Friday Links!
From Dan F., and it's a long and wonderful read: Triple alley-oops, LeBron cameos and electric crowds: The magic of summer basketball.
From Wally, and apps like this are incredibly annoying: Gaming Peripheral Apps, Ranked From Worst to Worst.
From Meg McReynolds, and to everyone's relieve, our favorite week of the year has returned: Fat Bear Week. And campaign posters for individual bears, which are delightful: Fat Bear Week Campaign Posters. Oh, and now Fat Bear Jr! Fat Bear Junior 2022.
From C. Lee, and it's perfect: One of the most perfect letters ever written. This is alarming: Revealed: the ‘shocking’ levels of toxic lead in Chicago tap water. Related: Profiting from poison: how the US lead industry knowingly created a water crisis. This is going to become much more common, and very quickly: Ninja Theory, other triple-A devs reportedly using AI voice acting tech over people. This guy is genuinely a huge piece of shit: Brett Favre Wanted Inmates To Help Build His Fraudulent Volleyball Stadium. The things some people study: Can reflections in eyeglasses actually leak info from Zoom calls? Here's a study into it. You can have them all: Michigan’s Bloodsucking Parasite Is Britain’s Royal Delicacy.
It's Come To This
Eurogamer has an excellent review of FIFA 23:
FIFA 23 review - a fitting end to a brilliant and grotesque era.
In the review, the phrase "engagement-farming" is used. Here's an excerpt:
All the worst parts of modern engagement-farming design are here. The red notification dots that keep you looking at your phone, the level-ups, the league-climbing system, the second- and third-screen web apps, the loot boxes, of course (the preview system is a nice try but does nothing, effectively giving you one free look a day, but positioning that right next to the blind pack you can infinitely buy - it's nothing more than a free taste, first roll on the house, masked as some kind of concession), and don't forget the actual games themselves, the kind of recurring head-to-head, just one more game multiplayer that would be almost toxically moreish as it is, goading you into another match with rage as much as enjoyment, without all the rest.
That's what AAA gaming has mostly become. It's not about providing enjoyment to the player; it's about manipulating them into spending as much money as possible.
Isn't it incredible how much micro-transactions have lowered the quality of games? Particularly sports games, where the major franchises are essentially micro-transaction cesspools now.
Think about how different games would be if micro-transactions were just banned. There'd be no reason to push game modes that involve spending more money, because there wouldn't be any. The quality of your game would actually determine how much money a company made, instead of endlessly milking the customer base by using casino-esque tactics to get them to continue purchasing.
It's all gone quite insane, really. And what I can't figure out is how to stop it, because it just marches relentlessly forward.
Maybe the EU will propose banning micro-transactions someday, and we'll get to enjoy gaming companies testify (with a straight face) that such a law would hurt the consumer.
Sure.
The Tripitaka Koreana
Well, this is really something.
Here's a description:
The Tripitaka Koreana - carved on 81258 woodblocks in the 13th century - is the most successful large data transfer over time yet achieved by humankind. 52 million characters of information, transmitted over nearly 8 centuries with zero data loss - an unequalled achievement.
I don't know how I'd never heard of this before.
52 million characters. Two gigabytes of data. 6,568 volumes. Carved into wood blocks. Stacked on top of each other, they'd reach a mile and a half high.
It's the "most comprehensive and oldest version of the Buddhist canon." And it was made in the 13th century.
Everything about this is absolutely stunning, and you can read about it here:
Tripitaka Koreana.
There Will Be Lawyers
When someone passes away unexpectedly, there will be lawyers.
You pay the lawyers, which is fair, because they're lawyering and going things that you, as a non-lawyer, can't do. It's just part of the process.
Plus, in some cases, the lawyers are actually making more money for you than you're paying them in fees. At least slightly.
I mention this because after almost a year, the lawyer process appears to be almost over. This is a major milestone, because paying lawyers month after month became just another symbol of how life had changed.
It's been almost a year since Gloria's accident, so it will be a satisfying moment when the lawyers are out of the picture. It feels like it's been a long time.
Also, I think lawyers bill in thirty-second increments for anything they do for you. It seems like it, anyway.
An Odd Day
A relatively normal day, actually, but strange in the sense that I have no topics to right about, which is very rare for me.
I shot even par for 9 holes again on Friday. I called Eli 21. 2 and the first thing I said was, "I'm not a fluke!" which was nice. And to make it even better, I hit an 85-yard approach shot to 3 feet on the last hole and birdied it to get to even.
Enjoy the daisies.
