boost: Adam Engst Learns Seven Agentic Web Browsers Can't Count
Nov. 14th, 2025 03:57 pmfrom someone who's a realist-for-now yet also wants to believe.
Adam Engst on Can Agentic Web Browsers Count?
tl;dr No, given a readily available data set on a webpage, they can't.
The sweetest and scariest part was his sympathy for Copilot's very anxious inner monologue as it tried to come up with answers while working to a deadline that nobody had created.
When it comes to system prompts, the anxious tone of Copilot’s internal responses suggests a “ship now, apologize later, if you’re caught” system prompt that, if reflected in a real-world workplace, would be problematic. Obviously, AIs don’t have feelings that can be hurt and won’t complain to HR, but such a culture tends to encourage people to cut corners and make poor decisions that compromise quality and customer service. If Copilot is any indication, the same is true for AIs.
Dear Holly Poly Creator(s),
Nov. 14th, 2025 04:48 pmMy AO3 account is Settiai.
First of all, relax! I'm far from being picky, and I can pretty much guarantee that I'll love whatever you decide to write me. These are nothing but guidelines, for you to take to heart or ignore to your heart's content. Also, hey! You're creating a fanwork for me! About a poly relationship that I love! That's automatically a good reason for me to love you, no matter what. So, please, keep that in mind. Trust me, you can pretty much do no wrong. ♥
That said, I thought that I'd elaborate a bit on my requests and provide some general prompts in case, like me, you're the type of person who likes to have something to work with. If you're not that type of person, it's totally fine with me if you skip over anything/everything that I've included in this letter. Feel free to use and/or ignore as much of this as you want.
( General Likes/Dislikes )
( Baldur's Gate )
( Black Ships - Jo Graham )
( Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Related Fandoms )
( Critical Role: Exandria )
( Doctor Who )
( Dragon Age )
( Gargoyles )
( The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power )
( Mass Effect )
( Star Wars )
Department of Couldn't Make It Up
Nov. 14th, 2025 09:31 pmThe House of Lords have been taking evidence on the Assisted Suicide Bill.
Disabled folk to Parliament: The possibility of being compelled into assisted suicide scares us
Pro-assisted suicide mob to Parliament: a few disabled people coerced into assisted suicide is still worth it.
Honestly couldn't make it up
A Hundred Miles Through the Desert - Chapter Twenty Six
Nov. 14th, 2025 04:27 pmRating: T
Characters: Sons of Feanor, Elrond, Feanor, Daeron, various others
Warnings: n/a
Summary: After years in Lórien, Maglor and Maedhros are ready to return to their family and to make something new with their lives--but to move forward, all of Fëanor's sons must decide how, or if, they can ever reconcile with their father.
Note: This fic is a direct sequel to High in the Clean Blue Air.
Prologue / Previous Chapter
your phone is a fake house
Nov. 14th, 2025 08:54 pmThe wooden stairs in my childhood home had a creaky step. I can still vividly picture the way it groaned under pressure. It was such a loud, incriminating sound that I would usually hop over it on my midnight runs to the kitchen. Otherwise, I would wake the entire house.
It takes an incredibly intimate familiarity to develop that kind of habit. Once you really start knowing a place, you develop your own navigational idiosyncrasies like that. My roommate says he would always grab the railing in a particular way when walking upstairs in his childhood home.
I also see myself developing unique behaviors in the digital space. Only I have the motor memory to immediately open the notes app on my phone. A stranger would have to look for it, but my fingers subconsciously understand where to go. Much like with my childhood home, I have an embodied knowledge of my home screen.
That phrase—“home screen”—has been on my mind recently. The language of the smartphone invites you to think of it as a house. You can “choose your wallpaper,” just like with a real house; you can “lock” your phone like a front door. The metaphor is that this is a private refuge from the outside world. It is a tiny dwelling in your pocket, which you can customize like an actual dwelling to affirm your identity.1 In doing so, you “tame” the technology, making it feel natural in your everyday life.
The phone, like your house, is a focal point. Everything revolves around it. When you need comfort in the physical world, you go back to the home; in the digital world, you go back to your home screen. There is something calming about a deeply personal environment. It provides a grounding presence which we can retreat to.
A computer, meanwhile, remains more functional. Phrases like “desktop” and “taskbar” create a metaphor that this is a workstation; you have “trash” and “files.” Of course, there are still work-like aspects to the phone and home-like aspects to the computer, but the phone takes on a far more domestic role in our lives. It is not a utility: it is an extension of self.
