jducoeur

This morning's email included the latest entry from the Exploding Giraffe blog. (Which is co-authored by Paper Girls author Brian K. Vaughn -- it's quite a bit of fun, and interspersed with his current very-NSFW serialized graphic novel Spectators.)

This entry included some of the results from the "Time Capsule" contest in the Paper Girls letters page, where in 2016 they asked people to predict some things about 2019. It also included a followup: much the same poll, asking about the world of 2025.

I could have responded with a straight face, but where's the fun in that? Being rather punchy this morning, I wound up free-associating the following in the comments section, and it's worth preserving here:

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1) Who will be President of the United States in 2025?

Hansen Wong, an artificial intelligence accidentally created when someone typed "Ideal President of the US" into Midjourney AI in mid-2023 and (as usual) turns out to be close enough to correct to be usable. He is a generally good President, aside from the random attack on Antarctica in March '25. (Programmers are still trying to figure out what inputs led to that; current best theory is that it has to do with building a strategic penguin reserve.)

2) Will artificial intelligence be a danger to humanity by 2025?

We wouldn't dream of referring to our benevolent President as a "danger".

3) Who will play James Bond in 2025?

23 year old Fire Ross was an unknown until Barbara Broccoli, desperate to make the Bond franchise relevant beyond an aging audience and seeing the way things were going, commissioned a bespoke analytical engine to do the casting. Signs so far are good for the young black actress -- as of this writing, it is the first time in many years that the under-30 crowd appears to care about Bond.

4) Will the city of Cleveland have won any (additional) major sports championships by 2025?

No, but in a surprise upset they did come in second in the '24 Pairs Figure Skateboarding Championship, and hopes are high for the '26 Olympics.

5) Which nation or group will pose the greatest security threat to the world in 2025?

"Threat" is very much in the eye of the beholder. But much of the world is worried about what President Wong plans to do with all those penguins.

6) Will superhero movies still dominate Hollywood in 2025?

Yes, but all the attention on the upcoming Bond film is shifting the balance back to "spy" movies. That said, given the rumors of Bond's new flying car and gadget-filled bangle bracelet (sparking lawsuit threats from Marvel about IP theft from their planned Nicole Fury film), many observers point out that the lines have become pretty blurry.

7) Which will be more valuable in 2025, Apple or Google?

Apple, mostly due to anticipation of the recently announced iBall -- an artificially intelligent contact lens that reminds you of all the current gossip about the person you are currently talking to.

8) What company, if any, will be more valuable than either of those companies by 2025?

FlickTrack, which takes the world by storm with AI-generated five-second memes, each one custom-generated based on your social media feeds. That has become extraordinarily popular very quickly, and rumors have it that the iBall will feature a FlickTrack plugin that augments reality with scenes that appear to be happening right in front of you in reality.

(FlickTrack assures everyone that it is not being used to program people with propaganda from the Chinese government.)

9) Will climate change have significantly impacted your country by 2025?

This was originally a concern, but after the completion of the Dome, America has gone back to placidly thinking of it as Someone Else's Problem.

10) Which beloved celebrity will no longer be with us by 2025?

Max Headroom, declared obsolete on September 1 2024.

11) Will marijuana be largely legalized throughout most of the U.S. by 2025?

Legalized and broadly mandated, on the grounds that Americans had been getting dangerously harsh, and getting them to "mellow out" would be necessary for human survival.

12) What disease will we have a cure for by 2025?

Chicken McNuggets, which were finally recognized as the sinister fungal life form they had always been, and were then hunted down and exterminated. The average American's lifespan immediately increased by approximately five months.

13) What food will be the new “superfood” by 2025?

P'eng. Given the sudden abundance of penguins, they (of course) become a trendy foodstuff for the excessively elite until President Wong declares them off-limits for consumption. (No one yet knows why.) So an enterprising new startup produces a vat-grown but surprisingly tasty fake penguin meat, genetically engineered to be full of protein and antioxidants. It is already getting quite popular, and a major iBall-based ad campaign (which will show ads for P'eng on all billboards you pass by) is planned for October.

14) What current technology will be completely obsolete by 2025?

Cell phones aren't obsolete yet. But predictions are that everyone under 40 will be using iBalls by late next year, so the writing is on the wall.

15) Will there still be print newspapers in 2025?

Not in the traditional form; ecological concerns have made them rather un-cool. But there is an "artisanal news" movement forming that aims to bring them back, in the form of a new iBall plugin that will let you read the current news, formatted to look like a newspaper, whenever you hold a blank off-white sheet up in front of your eyes.

[ETA: BKV liked it! Squee!]

It occurs to me that not everyone has yet come across the Twitter feed of Donaeld the Unready and associated accounts. There is a growing collection of these, all interlinked from different viewpoints, and they are particularly perfect for the SCAdian -- of-the-moment political satire, all framed in terms of Anglo-Saxon England. I think my current faves are the political tapestries of Wulfgar the Bard. Check it out...

[Thanks to Steffan for pointing this one out.]

For those who haven't come across it yet, *especially* if you're a foodie, I commend Brooklyn Bar Menus. It's a fine bit of ridiculousness.

(I started giggling when I got to, "free-range water, sublimated eggplant & locally-sourced farfalle"...)

Although I generally consider myself to have completely moved in with Kate, that ignores one little detail: the roughly 200 boxes that are in the basement and storage. So part of my daily routine these days is spending 30-60 minutes unpacking something. Lately, it's mostly been boxes of random papers. This is quite a treasure trove -- while I am deliberately throwing out the majority of it, I'm finding delights on a regular basis.

