Slipping in just under the wire, Aptera's Delta render video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQuLuHzR52M isn't the physical 2022 car promised years ago, but pretty close, in that they are making some of these parts already. (also, covids) Notes: Looks great. I like the new back. I miss the undefined yoke button(s). I understand the clearly labeled horn is a legal thing for autocycles, but I would love a 1D scroll wheel either for specific user configured options, or 2D with a click to run a verbal interface (like websites for the blind, which is not something I'd imagine automotive engineers have to think about, but might be the fix for touch screens and the 'eyes on the road' issue). Or an OBS stream deck type thing as a center console upgrade? The center console looks great (could cork all the things), though I'm still hoping it is all removable. (Especially if it has a wireless charger, though I have a phone that supports it now, so maybe I'd live with the inefficiency if it isn't wasting any power if the phone isn't in place. (The obvious problem with that is how does it know if there's a phone there if something isn't on all the time?)) As an excessively tall person, no arm rest has ever been where I'd want it, and the phone bay/front panel is a delicate balance between being unreachable vs hitting me in the kneecap every time I take my foot off the gas. (I'd put the phone where the cup holder is and leave the front as knee room. I put my phones in a Prius' cupholder currently. I can hear Siri's directions or the podcast, but it does block part of the map.) There is a stalk, and not up in my knee like the Prius' cruise control and shifter, so that's nice. I miss the back-pack on the seats from Jason Hill's concept art. (at least the passenger's. There's no glovebox, and the center console is open, so where to put used tissues or the glass breaking escape hammer?) I'm not sure exactly what's happening behind the seats. There was talk of a storage bin down there. (Like the frunk, I'm assuming not) (or: a pocketed net across the bed, to provide driver-accessible storage and stop things in the bed from hitting you in sudden stops.) It seems to have lost the faceted lights. (also the rear turn lights are red, which annoys some people, but like deformable bumpers, I think that's a lost cause.) The rear view 'mirror' is huge, and immune to the actinic blue retina blasters. The side views are even bigger. The interior copper accents makes me miss the copper on the roof. The UI is different, but still says 10:29, so is still probably not anywhere near done. Related, there is a PRND under the screen (not sure if switches or just a display)(probably another legal thing), but PRD on the screen. Having a hardware/low-level-software-override neutral would be nice. (I got adept at putting the stalled Tercel in neutral, restarting it, and back in drive while still moving, but 'stalled' Teslas have parked themselves at 60mph in the center lane. Being able to put it in neutral and coast/push even if the touchscreen process/hardware is dead or rebooting would be nice.) You can see the windshield wiper. I don't see why you couldn't extend the nose up a bit more and hide it again. (Or maybe they just wanted the render to emphasize that it does have one as that seems to be a FAQ for some reason. Though it also has AC, something a car is less likely to have had historically, and they've hidden that.) Still probably going to be 2025 at the very earliest by the time they get to me @~20,000, which is a little inconvenient because I put #shacklife on hold pending a car. I can't bike far enough any more, so I'm feeling more stuck than ever. (Could just get an electric bike, though. That would re-open quite a bit of previously visited territory, get further north on the other side of the Hudson now that the bridge is open to pedestrians.)(Or add more trash capacity to the bike, do more local trash clean-ups in places that don't have bins? Would keep me busy, and I really liked the all day jobs I did in Demarest and Tappan.) The door strap bottom seems decorative in some shots, but not others. The rear charger/plate light knob sticks out really far. I hope it's sturdy. The control arm still seems kind of open, while the other 2 have covers. (Concern: squirrels and cats, while it's parked and warm) Still wonder about: smart cruise control (nothing smarter than that!, but that would be nice for my knee/calf on highways), phone app integration (and security, if it talks to the car over the Internet)(is that documented, re right to repair? and thus replaceable, hackable? Could I get a weather report or internal temp, the car's battery status, and set the car's AC accordingly via a script, before I leave the house?), map provider(s), telecom (does it have its own cell modem or use a phone's data? the ui shows what looks like both cell and wifi, but who controls the cell account long term? It's a little awkward for me as I'm on a family plan I don't control, but adding the car as a data line?), voice control, and of course Supercharger network access. It doesn't have CarPlay, but could it have AirPlay? Or generic 'bluetooth speakers and also video', just to make the phone's map more visible, or perhaps just while charging change the HDMI input on the main monitor to watch videos off the phone/laptop/dvd player. (That sounds both very unlikely and also extremely useful.)(Also I'm assuming it has bluetooth speakers. Everything else seems to.) I hope that a marketplace of parts for the console or amber turn lights or anti-squirrel covers might evolve, or even software upgrades. Or future upgrades, like a translucent solar panel. I saw the panels being put on a roof around the corner. They were very see-through around the cells! You could have the open bed and also the full solar. Maybe even a sun roof too, although I'm not sure what that would do to the carbon fiber eggshell. Also, I might prefer the closed bed, particularly if I'm camping in there, and the quilted carbon fiber is probably providing more structural support than a flat solar panel.
I'm considering getting a Fediverse account, but just to be hipster, not Mastodon.
Yuki Yuna 3: I thought I was caught up (except for the shorts), but possibly not. I might have also forgotten bit of the Yuki Cinematic Yunaverse. Anyway, has an end, but doesn't explain a lot.
2022-12-25
https://glassshard.tumblr.com/post/703994823678558208 hard core
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/12/21/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-a-new-voltex-al-heat-pump-water-heater/ I'd be curious to compare that vs. tankless point of use water heaters (use way more power when running, but only run while in use), and the complication that it pulls heat out of the ambient air, which is probably pretty chilly in a basement, or rooms heated via oil or something that makes it less green. Still arguing for a system where things like this and a fridge can be connected directly to a heat pump, so they could be connected to each other.
1899 ep 1: Seems like a nice puzzle box with plenty of attention to detail, but I dislike pretty much everybody and there's too much obviously important mysterious stuff dumped at once. (I'm not taking notes!) It's also incredibly slow. It's by the Dark people, so I guess I have to at least read the summary if season 3 arrives. I liked "Everything will be ok in the end. If it's not ok, it's not the end."
Anime review Fall 2022: The better shows weren't the better drawn ones, but had the better writing. I liked Little Lies We All Tell, Raven of the Inner Palace, Do It Yua Serefu!!. Arknights was OK for a VG title, though it literally was a prelude, like it says on the tin. Of the better drawn ones, I liked Bocchi and Chainsaw less than most people seem to, because I dislike the main characters. Bocchi is less painfully introverted and more just an idiot. Continued series continued apace: Mob Psycho 100 (which ended, actual arc and conclusion and everything), To Your Eternity, SpyxFamily, Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun (slower, less su-ki-ma), Legend of the Galatic Heroes, which is still introducing random people for half an episode. I still have to get to the HiDive shows. From last season.
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/19/1143753129/power-companies-florida-alabama-media-investigation-consulting-firm
Notes hit 100% CPU for hours, overheated the Air. I still need some way to monitor that.
The treadmill test didn't involve radiation after all, so I didn't need to fast, maybe. I have a thing stuck to me and I can't shower for 2 days. (Jokes on them)
2022-12-18
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/14/cdc-long-covid-deaths-00073816 I got a call from the hospital about the test. It's so expensive, they want at least $1,000 up front, and seemed to suggest I could pay the entire amount. (Would it have been cheaper to not pay the insurance company price? Maybe, but they didn't come out and say that, or give me concrete numbers either way.) Probably going to be something like 0.2% of my remaining lifespan. (which is how I measure money now, as I'm on a dwindling resource.) I really should have said no to the test in the first place. There's nothing they can do, and the heart test doesn't even look at the actual symptoms.
2022-12-11
The earliest galaxies spotted by JWST might be very bright because they have no dust.
https://ohanaware.com/sleepaid/ It annoys me that such a thing is necessary. I've worked out that I can only put the machine to sleep with my hand off the mouse because the slightest tremor will wake it up again, and I shut off all the wireless, so I haven't had too many problems like this, except the foundational issue that the Mac never actually sleeps.
https://electrek.co/2022/12/08/sono-motors-launches-hail-mary-purchase-campaign-to-keep-sion-solar-ev-alive/ Solar never made as much sense in a city car, even as a city car in general makes more environmental sense than a high-speed long-range cruiser like an Aptera roadster. Legalized golf cart style city carts would be better still. (ban 45mph stroads! Pedestrian, 25, or 65!) Sono is on the ropes, Arcimoto doesn't seem to be doing well after having shipped product, Lucid is offering discounts, I am so nervous about Aptera's future. (and build quality) (It's Dec 9, and they promised to have it in production this year (not that anybody is going to hold them to that 2 years later what with the covids and the supply chains)) The only successful car start-ups spent billions! Maybe Aptera will work out because it is technically an auto-cycle, not a car! Lucky 3 leafed clover! (Crom! If you can not grant me this, then grant me REVENGE!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxmKiisAZ0I direct solar heat pump. We need a next-gen solar controller/home DC power system, in addition to more direct drive equipment like freezers, pumps, heat dumps (and the corresponding multi-source heat pumps), or Aptera's rumored solar panel connection and EV DC charging in general. With solar panels being relatively cheap, over-provisioning is a good idea for cloudy days, but it needs equipment to automatically combine groups of panels to get the minimum useful voltage, and then undo that to not melt things when the sun comes out. Solid state batteries might change the need for all that, but that's still a big if.
Music: Woodland. I hesitated to link into Apple Music, and with a good reason. A number of links to Christmas music I had saved don't work now, when I'd want them. Even things I have in playlists have gone away. I've tried to explain DRM to my mother.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/12/pc-workstation-crams-monitors-chair-speakers-into-one-ostentatious-orb/ I don't have rgb lighting, just an Ikea lamp, but I have a monitor on an arm over a recliner, and it didn't cost 12k$. The sound system is nicer, though. My Altec Lansing speakers are great (still running!), but not exactly equalized because one is much farther away. (or both far away, but then no separation.) Something attached to the monitor would be nice, or the chair.
While I'm still #get_to_medical, pain from the jab from the blood test a week ago hasn't gone away. I still can't straighten my left arm or touch the inner elbow without pain. There's no bruising. I stopped bleeding so she had to dig a bit. I think it hit a nerve.
The test involves radiation again. It's going to be very expensive, Aetna will start pestering me to get it done by an alternative provider (last time: 2 weeks after I had the test)(and one of their providers is either a bad address or is operating out of a hotel), and won't do anything, except irradiate me. It's radiation every year with this guy. It doesn't even address the key issue I think I have, in that the blood pumps but doesn't get to key places (fingers, brain), and when there's not enough ambient oxygen in the blood (because something is using it upstream), something triggers the signal "Hey, beat harder, I'm starving here". Except it never stops because the blood just doesn't get out there. Maybe I need leeches.
The doctor also wanted me to "see someone", even though I'm really much less depressed than I was the last 2 times. I'm pretty sure if he saw the things I wrote to my therapist I'd be committed. Also my therapist is the comments box in consumer opinion surveys I take.
The doctor was not impressed with my indolent lifestyle (FIRE) and wants to run a bunch of tests so I can go back to work like a good Protestant, and also before the corporate insurance expires. I'll do the tests, because my heart really shouldn't be beating like that, but I can tell you in advance they are not going to find anything they can fix. I don't think I'll go back there. The insurance company didn't want me going there and that was before I got a cheaper plan. (they want me to go to CVS, which I'd actually prefer. They at least have computers for data, not just displaying faxes. (My computer is just for displaying foxes, which is fine.)) The pre-doctor warned me her hands were cold. I said not as cold as mine. She laughed until she touched one. Didn't think that might have been a symptom of anything, though.
2022-12-04
Laid-Back Camp Movie: Because of Crunchyroll's terrible handling of movie releases, I set a calendar event for this. I thought the dog was getting death flags. Also seemed like a Star Trek style communist utopia. Everybody builds a campground because it is worth something to community, not because they expect to profit by it.
MiA:BSFiD:DiA: I got the Nana-hat! The ears are a little confusing, and it sucks that it doesn't have a light, but I'm wearing it anyway. I've only been doing Nana-food runs anyway. I'm wearing the Relic High gloves, too, for the Nana-paw look. I still have to beat Ozen, but I can't see whatever obvious tell she must have for the toss.
RSS adjacent nerdery: I'd like a score-filtered RSS reader. Vienna has both open source and a plug-in system, but I wonder if it would not be easier to proxy that, have another app download the feeds, process the content on its own, output another xml feed, then let the reader just display that. It's more my sort of dev work and wouldn't be locked in to Vienna. (which is nice enough but wasn't my original reader, which got abandoned.) This is also more what I'd really like, a score-filtered Internet reader. It could download content from Digg but filter out Slate, Japanese Fox Twitter but not posts entirely in Japanese, podcasts but not certain episodes, Danbooru but score-filter on things like "simple background". It's not that I want to block "simple background" entirely, but if it doesn't have something I specifically want to see, I don't need to see it.
