pig-monkey.com - general

Link Log 2026-04-24

2026-04-24T00:00:00-07:00

stream_libarchive: workaround various types of locale braindeath

The machine didn’t take your craft. You gave it up.

Artificial Intelligence and the Public Domain

Between Cowardice and Violence

Greco-futurism long post

Apostate

Make VMs Great Again

2026-04-19T00:00:00-07:00

I have trust issues.

When Claude Code was released last year I was interested in playing with it, but struggled to find a way to run it in a secure, isolated manner. Trusting its own sandbox was obviously not in the cards. I explored other people’s solutions – mostly using things like Bubblewrap and Docker – but none of them fully satisfied me. It also quickly became evident that most of the value from using Claude Code comes from the --dangerously-skip-permissions argument, which gives it the ability to pursue a targeted task without constant permission requests. This requires even stricter isolation.

Eventually I landed on a full virtual machine being the only viable option. I reinstalled Vagrant for the first time in almost a decade and was off to the races.

I was a heavy user of Vagrant in the twenty-teens. I still really like the interface. But when revisiting it today the software felt rather heavy and clunky. It defaults to using VirtualBox, which has its own set of issues. There is a community provided libvirt plugin, but that seems largely abandoned. “Abandoned” seems to be the word for most of the Vagrant community – probably caused in part by the license change.

So for the past month I’ve been building Migrant, a lightweight VM management tool for running assumed-malicious AI agents in ephemeral environments. The heavy lifting is done by libvirt and QEMU. Migrant started out as just a way to get a more Vagrant-like interface with modern tooling. I use cloud-init to initialize the image, Ansible to configure it, and libvirt for the VM management. But because the whole raison d’être of the project is the fact that non-deterministic systems are inherently untrustworthy, Migrant expanded to have a suite of security features. It has network isolation, so the agent can’t compromise the rest of your LAN. It has shared folder isolation, so that the agent can’t exhaust the host disk or engage in any symlink traversal shenanigans. It has WireGuard tunnel support, implemented host-side such that the VM cannot bypass it (because why wouldn’t you want to run all your agents through Mullvad).

I think it’s pretty great. I use it regularly.

Migrant also serves as my testament as to how agentic coding should work. I’ve written it using Claude Code (initially running in a Vagrant-managed VM, but since the first public commit I’ve been building Migrant-in-Migrant), but it is the antithesis of “vibe coding”. I design the systems. I tell the agent how things should work. I review every line of code it produces. Most of the time I reject its first attempts. I take ownership of and responsibility for commits. The result, I think, is a pretty reasonable looking codebase.

My conclusion thus far is that coding agents are useful tools. They’re an accelerant. They’re great for exploring a problem space. There’s no going back to software development without them, but if they’re not being actively driven by an opinionated human with domain-knowledge and expertise, what they produce is mostly crap. Maybe that will change the future. For now, if you’re not challenging every line of output from the clankers, you’re doing it wrong. I suspect this applies equally to the application of LLMs in other areas, but personally I haven’t found LLMs to be useful for anything other than writing code.

Link Log 2026-03-05

2026-03-05T00:00:00-08:00

Death to Trust

Our Algorithmic Grey-Beige World

The Slow Death of the Power User

Plasma 6.4 Wayland vs X11, processor and power benchmarks

Improving Visual Processing During Deadly Force Encounters and Recommendations for Office

The effect of rear bicycle light configurations on drivers’ perception of cyclists’ presence and proximity

LoFi Festival x Echo World (Elijah Nang, 2023)

Tracking Investments with Ledger

2026-02-12T00:00:00-08:00

I have a few investment accounts I track with Ledger. Ledger has ways of tracking commodities that are too complex for me. My investments are index funds of different flavors. I neither know nor care to know what individual components they consist of. They mostly manage themselves. I do want to know their balance, but I do not care to think about them more than a few times per year, so the up-to-date-ness factor can be pretty low (which is the complete opposite of everything else that I track in Ledger).

I represent these things in Ledger using an asset account for the fund, with subaccounts for contributions, earnings, and fees.

