Andrew Dupont
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andrewdupont.net
Andrew Dupont
@andrewdupont.net
86 followers 70 following 320 posts
apologies to all you programmers who followed me thinking i was going to post about programming (also @savetheclocktower@mastodon.social)
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andrewdupont.net
It’s OK, though, because I got this tidbit
The actor revealed he was approached for the role of suave action-hero James Bond following Sean Connery's departure from the franchise. Connery, who died in 2020, originated the Ian Fleming-penned character on screen in 1962's "Dr. No." "They said, "Would you like to be Bond?' And I said, "Have you heard my British accent?" Van Dyke recalled, adding that he was skeptical that viewers would have "accepted" the change in genre from him.
November 18, 2025 at 10:46 PM
andrewdupont.net
I could give you context to this NextDoor comment, but I think we both know it won’t make much of a difference
A person on NextDoor, in a comment to a post: “BLOCKED FOR RIDIOCY AND TREASON”
November 14, 2025 at 8:12 PM
andrewdupont.net
Man, if UCLA wriggles out of its contract with the Rose Bowl, then words cease to mean anything anymore. (Their lease runs to the mid-2040s)
UCLA reaffirmed its long-term commitment to the Rose Bowl as part of a 2014 lease amendment, waiving its right to terminate the agreement before its completion. In return, the city of Pasadena has issued nearly $200 million in bonds to pay for stadium improvements that would benefit UCLA. The bond structure was designed so that stadium revenues would service the debt instead of taxpayer dollars.
November 12, 2025 at 1:32 AM
andrewdupont.net
Oh, OK. So first you need Democrats to relinquish all their leverage… and _then_ you’ll be more open to giving them what they want?

I’ve read scam emails that make more persuasive pitches than this
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., called the Democratic offer a "nonstarter." "The Obamacare extension is the negotiation. That's what we're going to negotiate once the government opens up. ... We need to vote to open the government — and there is a proposal out there to do that — and then we can have this whole conversation about health care," he said.
November 7, 2025 at 11:00 PM
andrewdupont.net
*gently massages temples, to no avail*
From a job listing, quoted verbatim: """"MUST BE A US CITIZEN OR GREEN CARD HOLDER""" """MUST SPEAK PERFECT AND CLEAR ENGLISH NO ACCEPTIONS"""
October 28, 2025 at 10:35 PM
andrewdupont.net
Willful idiocy from someone who, if she thought about it for a moment, would realize that _everyone_ has the right to critique someone’s views; it rises to an “obligation” for Emma and Daniel because they get calls from journalists whenever Rowling opens her mouth
“However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right — nay, obligation — to critique me and my views in public,” Rowling continued. “Years after they finished acting in ‘Potter,’ they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.”
September 29, 2025 at 10:12 PM
andrewdupont.net
Much like how I dread the em-dash being used as evidence of AI-generated text (that’s just how I type!)… I quite like this lettering style and regret that, when I see it, my brain now instantly goes “oh, someone generated this image with AI”
A screenshot of part of a (presumably) AI-generated image with Jesus Christ (?) and a speech bubble above him that says: “Sweet Jesus, that’s not analysis.” The lettering style is all-caps sans-serif and is reminiscent of a pre-Helvetica font like Akzidenz Grotesk. I, Andrew Dupont, find this pleasing.
September 23, 2025 at 5:20 PM
andrewdupont.net
In all seriousness, I appreciate that Peacock talks to me like I'm an adult instead of vainly trying to soften the blow. Other services might've tried to bury the lede by calling this a "Rate Adjustment" or "Plan Right-Sizing" or similar nonsense.
Email from Peacock: Subject: Upcoming Price Increase Thank you for being a Peacock subscriber. We want to let you know about an upcoming price increase to your subscription.
August 7, 2025 at 5:10 PM
andrewdupont.net
What the fuck is this? What the fuck are we wasting our limited time on earth talking about? Do I avoid daily reckonings with my masculinity simply by not having the energy to care about dumb shit like this?