Perplexing
On the way back from Ann Arbor last Sunday, I was listening to the Michigan State student radio station in Lansing. A very pleasant sports talk show was on, and three students were discussing Saturday's football games.
Then one of the hosts said that Bo Nix was the Daniel Jones version of Cam Newton.
Almost a week later, I still have no idea what that means. It haunts me.
The Min-Maxer
A close friend called me and said she was going to be late for dinner because she was taking her daughter to the Apple store at the mall.
"Ooh, the food court," I said.
"Oh my god," she said. "Congealed sauce buffet."
"Only a novice would say that," I said. "There are two optimal times to go to the food court: 11:30 and 5:30. All the food is fresh for the lunch and dinner rushes, and it's delicious."
"The only thing more disturbing than you eating at the food court is figuring out the best times to eat at the food court."
"Min-maxing the food court is just good, common sense," I said. "Also, try the bourbon chicken at the Asian place. It's fantastic."
Cancelled
There's some kind of construction project going at a house on a cross street near where I live.
It's the closest cross street, and there's a trailer parked on the curb. Behind it is always a huge black truck. It's been like this for weeks now.
In the back window of the huge black truck are white letters at least a foot high: "PRO-AMERICA," and below that, "ANTI-BIDEN."
Okay, then.
Driving or walking past this truck every day is annoying. What kind of person is so desperate for attention that they use their truck to yell at everyone?
That's a rabbit hole that no one should go down. Believe me.
Yesterday, though, I had a sudden revelation. No matter how loud this guy is, now matter how much he screams, my quiet, little vote is going to totally cancel his out.
Even better than that, I'm sure he's too lazy to find out which judges to vote for (because they won't have a party affiliation on the ballot), so it's not just cancelling, it's cancelling+.
Realizing that was a happy moment. Keep yelling, jerk.
Submission
A friend of mine sent this blurb from the back of her bottle of hair gel:
The Tresseme mission is to create a disruptive path forward so women can lead the way in life and style.
She said she had enough hair trouble without her hair gel being "disruptive."
Like many of you, I find marketing gibberish fascinating. I agree with her, though. Why have disruptive hair gel? This is more appropriate:
Tresseme will force your hair to submit to the authority of the state.
Now that's marketing.
Art, Again
Grand Rapids has a big art contest called "ArtPrize."
There are hundreds of places around downtown where art is displayed, both inside and outside. I went to one of the larger venues and looked around.
I don't pretend to know anything about art.
Most of what I saw was honestly crap. Literally, I saw three paintings that were cat portraits. Perfectly fine cat portraits, mind you, but still.
Anything can be called "art," though, so it was all art, including a worn cardboard box with some kind of mission statement attached.
There was this, though, and I thought it was beautiful:
This was a huge piece, too, at least ten feet wide.
I wonder if some artists get tired of having everything called art, when they spend their lives creating art? Art that is perhaps significantly more substantial than a cardboard box with a mission statement?
The history of art is filled with both extreme gatekeeping and no gatekeeping. Impressionism? Not art, at first. Surrealism? Absolutely not art, at first. Abstract art? Same. Art drawn on a computer? Don't get me started.
Eventually, though, they were all accepted.
On the other end is a fierce philosophical defense of art that claims anything can be art. It's a defense against non-artists who want to claim the ability to judge what is art (and thereby limit it).
I think it's not unfair to say that as personal expression, anything can be art. That doesn't mean it's good, though, and it doesn't mean it isn't disposable. 75% of what I saw on exhibit was totally disposable.
Are there some kinds of art that computer-generated art can't replace? Absolutely, and thank god. All the disposable stuff, though? Totally replaceable.
Given how much momentum these art-generating programs have now, I think it's going to happen much sooner than anyone expects.
Friday Links!
Ugh, what a week.
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World
The dating world, that is.
When you write a profile, you get to add interests (on Match, at least), and you select from hundreds of available ones.
I read a profile last week and these were her interests: billiards, card games, darts, chess, circus.
There was a coherence to those choices until "circus." That's what took it from eccentric to genius.
I've also noticed that there are an incredible number of women who want to hike the Camino de Santiago (about 500 miles, from France to Spain). It was in a movie or something. It's a pilgrimage to self-discovery, I think.
I'm not against self-discovery. I try to do a bit of that myself. The problem, though, is when everyone wants to do the same thing. That trail is going to look like Golden Corral at Thanksgiving.
Oh, and if you are on a dating app, here are two very common-sense notes:
1. Do not use a picture that is publicly available on the Web. If it is, anyone can just right-click on the image while in Chrome and find the original source. This means your full name will be exposed, and someone can easily find all your personal information from there.