Contributions into the accounts are entered as soon as they happen, since those contributions are being debited out of an account where the up-to-date-ness factor is critical. So a transfer from my bank account to my Roth IRA may look like this:

2025-02-01 Investment Company
    Assets:Invest:RothIRA:Contributions     $1000.00
    Assets:Bank:Checking

Earnings and fees are tracked, but I only make those entries about once per quarter. However, the investment companies provide monthly statements. That level of granularity can be useful to have stored. So when I perform my quarterly updates, I’ll download each of the monthly statements from the past quarter and use them to make three sets of entries – two per month for the three months in the quarter. For example, in January 2026 I might make entries for the 2025 Q4 activity such as:

2025-10-31 * Investment Company
    Assets:Invest:RothIRA:Earnings            $79.05
    Income:Invest:Earnings

2025-10-31 * Investment Company
    Expenses:Fees:Invest                       $1.05
    Assets:Invest:RothIRA:Fees

2025-11-30 * Investment Company
    Assets:Invest:RothIRA:Earnings           $103.25
    Income:Invest:Earnings

2025-11-30 * Investment Company
    Expenses:Fees:Invest                       $2.20
    Assets:Invest:RothIRA:Fees

2025-12-31 * Investment Company
    Assets:Invest:RothIRA:Earnings           $-13.82
    Income:Invest:Earnings

2025-12-31 * Investment Company
    Expenses:Fees:Invest                       $1.31
    Assets:Invest:RothIRA:Fees

Before making the first entry, I will ask Ledger for the balance of Assets:Invest:RothIRA as of 2025-10-01 and confirm that the value matches the October statement’s opening balance. I will then read the total earnings and fees from the October statement and make the two October entries in my journal. Then I ask Ledger for the balance of the account as of 2025-10-31 and make sure the reported value matches the statement’s closing balance. Rinse and repeat for the next two months. I can ignore any contributions mentioned on the statement because those entries were already entered in my journal whenever I made the contribution.

These transactions are marked as cleared with the * symbol as I write the entry because the data comes direct from the statement of past activity. There is no separate reconciliation process.

The PDF statements themselves then get stored, but (unlike receipts, invoices, and checks) that happens in a different repository.

Doing things this way allows me to query for the value of the accounts (as of the last quarter or so), have some idea of how they are performing, and keep track of fees. I don’t really care to know any more details than this, nor do I care to think about these accounts with any more frequency than this.

Tax Payments with Ledger

2026-02-11T00:00:00-08:00

How I record taxes in Ledger is pretty simple. In my demonstration of how I record salary payments the example entry included tax deductions that show the basic account structure.

2025-12-26 Acme Inc
    Assets:Bank:Checking                    $1000.00
    Expenses:Tax:Federal:FY2025              $200.00
    Expenses:Tax:State:FY2025                 $50.00
    Expenses:Insurance:Medical                $20.00
    Income:Salary

I pay state and federal taxes, so I have two main accounts: Expenses:Tax:Federal and Expenses:Tax:State.

Tax payments (and refunds for overpayments) can occur in years other than the tax years that the payments are related to. This requires some way to query transactions by tax years rather than just the posting date. You could do this by tagging the transactions, but I prefer to use a fourth account level to indicate the fiscal year. Thus my 2025 taxes live in Expenses:Tax:Federal:FY2025 and Expenses:Tax:State:FY2025.

If I pay an accountant to help me file taxes, I will log the payment against the Expenses:Tax:Preparation account, which uses the same fiscal year subaccount.

2026-02-01 The Accountant
    Expenses:Tax:Preparation:FY2025          $100.00
    Assets:Bank:Checking

If I receive a federal refund in March, I will debit it out of the appropriate tax account. I also tag these transactions with refund-tax so I can easily query them later.

2026-03-15 IRS
    ; 2025 Tax Refund
    ; :refund-tax:
    Assets:Bank:Checking                    $1000.00
    Expenses:Tax:Federal:FY2025

If instead I discover that I still owe federal taxes in March, I will credit the payment into the appropriate tax account. I tag these transactions with final-tax so I can easily query them later.

2026-03-15 IRS
    ; 2025 Federal Taxes
    ; :final-tax:
    Expenses:Tax:Federal:FY2025             $1000.00
    Assets:Bank:Checking

Some years I have made quarterly estimated tax payments instead of having taxes withheld from my paycheck. These entries look as you would expect, but I tag them with estimated-tax as well as the quarter number for future queries.

2025-09-02 IRS
    ; 2025 Q3 Estimated Tax
    ; :estimated-tax:q3:
    Expenses:Tax:Federal:FY2025             $1000.00
    Assets:Bank:Checking

The bottom line with all of this is that I can do a simple ledger balance fy2025 and see a complete and easy to understand picture of my 2025 taxes. Or I can run ledger balance expenses:tax:federal to see what I’ve paid in federal taxes over the past 14 years, broken out by year.

