📗 Want to read Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk ISBN: 9781250375100
#books#fantasy#noir
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2026-01-12T15:30:22-0500",
"summary": "\ud83d\udcd7 Want to read Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk ISBN: 9781250375100",
"url": "https://martymcgui.re/2026/01/12/153022/",
"category": [
"books",
"fantasy",
"noir"
],
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Marty McGuire",
"url": "https://martymcgui.re/",
"photo": "https://martymcgui.re/images/logo.jpg"
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"post-type": "note",
"_id": "47036956",
"_source": "175"
}
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2026-01-11T21:42:40-0500",
"url": "https://martymcgui.re/2026/01/11/machine-knitting-a-chattie/",
"category": [
"machine-knitting",
"knitalong",
"hats"
],
"name": "Machine knitting: a (c)hattie",
"content": {
"text": "In 2025 the folks at machineknit.community\u00a0did a 12 Months of Hats knitalong. I only joined at the end of the year, and am still getting my practice in with a lot of basics, so I was a bit too intimidated to jump into any of these in the actual year of 2025.\nBased on an interesting hat design request from a friend, for my first knitting project of 2026 I chose Kurt Payne's \"Chattie\" design, which was the November 2025 knitalong.\nUnlike my first hats, which were basically rectangles sewn up and gathered at the top, the Chattie is knit sideways in 10 sections, using short rows on one side to form the rounded crown. This results in a neat sort of spiral look to the crown. Also unlike my first hats, the brim of the Chattie is added after-the-fact.\nThe Chattie is a very flexible design. However, before I get into any complexities like color work, I made this \"quick\" one out of plain white fuzzy cotton+polymer blend just to get practice with the techniques.\nThe good:\nKurt's instructions were great. He starts with gauge swatches before walking you through taking measurements and using a chart to convert measurements to stitches and rows. Instructions were also included for different brim variants. I chose a single band of 1x1 rib for this test.\n The end result came out about the size I expected! At least, it sits snug on my head and just covers my ears when the brim is folded up.\n I like the look and the feel of the 1x1 ribbed brim and the overall shape, I think.\n I seamed the hat together on the machine and I think that went pretty well. There's a feeling of \"certitude\" I get when all the stitches to be joined can be counted and hung up on needles that I don't get when hand-seaming. I might be interested in getting a linker carriage for my machine to make this even faster.\n I made some mistakes (see below) but decided to power through and\u00a0finish. This was a test hat, so I didn't need a pristine result, just a finished object that tells me what I might want to change for a future design.\nThe oops:\nMy math worked out so the body sections had an odd number of rows, which was pretty chaotic when it came time to bring held needles back into work. I think in the future I will either make sure that I round that row count up or down to the next even number for all sections, or perhaps alternate round-ups and round-downs to end up with the same number of rows.\n I dropped two stitches in the body of the hat. That's really not bad. I\u00a0think\u00a0this happened because of weight management, or possibly pulling multiple needles out of work in a single row because I got distracted with said weight management.\n I decided to work the brim by re-hanging the hat body sideways on the machine, and I just couldn't seem to get the weights consistent. I had a lot of trouble with needles not knitting, or getting caught on the gate pegs and causing\u00a0later\u00a0rows to knit incompletely. This was a stressful, time-consuming mess. Surprisingly, the end result only had a couple of awful stretched out stitches, which I fixed up and pulled to the \"inside\" of the brim.\n Unfortunately, to fit correctly, the \"inside\" of the brim gets flipped up to become the outside, so you can definitely see my mistakes and my seaming, haha.\n I think I misremembered how to do a stretchy finish on 1x1 rib, or just plain pulled it too-tight as I went, resulting in the brim edge being too tight. This is just enough to be noticeable and annoying, but not quite fatal for the hat as a wearable object.\nFor the future:\nI'm interested in doing color work on a design, but a great deal of the visible parts of the hat have short rows such that the number of stitches per row is constantly changing. Simple patterns in cool contrasting colors should tolerate that fine, but doing nice all-over patterning like I want may end up being tricky!\n I'd like to skip sewing up 1x1 rib edges for a bit. I think for a future hat I will start the ribbing on the machine, the graft the live stitches onto the hat body directly, which should leave me with a nice stretchy edge without testing my still-poor hand finishing skills.\nThat's it for now. Thanks for reading!",
