Everything2 New Writeups

December 4, 2025 (personal)

2025年12月04日T02:22:38Z

So once again I find myself in the library. It's warm, out of the wind and the toilets are clean. I'm larning a ton of stuff today, like reading the Jefferson Bible, who knew that was a thing? I'll tel you another thing I learned: the loudest sound in the world is two teenage girls having a whispered conversation, and the quietest creature is an eight-year-old slumped in a comfy chair entirely surrounded by books. One more: the loudest object in the world is the zipper on a teenage boy's backpack. Lord, I thought there was a rocket launch.

I've been getting a lot of compliments lately. A friend gave me a brand new Black Watch tartan kilt, which fit me perfectly. Good Scottish wool, it's considerably more swishy than my old Utilikilt, and apparently it has 'a sexy swing". I have to watch myself, wouldn't do to be too sexy. but the colours do suit me, it's comfy and looks cool 9nd maybe sexy) but there's a downside; ttradtional ilts lac pockets,

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Fishflies (review)

2025年12月03日T22:07:12Z

"Fishflies" is a short-run comic series written and drawn by Canadian comics creator Jeff Lemire, first published in single issue format in 2021 and 2022 and collected into a hardback collection in 2025, published by Image Comic. The comic combines a slice of life story with horror. It is set in Belle River, Ontario, a real town in contemporary Canada.

Franny Fox is an elementary school girl in a small and somewhat depressing town in rural Ontario. She lives with an alcoholic father and is constantly teased due to her perpetually runny nose and general poverty. Her life is changed when another boy is shot while accidentally interrupting a convenience store robbery, and when the killer escapes, he is transformed by the gigantic swarm of mayflies (called "Fishflies" in Canada, apparently) that are carpeting the town. Transformed into a human-sized bug monster by the swarm, he befriends Franny, and both of them are given a chance to escape their circumstances.

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There Will Come Soft Rains (poetry)

2025年12月03日T21:25:03Z

There Will Come Harsh Winds

There will come a day when you stand, alone,

Forced to face the world by yourself.

Just as winter cracks open the barnyard door

And livestock shiver in the cold.

There will come harsh winds

That strip skin from the flesh

Which leave you shuddering, alone,

And forced to bear the storm by yourself.

Fettered down, you bend and buckle

Begging and crying, praying and pleading.

For a release from the chains each and every evening

Do you pray to a new God each time?

When your restraints fall to dust

The metal glowing in the light of day,

You search around for what must

Have happened to keep you away.

You walk over to that which you wanted to mount

For it would have held freedom at its summit.

But as you peek over the edge all you see

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The Holy Foreskin (thing)

2025年12月03日T18:38:12Z

The mystery of Jesus Christ's foreskin

Many people, notably almost all in the Roman Catholic church, seem to put a lot of store by holy relics, the preserved bits of holy people and whatnot from religious history. Examples include bits of the cross Jesus was put to death on, the nails he was hanged up by, pieces of Noah's Ark, and innumerable body parts of saints and holy folk, not limited to St Peter’s bones beneath the Vatican; St Paul’s head and chains in Rome; St James’s remains at Compostela; multiple competing skulls of St John the Baptist; Saint Catherine of Alexandria’s incorrupt body at Sinai; Saint Stephen’s bones dispersed across the Mediterranean; St Nicholas’s relics at Bari; St Anthony of Padua’s famously preserved tongue; St Januarius’s blood in Naples; St Thérèse of Lisieux’s relics touring worldwide; and innumerable duplicate fragments—fingers, ribs, teeth, hair, hearts, and whole arms—claimed for saints from Augustine

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agentic AI (thing)

2025年12月03日T18:06:53Z

I had to do a little research for this one, and I’ll admit I skipped some of the deeper technical bits, but here’s a quick summary of the "what," which I can explain.

