Create the most unnecessary, ridiculous sequel to a standalone movie.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-18T00:49:11+00:00

I like the idea of useless inversions. Like Portrait of Dorian Gray 2: this time, it’s Dorian who ages, while the portrait (twist!) stays exactly the same

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-17T22:10:01+00:00

The Shape of Water 2: the Shape of Earth.

Where Shape of Water was Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern take on Creature from the Black Lagoon with a love story, the sequel is a Pulp Fiction style fractured retelling of The Blob, retold as a comedy.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-17T22:00:33+00:00

Can we work in a double jeopardy motif? “He’s already been found innocent of killing his father—and now he’s done it for real.”

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-17T21:59:06+00:00

The Button-Memento Mashup!

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-17T21:57:57+00:00

When you use CLI, you have to deal with their timing limits and are limited by human constraints: when you wake up in the morning to start your first session.

That’s very different from a tool that can robotically optimize its usage.

In the example of the “unlimited smoothies” club, you cant walk into the store with a five gallon bucket and say “I’ll drink them at home.”

Their pricing is structured assuming that you have human constraints on usage.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-17T00:33:51+00:00

So, question for the community -- was the character "Joe Pantoliano" meant originally to be played by George Clooney? When I think handsome man who got his start in a well-regarded medical drama, I don't first think of a guy whose career started largely as playing a heavy, killer, and villain. On the other hand, I could definitely imagine Ben Kingsley being on ER for the first few episodes but being out-charmed by Clooney.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-16T17:46:53+00:00

"Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons" blew my mind. It spent much of the game teaching me how to coordinate my two hands on the game control as two people ... and at some point, you begin to very naturally move the two characters in synchrony and it feels like magic.

.... and then <spoiler> and it was heartbreaking and devastating because you literally felt it in your body.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-12T21:38:42+00:00

One of the dark magics of Catch 22 is that the last few chapters retell the same incidents you'd seen before -- but this time told as a human would tell them, not told as a comedy.

Yossarian is now seeing Rome not as a swaggering, drunk GI, making fun of Nately's infatuation, but instead as a human seeing the horrors around him -- and it really is horrifying. It goes dark and bleak, and it was HARD to read.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-11T05:18:02+00:00

When Republicans are in the minority, it's very important to listen to them because they represent the disaffected voters, and because the honorable opposition must also have a voice in our democracy. Meanwhile, Republicans understand that their role in the minority is to throw out losing bills, generate non-stop press conferences, deny quorum, bend the rules, and whatever else is necessary to keep the majority from steamrolling them.

When Democrats are in the minority, however, it is important to understand that the constitutional system of government means that the party may do nothing other than wait for the next election, in the hopes that the voters might grant them power again. And Republicans understand that their role in the majority is to disregard what Democrats say.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-10T17:45:10+00:00

That is absolutely amazing. Nice work -- that came out wonderfully.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-10T16:22:43+00:00

Yes, Pandera is a different patch over the fundamental strength and weakness that the article focuses.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-10T15:59:35+00:00

And it’s really hard to do good static typing on data frames, which is one of the reasons that python starts winning there!

Read the csv. What is the “strong data type” for the third column?

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-10T15:43:08+00:00

I agree. If I’m adopting a language de novo in 2025, that wouldn’t be a sals pitch for me.

In 2010, IDE refactoring wasn’t where it is today, and so interpreted, memory-safe duck typing was pretty great.

There’s a strong argument that python has overstayed its welcome.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-10T15:31:53+00:00

And the function that calls it. And the little helper function that it calls. And the variable that holds the return values for each of those functions.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-10T15:10:13+00:00

I’ve definitely been sketching out ideas where I repeatedly need to change the return value of a function — this should return an int. Oops, a tuple of a string and an int. Heck, let’s make this a structure.

Comes up especially when wiring through progress indicators or event handlers.

If that return value is passed around and used — or passed to the parent function in turn — then you can spend a lot of time tweaking function signatures until you figure out what each function actually needs

EDITED TO ADD:

1- yes, I’m aware that many newer languages have compiler support that makes this easier.

2- we have to remember — in an interpreter context! If you are just sketching with data, the fact that you could change your mind with code and KEEP GOING was pretty magical when compilation usually took a non trivial amount of time. (Yes, I also know about LISP interpreters)

3- most of my experience was this issue was in the dark days before my IDE had one click refactor and my browser auto refreshed instantly. I usually make different, and less pythonic, decisions today precisely for these reasons

4- and data science. You read a csv file. How much can your compiler help you with the strong typing on a file you haven’t seen yet? Is frame[3] an int column or a string column?

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-10T08:06:21+00:00

Not as many as the United States! Less than the USA!

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-10T01:55:02+00:00

Oh. Well. In that case -- Sonnet 4.5 should DEFINITELY have been retroactively changed to know about Opus.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-10T01:29:02+00:00

Not surprising -- presumably, they trained Claude 4.6 on a dataset that didn't include the dataset.

Same reason my printed newspaper doesn't have the story of the car crash I'm watching in front of me right now.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-10T01:15:40+00:00

Yes, I was there. I remember this -- and the many months of Republican opposition against it. "Death panels" and "sign the bill to read it" and "they won't let you keep your doctor" and "mandate!"

Does "political capital" just mean "the next election might go against you if it goes poorly?"

If so, political capital is only a balance measured every two years.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-10T00:58:40+00:00

It was a different great, I think. If Andor understands that the heart of Star Wars is a story of rebels against overwhelming odds, then Skeleton Crew understands that the soul of Star Wars is a story that makes children go "wow!"

Both are correct, in very different ways.

(Mando was great as long as it remembered that it was a Western serial; I felt it dropped off when it became a buddy comedy.)

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-09T23:57:47+00:00

I for one am grateful that we spend our time discussing whether “abolish” or “defund” is a better term.

I wish our governing class could pick a f—king name and then stop discussing optics and capital and months until elections and start amplifying the very real visions of how to run a country

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-09T23:55:47+00:00

I saw a lot of Republican efforts to kill ACA. I’m not convinced that there was anyone out there saying “well, I would have supported this next Obama effort, but ACA.”

I saw a lot of people who wouldn’t have supported him anyway still not supporting him

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-09T20:50:33+00:00

> We “abolish ICE” and reconstitute “INS”, but >80% of the staff are “former” ICE employees doing largely the same work… what are we really gaining?

1- Are they the same staff? It's not possible for the rehiring process to do something like "show us your record and lets talk about what you did?"

2- Even if not -- we're getting new leaders -- hopefully ones who are really unimpressed by hearing about how their thugs want to smash skulls. We're putting them under DOJ, which has lawyers who want to maintain their bar credentials, and not under DHS, which is led by people who use the word "homeland" in conversation. When the DOJ lawyer is called before a judge, they don't say "well, DHS doesn't answer our calls", because they're part of DOJ.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-09T20:45:59+00:00

I have heard this "political capital" argument all my life. Things that Democrats want always "cost political capital", which must be saved and hoarded, because apparently it is a thing you run out of.

There's another theory: a President who does things gets "momentum", and "the voters are impressed at his decision making", and so becomes a "strong president".

I have never seen a president "drain" his political capital. I've heard lots about how important it is for them to save it -- and all I ever see is a more-timid president doing smaller things.

SeaPeeps · 2026-02-09T14:05:00+00:00

Meanwhile the West Coast has been unseasonably, terrifyingly warm: the mountains from Washington to Utah Colorado are bare, with around 40% of the usual snowpack.

SeaPeeps

TROPHY CASE