thorny.party2026-10-29T00:00:00Zhttps://thorny.party/feed.xml๐ซก Respecthttps://thorny.party/respect2026-10-29T00:00:00ZOld Man Rick once told me, Respect is All or Nothing.๐ฉ The Abraham Generatorhttps://thorny.party/abraham-generator2026-10-25T00:00:00ZHere is a magic trick. All the props come from page 3 of *Finnegans Wake*.๐บ Red Inhttps://thorny.party/red-in2026-10-24T00:00:00Z*The Ninth Gate* has largely been recognized as satire, while *Eyes Wide Shut* so far has not. This has gone on long enough.โ๏ธ The Party Linehttps://thorny.party/party-line2026-10-20T00:00:00Z"Boy, we could really have a good party in this room." Wendy Macabre, ever ready with more cannibalism puns. She cannot get the Donner Party out of her mind. "Great party, isn't it?" "Your son is attempting to bring an outside party into this situation." Let's see: we have party like party time, ...๐ฅซ Reading the Storyroomhttps://thorny.party/storyroom2026-10-19T00:00:00Z"Now, this is the story room," says Hallorann, and walks the Torrances into the dry goods. Everything on the shelves is a word. Here are two screens, read.๐ Trail of Breadcrumbshttps://thorny.party/trail-of-breadcrumbs2026-10-17T00:00:00ZA rebus is read one link at a time. Each link below is on the page or on the screen.โจ Autocompletehttps://thorny.party/autocomplete2026-10-16T00:00:00ZEverybody knows what room Jack goes to to check on the hag. But let's just check the screenplay to double-check something:๐ฏ Missing the Pointhttps://thorny.party/missing-the-point2026-10-16T00:00:00ZThe Internet cheers like spectators at the gladiator games when Wendy "heroically" swings a bat around and then hits her husband in the head with it:๐ Dark Side of the Shininghttps://thorny.party/dark-side-of-the-shining2026-10-14T00:00:00Z| Album | Artist | Year | Starts | Ends | |---|---|---|---|---| | Abbey Road | The Beatles | 1969 | 0:00:10, the WB logo fades out | 0:47:13, SATURDAY | | After the Gold Rush | Neil Young | 1970 | 0:47:13, SATURDAY | 1:22:18, the park ranger | | Help! (US soundtrack) | The Beatles | 1965 | 1:22:1...๐ Burnt Toast: The Shining Decryptedhttps://thorny.party/burnt-toast2026-10-09T00:00:00Z<aside> <h4>Spoiler alert</h4> This post gives away the whole plot of <em>The Shining</em>, including the parts nobody noticed were there, and the plot of <em>Eyes Wide Shut</em> as I read it in <a href="/ews-unhinged">the previous post</a>. Watch the film first. Then watch it again. </aside>๐ง Eyes Wide Shut: The Maximally Unhinged Theoryhttps://thorny.party/ews-unhinged2026-10-07T00:00:00Z<aside> <h4>Spoiler alert</h4> This post gives away the whole plot of <em>Eyes Wide Shut</em>, including the parts nobody noticed were there, and key scenes of <em>The Shining</em>, <em>2001: A Space Odyssey</em> and <em>Full Metal Jacket</em> along the way. Watch the film first. Then watch it ag...๐๏ธ One Dialhttps://thorny.party/one-dial2026-09-26T00:00:00ZAll three positions turn out to be one dial: how much of the formalism you promote to furniture. Copenhagen promotes the collapse event. Everett promotes the state. QBism promotes neither. Once it is a single axis, "unsatisfying for opposite reasons" stops being a complaint about two theories and...๐งฎ De Morgan of Tarsushttps://thorny.party/pauline-logic2026-09-06T00:00:00ZPaul is doing something in the epistles that reads as rhetoric and behaves as engineering.๐ Close Harmonyhttps://thorny.party/close-harmony2026-07-20T00:00:00ZPac-Man makes a great deal of noise and tells you almost nothing.๐ A Maze of Deathhttps://thorny.party/a-maze-of-death2026-07-17T00:00:00ZEveryone knows who the bad guys are in Pac-Man. There are four of them. They're red, pink, cyan, and orange. They have names, they have personalities, they had a Saturday morning cartoon. Forty years of merchandising agrees: these are the opponents.