Agentic AI is basically an AI with some actual power and control. Instead of asking an AI "How would I do X?", you can now say, "Hey, AI, here’s a task—please carry it out." Off goes the machine, figures out what needs doing, makes a to-do list, and then toddles off to do it by itself. So when JayBonci says he’s enlisted help from the agentic AI Claude, what he’s effectively done is say, "Here’s this website, I want to achieve such-and-such with it," and Claude gathers its wits, plans the steps, and writes the code for the X bit. It’s rather like having a robot help you clean your room or do the spring cleaning: with minimal effort, the job gets done.

That isn’t to say it’s perfect. No AI has common sense or a human idea of what "a good job" looks like, so doubtless Jay has occasionally

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around you I plot the stars (poetry)

2025年12月03日T13:42:11Z

^{The split second when everything in my universe lined up}

^{and you were}the fixed point. The hinge. The pivot.

^elluzion

you are

where all the stories begin and where they end

where the music starts, where the maze is solved,

the epicenter,

the soft click when a key unlocks door,

when all the stars line up in a pattern I dreamed about

the ones I've been waiting for all of my life

I recognized them instantly

Geoffrey Keating (person)

2025年12月03日T12:42:43Z

Geoffrey Keating (in Irish, Seathrún Céitinn) (1569-1644) was an Irish historian and Catholic priest, who wrote in the Irish language. He was born in Tipperary, and some sources suggest he attended a bardic school there. In 1600 he went to France, where he studied theology in Reims and later taught at the Irish college in Bordeaux. After the French years he worked as a Catholic priest in Ireland, but sources largely disagree about where exactly.

Keating's main written work in Irish is his history of Ireland, Foras Feasa ar Éirinn. It is a massive history of Ireland, including both historical and mythical material. Its style is remarkable: in contrast to other history writing from the classical period, it is relatively close to the contemporary poetical standard, as Keating had the education of a classical poet. More commonly, history works were written in an archaic style perceived as historically correct.

In Reims and Bordeaux, Keating came under the influence of the

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urinal fly (thing)

2025年12月02日T20:57:16Z

A 'target' incorporated into the porcelain of a urinal.

"A target fixedly connected to a urinal or toilet to attract the attention of human males."
—US Patent US4044405

The author of the above patent is reported to have said that "parents, janitors, and others responsible for this cleanliness have often despaired the human male sloppiness of failing to direct urine into the proper receptacles", a statement I can second without hesitation, and a reason why I stand by my view that the trough urinal is a better solution than single-occupancy urinals.

Anyone unfortunate enough to visit men's public toilets containing a simgle-user urinal interface has doubtless encountered this phenomenon; it includes spray on the surrounding walls, pools on the floor and even (ye Gods, how‽) spray on the

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Stalky & Co. (review)

2025年12月02日T18:09:57Z

Reviewing Rudyard Kipling's 1899 schoolboy-life novel

"[this book]had an immense influence on boys' literature"
—George Orwell

Originally published in serial form in various magazine periodicals, the complete work was published by MacMillan in the UK in novel form in 1899. The stories follow the antics of three boys at a school based on the {United Services College], a prep school aimed at getting the boys to the military colleges of Sandhurst(Army) or the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, UK. Boys generally came from upper middle class backgrounds, often families in the military of civil service overseas.

Kipling himself attended this school, and it presents an accurate picture of British boarding school life at that time, and for that class of boy. Sons of officers and landed gentry are sent here for preparation and polish and many (possibly most) are destined to

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Mary's "Virgin" Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbour (thing)

2025年12月02日T17:11:07Z

A handy and moderately amusing mnemonic to help recall the order of planets from the Sun outward.

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Easy. Pluto is no longer a planet of course, but if you feel the need to include it you'll have to come up with your own reminder for that. ...'s Penis, maybe?1

I believe I got this from an episode of QI, possibly Stephen Fry, or maybe Alan Davies. 2

Bonus limerick:

There once was a lass from Cape Cod
Who wanted a baby from God.
But 'twas not the Almighty
who got up her nightie,
But Roger the lodger, the sod.

