From thoughts to text

The thoughts and text on this blog is mine, and mine alone.

  • I Have Bought My First Smartwatch

    Garmin Vívoactive 5. It is not my first smartwatch, but it is the first I have bought myself.

    My first smartwatch was a Christmas present: a Fitbit Charge 2.

    I call it a smartwatch since it counted my steps and heart beats. I think it even could show the time. Eventually it stopped charging. Ironically, given the name of the device.

    My second smartwatch, a Polar Ignite 2, was a hand-me-down from my father when he got a new one (for Christmas). It could count a lot more than the Fitbit, but then the touch screen stopped working.

    It still counts steps, heart beats, sleep, and more, but getting it to track my activity has gotten increasingly difficult without a way to interact with the watch.

    All I want is a way to track my kayak trips. But since my smartphone, for one reason or another, turns off the GPS tracking literally the moment I tuck it away, that is not an option.

    And yes. I have tried to change the battery options to no avail.

    I know Garmin Vívoactive has a lot more functionality. But I have turned off all notifications, and I have no intention to use it to stream music, read messages or use it as a payment method.

    It should simply be out of the way, and occasionally, on my request, track my activity.

  • How Much Do You Support Fascism?

    Not sure how to quantify it, but we could try.

    Do you think Donald Trump is a great guy or have great ideas or have done something good? This one was easy: You support fascism.

    Have you bought a Tesla this decade? Bad news (unless you really like fascism), you enable fascism.

    Do you use Twitter, or is it X?, or is it part of SpaceX now? Do you use SpaceX? You are enabling fascism. Yes, I imply that financially supporting Elon Musk (one way or another) is enabling fascism.

    Use any products from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon or Meta? I know I do. Well, they don’t exactly stand up to fascism. So we should try harder to not enable the enablers.

    Also, you should stay away from anything Meta regardless. I know; it is addictive. Guess what? It’s by design.

    These thoughts came after reading “Never Forget How Eagerly Apple And Google Coddled Fascism” and “Normalized Fascism in Open Source: $12 Million Given to DHH“.

  • Em Dash Is Fine – It Is AI That Sucks

    Here is a dialog from the movie Office Space — and just to be clear; Michael Bolton in the movie are talking about Michael Bolton the singer.

    • Michael Bolton: Yeah, well, at least your name isn’t Michael Bolton.
    • Samir: You know, there’s nothing wrong with that name.
    • Michael Bolton: There *was* nothing wrong with it… until I was about twelve years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys.
    • Samir: Hmm… well, why don’t you just go by Mike instead of Michael?
    • Michael Bolton: No way! Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.

    And this made me think about AI — and em dashes.

    I have been told that em dash is the hallmark of AI writing, and that seeing em dashes in a text is a sure sign that an AI was involved. But this is simply not true.

    Granted; AI do tend to use em dash and bullet points a lot, but that in itself proves nothing, although it can be an indication of AI writing.

    The interesting thing is that the people who look at em dash and think “this must be AI”, are people that do not read much. And I could say that this is the hallmark of people using generative AI — they do not read. They do not know what good texts looks like.

    (And based on my writing you may say that neither do I)

    AI written text might look better than what most people write, but as John Gruber of Daring Fireball writes; most people are terrible writers, so the bar is low.

    I would rather see your words, and more importantly, your thinking on a subject than a grammatically correct text with a lot of unnecessary fluff.

    Writing is thinking after all, so why would you deprive yourself of this invaluable tool? And if you do not care to write it, why should I care to read it?

    I am not against AI on everything. I use it for research (the glorified search engine), but I always check multiple sources if it is important. But for generative text and images? Please, spare me.

    I like to use em dashes. Why should I change? It is AI that sucks.

    There, I am done. Now go watch Office Space.

  • Rodents in the Attic

    I’ve just watched the most delightful C64 demo, Rodents in the Attic.

    Actually, I first watched the video on how this seemingly impossible demo was made, then I watched the demo.

    The thing about Rodents in the Attic isn’t just the impossible made — which you probably even wouldn’t think about — but the storytelling in the demo is just so perfectly on point.

  • Real Life Events Inspired by… Movies?

    I have a theory.

    In 2018, or thereabout, Mark Zuckerberg watched “Ready Player One” — or maybe he actually read the book — and decided to pivot Facebook into the Metaverse12. That went tits up, but everyone kind of forgot once AI made its appearance.

    Then, late in 2025, Donald Trump — a truly horrible, horrible person — watched the first 5 minutes of “Air Force One” — where Harrison Ford says “Get of my plane!” in the end — and promptly ordered the kidnaping of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro, which happened just a few days into 2026.

    It makes me wonder; how many other leaders are getting their ideas from television series and movies?

    1. Ready Player One is a dystopian science fiction book/movie, so obviously it was a perfect fit for Mark and Facebook. ↩︎
    2. If you ever read Ready Player One, stop there. After the success of the movie, the author, Erneste Cline decided to write a follow-up in 2020 called “Ready Player Two”, and it ruins everything from the first book. ↩︎