Plutonic Rainbows

Bleu de Chanel L'Exclusif

August 19, 2025 · uneasy.in/eddf1ef

Chanel's latest release, Bleu de Chanel L'Exclusif, officially launched on August 26, 2025, represents the most mysterious and intense expression of the iconic Bleu de Chanel lineage. Created by Olivier Polge as an Extrait de Parfum, this ambery-aromatic composition centers around New Caledonian sandalwood, resinous cistus labdanum, amber, and leather notes that create a warm, dense fragrance sitting closer to the skin than its predecessors. Opening with the familiar citrus blast of the Bleu de Chanel line, it quickly evolves into something more sophisticated as the labdanum becomes dominant, creating a smooth, incense-like presence with markedly improved longevity over the Parfum version.

The fragrance community's response has been mixed but generally positive, with reviewers praising its refinement while questioning its necessity within the existing ecosystem—one critic called it "the best designer release of 2025," though others find it redundant to the Parfum. At $205 for 60ml and $275 for 100ml, the pricing has drawn criticism, but the consensus suggests L'Exclusif successfully targets a more mature demographic seeking a sophisticated, grown-up interpretation of the Bleu de Chanel DNA.

CSS Optimization

August 19, 2025 · uneasy.in/22d1a32

I took a closer look at the blog's CSS today and noticed it had accumulated quite a bit of unused code over time. There were several classes like .highlight and .responsive-image that weren't actually being used anywhere, along with styles for HTML elements like abbr and dt that don't appear in any of the posts or templates.

After carefully going through and removing the unused bits, I found there were also some redundant font-family declarations scattered throughout — the same font was being specified multiple times when it only needed to be set once. I also spotted some performance-related CSS properties that seemed unnecessary for a simple static blog.

The cleanup managed to reduce the stylesheet from about 5KB down to 3.7KB, which is roughly a 27% reduction. Nothing looks different on the actual site, which was the goal — just cleaner code behind the scenes.

It's interesting how CSS can grow like this in any project that evolves over time. Features get added and refined, but the old styles often stick around even when they're no longer needed. Probably worth doing this kind of review more regularly to keep things tidy.

Study Plan

August 18, 2025 · uneasy.in/a03b1f7

I'm working on an eight-month study plan to prepare for potential postgraduate study in AI. The plan starts with foundational reading including Bostrom's Superintelligence, Brian Christian's The Alignment Problem, and Melanie Mitchell's Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. This initial phase aims to provide context around ethical considerations and societal implications before tackling more technical material.

The next phase focuses on machine learning fundamentals through resources like Goodfellow's Deep Learning, Bishop's Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, and fast.ai's practical tutorials. I hope to then explore natural language processing using Jurafsky and Martin's Speech and Language Processing, along with some hands-on projects involving language models and transformers, areas that might complement my linguistics background. The final months would revisit AI safety and governance topics while working on practical applications. The goal is to develop a basic understanding across theory, implementation, and ethical considerations.