Canadian Wildfires
From DQ Programming Advisor Garrett Rempel (a Winnipeg resident).
Quote from a local reporter in Winnipeg:
As of today, 19,892 square kms of Manitoba has burned this wildfire season. That’s 3.6% of Manitoba’s land mass. For context, that area is equivalent to burning the entire land mass of the state of New Jersey.
Note, this is also just shy of the total land mass of Massachusetts which is 20,202 sqkm.
Also as a separate footnote, Manitoba is 647,797 total sqkm with a land mass of 548,360 sqkm. If it was a state, it would be just behind Texas which is 695,662 total sqkm with a land mass of 676,587 sqkm.
We have a LOT of lakes.
Manitoba is also only the 6th largest province by land area (we have 10), and 8th largest if we include territories (3 territories total) just to give an idea of where it sits in Canada in terms of scale.
Art!
We went to the Blanton Art Museum in Austin while we there last weekend visiting Mom 95.5.
There was an exhibit starting soon called Spirit & Splendor: El Greco, Velázquez, and the Hispanic Baroque. It was already available to Blanton members, so we just strolled into the exhibit like we belonged and suddenly, we did.
The exhibit made me wonder when artists stopped painting royalty and religious scenes and started depicting ordinary people. I need to do some research on that.
Here are a few of the pieces; in particular, the two I found most interesting. It's impossible for a camera to capture the beauty of Wedding at Cana because the mother-of-pearl inlays don't have the luster they do in real life. It was shockingly beautiful.
This Doesn't Feel Like the Future
I managed to finish the new draft of section three (the last 70 pages, basically) before the multiple hurricanes hit.
I still need to rewrite the first section, and once things settle down again (middle of September, I hope), I'll be able to start working again. It feels strange not to write/edit every day, but it's just not possible right now.
This Week (and next)
I don't know how many updates there will be this week because I'm in full-blown chaos mode without the luxury of a schedule. I haven't redlined this hard in years, and it's not ending for two more weeks, so I'll do what I can.
Top-5 Desserts
After family consultation during a ride through the city.
These are in no particular order.
Me:
Chocolate chip cookie
Brownie with fudge sauce and Mexican vanilla ice cream
Krispy Kreme glazed donut (when just off the rollers and still warm)
A dessert my old friend made me for 25 years on my birthday (lots of lemon and Cool Whip)
Pie (probably pumpkin chocolate) with Cool Whip
Eli:
Agreement with me on the first three. Fourth and fifth still undisclosed.
C:
Alfajores
Pasta frola
Strawberry shortcake with biscuits and freshly whipped cream
Lemon curd
Any variety of a well-made fruit pie
An Immediate Answer
We shipped Eli 24.0s goalie mask to the mask maker today for repadding.
We were talking to the shipping agent, who was quite friendly, and when we were done, I said, "Okay, nobody's in line. Tell us the weirdest thing you ever shipped."
Without even a hesitation, she said, "Horse semen."
"I'm impressed there wasn't any thought needed," I said. "Talk about leaving a strong impression."
"Somebody had to touch it," she said. "And did those hands bring the bag here? Were they washed? You have to wash your hands before you handle that bag."
"That's for amateurs," I said. "Pros wash their hands AFTER they handle the bag."
In gaming terms, horse semen is apparently the S-tier of gross.
The World's Worst Chipotle (in all its glory)
There's a Chipotle on 28th street in Grand Rapids (3610 28th, in case you're wondering), and it's consistently been the worst Chipotle I've ever visited.
I've visited many, because Eli 24.0 loved (and loves) Chipotle.
Yesterday, since he's back for a few weeks, we went. I specifically didn't want to go to this location, because it's always terrible, but I hadn't been for 2+ years and thought maybe things had changed.
They hadn't.
Two people working a line that was halfway to the door. Three more employees who randomly appeared, but doing absolutely nothing, for the 15-20 minutes we were there.