"html": "<img src=\"https://media.martymcgui.re/9e/0e/32/f6/309ca54e21f3c673c2913b01bd19066c65019158f899c7139abf7c3f.\" alt=\"\" /><img src=\"https://media.martymcgui.re/d5/ab/cf/54/6f85f63afea3be05a6e18b1a825b6d205fef302bfcf1c820a5b77892.\" alt=\"\" /><img src=\"https://media.martymcgui.re/ce/59/7d/7d/99db69e98dc248d0ff77232e8f238cde3e518dcd04840c03846b1532.\" alt=\"\" /><p>In 2025 the folks at <a href=\"https://www.machineknit.community/\">machineknit.community</a>\u00a0did a 12 Months of Hats knitalong. I only joined at the end of the year, and am still getting my practice in with a lot of basics, so I was a bit too intimidated to jump into any of these in the actual year of 2025.</p>\n<p>Based on an interesting hat design request from a friend, for my first knitting project of 2026 I chose <a href=\"https://www.ravelry.com/designers/kurt-payne\">Kurt Payne</a>'s \"Chattie\" design, which was the November 2025 knitalong.</p>\n<p>Unlike my first hats, which were basically rectangles sewn up and gathered at the top, the Chattie is knit sideways in 10 sections, using short rows on one side to form the rounded crown. This results in a neat sort of spiral look to the crown. Also unlike my first hats, the brim of the Chattie is added after-the-fact.</p>\n<p>The Chattie is a very flexible design. However, before I get into any complexities like color work, I made this \"quick\" one out of plain white fuzzy cotton+polymer blend just to get practice with the techniques.</p>\n<p>The good:</p>\n<ul><li>Kurt's instructions were great. He starts with gauge swatches before walking you through taking measurements and using a chart to convert measurements to stitches and rows. Instructions were also included for different brim variants. I chose a single band of 1x1 rib for this test.</li>\n <li>The end result came out about the size I expected! At least, it sits snug on my head and just covers my ears when the brim is folded up.</li>\n <li>I like the look and the feel of the 1x1 ribbed brim and the overall shape, I think.</li>\n <li>I seamed the hat together on the machine and I think that went pretty well. There's a feeling of \"certitude\" I get when all the stitches to be joined can be counted and hung up on needles that I don't get when hand-seaming. I might be interested in getting a linker carriage for my machine to make this even faster.</li>\n <li>I made some mistakes (see below) but decided to power through and\u00a0<i>finish</i>. This was a test hat, so I didn't need a pristine result, just a finished object that tells me what I might want to change for a future design.</li>\n</ul><p>The oops:</p>\n<ul><li>My math worked out so the body sections had an odd number of rows, which was pretty chaotic when it came time to bring held needles back into work. I think in the future I will either make sure that I round that row count up or down to the next even number for all sections, or perhaps alternate round-ups and round-downs to end up with the same number of rows.</li>\n <li>I dropped two stitches in the body of the hat. That's really not bad. I\u00a0<i>think</i>\u00a0this happened because of weight management, or possibly pulling multiple needles out of work in a single row because I got distracted with said weight management.</li>\n <li>I decided to work the brim by re-hanging the hat body sideways on the machine, and I just couldn't seem to get the weights consistent. I had a lot of trouble with needles not knitting, or getting caught on the gate pegs and causing\u00a0<i>later</i>\u00a0rows to knit incompletely. This was a stressful, time-consuming mess. Surprisingly, the end result only had a couple of awful stretched out stitches, which I fixed up and pulled to the \"inside\" of the brim.</li>\n <li>Unfortunately, to fit correctly, the \"inside\" of the brim gets flipped up to become the outside, so you can definitely see my mistakes and my seaming, haha.</li>\n <li>I think I misremembered how to do a stretchy finish on 1x1 rib, or just plain pulled it too-tight as I went, resulting in the brim edge being too tight. This is just enough to be noticeable and annoying, but not quite fatal for the hat as a wearable object.</li>\n</ul><p>For the future:</p>\n<ul><li>I'm interested in doing color work on a design, but a great deal of the visible parts of the hat have short rows such that the number of stitches per row is constantly changing. Simple patterns in cool contrasting colors should tolerate that fine, but doing nice all-over patterning like I want may end up being tricky!</li>\n <li>I'd like to skip sewing up 1x1 rib edges for a bit. I think for a future hat I will start the ribbing on the machine, the graft the live stitches onto the hat body directly, which should leave me with a nice stretchy edge without testing my still-poor hand finishing skills.</li>\n</ul><p>That's it for now. Thanks for reading!</p>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Marty McGuire",