From an _Esquire_ article, emphasis mine: “The humble straw was invented— get this—about 5,000 years ago in ancient Sumer (modern-day Iraq), and they were made from gold and lapis lazuli. Think about that the next time your paper straw is disintegrating into your McDonald's Coke. The modern version was patented in 1888, and plastic ones entered our drinks in the mid-20th century. _Since then, men have been told to avoid them._“ The same _Esquire_ article, continued: ‘_Esquire_ has been on the front lines of this fight. In March 2001, among the “Rules” we frequently published, we said, “Rule No. 317: No straws.” In our Man's Guide to Drinking, we issued an even more severe edict: “No self-respecting man consumes his libation with a straw” Why? We never explain. But the assumption, I think, is that drinking from a straw is something a woman does, not a man. And I followed Esquire’s advice—it was an affectation that eventually became part of my personality. At a bar, I'd receive a drink with a straw and in dramatic fashion remove the item, slap it on the bar, and declare that “men don’t use straws.” ‘
August 6, 2025 at 7:02 PM
andrewdupont.net
If I were an Emmy voter I think I’d just stare at this list for 20 minutes and go “can we make it a six-way tie?”
Emmy nominees for outstanding guest actress in a drama series: • Jane Alexander, "Severance" • Gwendoline Christie, "Severance" • Kaitlyn Dever, "The Last of Us" • Cherry Jones, "The Handmaid's Tale" • Catherine O'Hara, "The Last of Us" • Merritt Wever, "Severance"
July 15, 2025 at 4:11 PM
andrewdupont.net
July 3, 2025 at 11:28 PM
andrewdupont.net
Protest sign: No kings (in general) /But even if you're cool with kings... / Specifically not THIS chucklefuck
June 14, 2025 at 6:36 PM
andrewdupont.net
This is a very strange way of saying “not enough people are paying for our magic-wand icons; hence we are bundling them so we can claim more revenue from delivering features users did not ask for.”
An email from Google: “We believe Al is foundational to the future of work and its transformative power should be accessible to every business and every employee, at an affordable price. That's why today we've decided to include the best of Google Al in Workspace Business and Enterprise plans, bringing the latest generative Al capabilities to our business customers without the need to purchase any add-ons.”
June 10, 2025 at 3:11 AM
andrewdupont.net
Maybe it’s just because every player worth watching for either the Pelicans or the Saints spent a lot of the season in street clothes, but I hear GMs say things like this and I think they’re delusional. This kid is gonna get hurt
The Jags consider it a two-for-one, with Hunter being this year's best receiver and cornerback prospect. “In our mind, we got two second overall picks this year,” said executive vice president of football operations Tony Boselli.
April 25, 2025 at 4:22 PM
andrewdupont.net
This feels part Faustian and part, like, incredibly lazy. AIs aren’t sentient and can’t write code without supervision… unless they’re offering to do chores I hate, in which case THANK GOD and here are all the repo secrets and see if you can fix the CI config while you’re at it
Advertisement of which I am skeptical: Dropbox, Lattice, and hundreds of other engineering orgs all rely on Meticulous because it generates and maintains an exhaustive suite of E2E Ul tests with zero developer effort. That means you'll never write, fix, or maintain a test ever again. Here's how it works: * Add a script tag to your local development, staging, and preview URL environments, so Meticulous can monitor your daily interactions with your app * Their Al engine uses that info to generate a continuously evolving test suite that adds or removes tests as needed and eliminates flakes
April 19, 2025 at 7:21 AM
andrewdupont.net
Poster: “Congressional Republicans are hitching their wagons to an idiot” Poster: “Recession: when you lose your job because none of the president’s friends will tell him his ideas are stupid”
April 6, 2025 at 1:54 AM
andrewdupont.net
Do not trust anyone who argues that birthright citizenship is not the plain reading of the 14th Amendment. As Evan Bernick explains, this isn’t a game.

reason.com/volokh/2025/...
Excerpt from the article: “I think I could beat the Dred Scott challenge, if I wanted to do so. I could come up with an elegant theory that explained why, on a consent-based account of citizenship, Dred Scott was wrongly decided and the Citizenship Clause nullified it. I think I could do more. I think I could convince you that it was consistent with some legitimate strand of originalism. Perhaps I could even convince you of a theory along these lines that would exclude the children of unlawful entrants from citizenship. “I'm not going to try, and I don't think that anyone should. That's because, as Robert Cover put it, ’Legal interpretation takes place in a field of pain and death.’ It's not a soccer field or a football field, it's not the Lands Between in Elden Ring. Play games with the Reconstruction Constitution, and people will suffer, bleed, die.”
