postnow.site

Am I reviving this site?

2026-01-12T14:55:29-0600

Am I reviving this site?

Probably not? I might just delete this completely and make a real blog?

I feel like this was a failed experiment

— bcj | Monday January 12, 2026 14:55 CST

No

2026-01-10T16:04:21-0600

Previously...

is justin mcelroy the mr beast of huntington west virginia

— @topghost | Saturday January 10, 2026 06:41 UTC

but now...

No

He's a Vancouver reporter

— bcj | Saturday January 10, 2026 16:04 CST

2025-09-13T12:07:14-0500

Previously...

(staring deeply into the mirror)

I am exactly the correct amount of horny, in the correct ways, towards the correct individuals and objects

— @topghost | Saturday September 13, 2025 08:53 UTC

but now...

— James Ballard, Crash by J.G. Ballard

— bcj | Saturday September 13, 2025 12:07 CDT

It's simple

2025-09-01T11:31:54-0500

Previously...

if anyone in tech were actually interested in making the world a better place they would invent a set of earbuds with the ergonomics and convenience of the airpods pro but with near-zero latency. (greg daniels shouting on taskmaster voice) I DON'T CARE THAT YOU'RE LIMITED BY BOTH THE BLUETOOTH PROTOCOL AND THE LAWS OF PHYSICS, NERDS! FIGURE IT OUT!

#good ideas

— @topghost | Sunday August 31, 2025 06:44 UTC

but now...

It's simple

you just put a cord in them. We figured this out like 150 years ago

— bcj | Monday September 01, 2025 11:31 CDT

What Happened to June-liet Berto Month?

2025-06-25T16:59:59-0500

What Happened to June-liet Berto Month?

Look, I wasn't really expecting to need to shotgun a bunch of Mission: Impossibles* and Jia Zhangke films†. June-liet Berto Month will be extending into July. God, if only there were a good name for June-Liet Berto in July

_{*
Stop that. I can see you're getting ready to email me to tell me it's Missions: Impossible. If you want to write that go with god but the series is called Mission: Impossible I am going to pluralize it by adding an s to the end
†
both great experiences by the way. Would recommend}

— bcj | Wednesday June 25, 2025 16:59 CDT

Replacing Jobs

2025-06-19T13:16:26-0500

Replacing Jobs

My mom is a copy-editor, a job that has been ostensibly replaceable by spellcheck for what, 30 years? 40?

Anyway, it’s interesting how you can basically always tell when a publication has decided they don’t need a copy editor

— bcj | Thursday June 19, 2025 13:16 CDT

complications

2025-06-18T11:43:51-0500

Previously...

'ai'

honestly, letting LLMs be called AI which has literally always been a bullshit term anyway is less of a defeat than the naming of any anything as smart. I don't think that light is any smarter and I don't think that popcorn is either

#ai #smart

— bcj | Wednesday June 18, 2025 11:42 CDT

but now...

complications

I think we should have taken from the watch world where extra features are called complications.

I would 100% get behind calling anything with additional network functionality complicated

— bcj | Wednesday June 18, 2025 11:43 CDT

'ai'

2025-06-18T11:42:07-0500

'ai'

#ai #smart

— bcj | Wednesday June 18, 2025 11:42 CDT

Spam

2025-06-17T12:27:26-0500

Spam

For months now, I have been getting emails inviting me to construction conferences. I've been invited to Aerotropolis Summit (Hong Kong), BIM Summit (Bangkok), Industrial Estates & Warehousing (Brisbane), Mass Timber Real Estate & Development Summit (Brisbane), Modern Methods of Construction (Brisbane), Modern Property Construction & Development Summit (Brisbane), Modular, Prefab & Construction Tech Senate (Bangkok), Net-Zero Construction Summit (Paris), Seismic Resilient Structures (Tokyo), Shopping Malls Summit (Hong Kong), and Steel Frame Construction (Bangkok). The few I've searched are real conferences and they've all come from the same two names Liam T or Alex G, so maybe they're just real invitations and I accidentally got onto an East-Asian/Oceana construction conference mailing list. But also, every email has come from a different domains and while plausible-looking the domain names don't match the conference name and don't seem to resolve.

