Hi, I’m Jay!

Welcome to my home page! This is where I put my stuff.

Currently this site is an experiment in posting here all the things I would otherwise post elsewhere: photos from Instagram and Flickr; statuses from Mastodon; and movies, books, and music from Letterboxd, Goodreads, and Last.fm.

More about what this is

Posts

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  1. The WordPress writing experience

  2. A nostalgia-free case for video rental shops

Status Log

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  1. I just heard the term "rightsizing" for the first time and I am white-hot with rage

  2. I'm an earnest Bluey fan via my nephews and just subscribed to Disney+ to check out this new episode everyone is talking about

  3. As far as I can tell, the best Kindle you can buy today is still using EInk technology that is over ten years old. I don't care about color, but when can we expect some more improvements to contrast?

  4. It sounds like the Humane AI Pin is worse than Siri, which is no small feat.

  5. The impulse to actually turn the premise of “Civil War” into a movie seems so juvenile to me. It's like an idea you'd have stoned in a college dorm room. "It's gonna make people think, man!!"

    The title is terrible and lazy, too.

  6. Anybody have any ideas on how to import Mastodon posts into #WordPress?

    (To be clear I'm not talking about enabling ActivityPub on WordPress.)

  7. I've never related to Trump as much as I do about his falling asleep in court. I remember sitting quietly in lecture halls in college, and no matter how interesting the subject, nothing could put me to sleep faster than that. I would have been out in seven minutes.

  8. I’d love to try playing the SegaCD Bram Stoker’s Dracula game again

  9. It could be cool if there were a "CSS Zen Garden" that worked strictly with custom props.

  10. Q: Why do people watch golf on TV?

    A: Because listening on the radio would *really* be boring

  11. “le morte d’arthur,” but “arthur” has a tilted “a” in the style of the “Arthur (1981)” movie poster “logo,” with the little top-hatted Arthur silhouette leaning against it.

    I made this and I have no idea what to do with it

  12. I would love a weekly half-hour movie critic TV show like Siskel & Ebert again, does anything like this exist on YouTube or podcasts?

  13. I want a “couch to 5k” but for hot sauce.

  14. The issue isn’t that people get their news from social media, it’s that people get their news from MEMES on social media.

  15. When I see posts about Gemini, the Google LLM, I initially think they’re about Gemini, the protocol. Fans of the protocol must be bummed out by this naming.

  16. What's so weird about Musk's obsession with turning "X" into "the WeChat of the West" is that it's such a boring idea.

    However involved he may or may not be in the development of rockets and brain motor implants and electric cars, and however truly "self-driving" those cars may be -- those are exciting things!

    But being passionate about building an app that lets you, like...post videos and buy stuff and send money or whatever? Who is excited by this?

  17. Does #DuckDuckGo’s pro plan remove ads from search results? If so I might switch from Kagi.

    The DDG ads are a big part of the reason I use Kagi (even if DDG ads don’t track me).

  18. If the glove's the wrong size, you must metastasize

  19. It's crazy to think about the ripple effects the OJ trial had -- Norm Macdonald's career, "the dancing Itos," the Kardashians, Seinfeld.

  20. I finally left Bank of America and moved my checking to a local mutual bank, feels good.

  21. Wait, *Steve Coogan* is in the new Joker? I guess I am going to see it after all

  22. Who else remembers the breathless hype that ensued after that Clap Your Hands record came out in 2005

  23. An eclipse seems like a great time to commit some break-ins

  24. Can’t wait till this #eclipse is over so I can look at the sun again

  25. Reminded again why #Vim/ #Neovim plugins/emulation will never work for me -- I tried the Neovim plugin for VSCode, one of the first things I did was `:vsp`, and nothing happened.

  26. Buy a few gross of eclipse glasses for pennies tomorrow, then sell them at a markup in 2044 #HustleLife

  27. I'd love a Tweetdeck-like frontend for Mastodon that lets you save a "set" of columns you've set up for easy retrieval/switching.

    Say I'm really into the NFL and every week I want columns for my home team's tags and some sports writers, but not on non-game days.

  28. Is there a simple ActivityPub bot you can set up that boosts a specified list of accounts?

    This would be like “following” a list on the bad site.

