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Installing OpenBSD on Linveo KVM VPS 2024-10-21 I recently came across an amazing deal for a VPS on Linveo. For just $15 a year they provide: AMD KVM 1GB 1024 MB RAM 1 CPU Core 25 GB NVMe SSD 2000 GB Bandwidth It’s a pretty great deal and I suggest you look more into it if you’re interested! But this post is more focused on setting up OpenBSD via the custom ISO option in the KVM dashboard. Linveo already provides several Linux OS options, along with FreeBSD by default (which is great!). Since there is no OpenBSD template we need to do things manually. Getting Started Once you have your initial VPS up and running, login to the main dashboard and navigate to the Media tab. Under CD/DVD-ROM you’ll want to click “Custom CD/DVD” and enter the direct link to the install76.iso: https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/7.6/amd64/install76.iso The "Media" tab of the Linveo Dashboard. Use the official ISO link and set the Boot Order to CD/DVD. Select “Insert”, then set your Boot Order to CD/DVD and click “Apply”. Once complete, Restart your server. Installing via VNC With the server rebooting, jump over to Options and click on “Browser VNC” to launch the web-based VNC client. From here we will boot into the OpenBSD installer and get things going! Follow the installer as you normally would when installing OpenBSD (if you’re unsure, I have a step-by-step walkthrough) until you reach the IPv4 selection. At this point you will want to input your servers IPv4 and IPv6 IPs found under your Network section of your dashboard. Next you will want to set the IPv6 route to first default listed option (not “none”). After that is complete, choose cd0 for your install media (don’t worry about http yet). Continue with the rest of the install (make users if desired, etc) until it tells you to reboot the machine. Go back to the Linveo Dashboard, switch your Boot Order back to “Harddrive” and reboot the machine directly. Booting into OpenBSD Load into the VNC client again. If you did everything correctly you should be greeted with the OpenBSD login prompt. There are a few tweaks we still need to make, so login as the root user. Remember how we installed our sets directly from the cd0? We’ll want to change that. Since we are running OpenBSD “virtually” through KVM, our target network interface will be vio0. Edit the /etc/hostname.vio0 file and add the following: dhcp !route add default <your_gateway_ip> The <your_gateway_ip> can be found under the Network tab of your dashboard. The next file we need to tweak is /etc/resolv.conf. Add the following to it: nameserver 8.8.8.8 nameserver 1.1.1.1 These nameservers are based on your selected IPs under the Resolvers section of Network in the Linveo dashboard. Change these as you see fit, so long as they match what you place in the resolve.conf file. Finally, the last file we need to edit is /etc/pf.conf. Like the others, add the following: pass out proto { tcp, udp } from any to any port 53 Final Stretch Now just reboot the server. Log back in as your desired user and everything should be working as expected! You can perform a simple test to check: ping openbsd.org This should work - meaning your network is up and running! Now you’re free to enjoy the beauty that is OpenBSD.
Vertical Tabs in Safari 2024-09-26 I use Firefox as my main browser (specifically the Nightly build) which has vertical tabs built-in. There are instances where I need to use Safari, such as debugging or testing iOS devices, and in those instances I prefer to have a similar experience to that of Firefox. Luckily, Apple has finally made it fairly straight forward to do so. Click the Sidebar icon in the top left of the Safari browser Right click and group your current tab(s) (I normally name mine something uninspired like “My Tabs” or simply “Tabs”) For an extra “clean look”, remove the horizontal tabs by right clicking the top bar, selected Customize Toolbar and dragging the tabs out When everything is set properly, you’ll have something that looks like this: One minor drawback is not having access to a direct URL input, since we have removed the horizontal tab bar altogether. Using a set of curated bookmarks could help avoid the need for direct input, along with setting our new tab page to DuckDuckGo or any other search engine.
