The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 19

This week, Shisui is looking particularly foxy. Pity I can’t say any more than that without massive spoilers. Fortunately, this show is still carrying the entire season.

Slime-Killing Witch 2, episode 8

This week, a swimsuit episode. Next week, an Egyptian pyramid filled with undead. I know this because they uploaded next week’s subtitles. I think it improved the experience.

(don’t know that I’ll bother rewatching the fixed version later; the bikinis are the best part, and they don’t need translation)

Bumpkin & Harem, episode 8

This week, Thirsty McWhitehair takes Our Oblivious Sensei on a date, using shopping for court-friendly clothing as an excuse to spend the entire day with him. Then she challenges him to a duel, planning to confess her feelings if she wins. Despite stacking the deck with well-displayed cleavage and a thong, she ends up on her back, but not in the way she wants.

Verdict: if the Sweet Young Thing Brigade aren’t going to be proper haremettes, we need more screen time for Hot Teacher.

(hot teacher is unrelated but all grown up)

Please wait until it’s signed…

There’s a whole lot of cheerleading going on about Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. Yes, it’s very nice that the House actually passed a budget, but it still has to survive being molested by the Senate before reaching Trump’s desk.

“Why don’t Senators use bookmarks? Because they like their pages bent over.”

(ironically, you actually could bend over someone dressed in this costume…)

(bundling the Hearing Protection Act into it sure sounds nice, and it would definitely boost American manufacturing, but you know there are squishy RINOs in the Senate who’ll fold under the pressure of a light breeze)

Google AI turns up the heat…

As for OpenAI…

If I were an investor, I’d have serious questions about spending $6.5 billion on a hardware startup that’s never demoed a product, with announcements that name-drop the look-and-feel designers, not the hardware team. Especially when the Chief Used-Car Salesman claims they’re going to sell 100 million of the gadgets at record speed.

(“look, we’ve got Jony Ive!”)

Touch Grass Boobs!

I decided to collect a few names and links for the next time I have to criticize someone who tries to create a LoRA for generating “natural” large-breasted women using only pictures of obvious plastic titties. It’s just sad that they don’t know what breasts look like.

NSFW and sites filled with predatory Javascript and sketchy ads, as usual:

• Momona Koibuchi
• Yuu Tano
• Matsuri Kiritani
• Nanami Matsumoto
• Ai Sayama
• Nana Fukada
• Yuria Yoshine
• Miharu Usa
• Kana Tsuruta

Disturbingly accurate, but also deeply wrong

Still going…

New DOGE recruiting poster

Google AI: always confidently wrong

I searched for “otagiri history”. Random facts were merged together:

It does link to its sources, but fails to provide any reason to connect them in this way.

Actual facts, which can be derived by completely ignoring the prominent “AI” summary and reading through the buried search results:

1. Otagiri is a mildly-collectible brand of handmade dinnerware, made by a variety of Japanese kilns from the late Fifties through the mid-Nineties. Several American designers were hired to provide Hallmark-ish designs (not for tiki mugs). It’s widely available on Etsy and eBay at reasonable prices, and every once in a while new old stock turns up in Japanese warehouses, often from patterns that never made it to the US (Umami Mart used to sell coffee mugs they found in the warehouse of Kenzan Ceramics, some of which had Otagiri branding).

2. They also imported ceramic tiki mugs, chickens, turkeys, houses, music boxes, etc, as well as some decorative laminated platters.

3. The importer has no documented connection to anyone by the name “Otagiri” (小田切 = “small field” + “bounds”).

4. Further down under “other connections”, it finally says “Otagiri was also a well-known dinnerware company, particularly for its pottery, known for its firing and glazing techniques”, not recognizing that it’s the same company.

5. It also cites a phony book on Amazon that clearly exists just to sucker people who search for the word.

6. Finally, it links to the Wikipedia article for Otagiri Dam, which qualifies as “otagiri history”, but has no known connection to any of the others.