  29. A total solar #eclipse is nature's version of the bouncing DVD logo precisely hitting the corner of the screen

  30. Meteorologists are always getting it wrong, I bet we don’t even get an eclipse today

  31. Screenshot of the page for the Apple TV+ original movie “Napoleon” in the Apple TV app, with a hand-annotated question mark where a Rotten Tomatoes score would go, but is absent.

    Does the Apple TV app just *not* put Rotten Tomato ratings on Apple TV+ movies?

  32. It would be like learning that people in Idaho get a bill for tens of thousands of dollars after the fire department extinguishes their house.

  33. I remember a Brit on a forum telling me about the first time he learned as a kid that Americans had to pay for healthcare and it blowing his mind, I think maybe he was seeing a movie where someone had to steal money to pay for an operation.

    I had never imagined what that experience must be like and how insane it must sound if you’re just hearing about it.

  34. Anybody else notice that trailers have their own trailers now?

    They all start with a rapid super-cut of the trailer and then the words "Trailer starts now."

    I know it starts now! I just hit play!!

  35. The "listen to this entire thing without grimacing” challenge

  36. When this first came out I didn't get beyond the first 30 seconds or so.

    Listening to it now, and knowing it was written by a person, it's extremely embarrassing to hear someone try to write new George Carlin material.

  37. iOS Mastodon search UI. I have entered “@potus@threads.net” in the search field, tapped “Go to user,” and a modal appears that reads:

“No User Account Found. There is no Useraccount [sic] ‘potus’ on threads.net”

    Wow this is worse than I thought. This is what I see on the official #Mastodon iOS app when trying to view a Threads account from an instance that has suspended them.

    It doesn’t just say “not found”; it says the account doesn’t exist (with a typo).

  38. Apple ought to remove App Store ads for Apple One subscribers.

  39. “But everyone said it didn’t matter which instance I joined.”

  40. The messaging on Mastodon needs to be a lot clearer.

    “You cannot view this profile because your Mastodon server, example dot com, has suspended the example dot net domain.”

  41. And people say Mastodon isn’t confusing 🙄

  42. If you search Mastodon for “threads.net” you’ll see a bunch of people wondering why they can’t see President Biden’s account, unaware that they are on an instance that did a full suspend on the threads.net domain.

  43. A tip for fellow old people, if you don’t recognize a celebrity name, they were probably in Euphoria

  44. It feels like older news than it should at this point, but it’s wild that I can follow users of a Facebook-owned social network from a small cooperative Mastodon server through the indie app Ivory.

  45. I watched some “The Mads Are Back” last night and it’s way funnier than RiffTrax in my opinion. I love Trace and Frank so much.

  46. One of the small but brilliant things about the Mac for the last 40 years is the way a menu item blinks after you click it, to reinforce which item received the click. Windows didn’t have this. You probably don’t think about it.

    It’s an affordance like this that demonstrates the care that went into the UI.

    It’s the kind of thing people would be too lazy or thoughtless to do today, and it’s the kind of thing I could see Apple killing because they forgot how important stuff like this is.

  47. Just because I’m a man doesn’t mean I’m into slickly produced pablum!

  48. I haven’t heard anybody mention how weirdly sexist it is that is being folded into “Gentleman’s Quarterly.”

  49. Wow — they fucked up #WJIB. What a disgrace. The new owner should be ashamed of himself.

  50. Been spending some time over the last couple weeks trying to write my first block-based #WordPress theme.

    Not only is the syntax redundant, poorly-documented, and difficult -- it's extremely limited in what you're able to put on the page.

    For instance, I can't put an archive title inside my own `<h1>` with some prefix saying "This is the archive for: “, or something.

    I find myself falling back to regular PHP enough that I'm not sure it’s going to be possible to build the theme I want.

  51. I know this will upset a lot of people, but the truth shouldn't need a content warning:

    Spring might be better than fall.

  52. I have a suggestion that I’m not entirely pleased with but I’m waiting to see if anyone else says it first.

  53. If they made Back to the Future today (heaven forbid), what car model would the time machine be?

  54. I see memes and comics that are like “I can’t stop listening to podcasts!!1”

    What #podcasts are you all listening to, anyway?

  55. So many “hazy IPAs” kind of taste like someone took their regular IPA and added a few pumps of “hazy-flavored” syrup to it.

