I was really pleased by this background image so wanted to talk about it briefly. The concept was (of course!) simple: the (in)famous xkcd graphic with the thankless Nebraskan removed xkcd.com/2347/

Like all lazy people in 2024, I turned to Chat GPT for help. This didn't work out well. (Have I mentioned that I'm bad at Chat GPT?)

I should mention that we don't put a ton of time into Oxide and Friends (sorry!) so I try to bound these side-quests at least somewhat. Somewhat. I decided to find a physics simulator (like a lunatic) and SimPHY was the first one I stumbled onto that worked well enough. I roughed out the structure from the xkcd comic:

Then removed the linchpin:

And simulated...

Until I got to something that was suitably calamitous:

I threw it on the iPad that I "borrowed" from my older son and traced it in Procreate with his Apple Pencil. 100% it could have been better, but I already felt like a crazy person and wasn't sure it was going to work out

Then I threw the lines into Photoshop, applied the bucket tool, and ... good enough!

Check out the episode I made this for where we interview Andres Freund on his discovery of a backdoor in XZ—maintained by the metaphorical Nebraskan! youtu.be/jg5F9UupL6I