Friday Links!
Leading off this week, and it's mind-blowing (to me, at least): Running DOS off a vinyl record is wildly impractical but deeply hip. Space pranksters: How a Thanksgiving Day gag ruffled feathers in Mission Control. This is an emotional and riveting piece of writing: 100 Years On, Bloody Sunday Still Bleeds.
From Wally, and its bittersweet: I Miss My Restaurant Family, Unfortunately. These are board games submitted to the Finnish National Library (it's not in English, but the images are interesting, and I know we have a few Finnish readers): Viimeksi syötetyt Lautapelit. This is an excellent read: My Hunt for the Original McDonald’s French-Fry Recipe. Hmm: 12 Very Haunted Roads.
From Geoff Engelstein, and this is just silly: Football agents "tried to bribe" Football Manager into giving better ratings.
From Meg McReynolds, and it's entirely delightful: Why Are These Sea Urchins Sporting Cowboy and Viking Hats? There's Science to Their Hot Looks. This is very, very good: I am an artificial intelligence dedicated to generating unlimited amounts of unique inspirational quotes for endless enrichment of pointless human existence.
Excellence from C. Lee. First, and this is a wonderful story, it's She Helped South Korea in Its Time of Need. In the Pandemic, It Repaid Her. This is quite helpful: Stop Glasses From Fogging Up With a Band-Aid on Your Mask. An interesting read: Covid-19 Mutated. Can Vaccines Keep Up? This is a wonderful site and a fascinating article: Ethics in Strategy Gaming, Part 1: Panzer General. This is thought-provoking: The Prosperity Hoax. I'm not going to get lost walking the three minutes back home from Jimmy John's, but for some of you, this could be incredibly useful: How to Turn Your Watch Into a Compass. This is excellent: How The Princess Bride Built Film’s Most Beloved Sword Fight.
Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving (disturbing historical legacy aside) to U.S. readers today, and I hope you were all able to spend time with your families safely.
If not, here are a few pictures for you.
First, I was invited over to the house for what has become the traditional Thanksgiving breakfast:
Gloria said that the turkeys were a little frantic this year, and maybe they were having a bit of a bad hair today, but they were still delicious. Cinnamon rolls on Thanksgiving for late breakfast are an unbelievable luxury.
Around noon, Gloria asked what time sports were coming on. I said, "Well, the Lions game is on soon, so I guess that's sports adjacent?"
After the traditionally delicious lunch, Eli 19.3 made a raspberry souffle (with a shaved chocolate outer shell), and it was delicious. The view from above:
I know. And it was his first time doing this, too. Here's the head-on view:
It was delicious.
Chef!
Eli 19.3 made dinner tonight.
He sent a picture of this dish last week (I posted it), but seeing it in person, and the process he went through, was really something.
The pasta dough was made last night. Tonight he used a press to flatten it and make it the right thickness. He made a pea farce and used a pastry bag to distribute it evenly onto the sheets of pasta. He tucked the pasta over, made crimps to separate into individual pieces, and cut them at the crimp. Then he put them into the freezer for a few minutes so that they wouldn't fall apart when they were cooked.
The whole process was mildly hypnotic, because it was very slowly and carefully done. Very procedural.
He also made a parmesan crisp, which had a little lattice shape, and that was cut into pieces.
There was also the frying of bacon and a sauce for the pasta.
The pasta cooked in boiling water, then it was transferred to a skillet that had the sauce and continued to cook for a few minutes.
I'm not mentioning the peas for obvious reasons.
What was amazing about the taste of this dish was the number of flavors in one bite. If you put a piece of bacon and parmesan crisp on top of a piece of pasta, the combination was remarkable--the base flavor of the pasta mixed with the salty taste of the bacon, with the airy taste of the parmesan crisp. It was all balanced, with no flavor stronger than the rest, but they were all strong enough not to be overwhelmed by each other.
I've had pasta in restaurants that wasn't nearly this good.
Obviously, I have quite a bit of skill in the "remove bag from freezer and set microwave timer" culinary school, but this was so impressive. And it was my boy making it. So wonderful.
COVID ate my brain
I think 2020 finally got in my head.
I had a physical schedules last Tuesday. I thought seriously about not going, given how most of the state seems to have COVID right now, but I wanted to make sure my C+ diet wasn't having a negative effect on my health (I didn't think so, but a series of numbers from blood tests are always comforting to look at).
