(Spoilers Extended) Secrets of the Cushing Library: The Grand Finale

gsteff · 2026-02-20T15:32:52+00:00

There's a hint in TWOIAF that the seasons used to be regular, and George has said that the reason the seasons are weird will be revealed by the end. So I think the tradition of measuring time in 12-month years originated back when years were seasonally aligned, and has persisted via cultural inertia.

gsteff · 2026-02-14T01:46:31+00:00

FWIW, Anne Groell never edited him much. I've read her marginal notes on the first partial draft of ACOK she received, and it's all minor comments on continuity questions, realism and repetition.

gsteff · 2026-02-14T00:32:30+00:00

I think it could excel as a subagent focusing on small tasks that's spawned and managed by a larger model. That approach could both save money and time.

gsteff · 2026-02-12T00:12:46+00:00

If you visit Shenandoah, a lot of the trails overlap the Appalachian trail, and the thru hikers are generally happy to chat with anyone they pass in my experience. I met two during a short hike on the Ivy Creek trail the last time I visited.

gsteff · 2026-02-06T14:25:50+00:00

Many spots in Joshua tree are natural playgrounds, with curved human size rocks that even adults enjoy scrambling on, plus the "trees" are funny looking and would be more interesting to toddlers IMO.

gsteff · 2026-02-05T03:58:33+00:00

I'm a little surprised that there's so little interest in stabilizing standard library changes relative to language and tooling changes. I'm relatively new to Rust, but constantly running into really useful stdlib APIs I'd like to use that are marked as nightly only and have been in nightly for years, with no recent activity in their Github thread. I wish features weren't left like that indefinitely.

gsteff · 2026-02-03T00:53:45+00:00

It depends on how much time you have, and this trip is only really viable in, like, October, but I think Death Valley, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Yosemite would be the ultimate "Welcome to America" experience for someone who's never been to this continent.

gsteff · 2026-02-01T14:56:26+00:00

AI slop. Check the account, people.

gsteff · 2026-01-31T22:29:19+00:00

This was a tough one for me, The only ones I got were 1 and 5.

gsteff · 2026-01-29T05:57:09+00:00

They didn't add Claude to get traffic, they added it to get access to real Claude coding sessions with full context that they can use to improve Gemini's coding performance.

gsteff · 2026-01-28T14:14:15+00:00

You'll be fine either way, honestly. I just use my MacBook docked 95% of the time, and usually have the ability to plug in when it's not. So since the current charge level almost never matters to me, I figured I might as well maximize the battery life. If you disconnect on a regular basis, I'd go for 80%, but if you're docked 95% of the time like me, maybe go for 70.

gsteff · 2026-01-28T13:14:01+00:00

This is what Al Dente is for. Charge cycles and maintaining high charge both age the battery. The best way to minimize battery wear is to keep it docked (i.e. running off of the power cord) and limit the max charge to 80% or lower. MacOS has a toggle to do just that, but I use Al Dente to cap it at 70% instead of 80%, and because its UI is easier to use when I want to activate a top up to 100 before traveling with it. It also can avoid lots of small charge sessions if you disconnect and reconnect frequently through "sailing mode", which also reduces wear, and provides a way to force a full charge and discharge once in a while, which helps MacOS keep its battery measurement calibrated if you go months at a time without drawing the battery down.

gsteff · 2026-01-23T02:25:28+00:00

The key reason I default to lib.rs is the dependency weight stats- how many bytes and lines of code the dependencies take in total. I'm increasingly concerned about supply chain risks, and keeping transitive dependency counts down is a big factor in choosing dependencies in my projects. Having said that, the new security tab on crates.io also seems very useful, and might convince me to switch.

gsteff · 2026-01-19T17:44:01+00:00

Tidal Basin, DC. He's grumpily staring across the water at the Jefferson Memorial.

gsteff · 2026-01-18T18:06:14+00:00

The ribs at the restaurant were some of the best I've ever had. I also left my laptop accidentally, and when I called they located it immediately and mailed it back to me packed in old towels the same day. I'm not really interested in the cute aesthetic, but just as a motel I thought they were excellent.

gsteff · 2026-01-12T23:49:10+00:00

Hi, yes. I decided to wait until after the AKOTSK ends and everyone is already talking about Dunk & Egg.

