Quick Summary

So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2025:

1. 2 poems posted here
2. 68 essays/rants posted here
3. 1 prose/stories posted here
4. 2 pieces of compositions/rearrangements posted here
   

And thus the grand total here is 73 articles, up from the 45 articles in 2024.

That's an average of 0.200 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.123 last year.

Like before, there is no NaNoWriMo entry, and this time, it is because it had imploded completely in 2025-04. So there will never be any more NaNoWriMo, ever.

What's there to reflect on the year past?

Honestly, nothing that I haven't ranted on and on throughout the whole year. I hoped that 2025 wasn't going to be a too much of a shitstorm at the end of 2024, but it has turned out to be quite the shitstorm, and I don't even mean it in a vague-ish sort of way.

The world economy is finally showing its true colours of the malaise and decadence of a plutocratic hypercapitalism involving klepto-kakistocracy with shades of various levels of geronto-autocracy as a form of fig-leaf. And like always, the middle class (or what is left of it) is being crushed from above and below.

``MT, that's a lot of big words!''

If you're new here, it is best to find out what each of the terms I just used mean---I tend to choose my words very carefully in the attempt to bring out the specific nuance that I am going for, all without the use of Generative AI.

Not because Generative AI is bad, or that I am too curmudgeonly to use it, but that I find it much more effective and pleasurable to literally use my own words. After all, I did spend a long time reading and using them---it'd be a shame to allow myself to be waste away for the sake of a little convenience, however little that may actually be.

Also, all human parts have this weird ``use it or lose it'' energy-optimisation strategy built-in, and to ensure that my mind is not completely mush from laziness, I do need to exercise it just like how I never skip leg day [from having to run up and down the stairs, as well as to wherever I need to get my commute from].

The year 2026 is already here. I think this is going to be a major turning point for many people, just like how the original COVID-19 was one too. But unlike the global epidemic, I think that this turning point is wholly man-made, and therefore where we end up heading in history is still in the hands of the people who are making the decisions.

I have nothing inspiring to say---I just don't feel inspired. I just want to pass the upcoming year quietly, and without incident.

But I think that it might be too much to ask for.

Comically Oversized Apple

I ventured farther than ``downstairs'' today. All in the search for this:

Okay, I did more than just look for a comically oversized apple, but one of the goals was to find the comically oversized apple. It's sort of a nostalgia trip---a core memory I had from way back when was that I won something, and Mr Lin Min asked what I wanted as a prize, and I said ``a large apple'', and he fuckin' delivered. I think it was just a ``regular'' fuji apple instead of the ironically named ``red delicious'', but when one's a wee kid, that apple is comically oversized, and I remembered grinning like an idiot at it for quite a few days before finally eating it.

------

It has been a while since I last stepped onto the famous Orchard Road in SIN City. Now, to be fair, the road itself is not too shabby---five-metre wide sidewalks that allow a good amount of walking without getting run into by people [for the most part], and the remnants of 2025's Christmas decorations still lining the one direction road itself.

But Orchard Road the metonym never really sat well with me. It is the epitome of profligate consumerism, with brand names dotting every possible retail space as idolatory shrines, with their cult-like worshippers in the rattiest clothing flocking eagerly to suck on the teat of the mighty brand by buying whatever over-priced campy knick-knack that is on sale.

``MT, don't you buy really expensive shit too?''

Well... yes. Just not in the form of jewellery, watches, handbags, clothing and the like. I mean, I can make the argument of utility here, but realistically, I'm just not a fan of these crazy brand name things. Especially not after a certain conglomeration effectively controls the seemingly disparate brands. To be fair, there are also other such conglomerates, but this one is just a bit too easy to remember.

In other words, the exclusivity that people are seeking through these brand names are effectively a sham. But then again, the people who end up buying these items don't want something so exclusive that no one knows that they have just spent ${large-number}-dollars on the thing.

