Brian Gawalt

@brian.gawalt.com

459 Followers 690 Following

Blog! https://brian.gawalt.com/blog/ Bot author: - @theslides.bsky.social - this account's #ReaderBot poster - [more tk] Mountain View, CA

screenshot of a chat window, where my buddy has texted "2.5 hours later" and then included his own screenshot of the same theater seat picker screen, and now 70pct of the seats for the Odyssey at 10PM at the Metreon are booked up a month in advance
Screenshot of a seat selection page for a movie theater online ticket order. It's The Odyssey AMC Metreon 16 | Fri Aug 14 | 10:00pm | IMAX 70MM and then all the seats that are in the middle half of the screen and the rear half of the auditorium are already booked up. Open seats are yellow and claimed seats are black so it looks like a small bomb went off centered on the ideal viewing position.
Heath Ledger Joker in the Dark Knight waggling his finger at the mob bosses saying "if you're good at something, never do it for free" (captioned)
Me holding a thick paperback, "The Filmmaker's Handbook," by Ascher and Pincus
forest whitaker as saw gerrera in andor barking, in exasperation, "separatists!!"
screenshot of a jupyter notebook, cropped to just the opened menus: Settings > Text Editor Indentation > [checkmakr] Spaces: 2 (unchecked options: Indent with Tab, Spaces: 1, Spaces: 4, Spaces: 8)
Screenshot of a Money Stuff email newsletter from June 26 2024 Archegos tapes Here is some elite investment bank chief executive officer performance: Jefferies calls CEO Rich Handler, who is on holiday in Turks and Caicos with a spicy margarita on the way. They tell him Archegos isn’t answering their calls. Handler says he’s going to get his cocktail and he wants Archegos positions gone and a tally of losses by the time he comes back. It was one of the few banks that escaped with minimal losses. Perfect. When your underlings call you up and say “hey we have a big trading counterparty that lost a lot of money, we’re sending margin calls and they’re not answering the phone,” the correct answer is “liquidate them immediately,” but the stylish (and equally correct) answer is “liquidate them by the time my margarita arrives.” Handler handled Archegos way better from his vacation than Credit Suisse handled it at the office.
Very brown gravy-like liquid filling up over half of a circular 1 qt pyrex container
Much more straight caramel color of the milk mixture in the same pan on the same stove
Same pot, only half as full now, with the black rice paddle spoon showing how it's still pretty thin liquid. It's much tanner/browner now.
Big 4 qt sauce pan of milk on a gas range with a black spoon stirring it
fourth panel of a calvin and hobbes strip, where susie and calvin are sharing a table with homework materials in front of them. SUSIE [rolling eyes]: Oh, right. You're TOO smart. CALVIN [raised eyebrow, leaning in hard, pointing at self with thumb]: Believe it lady. You know how Einstein got bad grades as a kid? Well MINE are even WORSE!
Very similar photo of the same android auto weather panel but now it says it's currently 72 with a high of 74 and low of 56
Android Auto weather panel saying it's currently 107 degrees with a high of 107 and a low of 83
Cartoon illustration of a Mario pihrana plant coming straight up out of the famous green pipe
Photo of the Statue of Liberty, seen from behind, sunlit also from behind
the famous banner sign up in the sky, it's a dark night sky, the sign is blue neon: [big letters in an arched box] REDWOOD CITY [small letters, no box, straight line beneath] CLIMATE BEST BY GOVERNMENT TEST
Results from the AI Compass personality quiz, https://bambamramfan.github.io/ai-compass/ You are... The Org Chart Survivor patron saint: Ethan Mollick Your company made you 'AI Lead' on top of your actual job. You use it, it helps sometimes, and you've stopped trying to explain to leadership what it can and can't do. You run little experiments and post the results. Just try things, you keep saying. Just try things. Impact: +2.8 • Valence: +0.1
Live Major League Cricket, an LA bowler pitches to the NY batter who hits it at a back angle to the boundary of the pitch (off camera)
Results: 69% woke, 31% chud 55% techbro, 45% neo-luddite 73% hopepilled, 27% doomer 92% davos, 8% dubai
screenshot of the CA DMV vanity plate availability checker results page: Congratulations - This plate can be requested! [mock up of a CA vanity license plate reading NBSP]
Four panel comic drawn in "landscape" in a little notebook page Panel 1: a guy has a hammer pulled ask the way back in one hand and a nail held on a table in the other. There's little distress lines and !! coming off the nail Panel 2: the nail now in close up is turned in panic and rummaging behind itself Panel 3: the nail is clicking a bicycle helmet on its head Panel 4: the mail is now serene with eyes closed wearing the helmet as the hanger enters the frame from above
Bryan Cranston as Walter White in "Breaking Bad" talking angrily on a cell phone in front of his pale olive green Pontiac Aztek
Table 1: Mentions of Trump and Biden in Broadcast TV Ads (1/1/25 to 6/14/26) Governor Trump mentioned by Republican Candidates: 28.68% Trump mentioned by Democratic Candidate: 28.96% Trump mentioned by All Outside Groups: 38.85% Biden mentioned by Republican Candidates: 2.31% Biden mentioned by Democratic Candidate: 0.00% Biden mentioned by All Outside Groups: 1.29%
tingle from "legend of zelda, the wind walker"
Screenshot of a late paragraph from the above essay, with a highlighted section: After lapping the exhibits a few times and watching a child sign the Declaration of Independence with a dick and balls, I decided to see, up close, the largest flag in one hundred and thirty square miles. [Begin highlight.] I drove past the Sheetz, parked near the Taco Bell, and walked up the hill. [End highlight.] From underneath, the flag was shockingly beautiful. It was a cold, cloudless, windy afternoon, and Old Glory was backlit by a setting sun. Its primary colors were a thousand different shades. It was radiant and very loud. Every penny spent on this flag was worth it. Why didn’t every city have one?