In his book, The Poetics of Space, the philosopher Gaston Bachelard argues that our intimate spaces are deeply intertwined with our imagination and sense of being. When you curl up in a comfortable nook in your home, for example, your consciousness is gathered inward. You have control over this small space, in contrast to the wild, turbulent outdoors. You can focus attention differently in miniature.
As I move between apps on my phone, I notice a vague emotion that I am entering different rooms, each with its own character. The settings app is the basement; the dating apps are the bedroom. No matter where I go, though, there is that coziness of being in a nook. This is my corner of the world; I am free to do what I want. I can let my mind relax, for I am safe and secure from the vast, terrifying world.
Of course, phones only give us the illusion of privacy and control. If apps are rooms, then every room in your house has someone peeking through the blinds. And you might be able to customize your experience to some degree, but automatic updates are a reminder that you don’t really have agency over your cute little space.
The veneer of domesticity means we let our guard down, just like we do in our actual homes—and without defenses, we fall in love. I adore the squeaky step in my childhood home because it’s a sign that I belong to this place; this is a part of who I am. It’s impossible to avoid being enchanted by the small connections we have to spaces, meaning that we will always extend some topophilia to the digital domain.
And yet this love is a projection. The phone creates a sensation of intimacy without providing true intimacy. On a rational level, we know this; but our actual experience happens in an ambient scroll state. Now there’s a dissonance between feeling like your phone is a home and knowing that it’s not.
Metaphors and user interfaces shape reality. I don’t feel as much tension with my computer, because I implicitly understand it as a workspace. If we learn to regard our phones the same way, we can reclaim power over them. But that starts with how you’re framing your thoughts, so be clear with yourself: you are not domesticating your phone—it is trying to domesticate you.
Werning, Stefan. “The home screen as an anchor point for mobile media use: Technologies, practices, identities.” (2016).
Well, that was sub-optimal
Nov. 14th, 2025 08:55 pmAfter three days in a row of not getting to sleep until after the sun was up (and then being woken mid-morning), I've basically spent the entire day asleep, apart from answering several phone calls from my sister and then almost immediately falling asleep again*.
I answered those sitting cross-legged on the bed, and I fell asleep in that position and then slept that way for several hours. My hips are NOT happy with me.
Hallowe'en Parties
Oct. 27th, 2025 10:02 amOur original plan was to go out on Friday night, taking the train right after I was done with work, but

This is the only picture of Laila in her costume that we got--no matter what we could not get her to look at the camera--and for a chunk of the event she was pretty anxious. There were a lot of people out and about on the streets, looking at the booths of people selling farmer's market foods and arts and crafts, but once we got past that and went to some of the stores that were giving out candy, that's when Laila really got into it. She still wanted me to carry her for a big chunk of it but once she realized people were handing out candy, that's when she got down and interacted with people. Her best interaction was probably with the people at a driving school, where she actually said "Trick or Treat!" to them. They were sitting down at the other end of the room after a long morning of handing out candy, though, which might be why.
When we passed by Batavia Creamery, though, Laila got really animated and asked for ice cream, so we went in and got candy and then stayed for a treat.
We walked up and down Wilson seeing if there were any more stores offering candy, getting Laila a couple more pieces, and then called it a day and went back home. While Laila played with Poppa and
Down below was the bar, manned by

We got drinks, hung out, and chatted with people. That was basically the theme of this party--it was much more low-key than last year, since last year there people were running around trying to find all the clues and piece them together, but this year the one mystery was the password and, well, I already mentioned how that went for us. We had a nice time but only ended up staying a couple hours because
A lovely start to the weekend, but kind of a disappointing ending. Laila had a good time, though, and I'm glad I got some walks to look at those trees.
Wounded Christmas Wolf
Nov. 14th, 2025 11:43 am
It is free book time again! This is a Christmas romance, a full length novel unrelated to my other series (though obviously it has shifter-romance-style werewolves in it). The link will work until the book goes live on Amazon on the 21st.
This book went through heavier rewrites than my books normally do, so please let me know if you notice any typos or inconsistencies and I will try to fix them!
As always, no obligation, but feel free to download and enjoy.
Free download from Bookfunnel:
https://dl.bookfunnel.com/1c4ety8smh
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: DCU (Comics)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bernard Dowd/Tim Drake, Tim Drake/Dick Grayson, Stephanie Brown/Tim Drake
Characters: Tim Drake
Additional Tags: Limericks, Poetry, Limerick Cycle, Birthday, Sweet Sixteen
Summary:
Only the really lucky characters get to turn 16 more than once.