A-hem. Anyway, Orchard Road. Good walk from Orchard Station all the way to Dhoby Ghaut Station. The trip to Orchard Station involved navigating the cluster-fuck that is now happening at Ang Mo Kio Station due to its expansion into an interchange for the CRL. The route from the bus stop to the station isn't complicated, but the fools who walk the narrow pathways... Mein Gott!---absolute cunts they are. Sauntering in the middle of the fucking pathway, walking two/three abreast over a space that is no larger than two metres; it's enough to piss me off.

Since they didn't give a damn about others, I decided to return the favour Exodus/Hammurabi's Code style. But to explain that requires a small divergence into something a little off-tangent.

I used to walk like a normal person, you know, arms swinging to the front and back. Then I smacked someone on the rear swing at some point, and reduced it to just from the neutral to the front, with the added benefit of not giving someone behind a free arm to lever into a lock. Then at some point between 2019 and now, the sheer number of people being packed into a unit square of fixed dimensions went up, and coincidentally, the idea of personal space/courtesy went down. That's when I started to switch over to the so-called ``interview stance'' when I don't have my backpack in front, which has one's hands between the belt and the chest, front facing, neutral, but ready to move where necessary. From this position, if something/someone stupid comes in, I can at least parry off and/or guard. With my backpack in front, I don't usually have to do weird things like that, but instead just touch my opposite shoulder with my hand to create a nice elbow lead for anyone who wants to push themselves into my backpack-leading front.

For the purposes of the story though, the backpack is where it ought to be (i.e. behind), and I'm just walking. I raised a guard, and just walked through the space without losing momentum. I think I heard swearing, but I had my noise-cancelling earphones, and had already walked on, including crossing the road.

``MT, couldn't you just say `excuse me' like a civilised person?''

I could. But no one is listening to anyone anyway, and I've also gotten to the point in my life where I realise that if no one else gives any fucks, then I'd be a monkey's uncle if I abode by the same.

AAaaaaaaaaanyway, Orchard Road. Nice walk. I went into Ngee Ann City for a spell, and had lunch out at OrchardGateway on a whim. Hopped on the NEL for one stop to Clarke Quay Station to swing by the Don Don Donki there to get the comically oversized apple, and other supplies. And yes, it included some Nikka Black Deep Blend Whisky, which is damn strong (or I'm getting damn weak only chugging parallel imported Jack Daniel's).

------

In other news, I found myself playing Mad Max on Steam. It's... under-rated, for sure. It has that Borderlands vibe with Batman: Arkham Asylum combat mechanics. I'm still in the early game, but it has gotten me hooked.

I think that's about it for now. Till the next update, I suppose.

Oh, and that comically oversized apple? It's really too much apple for one person at one sitting. Also, I think it might actually be a Hokuto.

Decide...

When a choice is made, it necessitates an excision of all other choices other than the one that one has chosen to proceed with. Such is the nature of choice, and the associated jargon of ``discrimination''.

But the spurring of all other options to commit to the one choice that one decides on is scary, because commitment is scary, with the one true reason why few dare to leap head first into this.

What if the choice you made... was wrong?

There is no one out there who has to make decisions that do not have this thought lurking at the back of their minds---absolutely no one. The only times where this poses little issues are when the choices to be made are trivial and of no consequence (``Should I wear this shirt or the other today?''). For all other times, there is always that foreboding sense of a choice that was made in error, with the associated need to live through the consequences that come about.

But here's the thing. I think that for the most part, almost all decisions that we make do not matter at all from the perspective of ``correct'' and ``wrong''. The reason is that fundamentally, the choices that are made have consequences that spread out into the time beyond, and given the innate flexibility and adaptability of being humans, even the ``wrong'' decision can lead to a favourable (but possibly previously unaccounted for) outcome, should one continue to improvise, adapt, and overcome.

Therefore, the choices that we make are really determining from whence we are beginning our chain of consequences from.

