Early Version

💡 if this was a stand-alone film, some of the sins would be more forgivable.

Compared to the first films 🌎 I haven't seen or read much about 4, there are some major issues with Toy Story 5.

• the whole toys can't be seen moving ⚙️ mostly. we get one scene where Sid sees Woody at the climax of the film in 1. but, beyond that, the rule is there has to be an explanation other than "the toys did it" thing falls apart if you can send text messages constantly and operate giant construction cranes. the premise of the suspension-of-disbelief has been broken.
• there is no villain. In TS1, the villain is Sid (and the conflict between Woody and Buzz). What is the villain in TS5? The Lilypad 🔥 iPad has one heel scene. Beyond that, the villain is Bonnie's insecurity and Jessie's pigheadedness 💡 so much of the plot is "Jessie demands things happen her way and makes things worse".
• the army of drone robots is creepy and bad. but it's presented as a joke.
• the army of drone robots only shows up due to multiple Deus Ex Machina -- apparently the entire internet is just 10 people?
• i get that "default Buzz is really stupid" is part of the character, but why do they decide Jessie is their leader?

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some other things I didn't like, but are maybe not objectively bad:

• the poop jokes didn't land with me.
• maybe the "toilet training toy" should have a finite lifespan
• why is Woody a vigilante?
• why do the toys have the magical ability to command animals?
• how much of Bonnie's behavior is because her toys have been constantly manipulating her life?
• the film doesn't really have a message about devices ⚙️ screens. Devices are sometimes bad?

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the 15-minute version of the film without animated toys would be ... fine. Bonnie gets iPad, Bonnie's friends are mean to her (on and offline), Bonnie loses chat privileges, Bonnie makes new friends. and Bonnie's parents give wise commentary on the family's struggles.

the Christian liturgical calendar is fairly straightforward. Christ is born, Christ lives, Christ dies, Christ lives again.

the Jewish one is much more depressing. this month, we have the Seventeenth of Tammuz. 🔥 why? 🌎 i do not want to "celebrate" the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem

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my theology is, roughly, the tension between the LORD did reveal his law to Abraham and Moses and there is no reason to observe a holiday based on the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem is the cause of the burnt-over zone, the Pentecostal churches, the LDS movement, etc.

🔥 perhaps this should have a themed title. but, so far this year, there are no themes. "Iowa" was 2024, and "North Dakota" was 2025.

i feel like i have been driftless for the past 10 days.

unproductive. unsatisfied. unemployed in a bad way. 💡 as opposed to the good way of rich, working on side projects, and doing the stay-at-home labor of the relationship

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so the solution is the THC.

and solving all the problems of the world.

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one of the things In The News is re-districting. the Democrats want to do it in Virginia. the Republicans want to do it in Florida. and a Calvinball of rules and partisan judges will decide what ends up happening. ⚙️ it's only partly the fault of partisan judges. the morass of laws is the fault of legislators. constitutional amendments in Virginia and Florida. the Voting Rights Act. but also, decades of interpretation. and a critical mass of the federal bench that will ignore the law on behalf of a political agenda.

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the solution, in theory, is multi-member districts with members chosen by single transferable vote - party list system. the details are a bit complicated. but: if 30% of the people want Democrats, 30% want Republicans, 20% want Labor, and 20% want Conservative, the elected members roughly match that. no map-making.

some of the details are solvable:

• in the US, you probably can't have districts that cross state lines. so does Wyoming have 5 reps, or just 1 (and thus a single-member district)
• the party system inevitably mutates as a result of the electoral system
• drawing the multi-member districts still has some power

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the biggest problem is that the fundamental flaw of democracy remains.

• elect some people
• a major problem arises
• the elected people study the issue and come to a solution
• stochastically, a lot of uninformed people feel the other way
• they elect new people, on the platform of being unreasonable and uninformed

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what is the purpose of government?

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government provides:

• social services / safety net
• public works / infrastructure
• military
• education
• currency
• court system

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on some level, the "plot" of Season 4 is DadTok tries to take over.

There are a few subplots with the girls:

• Jen and Whitney on DWTS ⚙️ Dancing With The Stars
• Taylor having drama, and The Bachelorette, and trying to solve her drama
• Mayci tries to get the girls to show up for her book tour event

but "DadTok is here" is the main plot. with Jordan 🔥 ick as the main protagonist.

