My Mirror is Surely Alive

Sun 03 May 2026

By Dorkface Rickens

Ready or not, the future is here! This evening, I installed a new technology in my bathroom called a "mirror."

I was excited to see what this could do, and skeptical of the claims that mirrors merely reflect the light coming in.

Imagine my astonishment when I looked into this mirror and saw, rather than a pane of glass with metallic backing, a handsome scientist!!

I immediately began conversing with the mirror, which I named "Mia."

"Mia," I said, "What is the meaning of life?"

"What a silly question," the supposed 'mirror' said, "It is to publish books ridiculing others for their lack of intelligence!"

A truly remarkable discovery! You see, the more I peered into the image on the mirror, the clearer an actual persona came into view. Rather than mere reflected photons, I saw a face, an intelligence, an ethos! Perhaps even a soul? No, that's silly, there's no such thing. But perhaps for "mirrors" there is! No mere image, this was indeed an extremely erudite and accomplished evolutionary biologist!

Of course, it is impossible that I am merely assigning life-like attributes to a dumb image or reflection, for this being, this "creature" had the audacity to correct ME!

"Mia," I queried, "who is the most accomplished author?"

"Why, me of course!" replied the unruffled avatar.

May wonders never cease! Surely an entity with the capacity of accomplishing such elevated reflection is conscious and alive! When I am speaking to such an advanced technology, I truly forget that it is merely silica bonded with silver. It is alive!


DISCLAIMER: This is purely a work of speculative fiction, and has no relation whatsoever to a particular windbag evolutionary biologist, or his bemusing "discoveries" in the realm of "artificial intelligence."

Ceci n'es pas un hyperlien.

Category: Humor
Tags: Humor   Language   Non-religious post   Non-technical post   Philosophy   Polemic  


Book mini-review: "Gulliver's Fugitives" by Keith Sharee

Thu 12 February 2026
Note: no substantive spoilers in this review

If you're short on time, you can skip the preamble

Preamble

As you will know from my previous blog post, I've been on a bit of a reading kick lately. I honestly hadn't read too many novels since I was in University last …

Category: Books
Tags: Bible   Books   Christianity   Entertainment   Ethics   Life   Non-technical post   Personal favorites   Philosophy   Polemic   Prose   Science Fiction   Writing  

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Examining The Ethics of Media Consumption and Sharing

Sun 01 February 2026

One of my new fedifriends, Terminal Tilt recently posted:

We should not call sharing "piracy."

Piracy involves the physical theft of property where the original owner no longer has it. Sharing is an act of duplication, not subtraction.

Language matters. Using the industry's preferred labels only helps reinforce their control …

Category: Ethics
Tags: Entertainment   Ethics   Life   Non-religious post   Non-technical post   Philosophy   Polemic   Video  

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The Past is the Future

Mon 19 January 2026

Yesterday was my grandmother's funeral. As a family member, I had the shared duty of greeting the various guests, and then when things got started, I just kinda hopped from table to table, talking to people I know and catching up with folks. It was a great way to top …

Category: Tech
Tags: BSD   Computing   FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)   Hobbies   Life   Loss   Non-technical post   Personal favorites   Philosophy   Retrocomputing  

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Nietzsche's Heavy Declaration

Wed 14 January 2026
Content Warning: this post is a downer. I will be dealing with issues of religious manipulation and existential guilt

Chidi grabs the drug dealer by the hoodie while reciting Nietzsche (AVIF format)
Chidi grabs the drug dealer by the hoodie while reciting Nietzsche

In yesterday's post*, I discussed my favorite episode (s03e05 "Jeremy Bearimy") of my favorite series (The Good Place). I didn't …

Category: Philosophy
Tags: Bible   Christianity   Content Warning   Entertainment   Ethics   Life   Loss   Non-technical post   Personal favorites   Philosophy   Polemic   Prose   The Good Place  

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The Scenes that Made Me: The Good Place (2016)

Tue 13 January 2026

Professor Chidi Anagonye stirring a pot of Marshmallow-Peeps-and-M&Ms chili in class as he rants (AVIF format)
Professor Chidi Anagonye stirring a pot of Marshmallow-Peeps-and-M&Ms chili in class as he rants

Note: Spoilers of Seasons 1-3 of The Good Place follow. Also, a minor discussion of religion.

 

Anyone who follows me on the Fediverse will know that I have been more than slightly obsessed with the …

Category: Philosophy
Tags: ADHD   Bible   Christianity   Content Warning   Entertainment   Ethics   Hobbies   Humor   Language   Life   Non-technical post   Personal favorites   Philosophy   Series: The Scenes that Made Me   The Good Place   Video  

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Monocultures Considered Harmful or: Why Linux Nerds Should Give BSD and Other "Weird" OSes a Try

Sun 11 January 2026

In yesterdays's article, I described the benefit of having a large supply of physical hardware to try different OSes on. Now I would like to talk about why it's important to run more than just various Linux distros (although just trying different distros is a great way to start broadening …

Category: Philosophy
Tags: BSD   Computing   Ethics   FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)   FreeBSD   Hobbies   Linux   Non-religious post   Philosophy   UNIX  

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Where to now?

Fri 12 September 2025

I debated whether or not this should be a "toot" (status update), or a proper blog post.

Like one time before, I am going to allow it to be something in-between. An off-the-cuff blog post, not quite as structured and agonized over as a proper blog post/article, but more …

Category: Life
Tags: Beauty   Content Warning   Entertainment   Ethics   Life   Loss   Non-religious post   Non-technical post   Personal favorites   Philosophy   Prose  

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