I have added an rss generator to pSpace. The last 40 entries in rss. I actually coded something! It's open source if you want it, but frankly it's too stupid to bother with. It's in Perl, which despite the v6 mind-share disaster, has actually been getting updates all this time, so I've been meaning to get back into it. There's a new -e, -E, that enables a bunch of new things. #testing
https://ooh.directory/ Original flavor Yahoo-style blog list. I should add my site to it, except I don't read this and can't imagine anybody else would, either. I should probably add an rss generator to pSpace.
World of Warcraft: Whatever it is this time, something about dragons again: Very modern. Not in the sense that they updated the game engine or server load or auth or quest system or addressed the last decade's worth of technical debt in any way (aside from the unified auction house, which killed my business), but rather that everybody is gay now. Did you want to think about gay centaurs doing it? Well, you are now. (The lesbian dragon with the glasses is cute, though I'm pretty sure they should be asexual drones for the queen. There's a lot about egg tending, but it doesn't get into specifics of egg production.) Nessingwary is retired and a conservationist now. (I do feel bad about murdering non-hostile animals, though.) Crafting is more complicated. The prices for the 2-star mats are cheaper than the 1-star mats, so maybe too complicated? (5 star uniforms? Nuuuudist Beeeeeach!) The end game is all the gathering professions get better mats, but the crafting professions can make better things from lower quality mats, so it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Why even bother. Also, about the auction house: they made the change so that posters have access to the market data when posting, but then add the star system and crafted levels, which does not show up. The dragon riding is the nicest thing. You get it quickly, and while it isn't overpowered flight, it is enough and is more engaging than autorun for 5 solid minutes. I used to stoop and fly just above the ground anyway just because it was more fun. While that doesn't address the immense autorun times, there is a portal system that attempts to. The crafting orders will be nice, eventually.
Mini Motorways updated, so I played it. #4 for the day, except it didn't record the score. Oh, yeah, that's why I stopped playing.
Summit of the Gods: sweaty
Is fact checking a new propaganda outlet? My Google News fact check block is filled with "No, Chinese state media did not blur World Cup crowds as viral tweets suggest". Which is fine if it is in fact true, but the volume of "independant" local news media simultaneously "fact checking" anything involving the Chinese state media is suspicious. In other news, there is no [citation needed] bar on getting things into Google News' Fact Check section.
@KatyMontgomerie Reasons Jesus was probably trans: - Man with no Y chromosome - Punished by society for no reason - No one talks about his childhood - Suspiciously survived Herod killing all the male children - Recast as a cis in history books
I was actually in the first group for the new WoW thing (at least when the zep worked on the second try), but when I saw the giant pile of meat right at the start, I went to get my skinner, but by then org had crashed, and I couldn't log in again. The big crowd at the zep wasn't everyone in the zone, apparently. So there's that. I know they don't do world firsts, but it's a pretty weak experience for the dozens of people backed up at the portals.
2022-11-27
I'm Quitting Heroing, OVA: too slow, but nice mid-season twist. The only good feature on HiDive is the 2x playback.
Thanksgiving: assorted family members were going on about stuff, so I looked it up: times of india, ny post, fox, politifact. I knew what I'd find based on the top links, but it's false according to politifact. Pointing that out didn't change their minds at all. I tried to point out the crime stats in the previous link, too, not that it helped. I was told to look up the FBI data (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_violent_crime_rate) except that only proves my point that crime is worse in red states. Defund the police!
https://www.vox.com/culture/23473173/crime-new-york-joan-didion?utm_source=digg
MiA:BSFiD:DiA: I redid the last 2 fights, and it successfully gave me the save game+. It glosses over how you get a white whistle. The text says in the abyss, but it can't be that one guy in the golden city, because you'd have to come back up. There is an epilogue in there somewhere, but I might just feed Nanachi every day until the next Zelda comes out. On the other hand, I have 300 cartridges, but haven't even used the guns that much. Might as well go on a killing spree for the quests.
MiA:BSFiD:DiA: Abruptly ended. I shouldn't say abrupt, in that it was the foretold conflict and in the appointed place, but I wasn't expecting the credits to roll after. The skill tree has a white tier. Why is that there if you Last Dive immediately? Further complicated by the game crashing before you get to the save game screen, so there is more content, it just wouldn't let me see it.
MiA:BSFiD:DiA: finally got around to doing level 5 runs. It's much nicer than 3, too. You do need to go in with a ton of food, and I don't know what the fish want [worms, which you will need to bring with you], but it's pretty easy to visit Bon-san, and a few level 5 sun spheres will pay for the expedition. I still haven't beaten Ozen, or found the wedge farm guy. I realize 90% of the game is inventory management, but I'd still like to switch bags/armor so I can do speed runs for loot, combat runs for the quests, and exploratory deep dives. Though I suppose if I had enough wedges, it'd be a moot point.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/11/how-cupra-made-an-electric-hot-hatch-alternative-to-the-volkswagen-id-3/ "And my dream is in the future you have an electric car that you accept that you only have 300 km range, but the weight is down to, I don't know, 1,300 kg or something, and then you have it, then you have a real car, then you have a lot of fun and a sporty car." What if you have a 816kg 3-wheeled autocycle, and also 643km range? (Now Aptera just needs to be really real.)
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23436211/overpopulation-population-8-billion-people "In 2022, some 24.8 million are under the age of 6. That’s about the same number as in 1962, during the height of the baby boom — but that year children under 6 made up more than 13 percent of the total population, compared to a bit over 7 percent today." A decrease in the rate of increase is not a decrease. While it will be difficult dealing with the geriatric boom in a capitalist society (see also Mitt Romney's 47%), ultimately it will be better for people in general.
Nuclear energy: "The Radiant Energy founder disagreed, arguing over specific statistics and insisting that nuclear energy should be considered a low-carbon energy solution, and also safe. (He pointed out that Chernobyl's nuclear plant actually continued operating for 14 years after its 1986 nuclear accident.) Interestingly he also argued that in the Netherlands there's a museum of nuclear waste — a science museum attached to their nuclear facility — "where they don't just have the high-level waste, they have the highest part of high-level waste, the most dangerous isotopes, separated from the nuclear fuel. The most radioactive stuff — very hot for 500 years — and they have a tour where you can walk over it, and you can feel the warmth from the floor from the radioactive isotopes.... " I've always said if it is hot enough to dangerous, it is hot enough to be useful.
2022-11-20
Twitter is Right Out, now. I have signed up for several other socmeds, but haven't found anything compelling. (that I didn't already have via anonymous rss, at least) I have set up bookmarks in pixiv for my Nanachi picture addiction. (or maybe 2k images is enough? The pixiv image pool is much worse average quality.) There's nothing else in particular I needed from twitter that I didn't get anywhere else. I get most of my twitter memes (@barry: "If a dude can be the CEO of three companies at the same time that just says to me CEO isn't a very demanding or important job.") from other sites anyway.
King of Thorn: Very old school anime movie, as in the classics, and not just the character design. It's hard to watch with the fast pace of strange concepts, has super weird SF twists, odd nudity, and hilarious English names. Not as much gore, and the translation is actually in English, and it's not on the SciFi channel at 2:00, so it isn't quite the same. Worth watching, at least, even though they totally stole half the plot from Jurassic Park.
Was on the Aetna CVS website, watched a movie about how much they care for me. Clicked "Find a Doctor" to find a cheap provider for a test, just like they've been bugging me to do. (because they care!) Got "We're sorry. This feature is not available for you." So at least I didn't waste an hour on the years out of date list of local providers, but I can't actually say it was a better experience. Fun: https://health.aetna.com/icall-hanke-the-prose-Host-Dyings-of-Chamber-hat No idea what that does or why it's called that. Less Fun: everything you type into their site gets sent through quantummetric.com, and they have all manner of medical data collection. I'll go to the Quest place with the 2 star review because I know it exists, and it has a website. 4 other places around here either don't have websites at all, or do but don't mention this location.
exception: try to catch this! Top tier SciFi Weirdness. The character designs are a little much and the animation is just OK, but it's good looking. I like the fish ship, epic scope. I thought it was going to have a cliff hanger because there wasn't enough time left, but somehow managed to go long instead.
MiA:BSFiD:DiA I found Nanachi! My life's work is done, although my new life's work is feeding Nanachi good food. (Foreign Caravan Woman can shove it.) If you fall to your death in the right place and time, Nanachi will save you. I like that the game just assumes you are going to die eventually on a pretty easy level and locks major content behind that. The moment was ruined a bit because my Switch has an occasional crackle to the speakers that was there the whole time, also I don't know how to extract the snapshots.
Canoo seems to ongoing. They just had the prototype for ages but there seems to be tons of them now. Glad to see it. Still wish the front wasn't so flat, but maybe with the window there it wouldn't matter.
Followed shortly by Old Navy, Hershey. The deluge.
First Christmas Ad: Old Spice, 11-14
CP2077: Very Hard, 100% completion (so far as I know), Secret Ending (which I did have to look up). Didn't get engineering to 20, but did the final mission with a hailstorm of seeker grenades. It probably would have been better to go aggressive with the knife/shotgun combo, what with the rapidly decreasing health, but the grenades were safer. Smasher lost something like 25% of his health in one move when he tried to charge, got staggered with the shotgun and the grenades from all around the room converged at once. I hit him so hard I think I skipped an entire phase. I logged out standing on Smasher's ship, which is mine now. (His gear is disappointing. Mine: all legendary except for the tech shotgun, which I just could not find.)
2022-11-13
I saw the Rivian delivery truck. It's nice. The floor is very low for the driver's knee safety, and the front is low and angled for pedestrian safety. It's very quiet, but you can hear the electric motor, and of course, it isn't belching diesel. I approve of this product/service.
Music: Aviators I'm pretty sure I heard them on the Asphalt soundtrack.
I got the black whistle. The 4th layer is demanding with the food resources, but it's so much easier to get around in, even with the orb piercers. 3 is a literal hell.
Breakthrough: couldn't watch
The Bad Guys: Dreamworks tier Zootopia
All Quiet on the Western Front: I hope the fox family survived. [Update: the Russian conscripts are actually getting the dead's uniforms.][Update2: now the conscripts are being abducted from African prisons and being dumped in Ukraine, going into winter, without anything.]
I saw Nanachi in MiA:BSFiD:DiA, or rather Nanachi saw me when I reached the 4th layer. It didn't get me the next whistle so it's still a major grind to get out of the 3rd.
https://jackrusher.com/classic-ux/ A curated collection of HCI demo videos produced during the golden age from 1983-2002. The page is also a classic Mac UI
2022-11-06
https://www.statista.com/chart/26125/companies-exerting-most-negative-influence-on-climate-policy/ In case you were wondering, it's exactly the people you'd expect.
MiA:BSFiD:DiA got me again with the quest text. I thought it said kill a fire and an ice turtle (which would be thematic), but there's only a fire turtle. What it really said was kill the fire turtle and some wall creatures, but there's no way to review the text because it isn't in the quest log. Then it got me again because the only way out is a tiny hole in the ceiling I had to watch a video to find. Every time you step out of a comfort zone it is a horrible experience, and I'd hate it except it is being pretty faithful to the source material's vibe and it is a pretty nice feeling to have mastered a new area.
https://beyondloom.com/decker/index.html Borderline insane, but HTML HyperCard, including the dithering.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221028-will-we-ever-live-in-city-sized-buildings I would like to object to linking arcologies strictly to city-sized buildings and skyscrapers. (or monstrosities like The Line) Arcosanti is nothing like that. Even with incorporating agriculture into the city: It doesn't have to be insect or fungus ranching inside dystopian sublevel x-12. It just has to be intentional. You can't plan for a giant population and not expect to feed them, or deal with the waste.
Productivity increased during the pandemic, then has a "perplexing" drop now. Nobody wants to connect that with forcing people back into the office?
2022-10-30
"In a nutshell, our theory is that consciousness developed as a memory system that is used by our unconscious brain to help us flexibly and creatively imagine the future and plan accordingly," explained corresponding author Andrew Budson, MD, professor of neurology. "What is completely new about this theory is that it suggests we don't perceive the world, make decisions, or perform actions directly. Instead, we do all these things unconsciously and then—about half a second later—consciously remember doing them." https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-have-developed-a-new-explanation-for-consciousness/
2022-10-23
iOS has a Dvorak keyboard now. It is a little annoying that the delete key moved, but I'm finding it easier to type with thumbs, especially sideways with both thumbs. I've always tried to maintain touch typing with Dvorak and two finger poking with qwerty, but the phone isn't exactly either.
