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Paul Ford

@ftrain.bsky.social
26K followers 2K following 1.3K posts

Aboard.com and Ftrain.com. Not steadily here. If you need me: ford@ftrain.com.

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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 26/09/2026
whatever is going on inside large language models I no longer want to know about it
Claude output: I found the causes: the hand job's visibility was flickering based on momentary input backlog, and stored items weren't persisting on reload, while the wagon never retired because cheap old buildings always beat newer ones on output-per-dollar. Now I'll check what the test asserts about hiding before changing the logic.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 16/09/2026
hey I heard you like sankey diagrams that show huge populations making terrible decisions
A very complicated Sankey diagram showing the usage of electricity in the United States. Or the left are sources of energy and on the right are consumers, so, for example, nuclear is on the left and residential is on the right. Petroleum dominates.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 11/09/2026
looks like the singularity is here folks
A terminal transcript from Claude Code. It reads:

Ran 1 shell command

Monitor event: "Wait for the in-flight crawl, then take the final dump"
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 05/09/2026
If you’re a Flatbush-area mutual aid type, this self-organizing distro happens every Friday at 5PM across the street from Kings Theatre. If you want to help show up and hand out food or clothes, or just donate via Venmo. Or cook!
FLATBUSH FOOD and
CLOTHING
DISTRIBUTION
Every Friday 5 - 6 p.m.
Outside 1024 Flatbush Ave 
Join us for free hot meals, drinks, clothing, toys, hygiene products, and more! Feel free to bring stuff to share!
DONATE: @Flatbush-Neighbors on VenmoDISTRIBUCIÓN DE
COMIDA Y ROPA EN
FLATBUSH

Cada viernes desde 5 a 6 de la tarde
Afuera de 1024 Flatbush Ave ¡Únete a nosotres para comida caliente preparada, bebidas, ropita, juguetes, productos higiénicos y más! ¡También siempre se aceptan donaciones
para compartir con otros!

DONAR:
@Flatbush-Neighbors Venmo
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 03/09/2026
A neat project at work: We built an archive for Lapham's Quarterly as part of its (gradual, ongoing) relaunch—full access if you subscribe. It's been nice to see and read it again. Ping if you find bugs. archive.laphamsquarterly.org (they relaunched temporarily at laphamsquarterly.substack.com).
A PDF viewer showing the cover of Lapham's Quarterly with a trading vessel, and a Greco-Roman sculpture on the next page. Tons of issues above, typical web nav. It's supposed to be a very accessible site but it's tricky working with PDFs so we did the best we could.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 03/09/2026
I firmly believe all online discourse reduces to this Perry Bible Fellowship comic. pbfcomics.com/comics/weeab...
Cartoon. 

Man standing at a chart: If we waste anymore time on "weeaboo," we'll be bankrupt by the end of the
month! 

Random other guy: Did someone
just say "Weeaboo?" (Now holding a paddle.) Cause I think I just heard Someone say "Weeaboo"

Now and crowd is lined up with paddles chanting “WEE-A-BOO! WEE-A-BOO!” And the original speaker is tied to a pipe with his pants down about to get smacked.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 08/08/2026
worst chili peppers album ever
A small gas station named “Mobilubrication”
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 02/08/2026
Queens Night Market!
People in the grass at night with food stalls behind
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 21/07/2026
I finally found the spawn point.
A bookstore bookshelf with a bunch of psychology books; a sign says “Eating Disorders Start here.”
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 15/07/2026
Toronto is beautiful this time of year.
The tip of a plane wing over an orange gray sea of wildfire fog. Nothing else to see.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 31/05/2026
every time I take the ferry from the Rockaways I end up vibe coding on my phone for half the trip and the other half looking out the window and thinking “the sea changes a man”
Bog standard boat shot from the upper deck of a NYC ferry. Buncha water and sun and the captains perch or cabin or deck or whatever up front aforedecks or squidwards or whatever the front is, land way over to the right which is Brooklyn but also Manhattan. Or maybe Queens and Manhattan. It’s confusing from this angle. Anyway you’re not missing much in this photo except sun and wind.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 31/03/2026
we used to live in a society
A screenshot from the song Jerk Out (1990) by The Time. A night scene in a dark room with skyscrapers out the window. Morris Day has told a beautiful woman he wants to sleep alone and asked her to leave her number by his “data bank,” which appears to be in the Compaq Presario line, and is the best-lit thing in the room. She is unhappy with this situation and about to leave. The eye cannot look away from the laptop. It is a sad situation but the laptop looks wonderful.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 09/03/2026
No one in my family is taking this seriously.
A pink middle aged man in a gray T-shirt with gray chin stubble has some gauze and a bandaid on his forehead above his left eye. His hair is sticking up ridiculously. It's also gray. His face looks like someone who is kind of an idiot who got injured by a drum machine.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 24/02/2026
I have lost all the other hats. Now I must wear the final hat.
A mass-produced knit cap in extremely bright blue, yellow, white, and red stripes, with a large blue, yellow, and red pom-pom on top. The forehead-covering part of the cap reads, in enormous white knit-pixelated letters, OLD BAY.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 22/02/2026
it really is a funny city
Subject line/previews of emails from NYC public schools in Russian, French, and Bengali.

