Murderbot and his "Hippie Clients"

I’m enjoying the Apple TV series, “Murderbot."

The mix of “green world” (organic and open), and “closed world” (artificial and enclosed) are quite prevalent, even in the mind of Murderbot himself:1

“I could just leave them to cope on their own, I guess. But it wasn’t that easy. It’s wrong to think of constructs like me as half-bot, half-organic. Like the bot-half should just want to obey orders and do its job. And the organic part should want to protect itself and get the hell out of there. As opposed to the reality. Which was that I was one, whole confused entity.” (S1: E7 at 13:22, Murderbot internal dialogue)

And in the next episode:

“I was trying to calm myself down with some of my favorite episodes. But I couldn’t focus. It was like this new show, “Murderbot: And Its Selfish Ungrateful Hippie Clients,” had just taken over." (S1: E8 at 22:39, Murderbot internal dialogue)

I’d share some screenshots of the show, but sadly, screenshots are disabled on Apple devices. There are some workarounds though, and here’s the trailer:

Note that the trailer is from YouTube. It would be nice if Apple TV shows and movies could be embedded from Apple TV, without all the ads and other nonsense.


  1. The “green world” and “closed world” ideas are from a book by Paul Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996). ↩︎


Honeywell Rabbit Sculpture

Honeywell Rabbit Sculpture (ca. 1965) at the Computer History Museum.

The Rabbit sculpture features on pages 48-49, in Core magazine (2015), published by the Computer History Museum.

The sculpture, made of resistors, was created around 1965, and part of an advertising campaign featured in Business Week magazine.Core 2015 CHM - Honeywell Rabbit Sculpture.


Univac ad - Fortune magazine, September 1956

Early computers, from the scientific world to the business world.

Univac ad Fortune Sept 1956.
"Univac - For Finding Lost Moons of Lost Dollars"

Photos - Tour de France 2024

Photos from our trip to the 2024 Tour de France, week three in Nice.

We toured with Custom Getaways and they were absolutely amazing 👌

Tour de France 2024


Hyper-Reality

Hyper-Reality on Vimeo was posted 9 years ago, but it feels like the not-so-distant future, like in the next 5 minutes.


Video - Tour de France 2024

Video from our trip to the 2024 Tour de France, it’s 15min but quite entertaining!

We toured with Custom Getaways and had a wonderful time. They’re an official tour operator of the Tour de France, making us part of the tour with special access and events, amazing!

The video was taken with an iPhone 15 Pro and a DJI Osmo Pocket 3.

Update: Our trip to the 2026 Tour de France


iPad traffic lights Easter egg

Is it just me, or was there a pre-roll before Craig’s F1 driving showing an Easter egg of the iPad Window Controls? I think there was a quick image of the traffic light buttons on an iPad window floating by in the montage, but it’s not on the published video as far as I can tell.


6 out of 5 stars - Apple WWDC 2025

One of the best parts of the WWDC 2025 Keynote, “6 out of 5 ⭐️” by Allen Stone.


Visualizing History

Histography is a data visualization project by Martin Stauber, and it’s pretty amazing.

“Histography" is interactive timeline that spans across 14 billion years of history, from the Big Bang to 2015. The site draws historical events from Wikipedia and self-updates daily with new recorded events. The interface allows for users to view between decades to millions of years. The viewer can choose to watch a variety of events which have happened in a particular period or to target a specific event in time. For example you can look at the past century within the categories of war and inventions.

The project reminds me of The Fifth Element when Leeloo is researching “War." It’s not the interface, but the way so much information can be visualized in such a compact form – it can be a bit overwhelming.

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)


Deep LA Conference at The Huntington

I’ll be presenting a paper at the “Deep L.A.” graduate history conference taking place at The Huntington on October 3rd.

The conference is sponsored by UCLA and USC, with a focus on Los Angeles and Southern California regional history: http://lahistoryconference.tumblr.com

I’m presenting a portion of a chapter in my dissertation, which focuses on mainframes, paperwork, and the electrical utility company Southern California Edison during the postwar era.

LA History Conference logo - Deep LA
(Revised and republished March 28th, 2025)