botwerks

the cocoon ofhome entertainment

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 07:26:15 +0200

Modernity has shifted leisure from activities that require coordination with other people toward activities that can be consumed without the permission or participation of others.

this is (imho) a damning indictment of where things have been going and i’m personally not encouraged by this. we’ve been trying to be better about this in our house, but i get it. it’s a struggle.

lonely planet: minnesota one of the 50 best places to visit in 2027

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 20:45:09 +0200

50 Best Places to Visit in 2027: Lonely Planet’s Top Travel Destinations - Lonely Planet

npr comments as IM

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 18:04:04 +0200

897: Intergenerational Space Travel - This American Life

i loved this.

data centers - a flavor of satan

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 08:38:13 -0500

The Data-Center Debate Is Divorced From the Facts - The Atlantic

much right, some wrong. either way, watch folks lose their m07h3f-cking minds.

Ti strider bike

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 07:16:18 -0500

The Latest from Litespeed is the Rumpus, a $1,000 Handmade Titanium Balance Bike - Bikerumor

i love titanium bikes. this is ridiculous. if you see a kid on one of these their parents should be crotch kicked immediately.

alleycats are back?

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 07:45:26 -0500

Inside the Return of Legendary MPLS FTW Alleycat Babes in Bikeland - Racket

i totally missed this earlier this year. clearly my racket reading is not what it should be. this is a wonderful love letter to the minneapolis biking scene.

an empire of grift

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 07:44:07 -0500

Empire of Grift - The Atlantic

this is a rather eye popping rundown of the activities and the engagements of the current administration. it’s sobering to see all of the bullshit of the past couple of years laid out like this. but, there it is. with the firehose of shit we’ve endured i forgot about a few of these. oh shit, yeah … there’s a purported, “board of peace”.

what’s clear these days is that only power matters. the pretense of doing anything good or a larger more civically minded undertaking has been tossed out the window. the notion of being a city on the hill is poof … gone.

your tax dollars at work.

come on, show OpenStreetMap some love

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 20:59:38 -0500

Make Your First Edit to OpenStreetMap in the Next 15 Minutes | Website Wizard JOSM Plugin

ok, this was something that, for some reason, i could not turn away from. this is a delightfully quick little diversion and there’s even a homebrew recipe for josm. which makes the process that much simpler. the hardest thing in this little writeup is finding the filter panel in the JOSM tool.

sidebar, this is a peek into a very cool world where software meets built reality and all sorts of data sources and layers and cool shit. that i had the time to poke at this in earnest.

get crazy with the autopilot

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 13:39:36 -0500

Protecting Engineers’ Skills in the AI Era

An operator who only ever supervises automation slowly stops being an operator. The hands go cold. The mental model of what the plant is actually doing gets fuzzy. Then comes the day the automation hands control back. It’s always the worst day, because automation only quits when it’s confused or in trouble. But by then, you have a person in the chair who hasn’t truly operated the thing in years. The manual steps were there to keep the human current. It was inefficient by design, on purpose.

insert snarky comment about vs code fans.

voters have a message ...

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 13:23:23 -0500

Voters Have a Message for Democrats - The Atlantic

there are some interesting bits in here:

Julie, a Democrat from Arizona, said this about her party’s leaders in an April 2025 focus group: “They didn’t make people connect to them emotionally enough. And we need that emotional connection. If you look at the MAGA party, they have, albeit a bit psychotically, a very emotional connection. And we need that.” She’s recognizing that Trump built something that Democrats haven’t - a bond that goes beyond policy positions.

the last thing i need is an emotional connection to amy klobuchar or DFL leadership. what i’d welcome is some techocratic leadership with some well placed empathy. some fuckin’ competence and a lot less fecklessness. try good shit. folks seem to forgive failures if you’re actively trying stuff.

Notice that this kind of appeal isn’t limited to either the party’s left wing or its center. It’s more about coming across as an authentic messenger who cares about the issues that ordinary people also care about - not the interminable moderate-versus-progressive policy discourse that animates professional political obsessives.

not being asked to cop to some culpability here - is the press. the press has done a ton to stoke this intra-party fueding and debate. that said, i’m with the folks that have a spine and some vision. we don’t have to get into the weeds on the implementation, but some fire would be nice.

the watcher, social commentary in disguise

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 09:04:42 -0500

work with me here

what if the watcher is really a story about america’s dysfunctional relationship with safety and real estate?

i’m really trying to find some sort of justification for having wasted time watching this stupid series on netflix. what if instead of being a whodunit, this is actually an unsatisfying commentary on the stupidity and futility of the american obsession with real estate?

random boxes checked …

prestige real estate in posh suburb of new york with all sorts of deferred and ongoing maintenance.
italian marble counter tops that need to be replaced with something else for “reasons”.
commuting is a hassle, but hey you don’t have to see some dude shooting up on the sidewalk.
neighbors who clearly have too much time on their hands
a self-appointed preservation society where everyone has opinions and takes on what makes for “neighborhood character”
multiple families stretch themselves well beyond the breaking point financially and make themselves house poor in order to project an image.
real estate agents who are crooks working market manipulation aplenty,
ineffectual and crooked cops.
security systems and cameras to provide a feeling of safety, while proving to be ineffective.