"url": "https://martymcgui.re/",
"photo": "https://martymcgui.re/images/logo.jpg"
},
"post-type": "article",
"_id": "47028570",
"_source": "175"
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{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2026-01-11T19:52:33-08:00",
"url": "https://nadreck.me/2026/01/apple-and-back-to-basics/",
"category": [
"technical",
"apple"
],
"name": "Apple and Back to Basics",
"content": {
"text": "I have never heard as many people avoiding upgrading to the new macOS, this late into the release cycle (we\u2019re up to 26.2), as I have with this release. Between the new UI being an accessibility nightmare and just actively weird, plus it all seeming to be buggier than normal, it just feels like a bit of a mess. I\u2019m not saying there weren\u2019t some good improvements as well, but let\u2019s just say it wasn\u2019t their best.\n\n\n\nWhat I\u2019d like to see from the next release (macOS 27, since they\u2019ve moved to a year-based versioning) is a \u201cback to basics\u201d bug-fix-focused release. Get your house in order, address technical debt, make everything as smooth and reliable as possible, get things into a good state for future development. Address all of the hate on the new UI, and follow your own UX guidelines. Fix the sorts of UI bugs that make the OS feel regressed and sloppy (for example, when dragging and dropping files from one window to another, it\u2019s no longer clear if you\u2019re copying into that window, or into folder inside that window). That absolutely needs to be the priority, though it\u2019s not like I\u2019m in a position to dictate as such.\n\n\n\nWorth noting, the idea isn\u2019t a far-fetched one \u2013 they\u2019ve done it before with Snow Leopard, and even marketed it as a \u201cNo new features\u201d release. It\u2019s time to do that again.",
"html": "<p>I have never heard as many people avoiding upgrading to the new macOS, this late into the release cycle (we\u2019re up to 26.2), as I have with this release. Between the new UI being an accessibility nightmare and just <a href=\"https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/icons-in-menus/\">actively</a> <a href=\"https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/\">weird</a>, plus it all seeming to be buggier than normal, it just feels like a bit of a mess. I\u2019m not saying there weren\u2019t some good improvements as well, but let\u2019s just say it wasn\u2019t their best.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What I\u2019d like to see from the next release (macOS 27, since they\u2019ve moved to a year-based versioning) is a \u201cback to basics\u201d bug-fix-focused release. Get your house in order, address technical debt, make everything as smooth and reliable as possible, get things into a good state for future development. Address all of the hate on the new UI, and follow your <em>own UX guidelines</em>. Fix the sorts of UI bugs that make the OS feel regressed and sloppy (for example, when dragging and dropping files from one window to another, it\u2019s no longer clear if you\u2019re copying into that window, or into folder inside that window). That absolutely needs to be the priority, though it\u2019s not like I\u2019m in a position to dictate as such.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Worth noting, the idea isn\u2019t a far-fetched one \u2013 they\u2019ve done it before with <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard\">Snow Leopard</a>, and even marketed it as a \u201cNo new features\u201d release. It\u2019s time to do that again.</p>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Nadreck",
"url": "http://nadreck.me",
"photo": null
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"post-type": "article",
"_id": "47027576",
"_source": "2935"
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Me looking at my todo list on a Sunday night after having done at least a couple things today, yet somehow it looks more like a list of what I did *not* do today.
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2026-01-11T19:21:19-08:00",
"url": "https://aaronparecki.com/2026/01/11/11/",
"syndication": [
"https://bsky.app/profile/aaronpk.com/post/3mc73jd3vwf2j"
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"content": {
"text": "Me looking at my todo list on a Sunday night after having done at least a couple things today, yet somehow it looks more like a list of what I did *not* do today."