Why do I know any of this? Because a while back, my mom was sorting through stuff that’d been in boxes through multiple moves, and she handed me a small lidded crock and said, “I think you’ll like this, it feels very Japanese”. I turned it over, saw the name and country of origin, and googled the sticker. Then I checked the labels on the coffee mugs I’d previously bought from Umami Mart, and sure enough, one of them had the same Otagiri sticker.

Later I found a few nice-looking affordable pieces in the same pattern (Bittersweet) and bought them. I now have a number of their more decorative plate designs on the wall in my dining room, as well as a slowly-growing collection of that pattern. I was briefly tempted by a very complete dinner set of Bittersweet, but you had to pick it up in person in Monterey and I’d just left California forever.

I also discovered that there are a number of “Otagiri-like” patterns for sale online, almost all of them unlabeled, and based on the similarity in design, I suspect there were other importers working with the same Japanese kilns.

These, for instance, have the exact same size and shape as Otagiri soup mugs and bread plates, but don’t match any known set:

One reason a lot of Otagiri pieces are unlabeled is that the importer initially used a gold sticker on the bottom for their branding, and people often removed it or washed it off. The only reason we have official names for most of the patterns is that they later switched to stamping/painting the details on the bottom (likely when they filed their US trademark in 1980). I’ve also seen it claimed that the stickers were only added once the crates were unpacked in San Francisco, but the mug I got from Umami Mart had it applied in Japan.

By the way, Kenzan Ceramics doesn’t make coffee mugs and dinner plates any more; they’re strictly high-end wall and floor tile. I guess the export business got them through some lean years while they were establishing their business.

Slime-Killing Witch 2, episode 7

In the least-plausible setup of the season, Our Busty Guild Gal In Red Underrim Glasses is unable to find a man, and drags Our Ever-17 Witch and company to a find-a-mate party as her wingwomen. We haven’t seen this character much this season, so her presence is welcome, even if Her Cunning Plan is a bust. Anyway, the local wedding spirit talks Azusa into buying a sister-bonding package for Our Slime Twins. This gets Best Gal Beelzebub into more clothing than we’ve ever seen her wear. But in a good way.

I wouldn’t have minded some more footage of Our Busty Undead Catgirl and her distracting casino-dealer outfit, though. Maybe she’ll make it into a LoRA.

This might have worked as a half-length sketch, but padding it out to an entire episode dragged.

Bumpkin & Harem, episode 7

This week, Our Sword Dad adjusts to life with a house and a daughter, getting through years of “am I a good dad?” in a few hours. It happens so fast that White and Red barely have time to be jealous that they don’t live under his… roof.

Verdict: a bit slow, but they compensated by giving Daddy his first encounter with an age-appropriate hottie who he has an excuse to spend some time with. Go, teacher!

(Guest Lecturer Zelda is unrelated)

A-Rank Adventure Harem, episode 18

I just fast-forwarded through this because last week’s preview promised that Our Little Blonde Titty-Witch would finally be back, and she is, but fully dressed in street clothes. Other than that, it looks like it was a whole lot of talking and setup for the final story arc.

(spies are completely unrelated, and I just wanted to use this picture)

Traeger Update Update

I hadn’t fired up the smoker yet this year, so I went out to clean it and replace the ash bucket while it ran through the firmware updates. Apparently I’d left it uncovered for one of the bigger storms late last year, because the rain has to be basically horizontal to somehow get inside. That is, rain got inside.

It drained into the ash bucket and overflowed into the cabinet. The pellets were in sealed bins, so nothing was damaged, but soaking the mix of ash and rendered fat in the bucket made for a pretty nasty smell.

End-of-season note to self: thoroughly clean everything before the first snowfall, then leave the cover on all winter, even if you think you might have a chance to get out there and use it…

(maid is unrelated, welcome to drop by and do some cleaning)

Maomao’s going to have to stay in spoiler limbo for another week, because this week’s episode was apparently bumped. This would be less annoying if there were other good shows to watch.

Smoke-Signal Flag Day

Traeger has announced that you must update the firmware on your Internet-connected smoker by the end of September, or it will no longer be Internet-connected. Something-something-cloud-services.

BroadcomBot fixed it!

I have now successfully downloaded VMware Fusion 13.6.3. It even worked.