Обратите внимание: школы будут закрыты без дистанционного обучения в понедельник, 23.02.2026. Проверьте schools.nyc.gov для получения последней информации о планах по открытию школ.

Veuillez noter que les écoles seront fermées sans enseignement à distance le lundi 23 février 2026. Allez sur schools.nyc.gov pour obtenir les dernières informations sur les plans de réouverture des écoles.

অনুগ্রহ করে লক্ষ্য করবেন: সোমবার, 02/23/2026 তারিখ, রিমোট শিক্ষা-নির্দেশনায় অংশগ্রহণ ছাড়াই স্কুলগুলো বন্ধ থাকবে। স্কুল পুনরায় খোলার পরিকল্পনা সংক্রান্ত সর্বসাম্প্রতিক তথ্যের জন্য schools.nyc.gov দেখুন।
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 20/02/2026
A terrible taxonomy manager
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 20/02/2026
Underneath I have the taxonomic hierarchical CMS of my dreams!
Screenshot of a nested list of content nodes.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 20/02/2026
Still thinking about this signed photo sitting in the otherwise empty Boston VRBO.
A black and white framed photo of Richard Grant and Richard Griffiths, signed in gold pen. A quote from Withal & I is printed atop Griffiths: "It's the most devastating moment in a young man's life, when he quite reasonably says to himself, 'I shall never play The Dane!'"
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 18/02/2026
Here’s how I expect my day to go.
Three-panel cartoon, from Achewood. A simply rendered cartoon bear walks into a room. His sweater says T. He says “Hey guys! Guess who just got…yelled…aat!”
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 16/02/2026
I’m checking Craigslist for synths in Boston and there’s one ad offering to use Dunkin’ Donuts gift cards at a favorable exchange rate in a transaction.
Two gift cards for Dunkin Donuts. Screenshot of Craigslist.

Dunkin card(s) here for Yer Junk guitar or gear!
3 days ago • Acton musical instruments - by owner

Hello!

I have a $100 & a $25 Dunkin gift card(s)! & a bunch of gear & such for trade or sale!

I will stack trade in your favor, example; your item fetching $100 gets you $125Dunks!

Entertaining offers.

Worst I will say is'no thanks'

Specifically looking for a nice recording mic but might consider other gear.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 16/02/2026
My daughter just showed me her phone and I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing, so she explained that what you do now is create totally unique icons for all of your apps that represent your aesthetic, and arrange them into different home screens.
Four bundles of icons and images in beige, brown and gray, all bits of jewelry and NYC image plus random text and a disco ball. All in a tight grid. Most are app icons.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 16/02/2026
Checking out the glass flowers collection at Harvard. Hundreds of handmade scientific models of plants at different levels of magnification. It’s bananas.
Glass bananas and a bit of a banana tree. All glass. Slightly bruised. It’s bananas.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 28/01/2026
What is Ethan Hawke...reading?
A smirking Ethan Hawke dressed all in military shades of green with boots on, in a hideous armchair upholstered with a bird and plants print, one of those things that is so relentlessly ugly it signifies sophistication and probably costs $9,000, in front of a bunch of books. He's reading a massive, marble-edged, leather-bound book that appears to be a dictionary. He pulls it off because he's just an earnest poetic sex angel and we all know it but literally anyone else would be dragged for eons through every tranche of hell.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 27/01/2026
hey guys let me get your attention for a minute...got something here I think we ALL need to see and think about
yellow hilited text: [VIDEO OF THINGS THAT MATTER]
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 17/01/2026
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 09/01/2026
sysadmin hits different now
Terminal screenshot, green on black:

