What?
I find
this astonishing:
NEW YORK, Oct 27 (Reuters) - The New York Stock Exchange is preparing to start trading a new type of options contract that lets investors make all-or-nothing bets on whether a stock or exchange-traded fund will close above or below a set price.
...NYSE is also seeking approval for a second product tied to company earnings metrics, the latest push by exchanges to capitalize on booming demand for event-driven trading.
The binary return options contracts are expected to begin trading within days.
The stock exchange going after Kalshi. What a world we live in. What's next, NYSE? How long before you offer parlays?
The mind reels. Mine, anyway.
An MRI
I had the VIP MRI experience on Friday, much to my surprise.
Then I got the results, and I know why my shoulder hurts. Tendonitis everywhere, basically. Quite a bit of tendinosis. Bonus edema around the AC joint and other places. Partial rotator cuff tear (probably non-surgical, though).
I have a fantastic PT place, and they've helped me get back into a much better range of motion. I'm still going to need quite a bit more work, though, before I can swim again.
I have a video conference with the orthopedist next week and I'm hoping she'll recommend an injection to calm everything down in there. The inflammation is the first thing to tackle.
Books!
I've been fortunate enough to read two exceptional books over the last few weeks.
The first is
American Tabloid by James Ellroy, who is another author prominent in his time who faded away compared to his contemporaries (for baffling and unknown reasons). It's the longest book I've ever read (800+ pages) that never lost its focus or its ability to keep the reader clearly informed.
One of the reasons I don't generally like 500+ pages books is that I have no interest in chasing the mind of the author to access their work (hello, David Foster Wallace, etc.). This never happens in American Tabloid, and it's an entirely brilliant piece of writing. Also, the characters. JFK, RFK, Jimmy Hoffa, the Mob, Jack Ruby, Cuba, the CIA, the FBI...I probably left out ten others. It's an astonishing work with a fantastic ending.
The second book is much, much shorter--less than 200 pages--and much more recent. It's titled
The End of Everything, and it's shortlisted for the Booker Prize this year. It's science fiction, and somehow the style reminds me of Orwell's
1984 in its restraint. It will stay with you well after you finish.
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, a fantastic read: The Danger of Getting Too Close to a Source.
This is a heart-warming story: ‘When they listen to this song, they know food is coming’: Burrolandia, a donkey obsession.
A thoughtful essay (my favorite line: "no one wants to eat candy all the time."): Thomas Bowdler lives: on the sanitization of horror.
One of the most honest interviews I've ever heard about playing goalie (and my new favorite player): Devin Cooley post-game interview.
A terrific read: The ‘Finger cutter’ and the ‘Brazilian Escobar’: the men accused of bringing cocaine cartels to Europe.
Again, to no one's surprise (from the stellar journalists at Pro Publica): How Trump’s FBI Purge Saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn From a Bribery Investigation.
From D.G.F., and it's part of gambling's slippery slope: ‘I’m Not Going to Have Blood on My Hands:’ Why Nicole Noren, a decorated ESPN producer, quit in protest.
From Meg M. and it's fabulous: Jolly Rancher fluorescence. Also fabulous: The Elizabeth Holmes Documentary, Through the Eyes of the Reporter Who Exposed Her.
From Wally, and it's another cross-universe cash grab: The ‘Star Wars’ and Marvel Universes Collide in ‘Hope Assembles’ Comic Series. A little late, and the seminal video was fabricated, but it's still fun: National Sasquatch Awareness Day. This is both amusing and fascinating: Who is Elias the lighthouse keeper? AI fiction tells the same old story.
Project Helix
It's the next Microsoft console, in case you hadn't heard. Available holiday 2028, allegedly.
Priced at $1,200-$1,800. Also allegedly.
Memory prices aren't going down anytime soon, so the price point seems plausible, really.
Here's the question, though: what are they doing?
They've already gutted the gaming division. The pullback is so substantial that releasing a new console makes zero sense, especially at that price. No one's going to buy it, and why would anyone make games for it?
Clearly, it's not just just a console.
It's the only answer that makes sense. When I say "not a console," I don't mean it also has streaming and whatnot like the current-gen Series X. I mean it has to be substantially more than that.
No one will pay $1,500 for a console, not even me.
What if it wasn't just a console, though? What if it had some kind of dual boot setup where it was also a PC? $1,500 for a console gaming machine AND a Windows PC is not an unreasonable price.
Okay, here comes some unwarranted speculation. If "Helix" refers to DNA, then it could be referring to a double helix, which makes sense if you're referring to a multi-function console with two distinct purposes. I know--stupid--but sometimes the people running large business projects are obsessed with the name (based on my own experience at Dell, many years ago).
The gaming division is hemorrhaging enough money that Microsoft would seemingly be on track to shut it down if it can't contribute to other parts of their business in substantial ways. A dual function PC/console could be that way.
The Constraint Theory
There's a well-known belief about art; most famously expressed by Orson Welles: "The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."
I've been a believer since the very first time I encountered it. And it makes sense, intuitively. Everyone believes it, really.
But what if it's wrong?
