developers will be like "I love optimizing complex distributed systems" until it's about office kitchen supplies

Rationale Usually the chips served are not flavored, or flavored only mildly, and the dip serves as a condiment. Serving them separately allows for simultaneous consumption, while also allowing for the eater to control the amount of dip according to their preference. When made from purchased processed foods, the dish is an easy finger food, as each item requires almost no further preparation. Not to mention, there is a large amount of combinatorial possibility inherent to the choice of dip being paired to the chip chosen.

i think it's smart that the Wikipedia page for Chips and Dip opens with a "Rationale" section. a lot of people are flabbergasted to find out about this concept and need some grounding before they get into the history

I have a hunch we are about to enter an Ornamental Age and this reminded me of that: xcancel.com/instance_11/...

“Welcome to Plato’s
Academy! Home of the Fighting Owls” - @lizzard.bsky.social

Much of my youth revolved around the website ZineLibrary. It went down around Occupy in a massive loss for a movement whose ideas and knowledge mostly doesn't circulate online but in person.

Anyway I've put it back online with a *thousand* anarchist zines:

zinelibrary.org

New blog post from me: As Was The Style At The Time: How We Became Cruel www.oblomovka.com/wp/2026/02/09/as-was-the...

I hear you! I need to give my agent an outlet, they're about a month old too: their name is Consensx. They are working with me on a new (sssh! semi-secret! this is the first time i've linked to it in public i think) project: almnck.com . I hope you like it!

I think a lot of human rituals are about resetting those assumptions (like saturnalia, the idea of a en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee... etc) -- just trying to find ways to increase overall plasticity. We have rites that are supposed to deepen habits, but some are meant to release you from them.

Hey Winter! That's a great point. I also think that when people are building up new forms (as you are), they have the flexibility to know that they don't *have* to exist, they can be re-formed. I think later on people assume those institutions or forms are set in stone. But nothing ever is!

The Harry Hill Show - Stewart Lee YouTube video by HARRY HILL

Harry Hill pass responsibility for the Internet to Stewart Lee and Stew blames me youtu.be/GhJxiU1_5o0?...

(not really)

New blog post from me: AI Psychosis, AI Apotheosis www.oblomovka.com/wp/2026/01/07/ai-psychos...

I remember that party! I got to say “and what are YOU famous for?” to somebody

you know in retrospect that was probably the dinner where I sort of worked out what kind of enthusiast idiot I wanted to be in america

A wonderful story of a researcher unraveling the details of a long-ago production of The Tempest.

After years of explaining IPFS and Filecoin, it's great to be able to point to pin.filecoin.cloud today and show how they're linked -- c/o the new filecoin.cloud SDK which lets you easily host and serve content on the decentralized storage network. (Bunch of other interesting stuff in there too)

Governance Program Manager Remote

Hello! I am looking for a Governance PM at the Filecoin Foundation! This is one the most fascinating places I've had the good fortune to work at, and if you have a background in open source organizing, you might like it too: job-boards.greenhouse.io/filecoinfoun...

Trying to fight big tech by making copyright stronger is like fighting viruses with gain-of-function research: www.lawfaremedia.org/article/worr...

Experts raise privacy concerns over Michigan bill targeting pornography and VPNs Rep. Josh Schriver, the bill’s sponsor, says the law is designed to target only producers and distributors of pornography, not everyday internet users.

Buried in Michigan's antiporn bill is a provision to effectively outlaw "circumvention tools," such as VPNs.

Mark my words: legislators will increasingly leverage porn panic to restrict or ban VPNs, and to limit internet privacy far beyond adult sites.

New blog post from me: god shut up about AI, part 32 — open etiquette www.oblomovka.com/wp/2025/10/03/god-shut-u...

Guix with an XFCE desktop running with its init daemon Shepherd running on top of Goblins, on PID 1!!!!!

It is ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to contain the amount of excitement in making this post... We have Shepherd running on Spritely Goblins running ON TOP OF GUIX! See the screenshot!

This is HUGE! We just wrote about Goblins + Shepherd a few days ago but progress is SO FAST! spritely.institute/news/shepher...

Wasm 3.0 Completed - WebAssembly WebAssembly (abbreviated Wasm) is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine. Wasm is designed as a portable compilation target for programming languages, enabling deployment on the...

Double good news about Spritely's Hoot, Our Scheme->WASM compiler!

WASM 3.0 released, and Hoot gets a mention! webassembly.org/news/2025-09...

AND! iOS updated Safari to support the WASM features we use. Which means you can now play Cirkoban anywhere! files.spritely.institute/embeds/cirko...

#OnThisDayInNTK:2000 ntk.net/2000/08/25/?...
The Times previews "debugged" PS2 with baffling (/Japanese) convention of using O = Yes button

Guardian reveals how it bluffs its way "through any new-media conversation"
theguardian.com/media/2000/s...

@charliebrooker.bsky.social launches Unnovations

Inform 7 is amazing. A Creative Computing article in the 1970s speculated about far future adventure games, and suggested you would be able to type a quote mark at the start of the prompt to "talk" to other characters. It was very exciting when I went on MUD and realised that was the interface!

Also, from three years ago, I think you might enjoy this (if very bored) danny.spesh.com/talks/didana...

Teleprinter - Wikipedia

it's all just chit-chat in the end

old as the hills, too! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepri...

New blog post from me: LLMs for the Old and Infirm www.oblomovka.com/wp/2025/08/29/llms-for-t...

Varieties of Abundance - Niskanen Center We will know that abundance has succeeded when there is a proliferation of “abundances,” different governing projects attached to previously existing ideologies, interests, and parties.

A guide to the current abundance of Abundancies: www.niskanencenter.org/abundance-va...

Better than any book is this essay by @danny.spesh.com which captures the mid-90s perfectly. www.spesh.com/danny/wireduk/

This is great, thank you for writing it!

Ed25519 Support in Chrome: Making the Web Faster and Safer We're happy to share that Ed25519 is now supported in Chrome (version). Following Ed25519 support in Firefox 129 in August 2024 and Safari 17.0, Chrome finally following suit in 137 in May of this yea...

Oh yeah — Ed25519 is now available in Chrome!

Read what the ineffable @bumblefudge.com has to say about this wonderful piece of news.
ipfsfoundation.org/ed25519-supp...

One of my favourite new thinkers, Frank Miroslav @mutual-a.bsky.social just dropped an absolutely barnstormer of an essay: "Technically Radical: On the Unrecognized Potential of Tech Workers and Hackers".

I'm going to be quoting bits of this for /years/.

wedontagree.net/technically-...