This month, I've been getting messages with the subject 'hi' and a body with a simple request for a reply with letters removed (presumably to beat my spam filter) such as "I ask fr yr urgt rpl" or "If u can, pls kndly rspond quik"

Last month was my favourite though. I got a half-dozen emails where the from and to addresses were random 8 digit numbers (for any domain I have set up, I have Fastmail show me email sent to any address). In all cases there is no subject. Each email contains the following:

wWrwwew one

#spam

— bcj | Tuesday June 17, 2025 12:27 CDT

Group Chat Dynamics

2025-06-06T14:53:38-0500

Group Chat Dynamics

me: hey buds, what's new?
k8, my friend who only uses txt speak: n2m u
k2e, my 'friend' who only uses numeronyms: n1t t1o m2ch h2e e4r. I2s a0␀ l2y F4y

— bcj | Friday June 06, 2025 14:53 CDT

What's new

2025-06-01T15:36:45-0500

What's new

I went on a multi-city train trip with friends earlier this month and then I was a bit slow on follow-ups so here's the round-up of things I've been doing lately

Photos: I took a ton of photos on my trip and also some afterwards. My favourites are that one photo of an orange flower and the picture of the sparrow. I'll probably have another round of local photos pretty soon so check out these photos while they're the 'new' ones
Beocijies: There's a new beocijies (mobile) user who was very patient in my getting their page live. Why did it take a while? I went ahead and added Atom/RSS feeds to all the beocijies sites so it's easier to keep track going forward
One Gross Online: I did some formatting updates to one gross online and here's the changelog which is now more readable. The important thing to know is today is the first movie month, it's June-liet Berto Month (thanks Richard!). PS sorry, I didn't think when I rewrote the feed stuff so you probably got spammed with a bunch of posts in your feed reader. It won't happen again (soon anyway)

— bcj | Sunday June 01, 2025 15:36 CDT

Students cheating using LLMs

2025-05-20T13:10:42-0500

Students cheating using LLMs

I've been thinking a bit about how all my teachers implored us not to just use Wikipedia for research because anyone could edit it.

I feel like I remember teachers being technically wrong about how often errors actually cropped up in Wikipedia vs. other encyclopedias and largely missing the trees of let's say Encyclopædia Britannica also not being a research tool as much as a reference manual, and that doing research requires doing actual research and reading of primary sources.

The problem with how students were using wikipedia was a mixture of students not really grasping (or not caring about) what the learning process is about, and the bigger problem of the structure of schooling not actually being about fostering that learning and understanding (in spite of teachers often working toward that goal).

But also... the joke about wikipedia is [citation needed] because, for whatever faults and ideological slant wikipedia has in its approach, it is genuinely trying to provide an accurate and well-supported catalogue of formatted information and LLMs are lying machines. Both are susceptible to bad actors but wikipedia has a defined process for identifying and removing incorrect and malicious information and actively works to signal unreliability by noting where claims are being made without sufficient backing.

— bcj | Tuesday May 20, 2025 13:10 CDT

Are LLMs Killing the Lorem Ipsum Industry?

2025-05-20T12:06:40-0500

Are LLMs Killing the Lorem Ipsum Industry?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

— bcj | Tuesday May 20, 2025 12:06 CDT

Gunk

2025-04-04T15:44:22-0500

Gunk

A modern ooze for modern times

— bcj | Friday April 04, 2025 15:44 CDT

Crosscountry BC

2025-03-28T11:51:50-0500

Crosscountry BC

Misty's write-up on Crosscountry BC is great. check it out if you haven't already

— bcj | Friday March 28, 2025 11:51 CDT

everyone drop what they're doing

2025-03-27T22:54:55-0500

everyone drop what they're doing

tortoise is putting out new music

#music

— bcj | Thursday March 27, 2025 22:54 CDT

My Enemies

2025-03-16T13:28:01-0500

My Enemies

A few times now I've happened upon people on letterboxd giving films 'reviews' that either include, or in more cases, solely consist of, a numeric rating out of 100.