April 4, 2025 at 4:42 PM
andrewdupont.net
I like how the TxTag fiasco from years back (and probably ongoing) is so notorious that text spammers are now using it for phishing. Just got this text and I had no trouble believing it until I saw the URL. (Redacted for safety.)
A text message: “Your toll payment for TxTag Lane must be settled by March 25, 2025. To avoid fines and the suspension of your driving privileges, kindly pay by the due date.” A link to a fake TxTag site is given.
March 25, 2025 at 4:55 PM
andrewdupont.net
If they were licensing my old-ass book on Prototype the way they ought to, I’d be due a mere handful of pennies. But I’ll pursue those pennies with the zeal of the newspaper delivery kid in _Better Off Dead_
Search engine results for LibGen, a large set of pirated books that Meta used to train their AIs instead of paying money like decent human beings. My book, _Practical Prototype and script.aculous_, is in the collection twice.
March 20, 2025 at 6:49 PM
andrewdupont.net
I am astonished that I — a person with an irrational fear of approaching those I admire but have not yet met — share a species with people who think it’s cool to do their shitty Christopher Walken impression in front of his goddamn face.
From _The Independent_’s interview with Christopher Walken: Everyone thinks they can do the Christopher Walken voice. That New York lilt. That round, honeyed purr, like a cat with plans. Try it yourself. Go on. Speak from the back of your throat. Elongate those vowels. What you shouldn’t do, though, is try it in front of him. “People come up to me in the street and they impersonate me to my face,” Walken says. “You know, they speak the way I speak.” The actor, 81 and spry, looks knowingly down the lens of his Zoom camera. “And I’m never sure what they’re doing at first. I think, ‘Why is he talking that way?’ But then I realise.” He lets out an ambivalent whine. This sounds a little cruel, I tell him, while fully aware that I was speaking pure Walkenese to a colleague mere minutes before our interview. “Oh, it happens all the time,” he sighs.
February 16, 2025 at 8:29 PM
andrewdupont.net
4. The site described above is disheartening for obvious reasons, but also strangely heartening? Even in the midst of an otherwise destroyed city block, there is often inexplicably one house that managed to survive the fires.
Screenshot from a map of properties in Altadena with icons indicating whether each was destroyed by the wildfires or is intact. One black icon (intact) is shown amidst a sea of red (destroyed) icons.
January 14, 2025 at 12:08 AM
andrewdupont.net
Instead of just assuming that code moved quickly on the IE team back in the day, I like to imagine that a code reviewer demanded a defense of the casing convention of `XMLHttpRequest` and _received one that satisfied them_.
An annotation of the JavaScript code new XMLHttpRequest() in which the “XML” is described as “patrician; dignified; trendy” while the “Http” is described as “plebeian; quotidian; stodgy.” It attempts to answer the unanswerable question of why “XML” is in all-caps but “Http” has only its initial “H” capitalized.
January 6, 2025 at 6:22 PM
andrewdupont.net
Biggest difference between Austin Nextdoor and Pasadena Nextdoor (as I experience it) is that some folks in Pasadena treat it much more like their own blog.

This post _eventually_ demonstrates its relevance to the community — dengue fever might be afoot! — but, man, did this person bury the lead.
A digest of a Nextdoor post: “Hello neighbors. On October 11th, I noticed a rash on my upper thighs...” The rest is hidden behind a “See more” link that I was reluctant to click.
November 18, 2024 at 5:54 PM
andrewdupont.net
Listen: Marty McFly has come unstuck in time.
Gamble House in Pasadena; a DeLorean is parked in the driveway in its full time-machine accoutrements.
September 29, 2024 at 12:57 AM
andrewdupont.net
I regret to inform all of you that your “hello world” tutorials would fail acceptance criteria, since they fail to include the comma that signifies direct address
(an excerpt from the 1978 book _The C Programming Language_) 1.1 Getting Started The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it. The first program to write is the same for all languages: Print the words hello, world This is a big hurdle; to leap over it you have to be able to create the program text somewhere, compile it successfully, load it, run it, and find out where your output went. With these mechanical details mastered, everything else is comparatively easy. In C, the program to print “‘hello, world"is #include <stdio.h> main() { printf("hello, world\n"); }
July 31, 2024 at 8:27 PM