2022-10-16
Anime Review First Episodes of Fall 2022 I'm still subscribed to HiDive, but I'm not bothering to follow shows weekly because of how bad the ui is. I still have several to binge via my own UI, anyway. Speaking of terrible UI, the Fall 2022 Simulcast page doesn't list the new shows for days, and the episodes aren't showing up in the queue. In Mob Psycho 100's case, it wants me to watch the Riegen OVA again because it seems to be listed as season 57. Maybe humanity has declined and we should just stop doing things. [Updated: additional shows. I don't know why CR makes discovery so hard.]
2022-10-09
There is a critical failing for CP2077: the character management. There's only the one list of save games. Better hope your last Corpo quicksave didn't get pushed off by the Streetkid autosaves. I went to get the last bit of cyberwear (the puma feet are useless) and another apt (not really worth it?) and I got a few of the cars I think are nice (konichi-wa!), but I don't know that my ex-salaryman will still exist if I keep going. There's a lot of visual weirdness now that I'm driving more, like people floating in the air over the road, but it's fine, whatevs. The bigger visual thing why give your character realistic customizable genitals if you can't take your pants off. That seems like a lost opportunity, and it's not like there isn't a streamer switch and there's tons of non-realistic genitals. (though I didn't see all the dildos people complained about.)
Got the good ending, though the things happened to the chooms that I easily foresaw and didn't want to happen. Given that the endgame is around level 25 (or less, if you focus), it does make upgrading early legendaries viable. And I suspect that I'm not used to how OP you can get on single player rpgs. Fallout4 amazed me that if your stealth was high enough, you could walk into a room, pickpocket everything, then stab everyone in the face and they'd never know you were there. I already started a hard run, but am wondering if extra-hard is best.
It still seems weird that at least on normal, you can massively outlevel the end-game gonks at 30/50, with a bunch of side jobs undone. It's not just the rare monowire, either. Even a random unbuffed smart gun is taking down squads at range. Went back and did the other choice, which is more what I wanted. Never heard back from original V, though Alt managed it. Might have been nice.
Arcimoto jobs cuts, -97% stock price. Not good news, for them or the planet.
I got to an end in 2077, rather unexpectedly, at level 30. I was still leveling things on the goons when Smasher suddenly showed up, got absolutely wrecked with the monowire and static shock and optical camo, and then it was a series of choices, none of which seemed to turn out right. At first I thought that depressing was just how it was, but I learned there are loads of secret endings, and while I still don't know how to get the one I want, I do know I want the one with the Uploaded Intelligence involved. I made another corpo character to see what's that's like, but I may go back to the save file and see what I can get that's better.
I provisioned another Mac. It did not go well and I'm still suffering the Spewcus. (I woke up drenched in sweat. It's gross, but I guess that's why getting wiped down is an anime cliche.) I tried using the migration assistant, but it did not have any way to filter out the video files, so the user account wouldn't fit onto the smaller drive, so I let it do the system stuff, except the printer isn't compatible, and the verizon account copied over, but broke some id number, so it saw there was something to do (created a log file) and then did nothing (Zero bytes). Turning the account off and on again actually fixed it. I don't know about the printer. The old machine might be able to update the firmware, but I'd need a usb a-a cable and the only one handy is connected to the final time machine backup which will take approx 18 trillion years just to start. Then when I tried to manually copy over the user data, it turns out the network shares are not compatible any more, except it does see somethings, but not others, depending on afp or smb shared. Absolutely maddening. Worse, there's an option to switch to the one that works, but it doesn't do anything because other choice is grayed out for some reason. Also the messages copied over, but some (only some!) attachments broke, and to see anything the system had to be restarted because Messages is another one of those Apple apps that never actually quits. (It (m1 mini) restarts so fast, though.) All that was after the initial frustration with the Samsung's hdmi cable being just broken enough to pass QA and still drop the connection every few minutes, getting shorter every time. It's a nice enough monitor, basic 32' 4K, a little dim compared to the iMac. The speakers are awful, but that's kind of expected in monitors. I had hopes given that the panel is also used in a TV, but maybe only the TV gets better hardware, to go with the spyware.
2022-10-02
I'm having the Spewcus, the seasonal allergy event wherein my nose runs like a firehose. I even took a covid test, because the beginning was just a sore throat and cough for days, but now I'm leaking so much fluid I'm blowing my nose every 2 minutes, so at least it isn't going down my throat. I was up all night leaking. The neti pot produced a lot of green blobs, but I fill up again in minutes. I've been putting off watching the 2-part MiA season finale until I don't feel so bad. I have 2 new games I haven't touched and haven't even logged in for Warframe's tribute in days. My skin hurts.
#aptera_adjacent: the bottom of the Patriot, the America's Cup hyrofoil. Because the bottom is designed to glide just above a surface, the same equations describe the shape. OTOH, it also almost sank in 2021.
Cyberpunk 2077: It was on sale, and I was still hyped on Edgerunners. It is very impressive looking, but I see where one might find the depth of the city lacking, in the limited npc AIs and the weird bugs. For example, my character's clothes turned invisible at one point due to some issue with the wardrobe, but has underwear in the world but not on the inventory screen. I think I should be able to make a nudist if I wanted to. Even BotW reacts to you not wearing clothes, even if it doesn't show it. I am also terrible at the driving, which is unfortunate for the pedestrians. And I can't afford enough (or any) mods. Time to get chromed up, choom! There's a free legendary monowire that I somehow managed to screw up, so now I have to pay for one like a gonk.
I've been getting into MiA:BSFiD:DiA. I think the main thing people complain about is that the core gameplay loop of explore and craft is deliberately made horrible, because it's the Abyss and everything is cursed. But, as you learn more (and it makes no effort to teach you anything), the loop gets smoothed out and you are confidently mounting expeditions, sprinting between red nodes, sneaking around primordial monsters, using ropes and arrows with reckless abandon. Do you feel compelled to become a diver or not?
2022-09-25
Drifting Home: horrible monster children
Anime Summer 2022 review: Yurei Deco's ending is super weak, like, offensively so. Watch the first episode to see a cyberpunk world that isn't all neon and rain, but then skip it. Biscuit Hammer: boring, and I never got past the Engrish in the title. Hanabichan: good short. Utawarerumono slid into the endless epic mode, leaving behind the frantic pace, tail petting, and SF weirdness of the first season. Similarly, Shadows House is plodding along. Shine On!, Yakuza Babysitting: meh. Prima Doll: higher grade meh. A Herbivorous Dragon of 5,000 Years Gets Unfairly Villainized: pretty funny, though the Chinese translation is not always great. Lycoris Recoil: A much better ending, then another even better one after the credits. VERMEIL IN GOLD: minor perversions, unfinished, watch Kanokon instead. Doomsday with my Dog: nice short, very shibe, though the hidive interface is terrible for shorts with this many episodes, such disappoint. Call of the Night: I love it, and the ED. Made in Abyss: Of all the shows, contains the most Nanachi. I liked it even better than the manga. The abyssal language was less of a confusion because the voice actors can convey meaning. Faputa is more emotional. Certain things are more gross.
There were a couple of other things I will binge eventually. I am so slow at everything now.
Music: Posy
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/22/996533041/after-months-of-a-racing-heart-and-burning-feet-a-covid-long-hauler-gets-a-diagn
2022-09-18
I've noticed both the curse and the butterflies of doom are tuned to produce the maximum terror, but not actually kill you. A wall will be 19m, or 38m with a stop in the middle, but not the 20m that will make you puke. The butterflies will hurt you, a lot, but if you don't stop they won't have killed you by the time you get to the top. This reduces the terror and turns both into another part of the hunger mechanic. I kind of wish I hadn't noticed that, but it does make it more playable. Similarly, damaged but not broken weapons repair out of the abyss, significant savings. I've made it to level 10 and bought out the stores after just a couple of shallow dives. I guess I can use ropes, after all. Also I found out you can use the hatchet on the butterflies. Also that excavating with a full back will kill you, and the farther you fall, the more messed up your corpse is.
Made in Abyss, Binary Star Falling into Darkness, Deep in Abyss section: It sucks that the ropes don't stay between runs. It makes them too costly to use, really, but climbing gets the butterfly of doom. The enemies that infinitely spawn behind you aren't terrible, as long as you can get more out of them than a hatchet costs or game the system by turning around and stepping back, except for the butterflies, which are going to make me quit the game. The combat is also way more stealth than I think people expect. Definitely not worth $60. Should have spent that on the $100 plush Nanachi instead, but that isn't even available any more. Or the $1,000 life sized statue.
Made in Abyss, Binary Star Falling into Darkness, Hello Abyss section: Was OK until it locked me into Ozen's training room, required that I have 2 animal bones, then provides no animals. I get that it wants to kill Riko, a lot, or else you'll never hear Reg cry, but just shrugging and saying save game scumming is part of it is lousy game design. I had the bones, but got rid of them for food. The weight limit is really tight. [Update: there are animals in there! Only Reg can kill them? and he just wasn't bothering until I reloaded? He gets stuck in the terrain, too. Also couldn't find the croakers because they don't show up on the monocle unless you are actually in the room. The pop-in is ridiculous.] Whoever programmed Reg to ask if Riko was ok every 4 seconds should be taken out and shot. I had to turn the voice lines off.
Resident Evil Retribution: has a huge intro to the previous movies (appreciated) but then immediately ignores it with extended fantasy sequences. Just an idea? start with the fantasy, then ground the viewer?
Cyberpunk Edgerunners: Don't just stand there like a gonk! Time to get chromed up. This is the good stuff, choom.
The RNC is robocalling me. (Good luck with that.) I listened to a few messages. I would like to comment on the quality of the robot voice. It seems very human, except that when you have 25 identical 16sec voice mail messages, everything they put in to make it more human just makes it seem more horrible.
Aptera adjacent, from "BOB" AND THE OXYGEN WARS, by Connector Waves Forest
While I was crouching there, telling various inanimate objects how stupid they were and patching the pack by tying my shirt around it, all my arm and neck hairs suddenly stood up.
I turned around, and there was the smoothest-looking sports car I've ever seen, standing with the passenger door open. Instant floods of relief struggled with major danger signals for control of my legs. There was no way I could have missed seeing that car miles ahead of its arrival. I'd been looking back a lot oftener than any logical expectations could justify. And even with all the smog that's crept into the desert basins, visibility was still at least twenty miles, on a road going straight over the horizon.
The desperate craving for shade won out. Dehydration makes me capable of superhuman rationalizations. The car was actually the same shimmery color as the road, and might have been mistaken for part of the constant mirage. The motor was too quiet to be heard over the mild desert wind-which, rather than cooling me off, tended to produce a slight blowtorch effect.
And anyway, how could something so beautiful be dangerous? Its curve was completely different yet thoroughly appropriate. The interior was a deep moss green, and a cool ocean breeze seemed to be flowing from inside it. This car was definitely not made in Detroit.
There's another bit about how it doesn't have gears, too. Now I want a moss green interior with copper accents to match the roof. There's various moss-like plants for lawn replacement. I wonder if they could be grown in a car? I'd imagine the humidity wouldn't be great.
Full Metal Alchemist The Revenge of Scar: kind of terrible.
2022-09-11
Psycho-Pass: Sinners of the System:
Aptera news from the big Gamma reveal at Fully Charged Live: film, not paint. (much cheaper, environmentally friendlier, but not as long lasting, probably? Especially as one would definitely want to park in the sun all the time. On the other hand, getting a different color every X years is also nice if X is a reasonable number. Why make a life-time commitment for a car that will never rust and might outlive you?) Still working on the charge port, but there's no way CCS will ever fit there. (There's already a Tesla adapter ecosystem, so not a big deal, but it would be nice to use the supercharger network.) The AC is around the screen. (presumably there's a duct around the screen itself for condensation vs. electronics.) (I wonder if there's any way to stick a phone mount directly in front of the vents? Or is that it ran hot why the SE exploded, and not a normal thing for phones to do?) Gamma doesn't have the fake UI, but not sure if it is completely real yet. Buttons on yoke are not defined/user customizable, but there's no other button controls, just the screen. (Temp/wiper? That's mostly what I fiddle with. Windows? Still would love to have a UI for the blind with the scroll wheels, because in general the touch screens test poorly.) Gamma seems to have lost the ^^ cells on the tail (it did seem risky, moving things in and out over them). The copper accents are very cool (maybe not permanent, but I say leave it). The cells look darker, too. It kind of looked like the wheel pant hit the ground on the flat factory floor while it was moving/turning. Not done in time? Also 3', not 5' clearance. Depending on the abuse it can take, maybe a little problematic on local roads. [update: the foam is designed to abrade away. So if you have nice roads, you get the max air flow. If your roads are installed by mobsters, it gets rubbed away down to exactly the point it needs to be, for your local conditions. I think that's genius, as long as it doesn't look too shredded. There's going to need to be a lot of communication about that.] They also didn't finish the covers for the control arm. Could crank an Aptera out every 12 minutes? They experimented with "guys up to 6'8"". (https://twitter.com/aptera_motors/status/1569802564178427904?s=20&t=sbBn7cwf_S--DL9FbInPQQ Flawless Victory! He doesn't even kick the corner everyone else hits, but he's also a performer and perhaps more physically aware.) There's another test car that's just the interior made out of foam. It's not 88' with the wheels straight, so it's a little smaller than everyone fears. I did measure the driveway just in case. I'm still probably going to put bunny teeth and googly eyes on the yoke. Another update: it has a full air flow. This is not obvious but the intake is below the windshield wiper, the output is by the plate. It can do a normal powered AC loop if the heat sink is too hot, such as not moving on baking asphalt. This requires more power than the radiator loop, but if you need to cool the batteries while fast charging, you've got the power. It should thus also have no problem preconditioning the cabin, which is a nice EV feature.