  56. Does anybody know of any websites or apps that still use #GoogleCardboard/ #WebXR?

    It was such a fun, inexpensive little trend and I wish it had stuck around.

  57. #WordPress should add a “subtitle” field to core.

    Of course you could use a custom field for this, but not every theme will use the same custom field key. This is the same reasoning they used to put Post Formats in core.

  58. Just learned from Drag City that Joanna Newsom's "The Milk-Eyed Mender” has just turned 20. Easily one of the greatest records of the last quarter century.

  59. Wait Saltburn stars that kid from Killing of a Sacred Deer??

  60. Poster for “The Proposal,” the 2009 Ryan Reynolds / Sandra Birdbox romcom, “watch it on Apple TV+ for a limited time”

    Wow — Apple TV+ is getting into licensing legacy content? This is a panned romcom from 15 years ago.

  61. Elon is rattling off ideas for Twitter like it’s Calvinball

  62. Every thought Elon has is an r/showerthought that he thinks is a TED Talk

  63. Elon has the misplaced arrogance of a “gifted” 7th grader who thinks big problems aren’t hard to solve at all, actually, and would have been solved long ago if only people were as bright as him

  64. One simple thing Elon could do to immediately make Twitter better is to turn RSS back on

  65. If the nascent metaverse is analogous to the nascent internet, does Mark Zuckerberg think Meta is AOL or Netscape?

  66. Only one French duo *I’m* interested in seeing reunite:

  67. I’m worried about putting all our eggs in Bandcamp’s basket. I love what it’s done for music, but in ten years a LOT of embedded audio players just won’t work anymore.

  68. an art heist movie where a team pulls off a 51% attack

  69. One of the great comforting things about a Bose Wave CD player is that the words on the glowing display are in Gill Sans

  70. A good trick if you're logging into multiple similar WordPress environments (dev/staging/prod): Change the Admin Color Scheme for each one so you can easily tell which one you're in.

  71. the mac touchbar could be offering to refill my coffee and i wouldn't know it because i never look at the keyboard

  72. Whenever possible, show up with a box of donuts

  73. Where is the Technorati dot com of the #IndieWeb?

  74. We don’t talk enough about this Randy Newman impression that always felt bizarre in the middle of a teen comedy

    https://youtu.be/qWzZOPqM8QM

  75. all movies should be exactly an hour and forty five minutes

  76. If you still subscribe to @DVDNetflix, nothing ever “leaves Netflix”

  77. matrix resurrections is seriously taking advantage of my weakness for "white rabbit"

  78. I knew it was only a matter of time before Twitter changed their timeline design so that "open for a surprise" tweets wouldn't make sense anymore

    https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1390035323862896643

  79. I want a supercut of every time a small mammal jumped and latched onto somebody’s face in a 1995-2005 comedy, it would be like an hour long

  80. If Trump just called into Tucker Carlson for five minutes every Monday night urging people that getting vaccinated is the patriotic thing to do, COVID in the U.S. would be over.

  81. Ted Lasso follows in the grand tradition of characters invented for commercials carrying their own series, its foundation laid by Ernest P. Worrel

  82. Testing out a quick photo thing here

  83. I love vegan leather, so nice to know there’s no eggs or dairy in there

  84. It’s 2021 and I just bought a TiVo

  85. Soon all these Cooper Light/Souvenir/Recoleta/Clearface/Windsor fonts are going to go WAY out of style, and quickly, don’t get caught flat-footed on this

  86. Why does everybody use any excuse to say “kraken” these days? When did this kraken obsession start

  87. In general I’m a Spatial Audio optimist, but wow does Sgt Pepper sound bad in it

  88. If you search Lycos for “lycos,” you get an error page.

    If you search Lycos for “google,” it says “There were no results for your search query. Maybe you accidentally invented a new word?”

    Searching Lycos for “bing” works fine.

  89. I think this makes two #DrunkGruber @ditheringfm episodes in a row

  90. Everybody knows “web 2.0 badges” were a thing, but now for the life of me I can’t remember where I actually saw them

  91. Is this a podcast or is it just somebody slowly reading an article over a trip hop record

  92. MATTY IN THE MORNING, MATTY IN THE EVENING, MATTY AT SUPPERTIME

  93. How can @SubstackInc URLs be 459 characters long

  94. The vocal hook from “Immigrant Song” is just the “Get Smart” theme

  95. There’ve been a lot of short-lived sitcoms, I know, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single reference to “Double Rush” since watching it in the mid-90s. It’s like I dreamed it.