A half star is for cowards. The realm of 100 point scores is for cretins. They are my enemy

— bcj | Sunday March 16, 2025 13:28 CDT

music

2025-03-14T18:41:19-0500

music

living my best life. just ripped some CDs I ordered and loaded them onto my iPod

— bcj | Friday March 14, 2025 18:41 CDT

Keeping promises

2025-03-10T12:06:18-0500

Keeping promises

In An Army of Housepets Part 2, Boats (the music band) promised us:

I will never stop watching movies and
I will never stop watching movies and
I will never stop watching movies
With you
With you
With you

But just a few short years later on Getting Worst.jpeg, there's Mat Klachefsky informing us:

We finally stopped watching movies
We threw ourselves into our hopeless hobbies

What happened?!

#boats #movies

— bcj | Monday March 10, 2025 12:06 CDT

Guy who thinks Chunking Express & Vive L'Amour

2025-03-02T13:11:09-0600

Guy who thinks Chunking Express & Vive L'Amour

is a Dante's Peak/Volcano or Deep Impact/Armageddon

#guys #movies

— bcj | Sunday March 02, 2025 13:11 CST

Daily Photo is back this month

2025-02-25T16:20:22-0600

Daily Photo is back this month

No, not photo a day (which is still back for 4 more days [today's isn't up but I think it's going to be a good one]).

No, the daily photo blog a friend from twitter made and was one of the reasons I got around to making myself my own photo site. I can't imagine you're seeing this but glad to see it's back Jake, hope you're doing well

#photography

— bcj | Tuesday February 25, 2025 16:20 CST

Late

2025-02-23T17:56:30-0600

Late

Photo a day will probably be late today. I took a bunch today and i might not have time to look through them until tomorrow

— bcj | Sunday February 23, 2025 17:56 CST

Computers love uniformity

2025-02-17T09:41:51-0600

Computers love uniformity

A minor but annoying thing is if you search 'Islander Day' (the P.E.I. provincial holiday on the third Monday of February) on Google, it helpfully gives you a little 'knowledge' graph above the results telling you that Family Day's date is Monday, February 17, 2025. Mine helpfully has the word Manitoba underneath to tell me this is a holiday in Manitoba where I live. For those of you outside Canada, today isn't a national holiday, but many of the provinces in Canada decided to make a holiday that lines up with President's Day in the US and most of the provinces that did that decided to call that day 'Family Day'. Wikipedia reasonably enough groups these holidays together under a page called 'Family Day (Canada)' but there's no real reason for Google to do so when I search for Islander Day. Islander Day isn't more correctly called Family Day and neither is celebrated in Manitoba like Google told me, it's Louis Riel Day here.

N.B., if you search for Louis Riel Day, it may give you the same knowledge graph, or it might instead give you a snippet from a Saskatchewan culture site telling you Louis Riel day is observed by the Métis on November 16th. the Manitoba Métis Federation now refers to that as Louis Riel Commemoration Day and my location is set to Manitoba, but the Saskatchewan and Ontario Métis nation websites both just call the 16th Louis Riel Day and the Métis have the right here to say which day they observe Riel's legacy.

N.B., it is Family Day in NB

— bcj | Monday February 17, 2025 09:41 CST

Movies

2025-02-15T23:47:44-0600

Movies

It's honestly so important to remember the word is as goofy as 'talky'

#movies

— bcj | Saturday February 15, 2025 23:47 CST

How I would fix the Academy Awards

2025-02-12T19:33:22-0600

How I would fix the Academy Awards

Best Director winner has to make a direct sequel to whatever wins Best Picture

#movies #things they should listen to me about

— bcj | Wednesday February 12, 2025 19:33 CST

Mid-Afternoon Music

2025-02-10T13:00:42-0600

Mid-Afternoon Music

I composed this piece based on the sound I got when I threw a basketball at an electone — Tucker is probably my favourite music I discovered through twitter

#morning music #music

— bcj | Monday February 10, 2025 13:00 CST

My opinion on the 'best' unsung website

2025-02-05T18:10:42-0600

My opinion on the 'best' unsung website

I think it is the Online Etymology Dictionary. I use it all the time and I feel like it does not get the credit it's due[by who, me?]