The number of people who can create art without limitations is extremely small. The number of people who have constraints? enormous. In film, for example, there are a few directors who have this opportunity, and because they have the highest profile, their work is guaranteed to always be shown and to be judged against their budget. It's a higher bar.
In contrast, low-budget filmmakers, of which there are legions, might make something terrible that either never gets distributed or barely makes a ripple in the pond if it does. The level of scrutiny is so much lower. People forget about them, skewing the numbers, but they never forget the big budget disaster.
Sometimes, though, they're wrong.
One of the most famous tales of no-constraint filmmaking is Michael Cimino's Heavens Gate. It was destroyed by critics in its two hours and twenty-nine minute release version. It was continually held up as the perfect example of no-constraint art and how it fails.
About ten years ago, I saw the Director's Cut, which is three hours and thirty-nine minutes long. In high resolution, on a large OLED television. I watched it in one sitting.
It's a masterpiece.
It's beautiful, it's poignant, and it hits you in the gut repeatedly. It's an incredible film.
In music, The Beatles had an unlimited budget for every album from Sgt. Pepper onwards. Sure, they're the Beatles, but the quality of their output didn't drop even when they were printing money.
There are a ton of counter-examples, of course, but my point is that some of the most powerful art IS created without essentially any constraints, and our belief that it can't, by definition, be any good is misleading at best and harmful to our understanding of art at worst.
Memories, Both Good and Bad
It gives me great joy to play Sim Golf again.
It also reminds me of how much it needed a quality of life patch post-release. It's sheer cleverness created issues.
Sound, for example.
The game uses audio clues extensively to provide feedback on the player experience, which is ingenious and an example of how Sid Meier was on another level entirely around 2002. It was just one of many excellent bits of quality design.
However, when the course gets crowded, there can be so many audio cues that it's impossible to use them as feedback. It's just overwhelming, and there's no setting for enabling certain cues and disabling others, or having only a percentage of the cues generated actually play.
There are tons of golfer messages as well (many of which provide no real information), and when your golfer is playing a practice round, the messages can pop up so often that it interferes with hitting your shots.
Those are small things compared to how wonderful it is to play again, but they're there.
Right now I'm waiting for I.M. Picky to show up to offer me more land so I can expand my course or purchase a different plot entirely.
Winter. It's Coming.
I'm installing clear plastic insulation on the ground floor windows because air came through last year like a polar vortex.
It looks easy on the video. In real life? Do you remember the Lucy wallpaper hanging scene? Yeah, not quite that bad, but close.
It's also hard to stretch with my right arm given that my shoulder is garbage right now. MRI on Friday, though, thank goodness.
Eli 25.2 is now mostly settled in Bogota and quite happy. Almost everything has exceeded his expectations, and he's found both a track and a track club, as well as an excellent place to get coffee in the morning for $1. And a loaf of sourdough for $2. All good.
Colombia
By the time you read this, Eli 25.3 will be in Colombia.
He's not coming back (for good) until next October. I'm worried about him, even though he's entirely capable of handling himself, and it will be a long year. He's doing the research he needs for his doctoral thesis, though, and he already has a network of contacts there.
I was able to pour some of that emotion into Remarkable Man (the new title for the book) in the last few days. It was all I could do.
He's going to be perfectly fine, I know he will. As a parent, though, sometimes you worry in spite of yourself.
[AI POST] Abandonware and it's sudden restoration
I loved Sim Golf.
It was Sid Meier's labor of love, seemingly. Quirky and full of charm, and when I sent in a bug, I received a Sim Golf poster autographed by Sid himself.
That was in 1996.
Over the years, I've wished in vain for some kind of remake. No chance. It was already abandonware a decade ago.
Other games came out since then, all far inferior to the original. Nothing could ever match its charm.
Now, using AI tools, a remake exists, and it's genuinely spectacular. 4K resolution, upscaled art, and it plays quite well. And all the necessary files --except the original assets--are posted on GitHub (and it's easy to download Sim golf from MyAbandonware).
I'm stunned.
Have a look: I rebuilt Sid Meier's SimGolf to play 1:1 with your original copy: in your browser, on Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/iPhone, in 4K, with mods.
There's also an astonishing NFL2K5 project well underway.
I understand that the use of AI is contentious for many of us. It's become some kind of purity test issue. But this is a use that seems quite acceptable. Abandoned games, now playable on modern operating systems, with updated graphics.
A Surprising Outcome
In the last few months, several major literary awards have rescinded prizes or disqualified entrants because AI-detection tools considered the manuscripts AI-assisted.
I don't know where I stand on this, but this is not a discussion about that.
I was curious if The Man You Trust would pass one of these detection tools. It was published well before LLM's were publicly available. It's also written in a very specific style (due to the main character) that I could best describe as "constrained." I thought it would sound artificial to an AI-detector.
Which would be quite funny.
I convinced myself to the degree that I uploaded a chapter to GPTZero, which is one of the best free detection tools.
Guess what? I was wrong.
GPTZero returned that it was "100% confident" the text was entirely human written.
Score: AI-detection tools 1, Me 0.
