I had someone leave some nasty comments on a number of my stories last night. They also found my email (not like it’s a big secret) and sent me the same nasty comments. It doesn’t really matter what the comments were, I actually acknowledge that they probably have some basis for them, even if the full story is different from what they think it is. That’s not really the point of this article, though.

I mentioned recently that I was confused by the earnings on Medium, and then they jumped a bit — 10 cents in one day, then they stayed static again for a bit. I don’t know if it’s just what’s happening or if Medium is kind of updating all at once. Either way, I might get a payout this month, but I’m not counting on it.

I started in the IT industry in 1994. The first browser I used was called Mosaic. I started actually doing web development with Netscape Navigator 0.9 Beta. The big innovation of Netscape Navigator was support for jpeg images. Until then, only GIF’s worked. In theory jpegs supported full colour images. We couldn’t see the colours, because our monitors weren’t full colour; they only did 256 colours, but the images could be printed on a colour printer (that almost nobody owned) in full colour, and if you managed to get a display that handled more colours, well, you could see the image in all its glory.

Mustache Man The Weimar Republic failed. It was actually a pretty spectacular failure. Their currency became worthless almost overnight, a victim of hyperinflation brought about by the sanctions and reparations from WWI. People were desperate, and Hitler gave them a place to focus their anger — but let’s be clear, without the collapse of the German economy, Hitler would not have been able to make that narrative work. If people are happy, they don’t need someone to blame. He gave them an easy focus for their fear, something that didn’t force them to face reality. Sure, it was a lie — but fascism always starts from a lie.

This is not a post-scarcity piece In 2016, I was teaching IT at Nova Scotia Community College. That was the year AlphaGo came out. Most people didn’t know much about this until the rather breathless headlines started to hit, and even then, it didn’t mean a lot to them. So, another game, kind of like chess, but asian, was now being dominated by computers. Kind of interesting, maybe, but not something to give much thought.

Napoleon Bonaparte was of average height for his time. The idea that he was short comes from a few things. First, the French had different standards of measurement than the British did. What the French called 5'4" in France was 5'7" in Britain, but the British, wanting to make Napoleon look like less than he was, used the French number and made fun of him. Blatant propaganda. That is why, from this day forward, I think we should use the name Bovino Complex to describe a very short man who is unable to deal with his height and therefore tries to be stronger, tries to pretend he is large and strong. After all, Mr. Greg Bovino truly embodies that disorder. He obviously wants to be the big man. Look at the way he dresses, look at the way he interacts with the press.

More Footage From the Minnesota Front This just happened today. Not much is known yet, but two videos have come out. The first one is clear. ICE agents hold a man down on the ground and shoot him five times. The second piece of footage is more damning. The agents were spraying something into the face of a woman who was on her knees. The man, who was an observer, got between the agents and the woman. They tackled him to the ground. In slow motion, you can see that the ICE agents remove the man’s legal firearm from his belt. The weapon was never drawn.

How I Got Started Since I left the IT industry, I’ve been doing a few things to make money. One of the big ones has been Uber Eats delivery. This piece isn’t (yet another) Uber is so evil piece. It’s also not a gushing endorsement of the company or the job. Instead, it’s about what the experience is like for me, day to day. Specifically isolation. I have been doing Uber Eats delivery for about a year now, since the beginning of 2025 (it’s December 31st, 2025, as I write this). I’ve actually seen it change a lot in that year, which is rapid.

The other day, I wrote about how I was using DeepSeek as a junior coder in a couple of web projects and how much I had accomplished. It was mostly an article about AI. This isn’t, this is actually about the two projects. Project one is my CMS. A content management system. I call it Bauble — because my operating name is Bright Crow, and I liked the idea of a crow having a bauble.

First: if you know me well, especially if you are family, this is going to get a little more personal than you might appreciate — maybe give it a skip. Warning out of the way, on to the piece.