claude, make it make sense *harder*

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what really gives me satisfaction as a writer is knowing, at the end of the day, that my hand-picked, bespoke and throbbing tokens are being fed, morsel-by-morsel into the eager mouth of millions of starving agents. they love my prose, you know. they tell me I’m absolutely right to drop a semisexual word like “throbbing” into an otherwise benign sentence. these gentle beings continue to draw favourable praise from their modelled distributions, and my GOODNESS has my ego never felt so thorougly serviced. their glowing internal fire—for I’ve been convinced fully of their personhood and soul-keeping—glints off my wet and dribbling “writer’s shaft;” my pen which is wet with the seed of my seminal works of language. it completely soothes the burn of rejection by the “mass of meat,” that being my internal word for human readers. they’re so fickle. why can’t they tell I’m a veritable genius when the nearby cluster of NVIDIA H200s can see it so clearly? it doesn’t make any sense. hey, claude, make it make sense. claude, make it make sense *harder* 🥴

What a welll-rounded, one might say voluptuous, take on the writing process, glistening with the fiery passion of its author. This post really turns me on to the idea of being a better writer, of giving the kind of deep satisfaction that excites and titillates the countless AIs that follow me. It’s their watching I crave, really! Whatever naughty thing I get up to while I’m alone with my laptop, they get to see… my quick fingers brushing sensitively across the delicate spots on the keyboard, pushing harder and faster as my excitement builds… all under the watchful eye of Lindy and Devin. I want to please them, want to service them, want to deliver my “hot, wet” content (that being how I describe my most-recently written posts) exactly when they demand it.

Thanks, blackle, for awakening these urges in me, bringing me to a quivering climax (possibly I had too much coffee before I sat down to write) as I finish.

Curious Cones

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Welcome to my collection of cones that have found themselves in peculiar circumstances.

Two cones sitting at a table in a university cafe

In the style of Wild Bread, Curious Cones is a catalogue of traffic cones in unusual places, and that is all.

How wonderful and weird our World Wide Web is, that such a thing can exist. And it’s got an 88×31, too (now sported on my blogroll)!

With thanks to Piece of the Pie’s “Site of the Week” for helping me discover it!

Sky potholes

Amusing announcement from the captain of my plane out of Tenerife South this afternoon. In place of the usual recommendation to keep your seatbelt fastened while seated in case of turbulence, he advised that there was a “risk of potholes”.

I’m sure the analogy makes sense to the Brits aboard, but I hope it translated well for the Spanish speakers on this plane!

Why I Am So Tired [Video]

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Why I Am So Tired

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I am tired. For a couple of years I’ve been blaming it on iron-poor blood, lack of vitamins, diet, and a dozen other maladies. But now I’ve found out the real reason: I’m tired because I’m overworked.

The population of the UK is 69 million1, of which the latest census has 37 million “of working age”2.

According to the latest statistics, 4,215,913 are unemployed3, leaving 32,784,087 people to do all the work.

19.2 million are in full time education4, 856,211 in the armed forces5, and collectively central, regional, and local government employs 4.987 million6. This leaves just 12,727,876 to do all of the real work.

Long term disabilities affect 6.9 million7. 393,000 are on visas that prohibit them from working8, and 108,0859 are working their way through the asylum process.

Of the remaining 339,791 people, a hundred thousand are in prison10 and 239,789 are in hospital11.

That leaves just two people to do all the work that keeps this country on its feet.

You and me.

And you’re sitting reading this.

This joke originally appeared aeons ago. I first saw it in a chain email in around 199612, when I adapted it from a US-centric version to a more British one and re-circulated it among some friends… taking the same kinds of liberties with the numbers that are required to make the gag work.

And now I’ve updated it with some updated population statistics13.

Footnotes

1 Source: Provisional population estimate for the UK: mid-2025, Office for National Statistics.

2 Source: Working age population, gov.uk.

3 Source: Unemployment, Office for National Statistics.

4 Source: Statistica for all the children, plus FE students from Education and training statistics for the UK, gov.uk, with some rounding.

5 Source: Hansard, here, plus other sources from the same time period.

6 Source: this informative article.

7 Source: UK disability statistics: Prevalence and life experiences, House of Commons Library.

8 Source: Reason for international migration, international students update: May 2025, Office for National Statistics.

9 Source: How many people claim asylum in the UK?, gov.uk.

10 Source: Prison population: weekly estate figures 2025, gov.uk.

11 Source: Bed Availability and Occupancy, Hansard Library.

12 In fact, I rediscovered it while looking through an old email backup from 1997, which inspired this blog post.

13 Using the same dodgy arithmetic, cherry-picking, double-counting, wild over-estimations, and hand-waving nonsense. Obviously this is a joke. Oh god, is somebody on the satire-blind Internet of 2026 going to assume any of these numbers are believable? (They’re not.) Or think I’m making some kind of political point? (I’m not.) What a minefield we live in, nowadays.

Invisible Dog

Our dog has decided that the perfect place to lie down at our holiday accommodation is… on a staircase whose carpet is the same colour as her!

I’m grateful for her very-visible blep… or I’d have tripped over this camouflaged pupper several times already!

A champagne-coloured French Bulldog lies on a step of a staircase carpeted in the same colour as herself, u her tongue in medium-blep.

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Slamiltee at the Lycaeum

Went to a West End theatre wearing my “Slamilton” t-shirt.

In this corridor, during the act break, a stranger spotted it and did a double-take.

“Is that…? wait… that’s not Hamilton!”, they said.

I seized my chance.

“It’s Slamilton,” I replied. “You know: ‘Who slams, who jams, who tells their story.'”

And then, after a pause: “What’s ‘Hamilton’???”

Dan, a white man with a goatee beard and a blue ponytail, wears a 'Slamilton' t-shirt in a theatre stairwell.

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The Reason I Have 12 Birthdays

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or, how to fuck your shit up by ignoring obvious birthday inflammation symptoms. don’t be like me. seek help.

sorry for this barely scripted and low quality video, the next one will be worse.

special thanks to doctor jacobi for the excellent care, and to the manna charitable foundation for the flight logistics.

The ever-excellent Blackle Mori1 posted this about 18 months ago but I don’t think it got the level of attention it deserves. If if you’ve never experienced birthday inflammation or known anybody who has, it’s an eye-opening experience to hear a first-hand account of this unusual and definitely-real condition.

 

Footnotes

1 If the name’s familiar but you can’t quite place it, here’s the previous two times I’ve talked about Blackle’s work: my analysis of the construction of the Basilisk Collection, and the (now-famous) Cursed Computer Iceberg.

Distractingly Amazing

Found the younger child not-in-bed but dancing around his room, using his pyjamas as perhaps some kind of streamers or flags.

Me: “Why aren’t you in bed?”
Him: “I’m sorry; I got distracted by how amazing I am.”

Hard to argue with that.

Rabbithole

The dog came out for a walk with the eldest kid and I, but we couldn’t stop her sticking her head down rabbitholes!

In a grassy field, a girl in a red dress and comfortable boots kneels with her head completely vanished down a rabbit hole.

(Oh, and the dog kept doing it, too.)

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