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Aaron Parecki",
"url": "https://aaronparecki.com/",
"photo": "https://aperture-media.p3k.io/aaronparecki.com/41061f9de825966faa22e9c42830e1d4a614a321213b4575b9488aa93f89817a.jpg"
},
"post-type": "note",
"_id": "47027338",
"_source": "16"
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{
"type": "entry",
"author": {
"name": "Jared White",
"url": "https://jaredwhite.com/",
"photo": null
},
"url": "https://jaredwhite.com/20260106/rachel-maddow-deepfakes-millions-of-views",
"published": "2026-01-06T09:37:18-08:00",
"content": {
"html": "<p>As of right now, there\u2019s a deepfake AI clone of Rachel Maddow on YouTube called <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/@MaddowsBrief\">\u201cMaddow\u2019s Brief\u201d</a>. It\u2019s apparently fooling lots of people, because overnight it\u2019s grown from 20K subs (when I first found it) to 38K. Just one of the slop videos, posted less than 24 hours ago, already has a million views.</p>\n\n<p>I reported two videos to Google last night. So far, nothing has yet been taken down. Many people in the comments are saying things like \u201cRight on, Rachel Maddow! Telling it like it is! Screw Trump!\u201d</p>\n\n<p>This is all generated slop. It is <em>clearly</em> not actually Rachel Maddow, and even if what \u201cshe\u201d is saying happens to be true when evaluated, it is still nonsensical. It is not grounded in any real truth claims by any verifiable human sources. <strong>It is a con job. It is spam.</strong></p>\n\n<p>Why is YouTube allowing this sort of thing to take place at all? From an ML standpoint, it should be relatively trivial to flag such deepfakes in an automated fashion and immediately escalate to human review\u2014especially for a new channel like this (it only started on Jan 1, 2026!) sporting a deluge of videos in a brief period of time.</p>\n\n<p>This is not some sort of \u201coh gosh, now what do we do?\u201d problem. <strong>This is intentional.</strong> YouTube & Google have intentionally decided they don\u2019t care about deepfakes and slop. Because if they really wanted to do something about it, you wouldn\u2019t see this happening. Period.</p>\n\n<p>Without a <em>significant</em> change to the policies of platforms like YouTube around this stuff, it is the beginning of the end of the Internet as we have known it. <strong>We cannot allow this madness to continue.</strong> <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/generativeai\">#GenerativeAI</a> is an existential threat to knowledge and truth.</p>",
"text": "As of right now, there\u2019s a deepfake AI clone of Rachel Maddow on YouTube called \u201cMaddow\u2019s Brief\u201d. It\u2019s apparently fooling lots of people, because overnight it\u2019s grown from 20K subs (when I first found it) to 38K. Just one of the slop videos, posted less than 24 hours ago, already has a million views.\n\nI reported two videos to Google last night. So far, nothing has yet been taken down. Many people in the comments are saying things like \u201cRight on, Rachel Maddow! Telling it like it is! Screw Trump!\u201d\n\nThis is all generated slop. It is clearly not actually Rachel Maddow, and even if what \u201cshe\u201d is saying happens to be true when evaluated, it is still nonsensical. It is not grounded in any real truth claims by any verifiable human sources. It is a con job. It is spam.\n\nWhy is YouTube allowing this sort of thing to take place at all? From an ML standpoint, it should be relatively trivial to flag such deepfakes in an automated fashion and immediately escalate to human review\u2014especially for a new channel like this (it only started on Jan 1, 2026!) sporting a deluge of videos in a brief period of time.\n\nThis is not some sort of \u201coh gosh, now what do we do?\u201d problem. This is intentional. YouTube & Google have intentionally decided they don\u2019t care about deepfakes and slop. Because if they really wanted to do something about it, you wouldn\u2019t see this happening. Period.\n\nWithout a significant change to the policies of platforms like YouTube around this stuff, it is the beginning of the end of the Internet as we have known it. We cannot allow this madness to continue. #GenerativeAI is an existential threat to knowledge and truth."
},
"name": "Rachel Maddow Deepfaked on YouTube with Millions of Views of Slop Videos",
"post-type": "article",
"_id": "46978366",
"_source": "2783"
}
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2025-12-27T19:23:38-08:00",
"url": "https://aaronparecki.com/2025/12/27/13/",
"category": [
"moving",
"365"
],
"photo": [
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],
"content": {
"text": "It's moving day for the cats! They are still suspicious but they like hanging out with us on the bed."
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Aaron Parecki",
"url": "https://aaronparecki.com/",
"photo": "https://aperture-media.p3k.io/aaronparecki.com/41061f9de825966faa22e9c42830e1d4a614a321213b4575b9488aa93f89817a.jpg"
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"_id": "46971277",
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Can't believe we already found somewhere we should have added an outlet. So instead I drilled through the cabinets to run an extension cord from the one outlet we *did* put inside the cabinets, and now there's power for the shredder.
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2025-12-27T10:19:46-08:00",
"url": "https://aaronparecki.com/2025/12/27/12/",
"category": [
"triplex",
"moving"
],
"photo": [
"https://aperture-media.p3k.io/aaronparecki.com/1077f67878b5b2239e346f18e8b9d6b7db729095a5677e47e8a2bdcedba96350.jpg"
],
"content": {
"text": "Can't believe we already found somewhere we should have added an outlet. So instead I drilled through the cabinets to run an extension cord from the one outlet we *did* put inside the cabinets, and now there's power for the shredder."
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Aaron Parecki",
"url": "https://aaronparecki.com/",
"photo": "https://aperture-media.p3k.io/aaronparecki.com/41061f9de825966faa22e9c42830e1d4a614a321213b4575b9488aa93f89817a.jpg"
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"_id": "46971146",
"_source": "16"
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