๐ค Pac-Nerdhttps://thorny.party/pac-nerd2026-07-05T00:00:00Z<pac-nerd> <svg viewBox="0 0 480 570" width="480" height="570"></svg> </pac-nerd>๐น๏ธ Pacโขtionaryhttps://thorny.party/pactionary2026-07-03T00:00:00ZThe living vocabulary of [Pac-Nerd](https://lilthorny.party/components/pac-nerd). Unlike the original 2006 Pacโขtionary, this isn't arcade history โ it's a working glossary that grows with the game. A term earns its place by being something players actually *say*: "I Travised," "nice Frambit,"...๐ฆต kneecappyhttps://thorny.party/kneecappy2026-06-19T00:00:00Z๐งฐ The Labor Model Changedhttps://thorny.party/the-labor-model-changed2026-06-17T00:00:00ZReact and TypeScript are partly technical tools. They are also organizational tools.๐ชค The Three Strategieshttps://thorny.party/three-strategies2026-05-28T00:00:00ZWhen a company has decided it wants you gone but doesn't want to pay for it, there are three plays. Understanding them โ and the cost asymmetry between them โ is your entire defense.๐ชฃ Buckets as Substratehttps://thorny.party/buckets-as-substrate2026-05-15T00:00:00ZSubstrate.run raised $100 million. Impressive bucket!๐ฅ Heat it uphttps://thorny.party/heat-it-up2026-04-14T00:00:00ZA streak is a tiny moral system.๐ฐ Nobody Wins from the Gimmickhttps://thorny.party/gimmick2026-04-09T00:00:00ZDuolingo XP is perpendicular to learning a language. Not opposed to it. Not aligned with it. Perpendicular. You can max your streak, top the leaderboard, farm XP until the owl weeps with pride โ and acquire zero language. The metric decoupled from the thing it represents. Now it just measures i...๐ง Dr. Funkensteinhttps://thorny.party/dr-funkenstein2026-04-04T00:00:00ZMary Shelley wrote about animating dead matter with lightning. George Clinton turned that same idea into a funk cosmology. The Mothership lands. Dr. Funkenstein reanimates the groove. Same myth, different frequency.๐ฌ Fitnesshttps://thorny.party/fitness2026-04-02T00:00:00ZTurn a decision into a population. The human is the fitness function.๐ชฉ The Gold Roomhttps://thorny.party/gold-room2026-04-02T00:00:00ZThe Overlook isn't a building. It's a labyrinth that remembers.๐บ๏ธ Roadmaphttps://thorny.party/roadmap2026-03-31T00:00:00ZA roadmap assumes you know where you're going.๐ชจ Sculpturehttps://thorny.party/sculpture2026-03-30T00:00:00ZMichelangelo said the sculpture was already in the marble. You just remove what isn't it.๐ฆ The Registry Is a Second Systemhttps://thorny.party/the-registry2026-03-29T00:00:00ZGit already has content addressing. Every commit, every tree, every blob is a hash. The integrity of your code is guaranteed by the tool you already use to write it.๐ The Mushroom Is the UIhttps://thorny.party/the-mushroom-is-the-ui2026-03-29T00:00:00ZA mushroom is the fruiting body of a fungus. The real organism lives underground โ miles of mycelium threading through the soil, decomposing matter, exchanging nutrients, connecting trees. The mushroom is just the part that pokes above the surface. It's the interface. The visible tip of an invi...๐ก๏ธ Offensively Simplehttps://thorny.party/offensively-simple2026-03-27T00:00:00ZWhere we're going, we don't need handcoded state machines.๐บ๏ธ Miles Aheadhttps://thorny.party/miles-ahead2026-03-25T00:00:00ZThe way most people use AI is a linear stream of consciousness. Context fans out radially from the keyboard and never connects back โ or does so only if the human remembers to. Every session starts from scratch: the same chicken-scratch prompt, the same general corpus, the same attempt to remat...๐งฌ Built for AI from day onehttps://thorny.party/built-for-ai2026-03-23T00:00:00ZAll existing software is placeholder.