Above: Poster detail, The High Rollers Burlesque Company. Details on The High Rollers and how to obtain high-resolution free digital copies of High Rollers posters here.

jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec

Finished Uncharted 4 which is on sale at the moment. Haven’t touched earlier versions, I don’t think they’re available for the pc. This one was pc-ported in late 2022. Early in the game, you’re tasked with playing a popular old-tyme videogame device named Crash Bandicoot during a “home” scene. I never played Crash Bandicoot, you run toward the screen so you can’t see where you’re going. My thought while playing: “Well, this is just bugnuts awful. I’m so glad this is a one-off and no one ever did this ever again.” [SFX: haunting foreshadowing wind whistles through empty cavern]

The gameplay is basically identical to the Tomb Raider series (I don’t which is copying from which or if they’re both copying from an earlier source, or etc), down to the annoying pitons (just ... the whole piton experience was a net negative one with the timing and whatnot). I felt better about roping in Uncharted (the protagonist’s hands get all grabby when he’s in reach of a reach, so you’re not just hoping for the best and launching to doom) than Tomb Raider, and there is no weapon/etc upgrade skill tree, for better or for worse.

I spent quality time wondering if I should go with gun X from a fallen enemy that I murdered or stick with gun Y, the gun that I killed him with. Since there’s no gun guide on the Unchartered fandom wiki and I’m too lazy to go hunting, I snapped to a “gun with most bullets equals most fun” rubric. You were allowed one handgun and one ... bigger gun. You couldn’t grab two AKs, or two RPGs, or even two handguns. Between major sections you would lose your chosen gun, I can’t remember if it was every time, but it happened enough that it probably was a thing. Sometimes I’d try switching between two guns and the old gun would disappear on the ground. “Huh. Choice is easy now.”

Shooting felt a little glorky, if you know what I mean. I felt like ~17.2% of the shots I fired should have hit when they didn’t, though the stats said I was hitting 35% which is in line w/my usual situation. But cover was annoying. Pull up behind a solid pillar, and shots that are clearly whizzing by you also cause damage. On top of this, your NPC pals occasionally would hole up behind cover exactly where you wanted to be. So you could either hold a non-"locked” position behind them, or find another less-good angle. They would also sometimes try to shoot enemies through walls, or continually miss after firing at one person for a long time while I just sat around waiting for a safer clip-pick-up time. We have an early entry in the worst sentence of 2024 contest, everyone [FX: party favors party favoring]. (New year’s resolution: do less with less)

Normally I wouldn’t have even mentioned the death scenes. I die a lot. But thanks to Tomb Raider, I have a low bar. Here’s a surprise: less gruesome deaths than Tomb Raider! Seriously, guys, get some help. Some health plans in the USA will actually pay for “non-continual” psychological counselling. You can have a problem, but it better not be a lifelong problem, that’s not covered. Adventure awaits: level up on phone trees!

The plot was serviceable, points off for [FX: spoilers inbound] chief antagonist actually saying protagonist-will-not-shoot-us after you’ve shot up 100+ of his underlings. Serious weird surreal points off for the whole “we’re chasing this treasure because this psycho guy helped my brother break out of jail” and you actually do that, you’re the brother for awhile and you break out of jail with the psycho guy and he’s all “I want that treasure or I will kill you lol rofl” and it is revealed that the brother was actually lying and the psycho guy died months before. So that whole jail break sequence you played out was a fictional story told w/in the “real world” of the plot. But I was there, man.

Triple-A Game: Okay you’re in prison and there’s a prison break, right? And you’re in a group of escapees. And the other escapees, they’re yelling at you because you’re just ... slowly walking. Not even a regular-paced walk. “Hurry up! Come on!” Over and over. It’s very dramatic, the way you saunter through the halls with this weird posture like you’re amped on looking for change on the floor extremely methodically while everyone else is shooting up the place way ahead of you.
Key bindings: “Run"? What’s that?
[ten minutes later]
Triple-A Game: Okay, you’re in a different prison and there’s a -second- prison break, right? And you’re in a group of ... just use the roll. It’s faster.
Me: Combat roll, got it.
Key bindings: It’s just “roll.” You can use it any time.
Me: Any time I want to look like a total dickhead constantly rolling through the prison like a fuckin’ boozed-up stunt clown during a shoot-out, yeah? Running was too “high tech” back in 2016?
Triple-A Game / Key bindings: [FX: staring]

Struggling to lift a gate or move a shelving unit by continually/quickly hitting “E” got old, really fast. It was not a challenge that added anything to immersion or gameplay enjoyment. If I stopped, then we all sat around looking at the gate etc. Same mechanic for breaking an enemy’s hold etc. “Oh no, I am incapable of hitting ‘E’ quickly.”

Uncharted 4 for all the chatter about it being “almost open world” felt more like a rail than some of Tomb Raider. The latter even had a lick of trading/money management thrown in to at least one of the titles. With Uncharted you come across a large abandoned town/settlement/whatever and immediately you will be shown/told that your destination is whatever-the-farthest-thing-away-from-you-is-which-is-also-the-tallest-and-or-biggest.

The entire treasure/pirate story was entertaining, all done up with real pirates that really existed. Though ... liberties were taken wrt their capabilities and amount of plunder plundered (game: “vast, just crazy-go-nuts”). Fun game fact: pirates had proximity mine technology in the 17th century. Interesting puzzles, litle too easy, little too much hand-holding (I played on the default “moderate” setting). Characters don’t repeat phrases over and over ... though, on the other hand, at one point someone said something clue-y during a bout of gunfire so it was lost to me. Compromise: make a “What?” command.

If something is chasing you, how do you convey that in a game? You could get the thing on screen with the protagonist, or you could show it in rear-view mirrors if the protagonist is in a car, or split-screen, or a picture-in-picture, or with sound, or with cuts, or with camera angles, or let the player move the camera around so they can see it, or you could fucking go Crash Bandicoot on everyone’s ass.

The thing with Crash Bandicoot is that you only participate in that one game mode, running toward your gaming IRL self. With Uncharted 4, when the switch to “running-toward” occurs, the control layout changes. Wait, does this mode have a name. [FX: looks at wiki] Why the hell is this thing a novel “The majority of the game takes place from a third-person perspective in which Crash moves into the screen.” They don’t have a name for this concept because it is ass. “... moves into the screen.” Ugh, phrasing. So. At one point in the game, you’re riding as a passenger on a motorcycle, and a truck is chasing you. You fire on the truck with your gun while moving into the screen. The truck eventually blows up. “Well, good thing that was brief.” Sections later, you’re on foot moving into the screen. There’s the same type of truck. Which way to go? Who knows, and who can remember how the controls are mapped. Seriously, I’m writing this now and I can’t remember if they flipped the controls when they switched to Bandicootview (there, I’ve christened the garbage) or if they kept it the same. Doesn’t matter, either way it takes time for your brain to work out the details, or maybe just my brain. Maybe my brain isn’t plastic enough. [FX: applies brain plasticity test, passes] Nope, that’s not it, turns out it’s just a stupid idea. The truck enthusiastically drives over you twenty+ times. The ragdoll death sequences are the most dynamic in the game. “Got some distance on that one.” “Oh here’s a side alley I could just --” Truck: “LOL NO” I don’t remember how I figured out what the program wanted me to do. Truck driving through me over and over and over again. Felt like a puppet, started disassociating, earth below me. “What is this?” At least GTA5 had a “skip bullshit mission” button, I mean, except for the torture scene (again, your USA health service provider may have co-payment severely-limited mental wellness shopportunities, check your five-inch thick contract volume II). Section going out with a least-enjoyable game portion award 2023.

If you’re in a convoy-type battle what happens if you’re taking too long to clear it? With Uncharted, they just re-loop the same sequence over and over. It’s a long bit, most people wouldn’t notice, but ... there was this bug. I jumped into an enemy car. Or that is, I almost jumped in. I froze right before I landed in the passenger seat. Couldn’t move/shoot/take damage, just look around with the mouse. And we kept rolling. So I let it go, out of curiosity. Looped for ten minutes. My enemy driver was courteous, but did not get me to my destination; five stars. Ran through it again, no problem.

That’s another thing. I’m never going to play this again. I replayed the three most recent Tomb Raiders once each. But this one, I tried re-visiting with some “bonus” hacks you can activate (infinite ammo, anti-gravity, etc) to go missed-treasure/journal-entry hunting (the protagonist keeps a journal w/pretty stylin’ drawings, does not take any photos except to drive the plot) but I just didn’t feel like doing the endless roping/pitoning/playing as child-you (that comes up twice) slog to get to the giant abandoned town, for example. Additionally, you cannot skip any cut scene at all. Maybe this was a transfer artifact, oops, it worked on the Playstation? Yeah, that’s it, he convincingly lied to himself because who doesn’t have a scene-skip in 2018). Maybe a “online video” person has recorded just the journal images (full online playthrough videos are ten hours, not going through that just to find 20ish journal images). The treasures (bottom-of-barrel collectible, does not affect metric/plot in any way other than “Treasures acquired”) were odd; a large majority of them were in a small rooms just off the main trail, and every one of them had an identical glint you could see from ... forever away. Didn’t really feel ... worth the bother.

PS: Don’t make the main antagonist look/sound like Rob Schneider.