Guardian: fanart: Da Qing Works
Nov. 15th, 2025 09:33 amFandom: Guardian (TV)
Rating: G-rated
Notes: Pencil/coloured-pencil sketch, photographed and edited/tinted.
Tags: Beginner Art, Da Qing with cat ears and tail.
Summary: Riffing off the DreamWorks logo, but with Da Qing.
( Da Qing Works )
(no subject)
Nov. 14th, 2025 03:23 pm(Sorry I haven't been updating these. In my defense, (a) my routine got thrown out of whack, but more importantly (b) CoViD levels stayed REALLY LOW all summer. Now they're STILL really low, but it's cold season, so we're back in the game of "Is it CoViD, or just a cold, such as we would have laughed off before 2020?")
Recent Reading
Nov. 14th, 2025 11:43 amLatest novel in the Rip Through Time series, in which a Vancouver B.C. police detective finds herself transported to 1870 Edinburgh, where she falls in with an undertaker who does forensic pathology work on the side, and they solve crimes together. This one is something like novel 5 in the series (with several additional novellas).
I wrote the... *checks AO3 to confirm* ...yes, still the only fic for Mallory and Gray (the Canadian detective and the Scottish undertaker). And every year since I wrote it, I know when a new novel has been published because there's a small influx of readers who turn to AO3 to self-medicate for the fact that Mallory and Gray still haven't gotten together yet. So I already knew from this year's comments that they don't get together in this book, either!
AND YET.
AND YET. (spoilers)
Gray proposes a marriage of convenience, Mallory turns it down because she's holding out for a love match, Gray begins to say something about maybe in time she will develop feelings for him -- but cannily phrased, so that she doesn't realize HE ALREADY HAS feelings for HER, and she storms out. AND THEN. He writes her a letter explaining all! Which she doesn't get because of murder mystery shenanigans! Which is very Jane Austen of him, but he NEVER REWRITES THE LETTER, NOR CONFESSES WHAT WAS IN IT, and we're left with them deciding on the last page that if they can't come up with a better option by the time his sister gets married, he and Mallory will do a marriage of convenience after all -- WHICH IS VERY PINING IDIOTS OF BOTH OF THEM AND I WOULD GO AND BITCH TO THE ONLY PERSON ON AO3 WHO WROTE FIC ABOUT THEM. EXCEPT THAT PERSON IS ME. SO HERE I AM. BITCHING TO YOU.Yes, I'll read the next book in the series. No, they still won't have gotten together. Yes, I'll be as mad about it as I am right now. ARGH. (
E. Pauline Johnson (Mohawk), The Moccasin Maker (1913)
I have the impression that if I was Canadian I might have been more familiar with Johnson before this, as she was an early light on Canada's literary scene. She was more famed for her poetry than her stories, but I first heard of her because Chelsea Vowell (Metis) recommended the story "A Red Girl's Reasoning", which is included in this collection.
Johnson was mixed race herself, and a fair number of these stories feature protagonists in mixed-race marriages, sometimes happy, sometimes not. A lot of her characterizations are idealized, but I found the stories entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking. I very much enjoyed how often she centered indigenous women, and how she routinely insisted on their agency and dignity -- "A Red Girl's Reasoning" is a prime example.
I also enjoyed that chinuk wawa made the occasional appearance! Johnson lived her later life in Vancouver, British Columbia, which was within the region in which chinuk was commonly spoken. Her use of the language is a little different than what I was taught down here, but still entirely comprehensible to me. (And for people unfamiliar with chinuk wawa, she explains the terms that can't be deduced from context).
Warning for those who check out the Gutenberg edition: the included foreword about Johnson is as racist as all get out.
Rachel Poliquin (illus. Nicholas John Frith), The Superpower Field Guide: BEAVERS (2018)
Breathless, dynamic, humorous, chock-full-of-facts middle-readers book about why beavers are extraordinary. I learned a bunch of stuff, and have to agree: beavers are extraordinary! The illustrations are in a deft, mid-twentieth-century cartooning style that I found charming. Will definitely check out other books in the series.
Mirror Mirror
Nov. 14th, 2025 02:43 pmThe adventures conclude! Spoilers for the earlier ones ahead!
( Read more... )
multiple sclerosis and now lupus
Nov. 14th, 2025 11:26 amSee also the paper in Translational Medicine (paywalled).