1 Right, that didn't need to be said, and it's beneath me. Apologies.

2 Okay, I was wrong. it was of course originally, xkcd: https://xkcd.com/992/. ~~But it could still have come via Fry or Davies~~ I almost certainly came to it through QI, but it was Sandi Toksvig.

xclip -o | wc -w
128

best coffee ever (thing)

2025年12月02日T02:21:01Z

"What's the best coffee you ever had?

I get this question from time to time, and each time I have a different answer. I intend to share some of them with you, with reasons.

Part of my coffee journey is the highlight moments of "This is what coffee can taste like! Ah, this is great coffee!", followed by "What's different, and how can I get it again?" There've been many moments of 'best coffee ever', in ways that have changed my expectations of flavour or how to improve my process.

The first one was in Hungary, in the home of my interpreter, whose wife would every morning make coffee in a family-size moka pot. The flavour was intense, rich and robust, the body was excellent. Even using storebought ground coffee, it was fabulous and was the start of my journey into proper home coffee making. Once i got home, the Bialetti Moka Express quickly became my favoured brewing method, and remains so to this day. On that same trip, a road trip to

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call and response (review)

2025年12月02日T00:51:37Z

"Call and Response" is an American collection of short stories, written by Christopher Caldwell (better known to us Everythingians as the glorious Evil Catullus) and published by Neon Hemlock Press in 2025. The book's subtitle is a straightforward "Stories of the Fantastic."

The book is arranged into two halves -- first is the Call, which includes five stories with a variety of characters, plots, and settings, followed by the Response, with another five stories that are related in some way to the first five. Some follow the same characters years later, some are focused on the same settings in the distant future, and one has neither the same characters or settings, but looks at a similar premise from a different point of view.

In the "Call" section, the stories include:

"Femme and Sundance" - Davion and Tommy are two outlaws in love. After they use supernatural disguises to rob a bank, they'

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coffee nap (thing)

2025年12月01日T23:27:56Z

So here's a funny thing. A couple of years ago I discovered this technique to refresh myself in the early afternoon. A coffee nap is a technique where one drinks a small amount of caffeine and then takes a short nap, of 15 to 20 minutes duration. The idea is that caffeine takes that long to begin affecting your system, so you wake up just as it starts to kick in.

Caffeine works by blocking a neurotransmitter called adenosine. Adenosine is a naturally occurring chemical in the body that promotes feelings of sleepiness. Throughout the day, adenosine levels build, signaling to the body that it is time to sleep. During sleep, adenosine is cleared from the brain. So during the nap, your brain clears some of the adenosine that contributes to feelings of tiredness, leaving more room for the incoming caffeine to block the remaining adenosine receptors. This 15--.20 minute nap timing therefore creates a stronger boost in alertness than coffee or a nap alone.

I occasionally use a coffee nap

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root log: December 2025 (log)

2025年12月01日T16:50:47Z

Tis the season

Hello everyone, big update this month. As I've stated in my previous root log: mid-November 2025 - Nodelet updates, I've embraced agentic coding with Claude and have gotten a 20x productivity increase when dealing with a big and technical debt-laden codebase. This has allowed me to accelerate the modernization prioritizes I've had for a decade, enabling a massive push to clean the codebase up and finally start to ship new, modern features to the website. I'm firmly committed to revitalizing the community, bringing in new blood, and creating the long-term financial and content stability this place needs. It is not lost on me the minor irony of using AI to create a place where humans can create, but I think it represents the best of what modern approaches have to offer.

Traffic is up 300% month over month, largely due to stability, though we are seeing a rise in Google and Bing search traffic in part due to responsiveness and

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savory French toast (recipe)

2025年12月01日T03:41:46Z

French toast can be whatever you want it to be: a lazy pancake, a sugar delivery device, even an open-faced grilled cheese. Until I found a recipe online a few years ago, I hadn't considered that it could also be savory, while remaining pleasantly sweet. Add the right kind of cheese, some spices that complement cinnamon, and maybe some greens, and you're there. Everyone I've introduced this to has liked it, although I usually go light on the greens if they're not adventurous eaters.