PPS: There’s another campaign (Uncharted: The Lost Legacy) included w/the Steam PC version, two different main characters, set in India. Better main character, more interesting map (open-world, you pick where to go/what to tackle), more interesting puzzles/side quests. Two timed events with generous slop (so far) (I hate timed events, thank you no. “Do a thing, but faster” “or, shove your Taylorism up your ass”). Melee still a problem, but I’m uninterested in melee in general so maybe it’s superlative melee, doesn’t matter and I wouldn’t know, not enough experience with it. Still has that damn truck though. No Bandicootvision or whatever I called it as of yet. Occasional bouts of “you’re supposed to crash though this building run over here, the floor collapses while you’re being fired on” and I find some sort of refuge somewhere where I can’t get hit and the game continues with the dramatic soundtrack. I enjoy stuff like this too much, more than playing the game as intended. Main playing rubric these days: “How do I ... screw with this.” Especially when characters try to give me pointers. [FX: coming up on enemy camp] “We should sneak around/through/try not to disturb them ...” What? Did you say “shoot the sniper immediately to take out their long game, then let the rest of the brave boys funnel into our crossfire even though you’re only contributing about 5% of the total body count? On it.” [FX: pewwwwwwwwww; pew pew pew]

Which reminds me, somewhere in the middle of the campaign my boon companion, my sidekick, my thorn spouted off for awhile about culling tactics and I’m all shut UP maybe shoot a guy once an hour and we’ll talk about “tactics.” Why the game people thought that would fly in any regard in or out of the game is beyond me. ~"Your shooting sucks.” “YOU’RE SHOOTING AT A WALL HALF THE TIME AND LET’S TALK ABOUT THE EXCRUCIATINGLY PAINFUL TWO MINUTES YOU SPENT DANCING AROUND RIGHT NEXT TO THE DEATHTRUK® GOING IN AND OUT OF “COVER” EVEN THOUGH IT COULD SHOOT YOU ALL THE WHILE HOW ABOUT THEM ‘TACTICS’ YOU CHILD”

That’s another recommendation, if you have a sidekick. A whistle. “Come over here and stand right fucking next to me ‒ DON’T TAKE MY SPOT ‒ because your algorithm is embarrassing me and my gameplay. You are heartbreaking my immersion, program segment.” That plus the “What?” command.

“What?” repeat last spoken bit of dialogue
“Whistle/heel/come” stop playing in bulletland and come take cover beside me
“Flank” go around to their side/back and do your sad little plinking

I just made your upcoming open-world sporadic-combat programmed-sidekick game 2.8% better. Standard 8% vig. Godspeed.

What A Combo (Fern Brady) “Fusion Food Is Bollocks” / Chef Big Has (34min)

Horne Section Podcast: Wind the Bobbin Up (Greg Davies; Alex Horne; 34sec).

Far Cry 4 is busy. “You know those moments of silence between things going haywire,” the designers apparently thought. “People hate those.” You are fighting in some sort of red team-blue team dethrone-the-fake-king situation in “Kyratt.” It is open-world-with-campaign. There is shooting. There is hunting. There is ... no rest. You may decide to creep up on a base to take it. While you are gathering intel, animals will probably attack you, random events will overtake you, your hired merc keeps shouting while you’re trying to stay in cover, eagles claw at your face, the fearsome honey badger wants your liver on a plate. It’s a bit too much. Not exaggerating here, start event A, it will be interrupted by events B, C, and D. It’s an odd decision. You can’t ratchet the frequency down, setting it to “easy” doesn’t seem to have an effect. You start to learn how to avoid events both “in-game” ‒ standing out in the open for awhile gets you an eagle attack, so you hang out in cars or next to buildings/trees ‒ and “out-of-game.” If you take a base, there are (a) small after-victory attempts by the enemy to re-take the base, and when you leave the base on foot/in a car, there is a major attempt. This is ridiculous because you’re usually leaving to go do some other thing, and you keep getting interrupted, over and over and over so that you’re in three+ deep. I reflexively now fast travel away from the base after grabbing one.

The random events are a mixed bag. There’s always some villagers being gnawed on by a bear or clawed at by an eagle. These aren’t even “random events,” it’s just ... what happens, almost all the time within earshot/just out of eyeshot. Rest assured, you’ll be just far enough away that when you arrive on the scene everyone is dead, or you’ve got a half-second to take a potshot at aggro eagle #827. There’s a bunch of shooting just over there, it sounds like a war, and you arrive it’s two of your comrades against one enemy. You potshot him, and think “ah, peace has restored to the kingdom. Now it will be quiet for at least a minute” and immediately your buddies start madly shooting into the air to celebrate ... your “victory.” “Did someone say ‘fast travel’ again?”

The map marks everything, but finding the main campaign or specific events/etc is sometimes difficult. “Can I not find the main campaign because I haven’t advanced yet in the open world enough to trigger the next waypoint, or can I not find the main campaign because it’s a small icon on a huge map that is sometimes 90% buried beneath other icons.”

Hunting is a total drag and part of the core game, you can’t skip it. It’s all the time. You can turn off all the “collecting” animations which includes skinning. This has the added bonus of reducing your time stuck in animations while a honey badger chews on your leg. Honey badger doesn’t wait for no one.

Weapon loadout is limited and annoying. (A) you are going to do a hunting event to get a bigger bag for your loot. You set up your loadout at base camp: your best weapons. You arrive at the starting point. “Grab this bow, because it only counts if you shoot the animal with a bow, because of course.” But I ... have a bow. You couldn’t tell me when we started? You can grab the bow, but your bow is better. So you start to back out. “Oh, you want to quit the mission entirely?” [FX: eye roll] (B) The UI for the loadout is ... incredibly poor. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if I am equipping multiple weapons on my person, there should be one page where all of that is selectable/clickable/whateverable. “If you want to modify your large weapon, you can find it in the list of weapons in the “specialized” category, and your regular gun is in the “weapon” sub-page, and your sidearm is somewhere in the “sidearm” page. Then if you want to change any of these, you can click on the “holster” selection on these sub-pages to open up another page specifically for that particular loadout which ... ugh. One page, no scroll bars, no sub-pages.

The collectibles range from a quick roadside pullover to spending 15 minutes of anguish trying to work your way over a mountain face. Roping is a tad more advanced than Uncharted and Tomb Raider: The Tomb Raidering. If you die, you warp back to base (for the most part), so you can do it all again. I passed on these opportunities when offered.

The skirmishes/campaign battles worked for me after I ratcheted down to “easy.” Challenging, not ridiculous. My reflexes are poor and the fog of war continues to vex. I spend about 20% of my time running around yelling “who the dang is shooting me?” There’s a little lopsidedness in that the enemy can see you with pixel perfect aim, and you’re looking at ... some bushes. It feels like a touch of the “in cover, getting shot” problem with Uncharted 4 when you’re inside a hut and they’re getting a ridiculous angle on you through the window. Some of the advanced combat moves I can “earn” I anticipate never using so I’m not bothering to “earn” them. “To attack two guys in cover when one has a flamethrower and the other is reading comics, use the Hyped-Up Crazypants syringe to gain a 27.3% increase in head-bonking-coconutability by pressing W-H-U-T then move the mouse into the seven o’clock position.” Again, I play the long game with snipers and throwables; they are good about sniffing you out, firing mortars/charging to make you work for it. With this game I’ve also taken a shine to running full-bore into central HQ and holing up in a corner. Sometimes it works. The merc is useless. You can spend good money for a merc upgrade. You send out a merc, he’s all whoop whoop shouting, sometimes driving straight into camp. Seconds later, a pop-up: “The mercenary is dead.” Yeah, yeah. The computer fought itself and won, and lost.

It is important to note that this is a proper “open world” game, not like Uncharted 4 rail world. Go do what you want to do, leave the main campaign hanging for awhile or plow straight through it. Some events/items are time-dribbled, including a large portion of the map. Some performative bonuses are tied to optional events I will be skipping, like arena combat. Some things become unbalanced depending on your style of play. I have been accruing skill points for awhile but have nothing to spend them on, even though there’s still ~14 skill upgrades available. They’re all either “do this main campaign mission [which is 10+ missions away]” or “do two of these side missions [that you are not going to do]” or “take over two bases without anyone noticing” which given how quick the enemy spots you sneaking about ... that’s too tedious.

There are occasional guffaws. Enemies yelling at you that they’re going to relish the opportunity of killing you suddenly being mauled by an errant bear, say. Or being rhino-shoved. I found my favorite vehicle in the game, a Tuk-tuk (you cannot own/spawn vehicles; yes of course they occasionally despawn when you’re in the middle of nowhere), and was putting along a mountain path when I passed a rhino that was charging another occupied car. “Well, it will be busy with that, I’m safe in my little tin can.” Then the rhino got bored with its toy and charged me. Turns out: Tuk-tuk is slower than rhino. The rhino bashed the hell out of the Tuk-tuk and I went rolling/flying half-off the cliff. It was like the ending of (spoiler inside spoiler) The Italian Job except with a car smaller than the film’s iconic Minis. I waited around for the deathblow, but the rhino trundled off to despawn somewhere.

Far Cry 4 is currently on sale.

top ten 2023 has finally finished slotting ... no particular order

- dogs
- coffee
- finding old local italian grocery store
- baguettes
- finishing projects
- “laying down the law” category tie: new keyboard / the tactile feel of using a grease pencil & resultant grease pencil markings
- cleaning electric razor
- sleep
- banana pancakes
- doin’ “art”

Horse racing to end in Macau. “Wonder if they shut down the dog racing place I shot in 2004 ...”

South China Morning Post August 14 2022 [CW: animal cruelty]: How one dog helped end greyhound racing in Macau, and how he lived out his life free from the cruel sport

Voice of a Star Wars Fan (with English subtitles) Reduced version (20min).

See this post at Daring Fireball after you watch the film (thanks to jon).