ODD TAXI in the woods: watch the series, then the closing credits of this. Or just live with the undefined or bleak ending. I'm not sure as the movie can make any sense without the series.
Crunchyroll got the ODD TAXI movie (good), then I forgot about it, even though I left a note. You could have added that back to the watchlist, one might say, except that the Psycho-Pass movie is a totally different entry, and movies don't show up as new episodes. The news page really needs to announce things when they have a workable link, not that something will happen 3 weeks in the future.
gaming disorder pawg @roun_sa_ville Sep 8
Please be respectful when talking about the Queen. She was a head of state, a monarch, a mother to multiple pedophiles and most importantly a devoted cousin to her husband
Nobe 500: retro-styled electric truck. Small! No lift! capable!
DECA-DENCE: top tier SciFi Weirdness. A must watch if you are in to that kind of thing.
"Sono Motors is on track to put over 32,000 solar electric vehicles on roads this decade" As questionable as Aptera's rush to mass production might be, taking 20/32*10 years to fill just their preorders also seems questionable.
For all Mankind #3: so many questionable life choices.
The Volkswagen XL1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFoNWEK84RU) is a sensible Aptera, in that it has 4 wheels and isn't so wide, but also the same slipstream style, doors, split windows, carbon fiber everything, camera mirrors. But, also not far enough: not a real production car (not at the levels Aptera is hoping for, at least), not fully electric, not the same absolute devotion to the aerodynamics, or giant bed or headroom. So the Aptera might look like a UFO, but it is part of the history of auto development. The off the wall ideas aren't out of the world.
AppleTV: So to watch episode 2 of For All Mankind, I tried to go to the show page because the episode has 4 minutes of credits and the play button didn't want to skip it. The app consumes all available RAM and then some, then the OS has to kill things. Oddly, not AppleTV. Did it again, too.
For all Mankind #3.1: I liked the 'Bill Paxton playing Gordo in a movie' reference as Gordo was basically Bill Paxton from Apollo 13.
2022-09-04
Top Gun: Maverick: An impressive movie, but in between the movie coming out and now, the drone ranger was proven right. Also kinda glosses over the bit where this mission is too complicated for our own 5th generation fighters or anti-anti-air, but the Chinese (oh, sorry, don't mention that...) knock-offs are such a threat, until they aren't because they have no radar detectors.
Pantheon: seemed nice until the coming attractions, and the audio level on hidive is still much lower than everything else, and there's no subtitles/captions.
The Nice Guys: bleak and aimable. I guess it works?
2022-08-28
I saw a fox. It was overcast and I was thinking I probably should have gone to my previous fox sighting spot because they stay up late on cloudy days. It was in a small open park next to a ball field, just sniffing around, stretching, sitting. It had a white chest and lot of white on its front paws, but not a lot of white on the tail. Then it crossed the road and sat in somebody's yard. I moved into the park to sit on the bench I'd was going for originally, but after a while, it came back across the road, picked up a squirrel or rabbit, and trotted back across the street and around the corner. It must have been taking a rest while bringing home the groceries.
MR28 Practice is fine, take Garuda, kill kill, go to take the test, requires a real melee weapon equipped. Instead took Saryn, use no weapons at all. The eximus units just serve as spore carriers, so I don't even use the abilities much either. The trick on that one is to use the operator to get the canisters, so the trash will collect around the frame/molt. Didn't even need the last canister.
Prey: nice, loads of callbacks but not so in your face about it. Fight scenes could be a little less choppy.
Age of Adaline: Cute. Has Harrison Ford not looking angry he got up that morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w4rg3UcsgI Swamp cooler with desiccant instead of water/air. Needs space and heat, but cheap
2022-08-21
2022-08-14
"decapitalism"
There's a new fox game, Endling: Extinction is Forever, which I would totally get except all the comments say it made them cry and I don't need that right now.
Strong Towns "By designing our cities for cars, we have siloed and excluded our elders from the daily life of the community and from their basic needs. Was it worth the cost?"
The Sandman: He is coarse and gets everywhere. A little dull, as they are a little too in love with their whispering. Is at least audible so I don't have to look at the screen all the time for the subtitles. Absolutely everyone is gay. Possibly related, there are multiple nude men with no genitals, but there are multiple nude statues with genitals.
The Senate finally (narrowly) passed its climate bill. Doesn't help me any. It's mostly tax cuts, to avoid having to pay for anything or do anything. As I retired (sort of, I was doing work again, immediate frustration and tension headache. Not a migraine, at least.), the tax cuts don't impact me as much, and Aptera doesn't get anything as 3-wheeled autocycles still don't qualify, there no new investment, and the America First language (https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/8/23296678/ev-tax-credit-qualify-battery-supply-chain-china) in the bill breaks all Aptera's foreign suppliers (the batteries and engines, but the ultra-light Aptera is mostly batteries and engines). Maybe the condo board could finally get solar panels.
Wasteful Days of Highschool Girls: Just wanted to tell you something amazing.
DOOMSDAY WITH MY DOG: barely animated short, but well drawn, and fast talking.
The doors on the Rimac Nevera (width:1986mm) are what I was thinking of for the Aptera, but seeing it, it clearly doesn't leave enough of a roof for the solar panels. It also has a tiny window, but higher up. All of the car behind the wheels is part of the door, which seems less than safe.
I looked up videos to help me suck less at BotW, and it is all about parry in the 2 frames of this or that. I can't see that! I can barely see Link. I'm nowhere near fast enough to set off both bombs and parry while I'm in mid-air. (which is definitely a thing the game expects you to to do: there's a timed run that's straight down a mountainside, but is so tight that a glide is not fast enough.)(or maybe the food buff? I don't remember these things.) At least I enjoy bombing people from a distance. It's like a mini golf game, or BirdieBirdie with actual bullets. I like the temples concept, the lock-on trigger is useless, and the horse system is interesting (you can't produce your horse out of thin air, but you can steal any of the available horses. Realistic without being irritating. I mostly don't use my horse because I climb too much, see the point about bombing). It's also not clear about the buffs: some are timed and overwrite, others are not either. The recipes are also something that screams just look it up in the wiki, we can't be bothered making an interface.
@itsretrop: "im a social vegan, i avoid meet"
Aptera adjacent: https://slate.com/technology/2022/08/the-dymaxion-car-the-true-history-of-buckminster-fullers-failed-automobile.html?utm_source=digg 'Turner had died while "driving odd type car for publicity."' Also: https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgdmqa/its-time-to-talk-about-0-60-times
Aria Vergil: '"Ohhhh why do the people in this foreign country live 15 years longer than us? Maybe it's all the olives/fish/rice/nuts/etc they eat!" It's because going to a doctor there costs like $6. That's it. Mystery solved. Turns out people live longer if their 70th birthday isn't locked behind a pay wall.'
The US has uniquely poor healthcare outcomes for cost.
XBus Camper: https://electricbrands.de/en/myxbus/ not available in the US, but nice, modular (including the batteries). Like the Aptera, also not actually an automobile, but unlike the Aptera, doesn't go that fast or far, but does have a full camper. I wish the back expanded more as I would would fit, but only by 10cm. An induction cooktop would also be nicer. As https://cleantechnica.com/2022/07/29/xbus-camper-is-everything-the-id-buzz-should-have-been-quirky-lovable-cheap-video/ points out, is more VW Bus than the Buzz
Uncle from another world: Possibly being a horrible, ugly, introverted old man myself, I enjoyed the available episodes. Is not actually isekai, which is a plus.
2022-07-31
People on twitter like the Duxtop brand induction cooker. They make well-recommended pots, too. So many induction cooktops seem to be poorly made Chinese things, though to their credit it is mostly that they just stop working or have really bad UI, not that pumping 1800 watts through it made it explode.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low-tech-solar-panel.html and https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/05/thermoelectric-stoves-ditch-the-solar-panels.html
Bonus Aptera rant content: dingos. If a dingo can get its oversized head into a hole, it can be sure that the rest will fit. Similarly, if you can get the Aptera's oversized wheel pods though something, you can be sure the rest of car will fit. It's not as bad as a Suburban or something really long that will clip corners or swing out into traffic or has massive blindspots in every direction. It's as bad as driving the front axle of Suburban in front of a Corolla. It's out in front, so you can see it, and like a dingo, you can be sure the rest of the car is going to fit through, or get around the corner. As with the moose test, not having rear wheels lets the Aptera scoot through situations it would not otherwise. (I still wish it wasn't so wide, even if it meant reducing agressive cornering at high speed.) Also their In&Out video cuts the bit where the driver actually has to reach for the goods. So, yes, it fits through the mini-window, but you can't get closer than 2 feet to the window, even if you open the door, because of the wheel pods. I personally don't care, but it is a thing and I wish they'd address it and not edit around it. Though not being able to be pulled out the window by car jackers (or cops) might be a selling point. (I am getting one of those glass breaking hammers for the front in case it flips and the doors can't open.)
tangentially Aptera related: modern gyrocopters are nice. If I had to get to my private island faster than on my solar powered catamaran, I'd get one.
Rant continued: The commenter also said an Aptera would be the worst if it hit a pedestrian in the knees and flipped them over the vehicle. While that would certainly be bad for the pedestrian, this is also wrong. The worst is a vertical slab like Truck-kun, which transfers the force directly into internal organs, then throws them forward for additional damage, next worst is a car that breaks knees and accelerates the pedestrian then brakes, throwing the pedestrian forward for additional damage. Getting hit in the ankle by a wheel cover is probably best case: you still might not be able to walk again, but at least you don't also have the strawberry milkshake blood.
There was an Ars Technica article on a 1,000km Mercedes prototype. There's a commenter who makes a number of factual errors about Aptera, an obvious comparison to a car with a 1,000 something range, computer designed parts, and a weird butt. Leaving that aside, it seems people think Aptera is a sedan, or wants to be one, but chose to be a 3-wheeled vehicle as a legal loophole. (Even though having 3 wheels cost them the government loan Tesla got!) As the Architect says, it is the solution to a series of equations. It is also a very American vehicle. It is very large, needlessly fast, excessively showy. Instead of a sedan, consider it as a post-modern take on the 2-seat traditional pickup truck or Keitora, trading the utility of an open bed and the weight an additional axle could support for the efficiency and massive range and acceleration and cost reduction, and UFO styling. It is as impractical as a modern pickup in some ways (The 500 pound limit, the giant lip around the bed, vs what good is a bed 5 feet off the ground that's too short for plywood or a christmas tree?), yet cheaper, cooler, and far less likely to kill a pedestrian. It's not a platonic ideal automobile. It is not even the most environmental option. (No car is: walk, bikes, mass transit, or just not commuting) It's designed for American highways, exurbs, and stroads. Driving one isn't going to be like driving a smooth riding Lincoln Continental (width: 75.3-82.3"), but Teslas also have very bumpy rides, also because of the sport tuning. It's not even legal to put a child seat in it. Are those prominent back corners the tailfins of SEVs? Probably, but I'm sure if they weren't helping the aerodynamics of the Morelli curve, they wouldn't be there. Is it unsafe in a collision with an SUV? Yes, but all sedans are, too. SUVs' safety reputation is based entirely on the fact that they kill the other people, making them relatively safer. (and that they glossed over SUVs' very high single vehicle accident rates) The tailfin might actually help because it is higher than an automobile bumper, so the SUV wouldn't ride up and over the trunk into the passengers like they do with cars. It would would just shove the much lighter Aptera out of the way. (or squash it against the SUV in front. Being light is a blessing and a curse.) While I'm ranting: people have also questioned the 3 wheels in snow, when the snow is deep but previous traffic has left ruts. I don't think it will matter. The 2 powered wheels are in the ruts and should have the power to drag the 3rd through/over realistic amounts of unplowed snow. I wouldn't recommend driving through 12 inches of snow, but I'd say the same for anything that didn't have a plow or treads.
2022-07-24
Wild Card: Bad life choices the movie. Nick Wilde sure has gone bad after leaving the ZPD.
