Halloween, etc.
Two of my favorite days of the year--Halloween and the Yankees being eliminated--almost happening at once. Good times.
Just as a reminder, the Costume Count, after a distinguished fifteen-year run, was retired after last year. I don't live in a house anymore, and most of us have aged out of having trick-or-treating kids, so it seemed like the right time.
Based on email, a fair number of you are also have boundary issues with political news this week. Having peace and quiet is a huge bonus right now, so I'm going to pivot to noise cancellation headphones, which I collect like Freddie in Scooby-Doo collects sweaters.
Noise cancellation headphones, in general, are a miracle. It's one of the best, unadulterated, undiluted pieces of technology we have, a universal good.
I've had multiple pairs of Sony's and Bose over the years, usually replacing them as newer models came out. What I've found is that you can get refurbished ones from the manufacturer at a substantial discount, and since people return electronics for any or no reason at all, you're usually getting an essentially new pair.
Right now, what I'm using as my primary option are the Bose QuietComfort Ultra ($429 new, $259 refurbished in conjunction with a coupon). The Bose sound has always been a bit bright for my tastes, but the noise cancellation and fit (particularly with this model) is superb. This is absolutely the best noise cancellation I've ever experienced, and the sound is less harsh.
I also have an old pair of QC45s, but far prefer the Ultras.
Sony's headphones are excellent (I have a pair of WH-1000xm4s). I prefer their sound quality slightly in comparison to the Ultras, but just barely, but the Ultras have better noise cancellation and a much more comfortable fit. The Sony series tends to fight more tightly on your head, and I notice it because I wear glasses. They're just not as comfortable.
Like I said, getting refurbished headphones from the manufacturer or Amazon has been an excellent experience for me (along with other electronics as well), and the discounts are huge.
Boundaries
I've discovered (as I do every four years about this time) that it's very hard to have boundaries with a phone.
It's on you all the time. There's a drip-drip-drip of information that's very hard to ignore. It's particularly hard when you feel the future of your country is at stake.
What happens, though, is that I drink from this tap all day, and all it does is create anxiety. I already voted. I've told all of you how I feel and who I hope you vote for. I've done what I can do. Yet I'm still twisting in the wind with every news update (99% of which are utterly meaningless).
Today I decided to wait until 6 p.m. to check any political news, and to only check one site (a political forum I've followed for decades, which usually mentions anything remotely important that's happened).
It's amazing how much better I feel. A little bored, to be honest, but relieved at the same time.
It made me wonder if people who otherwise have good boundaries in their lives (in their relationships, and with their employers) are more successful at having boundaries with their phones. It also makes me wonder if I have a lack of boundaries in general, or if this is a specific case.
As always, I'm working on myself. Sometimes more successfully than others.
PSA
Eli 23.3 recently entered the cycling world.
He found an excellent bike (through monitoring sites for months) for a fraction of the cost. "It came with a great helmet, Dad," he said.
Because I am, in fact, a Dad, I started down the rabbit hole of helmet research, and, as far as I can tell, found the apex testing site:
Bicycle Helmet Ratings. The testing is done by Virginia Tech in conjunction with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. It's outstanding.
In the old days, helmets were basically plastic buckets with a strap, but they're surprisingly technical now, with multiple technologies at work. If you ride a bicycle, or have family members who do, this might be a useful resource.
We only get one brain. Protecting it is a priority.
The Others
This is related to Eli 23.2s Master's thesis (which I can't tell you about yet), but in thinking about it, I had an adjacent idea of my own.
Everyone knows about "othering" by now. It's a classic tactic in politics (largely used by one party, at the present moment).
What I don't think people realize, though, is that there's a component of othering related to myth.
Othering is now being used to to separate people into humans and monsters. Non-white immigrants? Monsters. Transgender people? Monsters. It's not just that they're "others," they're not even human.
In other words, they have a mythic status.
Why would you turn other groups into monsters the level of myth? Well, who slays monsters in myths?
Heroes.
So if you can make a group of people into monsters, it makes "sense" that you'd need a hero to come in and save the humans.
That's some twisted, dark shit at work.
In Response
This was sent to me yesterday, and I'd like to thank the author for such a raw, genuine reflection. I'm not naming them at their request.
I felt the need to comment on your post regarding Liam Payne and provide some small insights because I was one of those professions you mentioned. With the proviso that I do not know Liam Payne, and have no understanding of his life or what it feels like to be a successful artist. My only connection to him is having enjoyed One Direction a long time ago.
