If I could have one superpower, I'd like the ability to materialize one medium-sized anvil every 24 hours anywhere I choose.

You're gonna read a whole bunch of spin about this, but the bottom line is that Microsoft is planning to lay off 60,000 workers, or about a quarter of its workforce.

https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-is-offering-buyouts-read-the-memo-2026-10

I can't think of any situation like this where a mass reduction in force wasn't an extinction-level event for the company. This is less "the boat is taking on water," more like "We've hit an iceberg and now the back half of our unsinkable boat is sticking straight up out of the sea."

"Sure, the endless stories of all the puppies The Long Island Puppy kicker has kicked during her long and absurd reign are awful, and her promise to kick even more puppies once elected are deeply concerning, but I really don't feel like Personhero has earned my vote, so I think I'll just stay home."

"Sure, she's notorious for kicking puppies all over Long Island, but she's promised to kick illegal puppies at the border!"

It's wild, though, how elections could be like "Friendgood Personhero vs. The Long Island Puppy Kicker," and it'd still be like 51% to 49% with like half of eligible voters sitting out the vote.

Inspired by works by @stevefaeembra, I give you: a blocky render of Catalina Island, California.

I'm gonna make tweaks at some point in the future, but I like what I've got so far!

#BlenderArt #Blender

Lmfao they burned down Hitler's house. Do the one in Florida next.

Everything doesn't have to be a franchise. Movies, games, books, everything. Shakespeare didn't have to write Macbeth 2: Glasgow Drift; he told the whole story in one play. Likewise, John Wick told the whole story. There was absolutely no need for any sequels.

And I get why everything's a sequel now. It's much easier to go back to the same well than to dig a new one. But man, we're paying a hefty price, culturally.

Nobody needs another GTA game except for the money ghouls in the C-suite.

The answer was to use an SVG instead of a canvas.

So I still calculate just one pattern which is then tiled across the whole rectangle, but what was interesting is that doing it this way not only yields accurate results even at the sub-pixel level, rendering an SVG this way also seems to be significantly faster than stroking paths on a canvas.

Lesson learned!

Alright, so.

I was working on an tool that overlays a hexagon grid over large images, built with HTML/javascript/CSS.

First iteration was to calculate all points in the hex grid, then use those points to draw the grid onto a canvas overlaid over the image. Slow and inefficient as fuck.

Second iteration was to calculate just the points of a tiling hex pattern, then draw that onto a canvas and use it as a tiling background image. Fast, but imprecise at the sub-pixel level.

What to do? Well...

Data centers are the Moai of the information age.

Do not talk politics with these people
You don't want to get into a fistfight
Do not talk politics with these people
You don't want to get into a fistfight
Do not talk politics with these people
You don't want to get into a fistfight
Do not talk politics with these people
You don't want to get into a fistfight
Do not talk politics with these people
You don't want to get into a fistfight

WHAT I WANT TO DO:
Work on shader/geometry nodes to generate pixel-art terrain, optimize hexagon map scaling tool, write another chapter for the novella.

WHAT I'M STUCK DOING:
Kids birthday party.

Keeeeell meeee.

Oh really, Tom? You regret handing the reins to a violent maniac? You're feeling weally bad about your widdle whoopsiedoo? Got a bit of buyer's regret there, Tom? Hindsight making you think maybe you fucked up, Tom? Like maybe you owe this country and the world the biggest "Mea maxima culpa" in history?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tillis-calls-hegseth-vote-his-biggest-regret/ar-AA2dD1pZ

God I fucking despise these people. These amoral shitbirds who are more worried about their power and paychecks than about actually making this country better. Fuckers.

Hey #California voters, can I get a sanity check on the #vote for this November? Got our ballots, read the proposals, here's what I'm thinking:

Prop 1 - yes
Prop 2 - yes
Prop 3 - yes
Prop 4 - yes
Prop 5 - yes
Prop 37 - yes
Prop 38 - no
Prop 39 - hell no
Prop 40 - hell yes
Prop 41 - no
Prop 42 - no
Prop 43 - no
Prop 44 - no
Prop 45 - no

Thoughts?

Here's a word we should add to our dictionaries:

vericide

noun
ver·​i·​cide (ˈver-ə-ˌsīd)
: the deliberate and systematic destruction of truth

One of the chief uses of generative Ai is large-scale vericide.

vericidal (ˌver-ə-ˈsī-dᵊl)
adjective
: tending toward or producing vericide

Generative Ai is an inherently vericidal technology.

Spread the word.

An idiot savant, emphasis on "idiot."

I bet the whole "rebrand Ai as Super Intelligence" nonsense is because old soup-for-brains thinks "artificial" is why people don't like Ai. Like, he thinks it's a branding issue, because "artificial" has a generally negative connotation (not that he'd ever put it in those terms) but "super" usually means "good."

What scares me is that this brain-rotted dimwit has had the average American dialed in with scary accuracy before, so this is stupid enough that it just might work.

Drawing hexagonal grids using canvas elements and some dead simple javascript is so easy, I'm a little shocked more websites aren't doing it.

And, like, where do we even go from here. If we can't even agree on a shared reality, if we can't even agree on facts, then we're in deep, deep shit. And Ai isn't going to make our reality dysfunction any better.

Is this it? Is it just gonna be more division, more polarization, more violence, and fascists laughing all the way to the bank? How do we even find a way out of this?

I don't know, man. This is one of those nights where it's difficult to find hope.

9/9