#BO: Business Office 2: Electric Business Office! 1-800-223-9899 called me again. I'm not calling back because I paid their bill and I'm assuming they haven't processed it yet and I'm not spending 15-60 min to find out they are slow and their departments don't talk to each other. I also got a call from my insurance agent I will probably ignore. (home, not health!)
Related: a better HiDive Queue page.
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Takagi-san: 8 9 10 11 12
Given that HiDive is nice enough to have normal URLs, you can predict them in advance, or easily generate them without having to scrape the site (`perl -e 'for (1..12) {print "<a href=\"https://www.hidive.com/tv/teasing-master-takagi-san3/s01e0".sprintf("%02d",$_)."\">$_</a>\n";}'`.). The key thing is the :visited url is invisible, so while the link is still there, it doesn't occupy any cognitive load. It doesn't melt down your Air, doesn't go forward when you click something but also not change any of the page you are currently looking at, and doesn't require that you click the slider forward to get to the next unwatched show.
HiDive's safari window hit 100% cpu for hours, I didn't notice because it wasn't the foreground window. Really need some sort warning system for that before the keyboard gets too hot to touch. There's `sudo powermetrics --samplers thermal`, but I'm not sure it necessarily will pick up on that because it just says if it feels hot and Apple seems to be fine running it very, very hot. None of those outputs seem to report actual temps any more (breaking a lot of temp monitor apps), though it could be inferred from the "Package Power: 164 mW". Possibly related: why does Safari still pick up mouse movements when it isn't the foreground app, or even visible?
I was wrong saying Tunic was much harder than Zelda. Either BotW is also much harder, or I've gotten worse. (but I didn't have that kind of problem with the Zelda-esque Oceanhorn2) (Or maybe Link just needs to put some clothes on) BotW has wild foxes, too. They don't seem to be pet-able, but I had a nice encounter where one just stared at Link for a while. I tried to tame it with the whistling, but it ran away. (I should have tried throwing meat at it!) (I looked it up: they eat apples, but don't ever interact with Link.) [I tried throwing apples at one, but it didn't react.]
I finally got a Switch, just in time for a 10 day heat wave. It does get a little hot, but it has to be more environmentally friendly than the PC. I'm all set for the MiA game in Sept. I need reading glasses to see the screen, but during the winter I need my electronic's waste heat for heating anyway so the main monitor will be fine.
Tied for #7 Daily in Minimotorways, except it didn't show the score. It has the score on the main screen, but not the other ones.
"However, it no longer (since APFS?) seems to be possible to exclude Time Machine drives." https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/07/18/invasive-spotlight-indexing/ Really? That's dumb. `rsync` ftw.
The trunk on the Lucid Air is really nice. Flat top and bottom, extra wide opening. If it can possibly fit inside, it will easily fit inside. The only downside is it is just a sedan's trunk. Also the price tag. The front storage is also massive. Half the front of the car is empty space. I'm waiting for the Blade Runner style car that just pushes the front back behind the wheels. The Air has the space. Related: Apteras have a front storage space. It's small and industrial looking (in the beta), and they never mention it, so maybe production won't bother.
2022-07-17
https://newatlas.com/automotive/visu-vw-t7-multivan-camper/
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a40606832/hyundai-ioniq-6-range-specs/?utm_source=digg "drag coefficient of just 0.21" Laughs in Aptera. Looks very nice, but I'm curious about the rear view, given the second spoiler up there. It could be good if it is Prius-like.
Anime Summer 2022 Not this season, but I just got around to it: 'Kemomono Michi: Rise Up' is hilarious. MITSUBOSHI COLORS is cute. Possibly just a travel show for Ueno, but at least a good one.
I subscribed to HiDive specifically for MiA. Their queue interface is interesting, to be kind. It is so bad, I'm considering dropping it after Abyss, even though the monthly cost is minor and they do get nice shows. The audio levels seem very low. The site died completely twice. I'm 4 days into the trial period and I'm already considering just paying them and pirating MiA.
Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It, by M. Nolan Gray.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3bJnKmeNJY
2022-07-10
Blasted: might have lost a lot in translation.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/2022/jul/was-paycheck-protection-program-effective?guillotines&utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark "the cost per job saved for one year was $169,000 to $258,000, which was much higher than the average amount—$58,200—paid in wages and benefits to small-business employees in 2020" UBI! cut out the middleman, the landlord, the overseer!
I went to the beach, got a variety of odd sunburn marks, possibly relating to which position I was sitting in when the sun came out in full. Mostly cloudy, indeed. I think I burned both the tops and bottoms of my feet, and back of one arm up and around the armpit, side ribs, half the chest, and 2 small spots on my back. I thought the pain in my feet was the coarse hot sand and pebbles, but I have turned quite lobstery. The last beach visit was fine, but I was there earlier and left before noon, not after 2. I was not even the most pale person there, but should have done sunblock in more places, though I was in and out of ankle deep water repeatedly so it might not have mattered on my feet anyway. The beach was very crowded for a weekday. At least, this frees up my summer death wish: summer isn't done until it injures me.
#BO 18006819692: the Final Update (or is it?). I finally got the itemized bill, which is for a cat scan. I can't say as to how it differs from the other 2 cat scan bills, because the line item is in its entirety "CT SCAN". (making the total unadjusted price north of 10k, actual price after insurance $2,400) So I paid their stupid bill, even though the envelope is hand-written and mailed 2 days ago (7-5, a week after the call), in-keeping with my theory that this bill is a complete breakdown of their system, with every step being done manually, possibly up to even getting my name attached to it. When they found the bill with at most my name, but nothing else, they pulled the incorrect address off my (fraudulent) credit history, never billed the insurance. The hospital document has my current address. Somehow this never made it to the Business Office. (I'm still afraid that was added retroactively.) The hospital does not have my insurance in the insurance company name field, but does have an "aetna allowance", so I'm not sure if even they have the insurance. I did, ages ago, ask the 3 local hospitals for some sort of price list. HNH was the only one to get back to me, telling me the prices charged depended on the insurance company. So maybe they adjusted their internal price downward, but still never billed the insurance, because that's the BO's job? Have they *ever* billed my insurance correctly? Tens of thousands of dollars... At this point I'd just rather be dead, and every thousand dollar mystery bill is one step closer to when I run out of money and kill myself.
Finally signed up for HiDive. I like the english translated credits. I mean, I skip them, but the one time I might want to know something, it's nice that it is there.
Missed the Grendel Excavator mission by less than 780/800, hit 2 when I meant 1 or 4 and lost my gloom. So salty. Annoying that incarnon weapons don't do their thing in there either. The meter fills up, but they won't transform. I got the survival one after on the second try, once I figured out Gloom-da's 3,4,3,E is room clearing, leaves you with more energy that you started with, and can restore thousands of health.
Bastard!!: as perverted as can be given that nobody has genitals. "Dark Schneider" and the joke names makes it sound like a "Hello from the Magic Tavern" side-plot.
"Please Vote" as a response to random, mechanized terror is becoming the liberal "Thoughts and Prayers," less an acknowledgement of what happened than a plea to move on and not think too critically about it. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/fourth-of-july-shooting-gun-control-voting?utm_source=digg Given Al Gore's efforts, the gun deaths are perhaps the Democrats biggest failing.
"Credit scores are astrology for landlords" @personallyrich Credit score affects your car insurance rates, according to Marketplace. Not that it will make a difference to me until I can get an Aptera, anyway.
The Patriot: prototypical American, doesn't care about the problem until it effect him personally, solves the issue with ultra-violence.
I saw 3 foxes this week! 2 together on a driveway, and another around the corner. I got to stare at the 1 for a while as I went past. Loads of rabbits, too.
2022-07-03
L. Paul Bremer is now a skiing instructor.
Hold the Dark: whispery nihilism, the movie
Meme: I showed my dog my iPhone 5 and she said "this is as large as a phone ever needed to be. your kind's waste is intolerable and you have turned our paradise amongst the stars into a tomb"
Radium Girls: Another item in a long string of poisonous industry.
Aptera being an aircraft "without wings": Lilium, a fixed wing VTOL all-electric aircraft.
28d uptime. Getting better, but the dock still sometimes wakes from sleep and has no usb or internet.
https://www.iamag.co/love-death-robots-the-art-of-swarm-80-concept-art/
https://globalnews.ca/news/8950820/long-covid-canadian-researchers-causes-study/ "All 34 of the patients who participated in the study were experiencing problems in the level of oxygen being absorbed by their red blood cells."
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution?utm_source=digg "A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul. Their opponents have dismissed them as misguided careerists – and the conflict may determine the future of biology" That seems like it might be news, and yet starts by saying eyes are irreducibly complex. Stopped reading there.
I finished leveling everything I could get my hands on, and would have finally started on the Steel Path, or possibly the last railjack stuff, but now youtubers say there's a stack decay bug that would cripple the galvanized mods. Warframe is giving me RSI anyway.
There’s a trash shack with a description like "SELLER WILL NOT empty out contents and has no knowledge of condition or contents.", sold in May for $32,000, is now on Zillow for 119. It's a just slightly less than ideal location (the neighbors back up to the forest, but not this lot), but has a barn and all the windows are still intact and the lot is big enough for some degree of privacy. I'd have paid $32k for it, cash, no questions about the trash. Not $120,000, though.
#BO update: the real itemized list did not arrive, so I called first thing and was on hold for 5 minutes, a miracle. The documents they send out would never have any kind of detail on it, and that's why the page labeled "SUMMARY STATEMENT OF CHARGES" couldn't possibly have had any information on it, because they don't have it. A real "SUMMARY STATEMENT OF CHARGES" would have come from Holy Name Hospital, not "Holy Name Hospital", which is how they answer the phone now and is the letterhead on their bill. They were also incredulous that they had a bill without my address, phone number, or insurance, because it has all that now. (which is why I didn't give it to them the first time) And they definitely billed the insurance. The fact that the bill in my hand has no insurance info is glossed over. We didn't get to this, but I suspect they would have denied ever calling me, my neighbors, or mother. In any event, still waiting to see if this is legit in any way.
Spiderhead: could have been shorter, but lovely location (Queensland, Australia)
2022-06-26
I saw a fox! It was in the road but ran as soon as the bike light hit it so hopefully it fears the roads. Had a nice early morning trip, finally climbed that scary rock wall in Tallman State Park, but the road connects to the other side. Had a nice moment in the sun at the top, anyway, and most of the way down. I saw a Rad Wagon, or so I thought. It turned out to be a Yuba. I'd see how much weight you can put on a non-wagon, because it was very long in person. I don't need to move kids, just groceries. I also saw an actual Keitora, Japanese style truck. I think it might have been bigger than an actual k-car, but it definitely had the low practical bed. It was in a farm, so I don't know if it was road legal.
Spriggan: very modern old-school animation. Also, they really have America's number.
I was looking for shacks on zillow again, and while I found a number of nice houses, the prices have all tripled, or more. It seems much harder to find trash houses. No shacks, though that isn't really zillow's thing. Living in a greenhouse might solve privacy issues if the glass at the bottom is opaque or translucent enough. Downside: pollination. There might have to be bees in there. #shacklife
Pacific Rim The Black #2: nicer in that it wasn't making references to a movie I hadn't seen, only the first season. The magic underwear was a little odd: do or do not.
https://hyperscript.org/ Specifically, the web worker and beep! are cool. The rest is a lot to learn, where would you implement it, and the lack of objects would make completion/discovery impossible. Also https://htmx.org/ I used to use a tool like that, but more JS heavy. It is awfully convenient. Both from https://grugbrain.dev/
Anime Spring 2022 Roundup: Birdie Wing ('Bahdy Bahdy') was a surprising stand out. I have no idea what is happening but it is gloriously insane. I enjoyed My Healer, Healer Girl, ESTAB (a little uneven). SpyXFamily is good, but possibly doesn't live up to the considerable hype. (the reaction face comedy needs to hit really precise beats, like Princess Connect, or else be massively over the top, Kill la Kill) The other tiny girl shows Tsubaki and Aharen are OK. I watched Skeleton Knight for Ponta. Dropped in on Little Baby Ghost, but never saw the fox tailed one, didn't care enough to watch the rest. World Dom is OK. Tomodachi Game is too tame, slow to be good, but is at least consistent with its clues. Shield Hero continued to be borderline bad, while Science Fell in Love crossed it. Galatic Heroes continues its thing, which I find oddly compelling.
New Google News UI: looks very mobile, is not actually responsive. It cut the weather forecast, font seems unreadable, but does let me finally remove the entertainment section.