Build and Deploy Websites Automatically with Git 2024-09-20 I recently began the process of setting up my self-hosted1 cgit server as my main code forge. Updating repos via cgit on NearlyFreeSpeech on its own has been simple enough, but it lacked the “wow-factor” of having some sort of automated build process. I looked into a bunch of different tools that I could add to my workflow and automate deploying changes. The problem was they all seemed to be fairly bloated or overly complex for my needs. Then I realized I could simply use post-receive hooks which were already built-in to git! You can’t get more simple than that… So I thought it would be best to document my full process. These notes are more for my future self when I inevitably forget this, but hopefully others can benefit from it! Before We Begin This “tutorial” assumes that you already have a git server setup. It shouldn’t matter what kind of forge you’re using, so long as you have access to the hooks/ directory and have the ability to write a custom post-receive script. For my purposes I will be running standard git via the web through cgit, hosted on NearlyFreeSpeech (FreeBSD based). Overview Here is a quick rundown of what we plan to do: Write a custom post-receive script in the repo of our choice Build and deploy our project when a remote push to master is made Nothing crazy. Once you get the hang of things it’s really simple. Prepping Our Servers Before we get into the nitty-gritty, there are a few items we need to take care of first: Your main git repo needs ssh access to your web hosting (deploy) server. Make sure to add your public key and run a connection test first (before running the post-receive hook) in order to approve the “fingerprinting”. You will need to git clone your main git repo in a private/admin area of your deploy server. In the examples below, mine is cloned under /home/private/_deploys Once you do both of those tasks, continue with the rest of the article! The post-receive Script I will be using my own personal website as the main project for this example. My site is built with wruby, so the build instructions are specific to that generator. If you use Jekyll or something similar, you will need to tweak those commands for your own purposes. Head into your main git repo (not the cloned one on your deploy server), navigate under the hooks/ directory and create a new file named post-receive containing the following: #!/bin/bash # Get the branch that was pushed while read oldrev newrev ref do branch=$(echo $ref | cut -d/ -f3) if [ "$branch" == "master" ]; then echo "Deploying..." # Build on the remote server ssh user@deployserver.net << EOF set -e # Stop on any error cd /home/private/_deploys/btxx.org git pull origin master gem install 'kramdown:2.4.0' 'rss:0.3.0' make build rsync -a build/* ~/public/btxx.org/ EOF echo "Build synced to the deployment server." echo "Deployment complete." fi done Let’s break everything down. First we check if the branch being pushed to the remote server is master. Only if this is true do we proceed. (Feel free to change this if you prefer something like production or deploy) if [ "$branch" == "master" ]; then Then we ssh into the server (ie. deployserver.net) which will perform the build commands and also host these built files. ssh user@deployserver.net << EOF Setting set -e ensures that the script stops if any errors are triggered. set -e # Stop on any error Next, we navigate into the previously mentioned “private” directory, pull the latest changes from master, and run the required build commands (in this case installing gems and running make build) cd /home/private/_deploys/btxx.org git pull origin master gem install 'kramdown:2.4.0' 'rss:0.3.0' make build Finally, rsync is run to copy just the build directory to our public-facing site directory. rsync -a build/* ~/public/btxx.org/ With that saved and finished, be sure to give this file proper permissions: chmod +x post-receive That’s all there is to it! Time to Test! Now make changes to your main git project and push those up into master. You should see the post-receive commands printing out into your terminal successfully. Now check out your website to see the changes. Good stuff. Still Using sourcehut My go-to code forge was previously handled through sourcehut, which will now be used for mirroring my repos and handling mailing lists (since I don’t feel like hosting something like that myself - yet!). This switch over was nothing against sourcehut itself but more of a “I want to control all aspects of my projects” mentality. I hope this was helpful and please feel free to reach out with suggestions or improvements! By self-hosted I mean a NearlyFreeSpeech instance ↩
