<a href="https://smidgeo.com/notes/deathmtn">deathmtn</a>

7/14/2025, 9:56:10 PM

This is a bug, but at least it looked cool.
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7/14/2025, 10:48:44 AM

I've been stuck on a bug for four days now that causes some weird jitter in an animation I'm working on. I've tried many things. Today, I vow that this is the last day. If I can't fix it, I'm going to either simplify that part of the animation or remove "horizontal" motion.
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7/14/2025, 10:41:30 AM

There's a lot of undead techniques in boxing defense.
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7/14/2025, 10:01:48 AM

Someone typosquatted some variant of paddleboston.com and put a phishing site there. I found it hilarious because it reminded me of www.yzzerdd.com and various Strong Bad Emails. But then I realized that it's very likely that people have really been scammed by this.
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7/13/2025, 8:30:15 PM

I saw someone refer to A.I. as "the A1 project" and L'd OL. I think I'm going to have to do that from now on.
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7/13/2025, 4:08:04 PM

Loud caw
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7/13/2025, 1:53:09 PM

This guy’s everyday carry includes superglue! Not a bad idea. I’d probably glue more stuff if I had glue on me.
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7/12/2025, 8:43:35 PM

Smokestacks (not really; the clouds just happened line up with this building’s fake chimneys)
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7/12/2025, 8:42:43 PM

Today’s turkey
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7/12/2025, 4:45:39 PM

Chinese restaurants are doing 2FA. Not looking forward to them making people use Google Authenticator someday.
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7/12/2025, 2:50:10 PM

Well, this is gross. iOS will put on “ambient music” the way it is will play white noise for you. It doesn’t identify the artists.

I checked out the four options it gives you, representing the four canonical subgenres of ambient music: Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Well-Being.
It is all shit. Suzanne Ciani and Pulse Emitter it is not. It is some averaged and filtered spa bullshit, like a politician that’s been focus grouped to death. I would not surprised if it was A.I., but it does stream, so I don’t think it’s a model running from your phone at least. Most likely, they went with the Spotify model and hired producers to give them some glurge for a flat fee.

And oddly, they tuned it to be too sugary to be “chill” or relaxing because it will make you angry in a way that Aeon or the Cro-Mags never could. The piano stuff in particular has a Walking in Memphis kind of tonal shape that’ll make you want to smash a waiting room window with a hammer.

Anyway, at this point, once this phone dies, I’m seriously considering the Light Phone, which sounds like it’s pretty stable at this point.
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7/12/2025, 2:22:02 PM

Ice attack on Central Square restaurant employees takes four, including a chef working here 22 years
One detained chef had worked at the Central Square restaurant for 22 years and another for 16 years. The other two had been at their jobs for two or three years, the owner said. The arrested chefs have no hope of blocking their deportation, he said.

…

The restaurant owner said conditions at the detention center are “terrible,” with no air conditioning and 48 people held in a cell. One of his workers held there was arrested three days before he had planned to fly to Spain to be with his wife and their two children, the owner said.
This happened a month ago. ICE now has $75 billion in funding. For comparison, the entire US army is asking for $200 billion for 2026.
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7/12/2025, 2:05:16 PM

I decided to help out in the yard for once (normally Katt does all of it) and remove a patch of day lilies and black swallow-wort. At first, it was easy because the rain last night made the dirt soft.

Like any project, though, the last 20% got really hard. The day lilies got their roots in between rocks and broken bricks, so the garden fork had trouble getting under them. That’s good weed strategy! The whole thing took two hours, and gradually, I ended up in the sun. That’s how they get you.
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7/11/2025, 5:02:29 PM

Last night’s camera attackers
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7/11/2025, 11:18:26 AM

23-minute run, 11 pull-ups. I was concerned because my ankles have been crunchy since judo, but it went fine.
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7/11/2025, 11:17:03 AM

Guys that look like like they’re pondering.
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7/11/2025, 9:33:30 AM

George Mason University, which I think of as economically right-wing, is being attacked by the Trump administration. Turns out they have a Black president.
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7/11/2025, 9:21:36 AM

We conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to understand how early-2025 AI tools affect the productivity of experienced open-source developers working on their own repositories. Surprisingly, we find that when developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without—AI makes them slower.
So, speed isn’t everything, and the biggest problem with A.I. coding is long-term quality. However, most participants *thought* they were faster with Cursor when they actually weren’t. To me, this is the most interesting finding: the power of the hype.
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7/10/2025, 10:00:48 PM

I had a lot of problems concentrating/not being tired today, so I bailed on thinking work and put up more shoe rack.

I don’t know why I’m surprised and angered at this point (I’ve tried five different stud finders of varying levels of fancienss at this point), but the stud finder was wrong again, and one of the screws went into pure drywall. The shelf pulled away when I tested it.

So I mounted it at a lower point, and it is not aligned with the other one as planned.

The paint color not matching the existing shelves’ color is bothering me more than expected, but I still think it’s better than buying new paint just for this.
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7/10/2025, 5:08:17 PM

Bad picture, but we saw both a blue jay and red jay not far from each other.
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7/10/2025, 3:33:25 PM

Maybe this is a recent anomaly, but the Financial Times seems to report on ICE than the New York Times. There seems to be nothing in their politics and US sections.
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7/10/2025, 2:09:29 PM

I was telling a friend about an idea about a game about waiting in a series of lines, he told me there is a game called While Waiting. It actually looks really well done!
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7/9/2025, 10:11:06 PM

Sniffin’
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7/9/2025, 10:10:48 PM

Homemade ice cream. It’s mint chocolate chip, and it has toothpaste levels of mint in it.
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7/9/2025, 9:58:54 PM

Back workout, 2x10 extra slow deadlifts.
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