The Post Office Benefit
An unnamed friend of the program started working temp as a driver for USPS a few weeks ago.
He was a well-respected tech guy who got bludgeoned because of his company and likely his age. Far easier to get someone half his age to do his job 70% as well for 50% of the money, or something like that.
He settled on a job at the post office, as a route driver. A rural route driver.
Since playing organization games already gave him enormous satisfaction, it seemed like a good fit. The pay wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, and he could get plenty of hours.
Surprisingly, there's been an added benefit.
He sent me data from his fitness watch today. His resting pulse has dropped from 61 to 51 at night. He's burning almost 3,000 calories a day from exercise.
It's a stunning leap in his fitness level. When I see him next time he'll look like Thor, only his hammer will be tubs of mail.
A Support Puzzler
Like I mentioned, I've been playing Dungeons of Dredmor quite a lot on the beta branch because it has the latest version.
Tonight, I finished playing for a few minutes with no problem, then had a meeting rescheduled, so I hopped back in a few minutes later. This time, though, the program didn't start because Windows Defender said it detected malware in the .exe and here was the message:
Trojan:HTML/Redirector.PAN!MTB
I know the PAN!MTB just means Windows caught it (I think), but how exactly does that happen when I'd only finished playing a few minutes earlier? I think the program might have had a small update before I tried to launch, but it happened so quickly I honestly can't be sure.
Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks.
Random Notes
1. Fifa is deeply corrupt, Infantino is a goon, and Argentina disgraced themselves in a legitimately terrible final, but the World Cup was great. For an American, it comes at the perfect time: after basketball season and before football season. Every four years, it's fantastic.
2. The reason the stock market refuses to go down, even though it's deeply overvalued, the economy is turning, and we're in a war, is because no one on Wall Street wants it to end. Bonuses are huge, the perks are enormous, and no one wants to lose any of it, which is why bull markets go on so long after they should rationally be over. It's a bit of a con game, really, when the market no longer has any relation to its true valuation.
3. I forgot to mention in the gaming abundance last week that eBaseball: Pro Spirit 2026 was released last week for PC and PS5, and with English translations. I can't remember a Japanese baseball game being released in the U.S. (with English translations) ever. I bought a modded or imported Saturn (can't remember which) in order to play the Japanese version of World Series Baseball '98. Over 25 years later, I can finally buy one on Steam, have English text in the menus, but Japanese commentary. Tremendous.
Friday Links!
Enjoy the World Cup Final, everyone.
A fascinating read: ‘I can sense Sinatra enter my body and exit my lungs’: aboard the celebrity impersonators’ cruise.
Dystopian and interesting: Inside America’s Shoplifting Lab: In the war on “shrink,” big retailers are turning to one Florida outfit to study shoppers and prevent them from stealing. I went there—and saw far too much.
A terrific read: The anguish of choice: In the shattered aftermath of war, Sartre delivered a formidable lecture on freedom and meaning. Its urgency remains.
From Chris M., and it's amazing: Venetian Bridge Brawls in 17th and 18th Century Art.
From D.G.F., a fabulous essay: Has America Crossed the Asshole Threshold?
From Wally, and it's superb: Ayn Rand Reviews Children’s Movies. I don't need to do this, but I can see how some people would: I Regret To Say That GMail is Now a Spam Farm, or, Why You Should Really Get That Dedicated Email Address Now. A strong analysis: How Superhero Movies Lost Their Power. Is it? I kid! ‘It’s more than just fairy smut’: Inside the UK’s first romantasy bookshop. Excellent: The ‘big durian’: one day in Jakarta, the world’s largest city. A long and excellent read: The Grocery Store Where Produce Meets Politics: The legendary Park Slope Food Co-op carries sustainable food, low prices, and New Yorkers’ opinions in bulk.
An Interesting Future
For a long time, weight has been represented in this country as some kind of morality play. Thin is virtue. Fat is shameful. It's a narrative that's been around for a long time.
Much of it probably came from commercial interests who sold products to help people lose weight. Diet plans and workout equipment and whatnot. I'm sure religion was in there somewhere, too.
Now there are GLP-1 drugs available for people who struggle with their weight.