๐ฉ The Fulcrum is Feedbackhttps://thorny.party/fulcrum2026-03-18T00:00:00ZA lever without a feedback loop is just a tool. With one it becomes a system that can regulate itself. Wiener's whole thing was that the same mathematics governs purposeful machines and purposeful organisms.๐ก๏ธ Content is a Dish Best Served Coldhttps://thorny.party/thermal2026-03-17T00:00:00ZNot all content runs at the same temperature.๐งฎ Decompose Marketinghttps://thorny.party/decompose-marketing2026-03-17T00:00:00ZWe don't have a marketing strategy. We have a logical system with consequences.โ๏ธ The Poetry is Load-Bearinghttps://thorny.party/load-bearing-poetry2026-03-16T00:00:00ZWe named it fungal because the metaphor was good. A pod is a fruiting body. The filesystem is the mycelium. Content decomposes into nutrients that feed new growth.๐ An Open Rant About Apple's UXhttps://thorny.party/apple-ux-rant2026-03-15T00:00:00ZThis is a living document. It will grow every time Apple pisses me off again.๐ Inversion of Controlhttps://thorny.party/inversion-of-control2026-03-14T00:00:00ZThe traditional model: the app owns the document. Word owns your `.docx`. Google owns your Doc. The app is the authority, the document is its captive.๐ป What Pains in the Asshttps://thorny.party/what-pains-in-the-ass2026-03-14T00:00:00Z[Pac-Nerd](/components/pac-nerd) monsters are incredibly disruptive. They show no respect for the player's workflow. You're trying to clear dots โ a simple, well-defined task โ and they constantly interfere: blocking corridors, cutting off routes, forcing you to backtrack.๐ฝ Phone Homehttps://thorny.party/phone-home2026-03-13T00:00:00ZTed Nelson had seventeen goals for Xanadu. Most of them were right. One of them was a trap.๐ Three GitHubshttps://thorny.party/three-githubs2026-03-13T00:00:00ZThere are three things people call "GitHub." They are not the same thing.๐ฆด The Watering Holehttps://thorny.party/watering-hole2026-03-13T00:00:00ZThe apes at the watering hole don't argue. They scream. Loudest, most aggressive display wins access to the resource.โ๏ธ Fission as a Servicehttps://thorny.party/react2026-03-11T00:00:00ZReact. The name tells you everything. Not a noun. A command.๐ The Firehosehttps://thorny.party/firehose2026-03-11T00:00:00ZThe web used to be a place you visited. You went to someone's site. You read what they wrote. If it moved you, you linked to it from your own site. That link was a deliberate act โ an editorial choice. A handshake between two independent voices.โ๏ธ The Pure Function Liehttps://thorny.party/pure-function2026-03-11T00:00:00ZReact's central claim: UI is a pure function of state. Render the same state, get the same UI. Elegant. Mathematical. Wrong.๐ The Decompositionhttps://thorny.party/decomposition2026-03-11T00:00:00ZATProto set out to decentralize the social web. What it actually built is email + domains + GPG + RSS + conventions โ wrapped in a protocol that reintroduces the platform at the infrastructure layer.๐ฑ Origin Storyhttps://thorny.party/origin2026-03-11T00:00:00ZI was looking at HTMX and thinking: I can dig this. Server-rendered HTML, declarative attributes, minimal JavaScript. The philosophy was right. But I looked at the code and it wasn't where I needed it to be. So I built Gimmicks โ an HTMX clone with one improvement I couldn't live without: dismi...๐โ๐ซ MY-celiahttps://thorny.party/mycelia2026-03-10T00:00:00ZA mushroom is headful: visible, tangible, divisible. But the organism is headless, underground, connecting everything. A head is temporary. The network is permanent.๐ Heads and Suitshttps://thorny.party/heads-and-suits2026-03-10T00:00:00ZIn 1987, Apple shipped HyperCard with every Macintosh. It came from the heads โ the Bay Area counterculture that built the personal computer, the Whole Earth Catalog people, the crazy ones who thought computers were tools for expanding consciousness.