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unfortunatelytheclockisticking.html

This template is an elaborate easter egg featuring the "Unfortunately, the clock is ticking" meme - a birthday cat image combined with a Windows notification-style dialog about.

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Read this when Use this page when tracing the HTML/Pandoc templates and include fragments that shape rendered gwern.net pages around unfortunatelytheclockisticking.

Overview​

This template is an elaborate easter egg featuring the "Unfortunately, the clock is ticking" meme - a birthday cat image combined with a Windows notification-style dialog about mortality, the passage of time, and diminishing possibilities. The template uses HTML image maps extensively to create a rich interactive experience where nearly every part of the image links to relevant content, often with humorous or existential commentary.

The meme's core message is memento mori: reminding users that time is passing, opportunities are finite, and procrastination has real costs. Like its sibling template idealconditionsdonotexistandwillneverhappen.html, this is shown as a popup easter egg: special-occasions.js spawns it as a pinned popup on April Fools' Day (desktop only), 5 minutes after page load.

What makes this template exceptional is its density of interactivity - it includes 100+ clickable areas with randomized link destinations, philosophical commentary, memes, and self-referential humor. The sofa alone has 65 randomized link targets. This represents Gwern's characteristic style of layering depth and humor into seemingly simple elements.

Key Variables/Blocks​

This template contains no Hakyll/Pandoc variables - it's pure static HTML with extensive JavaScript-like features through the display-random-1 class system.

Major Image Map Regions​

Dialog Box Text (Sequential top-to-bottom)​

  • "Unfortunately," → Clock of the Long Now
  • "The clock is ticking" → Clock of the Long Now
  • "the hours are going by." → Site subscript (Big Now)
  • "The past increases," → /changelog (site change history)
  • "the future recedes." → Vernor Vinge's Technological Singularity essay
  • "Possibilities decreasing," → "Your Life in Weeks" (Wait But Why)
  • "regrets" → /sunk-cost
  • "mounting." → /screwfly (on lordosis)
  • "Do you understand?" → /doc/psychology/cognitive-bias/illusion-of-depth/index

Interactive Elements​

  • Cat (randomized, 2 options): Links to /review/cat#are-cats-domesticated or 10-hour Cat video
  • Candle → "Do not go gentle into that good night" (Dylan Thomas poem)
  • Cat food can → "It Was All For The Tuna" (indie game)
  • Pillow/Space Invader → Space Invaders Google Easter Egg

Dialog Box Buttons​

"I Understand" button (randomized, 14 options):

  • /archiving
  • /search
  • /doc/index
  • Dhammapada (Wikisource)
  • /subculture
  • "Meditations on Moloch" (Slate Star Codex)
  • "The Tail End" (Wait But Why)
  • Hamming's "You and Your Research"
  • David Foster Wallace "This Is Water"
  • Randy Pausch "Last Lecture"
  • Why the Lucky Stiff retrospective
  • Paul Graham "Life is Short"
  • Bertrand Russell "In Praise of Idleness"
  • Seneca "On the Shortness of Life"

"remain ignorant" button (randomized, 17 options):

  • /404
  • Rickroll
  • "Dare To Be Stupid" (Weird Al)
  • Classic internet memes (All Your Base, Hampster Dance, Badger Badger, Nyan Cat, Zombo.com, YTMND, etc.)
  • Wikipedia Random Article
  • Neal.fun Internet Artifacts

Close "X" button (randomized, 9 options):

  • Redirects to /index or /404
  • Links to about:blank
  • Does nothing (disabled link)
  • "It was me, Dio!" image (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure meme)
  • Microsoft Sydney chatbot reference (ominous threatening text)
  • Evil Jinni: Hides image but leaves popup (malicious compliance)
  • Good Jinni: Actually closes popup properly

This region contains an absurd variety of links with deadpan commentary, including:

  • Philosophy (Default Mode Network, Oblomovism, Thrownness, Heidegger, Shakespeare)
  • Science (Tardigrades, house dust mites, microbiota, entropy, friction coefficients)
  • Meta-humor (Simulation hypothesis, texture resolution, SCP Foundation)
  • Procrastination themes (Temporal discounting, FOMO, hedonic treadmill, nostalgia)
  • Internet culture (XKCD comics, "touch grass" meme, 404 page, /everything)
  • Self-referential jokes (Debug coordinates, image map hover time tracking)

CSS Classes​

  • image-focus-not: Prevents image zoom behavior
  • invert-not: Prevents dark mode inversion
  • display-random-1: Enables randomization of child display-entry elements
  • disable-the-not-chosen: Hides non-selected randomized options

Usage​

Like idealconditionsdonotexistandwillneverhappen.html, this is an easter egg template not used in standard Hakyll compilation. Its actual trigger is the April Fools' Day handler in special-occasions.js (the "april-fools" special occasion): on desktop browsers only, 5 minutes (jokeOnsetSeconds = 300) after page load, it synthesizes an include-link to /static/template/unfortunatelytheclockisticking.html (as a local-fragment), spawns it as a popup via Popups.spawnPopup(), and pins it with Popups.pinPopup():

// Actual trigger in special-occasions.js (simplified)
let birthdayCatLink = synthesizeIncludeLink("/static/template/unfortunatelytheclockisticking.html", {
    "class": "april-fools-special-birthdaycat mini-title-bar",
    "data-link-content-type": "local-fragment"
});
Popups.spawnPopup(birthdayCatLink);

The randomization system depends on JavaScript in rewrite.js, which processes display-random-1 classes to randomly select one child display-entry element and hide the others.

See Also