Weight control is no longer a struggle of "good versus evil." It's an injection, or a pill.
I wonder how all those people feel now. A lifetime of good versus evil judgments wiped out with a prescription. Now they can't tell who has willpower and who just takes a pill.
And it really doesn't matter. Who cares? Why did anyone ever care?
I'm sure there's a movement out there proclaiming these drugs as evil or somehow immoral as they see their belief system circling the drain.
Quite a Gaming Week
For me, at least.
On Monday, EA backed off from microtransactions for their college football game.
On Tuesday, I played The Beatles: Rock Band during halftime of the World Cup semifinals and stared in amazement at the charts on expert. I Saw Her Standing There has a note chart so fast and complex I can't play it at 70% speed. It's an amazing chart, though, and I can get better.
This morning I found out that Dungeons of Dredmor, long dead, has been resurrected and is being actively developed. One of the funniest games I've ever played, with great gameplay and music to boot, and it's alive.
I played for an hour or so and it still holds up incredibly well. Right now, the dev work is on bug fixes and infrastructure bits and bobs, but hopefully they'll soon add features like support for 4k monitors. It's from 2011, after all, so there's definitely some modernization needed. What a game, though.
Tomorrow there's a patch for the college football game to fix some of the bugs in dynasty mode (the only mode I play).
Seriously, what a great time.
Thousands Have Lived Without Love, Not One Without Diarrhea
I sincerely apologize to W.H. Auden.
All right, let's get to it.
Here's a Defector gift article: Why The Explosive Diarrhea Parasite Is Way Worse Than Regular Diarrhea Parasites.
Diarrhea is bad enough that it's hard to believe there are separate tiers, the top tier certainly being "explosive."
There's lots of good advice in the article, including basic information (cyclospora can only be spread through human feces, and the most likely home for the parasite is in "knobby berries" and "delicate herbs." Oh, and lettuce, of course, because lettuce is always near the center of these outbreaks).
Importantly, if you get this, don't suffer instead of going to the doctor. A course of antibiotics lasting 10 days will usually resolve the symptoms within a week, which is good news for those of us who don't want to be running to the bathroom for a month.
The Defector article linked to an interesting crop scientist on Bluesky named Sarah Taber, who has some interesting theories. She's here. Notably, that Minnesota is the pristine standard for things like this, and regional produce farms often don't ship to Minnesota because their regulations are so strict. Minnesota also isn't having any outbreaks, unlike Michigan, which is jam-packed with them right now.
Good luck out there.
What a (Not) Revoltin' Development This Is
To everyone's astonishment, they backed off.
First, a correction. Last week I said microtransactions in EA Sports College Football 27 were added to both online and offline dynasty as well as Road to Glory mode. After additional research, I believe I was in error regarding offline dynasty. Only online dynasty and RTG mode were affected.
The points I made still stand. Or, at least they did until EA announced they were taking these specific microtransactions out of the game.
To say I'm shocked would be an understatement.
Sure, it's a temporary win. In EA's carefully worded statement, they talked about "valuable features and content with greater transparency and communication" with CFB 28, which clearly means these microtransactions will be present next year but clearly signposted early on.
That's okay. We get one last version without them. For once, consumers win.
What happened? As best I can piece together, a number of highly-followed influencers--who work closely with EA in promoting the game--rebelled and threatened to stop working with EA entirely. There was online outrage from us Regular Joes as well, but I believe the influencers were the leverage point.
Now the wait for patches begins, but with a hopeful attitude instead of a sour one.
Friday Links!
If I'd know it was like this, I would have watched it: Masked men to morphine addiction: The original TV Little House on the Prairie was a true American horror story.
This is brilliantly written and incredibly tragic: The Extremist in the Family: The Parents Who Chose Their Faith Over Their Daughter's Life.
Absolutely tremendous: America’s Last Bookie Goes Down: Tim Pughsley built a sports-betting website that moved billions, then the I.R.S. got involved. In the age of FanDuel and DraftKings, where is the line between legal and illegal gambling?
I didn't write anything about Graham Platner (I was too pissed), but McSweeney's nails it: If Only There Had Been a Sign That the Face-Melting Nazi from Indiana Jones Wouldn’t Make a Good Senator.
