Finally I got out of the boot this week so I’m trying to ease back into lifting. So nothing stressing my feet or calves. Upper body only today, but it felt great to be lifting again.

Barbell Bench Press 8x 205lb

Push Press 10x140lb

Cable Rope Tricep Extension 8x87.5 lb

Dip 5x16

Dumbbell Front Raise 8x35 lb

EZ-Bar Overhead Tricep Extension 8x40 lb

Sit Up 3x21

Unknown location (probably inside)

I made it a Life Clock last year, counting up the hours of my life. I still like that idea (I even reprogrammed it to show my daughter’s days of life this spring after she was born). But a number that only ever ticks up, slowly, slowly loses attention. I wanted the display to tell me something I’d actually act on when I glance up from my desk. The weather can be that thing for a while.

Packing a forecast into seven digits

The display shows exactly seven digits and nothing else, so I had to encode a whole forecast into a single number.

I split the seven digits into three fields:

The rain digit is just the chance of rain divided by ten and floored, so a 45% chance becomes 4 and a 90% chance becomes 9. One digit is plenty for knowing “should I be worried.”

The temperatures each get three digits. That’s easy enough for 77 (077) or 105, but Chicago winters mean I needed negatives, and the display has no minus sign. So I borrowed the leading digit. Since no real temperature here reaches 900°F, a 9 in the hundreds place means “this is negative”:

• 5°F displays as 005
• -5°F displays as 905
• -12°F displays as 912

One thing I like about this layout: every digit does work. The Life Clock left its leading digit parked on zero, since the hours of my life don’t fill seven places yet (likely never would). That digit wouldn’t flip to 1 until I crossed about 114 years old.

Switching to tomorrow at sunset

I want to know tomorrow’s forecast when the day is effectively over. That really varies, but sunset is a good rule of thumb for when I start thinking more about the next day.

So the display rolls over at sunset to show tomorrow’s forecast.

The code

The display polls a small Val Town service that returns a single number. The data comes from Open-Meteo, which is free and needs no API key.

Most often the issue isn’t “empowerment”. People start out wanting to achieve things, to change things to be better, to do a good job. The active issue is disempowerment

4x35 pushups

4x25 pull-ups

4x33 sit-ups

Unknown location (probably inside)

This review may contain spoilers.

This film does a good job of pulling your attention just around the corner....just one more corner...just one more corner....just a little further....then BAM.

Most of the time is spent in that edging squirm, feeling stuck into taking the next step, like glue on your shoes making the floor move your feet.

There were some seriously grand and terrifying moments: the grotesquery around the christmas tree, the gleeful inhumanity around the dinner table. But ultimately I think there were too many confounding tangents (Mary's mom was here why?) to make this as cohesive as I would have liked. As I left, I thought, maybe that's what they wanted me to feel: unfinished, claustrophobic from all the space and searching.

Getting lost in your own psyche is a recipe for getting eaten.

Another 4x4 workout in the boot

Air Squats TOTAL REPS 152 in 4 sets HIGHEST REPS 38 in 1 set ESTIMATED STRENGTH 46.7 reps in 1 set Crunches TOTAL REPS 128 in 4 sets HIGHEST REPS 32 in 1 set ESTIMATED STRENGTH

• 39.4 reps in 1 set Push Up TOTAL REPS 132 in 4 sets HIGHEST REPS 33 in 1 set ESTIMATED STRENGTH 40.6 reps in 1 set Pull Up TOTAL REPS 100 in 4 sets HIGHEST REPS 25 in 1 set

Unknown location (probably inside)

I enjoyed this film so so so so so much. (Big crooked smile.)

It's loud. It twisted the knife in every scene, tensing my body further and further. And the ending! Triple roundhouse to the gut that was :chefs-kiss:.

So much tension with no release: moments of will they? won't they? that stretch to the point of breaking and then don't resolve so you're left wound up for the next moment to crank it even higher.

The backlighting is on point in this one. And the music: both combine to convey the "Nikki" in play at any given moment in terrifying clarity.

Choosing screams over the end credits was a bet that paid off. (Side note: this movie was sooo loud and full of characters screaming mid-sentence that you could be forgiven for being overwhelmed but boy did I love the intensity.)

Inde Navarrette's performance as Nikki is right up there with Mia Goth as Pearl for my all-time scariest monologues and utterly terrifying emotional range.

Cowardice kills.

I think Mary Bronstein bet her husband that she could invert almost everything about Uncut Gems and still make the audience feel the same way.

Where that movie follows the male main character as the driving force, careening through the world like a bull in a china shop, this one follows a woman as the world falls through the gaps in her grasp. But you feel exhilarating anguish - and humor in that anguish - all the same.

The visual (non-visual?) choice of never showing the daughter - just hearing her voice off-screen - was ingenious and added subtle horror to every scene. Abstract, guilty weight instead of personhood that keeps you locked in to Linda's subjective experience.

As a new parent myself, I gripped my cushion out of recognition through the new-mom-and-baby scenes. And I still think the most terrifying part of her situation is in the first scene: your child is sick and you can't help.

Popular security culture often dwells on clever hacks and clean fixes. But for the difficult real-world problems, often there is no right answer or simple fix, only the hard work of building defenses thicker and thicker.

FROM:

The Cloudflare Blog

Mitigating Spectre and Other Security Threats: The Cloudflare Workers Security Model

Source

I’m exploring sandboxing at work ad this was a great read.