Yes, I saved the installer on my NAS, “just in case”.

No, they did not send the promised email; I had to keep checking.

Metaphor alert!

Vegan Toilet Bowl Cleaner. To put the sustainable organic cherry on top , it’s rhubarb-scented.

How to raise a busty waifu

Ina Enohara shows how it’s done: you feed them, you water them, they grow!

VMware (not) update

Finally advanced my VMware Fusion download failure to “Account verification is Pending. Please try after some time” (yes, I manually edited the page to enable the field, changed my one-letter name to a three-letter name, and overrode the disabled submission button; the fourth time it worked). Managed to get a chat window to connect me either to an Indian call center operator or an AI pretending to be one, who just sent me a link to the same download page that didn’t work.

Schrödinger’s chatbot claims to have escalated the ticket to “the concern team”, who will email me an update in the next 24 hours.

Clueless Crafter, episode 7

Well, that fell off a cliff, and not just the character art. This episode would actually have been improved by the addition of pies to the face.

And the flashback of Kurt’s childhood medicinal first kiss is clearly going to bring in a new horny haremette, since he just happened to be named Viceroy to the town that just happens to be next door to the demon kingdom, and I’m sure L’il Demonette just happens to have spent the last ten years dreaming of a reunion.

Verdict: one more chance before I drop it. Maybe.

(horny gal is unrelated, no longer on Pixiv)

Robo-Ho, episode 6

This week, the main character is once again her left leg, as Our Geeky Hero explores the busted joint while Our Naked Barbie Doll lies back and thinks of England. Then gets bored and calls Our Suspicious Galpal just as his probing starts to make her feel all tingly inside. She reacts as if the inside of her leg joint is lined with clits.

“These are the jokes, kid.”

Verdict: couldn’t finish it, giving up now.

(I was never expecting this show to be even a tenth as good as Gushing turned out to be, but I didn’t think it would be so cheap that they couldn’t afford a second joke)

Slime-Killing Witch 2, episode 6

Fight week times two. A bit shoutier than usual.

(fighter is unrelated)

Bumpkin & Harem, episode 6

Also fight week. This show has basically revealed itself as a jailbait-and-switch, with Our Affectionate And Servicing Former Students never hitting on Our Middle-Aged Rural Swordsman at all, and him never even thinking about it. And now Our Magical Blue-Haired Former Thief has moved into a clear daughter role.

Verdict: not that there’s anything wrong with that; S-Rank Daughter succeeded at supplying a collection of cute girls while keeping them out of Daddy’s pants, so maybe this one can, too. But they did kind of lead us on…

(Best Daughter is unrelated)

A-Rank Adventure Harem, episode 17

Despite the six minutes of post-adventure exposition and the travel montage, this episode pretty much wrapped up everything, including shifting Our Little Blonde Titty-Witch into full tsundere mode, and it even kept the character art fairly consistent.

Verdict: I think this is a good place to stop for me. Big adventure is over, Yuke’s got a house full of gals who love him, and there isn’t an Asshole Party in sight.

(fan-art is still mostly just poorly-posed CG or bad pr0n, so an actual drawing of Jamie was a surprise)

Deep Thoughts, For Stupid People

Last night I watched Lucy, Luc Besson’s cinematic drinking game. That is, if you take one shot every time someone states something absolutely ludicrous as fact, you’ll be dead in the first fifteen minutes. With bonus animal husbandry.

Why did I watch it? It was free, I was bored, and the highly deceptive trailer was vaguely interesting.

Why did I keep watching it all the way to the end? For the same reason I watched Kill Bill 1: I kept wondering if it would stop getting worse. And it never did.

(crazy blonde magic engineer is unrelated)

Anti-Semantic Versioning

There’s a reason I froze the version of Hugo I use to build this site: constant breaking changes. Yes, version 0.146.0 completely changes the templating system, forcing you to move all your layout files around. No, this wasn’t clearly documented until after 0.147.2 came out.

I gave up after trying to go from 0.119.0 to 0.120.0 left me with ~30,000 lines of diff output again. I have seen nothing in the changelogs since September 2023 that would make me want to take on that mess again.