— bcj | Wednesday February 05, 2025 18:10 CST

Some All-Trades Jagoff

2025-02-04T17:33:30-0600

Some All-Trades Jagoff

I was originally going to be more glib about this timeline apps article in the Verge a friend linked me too. I have a visceral, almost primal negative reaction to these apps, and David Pierce's suggestion of my current state of being does the article no favours:

You’re following creators on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, keeping up with your favorite memes on Tumblr and all the news on Bluesky, refreshing your favorite subreddits over and over all day, and checking your favorite news sites a few times, too.

The premise of these apps is that everything on the internet is a feed, and their promise is that you can have access to all these feeds in one place. This is, of course, the promise RSS made. It is also the memory many have of the heyday of RSS. Pierce even pitches these apps along with a plea to truly consider what you add to the apps—to take the retreat from unending algorithmic feeds toward a more curatorial approach. I think this impulse is good! But I think the premise these apps are built on is one we should chafe against and I think the promise of these apps is a trap.

RSS never was everything for me. I didn't have my messenger chats in Google Reader, or my email, or any of the forums I visited on there. I don't think it ever would have dawned on me to even want that. Some of that communication was synchronous and some of that would have been updates I largely didn't care about or wouldn't want to see until I actively went looking. I don't think everything is a feed (or at least it isn't in anything but the most superficial sense), and to treat it that way is to cheapen anything that doesn't fit nicely into that model. Even within my RSS reader I treat different things differently. I skim and mostly ignore my local paper's news stories but I save up Morning Music posts until I have a free afternoon to enjoy a curated experience. It's nice to know when there's something new to look for, but I do wish more places on the internet offered a place to just click around and find cool things like on my friend Casey's site. I consider One Gross Online a pale imitation, but it's page design and feed experience is aimed at making it a place to check out instead of just a feed to consume (whether it's there or not it is a goal to continue to aspire to).

My bigger problem with these types of apps (other than the fact that any of these social media and commercial sites will do their best to crush them if they gain any real purchase), is that a social media site is a place to be (or to avoid :) ). These apps simultaneously let these places run rampant and keep you out of them. The noisiest feeds will drown out the rest and have you reading everything as if it's from there. But also, you will be outside those places. Divorced of their context. It's sort of the other side of the coin from any of the tools that let you spam social media by cross-posting to both Twitter and Mastodon at once or Mastodon and Blue Sky (I've seen like 2 people who seemed to work out how to do this in a way that felt natural and you can flatter yourself to believe I mean you specifically if you were one of the people to do this). Even for slower sites like letterboxd that I unabashedly like, I am excited to see all the movies my friend Liz just added to her watch list. I would be sad if I didn't see that when I went to the site. I would hate it if that showed up in my RSS feed.

What's my thesis here? Tools that do everything rarely do anything well and even the best do it at the expense of some of those things? That places are and should be unique and to fit them into the same place is to strip them of any meaning or character? Sure. Let's pretend I made a full case for that. What does that mean for this posting into the void microblog I wrote this on? I don't know. I think my problems with it are sort of the problems I'm talking about and the answer isn't yet forthcoming to me. Watch this space (or add it to your timeline app so you don't have to)

#haterposting #timelines

— bcj | Tuesday February 04, 2025 17:33 CST

New Website Alert

2025-02-03T22:04:43-0600

New Website Alert

Beocijies by Mail is live. My good pal kit has mailed me a webpage and it is now available to you over the internet

#website

— bcj | Monday February 03, 2025 22:04 CST

Magic all around us

2025-02-01T18:10:25-0600

Magic all around us

No flyers please

we cannot be held accountable for damage caused by carts i left in our parking lot

