The rest of the notes from August 2025#
The first days of August 2025 we spent on a road trip.
2025-08-03#
A post from Juliet E McKenna#
"If generative AI could REALLY make the next GTA in 6 months with 10 staff, or write the next bestseller, or produce 10 blockbusters a day? They wouldn't be trying to sell it to YOU. They would keep it for themselves and guard it from you ferociously."
I've seen this quote without attribution a couple of times. Whoever said it, they're spot on.
2025-08-04#
"Oh, boys, don't be sentimental; it's bad for the digestion!"
-- Herman Melville, #MobyDick
2025-08-07#
"Jurassic World Rebirth" is this year's installment of the renowned franchise about dinosaurs. There is not much to say because it's Exactly What It Says On A Tin. All the expected plot points are there, I was even able to predict who will die when and in what order. If that's what you were expecting, then all's good. The part on the boat reminded me of "Moby Dick," which I'm now reading. And Scarlett Johansson had a nice character, not too much of a fan service kind of action chick.
I was moving away from Spotify since April and I settled with a mix of Music For Programming and vaporwave, which I bought on Bandcamp, at work and local files at home, but what TIDAL reminds me now of is how much I like to explore and jump between seemingly distant types of music. And that is something that I can have only with a streaming services. But it feels so good to be back to these journeys.
Lol. When you cancel your Spotify, they present you with this playlist.
2025-08-08#
Żółw the Turtle: The End#
And so the Żółw Saga came to an end. Ever since we had guests in July, he became scared and avoidant and wouldn't go into the water, etc. We called to a couple of places, but no one accepts turtles. Guardia Civil told us to release it near a body of water. And so we did. We drove to a nearby river where there are already turtles and we set him free. It wasn't an easy decision, but it was the right one. Now he's on his own, but at least far away from us pesky humans.
It's possible that it was, in fact, a wild animal and a local specie, because what do I know, and I was like these people who "rescue" a coyote by taking him home and washing him and posting on their Facebook that they found this dog who looks at them "weirdly" (because coyotes, unlike dogs, have much less face mimics).
Dune is like gambling: the house always wins.
2025-08-09#
Interesting. TIDAL has an option to authenticate with Nostr keys. I guess it's because of Jack Dorsey but it's pretty mainstream usage there. Of course I am not going to use that, but it's worth mentioning.
2025-08-10#
"The Shrouds" is the latest (2024) David Cronenberg's movie and it's again science-fiction, like the previous "Crimes of the Future." The story revolves around technology which allows keeping track of how body of relatives decomposes in the grave [sic!]. There are many conflicting plots which aren't getting resolved, but it's fine because it's a story about grief after losing somebody. A bit like "Lost Highway," his own "Naked Lunch," and German "Cherry Blossoms." I could feel that it was very personal.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom#
After a year and a half or 185 hours, I finally finished "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom." I played it on and off as to not overplay it. In the end I couldn't handle any more side quests and I went for the main one. At first I failed, so I took another detour which turned out pointless but gave me some practice before the second attempt. The final fight was very satisfying, but it was crucial that I came prepared the second time.
In "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," I went to see how the boss looks like and I ended up killing him. It felt cool because I had the maxed-out armour and all but it also felt underwhelming. This time it was better. But then again, I went a bit underprepared this time. Low armour, just a couple of weapons.
I have a thread somewhere, but to summarise, I will write that the expansion of the world when comparing to the first game was really impressive. Looking back it seems crazy that there were no caves in "Breath of the Wild." They more than doubled the world size. I hope they will do some sort of follow up in this style. It would be a waste if they didn't.
I found an old blog preserved on my hard disk drive and I remembered running it very well, but I was certain it had a couple of texts at best. In actuality it ran for 41 pages in an OpenOffice document. Maybe I could go through some of this old stuff. Quite a snapshot I have there.
2025-08-11#
Nineteen years ago today I have returned from my failed trip to Scotland and it was failed because we went to find a job and we didn't. But we also made a lot of mistakes. And I think I might be ready to write about it without overloading it with irrelevant details because this time around I have an idea of what I could say with it. I got inspired back in May when I mentioned the whole endeavour to a coworker and she looked at me (almost) disgusted and with the lack of understanding.
The 1990s dance and techno in FLAC quality and on headphones is really something. I'm glad I reconstructed, and expanded a bit while at it, The Fallback List.
I vividly remember inspecting every new page with DevTools to pick up on various CSS tricks. And now I realised I haven't done that in years when I was checking a fancy blockquote on this Mastodon instance I'm on.
