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.
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, a beautifully written story about Mike Love, the Beach Boy's asshole: The Beach Boy: My uncanny night watching one of the legendary group’s last-ever shows.
In praise of savage diction: Dead County Fair.
I totally blew out my ankle on one of these when I was in my twenties: The Quirky History of the Osage Orange, Texas’s Ugliest Fruit.
A terrific story: How Mexico's World Cup run brought a small Oregon town to life.
Fascinating: The Brits panning for gold: In remote rivers, prospectors still hunt for treasure.
From Wally, and it's a fantastic article: What Is on Voyager’s Golden Record? LOTR nerds, it's your moment: Every LOTR and Hobbit Movie Ranked By Book Accuracy. A thoughtful defense, even though I'm not usually a fan: On Slashers, Summer Flics, and Moving Beyond Typecasting. Extremely sleazy: Hasbro’s TV Contracts Allegedly Ask Child Voice Actors to Sign Rights Away for AI Use.
From D.G.F, the first of two connected stories: The Seeds of Prairieland. The second: ‘This is injustice’: how leftist zines were used to sentence anti-ICE protesters to decades in prison. The sentences are a heinous injustice and should be overturned on appeal. If not, then the next Democratic president should commute their sentences.
Wedged
Sony announced they'll stop producing physical discs for Playstation games in January 2028.
It's been a long time coming.
Remember back in 2007, when Microsoft tried an extraordinarily convoluted version of this? It was the original Xbox One announcement, and there were so many levels of cluster**** that I won't review them all. The point being that the big console manufacturers, excluding Nintendo, have wanted to kill the used game market for a long time.
The future happens slowly, then all at once, as the saying goes.
It's terrible for consumers, but when has anything ever been announced that's actually better for consumers?
Will game prices drop because the resale market dies? No. Is there any benefit whatsoever to consumes? Absolutely not.
I honestly wonder if Microsoft and Sony--the gaming divisions, at least--will survive. The BOM for the Playstation 6 is allegedly almost $1,000 now. AI and tariffs have inflated component pricing to such an insane degree that new hardware is almost guaranteed to fail.
So here's the conundrum for Sony/Microsoft. You desperately want to kill the resale market. You release a console to do that, but it's so overpriced that sales are lousy. The only base you have left is last-gen consumers who refuse to upgrade because physical discs aren't available anymore. Do you go ahead and stop producing physical discs in 2028 and risk alienating them further?
Maybe it doesn't matter as much as I think it does. Sony and Microsoft already have digital-only versions of their consoles out, and they sell well. This just feels like an inflection point for the industry, and not a good one.
It's also hard to see another game with the budget of GTA VI ever being made (no, don't mention Star Citizen lol).
Meanwhile, Nintendo must be thrilled. The Switch 2, even with the price increases, is still significantly cheaper. They'll still produce physical media. They occupy a unique niche in gaming, and they'll be around long after Sony and Microsoft have moved on.
The Book Which Dare Not Speak Its Name...
...because I don't have one yet.
If you're lucky, really lucky, you work every day on a creative project, sometimes for years, and every once in a while you have a moment. It might be more than a moment; it might be a week, or even two. And in those moments, you suddenly have the creativity you'd been looking for day after day.
In a funny way, it resembles exercising. I used to run because it was good for me, and it was, but it was all workmanlike. Because I ran all those times, though, I occasionally had one of those transcendent runs where I entered a deep flow state and time passed without me thinking about it.
That's a long-winded way of saying that in the last ten days I've had one of those moments. I had a list of outstanding issues, as well as stretch goals, for the book, and every single one has been checked off. It all fits into the existing work, it reads well, and it makes the book complete.
I feel very fortunate.
I respect the grind, but those moments when the grind disappears are both wonderful and a relief. It's hard to write a book. At least, it's hard for me.
The book with no name will make it by the holidays. It might even be sooner.
A Revelation
Where I grew up (South Texas), no one pronounced the "p" in raspberry. It was just "rasberry."
I didn't even know it was spelled with a "p" until well into adulthood.
I was working on the book this morning and there was a moment that called for a raspberry, or a rasberry. Unsure, I thought maybe I could just call it a strawberry because we said that as kids as well.
C was in the kitchen when I came out of the study.
"When you were a kid, did you call it "raspberry" or "rasberry?" I asked.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"You know, when you skin your knee."
