Friday Links!
Leading off this week, would you like to hear a black hole? Data Sonification: Black Hole at the Center of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster (X-ray)
This is fascinating (it'll be renamed Elon Musk disease in twenty years): Nobel disease.
From C. Lee, and it's terrific: Kurosawa Akira: Films of Love and Justice. Another creative giant: Dostoevsky’s 200th Birthday and His Living Legacy. This is phenomenal: From seawater to drinking water, with the push of a button. This is fascinating in every way: A Brief Compendium of Modernist Homes for Movie Villains with Flawless Taste. This is delightful: An Ode to what they call “Duck Architecture”. This is a terrific idea: How Public Libraries Are Seeding America’s Gardens.
From Ken Piper, and this is amazing: Hubble Finds a Massive Planet – 9 Times the Size of Jupiter – Forming Through a Violent Process. This is my surprised face: Owners left with worthless NFTs after F1 Delta Time racing game shuts down. I mean, it is distinct: Razer's Headquarters Looks Like One Of Its Gaming Peripherals. This is promising: What Is a Graphene Battery, and How Will It Transform Tech?
From Tim C., and it's fascinating: mechanical watch.
From Wally, and it isn't creepy at all: Creepy dolls covered in barnacles or missing their limbs keep washing up on Texas beaches. This was a hell of a ride, one of the greatest I've ever seen: This angle of Rich Strike winning the KentuckyDerby is nuts. This is some of the best tornado footage I've ever seen (and there are some f-bombs, for obvious reasons, so maybe NSFW): EF-3 Tornado Hits Andover, Kansas - Apr. 29, 2022. Just great: An Autonomous Drone Swarm Can Now Chase You Through a Forest Without Crashing. Next-level commentary: The Platypus Conspiracy.
I Have No Idea... (your email)
A reader from Finland (who's been around for a long, long time) sent this to me in response to yesterday's post. It's definitely not just English.
Let me show you two words in Finnish:
"kuusi alusta"
Let's look at the first word, "kuusi." This could mean a spruce ("kuusi"), six ("kuusi"), or your moon ("kuu" + possessive suffix "si").
The second word, "alusta."
Foundation/basis/... ("alusta"), from the beginning ("alku" + "sta"), imperative 2nd person singular form of verb "alustaa" (to format a diskette/prepare a foundation/...), the partitive singular form of a ship/vessel ("alus" + "ta"). (Because Finnish uses singular forms of nouns after numerals, "kuusi alusta" is how "six ships" is written in Finnish).
Not all combinations are grammatically correct (such as "spruce ships"), but "six from the beginning", "the basis your moon lies on", "the spruce from the beginning" all sound correct to me.
I'm not very surprised natural language processing for Finnish isn't very easy.
I Have No Idea How Anyone Learned This Language, Including Me
This is from Merriam-Webster's online dictionary. It's the thesaurus entry for "sound."
sound (verb,1)
1 to continue or be repeated in a series of reflected sound waves
//the stranded hiker's cries for help sounded throughout the canyon
2 to give the impression of being
//the idea at least sounds plausible
3 to make known (as an idea, emotion, or opinion)
//a person who certainly isn't shy about sounding her opinions
4 to make known openly or publicly
//the grand opening of the region's newest and largest mall has been loudly sounded for months
sound (verb,2)
1 to measure the depth of (as a body of water) typically with a weighted line
//the pilot sounded the river to make sure we weren't in any danger of runnin
2 to cast oneself head first into deep water
//a whale suddenly surfaced and then, just as suddenly, sounded
sound (noun,1)
1 range of hearing
//wandered off, out of her parents' sight and sound
sound (noun,2)
1 a narrow body of water between two land masses
//Long Island Sound is between Connecticut and Long Island, New York
sound (adjective)
1 according to the rules of logic
//sound reasoning alone should tell you that the result is invalid
2 enjoying health and vigor
//the horse is getting along in years, but still perfectly sound
3 marked by the ability to withstand stress without structural damage or distortion
//the shed looks flimsy, but it's actually surprisingly sound
Mother's Day
Eli 20.10 was in Paris on Mother's Day.