From Wally, and I guess it's political, too: From ‘heat panic’ to ‘sacrificed at the altar’: Europe’s air conditioning culture wars heat up. Honestly, there's no food (or quality) on Earth I'd pay this much for: What It Costs To Eat At Every 3-Star Michelin Restaurant In The US . These always bring back excellent memories: JAPAN - Spring 2026: Miscellaneous Food Pics and Ramblings. A single block of marble. Astounding! 18th-Century Sculpture Has a Delicate Net Carved Out of a Single Block of Marble.
From Chris M., and this is definitely a trend: The Fun Shortage Is Real, and It’s Making America Miserable.
From Meg M., and it's some emblematic of everything those people do: The Wet And Wild Freedom Day Catastrophe.
"Soccer"
Even though it took 50 years after the launch of the North American Soccer League (NASL) in the 1970s, soccer is now the #4 team sport in America.
It can't go any further, though, and it's because of the American way.
In professional American team sports, only the privileged are allowed to be privileged. If soccer set up a promotion/relegation system similar to the rest of the world, I could see (over many years) soccer rising all the way to #2 behind football.
Once you buy a major professional team in this country, though, you never have to leave, no matter how incompetent, tightfisted, or repugnant you are.
There have been a tiny number of exceptions for repugnant. The other two, though? Never a problem. The entire structure disincentivizes owners from investing in their team for any reason other than to make more money. If the team is terrible because they're so cheap they can always move to another city after holding them hostage for tax incentives and handouts.
It's entirely predatory, and it's a shame. It was also the only way for soccer to firmly differentiate themselves from the other major team sports and offer something better.
Too bad they never will.
I guess this is predatory week here at DQ, what with the EA post yesterday. We'll move on next week.
Microtransactions
Microtransactions are like our President: as soon as they get involved, they ruin everything.
EA Sports College Football 27 is the third iteration in the revival of a long-beloved series, and the first two installments have been pleasant surprises.
Better than that, actually. I played 26 all the way into March. A few things were wrong, but so many more were right.
I had high hopes for this year. Then the early trail started last Tuesday and the bullshit started dropping.
Basically, EA has put microtransactions into both online and offline dynasty. By itself, this is stupid, but what's worse is they took away the two faster coach progressions speeds entirely.
Why? To gate progression behind microtransactions. Even worse, they didn't mention the addition of these microtransactions. No one knew about them until the early access period (which began nine days before the wide release this Thursday) began. It's just sleazy.
I shouldn't be surprised, really. EA ruins every sports game they put out by the third iteration.
This game, though, felt different, and the development team had been incredibly impressive for the initial two versions. I still have nothing but the highest respect for them because they clearly understand what makes college football unique and so enjoyable. I'm sure none of them are pleased about microtransactions being added because it clearly wasn't their choise.
The blowback about this has become relatively significant, enough so that EA put out a statement for damage control. In it, they lied.
I'm seeing a pattern here.
A Thoughtful Excerpt
This is an excerpt from an interview at The Athletic with the coach of Marta Kostyuk.
Kostyuk is a young, rising tennis star, and her coach is remarkably thoughtful. Here's the excerpt:
"A coach can be right and still be unhelpful,” Zaniewska wrote.
“You can be completely right about what is happening — you can understand the tactical problem, the emotional pattern, the moment where the player is losing connection. And still, if you say it at the wrong time, in the wrong way, or from the wrong place, it might not land. It might make the player more confused, more dependent, more irritated, or more aware of something they were already trying to manage.
“I think a lot of good coaching lives in that uncomfortable space. Not in the dramatic intervention, but in the restraint before it.”
The reason I'm using this is because it applies to more than tennis or even athletics in general. Every relationship in our lives involves "helpful" suggestions flowing back and forth between us. We all instinctively know that what Zaniewska says is true, but this was a precise encapsulation of how it works.
Um, Yeah
I have a colonoscopy, so this is probably the only post today.
Coincidentally, after watching France vs Paraguay in the World Cup, I've now learned what "shithousery" means.
Still finding new words, after all these years.
