moblogging again

Its been nearly 20 years since I set up a moblog sidebar and posted tiny pictures from my Hitachi clamshell over iMode to my MovableType blog… But today I just got the itch to see where we are in terms of easy accessibility to WordPress moblogging.

It’s kind of in between rainy periods right now, which is hard on my lawn, since I assume it’s gonna rain and don’t water every day as I’m accustomed to doing the rest of the year. So yesterday, I performed my rain ritual and watered the yard thoroughly, and also washed the dust off my truck. It worked.

Back Home Again

Nam and I went on a nice trip to pick up Mina in WA and for Nam to see Max after four years of COVID lockdown/US visa processing. The last long leg of our trip saw us dropped this bus stop in between the two sides of Maha Sarakham city at dawn.

As it turns out, we aren’t moving back to the states just now.

Mina has come back to Thailand; she missed her friends here.

I have many tales to tell.

Bing: Corporate AI Echo Chamber

The AI-enabled version of Bing is useless for search… Imagine using the bare bones search engines of the 90s on all of the useless filler on the web today, navigating by command line to a toddler – that’s the new Bing experience. You can pare down on its idiot responses by tweaking prompts, but it’s a huge step backwards from just Googling something. It’s also noticeably clunkier than using vanilla ChatGPT.

I’m not the only one who noticed.

Chicano Subculture in Thailand and Japan

There was a resurgence of interest in “Thai Chicanos” last year, resulting in a few articles and videos across the web. The most entertaining video, however, is the one from almost a decade ago, about the “Cholos of Bangkok,” by Coconuts TV.

Also last year, an interesting YouTube video documenting “Japan’s Chicano Culture In LA” was published by Peter Santenello:

However, the true counterpart to the “Cholos of Bangkok” is “Inside Japan’s Chicano Subculture” by the NYT:

From a language and culture standpoint, all of these are enthralling. I’ve watched them all multiple times and pick up on new details every time.