2. Do not give out your personal phone number, for the same reason. It's far too easy to find out everything about someone from a cellphone number now. Just block your number when you call.
Towel (2017-2022)
I got my booster on Thursday morning and headed straight for the golf course. I figured I'd feel like hell on Friday (I did), and I wanted to play before I the booster blasted me.
I told Eli almost two years ago that I'd replace my golf towel if I shot even par for nine holes. It's not a golf towel--it's a kitchen towel--but a towel is a towel, right?
It's a dog's face, though it's hard to tell from the angle I used.
I've been close. Really, really close. I can't even remember how many +1s I've shot for nine holes. I definitely choked a few times.
More than a few times.
Anyway, I decided to try a new course, because I'm too deeply rutted right now. I saw my golf glove last week and parts were dark from sweat, but other parts looked almost new, and I realized my life was just like my glove. So I resolved to work hard to use the white parts of my glove, metaphorically.
This course was no longer than my home course, but it was pleasantly different, with lots of water, trees, and sand. A bit more difficult, but in a crafted way.
Plus, it was empty. I didn't see anyone else the entire round. It was the most pleasant round of golf I've had in a long time.
I was +5 after nine, mostly because I was unfamiliar with the course, but I'd started hitting the ball very well, and my putting was so much better (thanks, VR).
Then, on the back, I just started hitting every single ball flush.
I had a five on a par-three because I had a fried egg lie in a bunker, but improbably I birdied the next two holes, and I was even par on the back after five holes.
I was already tired, because there seemed to be a hundred-yard-plus walk between every green and the next tee box, and I was pushing my little hand cart with my clubs on it. I tried not to notice.
I had a six-footer for par on 15. Made it. A five-footer for par on 16. Made it.
Hit a wedge to twelve feet on 17 and missed the putt.
The mental focus was so demanding, so much more than I've used in sports for years. I wasn't missing anything, though. Everything was down the middle of the fairway and into the center of the green. My approach putts were all long, but every second putt was in the middle of the hole.
On 18, I flushed another drive into the middle of the fairway and put the approach about thirty feet away. I was so mentally exhausted that I couldn't believe it, and that length putt was not what I wanted to have.
I put it six feet past.
Lining up the putt for par (and to par the nine), I had thoughts in my head. About my age and the loss of athletic competence. About Eli. About why I'd never been able to do this, and how many putts I'd missed on a green like this to finish +1 instead of even.
Then I stepped up to the ball and stroked it into the center of the hole.
All my disappointment about golf, about how good I might have been if things had been different, just melted away. It was such a happy moment, a little joy stolen from the unrelenting march of days.
It wasn't a hard course, but that didn't matter. What mattered was I executed every shot and kept my nerve in situations where I'd lost it in the past. The monkey on my back was gone.
I was so tired I could barely make it to the car.
I stopped and bought a new golf towel, of course. A nice one, too:
Fighting for Big Things
Carlos Alcaraz is a tennis player, and he's only nineteen, but he said something very wise last week after winning his semifinal match in the U.S. Open: "It's amazing to be able to fight for big things."
I thought it was surprisingly profound, particularly because he didn't say it was amazing to win. It was amazing to fight to win.
This distinction, naturally, made me think about Eli 20.1. His life has been defined by his fight for big things, even when he was small. He didn't always win--he often lost, actually--but he always fought.
His dreams have always been outlandish. He wanted to play professional hockey when he was 10.0 (and for years after that). He didn't, but he fought for it like a professional. He had the attitude of someone who does make it, and I think that helped him in countless ways when he wanted to fight for other, big things.
Now he fights for big things and wins, often in outlandish ways, but I think much of what makes him successful is that he was always able to shake off the discouragement of losing. Maybe not right away, but it never discouraged him from continuing to find big things, and to fight for them. He never thought losing was a judgment of his worth, which is very, very difficult to do.
At least, it always was for me.
I have so much respect for his attitude. I try to be more like that myself now.
Behold the Magnificent
The strip mall next to my little golf course is magnificent. Feast your eyes on this collection:
Rosary Book & Gift
Uniforms
Sudanese beauty salon
Allstate
International supermarket
Hobby shop
Rent a Center
Thai restaurant
Temp agency
Spas and hot tubs
Global gifts
Mexican candy store
Mexican restaurant
Outlet store (of what, unknown)
Brazilian jiu jitsu
Nails and spa
Boutique and beauty
Escape rooms
Top tier grooming (male? female? who knows?)