  96. I’m a high-res/lossless skeptic; but is it possible that despite failing all ABX tests we somehow *unconsciously* experience high-res music differently?

  97. The worst homework you ever did was the homework between The Simpsons and going to sleep

  98. Sorry, watching Howard The Duck at 3 am is decidedly NOT “wasting your life”

  99. The handlebar-mustache-on-a-stick industry was really hurting in 2008, till some genius created wedding photo booths

  100. I remember when “trigger warnings” were just called “discretion advised” and nobody thought it was the fall of Western civilization

  101. Schiller's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by courage."

  102. Tucker Carlson trading R Stevie Moore cassettes on Discogs

  103. Tucker Carlson mouthing the words to “House Arrest” under a big pair of Beats headphones during commercial breaks

  104. How the hell do you pronounce bongino anyway

  105. I don't get why Donald Trump doesn't just run 11ty on a Linode instance

  106. Boy I wish all these substacks were just blogs

  107. Remembering this morning that I love email so much more than #Slack.

  108. The least credible part of Home Alone is that Kevin continues to dress himself in adorable and festive but no doubt tight and itchy clothing

  109. There is no way Snoopy won that Neighborhood Christmas Lights and Display Contest

  110. Shouldn’t it be “Bene Kalikimaka”

  111. Bad books are the worst of all media. Far, far worse than bad TV.

  112. “Sorry, we don’t have Pfizer; is Moderna ok?”

  113. Trump: “WIDESPREAD MASSIVE RIGGED VOTER FRAUD”

    Lawsuits: “Observers were 20 feet away instead of 6 feet away for 15 minutes”

    Courts: “lol”

  114. @manton Any idea why I’m getting a “request too large” error when trying to upload an image to my #WordPress blog through #Sunlit?

  115. Whenever anybody’s describing terrain in a book I can’t even remotely picture it

  116. It's wild when people claim to know with certainty what political outcomes would occur in a universe with a dozen or more variables changed; if this person had been nominated, if that person had said more of X and less of Y, if the New York Times or Breitbart or Facebook had or hadn't done Z. Nobody knows anything.

  117. Hoping to cram something into my brain other than this election in the next 24 hours of my downtime

  118. Nowhere in "Humpty Dumpty" does it say he's an egg

  119. For the first time in nearly 10 years of using Vim daily, I'm finally excited about the way I have completion working.

  120. Two things I did not anticipate about wearing a mask are (a) Face ID doesn't work, and (b) you can't do the "slight smile" thing at strangers as you walk past them or get out of each other's way in the supermarket. "Mask face" just looks generally peeved I think.

  121. I know there more important things going on right now, and I hope everybody is staying safe out there -- but the radio commercial Flo is different from the one on TV. Thanks

  122. “Rambo” was short for “Rambunctious”

  123. Apple Music in macOS Catalina will import users' existing music libraries from iTunes in their entirety, Apple says. That includes not just music purchased on iTunes, but rips from CDs, MP3s, and the like added from other sources.

    Ars Technica

    And I assume we'll still be able to add new mp3s to our libraries?

  124. At my funeral, I want somebody to read my favorite poem. My favorite poem is “The Iliad.”

Media Log

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Riddle of Fire (2024)

Watched:

I can’t overstate how much I adored this movie. It’s like watching a magic trick. There are so many ways it could have gone awry — tonally, stylistically — but it never does.

It’s one of those movies you would expect to walk away from thinking, “I see what they were going for, but they just didn’t pull it off.”

Riddle of Fire pulls it off.

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The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

Watched:

I’d never seen this movie before and I have to admit I had no idea the title was a metaphor. I had pictured a Hitchcock-like twist where a number of rings is the giveaway to some clue. Nope!

Saw this on 35mm which is always a treat. Lots of surprising unpredictable twists to the story. Hume Cronyn as the manipulative lawyer Keats was great.

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Nathair – Gilera (2023)

Listened:

I have to resist making excuses for this. Yes I love this because it sounds like it was recorded in a basement, OK?

Bandcamp

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Tell Me an Ending (Jo Harkin, 2022)

Finished:

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Photos

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