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Pure CSS interactive web holiday lights (updated for 2025)
Posted inCode & Algorithms Posted in genresWeb DevelopmentFun

season's geekings: Pure CSS interactive web holiday lights (updated for 2025)

/* xmas lights */ #lightrope { text-align: center; white-space: nowrap; overflow: hidden; position: fixed; z-index: 1000; margin: -15px 0 0 0; padding: 0; pointer-events: none; width: 100%;left: 0;top: var(--wp-admin--admin-bar--height); } #lightrope > li { position: relative; display: inline-block; list-style: none; margin: 20px 20px 20px 22px; } #lightrope > li > div { position: relative; border-left: 2px solid rgba(0,0,0,.05); border-right: 2px solid rgba(255,255,255,.5); margin: 2px 0 0 -3px; padding: 0; display: block; width: 8px; height: 18px; border-radius: 50%; transform-origin: top center; -webkit-animation-fill-mode: forwards; animation-fill-mode: forwards; pointer-events: auto; } /* Colors for different bulbs */ #lightrope > li:nth-child(5n+0) > div { -webkit-animation-duration: 0.8s, 4.1s, 3s; animation-duration: 0.8s, 4.1s, 3s; } #lightrope > li:nth-child(5n+1) > div { -webkit-animation-duration: .9s, 4.3s, 3s; animation-duration: .9s, 4.3s, 3s; } #lightrope > li:nth-child(5n+2) > div { -webkit-animation-duration: 1s, 4.5s, 3s; animation-duration: 1s, 4.5s, 3s; } #lightrope > li:nth-child(5n+3) > div { -webkit-animation-duration: 1.1s, 4.7s, 3s; animation-duration: 1.1s,…
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Writing » Topical Writing
How the Section 174 Tax Code Changes Caused a White-Collar Job Crash
Posted inWriting Posted in genresMikesplainingCurrent EventsEconomics

Opinion: How the Section 174 Tax Code Changes Caused a White-Collar Job Crash

Note, Sep. 2024: I want to point something out: I’ve given few references here besides a couple of Google search results I happen to like. This page gives my current understanding. I’m still researching it, and you should research it yourself, don’t take my word as gospel truth. But this is how I understand it right now.

Googling section 174 layoffs will point you to a lot of information.

I’m also going to add some links at the bottom to interesting references to the issue, as I come across them. —Mike

IMPORTANT UPDATE, July 3, 2025: Pending signing of the new tax bill tomorrow, it appears the below information may finally be obsolete. The tax bill passed by Congress today quietly included a provision permanently repealing the below-discussed Section 174 changes. See https://abgi-usa.com/section174/latest-and-greatest

UPDATE 2, July 16, 2025: If…

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Writing » I Can't Believe It's Not Poetry!
Interlude Tonsorial
Posted inI Can't Believe It's Not Poetry! Posted in genresDoggerelMature Audiences Only

Hair Of The Dog: Interlude Tonsorial

Exqueeze me whilst I sing the tale
of facial hair gone tough as nails.
When short, it chafes, when long it scares!
Crepusculating facial hairs
portend the chafed skin one expects
of consequence in harm direct
of concourse with the roughshod necks
of neck-beards come to wreak their heck!

'Ere I detect, this sullen morn,
a loathsome beastly beard is born,
to aggravate, and for a week,
imperturbate the shaven-cheek'd
and terrorize the newly shorn
with skin smooth as a baby born
and terror in their widening eyes,
as chafes, it does, their inner thighs?

O!

Gentle on a summer's eve,
till facial hairs arrive en-scéne
and, stubbly on a summ'ry day,
abrade a poor girl's thighs away!
Enbarbatating facial growth,
when unwisely left alone,
may force a call to…

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Workshop » Works In Progress » Writing Works in Progress
Posted inWriting Posted in genresWork-In-ProgressArtificial IntelligenceTechnosociology

Insert Clever phrase here: Artificial Stupidity thoughts & references

I write down a lot of thoughts on AI but have never gathered it into a cohesive essay or collection. This is the beginning of loosely collecting my thoughts and saved references for that.