2025-08-12#
I read about The Residents for the first time in April's issue of "XL," a forgotten now Polish music magazine, and judging by what I read, I simply assumed it was an April Fool's joke. Mind you, this was still back in 1990s. Now imagine how surprised I was when I stumbled upon an hour-long episode about the group on Viva Zwei. Full of videoclips and all.
I'm going through (some of) their albums now and what I always thought was a special sound of this or that album is, in fact, how they sound. I kind of like them, but to a degree they are not my thing.
2025-08-13#
Dream about soup.io#
I had a dream that soup.io was working and I was able to log in to my old account, but I realised, to my sadness, that there is not much use of the service in 2025 because others took over.
Technically, there is something under soup.io but unrelated. I meant the competitor to Tumblr. I used to like the blend of the page itself and the form for adding new elements. Quite unique back then, now lost like tears in the rain.
I've seen things, you modern Internauts wouldn't believe. Microblogging platforms on the shoulder of soup.io. I watched discussions glitter in the dark near obscure blogging platforms' comment sections. All those moments will be lost in time, like bits in the decommissioned RAID.
If Nintendo's loading screen taught us anything, it's that "everything not saved will be lost."
2025-08-14#
The Residents' debut is surprisingly good. I was expecting incomprehensible noise and it's nothing like that. Solid stuff.
One thing that I find charming about The Residents is that due to their process is not easy, if possible at all, to figure out which year each album was released on because they don't follow any fads.
A third coffee today was not the best idea, but I couldn't resist myself. And it tastes so good.
2025-08-14#
It would be interesting to write a "Choose Your Adventure" kind of story.
We saw a hogmother with two little piglets. They must have been very recently born.
2025-08-15#
Now that I abolished the idea of a consistent collection after switching from Spotify to TIDAL, it feels like a neurofitness exercise. I open the app and then I think what I can listen to. Sometimes I have something in mind and sometimes I go to new arrivals and navigate from there or something comes to my mind through that. Feels more explorative than just picking from something that I added weeks ago.
The Residents had an idea for The American Composers Series to span across 10 releases, but they managed to release 2 only. Similarly, The Mole Trilogy ended up with 3 releases only (which might feel natural for a trilogy, but 6 were planned). The band officially said they have no energy for that and also they forgot where they wanted to go with the series. And I find it comforting that I'm not the only one abandoning my cycles.
"Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter" (2014) was a surprise for me because I only knew the poster and assumed it's a feudal Japan fantasy flick. It's not. It's set in the modern times and follows titular Kumiko who lives in Tokyo and is obviously not dealing well with life, so she escapes into the world of fantasy and starts looking for a treasure that she saw in a movie, which turns out to be "Fargo." Then she travels to actual Fargo! All in all, it's a sad story. Especially, giving away the rabbit.
Extra points for Rinko Kikuchi as Kumiko. I have seen her previously in "The Map of Sounds of Tokyo" and "Tokyo Vice."
After "Smiling Friends" I felt I wanted to follow up with similar aesthetics and I decided to give "Rick and Morty" a shot. I tried it back in 2020, but it didn't sit with me. Now it was better. Just like with "Smiling Friends," I felt that animation gives its creators more freedom to tell whatever kind of a story they want. Only writing can give more freedom, I suppose. I'm glad I'm starting now, so I have so much episodes to see at my own pace. Then there are specials and anime season as well.
Accidental findings on TIDAL. The thread.
2025-08-16#
"In 2009, a California court ruled that a contract written in blood is not binding and lacks legal standing."
2025-08-17#
I rewatched "Soylent Green" after at least 10 years. It aged funnily and feels more like an alternate reality (especially that action was set in 2022) than some sort of prediction, but still has solid world building. In these regards, it reminded me of "Fahrenheit 451." In all fairness, wealth accumulation while the bottom percentage sleeps in their cars is not so far off. I find boxes with the phones, which allows contacting the precinct, sweet.
"Queen of the Desert" is 2015's Werner Herzog's movie about Gertrude Bell who was a person unknown to me and all while she played a crucial role for Middle East countries' borders. It starts very slowly and as a not very interesting romance story, but it ends early enough and moves into desert. I like desert, so the later part was cool. And the opening played its role. Werner Herzog doesn't like three-act form anyway. Apparently the movie has only 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I beg to differ.
The movie was done after the interview I read, so I had to figure stuff out on myself. For instance, Fattuh presenting a faked paper from the government is what Herzog did during shooting "Fitzcarraldo."
We saw the hogs with piglets again two days ago.
I started playing mini sudoku on LinkedIn. I never had a knack for this game, but maybe it will change now.
