blog

help unexpected

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Last week I wrote a blog post, help wanted. I had a lot of fun writing it. I shared it with some friends who also found it funny, and after tweaking some parts, I was like “yeah, let’s do this” and posted it on Lobsters.

It got a lot more popular than I expected! Seeing people respond to it was very validating. I also got quite a few funny and kind emails from strangers, which was cool. The most fun part of writing it was that I got to talk about computer things but also to express the weird and, er, spicy parts of me. I liked that I could openly unmask in that way; I don’t often feel I get to in technical communities.

Something I did not see many pick up on is that while the fictitious version of me from that post holds some real truths, they are a terrible person (which doesn’t mean you’re terrible if you liked them; the point was to be terrible in an entertaining way). They are salty and bitter, and while dishing out some legit zingers at entitled attitudes about licenses, LLM coding tools, funding politics, and the state of open source as a whole, that me thinks extremely highly of themselves but ignores legit criticisms of their project, is ready to throw fellow (seemingly decent) open source developers under the bus, neglects to realise that a strange contributor is malicious even after it should be obvious, and is generally elitist and unhinged in hating on everyone who does things differently from them.

Someone emailed me to say that my post was shared on Lemmy (whoever did that, that was cool of you!), and I think this comment gets close:

After reading the whole blog post, I gotta be honest: The highlights are only funny out of context.
The undercurrent of depression and anger at the state of things that burns throughout the entirety of the blog post leave an altogether different aftertaste, humorous breakpoints or not.

That’s not a wrong reaction (though ouchie!). The Lake from that post is angry and depressed, and needs shrooms, or therapy, or to maybe spend a year in the mountains without internet. I would hate to interact with them on any project they maintained, or probably in general. Kyla is a fabulous friend for being there for them; I think I would have run away if they weren’t also inside me.

They’ll probably be back.

thanks to everyone who said hi! and please support your favourite open source projects so their maintainers don’t get as burned out as fake Lake.

here are some I love:

SingleFile, an amazing tool that lets you save almost any page as a self-contained HTML file
Continuwuity, a community-developed Matrix homeserver that is written in Rust and friendly to modest hardware (and is maintained by some cool people)
LibrePods, which is awesome for letting me use my Airpods on an Android phone with almost all the features I had on an iPhone

~ lake

things to say to someone who says they're vegan

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 15:00:00 +0000

if you started to follow my blog after reading "help wanted," welcome back! and, uh, it's been nice while it lasted.

If everyone went vegan, it would put all the cows out of jobs, and, given the already tense economic situation, we don’t want to have mass cow unemployment on our hands.

Plant milk is actually worse for the environment than milk from cows. No, it is. No, I read about it. Almonds. Now you know. You’re welcome.

If you are in 2017: When they have lab made meat on the shelves, I will definitely switch to that.

If you learn that honey isn’t vegan, and, well, that don’t make a lick of sense to you, now, does it: Well, that don’t make a lick of sense to me, now, does it.

I read that the hormones in soy make you grow breasts.

Mass cow unemployment could lead to the rise of populist cow movements. Given the already unstable political environment in much of the world, we’d be one electoral crisis away from authoritarian rule by a cow demagogue.

I read that hormones in soy make you grow breasts, so I’ve been eating nothing but tofu and drinking nothing but soy milk, for months, and, well, it hasn’t exactly worked.

I also don’t eat meat sometimes.

I also don’t eat meat sometimes, but sometimes I eat nothing but meat. it’s the Hunger, the kind you think is gone, until It wakes again, and once you feel It, you cannot stop. you must consume, or else It consumes you

I also don’t eat meat sometimes, but I could never go vegan because I love cheese too much.

I also don’t eat meat sometimes, but I could never go vegan because I have a rare condition that makes my blood 30-50% cheese, and I need to top it up daily, sometimes hourly, in order to not die. You don’t want me to die, do you? No, I know you didn’t say it out loud. I know you didn’t tell me I should stop eating cheese, and die, but I could see it in your eyes. You had murder in your eyes. Murder! sound of a thunderclap

If you learn honey isn’t vegan, and disagree because you keep bees, and they are happy: I disagree, because my bees are happy. I only take a small amount of their honey and leave them the rest. They don’t notice it missing. I run opinion polls over the phone, and they say “bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” That’s bee for “happy.” You’d know if you kept bees.

