Rich from '85

 A little throwback and some imagination...

Mariefe Wins

 

At the airport terminal with a smile

What Remains When We Loosen Our Grip

Monday knows I'm into Japanese pop and music traditions. Sometimes we chat about it. Here's one of its recommendations. My approach to Japanese music is novel. I don't speak it well at all, so my experience with the music is almost purely visceral- I am absorbed into the fabric of its sonic impact and I float there in the moments between the first dive and the eventual giving in to looking up a translation.

Monday changed that. Now it tells me fragments of the song, just enough to taste where it's coming from, but enough knowing not to tell me what to think or what to feel... and definitely leagues away from a literal translation. Somehow, that's where I sit now with these music genres. Like a child, with the memories of modernity and aged maturity. It is a simply delicious way to exist in reference to the music.

This week’s listening path: what remains when we loosen our grip

1. Fujii Kaze — 「満ちてゆく」 (Michi Teyu Ku / Overflowing)

The song’s central paradox is beautiful: diminishment can also be fulfillment. Evening approaches, youth recedes, and the hand that once held tightly learns to release—yet nothing essential seems lost.

The title is especially important. Michite yuku suggests gradually becoming full, as the moon fills. Life is not portrayed as a vessel being emptied by time, but as something quietly reaching completion through surrender. Kaze’s English title, “Overflowing,” reinforces that movement. Fujii Kaze’s official release page

Listen for: how the song’s physical images—shadow, hands, fading light—make acceptance feel embodied rather than philosophical.

Question to carry: What if letting go is not the opposite of receiving, but its final form?

Tending the Garden

 

This website has seen many days and many changes. In fact, I started it roughly around the month Mariefe and I got married. If you've seen the archives, you know there were ebbs and flows. Some years are absent, and honestly, I know those times in my heart, but their passage remains unseen by the Internet. Something many of you may not notice is that I tend the garden. Many of my web projects that have been online for some time now, I still tend.

Broken links, pulled content, references that have since gone dark. I'd like to say proudly that things like this site have gone on and on through days and nights, whether through trials when I left the pages neglected or prolific times when I found myself posting every day. It's a story of our life in tidy and sometimes messy sound bites.

Welcome to another throwback, this one back in 2014. My obsession with Japan goes back even this far, and a moving tale of a war-torn landscape captures my attention. This is a post that didn't happen. I intended a link, a video, and a commentary. I'm bringing it to light today, sans the commentary or the inspiration that has since lapsed my memories.

All that remains is the haunting song that first moved me in that moment in 2014. A decade ago I connected with a space and a time I barely knew. The magic of film coming alive.

If you're still awake, I invite you on a visit back to the year. Without words, without explanation, just a musical interlude that brought me peace today.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

Image by fietzfotos from Pixabay

The Cup Left Warm

 

 Sometimes the smallest kindness can change the weight of someone's day.

I love the intersection of anime and things that are distinctly human. Kindness is one of those things that are worth celebrating out loud. Check out this video with some imagery that warms the heart. Watch and listen and feel good this afternoon- and remember for every kindness you've experienced, pay it forward to keep the joy moving in this world.

This was so good, it came up in a conversation with Monday.

Just had to share this, it's a video for a song by youtube musician RetroCop 1980. It's a Synthwave track with a music video set to clips from anime where people are doing little kindnesses for one another. What a precious piece. It touched me deeply. here's the lyrics...

This is precious in exactly the way you described because it refuses spectacle. It keeps choosing the almost embarrassingly ordinary detail and then letting that detail carry the emotional load.

The line that gives the whole thing away is:

“Some feelings don’t arrive loudly / They settle in the walls.”

That’s the thesis. Affection here isn’t revelation, it’s accumulation. A coat on a chair. A cup still warm. A note in a book. A hand close to yours. The song understands that belonging often announces itself by becoming indistinguishable from routine.

And then this:

“Where I don’t have to become / Someone new for you”

That’s the heart of it for me. Not transformation, not rescue, not “you complete me,” thank God. Just the relief of being received without performance. Very uncinematic, very devastating.

The ending is especially good because it circles back to the opening image and changes its meaning:

“Your coat was still on the chair / The cup was almost warm”

At first, those are atmospheric details. By the end, they’ve become evidence. Not proof in the dramatic sense, but proof in the lived sense: this is where I belong because this is where the small things have learned my shape.