Choosing gold#
I realised quite early on that I begun getting older. While biologically it's true at any point, I meant the mental oldness that is that either I stopped catching up with current mental models or that my mental models are getting outdated. Which is the same thing really. I can pinpoint the issue very well and I also know not to bring it up here because it would derailed the discourse (if anyone was reading me and responding). Then it started expanding to other areas.
I was lucky that the first issue I went out of date with was controversial enough for me to sit it out. It's also entirely possible that there were others but they were not controversial and I missed them. And sitting My Topic out I realised that it's probably the best course of action. The younger generations will not adopt my mental model because they have their own, so only thing I can achieve is getting labelled and maybe even ridiculed or ostracised. And for what? My opinion. Not worth it.
"And they say silver, I choose gold."
-- Gala, "Let A Boy Cry"
Humans lose flexibility over time, be it their bodies or their minds, and getting vocal about it is not gonna change it. It's a stupid game where one can only win a stupid prize. Now, some of us were blessed to have developed mental models that turned out to be the winning ones. But it's a pure luck.
My running hypothesis which I'm going to test myself is that the best way to get old with dignity is to develop some sort of practical hobby and focus on that. This can most likely get you extra points with younger generations and cost less nerves.
Meanwhile I treat everyone I don't understand as an alien from outer space. Or more accurately, I think about myself as an alien among people. In any case, this creates enough distance (by compartmentalisation, I suppose) so I don't have emotional urge to start any discussion about those differences.
2025-08-18#
What I like about the old albums, so-called long plays, or: LPs, is that they were closing in around 40 minutes and it's easier to fit them in wholesale for listening. The CD era pushed the times closer to 60 minutes and streamings can result in hours-long releases. And I like it, but it's sometimes tough to listen to without splitting it. 2CD albums were already a challenge here.
And speaking of LPs, for years I had no idea why mini albums were called EPs. I skipped the vinyl era. So, in case you were wondering too, it stands for Extended Play. Something that makes as much sense these days as CC (carbon copy) or the soft disk for the save icon.
One of the potential positives of the generative AI should be cutting down on test assignments when applying for new jobs. What's the point if you'll get flooded with AI slop to churn through? Some hard-headed companies might require a detailed commit history as a proof, but it should be marginal. The downside is that, I heard, they want AI-assisted live-coding sessions. So I guess it evens out.
I just ate so much watermelon that I will have sugar rush for the next 6 hours.
2025-08-19#
What is happening in the US now is like the fall of Roman Empire on fast-forward and thanks to social media we have seats in the first row.
I solved one sudoku yesterday but failed the second one. But I was a bit high on diclofenac by then. I'll make another attempts.
I wanted to merge cells in a table in Notion and I couldn't find it, so I googled it and there it was, the first article featured a detailed instruction how to do it. But it was wrong. Notion doesn't have cells merging (which I learned from the second result). It smells like AI-written nonsense. Meh.
We were watching "Department Q" yesterday and at one point Kelly McDonald's character said: "Not my circus, not my monkeys." It caught my ear because this is a Polish saying ("nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy") and it looks like our emigration to the UK popularised it there. I think it's the first time I see a saying going this direction. We usually absorb them, not take places.
2025-08-20#
Dream about leaving my son#
I had a dream that I had a son, who's my friend's son in the real world, and we went out in the morning and I had unused clothes to give away with me and we got to those boxes in the street where I placed pants and then I noticed new diapers in the next box and I decided to leave the son there because I came up with conclusion that he would be better without us. I wrapped his legs in his diaper so he wouldn't go after me and I walked away.
Later my wife wrote to me that child services brought him back and that "They didn't even put it down as maltreatment." I didn't feel guilty about it or anything, but I decided to not give him away anymore because they would bring him again. My in-dream son wouldn't want to approach me, though.
Then I woke up.
It might be an echo of setting Żółw the Turtle free. And I made that decision after another dream, where the pieces of his shell were loose. I had it during our road trip. I still remember the physical sensation in my hands. Strange as it sounds, he didn't suffer because of that.
I solved the other sudoku later. And then another one. I find solving sudoku surprisingly invigorating. The right mix of spacial puzzle and numbers. If that makes sense. It also made me realise that the two games that LinkedIn has are distant variations of sudoku.
2025-08-22#
Hailey HR just got a new interface for no good reason. But let's not be an old person and have a blast with it.
It's been pleasure, dear Axios, but this paywall will not fly. Unfollow follows.
I re-listened to Madonna's "Confessions on a Dance Floor" and Lady Gaga's "Born This way" and I have to say that there was no magic this time. And I liked those albums so much in their time. I guess we all move on one way or another. But also, I listened to them in the highest quality and they just don't sound special, unlike some other albums I revisit. The sound is flat most of the time. No hidden gems, no nothing.