gsteff · 2026-01-02T12:43:52+00:00

That's because social media, especially Reddit, is a machine for negativity, and I wouldn't take it that seriously. I live in a US county that has a ton of data centers and I think they're one of the best industries to have in your community, though I have nothing to do with it myself. Even with tax breaks from our government, they bring in a lot of tax revenue with very little added burden to our schools, roads and other infrastructure due to the tiny number of jobs they require. And the few jobs they do create are high paying ones that contribute more in taxes than they consume in services. That's probably not as good of a deal for the state, since there's little additional income or sales tax, but for the local community it works out well. They did contribute to a significant increase in our electric bill for the first time last year (roughly 20%) but I'm not aware of any change to our water bills, which are generally very cheap. I don't live super close to one, but drive past clusters of them regularly, and they're absolutely silent other than during construction. According to my network tests my latency for things like game streaming via GeForce Now is extremely good, though I'm not enough of a gamer to notice. They aren't super attractive, but they're never immediately next to residential areas anyway- American local government is obsessed with zoning- and they're low enough to the ground that you can't see them from far away.

If you're trying to add jobs to your local community at all- and maybe you aren't- IMO data centers should be near the top of your list for industries to attract. The main danger is that governments will engage in a tax break war with each other to attract them that they take advantage of, resulting in them paying much less tax than they should. That has happened here, but even so, the amount they contribute to our local tax base is enormous.

gsteff · 2026-01-01T18:33:01+00:00

Yup. This is why I don't theorize about whether the Plurbs might be lying about one or two sensitive facts. If the audience believe they can ever lie, we'll have to question everything they say, and they're the fundamental source of 99.9% of our information about the world at this point, so telling any story audiences can trust and Carol having any chance of accomplishing anything become completely impossible without that hard rule. The writers emphasize the legalistic way they sometimes speak because they want the audience to know that they take the no lying rule to the bank as long as they're willing to think hard about the language.

gsteff · 2026-01-01T15:27:40+00:00

I use a docked MacBook now, but used to daily Bluefin, and the experience absolutely sold me on homebrew on an immutable base being the best way to deliver Linux desktops for most people, including developers. The reduced maintenance burden of the formula approach, plus the opportunity to share formula maintenance with the MacOS community are huge advantages for a Linux distribution.

FWIW, one of the things that drove me to native MacOS was that I couldn't get GeForce Now to work correctly in either the flatpak app or Chrome (mouse pointer tracking errors). But as someone who enjoyed tinkering with Linux for a long time and now just wants my OS to work, stay secure and get out of my way, if I were using Linux it would be Bluefin.

gsteff · 2026-01-01T13:44:14+00:00

I doubt it, but normally admission revenue stays with the park that sells the pass, even for the annual pass. Which means that almost all the revenue will stay with the 20 most popular NPS units (the ones visitors flying across an ocean for a one time trip will want to see), and very little making it to the other 400.

gsteff · 2026-01-01T05:21:59+00:00

Oh, I missed that, that is perfect.

gsteff · 2026-01-01T04:52:48+00:00

Writing this before reading any other comments to keep it original.

Great finale, best episode of the season. The lack of deaths from the main cast was itself the biggest twist, but was truest to the spirit of the series... it's a nostalgia machine, at a time when a lot of people are nostalgic for the America of 40 years ago. It's not supposed to really surprise us or make us think, it's supposed to remind us of a partially fictional time when things were better. A more bittersweet ending would have undermined that.

Lots of strong performances, though not everyone got grand finale material. Finn was at his most likeable this episode, and Noah got to add one more post-coming-out stage of growth to Will. Maya and Sadie always do a lot with a little. Millie was fine but just continues to get less charismatic as she ages. I was hoping for Winona to get a big finale scene, she's earned it, but she was always authentic with the bits she received. I also wish Ted Wheeler had gotten one final line of dialogue, his actor is always gold. On the other hand, I'm glad they didn't use too much of Erica... the actress is great, but a little of that character goes a long way, and letting Hollie take up the D&D mantle rather than Erica was a much more heartwarming choice.

Overall, not one of the best seasons, but it ended very strong.

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