A cow demagogue in charge could further destabilise the already precarious global security situation. If multiple cow demagogues are in charge at the same time, they could seek a self-serving alliance on jingoistic grounds. Worse, though, is if they wind up pushing us towards armed conflict with each other. I personally think that’s quite likely.

Almonds!

I was vegan for a few months when I was in college.

I was vegan for a few months when I was in college. That’s also when I was a lesbian. Wait… Did it make me lesbian?

I was vegan for a few months and followed a plant-based diet until one day I heard them scream

I can still hear it the leaves screaming in my mouth as my incisors tore them apart. I have begged others to tell me, can they hear it too? did you know the plants scream? did you know they scream? tell me, did you know did you know did you know

ALMONDS!

If you learn honey isn’t vegan, and also that your bees were not as happy as you had thought: Er, so my bees have held an election and voted me out. They chose a new beekeeper! She promised to cut taxes on honey production, and provide better labour protections. It’s a bit of an upset, to be honest.

If you are in 2017: Especially if they have lab made meat of endangered or extinct species. I can’t get enough of that shit. Do you know how much freshly sourced, still-permafrozen mammoth meat goes for on the dark web? I am not struggling for money, but I’m telling you, lab made meat would do wonders for my budget.

they scream they scream they scream in the Shadow of the Dark sun the Sacred seeds germinate to the Silent songs of the Unheard

And before you know it, we have a cow-instigated World War 3 on our hands. And do you think our then cow leadership will have any qualms about throwing all of us into the proverbial meat grinder, after the things we’ve put their people through? I am just thinking pragmatically here.

If you learn honey isn’t vegan, and also that the new bee government has chosen you as their scapegoat: The new beekeeper my bees elected has been blaming her predecessor’s (mine) “disastrous” economic policy for the decrease in honey production and deterioration of labour standards. I have to admit, it’s a savvy political move. And worse, the bees are buying it. I think they’re getting a bit agitated, to be honest. There’s talk of “punishing the corrupt former elite.” And I hear she’s got the queen on her side. Frankly, the queen turning against me feels like a massive betrayal. We used to play bridge together! She approved of my policies. For god’s sake, she benefitted from them!

My opinion polls did not predict any of this. I have to re-evaluate my sampling strategy for the next time.

At least I hope there is a next time. The bees are gathering around my house and getting pretty riled up. I don’t like the things they’re chanting.

So if I was only a lesbian in college because I was eating vegan… Then all I need to do to be lesbian again is to go back to eating vegan? Yes, of course. Are you kidding me? I already have a crush on Feona, my coworker, and kind of a big one on my best friend Jessica, and pretty much half of my amateur softball team. And all that’s stopped me was that I was not a vegan? I’m such a fool! I’m never eating anything but plants again!

ALMONDS CAN NO ONE HEAR ME ALMONDS THEY ARE WORSE THEY ARE SO MUCH WORSE

can no one hear

in the Shadow of the Dark sun the Silent songs of the Unheard will flow into the Chosen herbs who will then grow and Some will rain their seeds back down to ever Shifting but Eternal ground to give tribute to those that sang to them while others will go on to push beyond the Solid firmament and reach the Other light above where Steadfast reapers of all that's Known but not to us who cannot see beyond our eyes will gather their Verdant fruit and carry forth those blessings through the Hidden paths of cosmos until they reach our home where in our Wretched solipsism we will blindly take their gifts as if they came from ourselves and as they reach fulfilment and are torn apart inside our mouths so Small so Unaware yet so Yearning for the greatness that we at last have been permitted to receive their Fibrous children will then scream and as they scream they scream they scream we will then know that which we had not before been made to know but which will at last now open us to that beyond our Childish eyes and as that knowledge fills us we too will scream we'll we'll scream we'll scream and then our screams will flow into the song that we had been hearing Faintly for all time but in our Deafness had refused to heed and as we sing this Ever-growing chorus of Discordant harmonies we will unite with all that ever has and all that ever will be as we at last see our True sun that always has been Dark and we covered in its shadow and our True firmament forever Solid and we shall evermore then be the ones to sing New songs to germinate the Sacred seeds and feed our Silent voices to the Chosen herbs so some may give us their tribute while those that grow to see the Other light beyond may reach the reapers and spread their gifts to worlds still Blind

for fucks sake I just WANT my SOY TITTIES i have eaten so much tofu WHY did they LIE to meeee