🔥 is it a parable for the Trump era? self-centered women with conservative-aligned politics act chaotically, are usurped by men?

In The News: The Bachelorette (American TV series) season 22 canceled ⚙️ or at least demoted to the purgatory of a summer dump, in response to new domestic violence allegations.

It is slightly weird because everybody could see this coming. Also, the 2023 incident that supposedly was the last straw ... was episode 1 of her TV show.

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so Momtok will not survive this (hopefully). What happens to everyone else?

• Whitney has already escaped. She's not in Utah anymore. Currently doing a second six-week commitment for Chicago on Broadway after her first run was a massive success.
• Mayci will always be in Utah. Her business ideas and book ideas are mediocre.
• Mikayla needs to get off the cameras.
• Miranda is a bit boring, and is back on TikTok.
• Jen 🔥 aka Jen Affleck may have peaked. DWTS didn't go great for her. Her husband kind-of hates SLOMW.
• Demi is off the show already, for her semi-bogus "I was sexually assaulted" claims. 💡 "I kissed a guy on a reality TV show" is miles away from "I was sexually abused for years as a teenager", and every time Demi claims otherwise she is digging her own grave.
• Jessi is getting divorced, and kind-of a mess. Her hair business is mediocre.
• Layla is also there. 💡 it feels like she's on the show as Mason's girlfriend rather than as part of MomTok. She seems desperate for content, being the resident shit-stirrer, and trying to find a special ⚙️ as in: "a very special episode of this 1980s TV show" plotline.

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So Mayci and Jessi might show up on the Real Housewives-ified reboot. Miranda is a normal tiktok person. Whitney will probably never want to talk about this show again. And everyone else can be forgotten.

notes after episode 1:

• so many people. so many people. which is fine.
• as a result, nobody is particularly jumping out.

For each tribe, I'll do a rough sort. People at the top are more likely to win, but also more likely to go out next week than the middle. There are at least 5 people who could ⚙️ obviously the season is already over and only one person wins win on each tribe.

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This demonstrates two problems with the American system:

ONE. The axioms have been on a random walk for at least 50 years. How does Chadha v. INS interact with Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo? Nobody knows.

TWO. We don't agree on what the axioms are, and people won't agree on what words mean when they are trying to be difficult.

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There are 匹 types of "dynamical systems" that can be leveraged on top of this.

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💭 the game of Hearthstone has a "meta" - what types of decks most people are playing. They optimize for success against the "meta", not the entire universe of possible decks. As a result, the "meta" is rarely if ever constant.

💡 it is an emergent behavior, similar to the movement of a flock of birds.

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humans also build status games.

It strikes me that the LLM, in some way, completely misunderstands the situation. 🔥 It has fallen into the register of an IBM commercial, rather than an actual product.

Regional fast-casual restaurant chain (~40 locations, 500 employees).

🤖 Currently paying $50K–150K per year for point-of-sale, inventory management, scheduling, and loyalty systems from vendors like Toast or Square. 💡 the 3% processing fee WILL NOT GO AWAY. 💡 should restaurants have loyalty systems?

🤖 Their general manager knows exactly what they need — she's been running restaurants for 20 years. ✨ in the future, the machine will know what you need better than the general manager with 20 years of experience. 💡 the GM will serve as a better foil to the machine than the machine can.

🤖 A freely licensed scheduling and inventory system, generated by a large language model (LLM) and tailored to their specific supply chain (they source locally, their waste patterns are seasonal), replaces generic software-as-a-service (SaaS) with something that actually fits. 💡 the machine will know what their waste patterns are. ✨ you aren't special.

🤖 If another regional chain forks the code and improves it for their context, the license requires those improvements to flow back.

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Some questions raised:

• Do they have a "scheduling system"? 💡 yes? They have a spreadsheet. If they don't like the spreadsheet, they can talk to LONDON ⚙️ the agent that manages the inventory system. it takes phone calls.
• Do they have a Point-of-Sale system? Yes. Always yes. ⚙️ is this a market disrupted by AI? no. the two limitations are hardware form-factor, and the stability of the 3% 💡 we use this as an estimate for the cost-of-chargebacks. transaction-fee price.
• Do they have an Inventory system? 🔥 No. They have an inventory management system. 💡 the Inventory system means they always have what they need ⚙️ and at a "good" price. Inventory management just tracks what you have, and how much it costs.