As with most things related to Ledger, this seems like pretty basic stuff when you’re doing it but becomes a superpower when you realize how most of the rest of the world lives.

Salary Tracking with Ledger

2026-02-10T00:00:00-08:00

In my previous descriptions of how I perform plain text accounting I did not discuss logging salary income with Ledger. My basic strategy is to create an entry with all the same data that appears on the paystub. The only number that actually matters to me is whatever amount ends up in my bank account, but it is still important to have withholdings documented for later querying.

A simplified entry would look like this:

2025-12-26 Acme Inc
    Assets:Bank:Checking                    $1000.00
    Expenses:Tax:Federal:FY2025              $200.00
    Expenses:Tax:State:FY2025                 $50.00
    Expenses:Insurance:Medical                $20.00
    Income:Salary

At the time of entry, I store a PDF of the paystub just like a receipt. (In Ye Olden Days this came from scanning a piece of paper, but now I just download the PDF from a web site.) This entry will be reconciled and get cleared with the * mark the next time I login to the bank account and verify the amount I received.

If I want to know how much money the employer or a government thinks I made last year, I can just ask Ledger for the balance of the Income:Salary account.

$ ledger balance income:salary --period 2025
        $-1270.00   Income:Salary

However, this number has no real bearing on my reality. What is much more useful to me is the ability to query how much money I actually received last year, e.g. my take-home pay. I can do this by asking Ledger to show the balance of the bank account, limiting it to postings that involved the Income:Salary account.

$ ledger balance assets:bank:checking -l "any(account =~ /Income:Salary/)" --period 2025
        $1000.00    Assets:Bank:Checking

If the only financial relationship you have with your employer is them giving you money in the form of a salary, then you could simplify this by just asking Ledger for the balance of transactions in the bank account from that payee.

$ ledger balance assets:bank:checking and "@Acme Inc" --period 2025

However, my employer sells stuff, and sometimes I buy that stuff, so for me the above query would show me my salary less my employee purchases. Which is mostly worthless.

When I receive a W-2 after the end of the year, I check all of its entries – gross pay, pre- and post-tax deductions, etc – against Ledger with a simple ledger balance "@Acme Inc" --period 2025. Having all this data stored locally in queryable plain text, rather than needing to access some web portal or read through various PDFs like a prehistoric savage, is a key life strategy for me.

Night Moves

2026-01-25T00:00:00-08:00

After falling out of the habit for a few months, I resumed my night runs at the end of December. I’ve been back into it for about a month now. It’s great, speed-running night city, just me and the coyotes.

New to this cycle, I now stop at one of those outdoor fitness areas near the end of my run and knock out some pull-ups. (It turns out using a bar is in fact easier than my normal finger pull-ups.) There’s usually a couple other weirdos there.

Link Log 2026-01-21

2026-01-21T00:00:00-08:00

When Sega Built the Most Extreme Arcade Cabinet

Beat Godfather Meets Glitter Mainman: William Burroughs Interviews David Bowie

I brush my teeth while standing on one foot.

2026-01-10T00:00:00-08:00

It takes about two minute to brush your teeth. These two minutes are an opportunity to improve balance and ankle strength. Sometimes I switch feet halfway through, other times I’m feeling more ambitious and will balance on one foot in the morning and the other that night.

Better Living Through Getting Stomped

2026-01-07T00:00:00-08:00

Four years ago I started going to a Thai massage parlor.

This is the practice where they walk on your back, drive their elbows and the heel of their palms into you, and sometimes tie your limbs into knots. My findings are that the older and smaller the Thai lady, the more brutally she stomps on you. I spend much of the session attempting to practice the Vipassana body sweep technique under duress and trying not to vocalize the pain. It’s great and I love it.

They would of course lessen the pressure if asked, but this is both incompatible with my male ego and would go against the teachings of the Bodhisattva in the incarnation known as Patrick Swayze.

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If I were a rich man I would go monthly, but I am not, so I limit myself to three or four times per year. I consider this a component of my prana-bindu training.

Just Another Saturday

2026-01-06T00:00:00-08:00

Two weeks ago I lost power from about 14:00 till about 21:00. This had negligible impact on my day. I took out my lamp and continued with the itinerary. My time was spent:

Drinking tea¹
Lifting Harambe
Reading Flaubert
Pursuing satori

It was just another Saturday afternoon.

I threw Lee and Brian at judo today. Lee is 14, and Brian is 13 but taller and heavier.

I told Sibylla & she asked what my teacher had said. I said he had said it was very good.

