley Parable" which was not a game and just used game mechanics to present a narrative. That's not a bad thing and it's not a criticism. But if you're looking for a challenging game, that ain't it. Dialogues between Kay and monsters happening in parallel to the gameplay reminded me of "Ghost Runner".
That said, the game is beautiful and well done. It also had potential for nice exploration but there is not much reason to do that. There is a side-game of collecting bottles with messages and another one with finding and chasing away 32 seagulls. You can replay any chosen segment after finishing the game and that might be the replay value here, actually. To find all the seagulls. I will probably not do that, though.
The level of details and the role of light vaguely reminded me of "Sky: Children of the Light".
The Ghost in the Shell (Season 1)
"The Ghost in the Shell" is a 2026 anime which is a new adaptation of a famous manga that gave us the 1995 classic sci-fi which inspired "The Matrix", among other films. I haven't read the manga but it's supposed to be more faithful than the film. It definitely is longer. And sillier. Something I did not expect from GITS. The plot is all over the place and I had trouble following it at times; interesting experience.
Visually it's stunning. I have read Masamune Shirow's "Appleseed" and I am aware of his style. And the series does it justice. There is also a grain filter that makes it look like a production out of the 1980s.
It was also interesting watch for someone who knows the film almost by heart, because I could have seen all the scenes that were selected to tell the story in 1995.
No Man's Sky
Shall we? Go to the thread here.
2026-09-14
Funny thing. I went on to play "Dead Cells" casually and I killed the Hand of the King for the second time and ended up with two Boss Cells. I managed to beef my character up to the point where it was a curb-stomp battle. Then the game gave me the cursed sword and I lost all the collected cells soon after. :D I mean, I knew it would go down like that, so no hard feelings.
2026-09-17
Blue Velvet
Tidal suggested me a deluxe edition of "Blue Velvet" soundtrack. And it sounds like music that could be used in Star Wars. And I mean it in a neutral way. I outgrew Star Wars but kept the sentiment. It's just no one makes film music like that anymore, unless maybe when they try to style it like that. But even then it sounds more modern. So, a nice time travel for me. Thank you, music. Thank you, Angelo Badalamenti.
Which reminds me. I created a comic when I was younger and there was a ship and the ship needed a name and I picked up the first CD I found and took a name from the tracklist there and named the ship like that. It was called Badalamenti.
2026-09-19
A phone for me.
2026-09-21
My parents are visiting, and I don't watch almost anything. I managed to see one "30 Rock" episode since they came. But I have time to play a lot. A paradox. All while walking a lot and doing chess with Duolingo regularly.
LinkedIn offers got extremely long descriptions. You need to scroll a lot before reaching the requirements. All about their company culture, etc. All AI-generated. I haven't had a look at those in a year or so, and I can see the difference very well.
2026-09-22
On a newly emerged writing style
Sometimes I see a text that's written so well that I want to write in its style. Immediately. It's fascinating that a human can have a sense of genuine pleasure from reading a combination of words. But well, it's been a while with us by now.
There is a growing popularity -- judging by my own feeling only -- of a certain format of social media posts.
Where every sentence has its own line.
With punches delivered separately.
I used to see it a lot.
On 4Chan.
Screenshots, of course.
I would never myself.
But now it's everywhere.
Twitter.
Facebook.
Even LinkedIn today.
I guess the problem of most of these is that this format can work well for a short post, but not for something that would be long on its own.
But, so, yeah, I think I could give it a spin to but rather with really short stories. It's not a bad format, just misused while being abused at the same time. A well-balanced mix of narrative and poetry. But well. We'll see. I only had a spark now.
On writing style in isolation
Because I went all-in into "No Man's Sky", I stopped reading, and I noticed that my writing style started changing again. Could be that it's my natural style. But I still read stuff, like articles, just shorter. So I cannot say that I am isolated. That could be an interesting experiment, actually. To take a complete break from text for a while and then write something to see what shape it takes.
Another thing is that returning from read books doesn't mean going back to the same place you were before. You return changed. Maybe transformed, maybe slightly adjusted. I used to learn other programming languages to pick up on different ways of doing things and enrich my skills in my main programming language. Yeah, the monads. I suppose it's important to read many different things to not get trapped in any particular style.
2026-09-23
Performative reading at the airport.
2026-09-26
Nostalgic walk
I'm in Malta. After seeing a long-not-seen friend, I walked back to the hotel and took the long way, which brought back a lot of memories. All this wandering after dark. One of the things that I always liked was that if you stand in the dead of night on a piece of land intruding into the sea from where you don't see much of urban landscape, it feels like staring into an endless and impenetrable void. Which I find oddly comforting. Being confronted with one big nothingness and being okay with it.
For lunch two days ago I took boneless chicken. This way it couldn't attack me.
No one is masking up on the airport. When I landed, there was one person. But that's it.