  • On Emergence and actual intelligence: People are talking about current technology, which relies on matching statistical profiles of strings of words, like true intelligence could emerge from it.I look at it this way: AI video generation is getting really impressive. You could feed it tons of video of basketballs bouncing, and pretty soon it would be able to generate videos of basketballs bouncing realistically through all kinds of extraordinary scenarios, because it had seen enough visual, external data to create incredible simulations of how a basketball bounces. It would truly, profoundly have a grasp on how basketballs appear to bounce.And never, in any of that, would it have even a glimmer of a clue as…
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Code & Algorithms » Web
Web Design—Adding Text Previews To HTML Details Disclosure Elements
Posted inCode & Algorithms Posted in genresWeb Development

god is in the details: Web Design—Adding Text Previews To HTML Details Disclosure Elements

Looking around the site, you might get the hint that I'm a big fan of <details class="detailsClassName"><summary>blah blah blah</summary> even more blah blah blah</details> disclosure elements.

For those unfamiliar, that's this:

Here's a title of a section

Here's where a bunch of information goes. Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah

It's true. I am.

But, I have one issue with them: sometimes I feel like they're a little nonintuitive. It's easy to miss them in certain circumstances, or maybe even not to realize they're clickable.

So, I came up with a way to make them show a preview of the contents.
First, you need the following…

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Workshop » Works In Progress » Visual Works In Progress
Work-In-Progress Preview—#WrappedInPink
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresAI Generative Illustration

Think... Nah, Not Gonna Say It: Work-In-Progress Preview—#WrappedInPink

They've been doing this "#WrappedInPink Challenge" generative art meme on LinkedIn. Here's just a preview of studies of some things I've been working on for it. Not entirely sure what direction I'm going to go in yey.

 

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Visual Art » Generative Illustrations
Feminine Stochastique
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresAI Generative IllustrationTechnosociology

Generative Mystique: Feminine Stochastique

About This Gallery

This gallery deals with the unavoidable stereotypes of femininity that one encounters using some current generative art tools ca. 2024.

Being trained on a society's art, there are two possibilities for generative visual art software: it can hold an unflinching mirror up to that society, including reiterating its existing biases; or its creators can seek to consciously tilt the output to favor what they deem to be better choices, which opens the whole project up to accusations, and let's face it, perhaps the reality, of introducing other biases. The unfortunate truth is that at the time, people never thought to question making art that almost exclusively reinforced certain notions (of femininity, or anything else). They did not consider themselves to be biased. So too, despite the most admirable intentions, it's honestly a valid question whether or not current attempts to right historical wrongs are undoing bias,…

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home » Site & Author Info » Site Directories & Finding Your Way Around
Directory of Article Titles By Publication Date
Posted inNews & Info Posted in genresNavigation

Waxin' and Milkin' All of Y'all Square Heads: Directory of Article Titles By Publication Date

This is the list of articles on this site, by the date they were first published, from newest to oldest.

There is also a Feed page, showing all articles in descending order of publication, but in more of a blog format, with article excerpts and greater detail than this list.

A log of all latest site changes & updates, which includes new edits & changes to existing older articles, is available on the Articles By Last Modified Date page.

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Writing » I Can't Believe It's Not Poetry! » "Incidental Poetry" Performance
Posted inWriting Posted in genresIncidental PoetryPerformance

“I Realized Something Disturbing This Morning” by Allison Rossi—Incidental Poetry

Originally revealed at https://www.linkedin.com/posts/allisonmarierossi_allisonwith2ls-copycats-plagiarismgoals-activity-7276604068976816129-tV7b?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop:

Your browser does not support the video tag.

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Workshop » Works In Progress » Visual Works In Progress
By Request, Wild SF & Wild NYC (Work In Progress)
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresWork-In-ProgressAI Generative Illustration

More Wild Styles: By Request, Wild SF & Wild NYC (Work In Progress)

A cousin of mine was helping work on a volume of poetry and asked if I had more images specifically of San Francisco or New York City in the style of “Wild California” Studies — AI Generative Art gallery that they could consider for inclusion. I didn't, but I whipped some up.

I'm pretty fond of how a lot of them turned out, but, as with so many of these projects, I wound up making many that are visually striking but don't really have much artistic value beyond that, and the work remains to be done to winnow down all the striking images to the ones that really are special.

Until then, I'm so fond of them, though, that I thought I'd give a preview. Here's the complete output of those experiments, awaiting the best of it being culled down into the final presentation.

Right now…

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Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Requests & Contest Submissions
Rad Santa
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresAI Generative Illustration

Here's To My Sweet St. Nick: Rad Santa

Someone on social media asked for AI interpretations of Santa Claus. I couldn't resist such low-hanging fruit.

