The Purpose Isn’t What It Does

“The purpose of a system is what it does.” Such a neat little turn of phrase; it makes you sound wise and cynical and like a person who sees through things. But it’s mostly wrong and almost always counterproductive

Posted on: 24 September 2026 | 2:00 pm

Regulate and Standardize AI? Nope.

Nate Silver’s latest is A supermajority wants to slow AI down, noting the general convulsion of fear provoked by the AI Guys’ it’ll-kill-us-all palpitations. From which:

Posted on: 18 September 2026 | 2:00 pm

Canceling Emily

Meet Emily van Lidth de Jeude, an artist who lives on an island and has the most adorable chicken coop you’ll ever see. Those URLs start with emilyartist.ca now; until recently it was emilyvanartist.noblogs.org. But that site, there for many years, is down now, and not coming back up. Why? Well, her email address used to end with @autistici.org (it’s broken too now), and therein lies the story

Posted on: 8 September 2026 | 2:00 pm

Clankers and Data Races

I just landed a PR that fixed a nasty data race in Quamina. Which shouldn’t have been technically challenging, but I took side-trips into Erlang, unit test footguns, whether or not I should go on accepting LLM-generated PRs, and programming while aging

Posted on: 1 September 2026 | 2:00 pm

Text Watermarking

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about the GenAI giants “watermarking” their output, which to say inserting data so you can tell that it’s been generated by ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or whatever. The technology for watermarking images is as old as dirt, works as advertised, and doesn’t affect image quality. What’s new and controversial is a claim that they can watermark text output cheaply, simply, and without harming the quality of the text

Posted on: 24 August 2026 | 2:00 pm

Five Views of the Wilcox Prairie

Fools have said that the Prairies are boring. This cannot be true, because in the absence of hills and trees there’s more distance in each direction you might look. Also, Prairie landscapes include the skies above them which, whether blue, star-spangled, or cloudy, aren’t boring. Herewith photoevidence from the vicinity of Wilcox, Saskatchewan, with which I claim no other connection

Posted on: 17 August 2026 | 2:00 pm

Happiness Bookmarks

It’s been a rough few years, for the earth, for the societies that populate it, and for my family. Like they say, “sandwich generation”. There’ve been weeks when I’ve struggled for a smile. I suspect more than a few folk reading this are also feeling stretched thin these days. Happiness has not entirely departed our lives, and waiting for a happier future is a really bad idea. So we should notice and bookmark those moments and hours when smiles come to our faces

Posted on: 13 August 2026 | 2:00 pm

Dununba, Sangban, Kenkini (and Stands)

Those first three words in the title name the members of the Dunun family, cylindrical West-African drums that you usually put on a stand to play. Think of those sizes as Papa bear, Mama bear, and Baby bear; the names are a bit onomatopoeic. I bought a set and, separately, stands to put them on. They’re pretty enough that I want to post their pictures, which gives me an excuse to share West-African drumming vibes. And recommend products

Posted on: 8 August 2026 | 2:00 pm

Upside Down

The world is, I mean. Bottom-up. Maybe that’s just me not understanding? It doesn’t surprise me that there are people who are stupid and/or evil. The surprise is, the others not voting them out of office, passing legislation outlawing what they’ve been doing, and sending the ones who don’t stop to prison

Posted on: 3 August 2026 | 2:00 pm

Six Summer Days of Music

I spent last week at a summer music camp put on by WCAMS, the West Coast Amateur Musicians Society, pronounced “Wickams”. My goal in writing this is to influence a few readers in the direction of attending this sort of thing if there’s one near you. You might be a candidate if you partake of some subset of: Loving music, getting old, being female, worrying about mental fitness, and having time available to invest as you please rather than as you must

Posted on: 26 July 2026 | 2:00 pm

Sports and Truth

This summer has been very sporting; in the course of a couple of weeks I attended a World Cup match and a minor-league baseball game. Took pictures and thought about enjoying this stuff

Posted on: 10 July 2026 | 2:00 pm

Mastodon, The Only Good Choice

Dear World: Now is a good time to get off social media that’s going downhill. Where by “downhill” I mean any combination of less useful, less safe, or less fun. It’s time for something better, and by “something better” I mean Mastodon. Which, I’m here to say, offers a better social-media experience than the alternatives. Furthermore, the alternatives are fatally flawed

Posted on: 5 July 2026 | 2:00 pm

Automata, Built For Comfort or Speed

It’s been a while. February was the last entry in this Quamina Diary; I never stopped working on it but there hasn’t been much blogworthy. This piece offers a progress update for those who’ve been entertained by Quamina, and also a pleasing (well, to me anyhow) dip into finite-automata theory and practice. With numbers and graphs and a bluesman!

Posted on: 14 June 2026 | 2:00 pm

Long Links (AI)

The piece you’re now looking at exists because my latest “Long Links” curation of interesting not-lightweight material included quite a few focused on our dominant malaise, namely you-know-what, I mean it’s in the title. Plenty of people have had more than enough of this discourse and I thought I’d spare them by moving these bits over here

Posted on: 8 June 2026 | 2:00 pm

Long Links (AI-free)

Hey everyone, I know you’re overloaded because everything has become overly efficient. Long-form reading or writing or art or music, who’s got time for that? Fortunately there are those who still do and here’s some if it. I hope one or two of the link targets can chisel their way into your jammed schedule and bring with them joy or rage or another appropriate feeling. Today’s curation has a lot of books and music and way more humor than usual. Also, a good electric wok

Posted on: 5 June 2026 | 2:00 pm

XML and JSON in 2026

The best thing about long-lived incumbent technologies like JSON and XML is that nobody really has to think about them much any more. Except for, I do occasionally, because while I’m not the inventor of either, my name’s on the front of both official specifications. Hey, it’s JSON’s 25th birthday, what a run! And what ever happened to XML? Let’s shake off the dust and have a look

Posted on: 1 June 2026 | 2:00 pm

Tab Trick

A person watching over my shoulder asked “How are you switching around so fast?” and I realized that while most readers here know this trick, some may not, and it’s awfully useful

Posted on: 24 May 2026 | 2:00 pm

Declining America

Recently I got an invitation from an organization I respect, to a gathering of senior people, unconference format. Yes, it’s mostly about AI. No, it doesn’t reek of boosterism. My guess is that the discussions would be relatively intelligent and unbeliever contributions would be welcome. I declined, because it’s in the USA

Posted on: 19 May 2026 | 2:00 pm

Life During Class Wartime

War is bad. Don’t start one. But we’re already in a class war and we’re losing. Where by “we” I mean most people; the winning side comprises, roughly, the richest 0.1% of the population, who are morphing into a hereditary aristocracy. [I mean that, see below.] So, what to do in a war one didn’t choose?

Posted on: 3 May 2026 | 2:00 pm