Far Cry 5 is a problem (I’ve lengthened/updated this ridiculous review; some of this is repetitive just like the game because I’m too lazy to edit it down (as opposed to being intentionally annoying), got a lot on my plate after bugout #4 bone appetite). It’s another Ubisoft open world game with some sort of malevolent society/organization mucking about and you alone must stop thems. This time, a family cult of four members: father, two sons, one fake daughter who is running her own sub-fiefdom/killing people just like the boys, apparently against her will. Their old-timey religious core is “scary thing coming, get in our tiny sadistic killing machine club/bunker or die.” I have no interest in religous nutcase ramblings, so much so that I ended up just skipping all the cut scenes after it was clear that it was just the family pushing the same “join our ‘faith’ or die” button over and over and over. Additionally they’ll just contact you on your walkie-talkie and spout that olde-time family religious nonsense so the only way to kill that is to mute the damn game. Don’t care. Take back land, remove culty nut bags. Check. I don’t believe “actual” dieties are mentioned at all, but again, skipped the cut scenes.

The family has taken over the whole place, using farms etc to manufacture their potent mind-altering/controlling drug, “bliss,” that they are generously distributing everywhere w/o consent like the U2/Apple thing, including the water supply. They have songs. “Religious” songs. That they blast from speaker trucks, buildings, radios, etc.

I started an annoyance list for Far Cry 4 and it’s mostly the same thing for Far Cry 5.

[x] you are strong as an ox; non-combat npcs get tapped by a car/attacked by a bird/etc and die
[x] follow mission
[x] follow mission: “you’re too close” (two seconds later) “you’re too far, you’re losing them here comes mission fail you shit”
[x] EXTREMELY tiny/fiddly activate-switch area [DEFUSE BOMB (click/hold one button) “you’re too close” “you’re too far” oh no the bomb exploded]
[ ] enemy shoots you in full cover (hey they fixed a thing)
[x] can accidentally injure friendlies when attempting other operation
[x] no devoted map icon for personal vehicle (bonus: icons for random vehicles)
[x] bizarrely easy to trade your kitted-out weapon for random dead npc floor garbage
[x] no place to sit other than vehicles
[x] saving npcs next to impossible
[ ] npcs panhandle ‒ no facility to give money/food/etc
[x] random attacks w/no agency (instant animated cut scene + health reduction/death)
[x] blinking item to attend to, but functionality for action is off (loot blinks, your inventory is full)

Trading floor weapons drove me nuts. Happened all the time. [FX: goes into intense firefight] I have a pistol? YES OF COURSE I WANTED TO TRADE MY UPGRADED M60 FOR A PISTOL OR MAYBE YOU MADE THE “TRADE WEAPONS WITH DEAD GUY” KEY THE SAME AS THE “LOOT DEAD GUY” KEY yes I could re-map the key thank you (UPDATE: You cannot re-map the key; the “pick up loot” key will always be the “trade good gun for shit-gun-that-is-right-next-to-the-loot” key). I can do a thousand things but they apparently can’t get people to play-test because it was the same damn thing for Far Cry 4.

The busyness of the game was another strange decision. There are main missions, side missions, collectibles, and random missions that occur in specific spots. Many, many spots, all over the map. So many random missions they sort of bleed over each other. You can be saving a kidnapee in one random mission and then npcs from another nearby random mission go “hey, we’re joining your fun.” Which was actually sort of enjoyable. The odd decision is that these “spots” are never “cleared,” just like Control. You can save someone, turn around 180, then turn back, and there will be another kidnapee there with some baddies or whatever random scenario barfs up. Infinitely. Until you kill the major baddie controlling the area, it’s just endless random missions like this.

Additionally, when one of these “good” npcs get knocked and you’re not right next to them, forget it, they will die just before you’re able to save them. Over and over. So the missions keep respawning, and you can’t save knocked people ... it sours you on dealing with these missions at all. I happily drove by tons of these events, honking my horn. “Good luck being a hostage!” Some good npcs will barf out locations of loot stashes which are nice mini-missions, so I started half-ass saving a few of them.

Another odd decision: you pay for everything. The people that you’re constantly saving, they make you pay for the bullets. “Aren’t we under siege here? Can we just not do a capitalism right now?” And you level up your firepower pretty quickly, the endless garbage guns scattered around don’t make any sense. Game is sort of imbalanced in this manner with all consumables etc. The UI for weapon loadout etc is atrocious, I don’t understand this industry-wide obsession with burying everything under sub-sub-menus.

To make the game 7.2% more palatable, I tasked myself with taking photos of tranquil scenes between firefights.

(love that little eagle tchotchke)

Melee really sucks. I’m not a melee person, I like to deliver my urgent metal-based communications from far away if possible. But you can run/walk up to an oblivious npc while hammering on the “punch that jagoff” button so that the millisecond you’re in range you have the drop on ’em ... but yet, over and over again, the game will override your initiative. “No, sorry, the NPC not only realized you were approaching but conversely got the drop on you.” Melee, core mechanic, has the value of garbage.

I like the open world part of it. Everything else, the plot, the “ideas,” it can all go pack sand. There has been plenty written about the “politics” and how they neatly avoided taking a stand on anything. But what made me quit the game was the loss of agency, and the endings (I read ahead). You can be in any setting, doing anything, and you will randomly be kidnapped/drugged/transported. You can be hiding in a small room behind a filing cabinet in a building (I literally did this) and somehow they’ll get a shot of “bliss” on you, you pass out, and now you’re a prisoner. It’s ... kind of sad, that this was sort of rammed through. “Well they -have- to do this.” The game will literally force you to participate in one of three different types of ridiculous scenarios that you cannot skip/avoid. One of them is timed, my favorite. As far as I can tell, if you can’t finish in time, you never get out of the loop. Each of the three children of the main baddie “captures” you three, four times. So that’s ... nine-twelve times during the game you have to deal with this shit. “You know, I was running around in a field with my companion bear and dog a minute ago. Now I’m failing a speedrun and being chewed out by a religious psychopath.” The third time I did the timed speedrun, I had to run it over twenty times before I finished it. Have I mentioned how much I hate timed garbage. The fourth time the initial speedrun room fucking came up, I quit the game and uninstalled it.

Not bothering talking about all the twisted-ass shit in it ... we get it, you’re edgy because edgy gets the column inches or whatever platitudes your beancounters barfed out between coke sessions. The endlessly repeating Xtian-like songs that are part of the plot, the endless cut scenes of mass-murdering religious knobs explaining their philosophies ... ugh. Had to turn the sound off so much. Easily the worst gaming experience ever. Apparently one of the endings (spoiler alert here) is also you losing control of your actual game character! What FUN. Your character just goes off and finishes the game for you. Heck, why even allow input at all? Turn the game into a movie.

After I uninstalled it, I started reading around to see what people had thought of it. Three things: one, some people really hated it in the same fashion. I feel validated. Anyway. Second, some people liked it and spouted off about how the main characters were right or had a point. Uh. I stopped counting the number of people strung up on billboards or tortured to death, or slaughtered in their own houses, after about 100. I’d say I probably saw 200+ mangled bodies, tons of cages, implements, troughs of blood, etc. Just wondering what was “right” about that, that’s all. What I’m saying is that I use games as an escape from people exactly like this both in and out of the game. So really what I’m saying is that if you have an open-world game in which you want to use “real life” and really get in there and dig deep, maybe make an option to turn all of that off. I’m full, all full up, mmmm that was yummy! No thank you! Beancounter: “But ... the gritty ... so controversial ...” Me: [FX: asleep because huge meal of real-world horrible] “mimimi ... zzzz ... mimimimi”

The third thing was my realization: “oh right, there are probably mods to help me with my inadequacies as an elite gamer of gaming.” Don’t believe any of the AI websites that all repeatedly crow “you just have to add this parameter to Steam and that enables mods etc,” none of that works. There’s a whole working Far Cry modding system for all the Far Crys. Cries. Anyway. Very convenient, nicely put together, solves a lot of the most annoying problems like the “arcade guy” npc who plays a video game in a lot of the establishments spouting off banal platitudes about the arcade version of the game. “This is the best game ever!” Over and over while you’re on the roof trying to have a nice snipe. You can click a checkbox: “remove annoying arcade guy.” Done. They didn’t have god mode in the mod menu, but there were enough other options like doubling your speed, infinite ammo, etc, that combined was more than enough to get me over the hump of the annoying-can’t-skip/quit repetitive mission which got me into an annoying-can’t-skip/quit constantly-spawning npcs boss fight but mods again saved the day.

PS: The sheer fucking gall of using a commercial song for the bullshit Manchurian Candidate trigger is ... amazing. The religious nutcake opens a simple windup music box and then the song plays. It should have been a novel music box melody you utter drips. Thank you for using one song, over and over, for your fake psyop horseshit? For making me hate an actual extant song? Is that something everyone talked about at the game design meetings? “You know, it would be like the game is infecting their brain in real life ooooh.” I tried muting music specifically during the awful timed mission and the awful endless-spawning npcs mission after that, and wouldn’t you know it, it doesn’t mute the commercial song at all. Huh. Later, after you finally manage to get back to the open world, you will encounter radios “randomly” playing this song. Mod menu to the rescue again. You can kill just the religious songs, or all the songs coming from radios etc. Thank you modders.