two dogs standing in a kiddie pool, both smiling, the one on the left is looking up at the camera and looks extra happy
Bronze statue of Frederick Douglass holding a book, he's behind a waist-high glass fence/railing. (He's on the landing of the museum entry way, about four stairs up from street level.) He's shot from below, looking up at an angle at him, as he himself looks slightly upwards into the sky.
Selfie with the top of my head cut off, in wearing a black T-shirt with white ink print, it's of a raccoon eating French fries off the ground, it says SWIMP in metal band lightning font
A pie chart of how much my personality (find the test buried 3+ deep in the quote tweet depths) matches neon genesis evangelion characters. Asuka: 55% Kaworu: 35% Misato: 40% Shinji: 55% Gendo: 25% Ritsuko: 35% Rei: 40%
four panel comic, no background PANEL ONE: calvin is Poof Poof Poof into a giant bubble gum bubble PANEL TWO: POW! an explosion occludes calvin's entire head PANEL THREE: calvin stands stock still, his face covered in bubble gum like a big dripping slime monster PANEL FOUR: calvin palpates the gum on his face, "Good heavens, I think I blew my face inside out!"
Screenshot of my gmail Updates tab, where X had sent "you have new notifications" to bots I turned off years and years ago: - at 9:58 am, to @ellipsabelle, 5 new notifications - at 9:07 am, to @1900badsext, 4 new notifications - at 9:06 am, to @Mark_mwish, 13 new notifications - at 9:02 am, to @Gregg_mwish, 14 new notifications - at 4:17 am, to @Tim_mwish, 12 new notifications
Screencap of the above reddit post Tail end of what I wrote: "'are malicious people insisting my posts violate their copyright, but really they just want my posts made unreadable for bad-faith reasons'?" Reddit red no-smoking crossed-circle: "Sorry, this post was removed by Reddit's filters." then an icon saying One Upvote None of how this is works is obvious to me, a guy in the top 0.X pct of people who know what "self-hosting on the Atmosphere" means. Sorry, this post was removed by Reddit’s filters.
shot from Friends of Eddie Coyle where Robert Mitchum (old, haggard, in a beat-up suit jacket and unbuttoned collared white shirt with exposed crew neck tshirt underneath) taking a sip from a tiny glass of beer, in a dark bar. He fills almost all of the screen, and *he* is light in an orange tone from his left. But behind him the walls and booths are in shadow.
DVD box art for Nicolas Cage in "The Weather Man," taglin "in life, accuracy counts." He's in a normal blue suit with a blue striped tie on a white dress shirt. He's wearing a toupee that gives him a full head of hair parted on his left. And he's carrying a big bow and a quiver of arrows over his shoulder.
Screen shot of the quoted post except "james bond" is replaced with "jabba." I left the "ja" and handwrote "bba" over scratched-out original letters
Red fireworks, like maritime flares, being set off on a baseball field. Towards the end, some green ones that explode in burst go off from the same launch pad
Pint of Doonesberry Sorbet by Ben and Jerry's, featuring Mike and Zonker from Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury
Four pieces of chicken breast, seared, in a tomato and scallion sauce, in a cast iron pan, on a gas range
Quentin Tarantino lowering his sunglasses to get a better look at something of interest
Shrimp scampi cooking in a big pan on a gas range
Notebook pen doodle of a Cthulhu looking blue guy, with three Homer Simpson bubble eyes and two red horns. He's waving one of his two hands in greeting and holding a red knife in the other. His jaw is just three incisors. His feet are tentacles. He has purple webbing across his armpits.
Screenshot of the above Google NGrams link, where "publish or perish" appears zero times till 1930, very very close to zero until 1951, then it goes exponential between 1955 and 1965, where it stays at its same basic height (or, within 20% of it) until today.
