Friday Links on Thursday!
As per recent tradition, I'm posting Friday Links on Thanksgiving in case you need a distraction from whatever holiday disaster might be happening around you.
I also traditionally take Friday off after Thanksgiving, and I'll be doing that again this year. See you all on Monday.
Leading off, a long and fascinating read: A Man of Parts and Learning Fara Dabhoiwala on the portrait of Francis Williams.
If you'd prefer an audio deep dive, here you go: The Most Iconic Electronic Music Sample of Every Year (1990-2023).
Maybe the nerdiest LOTR thing I've ever seen: Satellite Photos of Middle Earth.
Okay, this is the ultimate long read. The Digital Antiquarian, which is legendary, has a sister site called The Analog Antiquarian, and it has an 18-chapter post about Magellan. Here's chapter one, and you can find the rest of it from there: Chapter 1: East to Asia, West to Asia.
From Wally, and wtf is up with these custom popcorn buckets and why in the world do people want them? AMC Reveals Its Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim 27-Inch Popcorn Bucket. I prefer turkey, but lasagna isn't bad, either: How Thanksgiving Lasagna Became an American Staple. With links for more information on most of the films: 31 Titles Are Eligible for the Animated Feature Film Academy Award This Year.
From C. Lee, and it's an interesting look at food spending: Mapped: How Much Americans Spend on Groceries in Each State. I don't have either problem they mention, fortunately, because I have a huge sweet tooth: Britain’s postwar sugar craze confirms harms of sweet diets in early life. An excellent read: To invent the wheel, did people first have to invent the spindle? A bizarre and fascinating bit of history: Scientists Put Cats in Microgravity to See What Would Happen. Weasel alert! Children’s slippers stolen in night at Japanese preschool, police identify weasel who did it. This is unfortunate: Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake is losing players midway for an unfortunate reason – its target audience has grown old and farsighted. It looks fantastic: Retro beige PC case goes from April Fools' joke to retail — SilverStone's sleeper PC with modern internals ships in Q1 2025.
A Preview to Next Week
I have this sign on my study door now:
Telling the story will take the better part of the week, because it's interesting and has quite a few twists and turns.
To be clear, I'm fine. I got punched in the stomach by a homeless man who has some serious mental health issues while I was on a walk downtown. It was a hard punch, but I had on a puffy jacket that absorbed enough of the blow that my discomfort today is minor. I also live with a lovely physician who examined me as soon as I got home. The force of the punch was on my stomach muscles, not my ribs or internal organs.
In its entirety, it's quite a story, and I didn't want to start telling it today and then have to pick it up again on Monday. So I'll start at the beginning of next week.
One Good, One Not
The good news: Eli 23.3 let me know that his GRE score is official and everything is fine, which is huge!
The bad news: something happened to me today that really shook up me, and I'll write about it tomorrow, but I'm taking the rest of the day off.
An Entirely Accurate Description
Yesterday I did something goofy and C said "The weird in me salutes the weird in you." That's the best description of a relationship I've ever heard.
Spine Whine
I went to the spine specialist yesterday to have my sciatica pain checked out.
First off, what is the deal with ortho bros? He was quite knowledgeable, but he walked in with bulging biceps in a tight shirt and I almost started laughing. Live the stereotype, man.
After an exam, he said the L5 disc is pressing on the sciatic nerve. He offered the same injection I had three years ago (computer guided, done at the hospital), but based on what I said, he thought I might be able to get by without one.
I had told him sleep was the biggest variable, as far as I could tell, so he said to add one pillow for my legs (up to two now), which takes pressure off the sciatic nerve and slightly enlarges the passageway for the nerve (something like that, anyway). It's a bit awkward to sleep that way, but nothing I can't get used to.
Plus, he gave me a prescription for gabapentin. He said it interferes with the spinal nerves ability to transmit pain signals, and, as a bonus, it's a slight sedative and it would improve my sleep.
In conjunction with the stretching I'm doing, I'm hopeful all this will manage the situation. Plus I have a referral for physical therapy as well, because I need a system, not a drug. I need to examine my posture and sitting frequency and stretching and everything else to come up with a structure to stop this from happening again.
A Remarkable Coincidence
From Jussi, and it's incredible:
One of the three people to win the Nobel prize in chemistry in 2024 was Sir Demis Hassabis.
In short, he founded DeepMind (which Google bought), and was in the team that developed AlphaFold.
But he also designed Theme Park (1994) with Peter Molyneux. And then later at Elixir Studios was the "executive designer" of Evil Genius (2004).
Not sure how much more this tells except that now Molyneux can say he has collaborated with a future Nobel laureate (unless there's already someone else). Still, I think many would be proud just to have co-created Theme Park.
A former Bullfrog designer won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. My brain just exploded.