PPS: There’s a mission called “Special Delivery” (I think) and you drive a couple to a midwife for an emergency npc baby delivery. Some people are having problems with a bug, but I’ve not seen this particular variant/solution mentioned online. The pre-planned route you need to take w/a truck runs through a second mission’s designated area, pigs juiced on the cult’s drugs or some such. The program errantly flips the current mission to this pig mission. Since you’re driving a truck full speed to get that damn baby babied, you almost immediately drive out of the mission zone and fail, and it sends you right back to the beginning of the emergency childbirth mission. Endless loop. You can’t exit the driver seat, you’re on rails. You can’t quit the mission (not sure why). If you stop and try to clear the pig mission, the childbirth mission is still on a timer and you fail that. Back to start of loop. The way to handle this is (1) do the pig mission first ... or, if you’re already locked in the Special Delivery mission loop ... (2) stop in the pig mission area when it switches, then (surprisingly) you can open the map and fast travel to the farm with the pig mission (it’s probably the closest fast travel point on the map), thus escaping the pregnants couple and putting that mission on hold w/o failure. Finish the pig mission, then maybe ignore the childbirth mission forever. The child will have a great story about a driver disappearing just before they were born in an idling truck. Since I’m not going to finish the game (awful endings #1 #2 #3 avoided; there are no “good” endings, just endings that make you chuck your pc out a window), I am not bothering to get yelled at by an expectant couple for the nth time. Wait, are there any cliffs near that mission? (Uncharted 4 actually has a “hidden” achievement for something similar ... just saying, Ubisoft, embrace the random stupid) Additionally I suppose you could ignore the wayfinding and veer around the pig mission, but that would entail trial-and-error or looking up locations etc and a lot more of the soon-to-be parents yelling at you to correct course, assuming it doesn’t fail you for creative detours. It’s a very Grand Theft Auto type of mission.

PPPS: There’s a bug with (at least) the bear companion, “Cheeseburger,” when he is knocked. Sometimes, he can’t get back up, you can’t revive him, he’s just sort of stuck in that state. You can pet him, but you end up in an animated sequence petting the air, because he’s sort of knocked/not knocked simultaneously. One time a truck came barreling at him because he was frozen-knocked in the middle of the road. BOOM. Cheeseburger gets up. It’s my favorite bug fix ever. “Hold on Cheese, I gotta find a truck.”

PPPPS: You may wish to change your enter/exit vehicle key to something that isn’t by the “refill helicopter ammo” key. I’ve jumped out accidentally at least four times.

PPPPPS: There’s an arcade section in which randos can edit maps and offer them up for inspection. The maps themselves are amazing, the variety and amount of raw material offered up is done quite well ... I saw a satellite dish from the Watchdogs series (maybe they carried that forward and I just didn’t notice until now ... wait no “Alongside the almost 5000 Assets from Far Cry 5, map creators have access to multiple different assets from other Ubisoft Games like previous Far Cry titles, Assassins Creed games, and Watch Dogs”).

There are problems with this arcade map-creating version. No milestones ‒ you die, you start over. Some maps are very linear, and 90% of the time I am not up for the re-do. Also the enemy AI is very basic (moreso than the game, it felt like), and there doesn’t seem to be any way to change that. “One of our teammates was one-shotted a half-mile from here! Everyone converge on position immediately!” Or an NPC will be screaming that they’re coming to get you; you turn the corner/crest the ridge etc and they’re standing stock-still facing the wrong way, toward a dead-end or some such. They have three modes that they all do simultaneously as a group (for the most part). Sitting around, converging, or “spreading out” when they can’t find you. Fucking PAC-MAN had more strategy and personality. Reddy was aggro, Pinky was into tunnels, Bluey was sort of abstract/random and Burnt Siennay (or, if you grew up playing a certain Pac-Man machine in a certain pizzeria literally next to an arcade in Metro Detroit in the mid-80s, HANGLY DON), I don’t know what that cat’s deal was but that’s FOUR DIFFERENT MODES.

The enemies all act the same way ... and they spout off the same (christo-fascist culto bullshit) lines from the game, repeatedly. In the past when this happened with other games (including Ubisoft titles) there were multiple languages to switch to before it drove me crazy. Yell at me in French that you’re going to kill me twice. Ooh so pretty! Not this game. No other spoken languages are available. No option to mute spoken lines. It wears at one. Update: You can change the entire game to another language in the Steam menu. But that’s not just vocals, it’s the UI as well. Easy to jump through the same broken UI as before, it worked a treat. About the only thing that I had to figure out ... there was an “O” on the compass. Nord Sud Est Ouest. Update update: I tried French, Italian, and Japanese. I liked Italian the most. The shouting was the least annoying for whatever reason.

There’s a rating system for the maps, and some highly-rated maps compensate for stupid AI in different ways ... there was one map in which you were on a skyscraper, fighting enemies on the skyscraper across the street. Another one peppered the map with enemies that had you pinned down immediately “we’re in a tight spot,” and so on. Doesn’t seem to be any interactions with the maps beyond opening doors/hatches (I ran into only two maps that used keys, and this was in an obvious/pretty much no-value-added manner). It doesn’t mark the ones you’ve tried (update: this has become #1 annoying aspect with a bullet) ‒ the UI/UX is garbage. Map maker names are given one screen that appears once; the only other way you’re going to get that name is if you mark it as a favorite (but you have to bounce back to the pause menu to do so; there’s a key that pulls up the map creator information but you’re never told what that key is, it’s just ... sitting in the keybinding sub-menu). Conversely, enemy counts and generic messages like “GET TO THE EXIT,” those have to appear on the game screen all the time. You can’t search for the Ubisoft-created maps with the term/author name “Ubisoft.” You can report a map for several reasons including getting stuck, but ... they’re toggles. “I got stuck.” Fookin’ WHERE AND HOW, mate.

It’s just a bunch of weird decisions that are combined into a potent slurry of wrong. Game UI in general is really starting to roil me. “Here’s another premiere AAA game design crewe with their hot-shit UI” [FX: wait staff lifts silver lid to reveal: yet another steaming pile]

Seriously. Here’s your first lesson in UI 101: Screens you use constantly shouldn’t change. Far Cry 5: Naw, when you click on this big box here before you start a map, it will get you to the solo menu, but if you click after backing out of a map, it will immediately start up another random map that you didn’t select at all! Isn’t that fun?

Additionally, they left “money” on the table wrt search. There should have been a “loadout” parameter wherein you could search for maps that started w/o guns or didn’t have any guns at all, so you knew it was fists only/didn’t have gunplay etc. Not a novel idea back then.

That said, here are some maps I enjoyed. You don’t need to type the entire name in most cases (typing just “escape,” for example, will get you plenty of escape-the-x type games). You can also search for “top rated” etc to weed out the weeds. I didn’t list any of the maps that were just ... nice environments. You definitely want to stick with the “journey” theme as well (watch out for maps with “vs.” or some other sort of indicator that it’s a map for multiple players; I don’t know why some people are slotting those types of maps into the “journey” category), there are way too many outposts/assaults/etc that are just “here are 40+ enemies gathered together.” Most outposts start w/~20 enemies that are tending the alarms; if you flub that (and you most likely will, the average map provides very little space to stealthily shut them off), boom, reinforcements. Now you’re shooting 40+ enemies in a small area. Same thing, over and over. I tried one map for laughs that post-alarm had 188 enemies; the problem was that the map was 90% inside a large building, and spawn points were inside the building as well. You’d be sitting somewhere “safe” and suddenly an npc or two would pop up right behind you, shooting. Highest number I’ve seen was about 210, and that was for a simple assault, no alarms. Yeah, nobody has time for that.

I also learned to skip forest-based journeys, that’s just a whole mess of they see you but you don’t see them. Segments in the woods, sure, but if it feels like the whole thing is going to be Guess Where That Guy is, I’m out. Same with zombies. They can either throw rocks at you or hit you/scratch you. Not a fan of melee in general, it’s especially not interesting w/this game. Additionally I recommend turning off the red enemy markers. Also avoid maps that do not have health regeneration. These tend to also not have healthkits lying around ... you end up running around for 20 minutes next to death. Your character has a short audio “shivering illness” loop and pulsing red-edge-of-screen effect that are both really annoying. Maybe you can turn that off, too lazy to switch back from Italian (I ended up liking the voice characterizations better than the French/Japanese versions) and hunt around at the moment.

I got to about page 38 or so of the highest-rated “journey” maps (I skipped about ... half of them) when there was a noticeable drop-off in quality.

• Difficult Choices [MapSwapper]. A bounty hunt. Unfortunately there’s some sort of bug, either with the map or the game in general, such that second/nth time around you are shown the little red markers for every person you “interacted” with the last time. It’s better without. Additionally, at the end, when you’re supposed to go to the exit ... don’t try to go directly to the yellow dot exit (it’s out-of-bounds), there’s a different route you take. It’s not obvious, but it’s a fun little map hunt. I figured it out accidentally, I was trying to revive a jetski on land after I gave up on finding the exit (the jetski worked and then it didn’t work. I have a brain the size of one-half of a hamster, and it’s not the half with a brain) I kept dying in different ways, I kept coming back. I was rewarded with a very weird (but short) endgame.

• Puzzled Escape [Feeno58]. Another one that has a “secret” “exit” though this one is marked really well. Once you do that, it’s ... endless enemies, close quarters, and you and your infinite supply of prox mines. There’s one part in which you grapple up a shaft and there are four+ frenz waiting for you that I’m calling dirty pool. Then another giant heaping of enemies.

• MJ4 ‒ Last Day on Earth (Puzzle Parkour) [Wertandrew2]. This is a “figure out how to advance” sort of puzzle. Unfortunately I couldn’t get past the bridge with the railroad cars, couldn’t get the next grappling hook.

