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  Heh. Just a few months ago, industry headlines were all "South African Marketing industry's newest enemy is AI slop" and it was all about how advertisers have realised they can just ask chatgpt to barf out a shitty looking ad with as many reverts as they like, at a speed and cost that absolutely beats the pants off any professional agency. And it's bad because oh no, the client is destroying their own brand because they lack the aesthetic sense and fine awareness of the whims o...

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  Post: "Read this book, it's great, here's a plot summary, some excerpts and a list of your favourite authors who were inspired by it and think it's fantastic!" Me: "Ooh! Where can I find it?" Post: "It's out of print but here's link to an epub on Internet Archive which has been flattened so hard there are no chapter or paragraph breaks, just a vast unending wall of type, be grateful we kept the spaces between...

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  So that's a thing: the 14yo just decided he s sick of Windows consuming his entire C: (it's a vintage 64GB ssd) so he asked if I can find him a gaming Linux. We found one called Pop!_OS, downloaded the ISO and booted him up. It looks pretty groovy, I'd be happy with that interface, and he's running the rest of the install himself.

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  Funniest thing I ever saw is people being mad at Iran because they said that negotiations will not result until Obama is brought in, and Obama is a bad dude 😁😁😁 This is diplomacy. Diplomacy is not just making nice to find a middle ground. It's also provoking your enemy into making mistakes, it's applying pressure, its the right threat at the right time, the right bluff, the studied insult, the well timed snub. They don't actually like Obama, you fools, they are using his name to sl...

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  For those who need to stay on top of things: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-06-29-live-xenophobic-unrest-south-africas-30-june-marches-as-they-happen

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  You'd think our leaders would be making a LOT more noise about this, what with the coming local government elections... https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-05-12-unemployment-rate-rises-13-percentage-points-to-327/

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  Local retailer has started selling thick, hard-wearing door mats, with "WELCOME" written on them. So dangerous :( Because of vampires :(

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  Just occurred to me that many Americans may not realize that, to the rest of the world, "cowboy" is an insult. When a contractor looks at your roof or plumbing and whistles and says "looks like you had some real cowboys working here" they are insulting not just the workmanship but your own judgement for paying for such an obvious mess.

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  Ooh! New murderbot just happened!

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  Modern ID technology (as in: anything after 20th century paper filing systems) has frozen the evolution of names in it's tracks. Why else, in a world full of Dave Tailor's and John Smith's are there no people called Kevin Dev or Stephen Businessman?

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  Okay, back in the game (I was having a hard time caring about puzzles on my long weekend!)

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  Oh... his name is Jorn Ternus, like T E R N U S! All this time I been reading John Temus, like they got him from Temu Wow. I had so many jokes that I'm very glad I decided not to make.

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  South Africa: Why do our pharmaceutical regulations have a Schedule numbering system that goes the opposite from other countries? Over here, Schedule 1 means "It's on supermarket shelves", schedule 2 is something you have to ask the pharmacist to pass you over the counter, 3 and up are prescription only, getting more and more tightly controlled. Like a schedule 5 drug, they don't allow repeat prescriptions, schedule 9 you need two pharmacists to turn the key at...

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  Still remembering the hosting client who I had a good relationship with for like 5 years then their admin lady quit and some schmo on their board of directors took on handling me, and suddenly they weren't paying their bills and 6 months later they said "We're going to stop using your services" and I said "Well your domain is expiring in a few months, do you want to transfer it to another host or just let it lapse?" and they said "Laps...

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  I'm not a perfect man, but I do sometimes think that I actually get it right from time to time. For example, when my wife finally grudgingly accepted that she needs glasses, and asked me to book an appointment for her, I made sure she got her eyes examined by an optometrist who was also Mr South Africa 2023.

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  "Oh powerful Genie, for my first wish I want to be really rich. Do not make a mistake, do not add any ironic twists. For the purposes of this wish you are a kind, benevolent all-powerful being who wants me to gain the maximum benefit with no unexpected or unpleasant consequences. Make sure that you interpret this wish in a way that I will approve" Magic lamp prompt engineering.

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  Or to put it another way "The problem of colonizing another world is too hard to do in 20 years, so we'll shave off 9 months transit time and now we can do it in 10 years"

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  Apologies for dragging this particular topic out for yet another airing but... there's something very strange about a world where we're expected to have an AI write something for us (whether directly from a prompt, or rewriting something we already wrote) and then send it to somebody who is expected to use AI to summarize the while thing, and maybe even write a reply. What are we even doing then? You could argue that we're replacing ourselves with new AI overlords but it's not...

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  When did the word "Kind" become a sort of politeness band-aid for formal communication? Back in my day, we used to say "Please do the thing" but you can't say that anymore! No! Now you have to say "Please ..--KINDLY--... do the thing". I can't decide if this is because "Please" and "Thank you" are not considered polite enough, or if they're simply not passive aggressive enough. (K...

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  Ironically, my reaction to all the articles on linuxtldr.com is tl;dr

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  Fun fact about tornadoes in South Africa. They're rare, but if you see one you're not legally allowed to call it a tornado. Only the South African Weather Service has the authority to make that judgement (according to SAWS).

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  Well well well, if it isn't exactly what privacy nerds have been warning about forever! https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/27/ice_data_advertising_tech_firms/