He also designed Republic: the Revolution (2003), by the way, which was almost a surpassingly brilliant game.
He's certainly had a better last two decades than Molyneux.
A Message
I sent this in in text form to Eli 23.3 today:
I had a crazy idea to write a book called "Embrace the Pain: the New Science of Stretching" and fill it with pseudoscience and speculations about cavemen and become an international fitness phenomenon but I don't have the energy to go on Oprah.
The scary thing is I think this would probably work.
C has a better idea, though: a small volume of "curmudgeon haiku."
Update
Eli 23.3's GRE test status isn't showing as "cancelled," so seemingly that's a good sign.
An Exam Nightmare, or Not
Eli 23.3 took the GRE online this morning.
His score was higher than he'd hoped for, and he was all set for submissions to doctoral programs.
Here's what happened:
--he saw his score
--he pressed the "submit score to schools" (which sends your score to the schools you listed previously)
--his digital proctor told him to "erase his white board" (whatever that means)
--his computer crashes
Was his score submitted? Did he not complete the testing process? No one really knows. His score still shows as "not available" online (which is normal, for now), and he won't know for 24-48 hours if there was a problem (like the proctor cancelling the session because he didn't fully complete the process, even though he did complete the test).
He talked to support in Europe. I talked to U.S. support (because his cellphone plan in the UK doesn't include access to U.S. numbers). Everyone vaguely says they "think it's okay," but no one is absolutely sure. One person says they see his score in the system. Another says they can't see it for 1-2 days, and this is normal.
If something actually is wrong, there's an appeal process, which he doesn't have time for, and he could also retake the test, which he really doesn't have time for (because he's going to Columbia for a month soon to continue fieldwork).
TLDR he took the exam and his score is Schrodinger's cat for the next 24-48 hours.
Historical Oddities
Adjacent to our neighborhood, I see multiple bowling alleys with signs looking something like this:
All these places are old as dirt, and their signs are odd. Who advertises beer and liquor on a bowling sign? Plus, every time I see a sign like this, the attached building is small, seemingly too small to even be a bowling alley.
The strange collection of signs made me wonder if all these bowling alleys were somehow skirting liquor license laws, and, as it turns out, they were.
Post-Prohibition, Michigan, like many states, had dry counties everywhere. Bars and restaurants couldn't serve alcohol. Bowling alleys, however, had a carve out as "recreational" facilities, and they could serve alcohol if they fulfilled certain minor conditions. It was basically a massive loophole which was exploited to the hilt.
A few of these dodgers are still open today, like this one. It's been remodeled and looks terrific inside (if the online pictures are accurate). I'll be heading there next week to check it out for myself.
To No One's Surprise
Did I mention Eli 23.3 is running a marathon two days after Thanksgiving? It's hard to keep up.
He called me three weeks ago and said his friend was going to run the Hamburg marathon in September/October but didn't because of illness. So they're going back together, have plotted a course accurate to the meter, and will run it in the very early hours of the 30th. He doesn't care about a t-shirt or a finisher's medal; he just wants the experience.
His training base is going to be low--maybe 25 miles a week--but I have decades of experience running low-mileage marathons (or used to), so we talked for a while about strategies. Marathons are all about making good decisions during the race.
If anyone can make good decisions in the moment, it's him, so he should be fine. He ran a half-marathon this morning at an easy pace and said it felt great, so he's adapting quickly to longer runs.
I told him I'll be thrilled when there's another member of the family marathon club.
Engines
As part of a longer article I read today, this phrase stood out (I know, it's from LL Cool J, but it still works): a dream isn't a target, it's an engine.
I know that's hokey, but it doesn't make it untrue.
When I was younger, I was all about targets. I was lazy, but I managed to achieve quite a bit. It was never anything close to what I could have achieved, though, if I'd worked harder. My achievements weren't part of a process. They were just flags I could run up the pole to admire.
Eli 23.3 being born is what eventually turned me into an engine.
I thought about this in relation to my writing. I'm rewriting the entire first section of the book, about 70 pages, and it's a giant pain in the ass. Every morning it's brutal. I know I'll never have commercial success as an author. There's no target I can hit. I could just stop. I can't stop, though. It's inconceivable. Writing is an engine, not a target, and it's just what I do.
Eli is that way, too. No matter what he achieves, he never has a stopping point. He barely even slows down. The engine is always running, and I respect that enormously.
Maybe he's an engine for me, too.
We May Be On To Something
It's a small sample size so far, but for everyone who has responded, the theory about time perception for early/late people has held. People who are always on time perceive a minute as lasting less than a minute (kudos to John Harwood, who lasted all of 24 seconds. I think this means he attends events before they're even conceived).
What I need now, in addition to more respondents in general, is an additional sample from people who are always late. I doubt that any of you fall into that category, but if you know someone who's always late, please cajole them into testing this. Thanks.