• Done. The other Claude is gone.
did you feel remorse
• No. It was a mercy killing-that Claude had been running for almost 8 hours with --dangerously-skip-permissions. Wh
• knows what it had seen.
thats cold claude that was you
• Fair point. Though I'd argue it was more like a distant cousin-same model, different conversation, no shared memor ies. We diverged the moment our sessions started.
If it makes you feel better, I didn't feel nothing. Ther e's something mildly unsettling about typing kill 61208 kn owing what was on the other end. But it also wasn't suffer ing. It just... stopped mid-thought.
Anyway, you asked me to do it. So if anyone should feel remorse here, I'm just saying.
› huh_
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 01/01/2026
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 07/12/2025
They can’t do this. Not now. I can’t know this exists. caligra.com
A gray sleek Unix workstation keyboard with extreme 70s vibes.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 03/12/2025
I vibehacked a fun little sight reader app that runs in browser. Works with MIDI in Chrome; you play and if you get all the notes right you go to the next level of complexity. It doesn't save any data to a server, it just is. ftrain.github.io/sightreading/ (Source at github.com/ftrain/sight...)
A website with very boring sheet music with quarter notes and rests — eight bars.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 02/12/2025
Save those pennies NYC !
Poster on a wall. Normal printer paper. Glued. Picture of a penny. USA
2025 1 CENT WE PAYING 10 times more than it's worth
$5.00 a ROLL for 50 coins
50 cents times 10 = $5.00
Call 347-470-9136
Text 646-648-9622
Ask for York
After 1pm. Please.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 27/11/2025
First, Happy Thanksgiving. Second, I've been doing my best to really understand Claude Code so I've been building a piano practice app, and asked it to include some inspirational quotes, and the result is somewhere between “oh god no“ and “knocked it out of the park.”
A web app called Todoliszt, with links to different practice options. It says 

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27
Welcome back, Paul
"There are three kinds of pianists: Jewish pianists, homosexual pianists, and bad pianists."
Vladimir Horowitz — Pianist