He called me from the airport and we talked about many things. We had a gentle laugh about how Gloria would always be disgruntled on Mother's Day, no matter what we did for her.
She planted tulip bulbs in the garden last fall, before her passing, and when I drove by the house a few days ago, they'd come up. That made both of us happy.
I've come to realize something important about Eli in the last week or so, and it's a quality I should foster in myself, too. Since his mom died, he's fought for his happiness. He's grieved, and is still grieving, but he never let his grieving define him. Instead, he actively seeks out happiness, and leaves room for it in his life.
That might sound odd. After a tragedy, though, many people are unable to leave any room in their life for happiness. I don't mean it as an indictment. It's just that tragedy has a kind of gravity that always presses down on you. It lowers you to the ground.
Eli feels that gravity, and he just stands up even straighter to compensate. I have so much respect for him.
Parenting
Here's the good story.
On my way back from England, I was at Heathrow and found some benches to sit on before my flight. The benches were right next to the walking escalators, so I saw a man with his daughter (she was probably around three).
She was wearing flowery yoga pants and looked adorable, and she was holding hands with her dad and they were talking. Then he leaned down to her and said, "You've got loads of promise," and it almost made me tear up a little. He said it in such a gentle, kind way.
The other story.
I was walking to the pool on Friday and I was behind a woman with two little boys, who were walking in predictably ridiculous fashion. She looked at them and said, "All right. Let's stop having fancy feet."
I thought to myself, "Why would anyone EVER want to stop having fancy feet? Isn't that the whole point?"
Friday Links!
Have a great weekend, everybody!
Leading off this week, a heartbreaking and infuriating piece of history:
50 years on, the lessons of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study still reverberate.
Jordan!
Eli 20.10 said Jordan was the favorite place he visited of all the countries he went to on break.
They started out in Amman, which has four million people (I thought it was much smaller), then went to
Wadi Rum (also called the Valley of the Moon), which is an incredibly desolate, beautiful place. Anytime film directors need footage of Mars, that's where they go.
Here's a picture of Wadi Rum:
Another Wadi Rum picture:
Camels? Yes, camels were ridden:
They also went to
Petra (voted one of the new wonders of the world), an ancient, stunning city. To get there, you walk through this slender canyon:
The buildings are enormous, and carved out of the walls:
On their last morning in Amman, they went looking for street art and found this;
Eli said everyone he met was incredibly friendly. They rode public transport the whole trip (no bus numbers, no schedules, just ask lots of questions to get information), the food was wonderful, and it couldn't have been a better trip.
He called me from Vienna (his layover) on the way back, and finally--finally--he was exhausted. It took nine countries, me being there for a week, and a conference tournament to do it, but he ran out of gas. He said he was looking forward to sitting in a library and reading for four hours.
Of course, two days later he was fine.
The Big Hockey Post
I've written many times that athletes rarely get closure.
Eli 20.10, though, did.
After visiting nine countries in six weeks during term break, he returned for the conference tournament. His team hadn't practiced at all during the break, so they'd gone almost four weeks without a practice.
It wasn't looking good.
The tournament was in a very odd format. Five games of pool play the first day, all in a one-period, twenty-minute run clock format. The last game of pool play the morning of the second day, followed by quarters/semis/final. The playoff games were two periods of twenty-minute run clock.
Confused yet?
The tangible effect was that Eli spent the first day warming up constantly, in addition to playing the equivalent of almost two games. He said he felt terrible in the first game, then felt great after that.
The scores of the games reflect it: 1-1, 0-0, 5-0, 4-0, 5-1.
He was exhausted, but up bright and early for the last game of pool play (a 0-0 tie).