The AppleTV show "Home" had another "house in a greenhouse", nicer than the other one I was familiar with. Still not entirely designed for the greenhouse concept. I was thinking more traditional Japanese, with a blurred inside and outside, retreating to a warm core during the coldest part of the year. I'm not sure how well a straw house would do with the humidity, but also, would you ever need the straw's insulation if you had the glass? The Gary Chang domestic transformer home is also spectacular. One thing about the bed: you could have a horizontal bed, but slide out like the table? As a plus, pull it out half way and you have the seating. Just seems easier, or maybe my bed is just thinner and much longer. (I think any just society, even one prioritizing urban density, would crack down on the capitalist urges creating the nano-units. Even HK is still mostly empty space!) (Unrelated, but AppleTV's episode list is broken in a number of ways.)
Dirty Harry: I read some articles on how progressive San Fransisco is a failed state, but nearly everything about it is a Libertarian techbro philosophy, with a smattering of truly insane things that could either be legitimately loony lefties or actual false flag operations by the techbros. Either way, the alternate, as seen here in Dirty throwing away the law entirely, is Californian Ronald Reagan's War on Things approach. You are either with them, or against them, and they have the most powerful handgun in the world.
2022-06-19
"[V] DAS BARNALI from 248-763-7475" has been leaving slurred (drunk, or possibly just a heavy accent) messages on my voicemail, usually in pairs, 1 5-second one, then immediately another longer one angry I didn't pick up the first one. Some of them are asking for help, maybe, some are threatening me with the police. I really can't make it out. Things like this are why I send everything to voicemail. My phone hasn't rung in years and it's great.
Greyhound: competency porn. For all the death, that's not even a month of covid dead during the peaks.
https://www.science.org/content/article/what-causes-long-covid-three-leading-theories I was already on a drug for a clot. Is that not the same thing as this drug? Or could my micro-clots just be newer and on-going? I'll predict now that it would be my left lung on the scan. I still think that it is the mostly likely theory; I do not oscillate.
I saw the big planetary alignment. It took a lot more of the sky than pictures might suggest.
Never going to Holy Name Hospital (Teaneck, NJ) again, and not just because of NPAS. That didn't help, but the price increases have been brutal, and that's on top of normal American health care prices. I was willing to pay more so they didn't collapse during covids, but they doubled it again. My insurance company keeps complaining when I use them, but the alternatives they suggest don't actually exist, or is CVS, which seems less qualified to diagnosis serious issues than the Valley Hospital not-Dr. that misdiagnosed me. (can't go back there, either...) And Peace Health Partners double-billed me. #BO
The Business Office 18002239899 sent me the itemized list. It's blank, because of course it is. It still says I have no insurance. To be charitable, I'm assuming this is a regular bill and the itemized one is coming in a few days. I think I forgot to log the May interaction with them: I hadn't gotten the itemized list I'd originally asked for for more than a month when they started calling my mother, so I called them back again. They say there's a bill from them, Holy Name Hospital, which I already know to be false, given that I looked up their number and know who they are. I asked for the itemized list because I don't know what they are talking about and they sent the bill to an address that has only been used with identity theft, months after any possible service, so it was suspicious from the start. I gave them my actual address, phone number (yes, the same one they originally called, the one they said they had no business with), and insurance id, which they said was "1 digit away" from what they had. (So they had an insurance id, it was rejected for being invalid, and then they sat on it for 3 months before billing me anyway?) The document they sent me has "SUMMARY STATEMENT OF CHARGES" and "DESCRIPTION / AMOUNT", and that's it. The rest is white space, down to the footer, so it's not like the printer ran out of ink right there. They still don't show any insurance, even with their extra digit. I'm tempted to pay it to make it go away, but this is the most ridiculous bullshit I have seen from a company that reportedly handles millions of dollars. As a reminder, this started with them calling me from a number that said "press 1 to sign up for the sweepstakes" and hanging up if you didn't. #BO
Shimmer Lake: Better than I was expecting. I shouldn't have let it sit in my queue forever.
Fox & I: Qwah. Why is there only the one picture? He's beautiful. I still need to go find my shack with a fox neighbor, but my hands couldn't take 9 months of winter. I had to turn the heat up after a couple weeks. There was some youtube guy who was sold a lakeside homestead because the owner got too old to take care of it. I'll take care of it!
THe bug in Mini Motorway's scoring is just too frustrating. The main panel shows a score that would be 5th place in the weekly, but the actual list of top scores shows some random number in 198th. I only did it the once, so it's not like it didn't catch up or record the second try like the daily. The number it has is completely wrong. (and is always much lower!) I'll probably complain about it for another 6 months then uninstall it. I went through my podcasts lists and purged a few things. It's not like they were bad, but I just complain about them.
2022-06-12
Fast Color: nice, though I still think things like this could be shorter.
There seems to be a new neighbor across the courtyard who takes phone calls by shouting them out the window. At least I'm assuming she's on a phone, because they are profanity laced tirades about how the Christians didn't help her with her mental illness, also some of them are at 3:00 AM. She should get together with my other neighbor, the Christian who has done phone-based exorcisms. (Again, I'm assuming there's a phone involved.)
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/millennium-parade/1463024709 No Time to Cast Anchor, Millenium Parade, the GitS 2045 ED
Vampire in the Garden, first episode: nice stuff, but is it just me or is the music and singing not audible? I hear everything else, like them talking about the singing, and their lips move. Music is key to the plot, so maybe they are making a point about amusia in the Warm population. Or maybe it's just poorly mixed like many other modern shows. Second episode: I hear it now, so who knows.
https://sindresorhus.com Mac dev with functional free apps, like the good old days.
Severance: weird, but very slow, doesn't end.
Aptera (TransportEvolved pointed out 'a ptera' means 'without wings', which is a little odd. You wouldn't expect it to have wings, right? (Although that might explain the yoke: it's a plane without wings!)) is raising funds from the public, an offer which is closing soon. I have the money to get to at least the $10K->discount level, and really should do something with it before inflation eats it, but the risk is substantial and I don't think I can trust my decision making process. (Specifically, this: `perl -e "print rand()>0.5?'yes':'no';"`, which said no.) I compromised and invested near the minimum, 111 shares. I could afford to donate that to a green-ish cause, and if it doubles in the IPO then great, I got a piece of the pie for recognizing a new vehicle that is both outlandish and more practical than the FUV or an e-motorcycle. If it goes 35x in the IPO, I'll get another one. (I noticed the SEC docs called the car the roadster. Does it have a model name yet? The prototypes have individual names for their colors, but I've just been referring to it as the Aptera.) (I also don't have a reservation, which might be a mistake, but I'd still want to sit in a production model first. And the more environmentally friendly car than an Aptera is not having a car at all.) There's also reportedly a planned 4 seat, 4 wheel version, which would be closer to the ideal of a BEV Prius, but I'd still go for the freaky one.
Still from Blade Runner 2042
One way or another, you are getting a 3 wheeled car. Buy the shiny electric one now, or the dystopian one later after the climate collapses. (although, perhaps it would help tall people get in and out if they moved a little bit of the roof onto the door, like a gull-wing? I see a little of that in this one.) (or would that cut into the solar panels too much?)
2022-06-05
Boycott Moscow in Mini Motorways.
Mini Motorways put my daily score in the weekly and made up a number for the daily. It would have been just outside the top 10, too.
Lady into Fox: furry fanfic from 1922.
2022-05-29
I realize that a future archeologist might come across this diary preserved in amber and conclude that the humans of the Anthropogenic Period were consumed with trivial matters. This is both completely accurate and not true. I just unload my feelings about the climate or Ukraine on the opinion survey my bank does.
Stranger Things #4: Side quest. A little more my era and the nerd who looks like me got killed, but very disconnected from the rest, both thematically (a different enemy from a different world, and Hopper got Poochied.) and physically, in that the 'kids' are considerably older.
GitS SAC_2045 #2: leaving aside the reuse of the Stand Alone Complex name for a different series, I liked it better than the last season. The character models are noticeably less horrifying. I found the absurdity enjoyable but I do see the point that it is pretty weak GitS. It would be nicer if it were more hard scifi cyberpunk police procedural, but sometimes it's just Gundam and there's a new pink haired sidekick literally overriding the series' beloved old sidekicks in order to fire bullet hells at a dancer for 10 solid minutes. (Though I liked the 'moving through the crowd' scene, one invisible, the other unseen.) Needs more Patrick Huge. Or if the whole thing had been like the ED. I also don't like the end. I'm pretty sure I know what happened, but I don't like it.
https://www.thestar.com/business/opinion/2018/06/15/how-baby-formula-may-end-up-as-collateral-damage-in-trumps-nafta-war.html 2018!
Bubble: Scrubbing Bubbles, the Animation. Somebody's dream, I'm assuming. Very pretty, but, like a bubble, hollow.
2022-05-22
Love Death + Robots #3: Swarm has long been one of my favorite short stories. Could have been a little grosser/more "biological", but good enough. Mini Dead was a fun goof. Jibaro was visually interesting but weird. The "ancient horror" things continue to not be great.
Foundation: disjointed. Random things happen while a narration assures us everything is very important, even as it spends a lot of time being scenic and not actually doing things. Goes on at length about math and probability of the masses, then bases everything that happens on unique people who intuit the future and claim to be acting on feelings they don't understand.
The rear tube was the wrong size and exploded, but now, finally, it seems to be cheap Chinese tires that people on Amazon complain don't last. I still need to get a new bike.
The rear tire was squeaking, so I took it apart to see if it was the stem getting eaten through (again). It was not, but after getting it assembled again, the tire didn't hold any air. I can feel it come out right after it goes in. I think I broke the value forcing it open to let the air out. Also, the front tire developed a bulge or the tread is pulling away (again). So now I have to replace both tires, 1 tube. And ideally the handles, gear shifter, heavy frame...
smallandroidphone.com I blame android phablets for destroying phone UI in general. Why not just put everything on the screen at the same time? Or in 1 hamburger menu?
2022-05-15
Angels of Zariman: nice, though my main complaint is it is too dark to see when next to a sunny window. There's a massive grind to build all the weapons (and you need all of them to max any of them!), but not the hateful RNG as with the damaged necromech weapon receiver, of which still don't have even 1. The bounties are new, the mechanics are solid. I gave up on Narmers because it kept failing at random. Also, MR26, running out of weapons to master. Some zaws, kdrives, a lot of non-prime frames, kubro/kavat companions left. I'd been avoiding them because of the RNG. And another archwing, because it's an archwing. I don't know if I can get to 30 without an immense grind, all the "rotation-c 0.3% drop rate" stuff. Like the cursed damaged necromech weapon receiver.
Music: Sleepthief
Wolfwalkers: meh, given the Irish wolf is extinct. Wolf Children Rain and Snow is better, in that it is more openly depressing.
Yellow Magic Orchestra's Hiromi Hosono's grandfather survived the Titanic.
iPod discontinued: I've been using a 3S as a music, podcast device, and I have a 4 as backup, assuming it still works. It really would be nice to have a physical input for the 15s skip, stop functions.
For All Mankind #2: Mostly torturing Gordo.
2022-05-08
While checking the images loaded correctly, I noticed Safari was rendering the page much more readably. Can't have that! In other orphan related news, Salandria is growing up in the next expac. I may have to stop my annual orphan bit.
Binchou and Sally on an orb Binchou and Sally in Zerbis Merbis
The theology gets even more confusing. Maybe we are all just puppets for an unknowable force, or something.
The restart has fixed the podcasts. I now have new 20 podcasts.
Uptime: 42 days! But Podcasts have stopped working. Podcasts is a privileged app that doesn't quit if you quit it, so I'm not sure if I can actually restart its various components, but the phone stopped reliably getting new podcasts, and now it has none at all. The Phone UI in the finder can only see month old played podcasts, which are no longer on the phone because I deleted them because they weren't going away. Restarting might fix this. So much for the streak.
2022-05-01
I was going to go out on the bike for the first time this year, but the front tire exploded almost immediately and when I went upstairs to see if I had a spare (no), found a patch kit instead, debated saving the kit because it is a tiny travel sized box with an unopened tube of something, and while my brain was circling that particular drain, I tried to read the instructions, except I thought I was having a stroke because I could read the words, but they didn't make sense. Turns out it was just poorly translated, also my heart is 120 and I can't face going downstairs again.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/05/01/jony-ives-exit-from-apple-caused-by-company-culture-changes-and-growing-frustration
In a New York Times article based on the Tripp Mickle book "After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul," Ive resigned after years of frustration, seeing the company migrate from a design-centric entity to one that was more utilitarian.
The keyboards work and there are usable ports, so eat it, Jony.
Music: Dead Can Dance. The TUNIC soundtrack is also nice BGM.
For All Mankind #1: All the astronauts look like DC villains. The alt-history is interesting. (there's one thing where Nixon says "oval room at the White House", which I know is real because the use of room not office stuck in my head, but the rest of the bit references the show and thus must be fake!) I don't like that there's an intro 10 minutes into the show.