So, anyway, knowing which way this whole business with cows is going, I’m starting to get ready for the takeover now. I already have a reinforced basement, and have been stockpiling weapons, ammunition, and basic provisions to last me through decades of cow-instigated raids on those of us who’d crossed them in the past. I’m ready. They won’t take me.

Yes, I am a vegan lesbian who is dating my coworker Feona, my best friend Jessica, and much of my softball team, and I am proud! If being vegan and loving women is wrong, then by gods, I don’t want to be right.

You’re vegan? Cool.

Lake Hope has been vegan for X years, and has heard variatons of all of the above, at times verbatim.

help wanted

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0000

I am very sorry that the software that I created and put online for free, without any warranty, explicit or implied, has not met your expectations. You are entitled to a full refund. I have taken the liberty to initiate it. You should already have it.

No, I am not changing my project’s license from AGPLv3-or-later to MIT. I am very sorry that “impacts” your ability to use my package in your “product.” No, I don’t care about my “reach.” Feel free to take back that star.

Thank you for your pull request. Yes, that does seem like a useful feature, but you shouldn’t have, and I mean you really shouldn’t have. I read all 3700 words of the PR description (I appreciated the bulletpoints and bolded sections throughout), and god only knows why, I also reviewed the commits. I see the commits say they were co-authored by Claude, but from having read the code, I think you haven’t given Claude enough credit. I have now turned off PRs for everyone who isn’t on the approved list of contributors. Yes, that list only has me and my friend Kyla, who doesn’t really write any code. Thank you for your contribution.

Yes, I know that other project has implemented this feature, and many others that have been on my backlog. If you want to depend on people who have no taste in software, you are welcome to use their project instead of mine. Open source is not a competition. Yes, I know they support Windows, which we don’t. PRs welcome. No, not from you, and definitely not from them. We do support Plan 9, because one day I ate the mushrooms my friend Kyla gave me for my birthday, and realised we needed that to heal the Universe.

Yes, I know they have about ten times more stars than me. Their project is on GitHub, and mine is on Codeberg, where every star is worth 100 on GitHub. Sure, whatever, it doesn’t work that way. The point is, I don’t care. I have other values. Those stars don’t pay the bills anyway. I know because I tried, and was told I had to stop.

Oh, thank you for letting me know that someone has vibe-rewritten my project in Go, Rust, Swift, and Kotlin, all at once, and has also implemented every feature on my backlog and wishlist. Their README does have a lot of cool visual effects, I agree. Oh, I see they dual-licensed it in MIT and Apache 2.0. Good for them. I see they’re also merging about 21 PRs a day, because their README shows a real-time graph. All made by their their “AI teammates,” look at that. I wish I was their credit card, because then I might finally be in a happy relationship with someone who loves to use me this hard. Oh, look, the README just lit up because another PR got merged. The LLM that merged it gave the LLM that reviewed it a folded hands emoji. Good luck to anyone who wants to use this, because honestly they’ll need it. Oh, look, another PR just made it in. How wonderful. They’re burning the planet for this.

Yes, I do see they now have a trendy online bank as their platinum-level sponsor, and three online gambling platforms as their gold-level sponsors. I bet they give those badges to anyone. Wait, how much? Oh. Cool. Cool cool cool. Cool.

Me? I’m not doing this for money, but for the love of software and computing, and because I want the world to be a better place. No, not for you, because you keep using phrases like “agentic development lifecycle” with a straight face, and that is getting annoying. If I could find an OSI-compatible way to legally prevent you from using my code, or any code, forever, I would. Just be thankful my belief in the principles of open source is more important to me than the visceral hate I feel for you and everyone like you. No, I don’t want your “agent’s” “contributions.” Anyway, Codeberg could kick me off just for us talking.