FITBOD 5/28/26 • 25m Air Squats TOTAL REPS 152 in 4 sets HIGHEST REPS · 38 in 1 set ESTIMATED STRENGTH · 46.7 reps in 1 set Crunches TOTAL REPS 96 in 3 sets HIGHEST REPS 32 in 1 set ESTIMATED STRENGTH 37.1 reps in 1 set Push Up TOTAL REPS 120 in 4 sets HIGHEST REPS 30 in 1 set ESTIMATED STRENGTH 36.9 reps in 1 set Pull Up TOTAL REPS 100 in 4 sets HIGHEST REPS 25 in 1 set ESTIMATED STRENGTH 30.7 reps in 1 set

Last week in the boot, I hope.

Unknown location (probably inside)

People whose brains have been eaten by LLMs still maintain that ‘It’s not gradient, it’s texture’ or whatever is still their idea, expressed by the machine, but there is almost never any idea there at all. If your ideas were any good, you wouldn’t need to use the machine; as it stands your sub-literate scrawlings are the best thing about you. At least they’re yours.

But you people don’t listen. However bad a writer you think you are, you are not worse than AI. But you still keep letting it do your writing for you, as if I won’t be able to tell. Listen: I can tell. I can always tell. You think I won’t notice, but I will. There’s no hiding from me. If you let AI do your writing I will find out, and I will kill you.

FROM:

Sam Kriss

If You Let AI Do Your Writing, I Will Come to Your House and Kill You

Source

I love Sam’s writing.

I want people to enjoy my writing. That’s why I write it myself.

I have taken to having LLMs check my writing and critique it, but I write it myself. At least then, if someone is moved, I moved them.

The beans alone have a pungent smell, like damp moss and bitter leather. I like it. During the brew, the grounds smell like burnt caramel and walnut.

In the cup, I taste light pecan and chocolate - lighter than the strong aromas would lead you to believe. After a bit, I taste sweet apple as well.

It’s no single-origin, but it’s a solid blend; good for serving in a thick ceramic mug at the deli counter.

I will never shut up about the value of living and breathing openness. I learned / gained so much from opening myself up to collaboration AT ALL TIMES. my life is a lot richer now.

FROM:

Todepond dot com

My Year of Liveness

Source

Life is richer with others.

The reverse is also true. Any “amazing” equation unwinds into simple legal moves: add a term, balance the sides, factor. What looks like a leap turns out to be a walk.

The leap and the steps are the same thing at two distances. From far away you see the jump; up close, only ever the next step. Practice makes the close view feel obvious. Iteration makes the far view possible.

4x35 pushups 4x25 pull-ups 4x25 sit-ups 4x25 air squats

Unknown location (probably inside)

Yes I’m going to like a space travel story. Yes I’m going to like Ryan Gosling. Yes I’m going to love a faceless monster. 

Ultimately this one was too saccharine and too unscientifically shallow for me to really regard it as a good film, but I enjoyed my ride on the rocket ship.

In crisis communication, a well-known formula is: outrage x hazard. So even if the hazard is low, if concern is great, you’d better be speaking with clarity, acknowledging uncertainty, listening to the questions, concerns, and confusion, and bringing people along for the ride.

Calibrate to the audience perception.

This is the shelf beside the pull-ups door frame.

Another 4x4 workout, like earlier this week. Calisthenics I can do while wearing the boot. 4x30 pushups 4x25 pull-ups 4x25 sit-ups 4x25 air squats

Just now I’m realizing that the boot is actually added weight in the pull-ups. That’s why they’re harder than usual.

Unknown location (probably inside)

I finally got an MRI a couple weeks ago because my Achilles heel has still been hurting. Then last week the MRI results showed a partial longitudinal tear of my Achilles tendon. So now I’m in an immobilizing boot for a month.

With that, I didn’t exercise for a while, so this is my first in the boot. I just did calisthenics at home: 4x25 pushups 4x25 sit ups 4x25 pull ups 4x25 air squats (in the boot) 50 more pushups

Felt good to get my heart rate up again.

I hate the boot.

Unknown location (probably inside)

There’s a section on ‘patient diaries’, which are not written by a patient but written about a patient. Apparently when you are in a medically induced coma, or treacheotemized, etc, people come back and often have traumatic memories - not from the actual events themselves but from their brain trying to make sense of what happened; they think they were abducted by aliens, or their loved ones were replaced by robots, or they were molested in their incapacitated state. So some Danish nurses started a practice of keeping a handwritten diary for the patient, which their loved ones can also add to, about what’s happening - and then when the patient is back to normal, they give them this handwritten account, and it really helps ground the patient back into reality and make sense of their lost time. It’s so weird, and so beautiful an idea!

FROM:

Ex Libris Kirkland: Recently Added Notes

Note On: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

Source

Taking notes as medicine.

I didn’t know about this, but already I started a journal for our baby daughter like this. We leave a note for each day and have family/friends leave notes when they are with her those days. The hope was for it to be a keepsake for her, but maybe it will help ground her as a person, to have this history of her infancy.

Lots of arms and back today and while it wasn’t my strongest showing, I felt strong.

Those back extensions got my in the glutes, though.

Unknown location (probably inside)

My finger pads are hurting and raw from this after doing 100 pull-ups on the home rock wall last night.

Unknown location (probably inside)

Opening the bag and once brewed, I get smells of mandarin, fresh leather, and wet tree bark. It’s darkly sour.

I taste key lime, salt, and caramel. But not much comes to mind, and it’s not a strong enough flavor to trigger much of a reaction from my palate, either. Meh. I continue to think that the big players make weak flavors.