• The Underground [Petercooper3555]. Another way to beef up the challenge ‒ tank the enemies. Like some other maps that have done this, there was also a helicopter w/weapons sitting around. “Huh, bullet sponge ... time to ramp up the firepower.”

• Escape the Volcano [AKAFootloose]. Nice pathing. One guy got stuck in the crags.

• Skyscraper whatever: most of the ones with “Skyscraper” in their name are ok. One has you pinned down at the start (Skyscraper v9).

• Far Cry Classic Fort [Muckibudenjoe9]. “Journey” themed. Red markers are turned off, and health kits are rare. Ammo for the most part is plentiful (same as ~95% of the maps). But at one point I was pinned down by two helis (I’ve only seen three maps with more than one heli) and ran out of all my ammo other than a little plinkin’ 45. Health was 1%. It was very dramatic, had to sneak back to the other side of the island where I started. But was manageable. That’s a hard balance, map designers usually err on the side of “fuck it, put another cache of ammo here.”

• Castle Keep Part 3 [predatorback2]. “Journey” themed. Nice olde-tyme weapons built-up town. Ran out of ammo for my favorite gun. There is no more pick-up ammo after the initial ammo, I believe. Just what you can scrounge from all the sleeping enemies.

• Montor Landing [Thane111]. This is a well-done small map with some surprises. I tend to play open maps very slowly, and because of that, I think I got the best possible playthrough. Really, most anything by user Thane111. They have a “knack” for making enjoyable maps. There is a search by user function (it’s the bottom line, if you’ve already switched to another language). Try “Broken Bridge” or “Port Dredge Updated” for a Thane111 map w/additional contributions.

• Black+Shadows ‒ Mission 1 [Map.Editor.Man]. This one also had a surprise, in that you start with two shooty companions who follow your lead. Just like the main campaign. On top of that, more surprises. I’ve not seen any of this in any other map ... there’s a youtube video of it as well, in case you get stuck. Search on “Map.Editor.Man” for other maps. I thought the companions were invincible but unfortunately one went MIA and I’m going to assume was killed by one of those goddamned missiles. RIP Sargeant-Comptroller Joseph “Joey” D. Bugnuts, Jr. (XXX put a good memorial quote here for joey like “all we are is dust in the wind” or some bullshit XXX)

• Surface tension [HalflifeHippy]. I like the maps that try to break away from most of the other entries. This one is sparse and has you scrambling on mountain ridge lines. Took me four tries to get it. You have plenty of time to consider the errors you make as you look up at the rapidly receding ridge line during your fall(s). “Yeah, that was my thing.”

• Crater Climbing [Parashade85]. This was the longest climbing-centric map I’ve encountered. Really nice way finding markers. Mixes it up ‒ tunnels, jumping, climbing, combat. Combat is light/sporadic, never dicey. It’s oddly not rated that highly, ymmv. Took me about an hour.

• Escape Tokyo Oneroom [ported-by-pb2]. Small map in one apartment building.

• Underground [Bob.Fergus]. I would probably just search on the author’s name, “Underground” is vague. Lot of those top-tier soldiers with the sideways walkin’ and the big, big gun. Bob has several maps; I also enjoyed Bob’s “Total War” which is an “assault” not a “journey” and even though there were up to three different mortars firing (I haaaate mortars) but sometimes you just have to not walk the path to walk the path, right? Right. Also try “Desolation.” Harder, maybe skip: “Three Bridges.” Especially skip “The four bridges” ... three mortars, 100+ enemies. 100+, that is, “if” you trigger the alarm (this is going to happen w/95% of the maps). I don’t remember which map it was, maybe a Bob.Fergus one, I went through hell to shoot one of the alarms and got the message: “six alarms remain.” I laughed myself sick. I don’t know the difference between “Cartel one shot” and “Cartel” but I was able to finish the latter. “James Kong 007” has room to fuck around. I suggest getting into a truck and driving around the prison, honking your little horn. Maybe frenz will come out and play! Pro tip: the gorillas don’t count as counted “enemies.” They’re just there to liven things up a bit. The weird spitting monster, that’s an enemy.

• Bunker [sasamune]. There is no bunker; this is 95% a climb up/around a skyscraper using a large number of game assets as untypical climbing material. I think every game with a map editor ends up with a few of these.

• crate city enm. No author listed, unfortunately. This is a great little environment that has a good feeling to it. Core of railroad freight cars, stacked high, your destination is the top. Little touches like a row of mailboxes really sold it. At this point I’m looking at the arcade editor, just getting a quick feel for how difficult things are and to appreciate the work people have put into these maps. One of the tips I keep seeing online is to add curves/hills/etc to your surrounding landscape. This one did not, but the flat landscape plus wind and fog really helped to sell the desolation.

• Far Cry Alyx [Saint Perkele]. Very small space, made more interesting than many larger maps by smart spawning and an interesting/intriguing environment backdrop.

• High Noon [various]. I tried using various terms to find high-rise maps (shooting in tight spots with this game is definitely more fair than in vegetation “cover” so “skyscaper” yes and “vietnam” no) and tripped over four “High Noon” maps. Each brings something different to the table. I enjoyed Fantomaso8’s version, it’s frenetic. There’s also one that has to be the smallest/quickest map available ‒ it’s one shoot-out.

CAN’T GET AWAY FROM IT ‒ EVERYBODY WANTS A PHONOGRAPH / Advertisement for highly-desired phonographs, Standard Talking Machine Co. Chicago (1906) Trade Magazine

is he suckin’ her hair
what is going on
Shreds HARD

RE: The free phonographs for your entire fuggin’ city. People could get “free” phonographs if they bought enough “not free” records, see explanation here. They also made the spindle larger to “lock in” sales. Whatever, capitalism [SFX: drill noise].

Cinemadelicatessen: Alreadymade [NL Trailer]. See also A Dutch Artist Is Delving Into the Murky Attribution of Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ per Greg.org.

[cardhouse] It is time to talk about these two posters.

People from all around the archipelago ask me what my favorite brand of canned spaghetti is and I have to say there’s no contest. It is TOPMOST brand.

Programmes for theatrical performances at the Grand Opera House and the London Opera House, London, Ont., 1897-1902 (week of April 14th, 1901): THE GREAT RAYMOND COMPANY / Now touring the world under direction of MAURICE F. RAYMOND. / Two-page pamphlet featuring a few paragraphs of a “Special Explanation to the Public” RE Mr. Raymond’s entertainment, “[...] presented to the public as an example of and practical duplication (but without any claim to spiritual, occult or supernatural agencies of any sort) of the deceptions of the World’s greatest mystery workers, the fabrications and inventions of seers and soothsayers of the past ages; and the delusions and trickery often practiced by modern Media [...] the people who do not care for the entertainment as a totality, but come thinking to have the future foretold, or the past revealed, or to see an exhibition of super-human knowledge, are requested-not to attend.”

The Vault (2010). Episode 0 of 17.

The Billboard, October 28 1922. “HIBRU” World’s Champion Rough Rider and ACrobatic Cowboy. DEFIES ALL THE LAWS OF GRAVITATION! / THE SENSATION OF THE AGE! / A spirited horse and a hard-bioled rider. Cowboy makes enormous LEAP THRU SPACE to back of rearing, charging Bronco! AND HE NEVER MISSES! [...] A RIOT! A KNOCKOUT! Will be the fastest selling novelty for DEMONSTRATORS, WINDOW WORKERS and STREETMEN that was ever created! [...] PRICE, $4.80 PER DOZEN

“Bullet time” sequence from The Matrix (1999).

Unintentional graphical madness created by overscanning, St. Louis Dispatch November 21, 1924.

Rough on Rats advertisement, Chemist and Druggist June 15 1882. Dwelling House Size, 25c. POISON! The thing desired found at last! SOMETHING RATS WILL EAT. Rats are smart but Rough on Rats beats them. Clears out a building in one application. SURE DEATH to RATS, MICE, FLIES, Vermin, Ants, Insects, Roaches, Water Bugs, Bed Bugs, &c. Made only by EPHRAIM S. WELLS, Chemist, JERSEY CITY, N.J. For sale by Druggists and Storekeepers in 15 & 25c. boxes. LABEL REGISTERED. [etc] See also The Human Harms and Many Meanings of “Rough on Rats” and Rough on Rats (and biles, and piles, and corns ...)

HELICOPTER FLYING APPARATUS Charles H. Zimmerman, Nichols, Conn. Application August 10, 1943, Serial No. 498,075

Animal cracker sheep with “666” curlicues. It was as delicious as all the other non-satan animal crackers.

am i going to hell oh jeez

Piet Schreuders: The Paris locations of Le Ballon Rouge.

Paolo from Tokyo: Day in the Life of a Japanese All-Night Izakaya Restaurant Worker.

Rick Beato: George Benson ‒ The Greatest Guitarist/Singer of All Time. I’m only ten minutes in, Benson has a great memory of his beginnings learning to play at the age of seven.

Trash Theory: The Critical Kicking of Slowdive (“When The Sun Hits”) / New British Canon.

The industry was brutal back then (still is, always is). I listened to shoegaze but not devotedly ... Slowdive was barely on my radar. I didn’t pay any attention to the UK music press for the most part. “Uhhhh this album SUCKS [20 years later] 95 out of 100” Christ what a bunch of wankers.

the safest safe
is a safe
inside a safe
safeception

you’re a criminal, criming
you break into a safe
and staring right back at you
is another, smaller safe

how demoralizing
put a note on it, like “surprise, dipshit”

i love china markers/grease pencils

but i also love that we’re all committed to role-playing that the peel-off string is not 100% inoperative

occasionally i do a drive-by wtfing on augmented-gta roleplaying

there are entire ... systems of administration/justice etc and tons of forms to fill out and be all proper and procedural and etc

part i tuned in on, small group of people were discussing a particular sub-sub-menu with ~50 checkboxes allowing a person to view particular legal documents without being able to edit them ... in-game

[FX: 1978, playing space invaders in crappy mall] “interesting ... needs more bureaucracy though”

[Tokyo Times] The disappearance of a dilapidated old Tokyo tobacconist.