Newspaper comic spider-man from Dec 22, 2010 set in a subterranean cave Panel 1: MJ: You can't let Aunt May marry the Mole Man! SPIDER-MAN: There's one card I haven't played... [Background: Aunt May and Mole Man standing close together and gazing adoringly at each other] Panel 2: SPIDER-MAN: Sorry, ma'am, I'm afraid you can't marry this man. AUNT MAY: Why not, pray tell? Panel 3: SPIDER-MAN: Where can you find a minister -- here beneath the Earth's surface? AUNT MAY: !
the demo screen for the Win 3.1 color scheme "Hot Dog Stand", it's just straight nasty with red, black, yellow, and white as the four colors in the palette for window borders and edges and title bars
Cardboard box of Signature Select rotini enriched macaroni product. It has a pictures of the rotini but you can't see the rotini inside and that's fine
tmnt logo that reads "[red banner] edpol edpol edpol [big green turtle shell letters] EDPOL"
grainy phone photo of someone on stage in a full batman costume and cape, holding a microphone, facing a projector screen, that has the karaoke lyrics "Something in the way Ummmmmmm Something in the way, yeah Ummmmmmm" and you can see the laptop running that karaoke projector in front of the stage he's on, the cable management is slapdash
Screenshot from today's Money Stuff newsletter, its opening paragraph: I wrote last week that, in investing, “There’s no magic, no dark matter, no other source of gains. Everyone’s gains come from (1) economic growth and (2) other people’s losses.” In the aggregate, everyone gets the market return, which comes from allocating capital to economic growth. Some people get more and others get less, but they necessarily cancel each other out. People invest anyway, though, because allocating capital to economic growth is a good long-term proposition.
The caveman riding his faithful trex steed from Tartakovsky's cartoon "Primal"
Stir fry pork, scallions, and diced eggplant with some sliced basil in there, sauced up, in a large pan on the stove
Hardcover of "In Good Faith" by Ryan Avent held in my left hand
holy trinity meme with "meaning is not morality is not knowledge" linked in the outer ring and then pointing inward to say "nihilism is {meaning, morality, knowledge}"
Two plots side by side, describing when households will switch away from a nearby well with unsafe levels of arsenic, as a function of (a) that arsenic level, and (b) distance to the nearest clean well. They share a y-axis labeled "Pr(switching)" that goes from 0 to 1. The left plot has an x-axis of "Distance (in meters) to nearest safe well), running from 0 to 350. There are two clouds of blue dots, jittered around y= 0 and y=1, that are mostly concentrated between 0 and 150 and don't seem to have much different about them. There are three lines added representing a model's predictions of switching probability, for arsenic levels of 0.75 (yellow), 1.5 (orange), and 3.0 (red). They each slowly, ~linearly decay to about Pr=8% at d=350m, but start at different levels for d=0m. The yellow line starts at Pr=58%, the orange line starts at 70%, and the red starts at 81%. The right plot has an x-axis of "Arsenic concentration in well water" running from 0 to 10. It also has two clouds of blue dots around y=0 and y=1, with the y=1 cloud spread from 0 to 5 while the y=0 cloud is more limited to 0 to 3.5. There are yellow, orange, and red prediction curves, all shaped like logarithms, all starting at P=5% for Ars=0. The yellow curve represents a well distance of 20m, and rises highest to Pr=92% at Ars=10. The orange curve, dist = 40m, rises to 90% at Ars=10. The red curve, dist=80m, rises to around 82%.
Senior FBI official Brian "The Drizz" Driscoll in his official headshot where he's doing Dreamworks Face
Game box front cover for the SNES game."Krusty's Super Fun House"
mitt romney in the documentary "mitt" applying a hotel iron to the sleeve of his tuxedo while he is wearing the tuxedo. he is about to mildly voice "ow, ouch".
Screenshot of https://bsky.app/profile/alondra.bsky.social/post/3mjiqlmok2s2k which is a quote post Outermost post: Alondra Nelson, ‪@alondra.bsky.social‬ “The attacks on science also created a new talent pool for Silicon Valley to exploit: newly displaced STEM researchers. “ 6:28 PM Apr 14 2026 Inner post: Alondra Nelson ‪@alondra.bsky.social‬ “Silicon Valley would not exist without [taxpayer-] funded research.” https://www.thenation.com/article/society/ai-silicon-valley-andreesen-thiel-stem/ Open Graph pull has a picture of Peter Thiel at a podium over the headline/subhed "How Silicon Valley is Turning Scientists into Exploited Gig Workers / Tech elites are enriching themselves by plundering STEM institutions--and offering researchers scraps."
Promotional banner for "The Miniature Wife", Matthew mcfayden is large in pajamas at left, on his belly, looking at tiny Elizabeth banks, also in pajamas holding a megaphone riding a modern train
Three mountain goats scaling and impossibly sheet cliff nibbling on lichens or mosses or something