One of them is this. There's no attribution, but I probably wrote it -- it's certainly my style. (Especially the parenthetical in the middle.) If I had to guess a date, it would probably be Christmas 2000: from context, it clearly was during Trenza (my Crazy Bubble Company), which was seeking funding right around then. (We didn't ever find it -- I eventually quit when they asked the employees to stay on at half-salary while they tried to talk AOL into buying us.)

Anyway, it's rather fun -- one of my better pieces, IMO -- and worth preserving. And as my next company moves to Alpha, it somehow seems appropriate. So here it is -- feel free to share...

'Twas the Night Before Funding

Mark Waks, circa 2000

Twas the night before funding, and all through the cubes,
Not a creature was stirring, 'neath flourescent tubes.
The demos were rigged and the movies prepared,
So Patrick and Bob could go show off our wares.

The hackers were sitting there, still quite awake,
All fragging their friends in the levels of Quake.
When noises distracted me from playing Hack; it
Caused me to look and see what was the racket.

I ran to the skylight, and to my surprise,
A copter was coming down from the night skies.
And then he emerged, in the moonlight so clear,
The man who could only be our financier.

And out, just to make sure that we weren't crooks,
Came eight small accountants, each one bearing books.
They ran off before him, and all came inside,
And checked all the ledgers while I heard him cry,
"Now, Checkbook! Now, Spreadsheet! Now, Ballpoint and Quill!
On, Income! On, Debit! On Invoice and Bill!
Now into the files, the numbers you'll crunch,
Then, diligence done, you may all go to lunch."

They finished the books and all scampered away,
And the Man Himself entered to give his okay.
And I saw from the small Netscape tie-tack he wore,
That this man with the money was none but St. Doerr.

(At this point, I should interject that I don't actually know much about John Doerr, so this description probably isn't accurate. But he seems to be the appropriate mythological figure for this poem.)

He was dressed all in wool, in a Brooks Brothers suit,
The pockets a-bulging with stockmarket loot.
A bundle of options were held in his hand,
To exercise if all should go as we planned.
His handshake was firm, and his voice was most clear,
Assuring us we'd have the cash for next year.

He ran round the cube-farm, dispensing advice,
On how we should market, and what's a fair price.
He filled all our notebooks with wisdom on high,
On how valuations can reach to the sky.

And then, as his Palm Pilot gave out a beep,
He rose through the skylight in one mighty leap.
Back into the copter, with bookkeepers eight,
So his next appointment would not come too late.

Yet then in a panic, I realized one fact:
His signature was not upon the contract!
But I heard him exclaim, as the copter set sail,
"Don't worry about it -- the check's in the mail!"

I'm starting to seriously clear the house. It is *full* of boxes and papers and cruft, and I am beginning to realize that, if I'm going to actually list it in March, I need to get cracking on clearing stuff. So today's focus is going through miscellanea and making the fast separation: Keep, Discard, or Hold Onto For Further Study. And there's this box labeled "Library Articles".

Most of it is sadly frustrating. I clearly need to get rid of it, because I have *no* use for it myself. I'm hoping that I can find some school somewhere that would be interested in it (Simmons, maybe?), because it's a fascinating archive of the history of online librarianship, from the early days in the mid-80s. Jane clipped a vast number of articles about solo librarianship, research and search over many years, with the result that you can study much of the history of the field just from the contents of this one box.

I'm only keeping the bits that are exceptionally interesting or personal. Some of that is the humor -- random library-related cartoons and the like.

And then there is the ANSI Standard. An innocuous little pamphlet, very official, of ANSI Standard K100.1-1974:

Safety Code and Requirements for Dry Martinis

It's the best grin I've gotten in some time.

Read it for yourself -- the link above is to the official NISO PDF online. It's almost straight-faced at times, wandering off into beautiful excesses such as Table 1, "Maximum Permissible Olive Displacement". The best bit is the end, as they evaluate the possible mixing techniques, eventually recommending the "Radiation" method.

It's a delightful piece of silliness, and I'll be keeping it, even as I sadly deaccession a career's worth of meatier content...

Thanks to TechCrunch for the pointer to the announcement of the MacBook Wheel. (Video, about three minutes.) As it says in the video: "The Wheel, reinvented."

(I really need to spend more time reading the Onion...)

Thanks to TechCrunch for the pointer to someecards -- "when you care enough to hit send". They describe it as what you get when staff of the Onion go into the greeting-card business, and that looks about right. Nice 1950s style artwork combined with text like "Adorable candy will help distract us from the astounding horror of a man being nailed to a cross", "If I was your coworker, I'd sexually harass you" or "May your birthday be devoid of cute animals and soul-shredding wordplay". Rude, nasty, frequently funny stuff.

Not for every taste, but I suspect a number of people here will find many useful cards, and they have many hundreds to browse through...

Thanks to Gundormr for a pointer to this rudely hilarious article, which vividly demonstrates the dangers of machine translation. Slightly not safe for work, due to language. (We're talking about *really* bad translations here...)

I don't know how many people are following chaucerhathblog; I suspect that many took a glance at it briefly, appreciated the joke, and wandered off.

I'm only paying half-attention myself, but I must commend today's mailbag entry. From the woes of Leo of Armenia to the "HOTTE COURTLIE ACCIOUN!", it's a real hoot...

Thanks to laurion for the pointer to this stunningly appropriate cartoon...