I do understand what it's like to have peaked young, though. I am a dried-up former gymnast of some success once. I spent 19 years in the sport, beginning when I was 4. I spent time training at the USA National Team camp and was later a collegiate athlete.
That's the short of my background, and I've lived with the feeling of having peaked long ago. All my accomplishments are long past. I will never be as good at anything in my life as I was at gymnastics. I will never be worth as much to anyone as I was when I was a teenager. I don't know how to tell you how much that sucks.
But that's not actually the hard part. At least not for myself, or for those in other sports I've talked to. It's figuring out what you're supposed to do with the rest of your life. For many of us that means discovering who we are, even though a great many of us haven't known anything outside our sport. We don't have hobbies, or friends separate from our sport. We don't know what we enjoy. We would get up for an early morning workout, have school, train for hours after school, eat, and go to bed. There weren't any gaps for hobbies or 'playing' or going out with friends. Anyone you met outside your sport learned not to ask you to go out because the answer would always be that you couldn't.
I can imagine some of those feelings were true for him. Maybe it's easier if you leave on your own terms, having accomplished what you wanted to. He was losing his career despite his best efforts to cling to it. However, he still had plans and hopes and dreams of another solo album. I lost my dreams to injury, and watched as my teammates' one shot at a national championship was a fleeting appearance in the semi finals.
Despite that I was far luckier then most. I burned out hard in my late teens and much of my collegiate career was lost to recurring back issues. It gave me some time to discover who I was and what I was independent of gymnastics. I also got a degree unrelated to athletics. I had a support system outside the sport to fall back on. Did Liam have that? Did he know what to do if he could no longer be a singer?
Many within sports don't have an answer to that. They have no grasp of what they are supposed to do post-career. In a very real sense, for the first time in their life their time is their own. All of their former friends are still attached to their sport, and so they are alone in trying to discover who they are and how to make a life. An entirely new life, because it feels like you are starting life anew as a new person.
That's terrifying and confusing. You wake up every morning having no idea what you're supposed to do. It's not all bad, of course. For a few days it even feels good. The stress and fear of failure is gone. It's so difficult waking up every morning knowing you have to be PERFECT, and even a slight mistake could be the end of your dream. You're constantly living under pressure and it never feels like you can relax or catch your breath.
Beyond that I had to re-wire my brain to understand that it’s OK for me to skip a day of workouts. Only working out four days a week for an hour is an ongoing struggle. I think most ex-athletes feel that way. Taking a day off was associated with laziness or lack of commitment. Days off are essential for recovery, though, both mentally and emotionally. I remind myself I am not who I used to be and my body isn't what it once was and that’s OK. The things that were required of me aren’t required anymore. I'm not the same person so I don't have the same requirements.
There’s a certain brutality to fleeting success. In many fields you can fail and it's no big deal. You still have time. In gymnastics, that’s it. Off of the podium, and maybe not on the team. Your entire life as you've known it to that point is over. Liam didn't have a podium, and his stage was far grander. But he'd lost his place all the same.
I know of a former Olympian who passed to suicide a few months ago. It passed the media unmentioned, when just five years ago it would have been breathlessly reported. He was no longer making headlines, so no one cared. I remember a young girl I trained with for over four years, a gifted athlete with her entire life ahead of her. She's no longer with us. They never learned how to live independent of their sport. I wish the media noted not just Liam's death, but others like him who pass too often, unmentioned and forgotten. There are options out there to help them, psychologists who specialize in these situations. Help people like Liam probably needed.
Deferred
I have two irons in the fire, waiting for permission to write about separate subjects. Both are interesting, but neither are ready, so this is going to be a rare day off for me.
Comedy
I went down a Buster Keaton rabbit hole yesterday because of this video:
The Stunt That Ended Buster Keaton's Career. It's ten minutes describing the degree of innovation in his stunts and how they're archetypes even today.
What struck me most, though, was this quote from him: "Comedians do funny things. Good comedians do things funny."
It's one of the most profound lines about comedy I've ever heard.
One Direction
I don't think I've ever heard a One Direction song. If so, I didn't remember it.
I thought about them this weekend, though, after Liam Payne's death. He threw himself off a balcony. He was thirty-one.
It made me think about what life must have been like for him. What do you do when your life has clearly peaked when you're twenty-two? His solo career had slowly declined, and his label dumped him.
Twenty-two. Another fifty or sixty years of life, knowing you can never be what you used to be, if you use fame as a measure.
That would be hard. Oppressively so, really.