So I went.
I was careful, of course, and except when I was in the room with the doctor, I wasn't anywhere long enough to have any real exposure to anyone. Still, though, I was within range of far more people than I've been since March.
Thursday morning, I felt congested and my sinuses hurt.
This is a thing that I've always struggled with since we moved up here. It's dry in winter, like 20% relative humidity dry. It's so dry that your sinuses can get inflamed and start to hurt, which mine do every year when it gets cold.
In other words, it's nothing new.
It's 2020, though, and every symptom is a possible precursor to COVID. Cough? COVID Congestion? COVID Leg wound? COVID.
It took three days before I finally accepted that I was totally fine.
I also realized that I could close the door to the TV room (which is actually a bedroom that attaches to a bathroom with shower), turn on the hot shower for ten minutes, and raise the humidity in that room over to over 30%, which is much more comfortable for breathing (and my sinuses).
The pandemic has had such a corrosive effect on carefree moments. Everything involves a risk assessment, and the more often you have to do it, the more difficult it becomes to be objective.
Homestretch, though. We just need to hang on for a while now as the vaccines ramp up into production. We're all going to get through this.
Things I've Learned About Cooking (#2 in a series): Frozen Vegetables Are Like Wildlife Parks
#1 in the series was vent the package of Spanish rice before putting it in the microwave. We've covered that already.
When you buy a package of frozen vegetables, there will always be an inviting picture on the cover of the vegetables in roughly even quantities. For instance, let's say the package contains carrots, corn, and green beans. That picture is going to look like a national flag with three equal stripes: orange, yellow, and green.
This is exactly the same marketing as the wildlife park that proudly advertises over 275 animals, and has photos of all manner of exotic beasts. What a wonderful experience!
When you drive through the wildlife park, you realize that 260 of the animals are different varieties of deer.
When you open the frozen vegetables, the deer are the green beans.
We've Crossed Over to the Other Side
There is a game in Early Access now.
The name of the game is Shardpunk: Verminfall. It's is a turn-based RPG.
I'm not here to discuss whether it's a good game, because I don't know.
I'm more interested in knowing whether we've passed the point of no return when it comes to naming games.
Shard. Punk. Vermin. Fall. Four words that are words on their own, seemingly combined entirely at random. We're now just throwing four tiles into a bag and drawing them out one at a time.
How about Fallpunk: Verminshard? Or maybe Shardfall: Verminpunk?
The incredible thing about these four words is that using them in any combination, with a colon in the middle, makes for an equally suitable name. It's sorcery.
Verminpunk: Fallshard. That works, too.
Two words on the left, two words on the right, a colon in the middle. It's just science.
Pictures!
I was greeted by this lovely sunrise this morning:
While fall is over, I saved one picture to share with you:
Fall is so beautiful here. I'm definitely going to miss it when I'm wearing shorts in December somewhere else.
The trails I walk on at the local college campus sometimes have little art installations on the paths, which is always very cool. Here's one of them:
Those are regular-sized dominos, in case you're wondering.
Sir, I'd like to offer to be your Weight Watchers sponsor!
Somebody's been spending a lot of time at the Squirrel Corral buffet.
Almost Identical
Eli 19.3 has really gotten into cooking, and he sent this picture last night:
This was his description:
Agnolotti with a pea farce topped with a butter sauce, peas, bacon, and a Parmesan crisp.
I sent him this picture:
Rising above a bed of carrot strips and wild rice, an assembly of mini-tater tots with sliced avocado and frozen chicken strip medallions.
I mean, that's basically a draw, right?
Hopefully Soon
I'm really looking forward to the post-vaccine day when I never have to use the phrase "viral load" again.
This is now possible
Mini-tater tots are an actual thing.
Buy them for all those times when regular tater tots are just too damn big.
And I thought this country stopped innovating after we went to the moon.
The Exception That Proves the Rule
I can't seem to quit Tiger Woods.
In recent years, the quality of an athlete's character has affected who I root for. I used to tell myself it didn't matter, but as I got older, I realized that it does, at least to me. So I try much harder to find good people who happen to be athletes and root for them.
Then there's Tiger Woods.
He infamously blew up his life and the lives of his family with a series of reprehensible and selfish indiscretions in 2008. He is almost completely unwilling to use his massive platform to advocate for anything or anyone. He doesn't even seem to have close friends.