JaidenAnimations: Pokemon sent me to Japan! [31min] I am not “with it” enough that 80% of the cultural references here went over my head for one reason or another.

Advertisement for Improved Racine Automatic Sucker Machine, Confectioners Journal, June 1922, pg. 161. So, funny thing. The very minor heyday of the dumbell sucker was around 1922-1924. Very few mentions anywhere. In 1924, the Spangler Candy Company introduced Dum Dums, and the name was chosen, according to the Spangler FAQ, “because it is easy for children and adults to say.”

I’ll put a dime on the name actually evolving from dumbell suckers. Or dum-dum bullets.

TV Mertani: NGAWAL ANAK VESPA EXTREME JALAN SAMPAI LOMBOK (ESCORTING EXTREME VESPA KIDS ALL THE WAY TO LOMBOK) [paraphrased body of video] “Thank you for for watching the video on Channel TV Mertani, I pray that [you] will be given health, longevity and ease of all affairs, amen.”

“Party chunks really hits, you know? Like if I had said ‘rainbow chunks,’ sure, same thing, but it’s not the same ... with party chunks, you’re thinking, yeah, that’s a good time, those are some chunks to hang with, the party chunks ... but rainbow chunks, that sounds like a cereal manufacturer’s offshoot product that shows up at Grocery Outlet six months later ...”

Make art not content: PRINCE’s work ethic.

Hoog: What’s Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Club? A thoughtful consideration of the political/sociological factors in post-war Germany behind the creation of Berghain. Please note that the video does not contain loud music, frenetic strobe-filled shots of clubgoers clubgoing, etc.

Language Log: Mix & Match Japanese Orthography. “How do people decide when to switch among the different components of the Japanese writing system?”

“Hands on buzzers ... what is the worst, most stupidest name for a company that sells linge --”

[FX: hurls entire body onto buzzer] “AGENT PROVOCATEUR”

Wienerschnitzel (© 2024 The Galardi Group Inc) has indicated to me, via a large outdoor promotional sign, that “FISH IS BACK”

please no brickbats, i’m just a messenger here

sorry folks, this year is lookin’ mighty lean ... gonna have to cut back on the NUT CREAMS

2girls1bottl3 / Mixie and Munchi #merchpt2

comment: “The zoom on the squint while being censored lmao”

IKR

Angela Collier: long live scientific debate.

Johnny Harris: The Woman who Robbed $1 BILLION (and almost got away)

Orbit Gum. 1923 September International Confectioner; also Confectioners Journal.

Fern: How Communists Made Unbreakable Glass.

“The story of Superfest does make you wonder, how many products around us are worse than they have to be?”

you just described the goddamn internet

David Alan Grier: One last Prince story.

i’ve had some gift cards lying around for awhile w/low amounts. in california, you’re supposed to be able to get cash for anything under $10, good luck explaining that to the disinterested teen selling movie tickets.

one i’ve been trying to crack for about five years now. the amount was around two dollars. i kept at it because it amused me. first the store changed their gift card format, so the registers could no longer recognize my card. “you’ll have to deal with corporate” etc. so years of that. then it switched again, and the phone number is always busy. switch to email.

today, the death blow: your gift card balance is zero. mmm, i wonder why.

i know, i complain about red tape a -lot-. it’s when the stakes are low and i know the most likely outcome that it flips to being hilarious, i can’t explain it.

RealLifeLore: Why Norway is Becoming the World’s Richest Country.

In summary: Norway #1 forever. Norway wins. Ding. “Norway takes [thing] and sells it to get [thing] and then invests that in [thing] and here we go, out the back of the machine here is all the money ever.”

(Spoiler warning: Today’s critical discussion contains a spoiler for the current Timeguessr.com daily game)

One of the photos for the photo-based daily where/when puzzle game Timeguessr featured what I originally had thought to be a major intersection in Toronto.

One of the street names was “Bay.” Just “Bay.” “Wokay, so not Toronto, because Toronto does not have a bay.”

Vancouver has a bay. I spent a little time looking for the street names, no luck. “Definitely here though. Bay.”

The answer was Toronto. “There’s no bay in Toronto,” I sputtered.

The Cardhouse Staff Chemist was quick to point out Humber Bay. In Toronto.

That seems like a very small bay, doesn’t it? Actually ... what is a bay? [FX: falls into wikipedia]

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines a bay as a well-marked indentation in the coastline, whose penetration is in such proportion to the width of its mouth as to contain land-locked waters and constitute more than a mere curvature of the coast. An indentation, however, shall not be regarded as a bay unless its area is as large as (or larger than) that of the semi-circle whose diameter is a line drawn across the mouth of that indentation — otherwise it would be referred to as a bight.

First, THE LAW OF THE SEA. SEA LAW. Second, I don’t think this “bay” is meeting the criteria for being a bay. Let’s draw some circles.

I’ve conveniently marked areas that DO NOT meet the specification for a bay with RED CIRCLES. The areas that DO meet the specification are marked with GREEN CIRCLES.

You can see I’ve given it my best shot, and there’s no way to bay the circle here. It needs more oomph. More water. They’re going to have to flood a bunch of streets, intersections. Get all Venice-ee. Humber Bay is just a dent.

But government moves slowly. In the meanwhile ... I hate to do this, but you have forced my hand:

Humber Bay, by the divine, regal authority granted to me by the planet “Earth” to correctly/dispassionately adjudicate and professionate THE LAW OF THE SEA, I do hearby foreverhenceforth declare you to be:

HUMBER BIGHT

where are my points

Power of Skills: How Snooker Table are made.

they should put roller conveyor belts in parks so you can just walk in a nice area and not have to walk back

put some walls up to stop the wind

put in a roof to keep the rain out

seal it up to keep the bugs out

charge some very large, arbitrary amount of money per month and use high-pressure tactics to both close the deal and keep people from cancelling their contract

they should make a new type of CHEEZ-IT® ORIGINAL BAKED SNACK CRACKERS that is a cube

call them CHEEZ-IT® CUBES™ ORIGINAL BAKED SNACK CRACKERS

think of all that cheesy, oily goodness now in 3D right in your face℠ #facecube

don’t be a square, get the CUBE™, nerd

double-cheese concentrated CUBE™ just really shoving you into a corner, cheesily, slashing your tires, stealing the lawn mower out of your backyard

“Wow this cheese is serious”

Bobby Fingers: Fabio and the Goose.

Tokyo Times: Broken and long-unused Japanese vending machines.

I took photos of some broken vending machines back in 2004.

Jenny Nicholson: The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel [4hr 5min].

Not a Star War person, not a Disney person. What was most striking about this was not the number of ball drops/failures/let downs, just the sheer ... number of types of bullshit, on her own personal visit level, all the way up to systems level.

If you are trying to reduce your time spent in videoland, go with “My Story” followed by the last segment “Robbed.”

Münecat: I Debunked Evolutionary Psychology [3hr 21min].

Enter auction item description. Do not forget to describe item thoroughly.

> bike

PS: Gonna use the term “Regular Bycicle” from now on

Tom Walker: A tribute to the best horse Rust ever had ‒ MeatlessRumble4.

hello

it’s been a hot minute since we’ve talked about [FX: motions everywhere].

i am one of those comedy people who still wears masks. n95, just in case you thought i was one of those surgical/cloth randos.

i thought maybe we could all band together, mask up, kill the monster. we killed a flu variant, remember? rad.

but you know, the FABRIC. the HORROR of not seeing YOUR SMILE.

the soothing assurance of endless mutations. the death. the disability. kiss grandma, give her something to think about.

asymptomatic. without symptoms. it’s around ... 30% of the time. so that’s like a fun way to learn about percentages and risk.

anyway.

since sometimes i’m the only one in a store or building with a mask and occasionally i’m getting looks ... i thought to myself how do i UP this. how do i go to the NEXT LEVEL of YOU, SQUIRMING.

there were some people during Phase I of Endless Pandemic who were creating elaborate, odd full-face masks. yeah, i want something like that.

i’m not much of a 3-d artist. i have some ideas but they are in a long waiting queue.

instead, what if i could combine a mask with a motorcycle helmet? it’s the exact opposite of my initial thought vector. less comfort for me, more comfort for you. “oh that’s just a happy-dappy motorcycle person who is not reminding me about the disease that totally disappeared when the man on the television told me.” [SFX: 17 minutes of mouth-generated motorcycle noises]

so i looked around and i got the impression i was going to be using a glue gun and cutting up n95 masks. seemed risky.

then i ran into shellios. it’s a company that has created a motorcycle helmet with a filtration system.

wow, right?

except. there are many indications that the start-up folded the tent poles, maybe even two years ago. if you try to order a helmet, you get a little pop-up telling you to get lost.

unfortunate.

[FX: rummages around for glue gun]

DankPods: I finally own the Dyson Zones.

Vulture: The Portrait of Kim Gordon: Why Eric McNatt Sued Richard Prince. Here is my “hot take” on this situation: this is lazy garbage. It reminds me of street artists that tag other artist’s work. Fuck off, there are other walls. “Look, I took someone’s photo and added someone else’s lyrics and added nothing else, it’s mine now.” JFC

Anna Lapwood: Bonobo & Anna Lapwood perform Otomo live at the Royal Albert Hall. Background article (2022).