Some professions peak very, very young. Boy bands. Female gymnasts. Mathematicians. It's a strange list. I'd like to say something profound about who makes it and who doesn't and why, but it all feels trite, because I don't know if I could do it myself. Who could?
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, a tragic and bizarre (yet fascinating) story: The story of the California couple mauled by chimps has become even more disturbing.
A fantastic discovery: 50 well-preserved Viking Age skeletons unearthed in Denmark.
From C. Lee, and it's not good: Reports: China hacked Verizon and AT&T, may have accessed US wiretap systems. And another: FCC Fines T-Mobile $31.5 Million After Carrier Was Hacked 8 Times In 5 Years. Everything about Dubai is surreal: Too hot by day, Dubai's floodlit beaches are packed at night. Ironic: If your AI seems smarter, it's thanks to smarter human trainers. A fascinating read (Chinese science fiction discussion): The Dark Shadow of the Chinese Dream. An excellent bit of history: Triangular letters. Sobering: The Warnings of Famines Past. Man, this is nasty: A bug in Word deletes documents instead of saving them. This could be amazing: Artificial plant purifies indoor air and doubles as a power source for small electronics. This is wild, and not in a good way: Behind the scenes at Blizzard: Jason Schreier talks misconduct, swingers parties and what press got wrong. I don't think I'd want to live longer: Don’t expect human life expectancy to grow much more, researcher says. This is a heartwarming story: Hakamada’s case gives young recluse a reason to ‘keep living’.
From Wally, and when are people going to have had enough of this crap? Utah book banners now want to make Little Free Libraries susceptible to criminal charges. A fabulous read: The Wendigo and 6 Other Ancient Monsters From Indigenous Folklore. This is excellent: 50 Years of Broccoli (and Mockery): A Co-op Co-Founder Calls It Quits. An article about literary RPGs: What Is LitRPG for Writers (and How Do I Get Started Writing It)?
Interruption
I was going to celebrate the FTC making it easier to cancel subscriptions (common sense? Who knew that was still a thing?):
FTC “click to cancel” rule seeks to end free trial traps, sneaky auto-enrollments. Also, "industry trade groups" (and the Chamber of Commerce) are the worst kinds of assholes.
Anyway, that's what I was going to write about. Then this kid showed up:
That salmon's between 7-10 pounds. It doesn't look quite as large in the picture because it's turned a bit, but it's big.
There were about a dozen people on the river fishing, and no one else was catching anything. This guy, though, caught five fish in about twenty-five minutes. All of them were 5+ pounds.
It wasn't an accident.
He was close to the fish ladder (best location). He was using a fly rod, and pitching instead of casting (more precise). He was stripping line quickly to retrieve the bait (higher volume of casts).
All in all, a fishing masterclass. Plus, as soon as he got the hook out, he let them go.
What?
In his last twenty at bats with men on base, Shohei Ohtani is 17-20, with 7 home runs and 27 runs batted in.
If he was in a videogame, we'd all say his ratings were bugged.
Moving On
I saw an old video today--an Internet classic--of a parody version a Carol of the Belles, but with Burger King lyrics. It's incredibly stupid (even though Burger King actually used it in a commercial), but the longer it goes, the funnier it gets, for some reason. It's here: Burger King Christmas Carol Song
Sometimes things are so stupid they make you laugh. I put myself in that category.
There's one person I know who would absolutely get it: Potter. I went to college with him. We were friends all through college, even though I don't think we ever had one serious conversation. We got out of college and stayed friends, even though we weren't in touch very often.
I moved to Michigan and never heard from him again. This was after being friends for over thirty years.
I mean, I tried. I sent him multiple emails. I sent a holiday gift (we always did that, and they were always stupid) to his address, or what I thought was his address. I called and left a message several times.
I found out he'd moved, apparently to live with someone we also went to college with. She'd been with him the last time we had lunch together (which we did every few years).
It's not like it was some deep friendship, but it was enduring. We were both eccentric and had the same taste in humor (and usually music).
The friendship was a bank vault of memories.
So today, when I saw the video and immediately thought of him, it reminded me that friendships don't always last, even if you want them to.
Sometimes people move on.
Next Fest
I was hoping to have some demos to share with you, but nothing I've played has really grabbed my interest, except
Jotunnslayer, which is quite good. Think Vampire Survivors or Brotato with high-end visuals and sound and a mythic theme.
So many demos don't do a good job of guiding the player, or there are control issues. It's the once chance a developer has to make an impression, and it always surprises me when so many of these demos aren't put together well.
Also, when Steam's own filtering system doesn't work, which is embarrassing. Click on a genre to filter and you get no filtering whatsoever. Come on, Valve.