2022-05-01
The One: I had forgotten that baby Jason Statham was in this, or Morgan and Wong did it. Not necessarily a good movie, but an important historical piece in which they were first figuring out how to hit people with CGI motorcycles. Best part is a DVD extra where they overlap 2 takes Li did, and he's not a pixel off. Dude's a machine.
2022-04-24
Hell or High Water: Nice. More of a luke-warm amble than a hot pursuit, as the description says.
Uptime: 1 month! I've been very careful turning the power off only when the light on the dock is off. If it doesn't go off, I unplug the TB cable, then power it off. During the day, I just turn off the monitor and leave the dock on and the air asleep. This also requires all the USB-A devices be unplugged, because they go on and off as the dock goes on and off.
Speaking of share with Reminder as a todo list, Calendar could use that. You can drag events, but there's no other direct way.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets Ever since the greatest moment ever in the history of call-in radio, in which somebody called NPR to argue that Bush II ruled with the divine right of kings, one could argue that all the new conservative movements, from Trumpism (the king of kings) to QAnon (the James Bond insider) or garden variety fascism (il duce) or white nationalism (Trump again), are about finding the ultimate father figure who will set things to right with an unquestionable hand. It seems to not matter what the end goal is, and the means generally seem to be armed revolt and death camps. "I asked if he could give me a vision of what he thought victory for his side would look like. "It's just families and meaningful work," he said, "so that you can raise your kids and worship and pursue your hobbies and figure out what the meaning of it all is."" A world in which The Simpsons family is a possibility again, but also that "And the progressive left just remains the enemy. It's the enemy of true progress. It's the enemy of everything that is good.", like union wage levels, health care price caps, universal health care, progressive tax rates, welfare programs for children, basic income, anything that might make The Simpsons' world possible again, but also cost Peter Thiel money. As with the "personal climate footprint" concept, it is much easier to create a system doomed to fail, then blame you for failing.
Sorry to bother you: funny, but the America it is satirizing just makes me sad. And the sun will explode.
2022-04-17
Apollo 10 1/2: nostalgia trip, mostly detailing the things people put up with as normal but will later be looked upon as horrible.
https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/full
NY State "adjusted" my tax return, claiming, I guessing given the number is the same, that I owe them tax on the investment dividends, despite the fact that I don't live or work in the state. I don't understand any of this, aside from the obvious, that as somebody with a small income, I must not be able to do anything about this. Of course, it's only $150, so I don't care enough to do anything about it.
Anime Spring 2022
2022-04-10
Captain Nova: poorly thought out.
Argo: needlessly tense at the end, given I already knew the story.
These things bother me, so I got the phone out, and laid under the desk to reach the phone jack, and staying there because the cable attached to the phone wasn't that long, and by staying on hold for a while, I got through to The Business Office 800-223-9899. The representative allowed that they had called me once (not twice, even though verizon logs missed calls), but did not have any open business. I'm still not sure if that is a scam or not. It was not about Peace Health Partners double billing me. I'm not sure if that is a scam or not, either. #BO
After years of disuse, I put the phone away. The Business Office 800-223-9899 did call me back, so maybe it is legitimate billing, so I tried the Verizon "Place a Call" button, to call them from this number but without have to get the phone out of the closet and plug it in under the desk. It said "call placed successfully", but does not even attempt to give me some method of talking to them... #BO
2022-04-03
Got #30 in Mini Motorways (for reals) I think the end-game is just shuffling motorways around.
https://www.highcaffeinecontent.com/blog/20220325-Intel-Virtualization-and-Apple-Silicon Run naked hypervisor on PC to let Mac control windows/linux desktops. This would have been what I would have wanted for my PC, except it hasn't been so terrible getting up and crossing the room. Article is about running collection of old MacOSs from M1.
Tunic++: the reward for all the death the time the first time around is having 5x health and magic bars the third time around. I have more upgrades, but not enough money. Did some of the treasures. Still don't know what most of the cards do, but you can only equip 5 of them anyway.
https://tidbits.com/2022/03/26/tipbits-always-show-window-proxy-icons/
The Contractor: nice cast, but absolute nonsense. The crazy girl is the only one who does anything remotely competent.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/will-hurd-2024-book/629398/ The problem is if he runs as an R, he's running on the Republican party platform, which is not his to set. The people on his coattails are loons. Any legislation he proposes would go through the 2 coal barrons, same as Biden. Any Justice he names will be expected to overturn Roe, Oberfell, Loving, etc. There was another bit in the last IQ^2 US about how nobody is willing to pay now for transit projects that won't be done for 30 years. So instead we live with the decisions made 60 years ago. We continue to live with and pay for the roads made for suburban commuting for 1/3rd the population, and pay for the cars, and the pollution. The same episode mentioned the near total lack of accountability in the Homeless Industrial Complex and that is why The Radical Left can't run cities, and that Giuliani Time was the solution. The first bit is true, though, but it is just layers of bureaucracy and corruption, not that attempting to help the sick is somehow inherently broken. The debater mentioned it would take a million dollars per unit to build specifically low cost housing for the homeless. And yet, somehow, it costs less than that to just buy a condo at commercial rates and give it to a homeless person. The same way and for the same reason that a militarized police creates crime statistics, government backed student loan debt creates diploma mills and spiraling costs, or that nuclear plants cost more just to put up the associated office building, or even just the fence. Nobody is going to admit that zoning (largely racist) and lack of mental health care (largely Reagan) created the problem to begin with. "Cleaning up" areas means the people who live and work there now can't do either, but also can't go anywhere else. If they could afford the hours a day and thousands of dollars a year in car expenses, perhaps they could move to an exurb. This is, after all, the thing we pay for, the result of the decisions made 60 years ago.
Adam by Eve: Otherside Picnic media barrage. Visually intense, but boring except for the animated segment.
Health: new high score: 147. I had the thought that maybe the machine was wrong so I tried it manually. I think I lost track in the middle (on account of it being hard to think when your heart is going that fast for no reason), but still got to 32 in 15 seconds.
Anime Winter 2022 Roundup: Ranking of Kings had a bit of a non-ending, as the manga is still going, which was a bit of disappointment. Akebi is nice, Kuroitsu was fun and had a guest appearance from Astro Fighter Sunred, which was great. Vanitas covered some backstory. Bisco is over the top crazy. 86's eventual last episodes are good. Titan's last, last season is as good as the first. Princess Connect continues to pour great animation on a video game premise. (0x0) I enjoyed Otherside Picnic, though I'm not familiar with these net legends the way I am with the Steins:Gate stuff. Love of Kill, Ordinary Guy, Plunderer, and maybe 24th Ward are kind of dumb, though the last one is not over yet [Last episode is great!]. I also finally watched Heike Monogatari, which has been on my todo for ages. Great, but very dense and depressing.
2022-03-27
Black Crab: Some unfortunate Both Sides-ism in the Ukraine era.
Health: felt unable to watch a movie on a Saturday, heart rate turned out to be 110 for no reason. It fell to the 90's while the monitor was on, but still too restless to relax. Am writing this as a way to waste time. Brain still not doing brain things.
Steve Jobs:
It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company’s not any more successful.
So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product.
They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts, usually, about wanting to really help the customers.
Though having said that, I do think the Studio is a nice change of pace from the Ive's anorexia era, and the M1 in general is great. Leaving aside the fan, the monitor isn't terrible. (It's not modern, and should be for that price, though.) Now if we could just work on the software, app store, documentation, ...
I got a voicemail from "Business Office from 800-223-9899", which apparently is a number for a legitimate medical billing company, and said it was from Holy Name, my local hospital (and not a medical billing company, but these companies are so enmeshed I wouldn't immediately assume that was misrepresentation and fraud). I thought it might be about the Peace Health Partners (who also are not HNH but seems to operate inside it) double-billing me (which I assumed would never be resolved or even noticed, as I'm sure a billing company is too busy to balance its books), but the message I got when I called back offered me a sweepstakes chance if I pressed 1, then hung up on me when I didn't. Now I don't know what to think, but if they are medical billing and not a scam, at least I know they will be calling back. Repeatedly. #BO
Tunic: + mode. You keep your stuff and stats, but can continue to increase the stats. (except you only get 5 cards?) Even without the cheat mode, I'm basically unkillable except for the radiation because I can kill most enemies in 2 hits and have half a screen's worth of potions. Also, there are a lot more radiation enemies. I don't think there was any actual benefit to getting all the fairies, but I did that, too.
Apple A11y issue, Podcasts: I have a mouse button that does the page down key. I find it is more precise and faster than the wheel. Podcasts, for example, just beeps at me. But that got me thinking, is Podcasts usable with the keyboard? No. The list on the left has the keyboard focus, so if you type something, the search box gets it. That also includes the arrows, so you can switch lists, but not actually interact with the list. It still annoys me that I have to download each podcast individually, but it is better than have it randomly download hundred of old episodes.
Tunic: Only after defeating the final boss did I find out that it is not necessary to defeat the final boss, which I'm assuming is impossible without cheating, anyway. (It's hard to do even with immortality. I thought that was a meta commentary on 'the power to cheat death' in the manual, and that's why you deserve the bad end, by being part of the system. But the way out of the bad end doesn't require the boss fight at all.) Find 10 fairies to get the last page of the manual. (I did check I had all the pages, but by checking there wasn't one missing in the sequence. I should have expected there would be a back cover.) Some of the puzzles are pretty obscure. I thought the language was just to be more like playing a Japanese import of Zelda, but no, it is actual text you are meant to decode.
"the Studio Display contains the exact same 2.65GHz A13 Bionic chip, 12MP Ultra Wide front-facing camera setup with Center Stage, and 64GB base configuration of storage as the ninth-generation ‌iPad‌" Perhaps a triumph of the Tim Cook Supply Chain style of management, given the 5k is not that much more expensive than the LG 5k, which does not also contain an iPad? Or a complete waste, to have that technical capability and ignore it? Not even to use as an Apple TV? Thin client? Mouse driven iPad Max? RPi-style Pi-hole/filtering proxy? Home security camera? I was horrified to learn it has a fan.
Conversely, how much would it have cost to make a monitor that is just the 5k panel with a slot on the back and sold the iPad as an iPad. If you wanted a webcam, you could drop your iPad into the slot. The speakers similarly could clip on the bottom and plug into the USB. [Update: Oh, look, it does exist! https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/samsungs-new-4k-smart-monitor-has-a-magnetic-wireless-webcam/ It's even iMac colored.]
2022-03-20
Tunic: there's a cheatmode in the accessibility! Thank "Bob", because I can only beat the bosses by the skin of my teeth. I got the Boss Nanachi down by chugging health berries and cheesing the kick with the hookshot. Now there's this new gauntlet boss and it's not next to a teleporter so I can go get 10 more berries. Also, the invisible ghosts are an enormous pain in the ass. (They are cheesed with the quiet bell card.) And the room full of birds, that was impossible if I tried to fight them.
21 Bridges: fun fact: the nypd property damage claims cost more per year than reported thefts.
Tunic: There was a clue in the manual, sort of, but I still had to look it up. The fire wand and potion->mana card were also a plus for running through the quarry with no health. Are those rats? Mutant foxes? They have big ears and triangular tails though, and live in an abyss. Are they Nanachi? I initially got into the ziggurat without having the mask, but didn't trust the save point because I thought it was another killer robot.
Tunic: Got stuck already, may need to look at the wikia. I have the hookshot, but not the teleport, and I see a lot of places that require it. I don't see how to get into the place with all the teleporting mages. I found 2 different ways into the quarry, but the radiation(?) kills me, so I'm assuming I'm not supposed to be there yet. I spent so long backtracking I could afford 2 1000 coin upgrades, but still don't see what do do about the mages. I did find the fashion upgrade room on the map, so there might be a tiny clue somewhere in the manual.
Warframe: I got 420/69 off my 2 focus lenses, but didn't get a screenshot.
Would love to get actual numerical data on how hot the Air is inside.
Tunic: I got it because it has a fox in it. The sense of mystery and being dumped into a complex world is nice, but unlike Warframe the answer isn't 'go look at the wikia because we aren't telling you anything'. It is very much harder than the Zelda feel would suggest, and it crashed an hour in (right after I beat the guard captain!). This might be the Air overheating, but Oceanhorn 2 is way hotter. [It auto-saves, so I didn't have to redo the captain.]
https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/inspecting-web-views-in-macos/ Consider: it's easier even for Apple to write control panels in React that it is to do in Swift. Even if it means cramming things into Webkit. This does not speak highly of Swift, SwiftUI, or the continued production, documentation of either.
2022-03-13
Siberia: slow, but loads of spider plants for some reason.
Kotaro lives alone: off-putting eyes, and not sure what the point is. There are a lot of other shows with similar content that are also funny or cuter or sadder.
The Adam Project: Reasonably acceptable movie product.