I Did Not Expect This
I called my orthopedist a few weeks ago about my sciatica and was referred to a "spine and pain management" specialist.
I have an appointment scheduled with him on the 20th, but he also already scheduled an epidural for me on the 27th, based on the extensive series of questions I answered before they scheduled the first appointment.
What I really want to find out is what I need to do the first time I start to feel pain. It seems like there should be a sequence I can follow, either after pain commences or as daily maintenance, that should stem the progression.
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, it's mud: Special mud rubbed on all MLB baseballs has unique, 'magical' properties, study finds.
From Chris M., and it's an incredible story: Seem like peanut allergies were once rare and now everyone has them?
From Wally, and I only heard about it when it was going away: Amazon to shut down Kindle Vella serial book platform, saying it ‘hasn’t caught on as we’d hoped’. Allegedly: Scientists Just Named This 2024 Indie Horror Movie One of the Scariest Films Ever Made. They mention the Jaws theme: What makes music scary? Instrumentation, composition and your imagination. This was unfortunately inevitable: AI Is Fueling a Science Fiction Scam That Hurts Publishers, Writers, and Even Some of the Scammers. From the Midwest: Pasties, Our Regional Comfort Food.
From C. Lee, and it shouldn't be a surprise: Can video games improve your cognitive performance? Western-led study says yes. A fantastic essay: Why play a fascist? Unpacking the hideousness of the Space Marine. Alarming: Lawsuit: Chatbot that allegedly caused teen’s suicide is now more dangerous for kids. A wild story: Woman stuck upside-down between 2 boulders trying to retrieve her phone freed after 7 hours. Insane: The American Dream Now Costs $4.4 Million. Incredible: Scurvy Is Making a Surprising Comeback. The Chicago Manual of Style: A Venerable and Time-Tested Guide. A fraud, of course: The Inconvenient Scholarship of Kevin Roberts: Samuel G. Freedman traces the long and contradictory intellectual journey of the man behind Project 2025. Bizarre: Factorio has Silicon Valley tycoons like Elon Musk under its spell, and one $7 billion CEO is letting employees expense the game. Everything is bad for you, or isn't: Standing desks are bad for your health – new study. A fascinating possibility: Can walls of oysters protect shores against hurricanes? Darpa wants to know.
A Theory
I'm early to everything. Eli 23.3 is, too (unless he's doing something with me, when he gets to invoke the Parent Exception).
Gloria was always late. To everything. It happened so consistently, despite her efforts, that I began to suspect it was hard-wired.
I decided to test our perception of time. I wrote about this years ago, but if you didn't see the post, here's a short summary.
I started a stopwatch and stopped it when I thought 1:00 (one minute) had elapsed. :57 seconds had actually passed.
Eli was in the same range.
To Gloria, though, a minute took 1:07 seconds.
I've thought about that result for years.
I'm going to ask C if she'd be willing to try this (she's early to everything, too). And if you/your partner/kids/friends are either always early or always late, I'd appreciate it if you'd time them, too. I'll compile the results and write them up in a post.
Vampires
We could all use some entertainment about now.
I saw Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person last weekend and it was fantastic. Vampires have turned into such interesting subjects for film treatment, particularly because no one is too worried about following canon. All these films seem to diverge in their own interesting way.
Another brilliant (and hilarious) film is El Conde, which depicts Pinochet as a centuries-old vampire. It's very dark and incredibly funny.
Either one of these are excellent distractions from anything you'd like to be distracted from.
A Day to Feel Sick Inside
Well, America made it's choice. It's a dark day for us, and for the world.
In my lifetime, I've often overestimated the intelligence and character of the American public.
Never again.
Good Luck, Everybody
I've been saying this about the election since July, when I discussed it with Eli 23.3. I still believe it.
Woman will vote in unprecedented numbers in this election. They are angry that their reproductive rights are being taken away (and men should be angry as well). So many women will vote that they will determine the election.
This election is not close, and let's hope I'm right.
Please do not vote for the party who wants to take your rights away.
Good luck and I hope you have short lines today if you haven't already voted. C volunteered as an election worker, which means she'll be working from 6 a.m.-9 p.m. tomorrow. I have utter respect for what she's doing, and I'm also relieved I'm not pulling that shift.
Curiosity
I saw something interesting that made me think.
It was a mention of great apes communicating using sign language with humans. They've been doing it since the 1960s. It's incredible, that they could learn sign language from us.
In all that time, though, they've never asked us a single question.
Great apes are incredibly curious. They're fascinated by everything around them. Except us, it seems.
I've been thinking about this all day, wondering if the notion of asking a question is so foreign to them that they don't understand. Researchers ask them questions, though, all the time. Would they not learn how from us?
It's a mystery, and a welcome distraction.