Kill the Noise: ABLE10 what new? FINAL (2018). Verge article

BicycleDutch: Cycling in Carmel, Indiana from a Dutch perspective.

James Hoffmann: Trying To Find The World’s Best Coffee Candy.

Paolo fromtokyo: Day in the Life of a Japanese Game Center Worker.

Claudia O’Doherty: What Is England? (2013)

JaidenAnimations: I found out I have ADHD.

Led by Donkeys: Rishi Sunak ‒ The Movie.

Dutch Bike Initial Impressions. I have acquired a Dutch bike, after looking for one for over a year. You’d think it was that long because I’m a stingy bastard who is old and remembers when pinball was a nickel and candy bars were a quarter and weren’t made with industrial shavings designated by secret coded initials. “PGPR is mainly used with another substance like lecithin[2] to reduce viscosity and wheel chocking. Check your owner’s manual.” I think I only passed up two bikes, but the prices were way out of my league. The premise behind a relatively low-priced bike is that I will not cry about lost money when it is inevitably stolen. I will only cry about lost time.

I have only ridden this today (other than a short test ride), so there’s still a lot of work to do and research to be researched. For instance, I have no idea when this bike was made (my seat-of-pants guess is 1998). It is a Gazelle Populair. It is very similar to the current Gazelle Tour Populair and may actually just be the actual model. The Tour Populair is now Gazelle’s only non-electric offering and is priced at USD1499. My version is one gear, coaster brake. No calipers. It looks like it was originally sold in Amsterdam (pending research: pending).

It has rust, here and there, thin. Not like my beach cruiser bike that was left out in the rain for several centuries by the previous owner. I think it’s now made out of 20% rust. I rode the beach cruiser bike yesterday and the Populair is very different, all in good/great ways. Instead of yammering on about this, let’s replay a Not Just Bikes video about this very thing. Catch me on the “other side,” fren. [FX: gets all comfy in couch fort]

Hello again. See? SEE? I am a convert. However there are small things that need adjusting/etc.

Ring locks are pretty standard on Dutch bikes. This one is missing what I fancifully call the engagement knob. You push it through the ring lock’s circle, and a bar goes between the spokes. These locks are used to delay your personal US bike thief from tossing the bike into the back of a truck by up to 30 seconds. I can get a fakeroo bespoke (no pun intended) engagement knob at the hardware store for a buck or two. The color of the ring lock is non-black WHAT COME ON.

The dress shield and chain case are both original to the bike and made of vinyl. Though they’ve held up, there is a small tear in the chain case, and I don’t see a way to actually oil the chain if it needs it. I’d prefer metal or plastic.

The kickstand works but is anxious to not work. It collapses at the slightest movement. I don’t think this is the default setting.

The bike bell is not my preferred tone expression. Let’s see if I can find this mini-unicorn desired bell sound on the internet of value. hahah “retro ding dong” You’re probably wondering how many businesses actually have the sound of the bell available on the web page. The answer is 12.7%. I eat up all the descriptions of the bell sounds on the non-sound pages. “Oh tell me more.” Holland Bike Shop is smart, they have recordings next to each bell. This bell feels closest to what my brain remembers as the ideal bell. Here are some more: highest . cute . high . high . serious

The seat is squeaky. The bike will be fully moisturized, either by me or an official bike moisturizer, along with a general tune-up/look-see/anti-rusting. It’s odd how I will not be going to the shop that scoffed at my desire to acquire a Dutch bike a few months ago. “They’re so heavy!” the top-fit racing rider/clerk whined. Yes. They are. They’re tanks, that are passed down through the generations. I don’t plan to lift it over my head or wipe out on a dirt trail. I am not in a race with anyone or anything. I do not need to be fast. I am using it to travel the vast, flat plains of the East Bay California area and buy baguettes (yes I AM going to make a baguette holder for it. maybe). There’s so many of them in Holland that the prices are low, low low, gotta sell! I bought local, another reason it took me so long to get one. Anyway, let’s all sit here and marvel at these dunces of Capitalism who habitually turn away consumers or fail to try to understand what their actual needs are. Reminds me of the million stories I’ve read about car salespeople totally shooting themselves in their collective feet with collective shotguns over and over and over. The money is literally walking in the door and you turn it away! What happened to the greed, car salesidiot? The slaking of thirst! Get out there and sell! SELL SELL OR YOU’RE CANNED, YOU GET ME? CAN-N-N-ED

There is strange moisture exuding from my back and arms when engaged in vigorous riding. A trip to the doctor is warranted. I will purchase a “squee-gee.”

Finally, I am kicking myself again for not learning pinstriping instead of staring at the wall and drooling plaintively. “Perhaps there’s still time,” he said, Zimmer frame just out of shot.

Dutch Bike, Day 3. The front light is powered by three AAA batteries, I don’t know if it’s original. Requires large flat-head screwdriver. They are at near maximum charge, no corrosion. I’d rather have a dynamo, it’s more likely the batteries will corrode before I use up the charges. Riding at night, that’s Advanced Biking ... I’m sticking with beginner courses. The back light is standard, requires small Phillips screwdriver and ... half-stripped it. Get vice grips. [GETS] Okay. Two seriously-corroded JOS International “SPANNINGA” (“tension” or “voltage”) batteries. The tiny circuit board appears fried. Let’s get our safety glasses. [GETS] Batteries removed. Removed light assembly as well, no use having it if it doesn’t work. The circuit board will have to be replaced, I don’t think it can be repaired. It is obviously not complicated.

I forgot to mention that during my initial ride, a motorized scooter went flying by me and ran straight into a car that had stopped to let me by. I did not see the accident, but from all the contextual clues, scooter person was probably in the wrong. The scooter person exclaimed something like “WHY AREN’T YOU WATCHING” or something similar w/o swears. In total, three drivers have ignored ped/bike xing markings when I was already in the street, out of ... ~70 car encounters. I’ve mostly been on a “greenway” that travels under/near BART 90% of the time but it crosses a ton of streets. They are well-marked. I should flaccidly ring my C+-tier bike bell at them. Haven’t used it so far. The smaller your car is, the more enthusiastic my “thank you” wave will be. Exempt from waves: Tesla vehicles, megatrucks & similar clown cars. I am Richard Petty, famous stock car driver.

I am nowhere near the daily minimum suggested by this friendly website. I am out of shapes. Side note: see this article about Dutch bicycling habits, not that I’m comparing my riding to the average NLer. It is just an interesting artifact of a country that is not obsessed with cars and making sure cars are #1 and nothing gets in the way of cars and makes sweet, sweet love to cars. Never leave me, cars. Never!

Steering is a little more fluid than a “normal” bike, since your center of gravity is up higher, it feels like. Or I’m just not used to riding a bike in general, since I haven’t for ... 14 years.

I ordered a new key for the frame lock, the “just in case” key. I will need to order an auxiliary chain which is grabbed by the frame lock so it’s all one big lock thing. The key stays in the lock until you engage it. So when you’re riding, the key is in the lock. Apparently sometimes when bikes get jammed up against something the key is bent in the lock. Not good. I am looking into adding guards on either side of the key to prevent this.

I found a Kryptonite U-lock awhile ago, I need to change the combination and it will be my secondary lock. If all the other bikes have 27 locks on them, you should have 28. Take it from me, Mr. Rides Bicycles All The Time The Last Three Days.

Thejuicemedia: Honest Government Ad / the state of Democracy™.

Dutch bike day 5. A correction from my initial entry. Gazelle actually does have multiple non-electric models, but they are only available on the NL Gazelle site. It is Gazelle USA that only has the Tour Populair. I accidentally sent the s/n to gazelle.com for carbon dating and the nice people there directed me to gazelle.nl and complimented me on my purchase. IKR? Wait, does Gazelle sell parts. “Store” is “winkel.” WINKEL. Yes they sell parts in their NL winkels. BRB.

Double-tested the rear light assembly. Does not work. Given that the whole rear light assembly is ... ~USD35-50, I will try to gimmick up something to get the circuit board going. It’s not a rush job, again, not using this thing at night.

There is a sticker on the back of the bike which is from NL. It will be removed.

There is a sticker on the rear fender of the bike which indicates the original store it was purchased from. Maybe I will send them a nice note. [FX: goes to site] There is a manufacturer of bikes named “Cowboy.” The image shows a nut-bar bike. Everyone loves the nut bar. I’ve only seen one person explain why the nut bar is popular. It is because it makes the bike less wobbly. Of course, I’m not going fast enough to get any bike wobbling, nut bar or no. So you can have your nut bar, Speed Racer Cowboy Mansweat. Anyway, they look like they’re a big operation ... many stores, lotta brands. Elektrisch? NEE. At some point, ja, but not right now. [lqqks] Oooh front rack, forgot about the front rack. Not sure how I’m going to deal w/groceries, still have to order my plug-in chain (it literally plugs into the frame lock then then the frame lock hooks onto it when it is also locking your wheel).

There was a control number sticker on the bike. It has been removed.

I removed the batteries from the front light so they do not corrode. They would be quick-load/unload if it wasn’t a big flathead screw. Looking into replacing that. Probably not original?

1x compliments. Father saw quick flash of side view of bike. “Nice bike,” he said in a very low voice. I didn’t process it until later, otherwise I would have at least rang the bell. Rung the bell? Rang. I would have pressed the bell button to make it ringy-dingy.

