Friday Links!
Leading off, some masterful photographs from a bygone era: Irving Penn: Small Trades. Also, an excellent James Jones tribute: James Earl Jones Reads Poe’s The Raven. What a way to find something significant: Man browsing Google Maps may have made big scientific discovery.
From C. Lee, and it's both impressive and a bit terrifying: Green Berets Hijacked WiFi To Control Home Security System Then Vanish In Mock Raid. Great name for a network: After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship. Blech: Blood puddles, mold, tainted meat, bugs: Boar’s Head inspections are horrifying. The comments by the real estate agent are unintentionally hilarious: The pot farm next door: Black market weed operations inundate California suburb, cops say. This is loathsome: Fake funeral “live stream” scams target grieving users on Facebook. More fraud: SMS scammers use toll fees as a lure. This is a shame: Intel has reportedly canceled Beast Lake and its follow-up – and I’m gutted it’s killed off my dream gaming CPU. This is fantastic: The Pentium as a Navajo weaving. This is a terrific piece of journalism: Years After Grenfell Tower Tragedy, Buildings Still Wrapped in "Solid Gasoline". Co-creator of one of the finest RPG series: Wizardry Co-Creator Andrew Greenberg Has Passed Away.
From Wally, and it's a political link (from sci-fi author John Scalzi): Reminder: This Is As Good As It Gets With Trump. A thoughtful article about playtest board games: Playtesting Narrative Content in Board Games. The pictures are incredible: 40 Of The Most Futuristic Concept Cars From The Past That Look Totally Bizarre Today.
San Marino
I could have sworn I wrote about this, but I couldn't find it, so I guess not.
I've been a fan of San Marino's soccer team for years. They're a tiny country of 30,000 inside Italy.
More importantly, they're the worst national soccer team in the world.
They've had a national squad since 1986, and other than a win in an exhibition match, their record was 0-198. They'd never won an official international match.
I told C about this, because I'm the patron saint of lost sports causes, and she promptly surprised me with a jersey:
It's a beauty, and I happily wore it knowing no one would ever recognize the team.
Then, in San Marino's first game since I got the jersey, the unthinkable happened: they won.
On September 5, San Marino beat Lichtenstein 1-0, courtesy of possibly the worst offside call in the history of soccer. See for yourself:
game highlights. It's hard to feel bad for Lichtenstein, given that San Marino hadn't won in 38 years, but still.
This was in an official competition, too: a UEFA Nations league match.
Record without me having a jersey? 1-198.
Record with me having a jersey? 1-0. World Cup, here we come.
Salmon Run!
I was able to get some good pictures.
First, the line of anglers:
You can see the spillway to the left. This is the highest spillway, so the fish congregate at its base until they either jump over or use the fish ladder.
The fish ladder, with an enthusiastic participant:
It was getting plenty of use.
Here's one angler's catch. We saw multiple fish this size caught over a ten-minute period:
It was exciting to watch, even though I haven't fished in years. It made me want to, though.
9/9/99
The day the Dreamcast launched was amazing.
18 launch titles. Spectacular.
I can't remember where I picked up the system, because DQ Plot Advisor and NASA Expert John Harwood had left Electronics Boutique by then. Maybe Fry's. Regardless, I picked up Sonic Adventure, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, and NFL 2K and headed home.
Unlike the launch titles of most systems, these games had style. Style is hard to define, but easy to sense, and I couldn't believe how much fun the launch titles were. Plus the system itself had style. It just looked cool.
Then there was NFL 2K, which was so much better than the equivalent Madden title that EA must have been embarrassed. It wasn't long after that, when NFL 2K5 came out and was better than Madden in every conceivable way, that EA was so embarrassed they bought an exclusive license because they couldn't compete.
The Dreamcast also had the VGA cable, which displayed games in glorious 640x480 resolution. The console always seemed forward-thinking and ahead of its time.
The legacy of the Saturn, though, weighed Sega down, and the PS2 was much better supported by developers. Sony had untold dollars to spend on marketing, and Sega didn't.
A crime, really, that the Dreamcast didn't survive. While it did survive, though, it was glorious.