Smoke shop
Buffalo wild wings
A person could live for weeks without leaving the confines of this strip mall. I could get a job from the temp agency, buy my uniform, make money, enjoy multiple restaurants, stay well-groomed, buy gifts for the holidays, take up a hobby, take up smoking, buy a hot tub, buy insurance for the hot tub, and learn how to defend myself if someone came to steal the hot tub.
When their brazen plot failed, I would hand them a piece of Mexican candy in consolation.
Friday Links!
This is a tremendous interview: ‘I was promiscuous – that’s murder on marriage’: Loudon Wainwright III on sex addiction, booze and family feuds.
From C. Lee, and it's clever with a wink and a nod: Fixing famous paintings with AI. And on a more serious note, Allen Varney sends these amazing upscales: Sierra Game Screenshots Upgraded by AI.
From Wally, and it's an excellent read: The Collectors Who Save Video-Game History From Oblivion. For you grognards: Grant’s Top 10 Solitaire Wargames – 2022 Edition.
From Chris M., and it's really not surprising: America Is a Rich Death Trap: For citizens of a wealthy country, Americans of every age, at every income level, are unusually likely to die, from guns, drugs, cars, and disease.
Excellent links from C. Lee. First, and this definitely depends on your approach, it's ‘A Decade of Fruitless Searching’: The Toll of Dating App Burnout. Anyone who said in the last two decades that climate change isn't real is looking very foolish now: Zombie ice from Greenland will raise sea level 10 inches. This is bad: Authy has been hacked, here is how to protect yourself. I'm very skeptical of cellphone provides and home Internet in general: T-Mobile Misleads Home Internet Customers, Employees Say (Update). This could be huge: Scientists Find a Simple Way to Produce Hydrogen From Water at Room Temperature. This is both cool and very funny: Budgie art. Prescient: Shakespeare, always ahead of his time.
The Illusion
There are very few skills in life where you can feel like you have the skill when you don't.
Sports? Nope. Writing? Absolutely not. Carpentry? I don't think so. Guitar? Try again.
The list goes on and on. There is one skill, however, where you can absolutely fool yourself.
Singing.
I'm a terrible singer (and Gloria might have been worse). I can't hit a note. I have a tiny vocal range. I'm legitimately awful.
In the car, though, with a song playing, I can sing along and somehow, it's magical. To my ears, it sounds like I'm absolutely in tune and just killing it with the singing.
Then I turn the radio off and try to keep singing by myself. Oh, the horror.
In the shower it seems like I can sing, too, because of the unique acoustics. I can't, though.
I really, really can't.
Boosters
The Omicron booster has an EUA from the FDA (insert your additional acronyms here), so let's get boosters, everybody.
I was able to easily get an appointment this time. I could have gone the first day they were available (today), but had a scheduling conflict, so I'm going at 9:30 tomorrow.
I think many people just have COVID fatigue right now. They're sick of reading about it, sick of hearing about it, sick of taking any precautions. And I understand that, but improving your chances of living is a compelling reason to keep paying attention. Certainly, it's not like it was even last fall, because the hospitals aren't overflowing, but being willing to spend fifteen minutes to get a booster still seems like a good use of time.
Also, get used to hearing "mosaic-8": Fighting current and future coronaviruses with a single vaccine.
Also (also), this: Powerful New Antibody Neutralizes All Known COVID Variants.
Putting
My putting has been awful this summer, which I'm looking at more as a problem to solve than a sports thing.
I haven't played much real golf, because the summer just got away from me, and when Eli 20.1 was home, he was still working, so we would go play tennis or something that took less time than golf.
My putting hasn't been good in years. My stroke is inconsistent; I decelerate the putter on short putts, I read greens poorly, etc. In short, I suck.
This was briefly worse because I played so much Walkabout Golf on the Quest 2. Without the weight of an actual putter, playing so many rounds of virtual putting meant I had absolutely no feel for putting in the real world. I couldn't even really putt the ball with a real putter because it felt incredibly strange.
Okay, problem solving.
First step: order a weighted club handle that I can fit the Quest controller into, which at least means I'm putting with the feel of weight.
Second step: there's a course in Walkabout called Arizona Modern, and the 18th hole is very straight, very flat, and very long. In the real world, I'd say it would be over 100 feet. There's also a railing that casts an absolutely straight shadow for the length of the hole right up to the cup.
I started practicing on this hole every day, just trying to keep the ball straight for as long as possible. That quickly showed that my putting stroke was erratic. I adjusted by gripping the putter further down, which straightened me left arm, giving me essentially a rigid lever to work with.
I also had to figure out what putter strength to use in settings that would most closely correspond to the real world. That's finally dialed in now.