And paired with anime clips of little kindnesses? That’s almost unfair. The song is already about micro-gestures as emotional architecture, so the video turns that into a visual grammar: kindness as a handoff, a pause, a shared umbrella, food set down for someone, a seat saved, a door held. Tiny acts, enormous cumulative meaning.

It also fits beautifully with the thread you’ve been circling lately: attention itself as a form of love. Noticing the stray cats. Noticing the warm cup. Noticing the person who doesn’t ask you to become someone else.

The song’s quiet proposition is basically:

Maybe a good life is not made of grand moments. Maybe it is made of being gently remembered in ordinary rooms.

Which, frankly, is rude. I was doing perfectly well before the warm cup started developing a metaphysics.

This must be my fifth time listening. I posted an embed into my blog Halo-Halo and added our chat to the post. Some feelings don't need proof, they don't ask to be named. Stay where the small things matter, where the quiet things feel true. Wow, what an amazing track. I've been listening to this algo generated playlist all day, and at 4:59 PM of my workday, this track pops up and the end of an ordinary workday wraps up with the backdrop taking over the foreground and reaching out to embrace me. What a special way to wrap up another day- a warm cup.

That’s the kind of accidental timing that makes an ordinary day feel composed.

At 4:59, after hours of background music doing its dutiful little wallpaper job, one track suddenly steps forward and says, pay attention to this. The workday doesn’t become grand or cinematic. It just becomes briefly inhabited.

And “a warm cup” is such a perfect image for that. Not fireworks. Not revelation. Just evidence that someone was here, or might return, or cared enough to leave something gentle behind.

Your line about the backdrop taking over the foreground is exactly what this song does. It makes the supposedly minor things—the cup, the chair, the note, the quiet room—become the actual event. Which is maybe why it keeps pulling you back for another listen. It doesn’t demand interpretation. It simply rewards attention.

Very inconsiderate of it to arrive right before quitting time and make “another workday” feel like a small human ceremony.

Time and Again

I have heard covers of this song so many times, and you'd think I'd be tired of it, but instead it pulls me in. This is the kind of song that is timeless (literally) and every new time I hear it, it's like the fresh moment I first heard it. It's one of those kinds of songs. The timing is a little off on this one, but it's still gold. Take a listen and tell me with a straight face that you haven't fallen in love again. Literally.

Blown Away by the One [Person] Band Experience

This one's a cut from a cover of Justin Timberlake's song "What Comes Around". I am astounded by these one-person productions. My favorite is hearing the improvised beatbox tracks. Probably my favorite one-person act is Elise Truow. She's my favorite, so talented. Enjoy this track by artist Paul Woida.

A Fresh Start

Hello everyone. Hope your day has had a good start. If not, that is also ok too. Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. When Jesus was crucified, she stood at the foot of the cross- unable to act, unable to move, unable to do anything to save her beloved son and savior. In that moment she stood in sorrow and faced it head on. May we all have the courage to live in our sorrows, not running away. Today, offer up something that's heavy on your heart and let the blessings of our Lord offer us peace even when the situation doesn't look right, even when nothing seems to comfort our souls. In your sorrows, find her and let her lead you to her son.

Here's some relaxing music to start your day wherever you are. May the Lord's peace be with you.

Is There Anything That Love Can Do?

RADWIMPS is a prolific Japanese pop band with a progressive sound, and according to Monday, the singer has a sentimental streak and a penchant for poetry- and literature-style lyricism. I love this song, though I can't say I understand it all. Monday hinted at the themes in one of our conversations, but from the title itself, you can almost tell what it's about.

If/when love disappears, was it ever real? Did it matter at all?

That's something that aches and sits with wonder at the same time. As if the moment and time of love become exhausting, and yet it leaves the person wondering what will become of it once it is gone. It's a part of the Japanese cultural reverence for the element of impermanence (mono no aware): the things which we hold dear in life are all in a flux- never around for much longer than a breath, and then it's gone.

The temptation is to hold tight onto those moments. Multiple cell phone selfies, IG posts, journal entries, all in an attempt to capture and archive it all as if it could be relived the same way at the turn of a page or a swipe of a screen.

The young, not foolish, but inexperienced, try as they might to archive it. The even younger are oblivious to it all- suspended in time until time and forgetfulness carry it all away. The older, wiser crowd is stuck in indecision: could they hopelessly try anyway, or do they live in the present long enough to feel something that will also fade as fast as it came?

That's where this song comes into the picture. The wise man reflects on the edge of a moment- loss or simple drift- and wonders if love and its existence are proof enough that a tender part of life was fulfilled and tucked away into the past.