This scenario matters less so should we be the only people who are affected by our decisions (which itself can be considered an over-simplification---how many times have a ``decision that is only affecting ourselves'' end up spiralling out of our ambit and end up troubling others?), but in the event where there is an immediate effect upon the people who are around us, the stakes are a little higher.

Then the usual methodology for decision-making is under the Kantian concept of the categorical imperative:

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

---Immanuel Kant

Effectively, a decision needs to be made in a form consistent with defensibility by a rational person, which may not involve a quantitative approach the way a utilitarian might go for (because almost all numbers are made-up due to reframing and rationalisation, and humans are realistically not as numerately literate as we like to believe ourselves to be).

``But MT, doesn't this eschew the consequences, which is sort of what you are talking about?''

In a way, yes. As I said, the consequences from a decision matter in the sense of where we start from along the chain of consequences---decisions are not static, and neither are the actions that come from them. If we choose a ``good'' choice over a ``bad'' one, we may start from a favourable consequence, but there is no guarantee that the favourable consequence will remain favourable to the extent in which we are bothered enough to track the chain of events. Choosing a ``bad'' choice may put us on a ``bad'' start, but no one can say if the way thereon is only down, and not up.

But what matters then in choices is about convincing enough people that the choice that is to be made at that point in time is the ``best'' one. To do that, we need to explain to others who are affected by our choices why we are making them. The more they can share the context (i.e. assumptions and observations) that we have in making the decision, the more they can be convinced that we are choosing correctly. And the more they are convinced, the more they are likely to have the right buy-in, with the result of influencing the chain of events towards a direction that everyone is happy to be in.

Then what is the best way to achieve a greater shared context to reason from? The easiest is to have shared values, but the danger of having too much of an overlap of values is the subsequent shared blind-spots that come from having almost the same values, without the awareness of other possibilities that are out there. The next more objective form is to get measurements under the hypotheses that govern the choices to be made---if the methodology for these measurements and hypotheses testing can be agreed upon, then there is a shared pool of knowledge from which to reason from, thus creating that necessary shared context to decide from.

When the decision has been made, a good faith effort to commit to it should be applied---if the defense of the decision has been done right, this should not come as a surprise. But like all things involving actions, the decisions themselves need to be revisited whenever new relevant information/knowledge enters into awareness---this is the part that many people forget to do, which explains why people tend to over-emphasise making the ``correct'' decision, instead of making a timely and good-enough decision, and rolling with it until new relevant information questions the relevance and correctness of the previous decision.

If re-examining a past decision is hard, rescinding the previous decision to correct for the updated circumstances to issue a new one is even harder. Because it means having to admit that one is wrong, and in the modern society of heroes, the decision-maker can apparently never be wrong because that's a serious flaw of character.

To which I exclaim: ``Bollocks!'' The time for prophets are over, and even when prophets roamed the earth, they made prophesies that were ``understood'' to be eventually coming true, and not of an immediate nature. Making mistakes should be tolerated, and if the mistakes are righted, the entire action loop should be celebrated, studied, and venerated.

Because that's how we learn new things!

What's the point of being correct all the time? How do you know that you are correct because your process of reaching a decision is correct, or if you are just damn lucky? Want to feel like an imposter? That's easy---never make mistakes and create a complex on yourself on whether do you truly know what you are doing, or if you are just an undeserving hack.

SIN City does not tolerate mistakes. SIN City penalises mistakes. A person who made a ``big mistake'' is condemned, shunned, and marked for a long time as ``he who made a `big mistake' ''. That's why the Yellow Ribbon project has to exist, and even then, it is at best a fig leaf.

Because SIN City does not tolerate mistakes.

``MT, what's the point of this tirade again?''

You tell me. I'm just venting randomly during the last few days of 2025.

Good Ol' Times?

Were the old days really good, or is it one of those delusions that come from the fact that [human] memories of events passed are always rewritten each time they are being retrieved, and are therefore not even remotely accurate about what they were?

I'm not even talking about the current trend of the sixty-/seventy-year-old politician taking over their country trying to bring back ``the good ol' times'' because the current generation (which?) has brought on enough decadence to decimate what is considered the core of the nation's identity and prestige.