"I never heard either of those," she said.
"What?" I asked. "How is that possible/"
She responded, absolutely deadpan: "I was not an athletic child."
A Summer Respite
I assume you're all familiar with the necessary walk-ferry-walk-swim-walk-subway-walk journey when I swim, since I've written about it without pause for six months now.
Well, it may be gone for the next two months.
Astoria Park, which is within easy walking distance of our house, has an absolutely massive pool:
(thanks, Wikipedia)
It opened for the first time last weekend. Today, I went to see if I could swim laps.
It's not shown in the photo, but the area to the left of where the photo ends has four lanes for lap swim, only each lane is the width of 3-4 regular lanes. What this means is you can have 8+ people circle swimming in a lane and it's still easy. I passed one person the whole time and no one passed me. You never see the people on the other side of the lane.
Having a spacious feeling when you're swimming laps is a rare and prized experience.
This pool is also long. Really, really long, because it's 50+ meters (53, I believe). It makes for an endless lap.
Everyone was incredibly nice, which is what Astoria is like in general. What a place.
Friday Links!
Have a great weekend, everyone.
I genuinely wonder if any of these "gurus" are ever legitimate: The Real Love Company made her feel whole. Then ‘Daddy’ said to strip naked.
Another archive article from the remarkable Skip Hollandsworth: Poisoning Daddy: How a loving daughter and star student stole barium acetate from her high school chemistry lab, put it in her father’s refried beans, and almost got away with murder.
A terrific story: Mail Between Heaven and Earth: On Japan’s Post Office For Letters to the Dead.
Underrated: ‘David Bowie was a crazy workaholic’: Labyrinth at 40 – an oral history.
This is quite wonderful: For 60 years, an 84-year-old has let a deck of cards build his map.
What an incredible thing to see in person: We got a sneak peek of the final space shuttle set to go on public display.
From Wally, and he said it's one of his top three games: A team of Anarchy Online F2P ‘froobs’ defeated the MMORPG’s final raid boss after two years of prep. Grim times in the console world: Fears for Xbox as it puts its developers on the chopping block once again. This looks terrific, and since I live here now, I can even go see it in person: Exhibit showcases Jack Kirby and creation of superheroes. A national treasure: Cracking stories, Gromit: Wallace’s long-suffering canine companion to tell all in memoir. This is genuinely incredible, even with its limitations: The First Vibe Coded MMORPG Is Free, Open Source, and Surprisingly Complete.
GTA VI
The price of the "standard" edition for PS5 and Series X was announced yesterday. $79.99.
That's high, obviously, but it's also the one game that could get away with it.
The only problem is that it's effectively much higher than that.
Rockstar also announced that the "physical" copies of the game just come with a case and a code for download.
In other words, no reselling.
There was an entire ecosystem of used GTA V copies being resold over and over again. For GTA VI, that ecosystem won't exist.
This is why charging $80 for the game is ridiculous. Rockstar is already going to have much higher profits from the game because it can't be resold. They don't need to be charging $10 over what is already an inflated price point for AAA games.
If I owned the stock, I'd be thrilled with their announcement. As a consumer, though, they can pound sand.
[UPDATE: Rockstar is now claiming there will be a physical disk available "in the coming months." They appear to be scrambling in response to how pissed people are about their original announcement; if this was already planned, they would have announced it at the same time. I could actually see an "ultra deluxe" collector's edition with disc for $120+ with limited availability, which would have a minimal effect on the resale market.]
Calibration and the Dark Arts of Music Games
I'd totally forgotten how one of the expert level challenges in music games was calibrating your TV and audio to sync perfectly with the note charts.
There's always a tool inside the game, but it's usually not very accurate. To do it precisely, it has to be done manually. And doing it precisely, where the buffer before and after the note is the same size, and you hear when notes should be played, is how a music game envelops you.
I was struggling until I saw a Reddit post from 2015 about the correct method, which involved multiple passes, playing with the sound muted, etc. Then I had a massive moment of deja vu when I realized I'd already read this post in 2015.
And so it goes.
I also realized, after looking at RB, RB2, and Beatles RB yesterday, that The Beatles: Rock Band represents the absolute pinnacle of an entire genre. It's clearly so lovingly crafted, and with incredible attention to detail.
I remember being good at these games, once.