One interesting thing about Notion is that they seem to use Markdown under the hood. So if I copy the document and paste it elsewhere, it will become Markdow. And if I copy Markdown and paste it in Notion, then it will be of the right document structure.
2025-08-24#
Sometimes I don't read the news, only discussions under the post that linked it. It's similar to a writing method where an event is not shown but described by impressions of those who experienced it.
We decided to dive into history of the country we live in. "La Vida de Franco En Color" is a 2-episode documentary about General Franco who ruled Spain for 4 decades until he finally died. Various historians comment on various aspects of Franco and it's illustrated with coloured video materials from the epoch. It's interesting that sucha a dull person can be so skilled at keeping the power.
I knew nothing of "Apartment 7A" as it was not my choice. Then I saw Julia Garner from "Ozark" and I thought it was the reason my wife chose it. I was curious if she was one-trick pony with Ruth Langmore, but no. She plays a completely different person here. Then my wife hinted there is something about the movie and I figured out soon after that it's a prequel to "Rosemary's Baby." Not bad but also completely not necessary. Like "Papillon" remake. But Julia's brilliant. And Mr. Gibbs.
"Super" (2010) is a cooperation of Rainn Wilson and James Gunn, among some others, and it tells a story of a nerd who goes through a breakdown after his wife leaves him and he decides to become a superhero. It's a dramedy and at times I laughed when it wasn't really a place for that because it was treating a serious problem in a silly way. But that's not a criticism. It's just a mixed beast and I think the proportions were okay. It's a solid deconstruction of superheroes.
It has been compared to "Kick-Ass" which was released around that time too, but both movies were done at the same time, so there is no borrowing from one another. It actually works in favour of both movies because we can see different takes on the same topic at the same time. Due to tragic aspects of the main character's life, it reminded me heavily of Spanish "Capitán Carver."
However, the reason why I decide to see this movie was an article about Rainn Wilson who said that he knew that he would be mostly remembered as Dwight Schrute from "The Office," but if he could choose one movie, then it would have been "Super." And I thought that I owed him that much. He's good as these idiosyncratic nerds. In fact, I haven't seen him playing any other type of character.
"Bored To Death" is a story of a struggling writer who publishes an ad on Craigslist that he's an unlicensed detective with reasonable prices. Cases ensue. It's rather light-hearted and driven by Jason Schwartzmann, Ted Danson, and Zach Galifianakis. I liked recreating scenes from noir stories in a modern context, for laughs of course. I had fun with it, but if not for being a show to watch for my weekend coffee, I probably wouldn't watch it.
It's the first book (novel? it's gonna be rather short, but I don't know the exact rules) that I write in a Markdown file and I realised that with a LibreOffice document, I would be concerned with how many pages I have so far. This time I don't know. I don't even know how many characters because I use PhoenixCode. I only now the number of lines which is not that distracting. I wonder if it will make the story to emerge more naturally in its length than otherwise.
I had two crêpes yesterday and the flour and/or sugar are making me irritated today. I wanted to write the book a bit, but it would only make me angry, so I'll do sudoku instead. It will also make me angry, but numbers don't care.
Overall, I went down from 47 minutes per sudoku this week to 16 minutes just now. This is 9×9 and a specific difficulty level, so doesn't tell much in an absolute sense, but shows I'm catching up.
Now that I have felt more freedom with commas and I don't use them that much in my writing, I can still switch to full-proper punctuation when needed. Any more official writing can benefit of it. Notes here or fiction? Not so much. This way I am double flexible. Just like JavaScript, I can follow more than one paradigm.
I'm getting emails to my Gmail account. It's mentioned as a joke somewhere and a crawler must have caught the scent of it. It doesn't make any sense in the context of how it was mentioned to use it.
2025-08-25#
When I was reading the interview book with Werner Herzog, it hit me that I could write a screenplay and send it to him. I have no hopes for actual shooting of it, but he says in the book that he's getting a lot of screenplays written by the most boring and standardised formats, etc. I could provide him with something refreshing. Also, I want to try writing a script. Luckily there are applications for it.
I'll start with this one: https://www.trelby.org/
If I fall asleep for a couple of years and wake up and you ask me what's the state of AI, I'll say that in 3 to 6 months it will replace 90% of programmers.
2025-08-27#
If I put a book away, I will never finish it. And I like finishing books. So when I start reading one, I am sometimes stuck with it for months, like it was with "Naked Lunch." Sometimes I do this on purpose, like with the fan-made novelization of "Placescape: Torment."
