iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 02/10/2026

Awww yeah, time to check out the Allmusic new releases newsletter. Wonder what records are highlighted this week?

A stock photo of someone scraping a plate of food into the trash.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 02/10/2026

Dang, some excellent albums released on this day.

An "on the day" graphic from Plex, saying Kool & the Gang's Live at PJ's came out 55 years ago.

An "on the day" graphic from Plex, saying Public Enemy's Apocalypse '91 came out 35 years ago.

An "on the day" graphic from Plex, saying Fountain of Wayne's self-titled album came out 30 years ago.

An "on the day" graphic from Plex, saying Phono-Comb's Fresh Gasoline came out 30 years ago.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 06/08/2026

Yo @mlb.com this fucking sucks, keep this rancid shit away from me! Also, have you forgotten what happens when baseball gets in bed with gamblers, you historically ignorant bozos?

Screenshot of the MLB app, showing the Mariners/Tigers game. It features a banner saying "betting odds now available", which is awful.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 26/03/2026

Appreciate the resemblance to Basehead.

The cover of Basehead's "Play With Toys" album.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 27/02/2026

To The Teeth's FFO on this album are killing me: totheteeth.substack.com/p/to-the-tee... To The Teeth rules, by the way.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 26/02/2026

I love it when the grocery store near me puts out this sign because I get to think about this tweet.

A sign at a grocery store saying "sushi with clean ingredients prepared fresh daily"

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 23/01/2026

What stage of capitalism is "ads on fruit"?

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 08/01/2026

Shades of this famous letter.

A legal letter from the Cleveland Stadium Corporation on their letterhead. It's James N. Bailey, general counsel, responding to Dale O. Cox, Esquire. The letter states:

"Dear Mr. Cox:

Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters. Very truly yours, Cleveland Stadium Corp."

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 14/12/2025

My random campaign generator just produced a couple bangers for names. (deleted and reposted because I forgot alt text)

A screen shot from the title page of my random campaign generator. It includes the phrase "Gazetteer of Fat Hotdog" and has a village on it labeled "Mansfork".

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 09/11/2025

Fuck Everything, We're Doing Eight Cheeses

A picture of a frozen pizza proudly proclaiming that it's an eight cheese pizza.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 07/11/2025

Time to do the second half of this project: the creation of a gazetteer PDF to go along with the map. Been working on the title page. ("Enthusiastic Man" is a randomly generated name which is just a random adjective and random noun.) (repost because I forgot the alt text last time)

A screen shot of a PDF. The image on it is a random chunk of a crudely drawn fantasy map. The typography is designed to resemble old TSR modules. The title on it is "Campaign Module K4. Gazetteer of Enthusiastic Man, by Joshua Buergel. A Campaign for new characters." There's a bunch of boilerplate "welcome to adventure" stuff below that is, frankly, just fantasy-flavored lorum ipsum.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 26/10/2025

Rivers are now no longer perfect 60 degree turns. (The butts remain.)

A randomly generated map. The rivers have curves, while before they were just sharp angles. The hills, alas, still look like butts.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 23/10/2025

Well, this dumb thing now has points of interest - towns, cities, all kinds of stuff.

A randomly generated map. The artwork is exceptionally crude. But it now has crudely drawn towns, what looks like maybe a terrible donkey rendering, some strange clouds for some reason, the worst keep ever drawn, and other miscellaneous fantasy stereotypes.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 12/10/2025

I added deserts to my map generator. Underlying this is a crude climate model (along with an elevation model).

A randomly generated map, using my crude graphics. It features a crude river, some crude mountains, a couple crude volcanos, some crude hills that look like butts, assorted crude forests, and in the corner, some hexes that are yellow in a crude approximation of a desert.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 05/10/2025

Uh-oh. I seem to have created floods by accident.

A randomly generated fantasy map. Most of the surface area is just water. This was not intentional.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 05/10/2025

While I anxiously watch the Mariners game, I also added forests into this thing.

A randomly generated fantasy hex map. It includes poorly drawn mountains, hills that look like butts, rivers that are just blue lines, and now forests that are sub-kindergarten quality.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 02/10/2025

Well, latest version adds volcanos, which is fun. Also, cleaned up some things with river generation, although it's still not quite where I want it. Oh, and I added some hex numbers.

Another map from my map generator, once again replete with hills that look like butts. It also now features extremely crude renditions of volcanos as well as hex numbers.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 29/09/2025

Introducing: ugly lakes. This map generator is getting more and more map like (after you adjust for the ugly/butt-tastic "artwork" that I put together).

