Early Version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsI3pThlmXs📺 WATCH: U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club performs ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ | Trump 2025 Inauguration

Possibly the highlight of the inauguration ceremony. 💡 It is hard to imagine a Democratic president having such a song performed. The extremist cries of "but what about church-and-state" would have been too annoying.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, / With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: / As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, / While God is marching on.

An idea 🔥 just spitballing: what if you got one point for each "doink" ⚙️ when the bank hits the uprights of the field goal post on a field goal attempt?

Advantages:

• possibly a 4 or 5 point play
• encourages exciting outcomes

Disadvantages:

• would focus football less on using your hands

💡 I appear to be heading south from Alberta.

🤖 Great Falls, Montana, is a mid-sized city in north-central Montana along the Missouri River, known for its natural beauty and historical significance. The city is named after the series of waterfalls on the river, famously explored during the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Surrounded by mountain ranges like the Little Belt and Highwood Mountains, it offers abundant outdoor activities, including hiking, fishing, and camping. Local attractions include the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, Giant Springs State Park, and the Rivers Edge Trail. Great Falls also has a strong connection to Indigenous history and culture, a thriving agricultural economy, and a notable military presence through Malmstrom Air Force Base.

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projects for the week are just atacama. 🔥 we cannot confirm-or-deny a secret project

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atacama goals for the week:

• clean up the "tools for using claude" code.
• maybe finally add some LLM features
• maybe try Claude can't fix the parser again. 💡 there are various approaches here.
• maybe try SMTP-in/IMAP-in/SMTP-out APIs again.
• maybe continue to iterate on the "channel security" model
• maybe ponder the many implications of a "multi-user" model.
• maybe fix the "quotes" system
• maybe do more "put Claude through the paces by generating unit tests"

💬 Winter is Coming.

⚔️ well, actually, our concern today is that Spring is coming. and, with it, the Spring Ritual.

In 2022 and 2023, my "spiritual explanations" dabbled towards Baha'i. And, the 19 day fast ending on Naw-ruz ⚙️ the Baha'i name is cognate with the Iranian New Year, both refer to the vernal equinox.

💭 notes from 2023: considering the proper form of the Spring Ritual in North America. right now, our best theories suggest: it is a dawn-to-dusk fast (consumption of water permitted), from the Last Day of February to the Spring Equinox. also, the consumption of corn (maize) is somehow involved. certain festivals are excluded from the fasting requirements.

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in 2024, i started observing Lent without even realizing it. i also noticed, to my great dismay, that the Hebrew Calendar is incorrect with regards to the Leap Month.

per my conditioning, I determined the simplest answer would be to observer the Pesach ⚙️ Passover in English. Or, Easter in English; most languages call it Pascha. twice.

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This year, at least, there is no controversy regarding the timing of the phases of the moon.

But the nature of observance of the Spring Ritual remains something of a mystery.

A continuing mystery in my mind is: To what extent is Pentecost actually "an observed event"?

In Britain, it is called "Whitsunday". In the US, nobody cares.

But, to my American Jewish mind, there is a contradiction here. Or, a lack of a contradiction.

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On the one hand, it is a meaningless excuse of a festival. 💡 I know the book of Acts, but I shan't explain it here

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On the other hand, it is "just" the name of the sermon of the week. Nobody 🔥 other than the British Banks expects it to be anything. ⚔️ well, actually, they changed the scheduling of the Late May Bank Holiday in 1971

I order the glasses on Warby Parker.

30 minutes later, I get this message: We noticed that your prescription includes an additional value called a prism. Doctors usually prescribe a prism to help your eyes work together as a team (go, eyes!). At Warby Parker, lenses with a prism cost an additional $50. 💡 they knew that when I ordered! I uploaded the prescription the day before!

This is an example of bad customer service.

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/sammy-sosa-welcomed-back-in-emotional-moment-at-cubs-convention/3649573/

Growing up in a household in the 1990s with WGN, there was a lot of Sammy Sosa on the TV. The star of the Cubs!

At some point it all fell apart. Steroids, the corked bat incident. Steve Bartman.

Apparently 20 years is long enough to move on from that.

the new "channels" system is complete. 🔥 the CSS is not; after wondering why several attempted fixes did nothing I found a syntax error in the CSS file. now they have all been applied and it looks bad 💡 the emphasis fix took 5 minutes

the new glasses ... i have decided on one pair. the second pair is 30% off, i am debating which (if any) I will get.

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a project reaches a point where the "possible work" increases faster than the "valuable" work.

i could add more test files. but why? 🔥 tests are good! 💡 tests create friction against certain types of change. when those changes are bad, this is a good thing. but, if you know there will be changes, the tests simply mean you have to change more things.

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the "quotes" system is too fragile. none of the metadata is getting populated by LLM. the metadata is also very rarely displayed.

is this worth my time?

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💬 all computer systems expand until they are able to send email.

i still call them emails. Do I want "email to post"? Do I want "send emails to readers"? 🔥 it still seems like the wrong choice to try to convert this to a "newsletter" format

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i could support "ISBN" tags. but that might need (or at least want) the "new parser" I talked about a few weeks ago, as an example of something the machine should be able to do, but can't.

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those are questions for next week. and the answers will be (at least partly) based on "what other things do I have going on".

978-0593543504

A current take on math education. Most of the material is matter I was already familiar with; other readers may get more out of it.

• What is an algorithm? Why are algorithms better than "tricks" to do math?
• How can the use of visual aids make math more intuitive?
• How can homework exercises be structured to reinforce patterns?

Best part: the anecdotes from classrooms. I am not as enamored with her "examples of good teaching" as she is, but they are still interesting.

Worst part: She cannot go more than about 4 pages without mentioning that she founded Zearn, a math learning platform.

It is not uncommon that a company changing its name once is a good sign.

It is much more uncommon for a company changing its name a second time to be a good sign.