That put them into the quarterfinals against Cambridge, and a chance for revenge after the Rivalry loss.
The game was 0-0 going into a shootout. Eli stopped all five shooters, and our fifth shooter scored for a 1-0 win.
That put them in the semis against St. Andrews, who were (by far) the best team in the tournament. Their high-end players were terrific, and they had depth, unlike most of the teams.
The entire conference championships were broadcast on YouTube, so I got to watch live.
The announcers were fantastic, and very funny. As the shots kept piling up for St. Andrews, they wondered how long Eli could keep Oxford in the game.
As it turned out, for a long, long time.
At the end of regulation, it was 2-2, even though Oxford had been outshot 34-4. And Eli made it look easy, too, which has always led to him getting less credit than he deserved, because coaches never understood how difficult it is to make something hard look easy.
It was all on display, though, all the things he's done so well during his career. Puck control. Anticipation. Balance. Composure.
I'd like to say there was a miracle win in the shootout, but there wasn't. He stopped the first four shots, but the fifth beat him clean. Nothing you can do when a guy hits his spot like that.
After the tournament, he was named first-team All Conference.
I talked to him after the game and he was disappointed, but he also knew it would be hard to top that weekend as a way to end his competitive career. And he sounded completely at peace, which was the best thing of all.
As a bonus, you can watch the game if you'd like. Since it was twenty-minute run clock, the entire game is completed in under fifty minutes. I'm not sure I've ever been able to link to one of his full games, but no more appropriate time than now. Here's the link:
Oxford--St. Andrews semifinals.
He got back to Oxford at 11:30 p.m., slept for two hours, then got up to go to Jordan. That's for tomorrow.
Nothing to Feel Good About
Well, today was going to be all about Eli 20.8, and then Politico broke the story that a
Supreme Court draft opinion indicates the court is going to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The draft opinion was leaked, and my money is on John Roberts, because his legacy is going to be a clown show if this actually happens.
The most discouraging thing about living in this country is that no matter how many good people are trying to make the country better, the bad people always seem to win. This decision would be reprehensible and draconian in so many ways that it's unspeakable.
This is why you vote. And why you keep voting, even if change doesn't happen as quickly as it should. Because if you don't, the monsters are in charge.
You think this is the end? It's just starting.
Welcome to the dystopian future, America.
Sleep
This is still going to be a big Eli week, but I'm going to give an update today on the sleep post I wrote a while back.
Of the suggestions, quitting drinking (I have about a drink every two weeks, so not useful in my case) and using CBD gummies were the two things most commonly suggested.
I kept trying nothing, which worked surprisingly well.
What I've realized is that I was ignoring all the signals my body was giving me because I thought I could override it all with Melatonin and Trazadone.
As it turns out, not really.
Instead, I've just started paying attention, and I can feel when my brain starts to get wound up. Almost always, it's from getting too much information too quickly, which makes my brain speed up. When it gets past a certain threshold, I'm not going to be able to go to sleep.
I've started prioritizing single-focus activities when I wake up and before I go to bed. Instead of looking at a bunch of websites in the morning, I read with breakfast before I start working. It's a slower pace, with better concentration.
At night, if I'm watching television, I try to not look at my phone and multi-task.
My default had become multi-tasking to such a degree that I was becoming overloaded.
Now, if I feel I'm overloaded, I stop multi-tasking (if I am) and I focus on my breathing for a minute or two. It's a small thing, but it seems to be very effective.
How do I sleep now? Maybe not quite as well, but close, and when I wake up, I'm not sluggish at all. I'm ready to start the day.
All in all, I think it's a win.
Next Week
Lots and lots of Eli 20.8 coming. I doubt anyone on Earth had a better break than he did.
Games!
I lost my 108-day streak in Wordle today. Urgh.
Dorfromantik left Early Access today (30% discount for launch), and as I've mentioned previously, it's a wonderful, relaxing game. There's a new creative mode (endlessly play), different biomes, an undo button, and lots more. Eurogamer also has a terrific interview with the four-person team who developed the game (who all seem like very nice people):
The past, present and future of Dorfromantik.
