🇺🇸 & 🇧🇪 ⤑ well have I ever!
Ohh my, oh man. 😏 This guy done did. Did what? Not quite eat the rich, but certainly kill one, in a movie-like fashion, in broad daylight on the streets of Manhattan. Shot one Brian Thompson, C.E.O. of an American health insurance corporation – by definition making (lots and lots of) money from (thousands of) others' misery. 🤷
And for now he got he seems to be swimmingly getting away with it, too! 🙂
Not even his name known yet.
Awkwardly mixed feelings abound, because what injustice, exactly, has been delivered, with bullets inscribed with meaning? (†) Seems to be a pertinent question for everyone, save, perhaps, Mr. Thompson's loved ones. :l
(†) Meaning conveyed by words – oh how many.. or rather, few? 🤔 words suffice to be so much more meaningful and consequential than many a human life.. I can't keep coming up with the orange Trump turd as a gruesome example of a sad surplus human that we really ought to have gotten rid of at an earlier occasion. Sent off floating on a slab of ice into the Arctic when he was still but already an entitled baby.. Or something less comically poetic. Can I. 😒
So then will this Brian Robert Thompson be missed? Is the world worse off without (people like) him in it? Does this grief carry equal weight compared to your loss, or mine? Morals and ethics stirred – good people, questionable deeds.. In that regard it reminds me of recent local news of an entirely different kind: a highly esteemed public figure defies rules and disdains lives by driving drunk. 🍺 Do as I say, not as I do. “Oh the humanity”? Zonder zonde, de eerste steen? Waezige zaak!
Here, too, our conscience makes awkward leaps and bounds, and our moral compass behaves erratically. We struggle to make sense of a confusing world of reprehensible and good people, bad vibes, and bad things and good deeds.
Luckily our very own VRT has a pressing matter pop up to curb our confusion! “Hoe werkt een botsabsorbeerder”?🤦♂️ Orr, eh – well SOME moral! is direly needed from this story. And sought, and found: “Ook verstandige mensen doen domme dingen”. "😅"
“Morbid glee” appeared to be the upshot of the Anglo-Saxon matter. The Flemish.. Not quite sure. “Sardonisch gelach in vuistjes” is an unpolished mouthful. “Povere boel” in any case. 😏
On 9/12 Luigi was finally apprehended. The story not quite finished, but already quite the.
🦄 ⤑ AI: highly artificial..
..and of questionable intelligence – the mere word here is absurd and inappropriate. There is literally nothing intelligent about AI, it generates. 🤷 Regurgitates what it's been fed.
Its generated regurgitations arguably are quite something – it can be asked for beautiful pictures, say, and the LLMs make for impressive haikus (†), possibly great programming advice, email drafts, gift ideas for your dad who loves fishing, you name it. Impressive antics and magic tricks 🎉 but often, without warning, oblivious and shamelessly it will “hallucinate”. Really, “hallucinate”? More improper antro.. anthropom.. – humanisation. It almost sounds pardonable – poor overloaded ChatGPT, just couldn't handle it anymore, someone find it some benzo and a pillow.
Sadly its quirkiness may be the manifestation of an inherent inclination toward shittiness. Making matters even/far worse, like the sad crypto craze, AI gobbles up obscene amounts of energy. Someplace I read one Midgard-generated image makes for a fully charged phone. 😞
So what good will it bring us, and at what price? Speaking of price, since silly
amounts of money are involved, we are made to embrace (potentially highly
disruptive) technology. Microsoft would even have it
dabbling in your computer. 😀
Fortunately “everything is designed to remain local and private on-device”,
what could will possibly go be wrong.
For an Autumn 2025 update/aside, apparently Microsoft itself warns Windows may “agently” install malware. 😐 I'd wrap this up on a slightly dramatic note, something about the bone-dry bucket of chuckles in dire need of a refill maybe, but of course what chuckling would be appropriate to remain when we're reminded how direly bone-dry real life has become in, say, Tehran. 🫥
So much resources that could have been devoted to matters more pressing.. Will AI bring us nuclear fusion? Help us fix any of our myriad troubles? My sad premonition is that vibe-coded slop and serving sleazy human urges will remain the highlight of its career. Homo ecophagus once again doubling down on frivolous destruction without much consideration, reckless with his future, reassured by hubris.
(†) Great haikus – except, of
course, when ChatGPT totally confidently miscounts syllables. 😶 Please note
that counting is something computers are good at by their very nature, it's in
the name; and that haikus by their very definition consist of a precise number
of syllables.
And then this supposedly intelligent piece of software unflappably offers you
a broken haiku! Eh.. 6 syllables? You tell it it's wrong – get 8 instead on
another line. Again you tell it it's wrong.. It will merrily acknowledge its
mistake, apologize for good measure – and, unruffled, continue! to produce
broken and proper haikus alike.
To be sure, it will also keep apologizing and promising not to make the
(rather grave) mistake again, but won't stop making it! over and over again.
Rubbing faux- and proper haikus in your face.. Downright farcical; and what does
it imply for its output in general? How can you ever trust this thing..
🎼 ⤑ music & the internet have come a long way
RED — WCD après le Deluge
..and le ${deezloader} statt ripping CDs,
never mind vinyl.
Not as it used to be, for not better, just worse – in that regard like many
things, come to think of it.
Soulseek — Napster après la lettre
All souls aboard! 🫡
🎵 The patient 🇦🇺 Australian,
the greedy 🇬🇷 Greek,
the 🇲🇽 mesoamerican black
metal fan,
the 🇪🇪 Estonian treasure chest..
