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Sun Apr 19 10:00:01 UTC 2026
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Slept from eleven-thirty to eight-thirty.
Woke briefly around four.
Mostly sunny in the morning, then rain showers likely and a slight chance of thunderstorms early in the afternoon.
Rain showers, possibly mixed with snow showers and thunderstorms in the late afternoon.
Highs in the upper 40s.
West winds 5 to 15 mph, increasing to 10 to 20 mph in the afternoon.
Chance of precipitation 90 percent.
* [ ] prep for family D&D game on May 5
* [ ] character advancement options
* [ ] print new sheets?
* [ ] custom leveling vines spell
* [ ] describe the guild hall
* [ ] prep a few short guild jobs (with hooks to the wider world)
* [ ] D&D prep... What does the plane saucer need?
* [ ] Clear instructions saying "This is a ship that can navigate the planes and here's how to operate it."
* [ ] Null Entity guards a pocket dimension that's the ship's own traveling megadungeon. (Maybe be the Null Entity guards by asking really dumb groaner riddles?)
* [ ] A way to find descriptions and directions to interesting locations on the planes.
* [ ] confirm that Dr. Lipson takes my new health insurance (Priority Health). If so, schedule appointment?
Finished reading You Are Not a Gadget.
I'd hoped the heap of assertions would coalesce into one or more complete arguments, but Lanier seems unable to communicate his whole ideas or uninterested in doing so.
A reader could almost construct whole arguments from the crumbs Lanier drops, but only with generosity and uncertainty.
The book hints at possibly interesting ideas, but the clearly articulated ones are mostly not very interesting:
* Anonymity promotes incivility.
* The crown jewels of open culture (Linux, Wikipedia) are not novel.
* Novelty is the ultimate value. E.g., a game must be novel to be good, and whether it's fun is unimportant.
* Piracy is bad because musicians loose income. (Lanier is a musician.)
* Wouldn't it be cool if micro-transactions were feasible? Maybe peer to peer? Have the government pay for the infrastructure!
* People who dox war criminals (Wikileaks) are just as bad as the war criminals. (JFC!)
* "Cybernetic totalism" (belief that minds are mechanical and sufficient compute will usher in the Singularity) is spiritually bad and dehumanizing. (Probably, yes, but, as is his standard mode, Lanier assert this rather than building an argument.)
* Making financial instruments AIs would reduce global financial risks by [somehow!] making it _more_ understandable. (Hahahahahah. JFC. Reminds me of the self-interested AI contracts in Automatic Noodle.)
* It will be good for the environment if my coffee cup is a music album that costs $400. (I may be characterizing the idea uncharitably, but — come on — "songles"!)
All in all, Lanier's book leaves an impression of him less as a guru tech genius than as an old man yelling at clouds, which is unfortunate and probably partially unfair.
An editor strong enough to engage with the ideas might have helped the book work better as a piece of communication.
The Gamescience precision dice guy, Lou Zocchi, passed away.
Started reading Margie Sarsfield's Beta Vulgaris, a horror novel about beets.
Servings: grains 5/4, vegetables+fruit 4/5, dairy+meat 5/4, nuts+beans 1/0.5
Breakfast: left-over pizza
Lunch: Japanese curry
Dinner: coffee, Japanese curry
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