Burning & Playing PS2 Games without a Modded Console 2024-09-02 Important: I do not support pirating or obtaining illegal copies of video games. This process should only be used to copy your existing PS2 games for backup, in case of accidental damage to the original disc. Requirements Note: This tutorial is tailored towards macOS users, but most things should work similar on Windows or Linux. You will need: An official PS2 game disc (the one you wish to copy) A PS2 Slim console An Apple device with a optical DVD drive (or a portable USB DVD drive) Some time and a coffee! (or tea) Create an ISO Image of Your PS2 Disc: Insert your PS2 disc into your optical drive. Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities) In Disk Utility, select your PS2 disc from the sidebar Click on the File menu, then select New Image > Image from [Disc Name] Choose a destination to save the ISO file and select the format as DVD/CD Master Name your file and click Save. Disk Utility will create a .cdr file, which is essentially an ISO file Before we move on, we will need to convert that newly created cdr file into ISO. Navigate to the directory where the .cdr file is located and use the hdiutil command to convert the .cdr file to an ISO file: hdiutil convert yourfile.cdr -format UDTO -o yourfile.iso You’ll end up with a file named yourfile.iso.cdr. Rename it by removing the .cdr extension to make it an .iso file: mv yourfile.iso.cdr yourfile.iso Done and done. Getting Started For Mac and Linux users, you will need to install Wine in order to run the patcher: # macOS brew install wine-stable # Linux (Debian) apt install wine Clone & Run the Patcher Clone the FreeDVDBoot ESR Patcher: git clone https://git.sr.ht/~bt/fdvdb-esr Navigate to the cloned project folder: cd /path/to/fdvdb-esr The run the executable: wine FDVDB_ESR_Patcher.exe Now you need to select your previously cloned ISO file, use the default Payload setting and then click Patch!. After a few seconds your file should be patched. Burning Our ISO to DVD It’s time for the main event! Insert a blank DVD-R into your disc drive and mount it. Then right click on your patched ISO file and run “Burn Disk Image to Disc...". From here, you want to make sure you select the slowest write speed and enable verification. Once the file is written to the disc and verified (verification might fail - it is safe to ignore) you can remove the disc from the drive. Before Playing the Game Make sure you change the PS2 disc speed from Standard to Fast in the main “Browser” setting before you put the game into your console. After that, enjoy playing your cloned PS2 game!
“This Key is Useless Now. Discard?” 2024-08-28 The title of this article probably triggers nostalgic memories for old school Resident Evil veterans like myself. My personal favourite in the series (not that anyone asked) was the original, 1998 version of Resident Evil 2 (RE2). I believe that game stands the test of time and is very close to a masterpiece. The recent remake lost a lot of the charm and nuance that made the original so great, which is why I consistently fire up the PS1 version on my PS2 Slim. Resident Evil 2 (PS1) running on my PS2, hooked up to my Toshiba CRT TV. But the point of this post isn’t to gush over RE2. Instead I would like to discuss how well RE2 handled its interface and user experience across multiple in-game systems. HUD? What HUD? Just like the first Resident Evil that came before it, RE2 has no in-game HUD (heads-up display) to speak of. It’s just your playable character and the environment. No ammo-counters. No health bars. No “quest” markers. Nothing. This is how the game looks while you play. Zero HUD elements. The game does provide you with an inventory system, which holds your core items, weapons and notes you find along your journey. Opening up this sub-menu allows you to heal, reload weapons, combine objects or puzzle items, or read through previously collected documents. Not only is this more immersive (HUDs don’t exist for us in the real world, we need to look through our packs as well…) it also gets out of the way. The main inventory screen. Shows everything you need to know, only when you need it. (I can hear this screenshot...) I don’t need a visual element in the bottom corner showing me a list of “items” I can cycle through. I don’t want an ammo counter cluttering up my screen with information I only need to see in combat or while manually reloading. If those are pieces of information I need, I’ll explicitly open and look for it. Don’t make assumptions about what is important to me on screen. Capcom took this concept of less visual clutter even further in regards to maps and the character health status. Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Roads Mini-Maps A great deal of newer games come pre-packaged with a mini-map on the main interface. In certain instances this works just fine, but most are 100% UI clutter. Something to add to the screen. I can only assume some devs believe it is “helpful”. Most times it’s simply a distraction. Thank goodness most games allow you to disable them. As for RE2, you collect maps throughout your adventure and, just like most other systems in the game, you need to consciously open the map menu to view them. You know, just like in real life. This creates a higher tension as well, since you need to constantly reference your map (on initial playthroughs) to figure out where the heck to go. You feel the pressure of someone frantically pulling out a physical map and scanning their surroundings. It also helps the player build a mental model in their head, thus providing even more of that sweet, sweet immersion. The map of the Raccoon City Police Station. No Pain, No Gain The game doesn’t display any health bar or player status information. In order to view your current status (symbolized by “Fine”, “Caution” or “Danger”) you need to open your inventory screen. From here you can heal yourself (if needed) and see the status type change in real-time. The "condition" health status. This is fine. But that isn’t the only way to visually see your current status. Here’s a scenario: you’re traveling down a hallway, turn a corner and run right into the arms of a zombie. She takes a couple good bites out of your neck before you push her aside. You unload some handgun rounds into her and down she goes. As you run over her body she reaches out and chomps on your leg as a final “goodbye”. You break free and move along but notice something different in your character’s movement - they’re holding their stomach and limping. Here we can see the character "Hunk" holding his stomach and limping, indicating an injury without the need for a custom HUD element. If this was your first time playing, most players would instinctively open the inventory menu, where their characters health is displayed, and (in this instance) be greeted with a “Caution” status. This is another example of subtle UX design. I don’t need to know the health status of my character until an action is required (in this example: healing). The health system is out of the way but not hidden. This keeps the focus on immersion, not baby-sitting the game’s interface. A Key to Every Lock Hey! This section is in reference to the title of the article. We made it! …But yes, discarding keys in RE2 is a subtle example of fantastic user experience. As a player, I know for certain this key is no longer needed. I can safely discard it and free up precious space from my inventory. There is also a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of “I’ve completed a task” or an internal checkbox being ticked. Progress has been made! Don’t overlook how powerful of a interaction this little text prompt is. Ask any veteran of the series and they will tell you this prompt is almost euphoric. The game's prompt asking if you'd like to discard a useless key. Perfection. Inspiring Greatness RE2 is certainly not the first or last game to implement these “minimal” game systems. A more “modern” example is Dead Space (DS), along with its very faithful remake. In DS the character’s health is displayed directly on the character model itself, and a similar inventory screen is used to manage items. An ammo-counter is visible but only when the player aims their weapon. Pretty great stuff and another masterpiece of survival horror. In Dead Space, the character's health bar is set as part of their spacesuit. The Point I guess my main takeaway is that designers and developers should try their best to keep user experience intuitive. I know that sounds extremely generic but it is a lot more complex than one might think. Try to be as direct as possible while remaining subtle. It’s a delicate balance but experiences like RE2 show us it is attainable. I’d love to talk more, but I have another play-through of RE2 to complete…
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Here on a summer night in the grass and lilac smell Drunk on the crickets and the starry sky, Oh what fine stories we could tell With this moonlight to tell them by. A summer night, and you, and paradise, So lovely and so filled with grace, Above your head, the universe has hung its … Continue reading Dreams of Late Summer →
