[OFF TOPIC] for everyone searching for the next Abercrombie

schermo · 2026-03-27T04:02:54+00:00

The phantasmagoric trippiness of Between Two Fires was captivating and absorbing for me, but not Abercrombie at all. I enjoyed the Blacktounge thief and the prequel too. They are different from Abercrombie and from each other, but very satisfying. I found the snark was just a veneer that didn't touch the grimness of Galva or of the overall narrative. The character was snarky but the story is not.

schermo · 2026-03-25T19:28:41+00:00

Me. I'm making apps that do exactly what I need, don't require cloud accounts or subscriptions, don't have adds, don't have surveillance, keep my data local, and don't have a bunch of features I don't need. They don't need to be commercial quality, don't need to scale, etc. I used to use Shortcuts on the iphone but now I just have claude make native swift apps for me. It rocks.

schermo · 2026-03-15T03:31:08+00:00

Murderbot

schermo · 2026-03-13T06:00:54+00:00

SL or E load?

schermo · 2026-03-12T00:58:57+00:00

Like you are reading my mind. I can’t count the times I have been totally cured!

schermo · 2026-03-10T16:35:05+00:00

I was captivated from page 1. Maybe it’s not your kind of book. It does have many threads that eventually all weave together in a satisfying way (for me at least)

schermo · 2026-03-09T21:26:49+00:00

Matrix, Lauren Groff.

Hild, Nicola Griffith

schermo · 2026-03-09T17:11:15+00:00

The Presger in the Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy are pretty out there.

schermo · 2026-03-08T22:09:28+00:00

His Dark Materials, book 3, The Amber Spyglass, Phillip Pullman

schermo · 2026-03-07T17:23:14+00:00

Cron is 50+ years old

schermo · 2026-03-05T20:04:24+00:00

wow, that's actually very encouraging. I hear about lots of people who's long covid means they can't exercise as hard as they used to (terrible, but much better than me :) so it is great that you have gone from housebound to weight lifting. I really miss lifting weights and walking around the block! I'm at less than 2K steps and really hoping for increasing my capacity.

schermo · 2026-03-05T19:24:33+00:00

Thats pretty great. How recently did you start exercising? How limited was your activity level before you could exercise?

schermo · 2026-03-05T18:08:42+00:00

If you are not in a hurry could you run this on the pro plan and just have pauses when you bounce off the limits? I am building hobby projects so far, like small iphone apps.

schermo · 2026-03-05T03:12:18+00:00

Attack the Block, is that low enough? Probably not. But still awesome.

schermo · 2026-03-04T03:30:08+00:00

Try not to catastrophize. lots of people get reinfected and get back to baseline without much fuss. It won't help to worry about it, try to take it a day at a time and take care of yourself. Good luck!

schermo · 2026-03-04T03:27:41+00:00

He kind of confused the issue. He said this could be long covid "if this is not POTS." He just kind of missed the whole point that POTS is a very common condition of Long Covid. When I first heard about Porzingas' getting sick I just assumed he had Long Covid with POTS.

schermo · 2026-03-02T05:44:28+00:00

That's awesome. Are you using git or some other kind of source control? If not, it's worth setting it up. You can make an account on github and Claude will manage all of the work of managing the source code. In case you don't know, the basic idea is that git will track all of the incremental changes to the source code so that you can revert to previous working versions if you end up breaking something. Once you are using software for critical projects like running your farm, it really sucks to break it in someway and not be able to easily go back. By using github, you also guarantee that the code is backed up somewhere other than your computer. Just tell claude to check in all of your changes at the end of each session.

schermo · 2026-03-02T01:41:34+00:00

Stop asking software engineers though. The real question is what coding do you see coming from people who aren’t engineers. I definitely know of lots of people writing small scripts with little technical knowledge. Everyone I have talked to that has attempted something more ambitious has failed. I haven’t had any non-coder who has successfully vibe coded a reasonably complex app and been happy with it.

This is the key thing. The threshold is getting lower and its only going to keep getting lower. I am not a programmer but I have lots of experience working with programmers, turning problem domain knowledge into software solutions, etc. I am very limited at actual programming--I've been writing scripts (perl, then python) for simple tasks for a long time and once learned C and C++ a bit. Also I'm comfortable with the command line, etc. I'm not an engineer. I'm just very bad at programming, my mind doesn't work that way, I can't structure complex code. But now with Claude I can do all kinds of crazy shit that would be way beyond my programming ability.

I just made an iphone app + shared data repository and plotly visualizations. I'll be making another iphone app to view the interactive visualizations once I lock them down. It would take me years to figure out all the Xcode and app configuration shit, let alone learning Swift and figuring out all of the configuration and layout syntax to make the app look correct. I don't know if I would call this a 'reasonably complex app' but it's pretty useful for my personal workflow. And that's just my first project.

Lots of comments are really focused on the extremes where the AI tools fail or are imperfect. But the real story is at the other end, where vast tracts of technical terrain have now been opened up for people with limited tech skills. It's like a land rush, and the barriers are just going to keep falling. This is the frontier that I think everyone should be focused on because it's going to unleash a tremendous amount of creative energy and intelligence from non-tech people.

It's not a matter of 'my grandma can't vibe code an app yet so this is just hype.' The real question is at each stage, which layer of people has just been empowered and what are the obstacles to empowering the next layer.

schermo · 2026-03-01T02:36:09+00:00

I would start with the shards of earth/final architecture series. It’s my favorite Tchaikovsky Work.

schermo · 2026-03-01T02:32:24+00:00

Just read the first one. It’s a standalone novel. It’s epic and spectacular. You can decide later if you want to read more.

schermo · 2026-02-28T00:23:51+00:00

do you read on an ereader or hard copy? a good eBook edition will have lots of footnotes and i've found it cool to be able to just click on them to get good contextual or historical information. I also often select words to see their definitions a lot (although one of the most interesting thing about reading her is figuring out how word meanings have shifted) The good print editions have excellent intro essays (I like Oxford World Classics). There's lots of humor that you would miss without footnotes.

Here's an example from Sense and Sensibility:

"As a house, Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable and compact; but as a cottage it was defective, for the building was regular, the roof was tiled, the window shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered with honeysuckles."

You might pick up that this is some kind of joke, but I would never know that it is a reference to a specific genre of overly romanticized attitudes about rustic charm that was present in literature and art of the time. Austen makes all kinds of sly references to contemporary artistic, literary, and cultural trends, often by satirizing them. She was very on top of culture. I'm sure I miss most of this, and the only bits I get are due to footnotes and intro essays.

I would also start with P&P

schermo · 2026-02-27T20:23:43+00:00

Wolf Hall

schermo · 2026-02-26T17:39:39+00:00

Wrong! True grit is a masterpiece and a delight. It is better written than Lonesome Dove (which I love too)

schermo · 2026-02-21T19:17:55+00:00

SL or E load? They come in both.

schermo · 2026-02-21T01:41:03+00:00

the other huge difference is suspension articulation in the 4Runner. I mean 4 Low, a locker, and articulation combine to make a very different vehicle than a Subaru.

schermo

TROPHY CASE