Enjoy a couple of images:
The worst thing is that Chipotle corporate simply doesn't care. I contacted them at least twice over the eight years I've lived here and nothing ever changed. I was going to send them these images, but their website won't let you submit an image unless it's smaller than 720k, which basically means they'll never receive any images.
Incredible. I'm glad I'm moving in three weeks.
Below the Threshold
Eli 24.0 arrived yesterday.
In dinner conversation last night, he said he dated a racing team engineer for several months but hadn't mentioned it before because it didn't rise to the level of interesting.
I'm not sure what situation qualifies as interesting.
[To be perfectly clear, he found her quite interesting. It wasn't a personal comment about her in any way. And I'm being vague with the phrase "racing team" on purpose.]
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, From DQ Artist Fredrik Skarstedt, a fabulous, riveting read: The ‘Iron Dam’ that became China’s deadliest secret.
What a strange, fascinating story: He Announced His Intention to Die. The Dinner Invitations Rolled In.
A terrific read from back in 2013: The Oracle of Bay Street: finance bad boy Michael Wekerle is back, and his new firm is already the talk of Toronto.
This is absolutely fantastic: Vintage Bike Tricks, Circa 1965.
From Chris M., and I think in our lifetime we'll see the end of physical mail delivery in many countries: PostNord will deliver its final letter at the end of 2025: Here's what it means for you.
A fantastic, eccentric read: Are We Playing It All Wrong?
Terrific: Very British bribery: the whistleblower who exposed the UK’s dodgy arms deals with Saudi Arabia.
From Wally, and it's quite silly: There's Officially A Term Used To Insult AI, And You're Going To See It Everywhere. [AI] Using AI to animated hand-painted miniatures: AI & Wargaming - My Thoughts. Bizarre (Kramer!): China's unemployed young adults who are pretending to have jobs. Michael Chabon and a pitch meeting: Reed, Sue, Ben, Johnny & Me. Not my thing, but maybe yours: The 10 Best Sci-Fi Books With Space Battles. What a story: Meat Is Back at Eleven Madison Park, After 4 Vegan Years.
More Irony
There's a significant possibility that one day NCAA football payrolls (using NIL) will be higher than the NFL's.
Sure, that sounds crazy now. The highest college NIL payroll is around $30 million this year, while the NFL salary cap is north of $250 million.
The difference, though, is that the NCAA steadfastly refuses to call athletes employees, even though they are in everything but name only. There are multiple reasons why, mostly all related to oafishness on the part of the NCAA, but one of the effects is that as non-employees, it is incredibly difficult to limit their compensation.
It might look like a bad deal for collectives to pour so much money into NIL, but people donate to universities for many reasons, and one of the largest ones is the success of their sports teams. So as the payroll goes higher and higher, it's not necessarily irrational.
Sure, Congress could step in, but the Supreme Court (which is distressingly close to fascist at this point) actually has the correct perspective on this matter. They've been very unwilling to allow limits on compensation.
Next year? The top NIL payroll will probably be in the $40 million range, and it should continue to go up by 30% every year, at least. In five years, it will be over $100 million.
It's on it's way.
Fort Smith (from the Wayback Machine)
Mom 95.5 grew up in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
We were talking today and I asked her if she remembered her address. She did, surprisingly, and I put it into Google Maps.
From above, it looked like it was still there, but I wasn't sure. Then I put the address into Zillow and saw a photo of the front of the house. Definitely the same.
It's worth $123,000 now (not much, in today's terms). Mom said her mother purchased the house for $700.
Mom taught summer school in Fort Smith one year. There was nothing to do at Grandma's house, so she'd drop me off at the city golf course on her way to school, then pick me up on the way home.
I think the green fee was $7.50 and I'd play 36 holes very day. I was 11, if I remember correctly. Microwave cheeseburgers from a vending machine are delicious when you've already walked 18.
It was a beautiful course, to me, and much greener than the course I played on in Corpus Christi (more rain in Arkansas).
I looked it up today and, incredibly, it's still open. Ben Geren golf course.
