Max @max@smeap.com

What if Hate is a bell curve, and jerks aren't outliers, but rather regressions to the mean?

Are Tropical Swedish Fish terrifying sign of global climate change? 😆 https://smile.amazon.com/Swedish-Fish-Mini-Tropical-Candy/dp/B078Q5SC1Y

With all the polyjuice potions and wizards that can turn into animals, you can't tell me there isn't are least one trans kid stuck at Hogwarts around the holidays because their muggle parents won't accept the happier them, thanks to that spell they finally asked Professor McGonagall to help them with. Where's that movie?

I get that there's outrage that FB2 skips the only queer relationship that JK Rowling sees in her work, but where's the outrage that the only canon queer relationship that Rowling sees at all in her work involves _Wizard Hitler_? In all the years exploring adolescence, and growing up and into relationships, there wasn't room for a less squicky relationship or three?

My biggest DWeb proposal I've been meaning to proof of concept: Avatar Auth. Hear me out: Drive social identity keys from folks' Avatar photo files. The process of cropping/panning/resizing/curving the edges of an avatar is already a sort of hash algorithm. You get a sort of reverse steganography from data lost that can form a decent Key derivation input. Original file protection is no worse than most password schemes and better than some.

It *is* my professional ethical responsibility to treat all MITM attacks as hostile, despite whatever Firewall security theater suggests. I'm not risking the security of my users by kowtowing to a "good" MITM attack. Software can't tell the difference.

I started toying with the idea of high fantasy races in a steampunk Weird West setting, given that's not something I'd seen and it seems an obvious missing link in between usual fantasy stuff and say Shadowrun.

Wrote about a paragraph before getting side tracked into Pirates by what was meant to be a throwaway reference, with my Western anti-hero elf suddenly the maybe untrustworthy Captain of a morally questionable privateer quest. At least that gave me the character's name. Such weird.

I've heard it joked before that if someone has a bottle opener on their keychain, that's a likely sign they went to college. Appreciating the simple things: A trusty bottle opener I got as swag from my summer high school job. The Coca-Cola logo and Olympic Rings faded away years ago, but the bottle opener is still little the best one I have.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/26/17507224/too-many-cooks-creator-video-games-streamer-culture

Does it bother anyone else that XCX is not a proper Roman Numeral? Like, how disappointed must Neo-Roman Pop Empress Charli XCIX be? Will the mistake be fixed for Charli CI?

I can't fix code if it was never fucking checked into source code in the first place. So much damned hate for the previous developers on this project. Also, it's 2018 and if your source control is an after the fact "fuck it, we did it live, this is probably what we did", please DIAF and saves the rest of us trouble. 🤬

Saw a local TV ad on a TV in a bar that finally explained a mural I'd walked past for years and been confused by.

That realization how users may have other typing/clicking habits than you. Finally realized that I could reproduce a bug only if I released the enter key slower. No wonder I never saw this in my own testing, I'm much more deliberate and staccato in my own habits.

So if the Whills are microbiota, are they related to Thetans? Is Star Wars : Scientology :: BSG : Mormonism, this whole time?

What if Elder Scrolls finally discovered its Eldest Scroll, and it turns out to be one Final Fantasy?

Noodling on how a Heart of Darkness take could have worked for Star Trek where STiD failed: 1) No Khan, 2) start an off-screen "war on terrorism" with Romulus because Nero, 3) A strong Romulus and a war of attrition could have many Vietnam War parallels. It still would suffer from hugely diverging Kelvin timeline from Prime, but it would have been a more interesting story.

The best thing about the new "Global Clipboard" thing in Windows Insider Previews right now is the happy, smiling clipboard icon when it is empty. Sure, it's finally a better version of what Windows 3.1's Clipboard Organizer thought it was (and Office's enhanced Clipboard tools sometimes actually are), but I'm here for the service with a smile.

I still haven't written that manifesto on AI and Bot ethics I've threatened to several times, but YouTube's terrible Autoplay feature reminded me that I should.

The AI algorithms haven't had some major breakthrough from the last AI booms/binges. We've just accelerated GIGO.

Sea of Thieves Skellies never seem to understand the elegance of Parlay, nor the proper art of Insult Swordfighting, and yet I will never stop trying to them.