U.S. Elections 2024: A Political Post
Since early voting has started, it's time for this.
Please don't vote for a party that is actively trying to reduce--in a democracy--the ability of people to vote. Not all voters, mind you, just the groups who are likely to vote against them.
Reducing the number of ballot boxes and polling places in "liberal" areas. Onerous identification systems in the clear absence of even minimal voter fraud. Fantastical fraud claims to justify these actions, even when there is zero evidence to support them.
Call it what you want. Authoritarianism, fascism, the name doesn't really matter. It's the opposite of democracy.
Anyone who runs as a representative of that party is unworthy of your support.
Friday Links!
Well, that was a week. Here are some links for your Friday reading pleasure.
Expectations and a Sad Anniversary
Gloria's accident was three years ago today.
The first anniversary hit me like a sledgehammer. It was very, very bad.
Last year, I expected it to be just as bad, but it wasn't. That made me think it would get a little easier each year. A linear process.
It's not.
It was harder this year than last, probably due to my expectations.
I hope that some year it will be just another day, and I'll be able to reminisce about Gloria without it being the first thing that comes to mind.
Deceived
Sadly, the piriformis improvement was fool's good.
It was significantly better for about a week, then I woke up one morning and it was back to ground zero. The frustrating part of this is I can't figure out the pattern. Activity/stretching/sitting should add up to some kind of pattern of better/worse, but it's nothing I can discern.
Plus, piriformis syndrome is apparently so particularized that a million different things have helped a million different people. Stretches, strengthening, rest, massage, voodoo. It all works for somebody.
Now I'm stretching a bit less, trying to alternate workout activities that involve repetitive motion, and researching voodoo as quickly as possible.
A Story
I couldn't take about this when it happened, for obvious reasons. I think enough time (eight years) has passed now, though.
When we were in Austin, there was a boy playing hockey who was a year older than Eli. A great kid, genuinely. Excellent hockey player, straight 'A' student, and very congenial and polite.
His parents were, too. They were both first-generation immigrants, both professionals. Always upbeat and ready with a smile. Whenever I saw one of them (practice times often overlapped), I'd stop and chat. I always left feeling glad I'd stopped.
One afternoon, I received a call from the person in the hockey program who had basically adopted Eli (he's been adopted many times). She's one of the best people I ever met, and she's Canadian (bonus). She said something bad had happened and that I needed to check the local news.
I did. There was a story about a shooting in a suburb of Austin involving a husband and a wife.
It was the boy's parents.
The story said the wife had been shot and the husband had turned the gun on himself. What the story didn't say is that the great kid, the congenial and polite kid, had been home at the time, along with two siblings. When he heard the first shot, he ran to the bedroom and pounded on the door, trying to stop whatever was happening.
Then there was a second shot.
I felt numb. There was nothing in me that knew how to respond.
The great kid was just finishing junior high or starting high school, if I remember correctly, and now he was both an orphan and had two siblings younger than him to look out for. It would be a crushing, impossible load for anyone.
He hung on, for a while. Then he quit playing hockey, which was a second family. Stopped going to school. Started getting into trouble. He must have thought nothing mattered, and who could blame him?
It was the kind of story that doesn't even have a suitable word attached to it, because 'tragedy' is so inadequate.
I thought about him yesterday, for reasons unknown, and I decided to try and find him online. I expected not to find him, or to find only sadness, but I wanted to find out.
I stumbled onto his Instagram.
A picture of him with a long-time girlfriend. Pictures of him playing hockey. Skateboarding. Looking comfortable in his own skin.
Somehow, he made it through to the other side. I don't know many who would.
I don't know if I've ever felt so much respect and happiness for another human being in my entire life.
Assorted Stuff
First, Halloween is out of control:
This pains me, because I love Halloween. What's next? Low-earth orbit satellites?
This was a pair of jeans I saw while we were in Detroit:
Those are cats by the way. I texted the picture to C with the message I found my holiday gift.
She declined.
A Legionary's Life
The new system is installed, more or less.
Installing Windows is easy. Setting up all your peripherals and adding a second drive and downloading the programs you need takes quite a bit longer. In the end, though, it's very stable and relatively quiet (though I'm going to change out a few fans for Noctua's).
The system is a Microcenter pre-build, as I've mentioned before, and it's a quality build. I'm very impressed. The CPU is a Ryzen 7 7800X3D. All the other hardware is in the upper section of mid-tier, but after having the same system for the last ten years, it all feels like a Ferrari.
So, of course, I'm fascinated with what is basically a text game.
