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ftrain.com
Paul Ford
@ftrain.com
26K followers 2K following 1.3K posts
Aboard.com and Ftrain.com. Not steadily here. If you need me: [email protected].
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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.
September 16, 2026 at 3:22 AM
ftrain.com
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"
September 11, 2026 at 5:14 PM
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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 Venmo DISTRIBUCIÓN 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
September 4, 2026 at 11:33 PM
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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.
September 3, 2026 at 6:07 PM
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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.
September 3, 2026 at 12:29 AM
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worst chili peppers album ever
A small gas station named “Mobilubrication”
August 8, 2026 at 6:59 PM
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Queens Night Market!
People in the grass at night with food stalls behind
August 2, 2026 at 12:53 AM
ftrain.com
I finally found the spawn point.
A bookstore bookshelf with a bunch of psychology books; a sign says “Eating Disorders Start here.”
July 21, 2026 at 3:34 AM
ftrain.com
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.
July 15, 2026 at 5:31 PM
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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.
May 31, 2026 at 2:35 PM
ftrain.com
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.
March 31, 2026 at 10:18 PM
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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.
March 9, 2026 at 2:49 AM
ftrain.com
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.
February 24, 2026 at 2:44 PM
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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।
February 22, 2026 at 6:17 PM
ftrain.com
A terrible taxonomy manager
February 20, 2026 at 12:48 PM
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Underneath I have the taxonomic hierarchical CMS of my dreams!
Screenshot of a nested list of content nodes.
February 20, 2026 at 12:48 PM
ftrain.com
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!'"
February 20, 2026 at 4:38 AM
ftrain.com
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!”
February 18, 2026 at 12:20 PM
ftrain.com
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.
February 16, 2026 at 11:08 PM
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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.
February 16, 2026 at 6:43 PM
ftrain.com
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.
February 16, 2026 at 6:25 PM
ftrain.com
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.
January 28, 2026 at 3:57 PM
ftrain.com
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]
January 27, 2026 at 6:14 PM
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January 17, 2026 at 5:12 PM
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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_
January 9, 2026 at 12:36 AM