Things That Are Good to Do. Including “admit what you don’t know”, “put the cart away”, “rest before you’re exhausted” (I often get this one wrong), and “walk home if you can”.

My Weird, Dark, Twisted Habit

Seventeen years ago. (Seventeen years ago?) When I started this blog, that is, when I decided to take on another thing in addition to taking care of a spouse with chronic illness, making art to sell in galleries, being in porn movies, playing games, and doing all the other chores a person does to stay around and sane, I had a simple idea about doing stuff on the Internet.

In fact, I'd had this idea since I started doing anything on the Internet, much earlier, near the beginning of my art career. Arguably even since I started doing pretty much anything as an adult: 

If I was going to do something--especially something time-consuming--I should know why I was doing it. And, as a corollary, whatever that reason was, I should feel good about that reason, like that was a good reason.

If I was going to hang out on a website I was going to have it for a reason I knew and I felt good about, if I was leaving a comment I was doing it for a reason I knew and felt good about, if I was disagreeing with someone I was doing it for a reason I knew and felt good about, if I was telling everyone someone else should fucking go to jail I was doing it for a reason that I knew and felt good about, if I was telling literally anyone literally anything on here I was doing it for a reason that I knew and felt good about.

A vital caveat here is "because I was bored" is, for me, not a good reason. Because I have about a hundred other more fun or productive things I could be doing if that's the best reason I can come up with. If I'm bored I could read a book

The reason I started writing this blog, for instance, is because I run games at home with my friends and those games are fun and have all kinds of benefits and when I write about games on here I sometimes get ideas from people who I interact with or who build on the ideas I have here about how to make those games more fun. Benefit.

Many People Do Not Have Reasons

One thing it took me a really long time to learn is that most people do not think this way. They just do stuff and are not conscious of reasons.

For many people, they were either born into-, or quickly adapted to-, a world where writing your thoughts and feelings online in a comment section or even a whole blog entry is either:

• As instinctive as breathing
• Literally because they were bored and had nothing else to do, or
• Actually something they're lowkey embarrassed about

Person with very strong takes on what is Problematic in Gaming: "I love arguing about petty shit and calling people idiots"

A lot of people just haven't thought that hard about it. They're suffering from a terminal case of Heideggerian thrown-ness, just showing up in the world doing things because that seems unreflectively like the thing to do.

Anyway, so...don't be like that? Or at least not when there's stakes to what you're saying.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
This isn't a metaphor. Just a story about a roach.

LOS ANGELES — Pharmacists in the state of California have made a sweeping recommendation to have three months’ worth of medications, but to be sure to get them from other, imaginary pharmacies where they actually let you do that, sources confirmed.

“Any responsible adult will know to have three months’ worth of medications to prepare for things like shortages, travel, and unexpected events like natural disasters, but definitely don’t try getting that many months’ worth of your meds at any of our pharmacies, idiot,” shared Jessica Mayo, a representative from the California State Board of Pharmacy. “I’m actually going to be pissed if you try. I’m going to take it personally. What do you take me for? But I will judge you if you don’t find a way, too.”

Reactions rolled in from many disabled, chronically ill, and otherwise medicated Californians.

“I am constantly advised to have a stockpile of my medications,” shared Laura Woodward. “Except every time I ask my pharmacist about it, she calls me a drug-seeking heathen. And I’m only asking for a 90-day supply of cholesterol meds and immunosuppressants. I’ve personally never had much luck bringing these to parties for cool points, but maybe the pharmacists are seeing something I’m not. I’ll definitely keep trying to find this imaginary pharmacy I keep hearing about, though. It sounds dope.”

Notable philosopher Sam Shaw shared a unique perspective on this seemingly impossible dilemma

“It’s what I call Schrödinger’s Pharmacy: a pharmacy where you can do what your doctor has advised indeed exists, until you put the address into Google Maps,” said Shaw. “Doctors aren’t always great about keeping up with cutting-edge research, so they might not have read my blog post about it. I bet a lot of them are still unwittingly advising the impossible. It’s similar to how doctors tell you that in order to relieve pain, you have to lose weight, but it’s impossible to lose weight if you’re in too much pain to move. But also just real quick, I have a question about what pharmacies these people are going to because, like, I’ve never had trouble getting a fuck ton of weed from my dispensary.”

As a compromise, pharmacists are working on a system where you can actually pick up your meds the day you run out, and rumor has it they are even considering not yelling at you for missing the couple doses they couldn’t fill in time.

The post Pharmacists Recommend Having Three Months’ Worth of Meds From Other, Imaginary Pharmacy Where They Let You Do That  appeared first on HARDTIMES.

I’m here to give you a glimpse of a future that I think none of us expected. It’s a future where AIs are governed by laws, not by programs that try to contain and control them.

First, my secret: I see the future by living in it. I am spending the equivalent of $122k/month of API token spend, or about $4,000 per day, using 21 Claude Max accounts, a number that has been growing steadily at 2 per week. I’m using them to build my video game, Wyvern, which I’ve worked on for 30 years, and now it’s ready to fly.

For ten weeks, I’ve used Claude Fable 5 exclusively for all my design and planning, and also for agents that interface with humans. I have built a team of 18 “officer” seats, all Heads of This and That, all long-lived Fable instances. I also have mostly-headless Sol and Opus fleets, for implementation, reviews, and monitoring. Fable runs them.

I am running an organization of around 50–60 agents, five of whom are interfacing with around 10 humans in the outside world: myself, my 5-person core game design team, my accountant, my chief of staff, and a few others. Only Fable is allowed to talk to humans, via Slack and email.

This essay continues on my own site — the whole thing, with the illustrations, is here:
https://yegge.ai/essays/fences-not-sandboxes/

New essays land at yegge.ai first from now on, along with the archive of everything back to 2004 and the weekly Wheelhouse comics.