In the spirit of French toast's infinite flexibility, here's a choose your own adventure recipe that you can customize to your mood or the picky eaters in your life. The quantities are based on one serving with two slices of bread, so don't forget to multiply them to feed your audience, but don't worry too much about exact measurements and proportions. You can vibe it out!

The Base

2 slices of bread. Sourdough is a nice balance

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Server time: Monday, December 1, 2025 (poetry)

2025年12月01日T03:01:42Z

Iron Noder passed
The server time, so early!!
I thought I had more.

Too late for IRON NODER XVIII: NEGLIGENCE IS THE RUST OF THE SOUL / 7:01 PM November 30 2025 PST

Eastern Condors (review)

2025年11月30日T22:27:28Z

Eastern Condors (1987) is a spectacular send-up of The Dirty Dozen but for the Vietnam War. Sammo Hung directs and stars amid an ensemble cast of Chinese-American prisoners who are sent to Vietnam to clean up America's mess, and what a mess it is.

Whatever kind of action movie you want, it's here: Impressive martial arts moves, with lots of vertical stunts and a minimum of cuts. Knife fights that make up for finesse with the meanest blades they could find. Pistol standoffs, rifles spraying at nothing in particular, a few well-placed grenades, and just when you think the good guys are winning, tanks. And have you ever seen a guy killed by a leaf? Because there are two of those! The plot is thin, but it's a suitable vehicle for a 'Nam movie that's bigger and noticeably more fun than Missing in Action.

Everything goes wrong from the start, when Colonel Lam liberates his Army base from an agonizingly long

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Focuswriter (review)

2025年11月30日T21:45:30Z

Focuswriter is a free, open-source writing and composition program developed by Gottcode that is notable for two features; immense visual customization of the GUI and layout, and its "zen" nature. It has all the baseline features you would expect in a modern text editor: rich text, spellcheck, wordcounts, find and replace.

There is a bar at the top, and the bottom. Each bar and every option therein, reall everything except for the text page, is hidden until you mouse over it. If you want, you can set the bar at either the top or the bottom to always be visible, and customize what is and is not on each bar. It's designed for pure distraction-free writing, "focus" writer.

What makes it truly powerful is some of its extra features designed to encourage daily, consistent writing. You can set a "daily goal" of a certain number of pages, words, or minutes writing, and it will show you your progress toward that goal in the bar at the bottom. It will also log the amount of

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illegal (thing)

2025年11月30日T20:25:12Z

This 2025 song by ingenue artist PinkPantheress is ostensibly about using marijuana, but intentionally left ambiguous aaaand (subject to interpretation), possibly about having sex (while on drugs) as well as, possibly in exchange for more drugs.

The song makes it very clear from its opening lines that the person Pink involves herself with for this purpose is new to her:

My name is Pink and I'm really glad to meet you
You're recommended to me by some people
....
Oh, what's your name? I don't know what I should call ya....

Of course, the key point of the song is in the lines:

Oooooooooh is this illegal?
Oooooooooh it feels illegal.

This really gets to the heart of the fuzziness of modernity as to questions of sexuality and recreational drug use, and perhaps the casual exchange of one for the other.…

The Radiant Circle (fiction)

2025年11月30日T19:58:31Z

The Radiant Circle is a henotheistic religious entity in the world of Falw̄rwdd, headed by a high priest. The faith holds that there is one true god, and that the adherents to other creeds should be burned at the pyre. The current High Priest incumbent is Birihta.

This faith is thought to be the natural continuation and evolution of previous worship of Radiant One, a god in a now-dead religion. They worship the natural force that is the sun, and this natural force is embodied in the sense that it is the recipient of their prayers. They believe the sun brings life and prosperity, and that times of drought and intense heat are the sun's wrath.

The religion's sphere of influence is mostly restricted to the lands of Haffwdd, as the priests of the faith tend to be too fanatical for outsiders to tolerate. The people of Haffwdd have no choice, because the religion is mandated. There is great division among the people, because usually worship of the Circle coincides with

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