I had watched enough true crime to know that you should never talk to the police. And I wasn’t arrogant enough to believe that I was different. While I felt like I knew the interrogation tactics in and out, they were repeat customers of that interaction. I wasn’t going to call. I was going to ignore it. I’m not getting Reid techniqued. Why did they ask for me? This house was owned by my mother, how do they even know I live here? Wait who am I kidding, of course they know. I went to high school here, governments have records of that kind of thing. But still, why ask for me? Another thing was odd. We lived in Brooklyn, aka Kings County. Not Nassau County. These guys must have driven all the way here on a Saturday night. I felt like I was being watched. They wouldn’t drive all the way here to just leave a business card. I felt trapped in the house. Like they were a mountain lion on a rock perch and I was the prey in the valley below. They had the high ground and I didn’t know what they could see. But this was crazy, I didn’t do anything! Should I call them? Figure out what they want? No! That’s exactly what they want. They know I feel like this. This is exactly what they are going for. Another system carefully crafted based on years and years of “user feedback” designed to manipulate you into doing what it wants. But what if I’m doing what they want right now? Maybe they don’t want me to call. Maybe the real goal is to figure out what I do next. Watching and hoping I’ll go check on the body or something. But there wasn’t a body! If I did commit a crime this would all be a lot easier, I’d know why they were here and what they wanted and could plan my next move accordingly. I opened another Bud Light, took my clothes off, and got into bed. Even though there was nobody else home, I kept the sound off on the porn. Just in case they were listening. After I finished, I felt a bit more calm. Dude get a grip, all they did was leave a business card. Coming out of the paranoid spiral a bit, I realized what it must be about. It must have had to do with my Dad’s meeting. That was in Long Island, aka Nassau County. Probably some dumb financial crap. My mother was out with her friends in Manhattan, but she’d be home tonight and maybe she knew what the meeting was. It was now twenty to nine and I texted Brian. He’s like yea bro Dave just got here come through. And you still have that case of Bud Light? I put the beers in a backpack. Is this what the detective planned? Maybe I was playing right into the plot; arrest me for underage possession of alcohol and then get me to talk about what I knew. But I didn’t even know anything! This whole thing was stupid. I thought about how I got the beers, wondering if the whole thing was somehow a set-up. Totally nonsense thought. Kids buy beer with fake IDs all the time. When I got to Brian’s everything was normal. I walked around the back of his house and opened the screen door to his basement. There were three leather couches in a U-shape, two of which were sparsely occupied by Brian and Dave. I took my place on the third empty one and put my backpack on the center ottoman. “Pretty cool, right? Yea I found it in my Dad’s old stuff.” said Brian, referring to the inflated bag atop a device labeled Volcano sharing the ottoman with my backpack. “What is it?” “Bro it’s like an old vape. You put the weed in and plug it in to the wall.” He detached the cloudy bag from the device and demonstrated. If you pushed on the mouthpiece, it let air through and you could breathe in the vaporized drug. “It’s like a bong but chill.” I inhaled. This probably wasn’t smart with how paranoid I was from the interaction earlier, but I felt safe in the basement. It was a summer night, I was with friends, I had drank beer. Life was good. Dave showed us this reel. It was a mouse in a maze, and it started from the mouse’s perspective. Kind of like a skater cam, wow these things could scurry. Then it zoomed out so you could see the maze from the perspective of the experimenter. Then seeing the back of his head looking down at the maze, cutting to sped up dashcam video of him driving home from work. Zooming out again with a sparkling line showing his route through the grid of city streets. AI has done wonders for these video transitions. Maybe this whole video was AI. “What if we’re the mouse,” said Dave in the most stereotypical stoner voice. He’d always find shit like this, in that way that when you are high the thought seems really deep. But if you think about it more it’s nonsense, like that mouse is in a maze constructed by humans, and even if it doesn’t always feel like it, the society we live in is jointly constructed by all of us. Brian showed a video of two girls at some Mardi Gras bead type event licking one ice cream cone. He told us he wasn’t a virgin but I didn’t really believe him. It was a bit after midnight and it was time to go home. I hadn’t really thought about the interaction from earlier, but I started to again when I got outside. It was a half mile walk back home; I was grateful to hear all the noises of the city. Even though I couldn’t see it, it reminded me that there was a society out there. My mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Maybe she met a guy. Nothing too out of the ordinary. I unlocked the door, closed it behind me, locked both the knob and the deadbolt, went upstairs into my room, locked that door, and with the blanket of those three locks, a bunch of beers, and a couple hits of the Volcano, drifted off to sleep.