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 24/09/2025

Well, rivers are working. Ugly, but working. Next step, probably lakes, and then probably making the terrain types more sophisticated.

An ugly randomly generated map. There's a wan blue streak on it, zig-zagging in some horrible pantomime of a river. There are lots of mountain peaks and things that look like butts but are hills.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 14/09/2025

Can't tell if the categorization on my list app got this one extremely wrong or extremely right.

A screen shot of a grocery list app, showing a package of shredded cheese in the "Personal Care" category.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 06/09/2025

Fixing the dino panel bot is going great.

A screen shot of a Discord message from "dinopanelbottest". It is of the phrase "Today is a good day I think for sending a panel" with a panel from Dinosaur Comics featuring T-Rex saying "Cramming chocolate bars into ice cream" in a dream bubble. Alas, the background of the comic is solid green instead of white, although honestly, it's kind of a pleasant green that sits nicely against T-Rex's lime green skin. I'll confess, here in the alt text, that I'm tempting to leave it as it is.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 05/09/2025

The hack I used to get a random comic for my DInosaur Comics bot broke (Go Comics has removed their random page), so I'm going to have to go directly to qwantz.com to get my comic. Fine, whatever. It did, however, lead to a delight in inspecting the page.

A screen shot of T-Rex, of Dinosaur Comics, rendered in text, placed in a comment on the page for qwantz.com

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 01/09/2025

I'm sorting through my playtest junk bin and came across these cards from an early version of Fox in the Forest. The top row was from a version that included a mana economy and spells. The others are from when it still had Cribbage DNA in it (these modified the scoring rules each hand).

Picture of nine prototype cards. Two vaguely describe spells in a trick-taking game. Seven are random pseudo-Cribbage scoring rules.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 15/08/2025

Honestly, I don't know why I look at this.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 06/08/2025

All right, I rounded up a little. But as promised, royalties from Fox in the Forest to The Trevor Project this quarter. @czechgames.com, how are you going to make it right?

Screenshot of a donation to The Trevor Project for $1100.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 05/06/2025

My kid shared this phylogenetic diagram that a classmate generated with me and it hasn't left my brain.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 09/05/2025

We talked about this, Plex.

A screenshot of Plex's On This Day feature, showing Live at Ernesto's by The Slackers was released 25 years ago.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 08/05/2025

Plex, I do not like this feature.

A screen shot of Plex, showing an info bubble telling me that 99% by Meat Beat Manifesto was released 35 years ago. An event that I recall, unfortunately.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 03/05/2025

That's the third variation I've seen of that same image! The one on their home page right now is less messed up (but still has the faces wrong), and then there's one in a preview link that is missing a pip and still has a die with two fives. It's definitely slop.

A picture from the Mensa Mind Games convention with dice that have a 4 side next to a 3 side.

A picture from the Mensa Mind Games convention with a die with two 5 faces, and another with two 5 faces where a pip is missing on one of them.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 11/02/2025

Also, a side effect is that my phone is going to fill up with panel 2s.

A panel 2 from Dinosaur Comics, with T-Rex saying "We can do better!".

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 23/08/2024

This stuff is startlingly wack. I didn't expect much, but something in the range of "melted Jolly Rancher with hints of Hot Tamale" would have been fine. I like trash. Instead, they leaned hard on their "spice" and overshot "gross but drinkable" and ended up with "candle, but worse".

A photo of the Fanta Beetlejuice "spiced apple" soda. It features black and white stripes and a photo of the character.

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 23/07/2024

This is pointless, but whatever.

A screen shot of the feedback form for Google's AI summary feature. The feedback reads: "I hope there's a person reading this, but I'm afraid that it goes nowhere. Or, hilariously, you get your idiotic "AI" to summarize the feedback, in which case the acid contempt I hold you all in is unlikely to come through. But, just in case it's a person reading this, I don't think the technological and environmental disaster that is the gen AI fad is your fault. But, you have got to stop. It's just going to keep making everything worse. You know this. Please. Stop."

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 21/07/2024

You can give Google feedback about their AI glurge at the top of search results.

A screenshot of the feedback form for Google's "AI summary". The feedback reads: "How much did you heat the earth to generate this completely worthless wad of garbage text? Does it feel good to make something worse than useless which also destroys the public Internet and wastes vast resources? Are you proud of it? Will you look back in ten years, everything having gotten worse for your efforts, and think "well, at least the C- suite made a few extra billion"? Stop working on this. You're better than this."

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jbuergel @fiverandomsongs.com · 14/04/2024

Just played through Morrison Game Factory with Madeleine. I liked it a lot, plenty of satisfying puzzles in it. (Moo did not help.)

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