2026-09-28
Cormac McCarthy, "Stella Maris"
Cormac McCarthy's "Stella Maris" is a companion book to "The Passenger". As is, it reminded me of the letters from Johnny Truant's mother from "House of Leaves". While the other book tells mostly the story of Bobby Western, this one covers his sister. A transcript of seven sessions with a psyhologist shed new light on some details. As well as offer a small mindfuck that puzzles many people over the Internet.
But before we get to the mindfuck. Alicia has many insights on mathematics and psychology and a very graphic description of what happens when you drown yourself. It all falls into harsh realities depicted in Cormac McCarthy's books. I read on Wikipedia that the book is like a drama but without annotations. It's only dialogue. And yet, it reads very well.
"The Passenger" and "Stella Maris" spoiler: The mindfuck in question is that it's not clear what is going on. It could be that in "The Passenger" Alicia's dead and in "Stella Maris" Bobby's dead, and it's like a quantum physics where something is on two states at the same time. Or Bobby didn't end braindead in coma and woke up by "The Passenger" to find Alicia committed suicide. Or "The Passenger" is a dying dream, which would explain things not really adding up.
I need to read up more on this.
I realised recently that reading about how there's slop everywhere is not good for me. So I'll stop. Not much I can do about it. And I get the picture, so I don't need any more examples of it. I had a similar run-in with Elon Musk and the war in Iran.
After a rather modern book, I decided to read something really dated and went with "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" from Edgar Allan Poe. His only novel. I thought it was a pinnacle, but it was actually the other way: he abandoned long form in favour of short stories. Well, anyway. You can expect more flowery writing style in my posts until the next book.
Now. It's debatable how modern "The Passenger" and "Stella Maris" are, because while they were released in 2023, they were started in the 1980s. If not earlier. That is still over a hundred of years of difference as "The Narrative" was published in 1838.
2026-09-29
I like to be the first person to read a given book. That's why libraries are not so appealing to me. Those books've been read time and time again.
I'm in a riad in Fez, and it's so quiet that it's ringing in my ears.
I took Hawaiian shirts to Fez, but upon arriving I realised that it's not a good fit. Luckily, I had other options packed too. It was but a jape, to come off as a tourist, but I'll switch to blending in more from tomorrow on. I'll wear jeans, too. But it's too hot for shoes.
A curious thing. There are many people in the streets who try to guide us somewhere else. They claim that we're going in the wrong direction and try to steer us another way. One guy told us there is only a mosque down the street and we shouldn't go there if we're not Muslims (it was not true). The other one simply tried to convince us "there's nothing there" (again, not true). I'm completely not used to it. I think I'll start replying to them in Polish to confuse them.
Revolut turned out to be useful. Not only was it possible to create a Moroccan currency account on the fly, but also buy an eSIM card (3 GB for 30 days for 10 euros). I thought I wanted to get lost, but it was too much. Eight years ago I had no problem with it but I must've changed. I prefer to have Internet at hand now. You travel -- you learn about yourself.
2026-09-30
On average, Moroccans are rather slim people.
I had coffee too late yesterday and couldn't sleep till 1:30 AM local time which is 3:30 AM my time; it matters because I woke up in my timezone. I decided to listen to Marek Grechuta to focus on the lyrics. But what Tidal has sounds as if it was remastered compared to the CD I have, and I was constantly distracted by the bass. It never sounded so good, even on my Denon. One way or another, it was not a waste of time. And eventually I fell asleep.
Street vendors in Fez are not aggressive in their sale approaches when compared to Marrakech ones, who would literally take a glance at their shop or stall as a beginning of a transaction. You already decided you're taking it, now we're discussing the price, Ali Baba; and let me start with the most offensive price. I know that's their drill and culture and all, but it's tiresome for me. Now, in Fez they're much more tactful and leaving you a breathing space.
So, I'm reading that web development is dead. Well. I liked it while it lasted. Now it's time to find a new angle for oneself.
It's a rare skill. Knowing when to take your win.
On discussing AI
I've seen a couple of articles that were spot on about AI, but then they would throw in all the context about the AI overlords' fascism. And this is where they would fail as something that I could send to my pro-AI friends. It's tactically not sound, because the article would be rejected on this ground. But then again, sending them anything is probably a fool's errand anyway.
I guess there is a sort of player in me seeing this as a game of creating the best argument. One that cannot be rejected based on logic. Impeccable. Remove problematic parts and strengthen good ones. But it's a flawed thinking. People first believe in something, then argue about it. And chased into a dead end, they will abandon logic. The perfect argument doesn't exist. But it doesn't have to. You can have an emotional argument. Which sort of disappoints me, because I want logical people.
Years ago, I read a hypothesis on the financial Twitter: you cannot convince a person who just won a lottery that the lottery is not a viable course of getting rich. After all, they just did. Talking to AI centaurs reminds me of this, because every time I raise various concerns, their general sentiment is that "for them it works."