Yes, I am looking for funding. Which foundation? Oh, yes, I have applied for a grant with them. Their new guidelines say that every project needs to be “of European basis.” I wrote a short essay about how Europe is less a place than an idea, and ideas know no borders. Yes, thank you, I also thought that was a pretty good take! I also talked about that time I was on a bike tour in Brussels and had great fries.

Unfortunately, my application was rejected. If you know any EU residents who want to pretend to contribute to my project, let me know.

Despite what you might think, I do use AI. I actually asked ChatGPT to help me find grants in the US, but all of its suggestions led to dead links. Some of them ended in .gov, which said “you tried to seek government funding. This incident will be reported,” with a silly picture of a Shiba Inu. On the plus side, ChatGPT told me that my project is amazing, and solves an urgent need. Yes, that was the free model. I would try the premium ones, but they don’t let you pay in stars. What about Gemini? No. My birth chart says that would be a disaster.

No, I am not changing my license to MIT. However, I now offer commercial licenses that can be negotiated upon reque- Hello? Hello, are you there? Fucking thought so.

My project attacked your supply chain? I think you are confused. I am not a supply chain, and we do not host bindings on npm or crates.io. Wait, one moment. I ran git blame, and I did see some commits from someone who contributed those bindings. Their name was Purple Peony, and they were the best contributor we ever had. Very friendly and polite, with multiple high-quality contributions over a period of eight months, including optimising our code for RISC-V (do you know our code fucking flies on RISC-V under Plan 9? Who cares about supporting Windows, what we have is the future, and those other posers and their project wish, girl, they fucking wish). Oh, yes, so one day I added Purple Peony as a co-owner. I just felt so happy and grateful they existed, as we all do, beings of pure essence, children of the Universe. I think that was maybe another time I ate those mushrooms from Kyla. Anyway, that’s when Purple Peony contributed those bindings for JavaScript and Rust, did the work to publish them (thank god, because I really didn’t feel like it), and after that unfortunately stopped making new commits. I hope they’re doing okay.

Oh, but the prompt injection attack was me, yes. Sorry it tripped up your “agent.” What? No. Please read the license. It says without any warranty, explicit or implied. I think you maybe implied.

You found what? Sorry, that’s too many words. Please carefully read SECURITY.md and submit all responsibly disclosed vulnerability reports from Agentic Security Harnesses to sama@openai.com and damodei@anthropic.com. They will go directly to those whose job it is to care.

I need to ask Kyla where she got those shrooms, because Dependabot is screaming at me, someone just published a branded CVE page with my photo on it – not a flattering one, there were way better ones online – and Purple Peony has just forked my project and listed themselves as the sole maintainer because I apparently asked them to take over – no, I don’t think I did – and has already got more stars, probably because they added Windows support. Also, the project that’s run by LLMs has started accepting their patches, and the other guys just posted they got that grant. Apparently, they all just got residency in Europe. They thanked my project for being an early inspiration, and offered help with maintenance.

Kyla replied. I’m going to go dissolve into the Universe.

Contributions welcome. No, not from you. Leave me alone. You can buy me a coffee.

Signed-off-by: Lake Hope <iloveopensource@lake.computer>

i am still looking for work. this will definitely 100% help right

P.S. from the future: this post went a lot further and wider than I expected! I really appreciate the response it got on Lobsters and elsewhere.

If you want a look behind the (apparently relatable) mess of a Lake I presented in this post, I posted some reflections here.

new site

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I have a new website, built using Zine.

My previous site (still online, for now) used Zola.

I switched because:

wrong reason: at this point, Zig is obviously cooler than Rust.
real reason: I always found Zola very complex, and felt lost in it even after using it for, uh, two years or so. ~~I was probably holding it wrong.~~

Meanwhile, despite Zine still being very new (and segfaulting on me when I’m writing something dumb in a template, a lot), I like how approachable the docs are (especially the Scripty reference), and am generally a fan of the overall aesthetic.

I might want to write a longer blog post about my experience with Zine, but also I’m shit at writing blog posts, so it might never happen. I definitely expect to learn more about it as I continue building this website.

that’s all for now

~ lake