Sibylla said that didn’t sound very character-building. I said most authorities on child psychology said a child should be given encouragement and reinforcement. Sib said Bandura and who else? I said everybody else. I didn’t say that the authorities also said a parent had to be able to set limits because I was afraid she might suddenly decide to make up for lost time and set a lot of limits.

Sibylla said: Well just remember Richie, becoming the great judo champion is not the end of the story.

I said I didn’t think I was the great judo champion just because I could beat Lee and Brian at Bermondsey Boys Junior Judo.

Sibylla said: It isn’t a question of beating X and Y. What if there’s no one you can’t beat? It’s a question of perfecting your skill and achieving satori. What on earth are they teaching you in this class?

I said we mainly concentrated on learning how to throw people to the ground. Sib said: Must I do everything myself? She was grinning from ear to ear.

Helen Dewitt, The Last Samurai

Notes

↵ Of course I had to boil water on my gas stove like a savage instead of using the electric kettle.

Concerning the Tawashi

2025-12-29T00:00:00-08:00

I scrub my dishes and kitchen counter tops with a Kamenoko Tawashi. The palm fiber of the Tawashi is stiff enough for a good scouring, but does not scratch anything. It doesn’t hold onto food scraps the way some other brushes do. It dries relatively quickly when hung from its wire loop or placed in a two-piece soap dish, thus supporting my war on sponges. I use the #1 size, which is small enough to fit comfortably in my hand and to be shoved into drink ware. It is the perfect kitchen brush.

I use the same brush for about two years before replacing it. Every few months I toss it in the kitchen autoclave. I could keep them for longer, but I give my Tawashi enough unintentional haircuts when cleaning knives that I’m usually ready for a new one after a couple years.

The only other brushes I use in the kitchen are a bottle brush and straw brush. I also have one of those chainmail scrubbers for my cast iron, but the Tawashi gets used much more often.

The Tawashi, my Sal Suds spray, and my pink Mamison gloves complete my kitchen ablution armaments. (The pink color is critical for maximum cleaning.)

Tawashi are made by a number of manufacturers. Many are garbage. Those from Kamenoko are consistently good. I avoid it if it does not come in the orange wrapper with the picture of the turtle on it.

Link Log 2025-12-28

2025-12-28T00:00:00-08:00

Library of Useless

To Oil or not to Oil

The Woke Right Stands At the Door

The Smart Lifter’s Band Training System

The unpowered SSDs in your drawer are slowly losing your data

Rx Inspector: ProPublica’s New Tool Provides Drug Info the FDA Won’t

The Hero We Need

2025-12-16T00:00:00-08:00

Influencer is mistakenly billed as a horror film, but is actually an inspirational story of a young woman using her murder island to try to make the world a better place by pruning the insta-face-twat-tok-tuber population.

I eagerly awaited the sequel, and can now report that Influencers is even better than the first one. I am here for the Influencer Cinematic Universe.

Whoever composed the score clearly spent a lot of time listening to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo soundtrack (and who among us has not). Specifically they seem to be a big fan of track 4.

A Gentleman's Calling Card

2025-12-04T00:00:00-08:00

To my great surprise, my stock of calling cards is running low.

I had a batch of calling cards printed last December. I explicitly wanted calling cards, not business cards. Something with just my name, telephone, and email address. Nothing else. I ordered samples from the typical on-demand business card printing websites, but I didn’t like any of them. Most were too glossy or printed on too thin a stock. I knew I wanted something I could write on with a fountain pen (for this is what separates us from savages), in case I desired to share information in addition to what was printed on the card.

Eventually I realized that what I wanted was a letterpress printed card. I found a letterpress printer, requested samples, and confirmed they were perfect. Tasteful thickness, subtle off-white coloring. I placed an order.

This was done mostly as a joke. Who actually needs calling cards today? I figured the batch would last me years. Two weeks ago, as I was restocking a jacket pocket before going out for the evening, I was shocked to find the box mostly empty. It turns out, as a gentleman, a man about town, a bon vivant, calling cards are actually useful.

Anyway, I have my calling cards printed by Hoban. They sent out a holiday coupon today, so I reordered another batch.

If you see me at a soiree, ask for a card.

Link Log 2025-11-24

2025-11-24T00:00:00-08:00

Thumbs Up

Gunther, Christine and Otto

All that is solid melts into code

The Mass Shooters Are Performing for One Another

The personhood trap: How AI fakes human personality

America Surrenders in the Global Information Wars

The respective roles of Ninja and Shinobi

This Corrosion (Lisa Cuthbert, 2012)

How to Dance Goth

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