— bcj | Saturday February 01, 2025 18:10 CST

Without a hint of irony

2025-02-01T17:05:29-0600

Without a hint of irony

Walking through my neighbourhood i see Ukrainian flags and ‘stop the war’ messages, orange signs declaring’every child matters’ and also more ‘#bringthemhome’ signs cheering on a genocide than i can tear down on a single walk

— bcj | Saturday February 01, 2025 17:05 CST

Four Numbers You Might Count to From One

2025-01-30T16:25:07-0600

Four Numbers You Might Count to From One

1. Two (2)

A classic. Merely one more than one but twice as nice. Who hasn't counted 1 2. Even if you're eventually planning on "skip[ping] a few" afterwards, you simply have to include that two.

2. Zero (0)

We all love to count up, but once you'd done that, there's a countdown until someone decides to count down instead. Touted by many as our newest whole number, Zero is, nonetheless, a natural pick

3. One (1)

It's hip to be a square nowadays, so it's only right you start counting using powers. 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,... isn't just for robots anymore.

4. Any Other Number

Did you know that any collection of integers can be a series? Well it's even better than that, any other collection of numbers can too. Maybe you're enumerating numbers by the lexicographic order of their roman numeral representation and 99 comes next. Maybe your counting by numbers with a single contiguous block of 1s when written in decimal and 1.1 comes next. The world is your oyster.

#listicle #numbers

— bcj | Thursday January 30, 2025 16:25 CST

My Egg Story

2025-01-30T16:00:22-0600

My Egg Story

I was making breakfast this morning and I had put my two eggs on the stove top so I could put the carton away. When I went to grab one of them I somehow accidentally knocked the other one toward me, off the edge of the oven. But, miraculously, it did not crack. It had just the right amount of momentum to land on the handle of the oven door and sit there

#egg

— bcj | Thursday January 30, 2025 16:00 CST

NEOM

2025-01-27T11:47:32-0600

NEOM

You ever notice how doubters of THE LINE seem to shut up whenever you point out what the shortest distance between two points is?

Community Notes

Most objection to Saudi Arabia's 'linear city' is centered around the fact that the city will actually be an arc because the earth is an oblate spheroid.

— bcj | Monday January 27, 2025 11:47 CST

Repetition

2025-01-24T12:44:18-0600

Repetition

The other day I watched middling, fate-based, romantic comedy, Sliding Doors (1998). In it, the romantic lead (played by John Hannah) regularly quotes Monty Python in a way that makes the movie feel even more dated. I think the first time he does it works quite well. A dejected Gwyneth Paltrow (of Goop fame!) has had an almost absurdly bad day when Hannah suggests she remember what the Monty Python boys always say. Paltrow reasonably guesses he means "Always look on the bright side of life", but he instead responds "Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition". The joke works because it is genuinely unexpected as a response and as a bit of helpful advice. As the movie goes on, we discover this quote is sort of a mantra of his and quoting The Monty Python boys is a regular habit of his. Charitably, Hannah's character has had a rough time of things himself, and it is a way of establishing a character finding humour in the disasters one can not plan form. I don't think the film does enough to sell that and it really just comes off as an affectation.

There's a sort memory 90s online (and sometimes offline) nerd culture consisting of just quoting Monty Python and it is maybe uncharitable but it isn't exactly wrong. As much as we might bristle at it in the particular, all culture can probably be summed up as nodding at or directly quoting a shared context. The sin is just in doing it so blatantly, broadly, and consistently to render any meaning or humour in the original lost.

All of this is to say that if I compare people endlessly quoting Monty Python to people endlessly referencing internet memes, I'm kind of left thinking at least some of the Python lines might have been well-written or funny when they were first said.

#memes

— bcj | Friday January 24, 2025 12:44 CST

Seven

2025-01-23T19:07:40-0600

Seven

Seven, it's a number that many of us can count to, but is it a number that any of us can count on?