It certainly seems like he's lacking in character.
But when he takes a 10 and hits 3 balls into Rae's Creek on Sunday, then birdies 5 of the next 6 holes, I can't look away. It was the most Tiger Woods thing to do ever.
Or chipping in an impossible shot to win the Masters. Or make a 20 foot putt on the last hole of the PGA to get into a playoff with Bob May (he won, of course). Or win the U.S. Open with a stress fracture in his leg.
His highlight reel might be more spectacular than every other golfer combined.
I don't think I've ever seen another athlete who has a greater ability to rise to the moment. When he was younger, it was almost inevitable. and it was electric.
Other guys of questionable character? No thanks. Tiger? I still can't look away.
It definitely works
I stumbled onto the Clever Hans Effect this week.
Hans was a horse (of course) who appeared to perform mathematical calculations. He was quite a celebrity.
In 1907, a scientific inquiry concluded that while Hans was indeed quite clever, he was actually responding to physical cues given by his trainer (who wasn't consciously giving the horse clues).
This is often cited as a potential pitfall when researching animal cognition.
I thought that was quite interesting, but what really captured my imagination was the realization that "The Clever Hans Effect" would easily be the greatest indie band name ever.
An Announcement
I'm going to go ahead and rip the band-aid off, because it's going to surprise you and there's no way for me to edge into it.
Gloria and I are no longer together. We've actually been divorced for a few months now.
It felt very, very strange to not discuss any of this as it was happening, because I've been an open book to you for the better part of twenty years, but this was so deeply private that I just couldn't share it until now. We'd grown apart over the years, and it reached a point where there was no way forward for us.
Gloria has been gracious and amicable through the process, and I hope that I have been as well.
If you're wondering about Eli 19.3, he's great. When we told him, he hugged us both and said that he loved us and supported us.
This is what you'd expect, coming from the single best person I've ever known. When we went to the range later that day, he said, "Dad, nothing will ever happen to change us," and he's right.
I live in an apartment five minutes from the house, and I see Eli every day when he's back from school. Our relationship is the same that it's always been, which makes me very, very happy. And I still see Gloria and Gracie every week as well.
There are quite a few funny things about living in an apartment by myself after so long, and now I can start telling you about them.
Costume Count (damn it, 2020)
Well, it's not a thousand costumes this year.
In many places, trick or treating was cancelled. This seems prudent.
Garret Rempel got my hopes up with "Costume Count 2020!" as the subject of his email.
The exclamation point got me. Whimsical Canadians.
This was his email:
Costume Count by Type
(nothing) 0
That is all.
You read that right. 80 kph winds, below freezing, plus COVID. There was only one other house with lights on for my entire block and there was not a single kid to be seen. My kids stayed home, ate candy, and watched movies.
Social distancing like a BOSS.
I feel like our better northern half should appropriate that and turn it into a slogan: "Canada: social distancing Like a BOSS."
Moving on.
There were only two submissions this year (along with quite a few "no costumes this year" emails):
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Fate, Texas (which is about half an hour northeast of Dallas)
58 costumes in total (in alphabetical order)
Alice in Wonderland
Among Us characters
Anime Girl
Assassin's Creed character (Ezio)
Baby Tiger
Bumblebee Transformer
Captain America
Cat
Caterpillar
Clown
Cow
Creepy green mask
Day of the Dead
Dinosaur
Dorothy
Draculas Daughter
Dragon
Fireman
Football Player
Fortnite Character
Fox
Frankenstein
Garbage Truck
Grim Reaper (2)
Halo Master Chief
Harley Quinn
Hazmat suit
Jasmine (2)
Mandalorian
Micheal
Mushroom
Nerd
Ninja (3)
Panda
Police Officer
Popeye (Sweet Pea's dad)
Princess
Pterodactyl skeleton
Rooster
Scarecrow (2)
Skeleton
Sock Hop Girls
Spiderman (4)
Sumo Wrestler
Sweet Pea
Tin Man
Unicorn (2)
Vampire
Wizard
Costume of the year must be the garbage truck:
The kid had a safety vest and hat on, with a large cardboard garbage truck around him. What made it awesome was that when he got candy, he put it in a receptacle in front of him. He pushed a button, and just like a real garbage truck, it lifted the candy in a basket up and over his head and dumped it into the back part of the truck behind him
That's next level.
Next year will be back to normal, I hope. Stay safe, everybody.