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Code & Algorithms » Web
Scripts to Analyze CSS from Firefox’s Javascript console.
Posted inCode & Algorithms Posted in genresCSSToolsWeb DevelopmentJavascript

For Web Devs and Other Tool-Using Animals: Scripts to Analyze CSS from Firefox’s Javascript console.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to understand why your wordpress site's freaking menus display fine when you're logged in as administrator but are completely broken when you're logged out, it may be useful to be able to easily compile all the CSS for the affected page elements for both the working and nonworking versions, and compare them to see what might be different.

Let me back up. I had a problem the other day where my Wordpress site's caching plugin, which performs various optimizations on my site's code for non-logged-in users, was adding some sort of broken CSS. When I was logged in, everything worked fine, but when not logged in, something changed somewhere in the CSS that caused some of my menus not to display. I had a rough idea of where the changed code must be, but no more than that, and…

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home » Social Web / Community Features » Slashpages

/Flypaper

This was an old idea I saw on the web 20 or so years ago, and did for myself for a while: the "Flypaper" page, trying to find people you have lost track up by putting their names on a page for them to find if they do a web search for themselves. I had one for a while, too, and I'm going to update it and put it here. For now, this is a placeholder to remind me to do that.

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home » Social Web / Community Features » Slashpages

/Quotes

Information Technology

"Prompt in haste, repent at leisure." —Jason Gorman, LinkedIn

"JSON made the web shittier in a way that XML tried and failed." -Tantek Çelik

"This is exactly the sort of scenario where I imagine my waffle delivery drone idea would be helpful." —James's Coffee Blog

"Omnes stulti, et deliberatione non utentes, omnia tentant." —Thomas d'Aquinas, Summa Theologica ("Fools and those who do not think try everything")

"Ergo, omnes stulti Iavascriptum tentant. QED." —Norman Birkett, LinkedIn ("Therefore, all fools try JavaScript. QED.")

"People do not love Slack but rather feel subject to it." —pacifika, Hacker News

"'Open Source is free as in puppies'... Don't adopt it if you're not going to  care for it." -Kevin Marks

"“I asked ChatGPT”- ok well I asked the mycelium and it said to plant more trees and to…

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Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Interesting Leftovers & Bonus Galleries
Bonus Gallery — Winter Monsters
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresContest & Challenge SubmissionsFantasy IllustrationMonstersAI Generative IllustrationFun

Bonus Gallery — Winter Monsters

As usual, when doing my gallery for #SaturdayMonsterChallenge — "Winter Monster", there were a ton of images left over that I liked but didn't make the cut, or weren't quite unique enough, or didn't fit the theme. There are those.

 

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Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Requests & Contest Submissions
#SaturdayMonsterChallenge — “Winter Monster”
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresContest & Challenge SubmissionsFantasy IllustrationMonstersAI Generative Illustration

Baby, It's Cold Outside: #SaturdayMonsterChallenge — “Winter Monster”

Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024’s #SaturdayMonsterChallenge theme on LinkedIn is "Winter Monster". Here's what I did.

Bonus Gallery: Leftover Winter Monster Images
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Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Interesting Leftovers & Bonus Galleries
Bonus Bigfoots
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresContest & Challenge SubmissionsFantasy IllustrationMonstersAI Generative IllustrationFun

Mo' Bigfoot, Mo' Betta: Bonus Bigfoots

Working on the #SaturdayMonsterChallenge "A Connecticut Sasquatch In King Arthur's Court" I created a lot of extra images that I liked a lot, but which either didn't fit the theme quite right, or were too similar to others, or too different. Here are some of those.

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Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Requests & Contest Submissions
Finding Goths in Ungothly Places
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresAI Generative IllustrationFun

You Can Take The Goth Out Of The Club...: Finding Goths in Ungothly Places

My friend Hellena Banner (from whom I cribbed the title of this gallery, with apologies) was doing a project where she was trying to put Goths in the least Goth-like situation possible. I took up the challenge.

 

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Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Requests & Contest Submissions
#SaturdayMonsterChallenge “A Connecticut Sasquatch In King Arthur’s Court”
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresContest & Challenge SubmissionsFantasy IllustrationMonstersAI Generative IllustrationFun

#SaturdayMonsterChallenge “A Connecticut Sasquatch In King Arthur’s Court”

Saturday, Nov. 30, 2024's #SaturdayMonsterChallenge theme on LinkedIn is "Time Travelling Monsters".

