*A combination of things that won’t be found anywhere else on the internet.*

QQ Roundup Edition V

This is the last regular edition of the QQ Roundup for 2025. The next and final roundup for the year will be The Quantum Quimby Awards! Highlighting all of the best content this past year has had to offer. This will drop at some point between Christmas and the first weekend of January. I’d like to wish you all a warm, peaceful, and relaxing holiday season. Thanks so much for supporting me this year, I’m excited to hit the ground running in 2026! Cheers!

What To Read

I dialed it back to 2018 and read Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams. The title drew me in first and the soft touch yet near-future dystopian plot kept me invested through to the end. I truly did not know what was coming next as the chapters slowly cycled though the perspectives of different characters. Though, once again, I’m not so sure that the conclusion gave me the sort of closure I wanted. I desperately need my next read to have a satisfying ending.

My recommendation: worth a read for the truly imaginative character building.

How Taiwan Restored Voters’ Trust In Politics

I bring you this article from over a year ago to shed light on a story I, and I’m sure many others, may have missed. Following a citizen occupation of parliament in Taiwan during a period in which the government’s approval rating was less than 10%, a quick turnaround earned back 70% of public favor. How? By crowdsourcing public input from opposing viewpoint and using a tool called Polis to find common ground and then leveraging the data as a basis for actual enacted policies. It sure would be nice if a certain government that is allegedly by, for, and of the people would learn some lessons from this case study. As I wrote about in my post, A Legislative Slam Dunk, there are tons of things we collectively agree upon that have achieved zero traction in DC.

Google’s AI Deletes User’s Entire Hard Drive

This is a friendly reminder to keep AI on a short leash when you ask it things, especially as AI instances become more agentic and able to perform self-propelled tasks. “I am absolutely devastated to hear this. I cannot express how sorry I am,” the AI said. Imagine extrapolating this out to physical robots that run on AI? Perhaps we’ll have bots tasked with household chores lighting our clothes on fire so they never need to be folded again because the instructions were unclear. Hah!

Letters from an American: December 9th

While reading Heather Cox Richardson’s daily newsletter, which is fantastic, this one in particular got my attention. She reports that while doing some fact checking, ChatGPT claimed that those heading Trump’s cabinet positions are “factual impossibilities” due to their (lack of) credentials and proper experience in government. The letter then goes on to describe the situation in which politicians are focused on culture war issues because clickbait news is focused on culture war issues despite the fact that “most people care about and interact with the government through economic or affordability issues.” Gaahhhhh!

What To Watch

Stranger Things is back with its fifth and final season! The first four episodes dropped over Thanksgiving weekend and I was completely taken.

More Perfect Union is nonprofit, emmy-winning, journalism that fills the gap of in-depth reporting left behind by big money mainstream acquisitions. This piece looks into what fast fashion has done to the quality of the industry and the environment. Watch to learn why are ALL your clothes worse now?

What To Listen To

One of my favorite podcasts, If Book Could Kill, dissects “airport bestsellers” for factual accuracy and gives us all a reality check. They recently took a red pen to a book I loved, Sapiens by Yuval Harari. I challenged myself to burst my own bubble and listen to their critique which brought to light some things I hadn’t considered at the time of my reading. I love the gut check here, a sobering reminder that we can all be duped from time to time. Give it a go: If Books Could Kill - Sapiens

I’ve made an effort to branch out musically over these past few weeks, and in that effort I found a little floaty gem in Lifetime by Erika de Casier. A sonic astral projection. Smooth, relaxing, out-of-body. An enigma, both too long and not long enough.

The TikTok algorithm brought me to Mind Your Business by James The Seventh. I love her story, I love her manic vocals, I love how the internet randomly brought me here. She was on track to be a professional ballerina, tore her ACL, couldn’t walk for a year, and thus picked up a guitar. The result is a fun 16min romp and a fresh new angle for the indie pop scene.

I returned to a band I saw live maybe 15 years ago with a new release in Metamorphosis by Beats Antique. Dancey, otherworldly, and fun. A fusion of old and new - Middle Eastern, down tempo, electronic head-nodders.

Back to my usual groove, HEALTH - CONFLICT DLC, has been released! This was one of my most anticipated albums of the year and it did not disappoint. It's noisy, electric, and cinematic with an edgy beauty that always pushes through a certain sort of surface tension.