Code_of_Kai

This song is about the viral 'Faustian penguin' video meme that has taken Tiktok and X and every other social media (I'll post a copy below in this mini thread for those that haven't seen it). My song is called "PENGUIN, COME". It's from the POV of the mountain who beckons this Faustian penguin to come and climb into the heavens. I, like millions of others, was moved by this cute little guy.

@exQUIZitely I couldn't help myself it was too perfect , 😂

@Code_of_Kai LOOOOL that pic, why have I never seen that before omg lol!!

@exQUIZitely Yeah, it's baffling.

I sometimes wonder why some of those 80s and 90s classics arent ported to modern handhelds. Seems like the lowest hanging fruit ever, with very little risk since the tech effort seems small (especially with AI help) and the reward upside pretty promising (all those older gamers... and potentially new/younger gamers).

Games that deserved a sequel but sadly never got one: Loom by Lucasfilm Games, 1990 Loom 2 was never made primarily because Brian Moriarty (the game's creator and designer) and the rest of the original team moved on to other projects, and no one at LucasArts felt strongly enough to champion and commit to a sequel. Moriarty later sketched out ideas for two sequels called "The Forge" and "The Fold", but there was never a firm plan right after the first game shipped. He has described himself as too exhausted after Loom to push forward immediately. I wonder if Loom 2 (and 3) would work in today's gaming world. I would argue yes, since all the people who played the original would be in their 40s, 50s and 60s now - and if they are still gamers, they'd love a Loom sequel (and pay for it), I suppose? Would you support it?

@exQUIZitely Yes. I wonder if Loom would do well if ported to the Switch ? A whole new generation could enjoy it's magic

@Code_of_Kai Let me guess - around 40 or older? :)

Of 4 million slaves in America in 1860, fewer than 10—not 10%, the number 10—were owned by Republicans. More than 90% of the slaves were owned by Democrats. This crushing fact is left out of the textbooks, unreported by NPR, PBS & the History Channel. Yet it’s undeniably true.

@GenFlynn @POTUS Alternative: when he says avoid the 'Thucydides Trap' he means pursuit of managed decline of the US. The reason he denied it before is because it was happening before. Now that it isn't, he wants it back. That is avoiding actually means pursuing. I will not explain.

Breaking (the internet): CCP President Xi’s use of the term, “Thucydides Trap” during his opening comments to @POTUS has everyone wondering … WHAT THE …. ? Xi’s remark on the Thucydides trap is a classic piece of Chinese diplomatic signaling; polite on the surface, however, very sharp and pointed underneath. It’s a reminder to our president (and the world) that Beijing (Xi) sees itself as the rising power in a structural rivalry with a (supposedly) established hegemon (the U.S.), and that any failure to accommodate China’s ascent risks major conflict which the United States cannot afford (and there is practically zero support from the American people currently for more war and Xi knows it). Examining it another way, President Xi stated it intentionally to show China as Sparta (rising, dynamic, rightful heir to greater influence) and the U.S. as Athens (established but fearful and in decline). To some students of warfare, this may be an imperfect analogy, but the fact he used this phrase must be clearly and thoroughly examined. Xi is signaling that the U.S. should step back gracefully, especially on Taiwan (and never lose site of what Xi has already said about Taiwan; One (1) China, and he’s not backing down), checking trade & tech restrictions, and increasingly regional dominance, rather than the U.S. attempting to further impede China’s “rejuvenation” efforts. Essentially, it was a veiled warning: Push too hard (ie., on Taiwan or decoupling), and structural tensions could lead to an extremely dangerous place. Lastly, I believe Xi’s use of this ancient theory on warfare is explicitly tied to Taiwan tensions. At the same time, it’s cooperative language as well. Typical use of smart diplomatic double speak the Chinese are masters at. Xi addressing a new paradigm, a brighter future for humanity because he knows the world is watching and listening and studying. This is standard CCP diplomacy that keeps the door open for deals while putting the onus on the U.S. to avoid escalation. Bottom line, and like it or not, he let Trump know you’re in my house now and we set the rules here. FYI only, Thucydides wrote about the Peloponnesian War. The War (431–404 BC) was a devastating 27-year conflict between Athens and Sparta. It was driven by Sparta’s fears of growing Athenian (ie., U.S.) imperialism, the war ended with the total defeat of Athens, fundamentally altering the ancient Greek world and ending its “Golden Age.” The Peloponnesian war lasted more than two decades. I’d say we’re somewhere in the late third quarter and time favors the watchmakers and not the watch-watchers. We need to keep in mind that @realDonaldTrump isn’t the only one who understands nor read the art of the deal.

@MsMelChen Alternative: when he says avoid the 'Thucydides Trap' he means pursuit of managed decline of the US. The reason he denied it before is because it was happening before. Now that it isn't, he wants it back.