I'm just talking about the whole ``nostalgia'' factor that afflicts us in one way or another. It is the kind of reason why someone might want to go back to an ex-anything (girlfriend/boyfriend, company), or to revert to some kind of earlier behaviour in the face of issues that stem from the current behaviour. It is the kind of meaningless argument that is trumpeted about as the ``final word'' when there seems to be no other viable arguments left to be made in a debate.

Personally, I don't think the old days were really good, when compared to the present. The key premise here that I am relying on is the idea that personal agency of choice is a key component of separating the self from the not-self, and that more [relevant] knowledge/information often leadsd to better choices that can be made. In other words, I think that ``good'' happens when one can make better choices than before due to the knowing of more [relevant] information.

In that sense then, the old days were not good at all. The ideas of decorum and etiquette were based on society rules that were put in place by the privileged few, and even so, their politeness acted as a fig leaf over the still-existent discrimination that comes about from [deliberate] incomplete information for actions and states of being that do not conform to what is widely believed as the norm. It may be good for the majority of people then (we'll use 80% a la 80/20 rule ceteris paribus), but for the minority who had to live through that, it can be a true living hell.

And the thing is, what is majority and minority is never set in stone. So to make an unqualified statement of ``the good ol' times'' is to make yet another improbable [population] assumption that will age poorly in time to come.

Now compound this with the observation that memory is always retrieved in the manner in which it was last remembered (i.e. retrieved). A contradiction of sorts, but such is the mechanism of the original abstract demonstration of sentience before all the logic theories and Turing tests. The ``good ol' days'' are just an exaggeration of the parts of memory that we believe to be ``good'', where the quotation marks are to indicate that it is a heavily biased/conditioned context that we are referring to said memory. Just as the cringeworthy moments remain exceedingly embarrassing on recall, the ``good stuff'' are also exceedingly ``good'' on recall as well---the mind works on the same general middleware regardless of the valence of the specific thought. It is, from neurological formulations, an example of the ``network effect'', where the ``rich get richer'' (i.e. the more retrieved the memory, the more the memory is strengthened), but with the caveat that each time the memory is retrieved, it needs to be rewritten as part of the retrieval process.

Which means that we can actually self-brainwash to believe something when it isn't so, whether we realise it or not.

The infidelity of memory is why there has been a change in eye-witness interview protocol in the face of an inquest into a criminal act---no one is supposed to talk to the eye-witness before the official interview, and that interview needs to occur as early as practically possible from the criminal act's occurrence.

``MT, what about the historical writing?''

I think that the historical writing can show that ``the good ol' times'' are mythological for the most part. First hand accounts are rarely taken in situ, and are often taken years after occurrence. Second hand accounts are summarised works with the benefit of hindsight of many other perspectives that no one from the same era would have easily seen. And when these are written up in the more prevalent manner of the narrative form, hardly any ``good ol' times'' are spelt out---most historical writing is about how badly folks from the past screwed up. Anything writing that makes it sound like it was a dandy old time then are often marked out as propaganda, and more often than not, it is the correct assessment.

It is unlikely that anyone who isn't a propagandist will go through the effort to dig through the records, interview the people, just to write only positive things without identifying the issues that were actually being dealt with by the participants of the era.

So where does this leave us?

A sobering realisation that the past remains there, it wasn't really good, yet many are trying to rewrite that narrative to advance their own agenda.

And that the future is still not wholly certain nor deterministic, and yet can be sufficiently influenced through the actions we take today.

Which therefore means that we should always seize the day, and not let history dictate what actions we ought to be taking.

After all, history is just one of the two advisers we have to make decisions for today.

Welcome to Stupid O'Clock

Oh hey, check it out---it's stupid o'clock. It feels like it has been quite a while since I had an entry out at stupid o'clock. These things, you know, you've got to have just the right mood before things will fall in place, and the words that befit stupid o'clock will show up.