So I practice 15-20 minutes a day virtually, practicing that hole over and over again, which is easy because you can replay the tee shot every time. So I'll just pick a spot on the shadow and putt to it.
If you're wondering how that translates to the real world, well, it sucked at first. In the last couple of weeks, though, it's gotten much, much better, to the point where I have more confidence now, and my stroke is much more reliable. I still have some old habits, but they don't happen very often.
This also gives me a great option for practicing in the winter, because there's just no way to do it up here from December-March (and usually for a few weeks on either side of that, too).
I think it will be common for players in many sports to use virtual reality to improve their games in the coming years. Mini-golf will always be one of the most fun, though.
Nothing Could Be Finer
It makes me burst out laughing every time I think about how many people are losing their minds over non-white elves in the new Amazon Lord of the Rings series.
Colonial Origins
Eli 20.1 sent me an article to read: The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation.
Okay, I admit the title is a little dry.
The premise, though, wasn't dry at all. The authors posit that when nations were deciding whether to set up extractive states (Belgian colonization of the Congo) or neo-European ones (New Zealand, Canada, United States), the primary factor was the mortality rate of the colonizers from disease.
In extractive states, the only purpose was to transfer as much of the wealth and resources to the colonizing country as possible. Neo-European states, in contrast, were developed with an emphasis on private property and checks of government powers.
Disease? Basically, we're talking about yellow fever and malaria. In areas where the mortality rate from these diseases was much higher for colonists than indigenous people, extractive states were strongly favored.
This was a unique argument when it was first proposed (2001).
The authors present convincing evidence that the effect of weak institutions persists to the present day for nations who were once extractive states. Once granted independence, the extractive states tended to mimic the institutions with which they were familiar. They also show evidence to support the notion that these weak institutions account for a significant portion of the GDP gap between former extractive states and neo-European states.
It's fascinating, and if you're interested, you can read it here (the meat of the paper is 30 pages):
The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation.
Eli said this was a foundational paper in the field, and he said because it's foundational, it's also highly disputed. It's incredibly thought-provoking, though.
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, an excellent story from Ars Technica: 19th-century art form revived to make tactile science graphics for blind people.
We knew this was coming: AI wins state fair art contest, annoys humans. There's an interesting essay to be written about how evolutions in creativity have never initially been accepted as authentic.
From Eli 20.1, and this will blow your mind: The Animal Translators.
From Brian Witte, and it's a great read: Collections: Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?
From Chris Meadowcraft, a side-splitting segment on AI Art with John Oliver: AI Images. One of the unexpected benefits of Midjourney is that it can be very, very funny.
From Wally, and we're all getting old: Come On Eileen (From The Album Too-Rye-Ay, As It Should Have Sounded) 2022 Remix. This is a thought-provoking read: The great regression: To understand why so many adults are acting just like children, don’t blame Millennials – look to Japan in the 1990s.
From C. Lee, and this is questionable: Google 'airbrushes' out emissions from flying, BBC reveals. This is a terrific read: In California’s largest race bias cases, Latino workers are accused of abusing Black colleagues. A tragic bit of history: The Fatal Engineering Flaws Behind the Deadliest Dam Failure in History. I have plenty of hair, but it's all the wrong color. I asked my barber if he could hide my gray and he handed me a helmet: An Old Medicine Grows New Hair for Pennies a Day, Doctors Say. An interesting essay on game design: Oil It Or Spoil It. Fascinating: Why Ancient Romans Used Asymmetrical Dice With Lopsided Probabilities.
More on Habits
Mike sent me an email and asked a perfectly reasonable question:
what's stopping you from making the full-time switch to long thoughts mode?
That was an interesting question, and it made me think more deeply about my habits and what they represent.
I realized that my "short-thought" habits represent my life, really. They deeply embedded in me over a period of decades, and it's not easy to pull them out by the roots.
Sports on television (55 years). Gaming (45 years). The Internet (35 years). Plus, the world itself has become much more short-thought, hasn't it? From written letters to emails to texts to Twitter and Instagram.
So when I try to be in long thought mode, I'm fighting not only my past but culture in general.
I can do it, when I'm writing (or programming, poorly). It takes a few weeks to transfer over, but I've done it often enough that it's not difficult.
Trying to be in that mode all the time, though. I don't know what that would take. A calm, thoughtful partner, for one, so I would be in an environment that would encourage long thoughts. And more of a commitment from myself as well, because I could do it now if I had more discipline.
I don't know if that I want to be that person all the time, though. I like being goofy. That's still a big part of who I am. What I do want to do, though, is weed out some of the static and focus more on the signal.