Save our souls! 🎶
In earnest, Soulseek is quite something. Surviving
all the way back from yonder days –
Wikipedia tells us its initial release
was April 2001 :l – till today.. A feat as remarkable as are some of the
people on it. They just may be a reasonable reliable.. eh, cross section
of online humankind? Sure need to find me better words to describe how SLSK's
userbase does indeed reflect, paint a picture of the many faces.. ehmhuman..
soulkind.. 🤷
But! since "today" (Thursday July 10th 2025 if you must know) has officially ended about an hour ago, I'll have to postpone coming up with the bit more context. Meantime, even if with the aforementioned a-changin' times I've learnt to be less irkable, I often get irked by bad manners. Therefore, henceforth..
Some longgg overdue naming & shaming!
Someone has to be the first asshat to be named & shamed; in this case it was..
🇪🇸 u/Domly
Quite a haughty asshat! Enters a file sharing network without sharing a single
file. Then, when a plugin kindly automatically informs him of it, says he's new
❲even though later some quickly grepped
logs show the fucker having been around at least once before, in October 2024❳
and “i will be soon with more music”.
And, with the silly abundance of ellipses presumably reflecting his fiery
Mediterranean temperament, that “.............yo tengo el original” 🙂 –
referring to the original vinyl, as opposed to this shabby mp3 which he has me
downloaded “de una pagina rusa”, and is downloading himself right now.
Sanctimonious chauvinist pendejo writing in unsolicited Spanish..
Too bad his download wasn't even particularly particular, 356 people
"have" it on Discogs
ffs. Means there's probably nothing he'd ever want to find that isn't shared
plentifold by others already, so I'll never have the ephemeral pleasure of
saying “great, go listen to your /oɾixiˈnal/ vinyl then, I'll share these my
inferior rusty kilobytes with a Russian friend in need”. Nor will I ever be
gently explaining this confused fellow human soul there could be more between
heaven and earth than «/Mpt̪ɾes/», and making puffy promises never to keep.
Then again, this cross-section of online souls of course shan't consist of bad vibes only. Quite the contrary! Like IRL, most people are fine people. Some of them..
Odd, or mysteriously confusing..
Like earlier today, being this Friday August 22nd of 2025:
🇸🇮 u/dizrabonna
Offered me some .wav's without rhyme or reason? 🤔
12:45:46 [hyptonoad] Hi - this is just an automated message. It seems you don't
share much, be better if you did. o/
12:46:18 [dizrabonna] minimal ways, hehe
12:50:53 [hyptonoad] 🤔🙂🙋
12:53:16 [dizrabonna] 😋
12:54:10 [hyptonoad] 🤔🙂 (:
12:54:25 [dizrabonna] there's something in the Fire folder for you
12:55:58 [hyptonoad] And why, perhaps, for me? :l
12:58:48 [dizrabonna] you seem like a nice guy
12:59:03 [dizrabonna] i have a hunch about online communication
12:59:59 [hyptonoad] Govorite v ugankah. (:
13:00:47 [hyptonoad] And I need to go do stuff though. :/
13:00:58 [hyptonoad] Weird comms here. May catch you later! o/
13:03:17 [dizrabonna] maybe, take care
13:03:46 [hyptonoad] 🤔
Or they just genuinely..
..just didn't get the settings all set
..like later that, and the next day, Saturday morning..
🇪🇬 u/AhmedBN
17:35:54 [hyptonoad] Hi - this is just an automated message. It seems you don't
share much, be better if you did. o/
09:35:27 [AhmedBN] I want to, I still need to understand how to do it. Sorry for
the incompetance and thank you for the message
09:36:30 [hyptonoad] No big deal!
09:43:32 [AhmedBN] I tried to put all my floders in the shared section of the
prefrences, I thought I succeded but it doesn't seem like I
did. If you have any advices I would be very glad to hear
them
09:46:18 [hyptonoad] Eh.. Right now it shows 0 shared, so a setting must be off. :/
09:47:05 [hyptonoad] Maybe you need to find some button to "rescan" shares, or
some such.
09:53:42 [AhmedBN] waybe if I could show you a screenshot
09:53:55 [AhmedBN] do you think it's possible on Soulseek?
09:55:14 [AhmedBN] Now I get it
09:55:34 [AhmedBN] I moved all my library from C: To B:
09:55:50 [AhmedBN] but I can't get to change it
09:55:54 [AhmedBN] I'll keep trying
09:55:58 [AhmedBN] thanks again
09:56:18 [hyptonoad] No thanks needed; no big deal, as I said! Let's see.
09:56:47 [hyptonoad] I now see a folder called MODMUSIC, but it's empty.
09:57:16 [AhmedBN] I think I just did it !
09:57:28 [AhmedBN] how about now?
09:57:55 [hyptonoad] Yeh works! (:
09:58:51 [AhmedBN] great ! Thanks a lot, it means a lot, I'm quit a disaster
with informatics and I'd hate to appear greedy
09:59:01 [AhmedBN] you've been very helpfull
09:59:09 [hyptonoad] You're an exception to care. (: Take care!
..and some of them truly confusing..
🇧🇪 u/kezkondizko
An actual conversation was had, but left unfinished. 🤷 Be like 📣 in the 🌫️ or of course mere 😶🌫️
20:05:57 [kezkondizko] Hoi, ik wou je een vraag stellen <...> 20:13:23 [hyptonoad] Maar dat was 4 dagen geleden <...> 12:30:16 [kezkondizko] c u next time <...> 14:16:52 [hyptonoad] Maar hmh, internet text comms <...>
All souls aboard! 🫡