random thoughts

Stop the world

Eurythmics, 1999:

Stop the world
Call it a day
Leave it all behind
Leave it that way

I tried to pick the least depressing verse from the song (“Peace is Just a Word”). Yeah.

I don’t have anything to add. Yet.

Blahgust

The more I try to think what to write, the more the thoughts run away, nimble and free.

But I remain hopeful that I’ll find my way back to waxing poetic/inanely on whatever wanders into my mind.

In the meantime, here’s a photo I took of a pile of gravel, with all kinds of filters applied to punch it up, a reflection of the artificial times we live in.

And for fun, the original as it looked straight from my phone (what a weird thing this would have been to write in 1980):

A thing that shouldn’t annoy me, but does (pods)

Lately I’ve noticed people shortening the word podcast to just pod. I understand the reasoning–a podcast originally referred to an audio program meant to be played on an iPod (kids, ask your parents) but with the iPod dead and buried, if not forgotten (I still have two) I can see why people might want to use a different term now. And this is before you get into what even counts as a podcast now, since a lot of them are now also on platforms like YouTube, where they are…videos.

Still, “pod” bugs me because it still retains the “pod” part of “iPod”, which seems to me to be the part you’d want to replace. But mainly it just sounds just too twee (yes, I have a kind of twee meter in my head that tells me when something crosses the “too twee” line) and doesn’t really make sense because peas are in pods, not people talking to each other. Also:

Podcast > Pod

Broadcast > Broad

If the latter becomes accepted usage, I will embrace pod.

Things I could do that kind of amaze me now

Because when I think of doing them now, it seems…improbable.

  • Solving a Rubik’s cube in less than a minute. Not world record stuff, but I could solve it pretty quick.
  • Jumping hurdles. I actually won the hurdles race one year at my junior high. I still have no idea how I didn’t face-plant. Or won.
  • Playing chess and being decent at it. I still know the rules, but today I’d be a complete noob on strategy.
  • Bending my thumb down to touch my wrist. It kind of freaks me out that I was that flexible. Maybe I should still be that flexible?
  • More as I remember them!

I read the news today, oh boy

(Yes, I am misquoting the lyric, but that’s to be technically correct–the best kind of correct!)

Specifically, I scanned the CBC News site. Did I leave better informed? Marginally. Did it make me feel better? Absolutely not.

I’ve learned my lesson. Next time, I’ll be more careful when I let me attention slip and go wandering websites.

Here is frantically typing cat, which I will aspire not to be when I’m surfing the net, as one does.

(Also, any excuse to post this gif.)

Five random thoughts, July 31, 2025

In random order:

  • The “Liquid Glass” UI redesign being spread across all of Apple’s operating systems has pretty much confirmed in my mind that Apple’s best designers have either left the company or are being overruled by people who have no sense of design.
  • I’m not sure if I like having a Conservative prime minster who ran as a Liberal.
  • I did not have getting multiple injections into my abdomen this month on my bingo card (see: Stabbing the abs for more.)
  • I continue to be puzzled and occasionally flummoxed by the lack of awareness exhibited by so many people when in a public space.
  • Smartphones are a good thing, social media owned and operated by Big Tech is a very bad thing.

Canada Day random thoughts, 2025 edition

  • It could be worse.
  • It could also be better.
  • It’s very summer-like today, after the first week of summer was cool and a bit damp. A lot of people prefer the latter, even though we get it for about six months of the year.
  • There will probably be some fireworks going off later this evening.
  • The new sidewalks on our street are very bright in the sun.
  • I feel like more people cheat now than, say, ten years ago, possibly because more people are realizing they won’t get caught. This is not a good thing.
  • I have an itchy bug bite on my left leg. I have nothing in particular to help with this, except the power of my mind insisting it’s not really itchy at all.
  • I still love Bongo Cat. He is currently wearing a pineapple.
  • Apparently, Canadian patriotism is surging. A house a few blocks away is positively festooned with Canadian flags. I’m not sure how I feel about this, because nationalism generally leads to bad things.
  • I’ve seen reports that people are getting dumber. This feels right to me.
  • Am I getting dumber? My phone is often at 90% charge at the end of the day (even though it’s 4.5 years old). I think this is helping to preserve some brain cells.
  • When birding in Pitt Meadows, I went to check the temperature on my phone and it couldn’t pull the data in because of a very weak cell connection. It please me that such places exist, and you don’t even have to go too far to find them. Also, places where you can’t hear any traffic.
  • My leg is still itchy.

I never remember what SMH means

I know, I am typing this on a blog, which means I have the vast collected knowledge of the web available to me and even with Google flailing and AI slop overrunning everything, it’s still pretty easy to search and find out that SMH is short for Shake My Head (expressing mild disgust, disbelief).

But for whatever reason, my brain refuses to remember this, and I don’t want to search every time the term pops into my head, because it reminds me my brain can’t remember this specific abbreviation. I can remember LOL and IANAL (lol anal) and IDK and lots of others, but this is one that just never sticks.

But instead of wondering what it might mean, my brain always offers up the incorrect, unhelpful, and weird: Smell My Hand.

I want to say it still kind of works, but it really doesn’t. It’s just weird.

I am weird.

“Creep” has 1,143,126,864 views and 202,075 comments

At the time of writing this post, of course. Presumably, both numbers will continue to go up.

I saw a mention of the song on the interweb, so checked out the video again. The video is fine–I like the colour and lighting, and Thom Yorke looks appropriately weird. The song is one of those quiet-LOUD-quiet numbers that is predictable, but extremely well-executed. I can see why it has so many views.

But 202,075 comments. An average novel is around 80,000-100,000 words. Even if every comment was a single word, that’s more than double the word count of an average novel. That is a lot of words.

It makes me wonder how long it would take to read every comment. It makes me wonder if anyone has tried. And what they felt when they were done, assuming they were still conscious.

Also, here is the video in question:

Remember surprises?

I said this to Nic tonight in reference to him checking what people on eBird have reported seeing at a local park where we’re planning to do some birding.

The full question I posed was:

Remember surprises, before the internet?

It’s nice to be able to research things in advance, but I feel we’re losing something by constantly doing that and stripping away all surprise and mystery from…everything. Little things, big things, medium-sized things. Just look it up! No need to imagine, or wonder, just look it up, be as efficient as possible and leave nothing to chance.

I might be turning into a cranky old man, but really, I think I’m just kind of fed up with the way the world is. We’re losing our humanity in ways that we may never recover. But maybe we’re destined to be giant throbbing brains, anyway. How many quatloos would you bet on that?