So the day just passed was a long one. It's the last official day of work for this year (I've broken my usual rule, and have decided to actually take a bloody big block of leave at the end of the year), and since I was playing at the Christmas Eve service out at PPCC, it just made more sence logistically to wake up at the usual nonsensical hour, spend half a day in the office working, and then chilling there for another few hours before hopping on a short bus ride down to church.

What happened during service is not important---I brought Stella instead of Aurelia, and managed to flub the soaring bits of Joy to the World because I didn't write the bloody part down.

The important part was that it was the last day of work for the year. And now I'm sitting here, nursing a 18-year Glenfiddich after showering and having listened once more to End of a Life by Mori Calliope, and having all these weird feelings that I need to expunge.

Of course it doesn't help that I was reconstructing my original ``Loved.m3u8'' play list after having reconfigured my entire [offline] music collection, and ended up listening to quite a few of the songs that were unironically pretty damn emo.

Oh, and I finished reading Komi Can't Communicate the manga, where Shoko and Hitohito were getting all lovey dovey here and there, with all the other usual childhood stuff from high school gloriously drawn and drawn out over the 500 chapters.

Now that the setting is made, let's proceed with stupid o'clock.

------

It's funny. There was a time where I made the realisation that with the effective excommunication that my family made with their various factions of families, I was a man without a history, which meant that I could choose how to shape my own future. I was back from my second scholarship run (left it because I finally realised the I didn't want a PhD that badly enough to want to sacrifice everything, and that for what I truly wanted to do, I didn't really need a PhD), and was serving out my bond. I thought of an old friend whom I sort of lost contact, reconnected, and one thing led to another, and we dated for a while.

And I thought I was going to have a future with her. I thought we had aligned our values well, and communicated our expectations, I thought we approached the relationship with the level of maturity that was to be expected.

I thought, you think, who confirmed?

---Every Encik in SAF

Long time readers of this blog will know what happened eventually. Spoilers: we're not together anymore. I think that I can converse with her normally by now, but I am not strong enough to try for a whole tea-break of chatting, and have no reason why I would want to test that out.

That day, a part of me died utterly. And today, some donkey years later (I'm not going to ``do research'' to figure this shit out precisely for obvious reasons), I still maintain that that part of me has stayed dead.

I kinda lost interest in creating a future for myself. And I definitely lost interest in creating a future for myself where there's a spouse involved, though that took a few more years after that to figure it out a bit more. Turns out that the kind of woman whom I am attracted to, are precisely the kind of women that I should never start a life together with.

``MT, is it because they are smart?''

No, it's because they... are different kinds of weird. I like weird---it's interesting. Weird has a way of building up that kind of synergistic passion that is usually lacking in most prosaic conversations with the normies. Unfortunately, if they come in the package of ``woman'', then the subsidiary sub-system that doesn't usually trigger called ``libido'' turns up eventually and starts to mess with my brain, and then I get all attracted, and have weird thoughts of ``maybe this person is dateable?''

Spoiler: they are not dateable. Good for conversation, great for doing random shit with, just don't fucking date them.

You know, just treat them as friends. But whether one is actually friends with them is a whole 'nother philosophical question. Because to weird people, other weird people are just blips in the sea of noise---they don't necessarily register as ``people'', let alone ``people one tries to build a relationship with'', i.e. befriend. Weird people are weird because they are weird (i.e. not normies).

Took me forty years to figure this shit out. But at least I managed to figure it out.

Can I stand normies? Of course I can stand normies; I just don't see myself dating them.

Anyway, the point isn't about whom I'm intending to date, but more on that ``future'' part of things. I didn't really have big ambitions to begin with, always being the people pleaser that I was when I was a child (pleasing adults seemed like a better idea than trying to out-argue them at times where they are clearly in the wrong---no adult will ever acknowledge that a child makes a better point than they have). I wasn't born/living in a hyper-competitive environment---even my secondary school was more of a phase of life than something that I was trying my best to ``beat'' and turn out champion. Do enough to get paid enough to pay off the bills that are needed for existence and to serve my hobbies---that's about it. Still stand by that.