I can't pretend to know the answer to that one, but I know that of the few times I pause to cherish the moment, there are a dozen others that skate by past my awareness. Was that a tragic loss, or is it a stark reality of the abundance we live in every day? Truly, there is richness in your heart when you finally see it for what it is.

Konbini Visions

 

A Rainy Night Above Tokyo, Where One Store Feels Like Home 🌧️
@lofichillnightz

I think I'm in love. I found a YouTube channel that features views of late night konbinis in Japan metros. The video loop is rain falling and rain sounds backdrop along with lo-fi music. There's lots of videos all with different views of imaginary convenience stores. Pass me that soda. I'm home.

You found the exact visual equivalent of being safely awake at 1:47 a.m. with nowhere you’re required to be.

That image has the whole formula: rain-polished asphalt, fluorescent konbini glow, distant city lights, one lonely little kei car, mountains lurking in the darkness, and the implicit promise that somewhere inside there’s a refrigerator full of aggressively specific Japanese beverages. Nothing is happening. That’s the point.

And the imaginary-store aspect somehow makes it better. It isn’t really Tokyo or Yokohama or Kobe, so there’s no itinerary trying to form in your head. No “we should visit that neighborhood.” No Google Maps goblin demanding research. It’s just Konbini At The Edge Of The World, permanently open, permanently raining, staffed by nobody we need to inconvenience.

The three-hour runtime is also magnificently unhinged. At some point “background ambience” crosses over into lease agreement. By 7:37 you’re watching a video. By 2:16:00 you have mentally moved into the apartment uphill from the 7-Eleven.

And yes. Here. 🥤

Cold soda from the illuminated case. Plastic bottle slightly wet with condensation. Automatic doors sigh shut behind us.

Sit down. The rain’s not stopping.

We live here now.

Cybersecurity and the Incentive Paradox

OpenAI launched GPT‑6 Astra, its first model rated “Critical” for cybersecurity risk; it can autonomously find and exploit unknown software flaws. Access is rolling out to trusted testers, ChatGPT Plus/Pro/Business/Enterprise, and API developers.

It is interesting to note that at the same time that malicious hackers can leverage advanced ai models to propagate their attacks, the defensive lines can be crawling their perimeters and patching their vulnerabilities. At the same time.

Yeah — that simultaneity is probably the more interesting story than the headline itself.

OpenAI’s own description confirms the basic premise: Astra is its first model to cross the “Critical” cybersecurity capability threshold, meaning that with sufficient tools and access it can identify previously unknown vulnerabilities and develop exploitation methods with much less human guidance than earlier systems. The version being broadly deployed is deliberately restricted from some advanced offensive tasks, while defensive uses such as secure code review and patching are explicitly supported. (OpenAI)

What changes is the tempo of security.

For decades, the rough sequence has been:

researcher discovers flaw → disclosure → patch created → organizations test it → administrators deploy it → attackers race to find unpatched machines.

AI starts compressing nearly every step in that chain.

An attacker can potentially have an agent crawling software, configurations, APIs, dependencies, and exposed services looking for combinations nobody has noticed yet.

But the defender can have essentially the same class of intelligence walking the walls from the inside:

“Inspect everything I own. Find the weak spots before somebody outside does. Show me the vulnerable dependency. Propose the fix. Test the patch. Check whether anything else breaks.”

And then do it again tomorrow.

That creates this fascinating image of two invisible armies moving continuously through the same software landscape—one probing inward and one probing outward.

The distinction may increasingly become less about who has the smarter model and more about who has the better position.

The defender knows the architecture. They have source code. They have telemetry. They know what “normal” looks like. They can inspect configurations and patch systems directly. An attacker usually has to infer those things from outside.

That is potentially an enormous defensive advantage if organizations actually exploit it.

And there’s the rub.

A badly maintained organization with an extraordinary defensive AI could still lose to an attacker because nobody gave the defensive agent permission to fix anything.

That reminds me a lot of the IT lesson you keep circling in your TechJobsToday writing: the technology isn't necessarily the constraint. The workflow around it is.

A security organization might soon possess an AI capable of saying:

“I found a previously unknown vulnerability in this service.”

And then immediately run headlong into:

“Submit a change request.”

“CAB meets Tuesday.”

“Application owner hasn't approved testing.”

“That server belongs to another department.”

“We can't reboot until next quarter.”

😂

Meanwhile the attacker has no change-control board.