The Run
The September salmon run on the Grand River has begun.
I live by downtown now, and within about a half mile walk is the Grand River. I usually stop and watch the fishermen for a few minutes, because they generally congregate at a small spillway I pass. On the other side of the river from that point is a fish ladder.
Last weekend, C and I noticed a small number of fish using the ladder. Only a couple, but we guessed that mean the salmon run would be starting soon. In September, both coho and chinook salmon come through in substantial quantities.
Today, C was out walking (the one day I didn't go with her, of course) and texted that she saw two big fish caught, which is two more fish than we ever see being caught. They were silver, which means they were probably Coho.
Tomorrow, I'll go walking and try to get a few pictures.
Knowing What You're Owed
Eli 23.1 had a relatively simple trip to Bogota (one month for field research) scheduled today.
Bus to London. Fly to Paris. Non-stop to Bogota.
It was, by far, the least complicated itinerary he's ever had when traveling.
So, of course, his flight to Paris was delayed 3+ hours and he missed his connecting flight. There's not another flight until tomorrow.
In the U.S., you'd get a voucher for the shittiest hotel imaginable, if you were lucky.
In the EU, because the flight delay didn't satisfy the legal definition of "extraordinary circumstances" (he downloaded the law and the airline's policy and read through it), he was entitled to 600 euros, hotel, and four meals.
He got in line and went through half an hour of denial theater by the airline, even after telling them he had the airline's own policy on his phone and had read through it.
Finally, they relented.
I couldn't understand why they did the song and dance until he told me what happened when he turned away from the counter. The people in line thanked him because they knew exactly what to say to get 600 euros+hotel+meals instead of just a hotel.
The airline was trying to make him give up so everyone else would, too.
That half an hour of wasting time is going to cost the airline 10,000+ euros because everyone behind him paid attention.
ChatGPT and Google
I'm using ChatGPT more and more now. It's basically replaced Google as my search engine, because Google has trashed its own search engine so thoroughly that it's complete garbage.
It's a pleasure to search for something and receive straight information, not on SEO-optimized pile of trash. Plus it handles more complex queries far, far better.
It's a win in every way but one: Wikipedia. I'm concerned that Wikipedia, which is a world treasure, could become less and less important. It's so unique that it would be a disaster if it's lost.
Plus ChatGPT is an information scraper, so if content stops being created, what will it scrape?
In the meantime, I'm very happy to get actual results from my search queries.
A Note
That new COVID booster kicked my ass. Hard.
The Game Within the Game
And so it begins.
I was so hopeful for EA College Football 25. After the big patch last week, I sat down, started a dynasty, and designed a relegation conference system. It wasn't perfect, because I couldn't edit bowl tie-ins to have actual post-season games determine relegation, but I could still use the regular season and manually promote/relegate.
Pretty great, really.
I have good slider settings, it's the first real Saturday of college football, and I sit down to play my first Dynasty game. Which is incredibly exciting, because I fight from behind all game and tie it on the last play with a touchdown and two-point conversion.
A fantastic game. So much fun. Almost epic, even.
I start overtime and watch the players amble onto the field. They keep ambling, They amble and amble. I try to pause the game and can't. I wait. Amble, amble, amble.
Overtime never begins.
I shut down the console and restart. Dynasty loads to a menu, I hit resume, and...amble. I exit and it goes back to before the game was played.
Nice.
This is the shit EA always pulls. Make a game that's 90% fun, maybe even 99% (in this case), then throw in a bug that's so hideously bad it kills the fun. And don't fix it.
Lucy with the football and Charlie Brown running forward, over and over again.
Booster Achievement Activated
I got the new COVID booster today.
It's a celebration every time I go to get a COVID booster. To develop and deploy a vaccine in less than twelve months was an incredible achievement. That the vaccine is incredibly effective is another bit of brilliance. It's one of the most remarkable achievements this century, in my mind.
It's tragic that there are so many people who don't believe in the effectiveness/safety of the vaccine and refuse to get it because of pure misinformation. It's part of the lasting damage to society from ignorant people pushing against the validity of science.