openrouter

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 08:33:12 -0500

So you want to use OpenRouter? — Mo Moustafa

this is a great compendium of the various nits and gremlins that exist within openrouter and more specifically the backing providers. well worth the read.

neuromancer

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:28:26 -0500

random reactions / notes

i forgot how disorienting this book was when i read it years ago. it takes a solid 30% of the book before the place setting and the character relationships really start to sink in. the descriptive text is incredibly dense. it’s been interesting to see gibson’s evolution over the years. he has the knack for the clever phrase and the interesting metaphor, but the shock application for description has been dialed back considerably. iirc, things improved thru the balance of the sprawl trilogy, but man, there were a couple of places where this was a slog.

lots of this book really holds up well. particularly as we’re looking at the development of AI. the origin story of wintermute (and its looming presence in the 90s text BBS culture) the punk aesthetic and description of the tech is pitch perfect. it’s easy to see why it basically defined the genre. the bias towards japanese futurism and mega-corporations driving the developments on all fronts, this is my earliest recollection of this assertion.

the ono-sendai deck being the entryway to “cyberspace” and something that could customize and enhance your online interaction was in retrospect, so quaint. yet, so in keeping with the state of DIY and hack culture. i’m very curious to see how this is presented in the upcoming appletv series.

i don’t have a firm grounding in late 80s early 90s scifi such that the prior notion of the freeside is well formed for me. but as it’s described it feels like the proto-space vegas that so much scifi seems to incorporate into plots/scenery these days.

at this point i feel compelled to re-read the balance of the sprawl trilogy. this won’t help aggregate personal productivity.

the new american dream

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 06:57:53 -0500

i was listening to this esquire interview with emily st. john mandel.

there’s a lot to dig into this interview and it’s a great conversation that i wholeheartedly endorse listening to in its entirety. but there was a couple of minutes of discussion in here regarding the “new american dream”. i’m saddened / encouraged to see that it’s not just me that keeps tripping over this. though, i hadn’t thought about this in terms of this being “the new american dream”.

so what’s this new american dream? it goes something like this …

the new american dream:

leaving (the u.s.), or having enough money to be able to insulate yourself from the state of things.

this keeps popping up in any meaningful conversations with friends and acquaintances over the past couple of years. this has taken on a newfound seriousness. it’s no longer an abstract question or a passing joke around election time. there’s this underlying tension between; figuring out what the insulation number is, tapping out and figuring out where to go, and steeling yourself to see how you can endure with your friends and loved ones.

there’s a sad resignation behind this conversation. it’s the admission hanging in the air that something has become deeply broken in our society and it’s a mad scramble to get yours or get out. this is not a uniquely american failing, but honestly, i didn’t expect it to land so quickly, or even in my lifetime as a broad social consideration.

leaving’s in the zeitgeist.

lying's totally allowed

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 07:20:45 -0500

The truth in political advertising: ‘You’re allowed to lie’ : NPR

i’m in the middle of reading rewiring democracy by bruce schneier, et al, this was linked as a reference. i’ve suspected, but didn’t know, that lying is acceptable in political advertising as the speech would/could be considered political expression which is first amendment protected speech. but to date, we’ve been constrained by norms. these norms have clearly gone out the window.

schneier, is pushing on the “situation” here from the perspective of AI being able to do bespoke lying at scale and in real time. which, yeah, it’s really good at.

it’s kind of impossible to say how you get out of this state as the value associated with weaponizing this facility is so high. if you have a desire to be fact grounded you also need to protect your media sources and context. this requires money. most people don’t want to pay for fact-based news sources. what’s more (and worse) is people want to be tickled with their preferences. the acceleration loop continues.

da fuq? corporations can have spines?

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 21:09:52 -0500

Patagonia Sues the Trump Administration — Again | GearJunkie - this GearJunkie article was the first trip down this rabbit hole of bears ears lawsuit news.

here’s the word from the horse’s mouth - Patagonia sues Trump administration again to defend Bears Ears — Patagonia Works
the NYT weighs in - Patagonia Sues Trump Over Reduction of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah - The New York Times

oh and, fuck yeah, i’m in for a “buy-cott”. buy-cott, divas and shopping is the new BDS.

surprise gem: mac os mole - drive cleaner

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 21:08:25 -0500

Mole: system cleaner

this was a recent discovery and in a little less than 5 minutes it had cleaned up a solid 50G of cruft from various locations and eliminated stale/dead caches fron uninstalled apps. highly recommended. i forget how i ran across this, but i’m glad i did.

shitty takes for $500 please

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 20:55:40 -0500

Why Broadcom should buy Arista (and why it won’t) - SDxCentral

convulsive eye roll emoji.

a plan to hijack yer socials

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 07:51:52 -0500

Inside a Conservative Operation to Hijack Your Social-Media Feed - The Atlantic

here’s a thought … perhaps we should all waste the absolute minimum amount of time possible on the socials.

the new yorker on operation metro surge

sulrich@botwerks.org (steve ulrich) — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 19:19:00 -0500

What Happened in Minneapolis | The New Yorker

a balanced, albeit high-level, review of what happened with operation metro surge and some of the activity since.

it’s going to take me a long time before i don’t have a visceral enraged reaction when i read about this time in minneapolis history.