Meta and the Failure of Opportunity
Meta has always had an odd strategy with the Quest line of virtual headsets.
Mostly, it seemed like they just wanted to use it as a platform for their shitty "world" Meta Horizons, which has been around for 4+ years and failed hard in every one of them. Their idea was to use the Quest headsets as a Trojan horse to getting people addicted to the metaverse (and spend $$$).
I say addicted because any Meta product (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) doesn't want users. It wants addicts, and that's made clear through private company communications exposed in various lawsuits.
Now I go to the Quest home screen (when I boot it up to play Walkabout Golf) and see genre-defining apps like "Slap Your Friends." It's an example of how most of the new apps are just garbage as the platform withers and dies. There were some truly interesting gaming apps at first, but now they've been cast aside to promote shovelware instead.
They were so close to having something substantial! What a waste.
MRI
Eli 24.7 finally had his MRI read last night.
No stress fracture of his knee, but his IT band looked a bit gnarly, and the doctor also said he has patellar tendinopathy.
Both were a result of the training he needed to do for the ultra and the amount of steep downhill running he did in the race itself.
The good news is both of those issues are eminently fixable, and he'll do the necessary exercises with his usual level of zeal.
The other bit of good news is that playing hockey won't affect either injury at all. He only has one more game to play this season--the Rivalry game--and then he's unofficially retired from competitive hockey.
In four years of playing for Oxford, he never lost a home game.
Thanks, Science
Chris M. sent in a link to this story today: One vaccine may provide broad protection against many respiratory infections and allergens.
I know, that sounds impossible. Here's some detail:
Since the 1790s, when the English physician Edward Jenner coined the term vaccination (from the Latin vacca for cow) to refer to the use of cowpox to inoculate against smallpox, all subsequent vaccines have relied on the same fundamental principle: antigen specificity. That is, the vaccine mimics a distinctive component of the pathogen — the spike proteins that cover SARS-CoV-2, for example — to prepare the immune system to recognize and react quickly to the real pathogen.
“That’s been the paradigm of vaccinology for the last 230 years,” Pulendran said.
But antigen-specific vaccines fail when a pathogen mutates or when new pathogens emerge.
The new vaccine doesn’t try to mimic any part of a pathogen; instead, it mimics the signals that immune cells use to communicate with each other during an infection. This novel strategy integrates the two branches of immunity — innate and adaptive — creating a feedback loop that sustains a broad immune response.
The adaptive immune system is the workhorse of current vaccines. It produces specialized agents, like antibodies and T cells, that target specific pathogens and remember them for years to come. The innate immune system, which deploys within minutes of a new infection, has received less attention because it typically lasts only a few days before ceding the spotlight to the adaptive immune system.
How does it work?
The new vaccine, for now known as GLA-3M-052-LS+OVA, mimics the T cell signals that directly stimulate innate immune cells in the lungs. It also contains a harmless antigen, an egg protein called ovalbumin or OVA, which recruits T cells into the lungs to maintain the innate response for weeks to months.
The full article has much more detail, but the response level is astonishing. Oh, and what does it protect against? Viruses, bacterial respiratory infections, and dust mites. In other words, even allergies.
Phase I safety trials haven't begun on humans yet, so there's quite a ways to go, but this seems incredibly promising.
I wonder what the anti-vaxxer crowd will do with a nasal spray instead of a shot. It will be interesting to watch as they twist themselves into a pretzel over how it will poison the water supply or destabilize the U.N. or something.
Assorted
1. There's an excellent four-episode documentary on the ABA on Amazon Prime. It's called Soul Power and it's legitimately fantastic. Also, one thing I'd never heard until now: Bob Costas had just graduated from college when the Spirits of St. Louis made him their play-by-play announcer.
I guess he did okay.
2. I listen to a very specific kind of music to get into flow state when I work (or walk). It's probably epitomized by this song, which is one of the most perfectly written and performed songs I've ever heard. I did some research and it turns out that this band (Alvvays) and several other bands I really like are in a genre called jangle pop. That helped me find other, similar groups that I'm listening to on my phone today as I walk through the neighborhood.
3. Elastic shoelaces make for a revolutionary shoe-wearing experience. The entire pressure on your foot is distributed absolutely evenly.
4. I've walked 20 miles in the last 4 days, so while my back is still recovering, at least I can walk as far as I want now.
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, an express trip to Crazytown in a story that will leave you speechless: One Man’s Quest for the End of the World Started on a Ranch in Texas.
An incredible story: Power without a throne: how Khalifa Haftar controls Libya.