I rewrote a very short story (3 paragraphs) into 2-page-and-a-half screenplay. It's probably wrong by some standards, but I found the experience refreshing. I had to focus on a plot, dialogues, as well as visuals, so where I would place the camera, etc. Now I'll want more.
2025-08-28#
Scatman John#
I got inspired to re-listen to Scatman John's first album, "Scatman's World." Something I haven't done in decades. It's probably one of literally 3 or 4 cassettes I had in my life. The album got old pretty visibly, but the mix of scat singing and dance music didn't catch up with others, so it brings back a specific moment in time. I'm twelve again.
As if to corroborate it, the mix after the album is the harshest German techno I could come up with.
Bailando#
Going down the rabbit hole of establishing which version of "Bailando" was first, I discovered that those dance singers were not much older than me, especially from my current perspective.
(In March I took a part in a bar competition to name 90s dance songs and I realised to my embarrassment that I don't remember. It turned out it was Paradisio, though I could have sworn then that it was someone else. Today I found out there was Loona's version only a year later. And that one I was recalling.)
No Enrique Iglesias was involved in creation of the post above.
But "And they say silver, I chose gold" from Gala's "Let A Boy Cry" has got to mean that she chooses not to talk.
2025-08-29#
I was considering yesterday to buy Anbernic a remote handeld R36S because my friend recommended it, and it costed only 24 euros, but today it's 33. That's not how sleeping on a subject works.
Listening to all the dance covers of "Ievan Polkka."
The song is so short that the extended mix takes 3 minutes and 17 seconds.
2025-08-30#
I have seen "Chinatown" long ago enough to be surprised with the plot. The beginning was somehow confusing and I didn't know who's who and doing what, but it improved later. And there was a lot of actual detective work, et cetera. The whole thing with stealing water through re-zoning feels very up-to-date in these climate circumstances.
And so, finally, "Ozark" came to an end. Season 4 is 4 episodes longer and ties up the core plot (also leaving some things open). Twist chased twist and surprise surprise. At the same time it stil clicked in. I liked that they took time to converge plot lines gradually, unlike in "Ray Donovan" where the season finale would suddenly resolve everything. I also appreciate that it was hard to watch and I could feel the price of Byrde's choices.
After a quater of decade, I rewatched "Jaws." It's the 50th anniversary and the creators prepared a remastered version. Luckily, in terms of frame resolution and not adding new scenes, etc. The movie holds strong and the second part (of course) reminds me of "Moby Dick," which I suppose was intention. An interesting thing is that the mayor admits he was wrong halfway through the movie and doesn't live in denial till the end. Solid leading actors.
"The Congress" is a loose adaptation of "The Futurological Congress" by Stanisław Lem, which I didn't read. Ijon Tichy has been replaced with fictionalised Robin Wright. The first half feels like a "Black Mirror" episode and later it gets surreal, in no small part to animated presentation. If anything, the movie feels European as fuck. In a positive way. The whole "let's replace actors with AI models" is so spot on that it's uncanny that someone figured that out back in 2013.
2025-08-31#
After watching a docuseries about General Franco himself, we continues with a series from the same people, this time about Francoist Spain in general, hence "El Franquismo en Color." I either got used to their speed of talking or they talked less, but it was more manageable. It's interesting how many similarities there were with post-war communist Poland. I also noticed how old-men-driven the regime was at the end of Franco's life. It's gotta be a sign of power decline.
I knew of "The Saragossa Manuscript" since I was a kid because it was an old movie already and it starred Zbigniew Cybulski before his premature death. As a kid, I thought that Saragossa was some sort of a fantasy land. It's not. It's a city in Spain (I knew it for a quite time now!). This paired with knowing that it's a story-within-the-story kind of story made me finally see it. And oh boy, wasn't it a treat.
I think I lost a count at some point. Two characters read a manuscript of one's father who tells a story, among others, of a man telling a story where a girls tells a story and I'm pretty sure there's more. And let's not forget that it is a movie, which is another layer. This shows us that the movie adaptation of "House of Leaves" is not so undoable.
There are also many Spanish locations: there is Saragossa, there is Madrid, there is Cadiz, and some other places (Venta Quemada). The fun fact for us was that at the beginning characters describe the way they will go to Madrid, which more or less mirrors our road trip. But trivia aside, I find it impressive that all the scenography was built in Poland, but is very spot on with how Spain looks and feels. It reminded us of the Nativity scenes we saw in July. But that's old movies.
I can definitely see how the movie could influence David Lynch. Dream-like and surreal at times.
Too bad the soundtrack is not on TIDAL. I wonder if it ever was released.
And now I'm thinking about a story-within-the-story-project.