The first Rails World in Amsterdam was a roaring success back in 2023. Tickets sold out in 45 minutes, the atmosphere was electric, and The Rails Foundation set a new standard for conference execution in the Ruby community. So when we decided to return to the Dutch Capital for the third edition of the conference this year, the expectations were towering. And yet, Amanda Perino, our executive director and event organizer extraordinaire, managed to outdo herself, and produced an even better show this year. The venue we returned to was already at capacity the first time around, but Amanda managed to fit a third more attendees by literally using slimmer chairs! And I didn't hear any complaints the folks who had to sit a little closer together in order for more people to enjoy the gathering. The increased capacity didn't come close to satisfy the increased demand, though. This year, tickets sold out in less than two minutes. Crazy. But for the 800+ people who managed to secure a pass, I'm sure it felt worth the refresh-the-website scramble to buy a ticket. And, as in years past, Amanda's recording crew managed to turn around post-production on my keynote in less than 24 hours, so anyone disappointed with missing out on a ticket could at least be in the loop on all the awesome new Rails stuff we were releasing up to and during the conference. Every other session was recorded too, and will soon be on the Rails YouTube channel. You can't stream the atmosphere, the enthusiasm, and the genuine love of Ruby on Rails, though. I was once again blown away by just how many incredible people and stories we have in this ecosystem. From entrepreneurs who've built million (or billion!) dollar businesses on Rails, to programmers who've been around the framework for decades, to people who just picked it up this year. It was a thrill to meet all of them, to take hundreds of selfies, and to talk about Ruby, Rails, and the Omarchy expansion pack for hours on the hallway track! I've basically stopped doing prepared presentations at conferences, but Rails World is the one exception. I really try my best to put on a good show, present the highlights of what we've been working on in the past year at 37signals, and transfer the never-ending enthusiasm I continue to feel for this framework, this programming language, and this ecosystem. True, I may occasionally curse that commitment in the weeks leading up to the conference, but the responsibility is always rewarded during and after the execution with a deep sense of satisfaction. Not everyone is so lucky as I've been to find their life's work early in their career, and see it continue to blossom over the decades. I'm eternally grateful that I have. Of course, there's been ups and downs over the years — nothing is ever just a straight line of excitement up and to the right! — but we're oh-so-clearly on the up-up-up part of that curve at the moment. I don't know whether it's just the wind or the whims, but Rails is enjoying an influx of a new generation of programmers at the moment. No doubt it helps when I get to wax poetically about Ruby for an hour with Lex Fridman in front of an audience of millions. No doubt Shopify's continued success eating the world of ecommerce helps. No doubt the stability, professionalism, and execution from The Rails Foundation is an aid. There are many auxiliary reasons why we're riding a wave at the moment, but key to it all is also that Ruby on Rails is simply really, really good! Next year, with RailsConf finished, it's time to return to the US. Amanda has picked a great spot in Austin, we're planning to dramatically expand the capacity, but I also fully expect that demand will continue to rise, especially in the most prosperous and successful market for Rails. Thanks again to all The Rails Foundation members who believed in the vision for a new institution back in 2022. It looks like a no-brainer to join such a venture now, given the success of Rails World and everything else, but it actually took guts to sign on back then. I approached quite a few companies at that time who could see the value, but couldn't find the courage to support our work, as our industry was still held hostage to a band of bad ideas and terrible ideologies. All that nonsense is thankfully now long gone in the Rails world. We're enjoying a period of peak unity, excitement, progress, and determination to continue to push for end-to-end problem solving, open source, and freedom. I can't tell you how happy it makes me feel when I hear from yet another programmer who credits Ruby on Rails with finding joy and beauty in the writing web applications because of what I started over 22 years ago. It may sound trite, but it's true: It's an honor and a privilege. I hope to carry this meaningful burden for as long as my intellectual legs still let me stand. See you next year in Austin? I hope so!