Fascinating: A Sojourn into the Stephen King Archive: ‘The Dark Half’. Typescript drafts on view in the newly opened archive reframe the horror maestro’s relationship with his alter ego, Richard Bachman.
"Erected all over the South"--what is wrong with us: Poisonous Objects: Two exhibitions in Los Angeles respond to the racist monuments to Confederate soldiers that have been erected all over the United States.
An incredible story of indifference and malfeasance: We covered a now-discredited medical examiner for two decades. These are the botched cases that still haunt us.
Bizarre (and sad): Man vs. Machine: For three weeks last spring, ChatGPT convinced Allan Brooks that he had discovered a revolutionary mathematical theory. Now he’s suing OpenAI, claiming its product dragged him down a rabbit hole of lies, caused him to spiral into delusion and destroyed his reputation.
This is exceptional: Vigilantes at Dawn A forgotten deportation, a family archive, and the cost of belonging.
From D.G.F., and it's both a historical and present look: Living Under a Concentration Camp Regime — and Fighting Back.
From Wally, and it's a terrific read: How long do civilizations last? A look at Marines in WWI, including cats, rats, and aardvarks: Devil Dogs: 4th Marine Brigade. Timothy is a cat: Timothy reviews Moby Dick. A deep rabbit hole: On Gremlins: A brief history of sky goblins.
[POLITICS]: War
We all know this never goes well, and it won't go well this time. Imaginary justifications for entirely elective wars, promises of only short-term involvement, selection of a leader not for their leadership but their compliance with American demands, followed by a morass that will last decades.
We've done it over and over and over again. This edition is particularly vile and loathsome, but the basic storyline never changes.
Another sad time in a very sad era.
Some do
I had one of the favorite dreams of my life this week.
I'm walking just inside the NBA league office building, heading toward the elevators. The voiceover (it's a documentary) is talking about my great career.
I have a tennis ball in each hand.
I know I don't have any of the skills the narrator is listing, but I keep walking. I start trying to dribble the tennis balls and I'm so clumsy I can't even do it; I'm just batting at the balls.
The voiceover says "Some use the word superstar."
On The Mend
I went swimming today for the first time since I injured my back.
I walked to the ferry in icy rain, swam half my normal workout (which was still quite hard), took the subway back to minimize additional walking, and still walked over four miles.
It didn't feel great.
It's very different, being in the real world. I didn't realize what a controlled environment I'd been in for the last few weeks. So many places to sit today with nothing to push yourself up from (which is one of my hardest things). I bent and stretched and needed a range of motion I haven't needed at home or in the neighborhood.
Hopefully it will be easier now. And the weather is finally going to break, temperature-wise, in another day or so. It's been a winter.
Bonkers
I've just been privileged to see the single most bonkers trailer in gaming history.
I'm speechless.
If you only have two and a half minutes of free time today, please use it watch this: Hypernet Explorer trailer. And to whet your appetite, let me quote a few excerpts from the Steam page:
Form a party to explore a 92 floor skyscraper that barely holds the cosmos together or just get lost in alternate activities; manage a cursed pizza place, become a certified tarot reader, date yourself from another plane of existence, start your own space program, get filthy rich by manipulating the soul market and... go bowling with your beloved cousin.
Pick from 64 base classes that range from classic RPG archetypes (wizard, hunter, knight) to modern career paths (CEO, psychologist, combat medic). Keep class upgrades between multiple runs to avoid farming and fuse the classes you mastered to get new prestige classes.
Watch the trailer!
Communication
I'm up every morning at 6:45. Working by 7:15.
At this later stage of my life, I've become a morning person.
C is up by 5:30 almost every day. By the time I go upstairs, she's been up for over an hour.
I'm a morning person. C is an ultra max + morning person. She comes in hot, as they say.
She said she needed a reminder that the minute she sees me is not an ideal time to start a serious discussion, so I made a sign.
I wore it this morning. It was well-received.
Vampire Crawlers
When Vampire Survivors came out I played it endlessly, like many of us did.
I thought it was brilliant, but I also thought it was somewhat of a happy accident. A one-hit wonder that would set up developer Luca Galante (poncle) for life, but never be repeated. Harper Lee, if you will.
Dear Luca: I apologize.
The just-released demo for Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard From Vampire Survivors is deliriously good. Ridiculously, unbelievably good.
Like VS, it's wacky, and the atmosphere both calls back to Vampire Survivors feel and speed, yet also feels unique in its own right.
Sound effects are reused. Lots of code is reused. And yet it feels entirely fresh.
Spectacular.
Luca, I sincerely apologize once more. It wasn't an accident. You are, in fact, a genius.