Contagion: a little light viewing. Nice to think that powerful people making money on the situation might be held accountable, or that the president wouldn't be the one pushing forsythia and internal UV lights. And bleach, and horse dewormer.
Good stuff in https://tidbits.com/2022/03/05/apple-design-macs-for-other-types-of-professionals/ but "I’d like to see Apple—or someone—figure out how to repurpose older iMacs with Retina displays as monitors for another Mac." Can be done by removing the guts of the iMac and replacing it with a controller card for the monitor. It might not look great with an HDMI cable sticking out the power cord hole, but it worked. I did this to an old 2k iMac, but stopped using it because the small 4k is nicer, vesa mountable. The last time I checked one could only find the 5k controllers on Alibaba, but if you had access to the chips and a breadboard, it shouldn't be that hard to make. Surely there could be a market for that, given the immense cost of the 5k monitors. Some of the comments also want the Apple equivalent of the Raspberry Pi. I also like the Apple Pi concept. The Mini is mostly empty space. A really small, super basic home server would definitely fill a niche with firewalls, filtering proxies, local cloud services like phone backup, and storage through USB and USB-SATA. The increased power of the M1 would make ZFS a lot easier. Though given a lot of stuff Apple is doing (like removing scripting) just makes the Linux based RPi better. That reminds me, I haven't backed up the Pi in a while.
Related from the Verge: "They’ll soon be replaced by the trucks and the luxury SUVs, which have proven to be American car buyers’ preferred profile." Is that really true, or is that all that ever gets advertised and sold, because those are the vehicles with the highest profit margins? See also Jalopnik's bit about Kia dealers sinking their own electric car.
Speaking of corporations that don't need or want my opinion: the ID.Buzz is a disappointment. It lacks the utility of the T7, and the 4 seat is the worst of all worlds, with the fixed seats and huge space behind them. (The space is both too small for a big thing like a bike, surf board, or bed, and too large for anything else. The designers clearly noticed that with the velcro spacers.) I wouldn't complain so much about a SUV I wouldn't buy anyway except the coverage keeps calling it the hippy bus. It is in no way that. There is nothing about the form or function that matches it. The cargo variant is at least 'pure', with no seats and colossal space and ample tie-downs, but also no windows. I still think the front end would be better if they let the glass move back. Also real bumpers, but I guess that ship has sailed. In short, conventional car company continues to not discover electric potential.
Upgradable Mac option: RAM disks. Use old server memory for semi-volatile fast storage of things that don't necessarily have to be taking up SoC RAM, but also don't need to be written to the SSD.
Still don't have an upgradable Mac, but at least there is finally a reasonable desktop Mac again. (And plenty of network or usb drives to make up for the disk space.) The monitor is pointlessly complicated (the users in the video all had the 3 monitors supported by the Studio, so 3 webcams, 3 sets of speakers, etc. ), but is only $200 more than the LG 5K, and presumably Apple has fixed the connection issues, so it seems a good deal, relatively speaking. Going from 4 to 5K is a huge premium, though, and it offends my miserly sensibilities. If I had to, I'd get the Mini and the display, just because I miss the space 1440/2K has, and also like the high dpi. The TS3 dock has been unpleasant, and I haven't ever gone anywhere with the Air, and probably won't at this rate.
Funimation Great Anime Merge of 2022 Episode 1 reviews
2022-03-06
https://www.stclairsoft.com/AppTamer/index.html Force things to run on the E cores. Keep Air gaming cooler, or just in-keeping with my new understanding that it is not environmental to waste electrons to have fun when you could have as much fun with less photo realistic games.
The only x86 code running on the M1: Apple's own Music app.
Another thing to add to the 'good intentions' pavement: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/02/retirement-savings-plans-favor-rich-wealth-gap-tax-incentives-portman-cardin-congress-secure-act/
2022-02-27
The volume buttons fell off the 3S. I must have rolled over on it, as I found the buttons in bed. (try doing that with a modern phone) Turns out the buttons are just one piece of metal sitting on top of a membrane. I didn't want to glue it back, in case the glue hardened across the membrane, so I taped it. Fortunately, there are generous bezels, so there was plenty of room. Kind of looks like a vinyl wrapped, chrome deleted Model 3S.
🇺🇦 I realize this blog is entirely self-involved drivel. https://music.apple.com/us/album/guns-dont-shoot-single/1303861229
Hempcrete: not as load bearing as straw, but is thinner and still provides a number of straw's benefits.
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/02/24/game-changer-hyundai-ioniq-5-sliding-rear-hatch/ As a certifiable tall person, I approve of this concept.
Mini Motorways says my score is 3025, but the distribution says it is 1028. 3k still isn't in the top 10, but a lot better. I got robbed. The next day it decided I don't have a score at all.
Unthinkable: taut
The Foreigner: kung-fu meets IRA bombers.
"In the long covid group, he found that they had normal lung function and at peak exercise, their oxygen levels were normal even as they were short of breath. What was abnormal was that some arteries and veins did not appear to be transporting oxygen to and from the muscles efficiently." https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/02/21/covid-cardiac-issues-longterm/
The Bourne Ultimatum: some nice competency porn as Russia starts WWIII.
2022-02-20
Blood Red Sky: Been in my list for ages. Kind of slow, but nice enough.
Cleaner: Nice
Child of Kaminari Month: Hozuki would have sorted them out.
2022-02-13
Ratchet and Clank: never played it, didn't finish, inadequate use of ears and tail.
The 9th Precinct: Seen it already. What's the point of logging things if the name ever come up again?
Bigbug: that one episode of LD&R, except maximally French
I failed to get my mother to see the difference in conservative thought and conservative media product. If your news is filled with CRT and 'Rogan is a leading light of conservative thought who is a martyr for being lightly criticized for leading people to their deaths', then you are somebody else's weapon. In somewhat related news, I saw several articles that mentioned that the fundamental reason fundamentalists want to own the libs is that the Antichrist is said to help people. That's it. The entire reason America can't have schools or healthcare or infrastructure.
The Power of the Dog: banjo-cel vs. tumblr, with an undercurrent of everyone is gay. Un-addressed murder mystery happens in the last 5 minutes.
According to the multiple texts from Shannon, Jeremy Rubin lived at 5261 Caminito Exquisito. According to TDBank, I know have enough information to successfully steal his identity in revenge for getting his tax collector calls for years. The house looks mcmansiony, backing up on a long, narrow golf course. 1 hole? You go from block to block to golf an entire game?
Murderville: a surprisingly coherent murder mystery, but the first episode seems to have been filmed on asphalt.
Extinction: must have seen it because I rated it, but didn't remember it. Watched 4 seconds of it, heard the laser blast noise and remembered the twist immediately.
The Saint (2017): The other versions were mentioned on the Incomparable. The villain's spiderplants are very nice.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/02/greenflation-prices-inflation-climate-change-coffee-lumber/621456/
2022-02-06
Blade Runner The Final Cut: I could see it in 4K. I might actually have the bluray but no player. There are scenes that are very film-grainy, but some are the full detail.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/02/02/the-case-for-mark-as-unread-in-messages/ https://matthewbischoff.com/mark-as-unread-for-messages/ Isn't that what the Share with Reminders is for? Admittedly, the share interface is overworked, but it is there. Slack has an Unread and a Remind Me in X minutes, but neither of them are a todo list.
https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/
#1 in Mini Motorways (for a while). I still need to work on the next level, splitting the endgame up so fewer houses are on each network, but I believe I have won Mini Motorways. In other game news, I got back-to-back resource doublers so I ground out several forma on my necromorphs while collecting a ton of toroids. I should have the last VS rep rank in 3 days. Everything is coming up Millhouse, except my resting heart rate is sometimes 120 for no particular reason. Weirdly I don't even feel it until it gets up to 140. It just drains me.
Orbital Children: very nice nearly hard SF, although I'd assume that any AI with access to the Internet would destroy humanity immediately, and be correct to do so.
The crash hasn't happened in 5 days, but the no-usb/network did. Making me restart is only marginally better.
2022-01-30
New Mac sleep weirdness: there's a light on the Caldigit TS3 dock. I noticed it does shut off some times after I put the Mac to sleep, so I've been waiting for it to be off before powering it down in the hopes it fixes the crashes. Today, it didn't go off, and I got bored waiting for it, so I left it. A Message came in. I heard the alert on the phone, but I saw the notification on the 'sleeping' monitor! Both screens were black except the notification on the 4K. The monitor also stopped it's sleep/wake cycling. I have seen that before with the App Store notification, but only on the Mac's monitor.
So remember how I've been pirating Funimation shows even though I actually have an account just because that's how terrible their site is? Crunchyroll's beta site is now completely black in Safari with a JS error. I actually felt decent when I woke up this morning. First time in ages, vacuumed, trimmed the spider-plants. [Turned out to be Hush or the Safari content blocker.]
The House: technically proficient, but also no point.
2022-01-23
Car idea: Given the huge trunk/tiny opening problem, might it be possible to have a door on the side? Get in behind the lights and crumple zone and pillars? In related news, the ID.Buzz is kind of disappointing looking. It would have been better if it had just admitted it was a Japanese style van and stopped trying to be the Bus and failing. It would probably be a nice vehicle if it as least as drivable/functional as the T7.
The Colony: a throwback to the days of SF filmed in warehouses for budget, but on location so it looks nicer.
2022-01-16
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/01/12/catching-native-apps/ I just noticed PHP is missing. Admittedly, I haven't needed it. I did notice VSC throwing errors, but couldn't be bothered to look into it when I just needed to open some files. I've been meaning to work on a Messages extractor for a real back-up and search, and the one I found is PHP but doesn't like working with the open DB, and copying the DB works, but then doesn't do the images. If I had more than 3 functioning braincells, this should be easy to fix. I would object less if the change was done more to produce a lean OS and actually improved security, but it isn't. In fact, the opposite: the official store is crippled software or outright scams, the OS is gigantic, and the command line tools package is gigantic on top of that, and required for homebrew which is just another layer of overhead. Even after updating the command line tools, homebrew is still complaining they are out of date. Also, I apparently have git installed via homebrew, which might explain why the OS updates stopped removing it. In conclusion, millennials are terrible and everything is terrible. This has been my TED Talk.
I hit #2 Global for Daily Challenge in Mini Motorways. It's not going to last, as it is only in the 2k range and the pros can hit 4k, but I'm still proud of it. I don't know how to get much higher than that, though. Everything fails at the same time because it doesn't seem able to get them all off the lots of the skyscrapers. [Fell to #137, top 2%] [Next day's challenge, top 1%, 3k, but still failed everywhere when not enough cars get out]
Warframe New War: More gross body horror as usual, but now also horribly depressing. Strong thematic story, nice cameo appearance by an Entrati. I appreciated the dead spider plants. (Each withered in a different way!) Requires you to have a railjack and necromech, but doesn't really do much with them, or even your frame. (Wish the railjack could have a useful crew! [I might not have set up the crew correctly. It's much better when you give them jobs.] Was still glad I put the effort into leveling the necromech, even though I forgot and left the leveling archgun in.)(Speaking of which, farming toroids with a mech is easy! If still pointlessly time consuming.) One thing that absolutely cheeses the last fight: the regen arcane. I was hopping around like an unkillable bunny rabbit rather than bother with the stance dance.
Anime Winter 2022 First episode Review Not actually new, but showed up on Crunchyroll or ~/Downloads: Given how oddly terrible both Crunchyroll and Funimation are at simulcast queues (the concept of new, and everything, respectively), I wonder if the big releases might signal a move to Netflix-style dumps. Also considered "Taishou Otome Otogibanashi"
2022-01-09
2022-01-02
Multiple crashes a day, and with the dock unplugged, so the week it seemed to be working was probably just a coincidence. A great start to a new year. Related bit of irritation: I tried to change the terminal icon to the NeXTSTEP terminal icon, noticed the admin/su doesn't have access to it. I'm all for the protected OS volume, but that doesn't really need to extend to the Terminal app? Or at least the UI elements?
Binchou-tan in a rice sack
I'd like an Aptera, but I'm not sure how well it could do the roads around here with those little boots on the front wheels. Rural roads all seem to be nicer than mine, though, so it might do better as a shack car, as long as there wasn't much of a driveway.
I forgot to come up with a new site design, but it is thematically appropriate that the Zima Blue get a little bigger every time, anyway. (I should go back and put a tiny one in previous years!)
I may have actually retired. (FIRE!, although its not great to have the most cash right before the transitory inflation era.) It's not what I'd hoped for, though. I'm mostly mentally nonfunctional. Nothing I think or do can be trusted, and I have the long-Covid/cronic fatigue energy envelope. I may never achieve Project Binchou-stan's relatively modest goal of living in a shack in the woods. The doctor keeps sending me for expensive tests for the cancer but not hearing me about the thing that made me quit the job that would have paid for the tests. All so very depressing.

2021 Drivel