Notice the flip flop here. In 2015, Xi said that "there's no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the World" and now? Xi just sat across from Donald Trump in the Great Hall of the People and asks whether the two powers can “overcome the Thucydides Trap” and “forge a new paradigm” for great-power relations. Funny! Because a decade ago, he used the phrase "so-called" to describe it and outright denied that it was an applicable concept. So why the change of tone you ask? This is what you'd call a tell, an involuntary admission that Beijing’s position has deteriorated sharply since 2015. Back then, China was at the height of the post-financial crisis boom. Beijing was surging with double digit growth (on paper), the Belt and Road Initiative was rolling out to great fanfare, island building in the South China Sea was barely met with any Western response (thanks Obama), and the American president was still preaching “strategic patience.” Today, in 2026, the material reality has flipped. China’s much-hyped “century of rejuvenation” has slammed into structural headwinds that no amount of state media spin can hide - a demographic death spiral, a property sector collapse that wiped out trillions in household wealth, local government debt bombs lurking on the books, and a tech ecosystem increasingly isolated by US export controls and friend-shoring. The GDP overtake narrative that once enthralled the elites at Davos has quietly died; projections now show America pulling further ahead in nominal terms. Xi’s “China Dream” is at best delayed and at worst, never materializing. Trump 2.0 brought tariffs back on the table, hardened alliances with Japan and the Philippines, accelerated arms sales to Taiwan, and an American public finally awake to the CCP’s game. Knowing that China requires continued access to Western markets, capital, and technology to avoid stagnation at home, Xi now does a U-Turn and reaches for the historical analogy he once dismissed. Basically when you’re strong, you deny any threat exists hoping to lull the bigger power into complacency. When your power and strength wanes, warn that resistance will produce the very conflict you claim to fear. Xi is essentially saying to America, "don't contain us, don’t push back too hard, or you’ll be the paranoid Sparta that started the war against Athens.” It's actually a veiled threat to keep the one-way transfer of power and wealth open, OR ELSE. This 180 deg shift proves that the balance is tilting back toward American strength. The correct US response is to reject the premise entirely, and continue to maintain unrelenting pressure on every front and force Xi to choose between genuine reform at home or managed decline on Beijing’s terms. Xi’s sudden invocation of the Thucydides Trap - something he used to dismiss - simply confirms that the pressure worked. Americans should take this as a sign that their country is not in decline, despite the insane amount of propaganda now also being touted by American influencers and podcasters.

Rational grid is pretty useful. And fun like a Choose Your Own Adventure!

@BrianRoemmele This is very interesting and strangely amusing.

Fast Fourier Analysis.

@Maga4liberty Bird hands never lie

⏬ Rogan is blown away ⏬ Who is this young man? An African-American Charlie Kirk. He *annihilates* a lib commentator & she reverts to, " look at me like your mom - how dare you talk to me like that." Hey lady, maybe learn how to argue. What do you think? 👇

@TJCBerman Thanks, Tom

@Code_of_Kai Very cool 😎

A lot more of your code is a state machine than you think, and when it is, making it explicit pays off almost without exception. Anything with a lifecycle, a protocol, a UI flow, a parser, async coordination, game logic, or a workflow is carrying state through time — and the moment the valid configurations of your variables form a strict subset of their Cartesian product, you've built a finite state machine whether you named it or not. You just built it badly: the illegal states are representable, so they're reachable, so eventually they're reached. The transition rules live scattered across every handler and callback that touches the state, so "what are all the ways we can end up here?" has no answer short of reading the whole codebase. And because the machine was never made explicit, the causal history that produced any given bug is unrecoverable — you can see what's true, not how it became true. Making the machine explicit fixes all three at once. 1. Illegal states stop being expressible. 2. Transitions collapse into one location you can read like a table. 3. The event stream becomes loggable, testable, replayable, and model-checkable. The cost of doing this used to be real — verbose hierarchies, switch statements the compiler couldn't verify — but sum types and pattern matching are now standard equipment, and the asymmetry has flipped: implicit is the expensive choice now, you just don't get the invoice until production. For #Elixir devs, you might want to check out my state machine library, Crank: github.com/code-of-kai/cr…

Naval is right about this.

@benryanwriter "they corralled everyone on the left into a little glass fishbowl where they shout at one another & everyone else ignores them" = NET POSITIVE for the world.

Progressive journalist David Roberts says: “It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Bluesky has been a net negative for US politics. They corralled everyone on the left into a little glass fishbowl where they shout at one another & everyone else ignores them. Meanwhile, all the pols & institutions stayed on X & are being dragged farther right.”

@elonmusk It's so beautiful 😭

@ClaudeDevs When will this work within the desktop app? Thanks

How do you keep Claude working until the job is done? Claude Code helps with this in a few ways, including one we shipped recently: /goal.

@doodlestein Glorious

So nuts! My longest codex /goal marathon ever: gpt-5.5 xhigh · ~/projects/storage_ballast_helper Goal achieved (5d 13h 40m)