But it is funny, isn't it? I was having chicken chop, and I was looking at the hawker stalls. We're talking about stalls that have been there from anywhere between one month and thirty years. The people who serve at the stalls have been there for almost as long as the stall has been---day in, day out, doing the same work, reproducing the same services, producing the same goods, all day, every day.

Is that their ambition then? Do they even ``have'' ambition? And no, ``winning the lottery'' is not the kind of ``ambition'' that I am referring to here.

I examined myself. I don't think I can run the same thing day in, day out. In other words, I cannot see myself running operations. To put it bluntly, it is boring as fuck [to me]. I like trying out new things, challenging myself to new things. As part of doing these new things, some ``short period, high intensity'' type operations are probably fine, but running operations for a whole year and beyond like in the IT department or data centre operations or anything that is primarily structured around the routine... just sounds like death to me.

So, is this inner urge to do something new and challenging is ambition then? If not, then in many ways I should find commonality with the folks who are still at the hawker stall, cutting up chilli padi in the evening to mise en place for the next day's cycle of the very same.

But I don't. And not because I'm working in an office and not at a hawker stall---it's about the routine-ness.

Yes, I sound like a snob, but there was never an intention of being a snob.

Like I said, it has taken me nearly forty years to figure these things out for myself, and even then, I'm unconvinced that I have the full answer on what it is that I am. And frankly, I think that for most people who need to figure out what it is that I am, they might have similar issues.

But future. Funny thing that is. If today, I were to just keel over, dead, everything still goes on the way it does. There will be a slight pause as the information of my death propagates, but once the waves start travelling far out enough to decay to irrelevance, the world reconfigures itself quickly, and then everyone moves on, even as I ash up from the cremation and lose all corporeal form.

So in some sick sense, perhaps ``ambition'' and ``future'' are both overrated as things to have/possess. It may just be better to do whatever we want/can, now.

``MT, what's the point you are making here?''

No point---it's stupid o'clock. Think of it as a trite observation and nothing more. As I mentioned, I just wanted to dump out some thoughts that have been floating in my head, just so that I don't have to think about them when I officially chill out during the upcoming week and change from the block leave at the end of the year.

------

Recently, I went out to Decathlon out at City Square Mall to get one of those foldable safari chairs. Considering that I recently fucked up my ability to download videos from YouTube for offline viewing without having to log in, I decided to lie low during this period, and just use the logged-in download mechanism only for things that I cared about, like music releases, or some of the Let's Play series from my favourite VTubers (like Pavolia Reine), or even Karaoke (looking at you, Alpha Betta and Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame).

So in the meantime, I'd replace background YouTube offline viewing with some new Steam games I bought, and the ridiculous backlog of books to read, of which not all are of the e-book variety.

Which is where this foldable safari chair comes into place. It unfolds into a low chair with arm rests that I can put in the middle of my room so that I can sit there like a Boss and read.

``MT, what about reading it on-screen on Eileen-III?''

Sometimes, it is just not the same. Part of the reason is that there are physical books that I want to read, and reading that on-screen is impossible while reading them on a table is annoying considering that the angles are all wrong. ``Book in lap'' is a really comfortable position in comparison.

So I got the foldable chair. Nothing funny there.

But while walking about, I learnt of a new shop: Puzzletopia. This is opposite my favourite shop in City Square Mall: Super Dario Lasagne---the best damn lasagne in SIN City. I've known about Super Dario Lasagne, and it was one of the places that I had gone with her when we were still dating. I cannot remember if I went there alone after that and before the recent outing just to create new memories and therefore associations of the place, but I severely digress.

Puzzletopia. Dangerous place. Lots of fun puzzles, and there were some that was in their retail. I went in, looking for a portable tangram set. Their small ones were still 3 inches across (while being out of stock), while the one that they had stock on was still 5 inches across.

