This abstract mixed-media painting centers on a fractured heart, painted in deep red, split by a jagged black crack. Surrounding it are bold contrasts of dark and muted colors, textured surfaces, and both organic and geometric forms, creating a dynamic composition.

Sad Bastard Music Club #19

I haven’t sent a Sad Bastard Music Club email in 2 years. I’m fixing that problem now. If you’re not subscribed, I encourage you to sign up here. It’s a way to get some new, cool tunes, curated by a human (me). Because it’s been so long, I thought I would share some thoughts on […]

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A digital painting in retro-futuristic, cyberpunk style depicting a figure in a high-collared jacket facing a computer screen. The scene is saturated in a retrowave color palette of neon pink, purple, and teal. The screen and background are filled with glitch effects, digital symbols, and hidden web 1.0 easter eggs like a dancing banana, a spider web browser window, and a pixelated smiley face. The atmosphere evokes 90s hacker movies and early visions of 'hacking the internet,' with a surreal and nostalgic vibe. Generated by ChatGPT.

Keep the web weird

I’ve seen a lot of doomsaying about the death of the internet. Last night, I was reading about how integrated AI answers in search results leads to a drastic drop in clicks to the actual sites from which AIs derive the information to answer those questions or make those suggestions. It’s been noted that AI […]

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Learning to fly

Learning to fly

This post should be read with the song “Learning to Fly”. Not the Tom Petty version or the Foo Fighters version (geez, there’s a lot of songs with the title “Learning to Fly,” aren’t there?); the Pink Floyd version. And, actually, ideally the Leæther Strip cover version. My partner and my daughter have been taking […]

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Community + Code

Community + Code

Sé Reed took this picture of my water bottle at PressConf. “That’s epic,” she said. I agree. I assume she saw in it the same thing I did when I found it — ourselves. The funny thing is, despite this sentiment being prevalent amonst those of us that have been in the WordPress community for […]

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The Lovecraft Test, Gemini

The Lovecraft Test, Gemini

I’ve been sitting on this one for longer than I should have (and then, obviously, forgetting entirely about it). After putting DeepSeek through the ropes for my Lovecraft test, I decided to try Google’s Gemini. I haven’t used Gemini much, although I have used NotebookLLM which is based on Gemini, and I think it generally […]

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A WordPresser goes to DrupalCon

A WordPresser goes to DrupalCon

I’ll be going to my first DrupalCon next week. I can’t say that I’ve always wanted to go to DrupalCon, but I’ve certainly been curious about it since joining Pantheon because it’s always been such a huge part of Pantheon’s ecosystem and we’re always a big sponsor. And over the last few months, between #WPDrama […]

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The life of a developer

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. You have a broad plan. Say, you want to move your website to a new host. I’ve been running this site (which is a WordPress multisite that also includes my partner’s blog, the blog we originally created to share pictures of our kids, a personal portflolio-type site […]

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A Lovecraftian coastal scene under a gibbous moon, depicting Alden Marsh and Thalassa standing on the edge of crumbling cliffs overlooking a raging abyss. Thalassa, a mysterious sea creature draped in seafoam and kelp, has bioluminescent veins visible beneath her translucent skin and long, ink-black hair flowing like water. Alden, a scholarly man, holds her webbed hand as the villagers, pale and slit-eyed, approach with hooks and chains. Below, the ocean churns into a maelstrom, and a colossal shadow stirs beneath the waves. The sky is filled with storm clouds and eerie, phosphorescent light from the sunken ziggurat in the depths.

The Lovecraft Test, DeepSeek Edition

The stupidly big news in LLMs right now is that DeepSeek, a LLM built by a small Chinese team that was released a couple weeks ago, performs as well as, if not better than larger, more sophisticated (at least in terms of the dollars and hardware thrown at it) models by OpenAI and Anthropic (Claude) […]

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A vast, dimly lit computational chamber housing the Deep Thought supercomputer from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, resembling its original appearance in the BBC TV series. Deep Thought is an enormous, green, pyramid-like structure with glowing lights and an imposing presence. The room is immense, with towering, monolithic structures covered in cryptic symbols. The atmosphere is eerie and quiet, with the machine’s lights still faintly flickering after the recent conversation. The space is empty, save for the hum of inactive machinery and shafts of cold artificial light streaming through the towering structures. A thin haze of dust floats in the air, enhancing the illusion of an all-knowing machine that is merely a facade.

Truth (Flash Fiction February Day 3)

“That was close,” Fleeb Mungwort said, wiping his brow after the two pan-dimensional hyper-intelligent beings left the massive computational chamber. “I can’t believe they bought the whole bit about the successor computer,” Ploox Vendarf said, tying her head tentacles back into a tail. “That bit about Earth? Truly a stroke of genius!” “The problem remains,” […]

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A close-up, unsettling but friendly portrait of Nurse Maya Brooks, a medical professional with cybernetic ocular implants. She has a warm smile but an unnerving gaze, with gunmetal gray eyes featuring a glowing blue light at the center where the retina should be. Surrounding the light, a mechanical aperture-like iris expands and contracts like a camera lens. She leans in toward the camera, holding a clipboard, as if addressing a patient. The medical room in the background is softly lit, with faint digital overlays hinting at an augmented reality interface.

New (Flash Fiction February Day 2)

When Avery woke up, all they saw was dark. It was unnerving, but they tried not to panic. They had been assured that there would be a period of adjustment as all the systems came fully online. Instead, Avery took deep breaths to slow their heart rate, and continued to stare and perceive an inky […]

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A black and white, gritty, charcoal-style depiction of a driver mid-transformation into a werewolf, seen from the perspective of the passenger seat. The werewolf’s face contorts, fangs emerge, fur sprouts, and claws grip the steering wheel tightly. The freeway outside is shown correctly from the side, with cars traveling in the same direction as the werewolf’s vehicle, their headlights and taillights forming streaks of motion. The mood is dark and intense, with expressive brushstrokes capturing the raw, chaotic energy of the transformation.

Rage (Flash Fiction February Day 1)

The truck cuts in front of me and I need to slam on the brakes to not smash into the TRUMP bumper sticker on the fender. There’s a “LET’S GO BRANDON!” sticker in the corner of the cab window. It’s too dark to see the driver but his (I assume it’s a he) red taillights […]

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