It's only $23 to play a round, too, which is a huge bargain today. It even looks much the same, from the pictures I saw.
I doubt I'll ever go to Arkansas again, but if I did, I'd definitely stop by.
Irony
Here's the Ars Technica article: AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified.
Well, of course they're horrified. For all the potential in AI, there's no question that LLM models have been trained through a process of only thinly disguised plagiarism. Discovery would be so conclusive that they would undoubtedly lose.
What defendants, particularly large one, usually do with a class action suit is send an utter avalanche of documents in response to requests for information. Hundreds of thousands of them. What this effectively does is bury the defendant in so many documents they have almost no chance of finding the pertinent ones. Sure, they might be a smoking gun or two included, but if they're part of 150,000 documents, what are the chances they'll be found? This strategy is in the barely legal category, but it's not strictly illegal, and any process of determining such illegality would take years.
Here's the irony: if the plaintiffs use the properly customized LLM model to process the documents, their chances of finding the pertinent, damning information will be much, much higher. It's the kind of task where AI should excel.
At some point, these companies will probably write gigantic checks in exchange for immunity from plagiarism charges focusing on past behavior, and pay for access to data going forward. Still, it won't be anything near what they've actually made. It never is, in this country.
Eli 3.5 at the Zoo
Google Photo Memories or whatever they call it sent me this picture of Eli today:
That's Eli 3.5 (roughly) outside the snack bar at the Tyler Zoo, where we stopped four times a year (going to and coming back from Shreveport).
I loved that zoo both because he loved it so much and being able to sit and see giraffes and elephants with no fence in-between. It was a magical place for both of us.
A Masterpiece
I took a little break before finishing
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Today, I completed it. Certainly, the finest RPG I've ever played.
The highest compliment I can give this game is that you will feel elation and pain and they will both be genuine. What a rare experience to feel such things holding a controller in your hand.
This is a culmination of everything games can be as an experience.
10 across the board: story, animation, voice-acting, music, worldbuilding, mechanics. It's all there.
What a beautiful, unforgettable game.
Grinding
I finished an edit of section three of
This Doesn't Feel Like the Future today.
It's not complete--I have at least two more passthroughs in this draft--but it's starting to feel alive, which takes a long time.
I need to finish this by the 20th because all hell breaks loose then. We'll only be for three days in the next twelve after that.
Once we get to Queens and things settle down a bit--probably by mid-September or a little later--I can start working on the first section.
If things go as planned, there should be a very advanced draft by the end of the year. "Advanced" meaning one or two drafts from being finished.
It's better than I ever thought it could be, and it's not nearly good enough yet.
Novels are long, long roads.
A Caper
Eli 24.0 moved out of the dorms a few weeks ago and into a nice apartment with one of his friends.
They decided they needed a Persian rug. A sizable one.
As it turns it, he determined it was actually cheaper to fly to Marrakesh, stay overnight, buy the rug and fly back the next evening than it was to buy it locally.
This is entirely on-brand for him.
I don't know when they're going, but I'll have pictures eventually.
Brown, Chunky Air
The entire use case for Michigan is the great weather in summer.
Winter is a complete loss, obviously, particularly here, where the average snowfall in winter is 75 inches. Spring is no joy, either, because it's cold, windy, and wet.
Summer, though. Summer is beautiful.
Now, though, there's a problem.
Due to the Canadian wildfires that have been burning for months, the air quality has been terrible. I mean "one of the worst places in the world" terrible, and it's been like this quite often during the last two months.
Today, it was in 156 this morning. Whose air was worse? Let's see:
Baghdad (208)
Kinshasha (158)
Seriously, that's it--in the entire world. For major cities, at least.
It's foul. It smells like a campfire. It doesn't look any better.
Here's the problem. The two worst Canadian wildfire seasons in history have come in the last three years. If this is a trend and not a blip, then summer in Michigan becomes not summer, but wildfire smoke season.
Why would anyone want to live through that?