I wanted something smaller.

I already have a nice 6 inch set that came with this Tangram puzzle book that I recently sanded down more properly. The problem is that when the packing square is around 6 inches a side, some of the puzzles will end up taking linear dimensions of nearly a foot, which is... bad. Earlier this year while doing my ``I'm forty bitches'' week, I tried to play some tangrams while having a nice lunch... and it didn't work out well because of the lack of space.

I was looking for a much more compact version of tangram. And I couldn't find it. And Puzzletopia didn't have a small enough one.

That is, until I stumbled upon this little gem from Shire Post Mint. The damn thing is downright perfect. Naturally, I placed an order for it, and it's making its way to me through the mail even as we speak.

``MT, thought you could find this easily.''

Nope. This was only released in 2025-08, so the search during the months immediately after ``I'm forty bitches'' week would turn out nothing.

Praise the Lord!

In theory, I could make it out of thick cardboard, or even leather pieces, or heavy felt, but the sharp-ish 45° corners from the parallelogram and triangles are likely to fray under heavy use. This little gadget? It's copper---solid metal. It has enough mass to not fly away, and enough stiffness to not fray. And at 1.8 inches (with container), it is small!

And so, instead of debating what fancy-pants flute to get for my upcoming birthday gift to myself, it will be this. And there's also this other tangram book that I have, which will further increase the amount of fun I'm going to get with manipulating these tangram pieces while doing pattern matching/decomposition.

Now I'm debating whether I want to drop by next week (that's when the Puzzletopia staff said their new stock of the smaller tangrams will arrive) to show my discovery so that they can stock those up should anyone else want something that tiny.

It is at times like this that I wish I had enough space/resources to have a small workshop. Nothing much I suppose---a work table, hand tools, maybe a lathe and a press drill. Should allow me to mess about with making headjoints, simple flutes, and do other crafty work like making my own tangrams out of aluminium/brass.

------

And as I reach this part of the post, I find that my shot glass of Glenfiddich is done, and that I more or less have run out of things that I want to talk about during this stupid o'clock. Tomorrow (eh, you know what I mean) is going to be a new day, and I would like to start it by sleeping well, and then doing whatever the fuck I want.

Like maybe beating Last Judge in Silk Song.

Till the next update.

What a Fucking Mess

As the year draws to a close, I cannot help but stop and think about just how much of a sea change it has been over the past year.

And no, I am not talking about my own personal circumstance---I've done that throughout the year, and find no need to revisit it again right now.

Much of the world is run on the idea of precedence, with a bit of courtesy put in place. In a place of low trust (i.e. where one is more likely to meet strangers than familiar people), precedence and courtesy provides the kind of basic interaction protocol that ensures that at a minimal level, people can talk with each other. One may not like the other person, but at least there are grounds to work with the other person.

But the past year has shown that precedence is to be ignored, and courtesy gets one no where except continual abuse by those whose lack of courtesy is not only unpunished, but allowed to flourish due to the increasing self-inflicted hopelessness of the patient.

Looking away from the world stage, similar patterns of misbehaviour can be seen at a much lower level, where the Karens are starting to get more of their way, upending the precarious balance that once existed in society to allow its many different denizens a quiet room to exist.

On a different scale, there is the increasingly instable structural changes in the economy that makes the future highly uncertain. Services need to be rendered, products need to be manufactured, and food needs to be grown to ensure the basic level of sustenance of people, and yet there is this overzealous obsession being spent on trying to obsolete everyone, a type of techno-driven extermination programme.

While I am not fully in favour of bullshit jobs in the first place, the increased erosion of such jobs that have once kept a large proportion of the population fulfilled and out of trouble is a cause for alarm. The most fingered culprit for this is ``AI'', but it is less about the AI and more about the directions of the companies who have declared themselves the harbingers of a new Utopian Age---they just happen to be doing things relating to AI, directly (release of pre-trained large language models of all sorts), or indirectly (infrastructure providers for the training and use of all these prepared models).