It's called A Legionary's Life, and you play as a common Roman soldier at the bottom of the food chain, just trying to survive. No magicians or dragons or any fantasy elements. Plus, you'll die. Quite a lot, really. When you do, you get a small starting boost to your next character.
The historical research seems solid, and the writing reflects it. It's oddly mesmerizing, just scraping along. I highly recommend it, and it's only $3.99 as part of the latest Steam sale.
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, and it's HUGE, Geoff Engelstein's new game is in collaboration with--Kurt Vonnegut! And there's a profile in the New York Times about it. What a great story.
Kurt Vonnegut the Board Game Designer.
DQ Film Advisor and Nicest Guy in the World Ben Ormand sent me this link, and it's a stunning use of AI generated video. Plenty of editing, I'm sure, but still incredible: Harry Potter reimagined as a redneck using AI.
From Meg McReynolds, and it's Fat Bear Week, people! Weigh-in With Fat Bears at Katmai National Park for Fat Bear Week.
From Wally, and I had no idea this phrase was trademarked: US Court States Marvel And DC Have Lost Their Super Hero Trademark. Generally excellent recommendations: Science-Fiction Books Scientific American’s Staff Love. Idiot alert: Crime 81-year-old man sentenced to prison for cloning giant "Montana Mountain King" sheep for captive trophy hunting.
From C. Lee, and it's an incredibly low fine: Samsung Fined After Exposing Manufacturing Workers to Radiation. This is riveting: ‘Even the breeze was hot’: how incarcerated people survive extreme heat in prison. This is promising: Kyoto team finds way to detect early pancreatic cancer with AI. Watch out! Walmart customers scammed via fake shopping lists, threatened with arrest. 1984, here we come: Ford wants to eavesdrop on passenger conversations to help target ads. This is alarming: Bird flu is spreading rapidly in California; infected herds double over weekend. Related: Can our stockpiles of Tamiflu protect against a bird flu pandemic? This is incredibly clever: Hacker plants false memories in ChatGPT to steal user data in perpetuity. It's genuinely incredible how much power LLMs use: OpenAI asked US to approve energy-guzzling 5GW data centers, report says. This is a fascinating trend: High-end cameras make epic comeback despite smartphone ubiquity. It took long enough: A misspelled memorial to the Brontë sisters gets its dots back at last. Apparently these grow in Michigan, too? Foraging for America’s Forgotten Fruit. The Wikipedia entry for the previous link: Asimina triloba (the American paw paw).
Old
I took a walk today and missed the turn-off for the path by the river, so I decided to go through a field to reach the path.
I reached a wall ((at ground level for me). I looked over and there was quite a drop to the river trail. All right, no big deal.
I scrunched around so I could hold onto the top of the wall with my arms, then hung down as far as I could before I let go. I think the total drop after that was about 3.5 feet. Again, not a big deal.
The problem, though, is that the last time I did this (and it wasn't a big deal) was probably 30 years ago, if not 40. I landed and it felt like I dropped from a 12-story building.
Plus, my body forgot how to land. Your body forgets how to do all kinds of things, but your mind remembers the outcome as being good, so you trick yourself into trying things you shouldn't just because you could do them before (long ago).
I jammed up my toe, but otherwise I'm fine. It's just annoying how one-dimensional my fitness is, even though I'm in good shape.
Detroit!
This is what happens when you show up for your Global Entry interview on time--but a day early. The Homeland Security person sees you drove 2.5 hours and fits you in 30 minutes later. Unbelievable kindness (and I have a Global Entry number now).
I went with C because she's terrific company and it enabled us to split the driving (5 1/2+ hours in total).
After my total embarrassment, we went downtown to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). It's a fantastic museum, one of the highest-rated in the country, and we found a Native American exhibition that was remarkable in every way.
When you go to the DIA, though, you go see the Diego Rivera murals: Detroit Industry Murals, Detroit Institute of Arts. Wikipedia: Detroit Industry Mural.
There are 27 separate panels, but here are photos of the two largest. They're overwhelming, both in their scope and how the natural light coming in from the ceiling strikes them.
This time, though, I noticed one panel in particular, a very small one:
Enhance:
If you click on that to see it at full size and resolution, it's shocking how different it is from the other panels. C said it wouldn't be out of place as an illustration in The Man You Trust, and I agree with her.
Detroit
We just got back after a long day in Detroit, but I'll have pictures to share tomorrow of the DIA (Detroit Institute of Arts).
Plus, after ten years, I got a new computer! I'll tell you about that as well.