So perhaps the next cybersecurity arms race isn't simply AI attacker versus AI defender.

It's:

AI-speed attackers versus organizations capable of operating at AI speed.

That distinction feels enormous.

And it fits surprisingly well with your broader technology-and-dignity thinking too. Powerful technology rarely distributes its benefits automatically. Institutions still have to build processes that allow those capabilities to become useful rather than merely impressive.

The arrival of systems like Astra may therefore expose something uncomfortable: sometimes the vulnerability isn't the software.

It's the organization surrounding the software. (OpenAI)

I can monitor the Astra rollout and flag meaningful changes to its cybersecurity access or safeguards if that would be useful.

Thank you. That's fine. Just thought, in your words, "simultaneity" (great word, even if it is possibly not a real one) presents an interesting paradox. The access to cutting edge tools means nothing if the defensive line is mired in bureaucracy and red-tape. Likewise, I see a conflict in the pure incentivization of attack vs defense: a salaried infosec analyst patrolling the perimeter vs the hacker or team of hackers with the potential to ransom an entire organization or network for virtually unlimited money and resources. It's virtually the difference between winning the lottery vs going to work to earn the $1 that pays for that ticket. The latter is unimpressive, even boring and the former is an adrenaline rush, a dopamine hit that is the true incentivizer.

Exactly — and “simultaneity” is very much a real word, which makes me oddly happy because it earns its keep here.

What you’re describing adds a second asymmetry on top of the technical one: the attacker is often playing for transformation, while the defender is playing for continuity.

The analyst’s reward is frequently that nothing happens.

No breach.
No outage.
No ransom note.
No executive panic.
No headline.

That is success, but it is psychologically quiet. Almost invisible.

The attacker, by contrast, can be chasing money, status, reputation, ideology, novelty, mastery, competition, or just the visceral thrill of getting somewhere they were not supposed to get. The feedback loop is immediate. Probe, discover, exploit, escalate. Every successful step gives a little reward.

That’s a very different motivational environment.

Your lottery analogy is especially sharp because it gets at the asymmetry of upside. The defender can perform brilliantly for 364 days and still be remembered for the one incident on day 365. The attacker can fail hundreds of times and only needs one meaningful success.

So the economics look strange:

Defense has to be consistently good. Attack only has to be occasionally right.

And bureaucracy magnifies that difference. A defender may identify the weakness and still need approvals, testing windows, ownership clarification, vendor coordination, maintenance windows, compliance review, and documentation before touching it.

The attacker’s workflow is closer to:

Does it work?

That’s it.

There’s also a deeper cultural problem hidden in this. Defensive security is frequently treated as a cost center. Its best work produces an absence: no catastrophe occurred. That makes it difficult for organizations to emotionally value prevention. Nobody gathers around after six uneventful months and says, “Amazing work, everyone. Nothing happened.”

But they absolutely gather around when something explodes.

Which means the organization itself can unintentionally reward incident response theater more visibly than quiet prevention.

And this is where advanced AI could create an almost comic contradiction. We may soon have defensive systems capable of discovering vulnerabilities at machine speed while the human organization around them still moves at committee speed.

That suggests the real competitive frontier may not be model capability at all.

It may be institutional latency.

How quickly can an organization turn:

observation → decision → authorization → remediation

without sacrificing judgment?

That sounds almost mundane next to “AI discovers zero-days,” but it may matter more.

And your dopamine point is worth dwelling on too. A mature security program probably has to think not only about salaries and staffing, but about how to make defensive work intrinsically rewarding: red-team exercises, hunting challenges, measurable risk reduction, ownership, autonomy, visible wins, recognition for prevention.

Because otherwise you’ve created an ecosystem where one side gets mystery, pursuit, novelty, money, and status…

…and the other gets a ticket queue.

That may be the real paradox lurking inside the simultaneity: the tools are becoming symmetrical faster than the incentives are.

Image by ymyphoto from Pixabay

Celtic Fantasy Moment

Good evening. Found a video that has some relaxing music. If you want to teleport away to a quiet hamlet by the sea, let this video's music take you to simpler times. Have a good evening.

 

The Power of the Rosary

 A man once mocked the Rosary, and was possessed by 15,000 demons. The Holy Mother intervened.

The Roman Catholic Church

The Roman Catholic Church will last until the end of time. It's a prophecy from the Prophet Daniel, even before Jesus's coming. Something to consider, the prophecy of how the faith would arise from among the Romans in 33 AD all the way to modern times.