The other extremely interesting game that released today is
Kaiju Wars. Think "Into the Breach," but in a B-movie featuring Japanese monsters. It's incredibly stylish and an enormous amount of fun (based on the demo, which is also nice to have).
Actually, it's quite a bit more than "Into the Breach," although the combat is very similar. There's much more to the game, though. Like I said, there's a demo if you're interested.
Memories
This is a beautiful, nostalgic post written by lummoxjr (also known as author Lee Gaiteri, who has another book coming out soon). I'm not going to italicize the post, so just know that it's all Lee from here on.
I saw you mentioned the unfortunate passing of Scott Bennie, and Interplay's Lord of the Rings holds a huge warm and fuzzy place in my heart. So I have a story to share with you about what it meant to me.
My introduction to Tolkien's world came from my dad, who read The Hobbit to me and my sister as kids. In the late '80s I finally read Lord of the Rings for the first time and was blown away by the depth of the story. Then one day in 1990 my family was out at a mall and we discovered Interplay's Lord of the Rings in a software store: officially licensed by the Tolkien estate. Naturally it was a must-buy. Over the next several months my dad and I spent several evenings a week, a few hours at a time, working our way through the game together. We even got an Adlib sound card so we could listen to the music and sound effects in the game.
We discovered quickly just how huge the game map of the Shire alone was, and for the time the game was truly epic in scale. What was fascinating to us especially was that it was so non-linear, allowing many different paths through the game and even allowing different characters to be the Ringbearer. (There was a cost for using the Ring: it permanently lowered the bearer's Will stat, every single time.) Battles were frequent and tense. Quests were layered and meaningful, and it was vital to find supplies to survive. We got lost in the Old Forest together. We had a nice witch as a companion whose frost spells made her a powerful ally in the Shire and the Old Forest, but in some caverns outside of the Bree-land we stumbled onto an unfortunate letter and she turned on us. At Rivendell we reforged a lesser ring. We tried in vain to fight our way through Caradhras, and spent weeks trying to figure out a way through Moria. We lost Gandalf on the Bridge, but what you might not have known was that it was totally possible to fight the balrog instead—at the risk of losing one or two other members of the Fellowship, because it was a ridiculously hard fight. The adventure went on and on, with surprises at every turn. Some of the quests even had much later payoffs than we expected: such as a ghost we helped back in the Shire suddenly finding us again in Mirkwood, offering to be a companion in recognition of what we did.
But another fascinating wrinkle was that the game initially shipped with a cheat intact. If you typed "frodolives!" after the executable on the DOS command line, it would activate an in-game teleport function. At the time we used Prodigy as our online service, and it had some fairly vibrant message boards where we ended up sharing teleport coordinates with other fans of the game. As a result we were able to see even more parts of the map that we'd missed, or use the Pools of Healing in Moria to help us bounce back after some inordinately tough battles. We discovered also that some storylines from the game were apparently partially cut: you could go back to Bree and interact with Rayf Brogan, a ruffian who caused you trouble on the first visit who now had a change of heart and was willing to join the party. The teleportation mechanic opened up a whole new level of exploration in the game. I was deeply saddened that later re-release versions cut it out; yet the original was no longer playable on newer machines because it ran like a gerbil on crack.
We tried to get into the Two Towers sequel, but it wasn't the same. It tried to use split storylines that made it really hard to keep up with the action, so it just didn't work. But the original game was utterly glorious and remains one of my favorite games of all time: not just for its exceptional content, but for the times my dad and I spent deciding which path to take in a cave or if we'd looked behind this or that bush in hopes of finding a little athelas.
It's a beautiful thing how all creative endeavors—and in many ways gaming most of all—can create so many wonderful experiences, new stories, and fond memories in the people they touch.