Two decades of lacklustre investment opportunities have created a pent up greed that is suddenly released upon the world, consequences be damned.

Money. Money at the expense of what it may mean to be human (the replacement of the process of ``creating''). Apparent short-term gains at the expense of the preparation for the next generation's lives. Consumerism beyond mere material goods, as material goods have a true physical limit for consuming (how many washing machines can one buy?), while abstract services with low marginal costs can be consumed indefinitely often and intensity, with money being the only true limit.

In the past, machines are brought in with the explanation of freeing humanity from menial labour so that they can better cultivate the human's true power---intellect. What about now, with AI acting as an alternative model to accessing intelligence without all the pesky ethics that using a human has?

And what happens when everyone's out of a job, and yet we are all still living in the city? How can we survive when the object of trade is no longer easily accessible?

Bleak. It pains me that I cannot see any easy way out of this. Governments need to stand their ground and actually look out for their citizens, yet they can claim that they are---it's just that some citizens are much more important than other citizens. Corporations that misbehave need to be taken on at a scale that befits their juggernaut-nature---a multi-national corporation is a multi-headed hydra, and the current laws make it impossible for a country to exact punishment that can actually hurt the corporation as opposed to merely ``increasing the price of business''.

The problem with peace is that people keep forgetting that it is the viable threat of violence that helps keep the peace.

``MT, doesn't that go against your whole `courtesy' concept?''

Perhaps. I don't claim to have my thoughts in order---it would be folly to believe so. That's probably part of the reason why my head hurts half the time, and my anxiety keeps shooting through the roof. And we're not even talking about the actual things that are happening to me personally.

What a fucking mess.

I think I'll stop here for now. It's too depressing to continue. Till the next time.

Patches to Build Python3.14.2 on Cygwin

Well, that took a while, but I finally did it.

First, here's the payload (for 3.14.2).

Next, the explanation on what it is.

Cygwin remains as my preferred UNIX-like interface while operating in a primarily Windows environment. The Python interpreter that is still present in Cygwin is Python3.9, which is fine for me.

But the useful yt-dlp tool has pushed their support from Python3.9 to a version that is at least Python3.10, because Python3.9 will not be getting security support from 2025-10-31.

I understand. yt-dlp is a tool that targets a slightly more tech-y user, but not by much. It is also a tool that needs to be continuously updated due to the ever-evolving nature of video services, so having a Python environment that has proper security patches is a good thing.

But Cygwin hasn't a good working Python environment beyond 3.9 as at now. There's a weird Python3.12 build in the background, but it is incomplete and weird. Moreover, if you looked at the same site I linked to earlier, even Python3.12 is seeing the end of security supports at 2028-10-31, which really isn't that far away, should the maintainer of Python in Cygwin actually fix the current build.

So, it's probably better to build my own.

Building Python isn't hard... in Linux. On Windows/Cygwin, it gets complicated.

Which is what the payload (for 3.14.2) is supposed to ease. The contents of the payload can be seen in detail here, but I will outline the rough changes here as well.

1. uuid support library detection was broken;
2. List of support libraries defined (in static-compilation for ease of use);
3. Incomplete detection for clk_id for Cygwin;
4. Messed up refactoring on LDLIBRARY use that got an unusable name (libpython3.14.dll.a versus the actual libpython3.14.dll); and
5. Fixing up the way compileall.py does multi-processing (Cygwin's spawn() and forkserver implementations don't work as compared to simple fork()).

So now, I have a nearly-clean build of Python3.14 from which yt-dlp can run well enough.

``MT, why not contribute back the changes to upstream and/or take over the maintenance for Python3.14 on Cygwin?''

Well, it takes time due to the additional responsibilities and accountabilities on these patches that I have done up basically only to get working in my circumstance. So I think I've done the next best thing by putting it on my website, and talking about it here (where it can get indexed and highlighted).

I think that's it for now. Till some update in the future.