I hadn’t lost my virginity yet. And it wasn’t for lack of trying; it seemed like the rest of my generation was no longer interested in sex. On some level, I understood where they were coming from, the whole act did seem kind of pointless. But after a few beers, that wasn’t how my mind was working. I turned 19 last week. Dad flew in from Idaho, and it was the first time he was in the house I shared with my mother. He left when I was 12, and it was always apparent that parenting wasn’t the top thing on his mind. There was some meeting on Long Island. That’s probably why he was there, in addition to the fact he knew mom wouldn’t make him sleep on the couch. He had many reasons to be in New York that weren’t me. My birthday was just a flimsy pretense. He’d worked on Wall Street the whole time he was around, a quant. He wrote programs that made other people rich. But something happened to him right before he left. A crisis of conscience perhaps; he was spiraling for weeks, cursing the capitalist system, calling my mother a gold-digging whore (which was mostly true), and saying things needed to change. Then he packed a single backpack and left for Idaho. I visited him out there once my sophomore year. He had a camouflaged one room cabin in the middle of a spruce forest, but instead of the hunting or fishing stuff you might expect, the walls were adorned with electrical test equipment and various things that looked like they were out of a biology or chemistry lab. I didn’t know much about this stuff and that wasn’t what he wanted to talk about anyway. He wanted to talk about “man shit” like nature and women and not being life’s bitch. I tried to act like I did, but I didn’t really listen. All I remember is how eerily quiet the night was, I could hear every animal movement outside. My dad said you get used to it. Brian was having a party tonight. Well okay, party is a lofty way to describe it. He’d replaced the fluorescent lights in his mom’s basement with blacklights, and we’d go over there to drink beer and smoke weed and sit around on our phones and scroll. And sometimes someone would laugh at something and share with the group. I had a case of Bud Light left over from the last party and drank two of them today. Hence the thinking about sex and not thinking that thinking about sex was stupid. People wouldn’t be going over there for a few more hours, so I laid in my bed, drank, and loosely beat off to YouTube. Celebrity gossip, internet gossip, speedrun videos, nothing even arousing. I liked the true crime videos about the hot female teachers who slept with their students. Yea yea yea terrible crime and they all act holier than thou about what if the genders were reversed, but the genders weren’t reversed. Maybe they just don’t want to get demonetized. There were never women at these parties. Okay maybe one or two. But nobody ever slept with them or much thought about them that way. They were the agendered mass like the rest of us. Fellow consumers, not providers. Fuck I should just go visit a hooker. I didn’t know much about that, were hookers real? I’d never met one, and there wasn’t a good way to find out about stuff like this anymore. The Internet was pretty much all “advertiser friendly” now, declawed, sanitized. Once the algorithms got good enough and it was technically easy to censor, there was nothing holding them back. It wasn’t actually censored, it would just redirect you elsewhere. And if you didn’t pay careful attention, you wouldn’t even notice it happening. I tried asking ChatGPT about hookers and it told me to call them sex workers. And this was kind of triggering. Who the fuck does this machine think it is? But then I was lost on this tangent, the algorithms got a rise out of me and I went back to comfort food YouTube. Look this guy beat Minecraft starting with only one block. The doorbell rang. This always gives me anxiety. And it was particularly anxiety inducing since I was the only one home. Normally I could just know that the door of my room was locked and someone else would get it and this would be a downstairs issue. But it was just me at home. My heart rate jumped. I waited for it to ring again, but prayed that it wouldn’t. Please just go away. But sure enough, it rang again. I went to my window, my room was on the second floor. There was a black Escalade in the driveway that I hadn’t seen before, and I could see two men at the door. They were wearing suits. I ducked as to make sure they wouldn’t look up at me, making as little noise as possible. Peering over the window sill I could see one opening the screen door, and it looked like he stuck something to the main door. My heart was beating even faster now. It was Saturday night, why were there two men in suits? And why were they here? It felt longer, but 3 minutes later they drove off. I waited another 3 for good measure, just watching the clock on my computer until it hit 6:57. I doubled checked out the window to make sure they were actually gone, and crept down the stairs to retrieve whatever they left on the door. It was a business card, belonging to a “Detective James Reese” of the Nassau County Police. And on the back of the card, there was handwriting. “John – call me” John was my name.
The first in a series of posts about doing things the right way
