Marcus Butler
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marcusb.org
Marcus Butler
@marcusb.org
22 followers 20 following 27 posts
If you post hot takes, I'll probably block you. It's nothing personal.
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marcusb.org
"Feedback is a gift." Also a gift:

* The Trojan horse
* Sauron's One Ring
* Pandora's Box
September 3, 2025 at 5:35 PM
marcusb.org
Magic Smoke marcusb.org/posts/2025/0...

Sometimes you let out the magic smoke, sometimes it comes out on its own
A damaged circuit board with an integrated circuit with exposed silicon
August 24, 2025 at 1:36 PM
marcusb.org
Calling Myself With a Modem

Reading Hacker News Hug of Deaf, I was reminded of a time I built a custom notification system of sorts. I wrote a script to have a modem call my desk phone...

marcusb.org/posts/2025/0...
Calling Myself with a Modem
marcusb.org
April 10, 2025 at 11:26 PM
marcusb.org
Fighting #bots and #llm scrapers with Quixotic.

Quixotic is a set of tools for feeding fake content to robots.txt-ignoring LLM content stealers and other bots, particularly suited to static site generator users.

The core tool has no server-side dependencies.

marcusb.org/hacks/quixot...
Quixotic
Quixotic is a nonsense generator designed to help static website operators confuse and confound bots and content-stealing LLM scrapers.
marcusb.org
December 26, 2024 at 2:54 PM
marcusb.org
Its #chili time.

Recipe: marcusb.org/posts/2024/1...
December 13, 2024 at 1:13 AM
marcusb.org
I just completed "Hoof It" - Day 10 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/10

github.com/marcus0x62/a...
Day 10 - Advent of Code 2024
adventofcode.com
December 12, 2024 at 7:22 PM
Reposted by Marcus Butler
spavel.bsky.social
Well this is grim
weird interaction with a student this week. they kept coming up with weird "facts" ("greek is actually a combination of four other languages") that left me baffled. i said let's look this stuff up together, and they said ok, i'll open a search bar, and they opened... ch*tgpt and i was like "this is not a search bar" and they were like "yes it is, you can search for anything in here" the thing that made me feel crazy is like. every kid that's using this as a browser is getting new BESPOKE false "facts." this isn't "a widespread misconception about X that stems from how it's taught in schools." each individual kid is now hooked into a Nonsense Machine with the "widespread misconception about X" you can start at a baseline. like, ok, in tenth grade we all talk about X thing from history, and that leaves us with some misguided concepts about X, but we can correct that as students get broader understandings of the world but with this, each child is getting UNIQUE wrong facts they are SURE are correct... because they did what we told them to do! they "looked it up"! they got it from somewhere! it's not a kid making up a belief on hearsay and assumption... it's something they think they LEARNED this kid was extremely combative with me, and i understood why. i was sitting in front of him and telling him that the internet, a computer, technology, all these supposedly authoritative things... were wrong. and that i, one person, was right. he basically *couldn't* believe me. 8 135 3.8K 97K ... stillorangecrushed @stilloranged. 7h he decided that i was simply a teacher who'd made a mistake. he could check it, after all! he could look it up! he could find the REAL facts. i obviously hadn't done that, i was just an adult who'd decided i was smarter than him. hence the defensiveness. like i said: i understood 5 760 3.2K 82K stillorangecrushed @stilloranged. 7h ... it was so fucking rough. i did my best, but i am one person trying to work against a campaign of misinformation so vast that it fucking terrifies me. this kid is being set up for a life lived entirely inside the hall of mirrors
July 6, 2024 at 10:15 PM
marcusb.org
I just completed "Disk Fragmenter" - Day 9 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/9

github.com/marcus0x62/a...
Day 9 - Advent of Code 2024
adventofcode.com
December 9, 2024 at 4:49 PM
marcusb.org
I just completed "Resonant Collinearity" - Day 8 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/8

github.com/marcus0x62/a...
Day 8 - Advent of Code 2024
adventofcode.com
December 8, 2024 at 1:07 PM
marcusb.org
I just completed "Bridge Repair" - Day 7 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/7

github.com/marcus0x62/a...
Day 7 - Advent of Code 2024
adventofcode.com
December 7, 2024 at 4:54 PM
marcusb.org
I just completed "Guard Gallivant" - Day 6 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/6

github.com/marcus0x62/a...
Day 6 - Advent of Code 2024
adventofcode.com
December 7, 2024 at 1:44 AM
marcusb.org
I just completed "Print Queue" - Day 5 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/5

github.com/marcus0x62/a...
Day 5 - Advent of Code 2024
adventofcode.com
December 5, 2024 at 3:38 PM
marcusb.org
I just completed "Ceres Search" - Day 4 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/4

"Brute Force"

github.com/marcus0x62/a...
Day 4 - Advent of Code 2024
adventofcode.com
December 4, 2024 at 12:31 PM
marcusb.org
I just completed "Mull It Over" - Day 3 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/3

Is it cheating to use regex or just lazy?

github.com/marcus0x62/a...
Day 3 - Advent of Code 2024
adventofcode.com
December 3, 2024 at 11:47 AM
marcusb.org
I just completed "Red-Nosed Reports" - Day 2 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/2

github.com/marcus0x62/a...
Day 2 - Advent of Code 2024
adventofcode.com
December 2, 2024 at 12:03 PM
marcusb.org
I just completed "Historian Hysteria" - Day 1 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/1
December 1, 2024 at 5:55 PM