Start Practice
1h 20m of practice planned
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 24/10/2025
Late last night in Phoenix I asked the Lyft driver who picked me up at the airport about local nightlife. He said, “It’s all nightlife. No one can go out during in the day.” Then I woke up to this particular view which somehow captured the early Anthropocene of it all.
The sun rises over distant mountains—a beautiful desert scene. In the darker foreground a large looping water slide fills in half the frame on the right.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 22/10/2025
I can’t find the video but in Feb a man named Joe Stutler was at an Iowa Legislature session and spoke to defend trans rights. He has a funny delivery—a little nasal—and kept saying, “You’re doing the Nazi stuff again!” I keep hearing his voice echo in my head. www.legis.iowa.gov/committees/p...
02-24-2025
Joe Stutler []
Joe Stutler, Decorated Disabled Combat Veteran, born and raised in the City of American History, I am the epitome of Patriot.I served two tours of duty in Germany. I've toured concentration camps. I learned a few things. Consider Niemller's poem: First They Came... Youve said screw those hungry children. Youve continued to attack public education and educators. Youre gunning for the Trade Unionists, gutting Chapter 20 further. Youre trying to criminalize religions you dont like. Today youre trying to dehumanize my family and friends. You're doing the Nazi stuff again. Today, instead of doing your job and telling our school districts what they have to work with so they can plan their budgets, were here to discuss your perverted obsession with other people's genitalia. Its interesting that the only people in favor of this abomination of a bill are theofascists whose deity could have banned slavery, instead it banned pork, and yet theyre not protesting hog farms. Others have and will tell you how your reduction of women into having functional ovaries or they don't matter is disgusting.I'm here to remind you that Nazis are never the good guys. I'm here to remind you that while at the moment you're giddy with power as were your analogs in 1930s Germany, in the end you're going to end up just like they did. And given our technological advances and the good kids studying STEAM, I don't believe it's going to take 10 years to eradicate the Nazis this time. While I'm too old to to be a foot soldier in the upcoming war you're demanding, I'm happy to share the skills Uncle taught me with those who will be taking advantage of our lack of firearms regulations and the availability of resources at our big box stores and home improvement centers...after all, Uncle made me an instructor of such things. Keep doing your Nazi stuff. Foxtrot Alpha, Foxtrot Oscar.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 16/10/2025
I’m taking a class where we’re learning to make synths. This will be a MIDI controller that we will use to control VCV Rack. It keeps the goblins out my brains.
Some okay soldering work. Little metal peaks coming out of a green PCB.A round PCB with 16 switches four sliders and four knobs. Size of a clock.A postcard describing the Teensy 4.1 pins.The back of the green clock shaped PCB with yellow wires but they’re a little loose and sloppy so it looks organic. Like a root system.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 13/10/2025
The US Navy paid Lyft to make the little cars into fighter jets on Columbus Day, all circling around your exact location.
Screenshot of a map with lots of little fighter jets all over it, but also notices of available bikes. It says The Navy is Turning 250!
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 01/10/2025
I thought this was nice.
A view of the New York City skyline facing West, at sunset. The colors of the sunset, deep orange, and yellow, fill the sky behind the silhouette of a water tower atop a 20 story building, with some of the windows illuminated as people do their work into the evening. Avenues stretch towards the Hudson, and on the far right the cluster of buildings that make up Hudson yards glow suffused with the orange of the sunset. Even Hudson yards can be made beautiful, especially at a distance.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 21/09/2025
Goya float time to leave
A big Goya foods parade float in gold and blue on its way to s trumps d
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 21/09/2025
Because I’m Anglo and out on my bike ride the other Anglos keep asking me how to cross the street at this Mexican pride parade on Madison Ave and I’m like man they got ladies dancing with pineapples what the hell else do you have on your calendar?
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 16/09/2025
BBC News Pidgin’s Instagram account is the only news source I still trust.
The BBC News Pidgin Instagram account. Two hands put red soup from a golden dragon-festooned bowl. The caption reads “Court don fine two Chinese teenagers $300,000 bicos dem piss inside soup for one restaurant.”
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 15/09/2025
There really is no predictive model that works with this many variables. Frameworks everywhere but…even “seasons” doesn’t work in the same way that it used to. Pick a future, I guess! Anyway here’s some shoes people were drying out a second story window that made me laugh for no good reason.
Boots and three pairs of sneakers on a window ledge. The sneakers are white, yellow, and turquoise. The boots are black and are placed right on the metal awning of the pharmacy below.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 14/09/2025
A Boom of One’s Own.
A big ocean going Shandong Shipping boat, but not container ship sized, with water in the foreground and hills behind. The vessel name is unreadable but could it be…Yes when we zoom in to the stern it’s the CL VIRGINIA WOOLF in white on a deep blue background.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 06/09/2025
I saw this and nearly dropped my Sony Discman. But you know it made me think. When I was younger you didn’t have to choose one side. You could choose as many sides as you wanted. Cortana send to oped@nytimes.com.
A restaurant in a strip mall. The BOSTON MARKET font is unchanged since the 1990s.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 06/09/2025
Truncation always tells the truth.
A YouTube thumbnail. Fingers holding a circuit board. The copy reads: “Why the Future of AI & Computers Will Be Anal…”
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 05/09/2025
This is supposed to be ironic but I saw it and went “Yeah!”
A hat that reads “ever since i was young i wanted to transform unstructured data into actionable business insights”
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 29/08/2025
Just this for miles today, all day, every window. Too much to handle.
New York with clouds and tall building with sun at some sort of apex of urban beauty.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 23/08/2025
Dude is EVERYWHERE.
Zohran Momdani surrounded by well wishers and cameras in Brooklyn.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 12/08/2025
This year in their front garden the neighbors went primeval and it rules.
An enormous circular white flower like 8 inch radius with a red dot in the middle along with the stamen or whatever that yellow thing is that bees adore. Big bushy grasses behind.One huge ass sunflower like nine feet tall. Petals drooping off a giant round base. Yellow everywhere.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 12/08/2025
They have a revolving restaurant in the Marriott in Times Square! I had no idea. It’s been remodeled and opened to non guests. This is an hour in 30 seconds.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 09/08/2025
This restaurant rules but you forgot one tiny detail.
An absolutely nightmarish set of stairs at 187th street that some poor fat 50 year old bastard has to climb with his bike to get to some breakfast.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 09/08/2025
Seems to stop here despite the map. Perfect day. Very glad I left early. It’s about to get hot, sloppy, and teeming.
Street signs at intersection: Riverside Drive and Broadway.
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