#7 #numbers

— bcj | Thursday January 23, 2025 19:07 CST

Finally getting the good spam

2025-01-16T13:38:51-0600

Finally getting the good spam

— bcj | Thursday January 16, 2025 13:38 CST

Curse Broken

2025-01-15T23:34:08-0600

Curse Broken

thank god

new PB

#speedlunky

— bcj | Wednesday January 15, 2025 23:34 CST

Speeding Up

2025-01-15T20:21:35-0600

Speeding Up

If you consider how long it took me to add thumbnails to my website, it honestly was pretty quick how fast I fixed the issue where landscape thumbnails were sideways.

I also made it so the tag pages were somewhat useful and got rid of the comment section because I forgot how to use it.

One day (maybe even one day this year?) my process for posting photos won't require me to copy/paste all the image IDs into a command line script

— bcj | Wednesday January 15, 2025 20:21 CST

Shadow Season

2025-01-15T17:26:03-0600

Shadow Season

Winter is an underrated time for photography. Obviously, I love to take photos of flowers and insects and other things that are only around in summer, but when it's all white out it's a chance to really lean into texture and shadow as the focus of a photo

— bcj | Wednesday January 15, 2025 17:26 CST

It's said you die twice

2025-01-14T12:51:08-0600

It's said you die twice

once in the game, and once in real life

— bcj | Tuesday January 14, 2025 12:51 CST

Math Idea

2025-01-11T12:15:36-0600

Math Idea

What if there was a number, A such that X + A = X for any value X

I don't know if anyone ever thought of this before

#ideas #math

— bcj | Saturday January 11, 2025 12:15 CST

Branding Question

2025-01-11T12:13:12-0600

Branding Question

Is the Twitter Logo (not a bird the brand guide is very clear that it was the twitter logo and not a bird) now called the X Logo?

— bcj | Saturday January 11, 2025 12:13 CST

'Wrapped'

2025-01-10T15:40:27-0600

'Wrapped'

The thing about "whatever wrapped" that is separate from whatever company is doing it is that the data you can track about a thing is not especially relevant to my experience of it. Yeah, my favourite album probably isn't one I didn't listen to^*, but iTunes doesn't know whether one of the times it played an album it was the perfect time and I still think fondly about it. Did I already complain about this recently? I'm not keeping track

* Ok, but now that I think about it, I definitely said Hellraiser was one of my movies of the year the year after I first watched it. I was still thinking about it and it's probably better as a concept than a film.

— bcj | Friday January 10, 2025 15:40 CST

You should also check out:

2025-01-10T15:37:38-0600

Previously...

hell yeah

Go read li's movie list. So many things I want to see now

— bcj | Sunday January 05, 2025 19:48 CST

but now...

You should also check out:

richard's list!

Lot's of fun stuff here and just astoundingly different than mine

— bcj | Friday January 10, 2025 15:37 CST

POSITFYMAFMAW

2025-01-06T11:25:11-0600

POSITFYMAFMAW

the purpose of a system are the friends made along the way

— bcj | Monday January 06, 2025 11:25 CST

hell yeah

2025-01-05T19:48:59-0600

hell yeah

Go read li's movie list. So many things I want to see now

— bcj | Sunday January 05, 2025 19:48 CST

Movies

2025-01-05T09:59:18-0600

Movies

a movie is basically the same thing as it's plot summary, but to really know a film you also have to read about it's continuity errors on IMDB

— bcj | Sunday January 05, 2025 09:59 CST

A Quantified Life

2025-01-04T18:56:52-0600

A Quantified Life

Obviously it is bad that companies compile and sell all this information about you but I feel like people don't worry enough about how keeping track of that information about yourself can lead to unhealthy habits. It's good to forget things sometimes or just not know something and be happy in that

— bcj | Saturday January 04, 2025 18:56 CST

Happy New Year

2025-01-01T12:11:07-0600

Happy New Year

It's my favourite holiday and I've been busy. I just published my Year in Review/Year-end Best Ofs/Plans for 2025 as well as my 2025 Qualtagh

I also posted my first photos of the year to my to my photo blog (yesterday I posted my last photos of the year if you missed that)

#2024 #2025 #new year's

— bcj | Wednesday January 01, 2025 12:11 CST