Here's my interpretation: "A Connecticut Sasquatch In King Arthur's Court".

Bonus Gallery — favorite extra images

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Articles

Error 404 — You Done Took The Wrong River

This site has no dang page at this URL.

img {cursor:none;} .si-sidebar-inner >div:first-child {display:none;}.gallery-icon {text-align: center !important;}.dontshow {display: none;}.doshow > img {width: 100% !important;cursor:initial !important;/* last 3 are here in case they end up in noncritical style by accident*/}

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Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Interesting Leftovers & Bonus Galleries
On Time
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresAI Generative Illustration

Art Waits For No Man: On Time

I posted The Contents Of The Rest Of The World’s Dream Do Not Concern Me (or, Why I Didn’t Turn 40) and Day Nights at around the same time, and in making the featured images, used Stable Diffusion XL to create a bunch of images that I'm kind of fond of, all around the themes of time and calendars. Here's the leftovers.

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Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Requests & Contest Submissions
LinkedIn #SaturdayMonsterChallenge — Mustache Monsters
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresContest & Challenge SubmissionsFantasy IllustrationMonstersSurrealismAI Generative IllustrationFun

LinkedIn #SaturdayMonsterChallenge — Mustache Monsters

One of the fun non-work-related things that happens on LinkedIn is the "Saturday Monster Challenge", a fun AI art meme where every Saturday this one guy picks a monster-related theme and people make generative art monster images about it. Today, as I write this, the theme was "Mustache Monsters", for "Movember", a global campaign where men grow mustaches to raise awareness of men's health issues.

It seemed like fun. I of course, couldn't stop with just one.

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home » Site & Author Info » Site Directories & Finding Your Way Around
All Articles by Last Modification Date, Newer to Older
Posted inNews & Info Posted in genresFAQs & Further Info

Turn And Face The Strange: All Articles by Last Modification Date, Newer to Older

This is a mirror, for navigation convenience, of the /Changes slashpage, which lists all recent changes to any content on this site, including new edits and updates to old articles.

A list of just the most recently created, brand new articles is available on the Newest Articles page, or in the column on the right-hand side of any page, under the heading "Newest Articles...".

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Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Troubleshooting log

/Devlog

  • 2026may10
    • Make article headers on all archive pages show dates if the post is in category 803 (blog post).
    • Add othercatposts-blogformat class to , also pass ['blogformat' => 'true'] to call to template-parts/content/content-blog-horizontal in othercatposts blogformat handler
    • template-parts/entry/entry-meta.php was outputting comment counts and tags for archive pages. Added a conditional to suppress this.
    • Add dingbat separator to horizontal post summary layout for readability and change .dingbatdiv from margin: 12px auto 0px; to margin: 12px auto 12px auto; text-align: center;
  • 2026may9
    • Changed my mind! Make .entry-summary > p > .poststartimg float right on summaries instead of disappearing completely.
    • Added .entry-summary > p > .poststartimg {display: none; /* don't show featured images in excerpts on category pages... already included by template. */} to noncritical css
    • Moved section giving javascript-free sitemap, to navigate if menus aren't working because somebody just hadda have js turned off, to template-parts/header/logo.php
    • Update…
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Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Interesting Leftovers & Bonus Galleries
May Your Tags Blink In Eternity
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresAI Generative Illustration

Images Of A Resurrection: May Your Tags Blink In Eternity

I had a lot of fun making the featured image for the article "Resurrecting the <BLINK> tag". Here's some of the also-rans.

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Code & Algorithms » Web
Resurrecting the HTML <BLINK> tag
Posted inCode & Algorithms Posted in genresWeb DevelopmentFun

In With The Old: Resurrecting the HTML <BLINK> tag

Back in the bad old days, there was an HTML tag called [code][/code]. It did this, which everybody hated because it was annoying, and everybody's web pages looked like this:

.blink { display: inline-block; animation: blink 1s step-end infinite;} .oldschool, .oldschool * {font-family:times,'times new roman',serif !important;} .oldschool:not(a), .oldschool *:not(a) {color:#000;} .oldschool a, .oldschool a blink {color:blue !important;text-decoration:underline !important;} .oldschool a:visited blink {color:purple !important;} Hello! Welcome to Kupietz Arts+Code This is the homepage of Mike Kupietz where you can see all his art, music, writing, and code! BEST VIEWED WITH

An interesting bit of history, courtesy of Lou Montulli, early Mozilla engineer and author of…

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