1x bell ring. Ped has own lane, is walking in bike lane at a bottleneck. I may start ringing the bell any time I suspect a ped is not aware of me but it usually seemed like they were glancing back after hearing the seat squeak.

3x cars ignoring well-marked ped/bike xing. Looked like one accidental, one fuck you, one “what can you do” (a shrug). I think I’m going to stop recording these, it’s just going to be about 10% of the cars on the greenway path, much more in traffic. Hey wow cars are killing a lot of walking/biking people. USA: “How about ... trucks take growth hormones, cool right?” Vote for me, I’m running on a platform of “Let me walk back that bike infrastructure proposal.” Sure win.

I looked up the tires in case they might offer a clue as to when the bike was manufactured. That’s SCHWALBE, baby! Jam thumbtacks up in, I don’t care! SCHWALBE! I am sure I paid more for puncture-resistant inserts on my like-a-bike.

TheSideChannel: Voice-over for NBA Top 10 says “Top Ten” faster and faster.

Dutch Bike Day 6. I rode and I rode and I also rode. I have to say I’m pretty sick of the yellow curb cut appliances, the ones with the nurbual bits sticking out. I’m not mentioning the name of the manufacturer. Here’s a rare metal version by a different manufacturer that seems to only exist at the foot of the University-ish ped bridge.

The thing with plastic is that when there is rain on plastic, it is slippery. I almost lost it on a scooter over one of these, or rather, I did lose it, I just got lucky and recovered before a full wipe-out. But why test things. “We have this ... plastic chunk. It’s got bumps.” City: “OH GOD GIVE US YOUR ENTIRE INVENTORY YOU BEAUTIFUL BEASTS”

This long ride gave me ample opportunities to figure out how to be a nice bicyclist in public (again), both in general and given my problem arm. The arm gets little better day by day, which is just wonderful because March and April were hell months in which the arm just ached the entire day and night and sapped my will to do anything. It was surprising. “It’s just an arm! Less than 1/4th of the body!” I yelled to my brain. Brain wasn’t having it. So now, some normal bicycle things like looking behind you, well, I’ve got a different way to do it and it’s going to be muscle memory for quite some time even after the arm has healed up entirely. Might just have to buy a mirror to fool-proof it. Find out which arm I’m talking about on my patron thing! Sure there’s Patreon, but you should use ko-fi, the one person patron there is getting lonely! May get up to dark magicks w/o company. $1/mo, join now, avoid the summer rush.

I am buying some pink canvas webbing so I can tie a pretty bow on the bike and it will last more than a week. I like pretty things because they’re pretty.

I am very glad I bought this bike and not that $4000 Carbondale I was looking at. Canyondale. Caltropsdale. Five thousand dollar Communedale, Michael! COME ON!

Slate: Amazon’s hand-scanning biometric disaster now available in Food Hole.

let’s go back to the 80s w/the churchy nutbags screaming about getting scanned by a machine head or hand 666 etc

they were on to something

enclosed: dynamic flyer found on the street 1988, iirc

yes i posted this in 2022 along with a chaser

you are a good rememberer [FX: gives you one (1) dubbel zout button]

Dutch bike day 7. Rode 11.7 miles, some along the coast of the bay. It’s difficult to get to without having to go through areas that this particular city has decided to ignore completely vis-a-vis any cleaning ever. I just looked at a raw graphic map and winged it, because I don’t like stopping to look at my phone ever for any reason except when I’m taking nice photos. I wasn’t worried about my tires in the depressed areas (SCHWALBE!) but the poor dears don’t need that sort of workout. Tiny dog attack at the start, I’ll have to get that piercing dog siren thing. This dog was so small, and so ferocious. Maybe I should get a small mirror? “This is you, you are smol. Be cute and be quiet.” Then, routed unfortunately into Big Traffic and Big Intersections At The Freeway Interchange. Then, two people camping out directly in the horrible path under the expressway with four dogs, all of them not on leashes. “Don’t worry, they won’t attack.” I turned around and had to re-cross giant intersections to avoid that scene.

Today the bell started making soft little rings on every medium+ bump. I don’t know why. More reason to get rid of it.

I ordered a rearview mirror. I may order a front caliper brake thing, I don’t know how long I’m going to be dealing with a reduced-strength arm.

Pink canvas webbing is on the way. I will have to learn how to tie a canonical pretty bow. I’m horrible at knots.

Defunctland: Kid Cities.

Dutch bike day 8. I fixed the frame lock’s knob. Added a small metal sleeve, held in place by a screw that screwed nicely/tightly into the knob hole. Fortunate, because there’s no room to add a nut at the bottom. It will do. Now I don’t have to shred my fingers engaging the lock. Also ordered the “plug-in” lock, but it’s not going to be here until July. A nervous, dumbshit nation watches ... and waits.

Today the bell did not randomly ding at all. Temperature thing? Ghost bell?

Got a message back from gazelle.nl. The bike was manufactured in 2008. There have only been two owners previously, and the one before me didn’t ride it all that much. Thought it was 10+ years older. I am not a bicycle wear expert.

Occasionally I roll off the greenway because sometimes the BART cars are just too loud. But then I have to up my curb/mis-aligned sidewalk game. It’s like the movie Awakenings, which was filmed in The Bronx.

At the intersection of B Street and Behrens Street, someone added a tall box-shaped sign to the street sign pole. It had the image of bee, and a bear, along w/the obvious text captions, aligned with the respective streets. Bee. Bear. So that’s what I brainlessly repeated throughout the rest of the ride for no reason at all, like I was a defective See ‘n’ Say. “Bee. Bear.” [FX: seven minutes pass] “Bee. Bear.”

“I’m telling you again, Johnson, if you don’t get a fucking contagious disease mentioned in the goddam lyrics, you are FIRED”

The Erstwhile Philatelic Society caretakers recently got to experience The Solano Human Project and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It involves a pleasant stroll around the relatively quiet business district of Solano Avenue in Albany, California, United States, Earth. “Can you save humanity from AI while strolling on Solano?” Please read the link for a project description and accolades from other peoples who have done the do. As with any sort of experiential relational aesthetic artverk of the kind that carves out a fleeting existence in the world [FX: motions to world], the best time for you to contact Solano Human Project and reserve a spot is right fucking now. As a member of a group with several labor-intensical walkabouts under our various belts and suspenders, it is a juggling act and not everything is under your control. Additionally, we were fortunate enough to schedule our time during BONUS CONTENT PERIOD as mentioned on the project’s page: “Special ‘BONUS CONTENT’ only available through July 27, 2024.” Stop sleeping, do the thing.

If you are very masky like I am, please be aware that you are never thrown into situations where masking would be a problem. I mention this because this is the nutswerld we live in today, peopled by life-like robot men and women.

I am stressing the “do this” portion of this message because we, the EPS caretakers, always have quite a chuckle at the ridic number of people who either mutter/exclaim about really wanting to do the X but never do the X and then kick rocks angrily or expect us to serve them a hand-written engraved invitation to do the X before they’ll do the X. Don’t be a don’t bee. Be a do bee, doo bee doo bee doo. Move your ass. Now.

the world is filled with assholes

some of them go to great lengths to identify themselves

“well mah truck ain’t FATAL enough right there ... gonna fix it up”

would i rather be alive living in the us

or dead, floating in space

seems like a toss-up

It’s four days shy of a year when Zuckerberg answered an employee’s question about a crucial, important burgeoning technology during a meeting. Let’s check in with the meat of the blathering.

“Our north star is can we get a billion people into the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars a piece in digital commerce by the end of the decade? If we do that, we’ll build a business that is as big as our current ad business within this decade. I think that’s a really exciting thing. I think a big part of how you do that is by pushing the open metaverse forward, which is what we’re going to do.”

All I am saying is that I can produce this sort of grande bullshit if you give me a bottle of cough syrup and a straw. Pay me 1/10th his salary and watch your stock surge.

2024jun26. Ride #9-10-11. 16 miles today. 114 miles total, approximately. Installed rear-view mirror poorly. Re-installed rear-view mirror. Rear-view mirror is cheap piece of shit that vibrates too much so now we’re going to invest actual money in a new one. Pulled rusty pivot bolt/nut combo out of seat replaced with new bolt and wing nut so it’s easier to adjust. This of course did not work for something as beefy as a bicycle seat so back to regular nut for superior tightening. Added cheap panniers/saddlebags as test before buying more expensive panniers/saddlebags. Haven’t studied any of the How To Make A Pretty Ribbon Allll Pretty video tabs yet so I can add a pretty bow to my bike. Oiled squeaky seat, looks like it’s the worst rust on the bike. No more noises at all, bike is seriously quiet. Seat is third-party manufacturer, “Lepper.” Made in Holland. I may have to angle the seat up a bit, it felt like I was slipping forward a little. It’s a game of balance, and balancing, and balances. Waiting on plug-in lock (July 3rd), extra lock key (~week or two). Need a coffee mug holder on the bike. Morning ride with coffee thank you yes. I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m slumming riding this thing. It’s so pretty. I also had Pants Incidents wherein each leg of my pants got a little caught in the pedals, the left more than the right. Adding “solve pants problem” to bike to-do list. My bicycling outfit continues to evolve.

Limpboi suv driver blasted out from behind the Seabreeze Cafe and locked his brakes in the dirt/rock parking lot to avoid hitting me. If they evict the Seabreeze Cafe I will burn this city down to ashes. I recommend the “Dutch crunch” roll w/your fav-rit type of sammich meats & etc.

A bus pulled up to sidewalk and I yelled “oh NO” and cranked to get past it before it opened its doors. Depositing people directly in my path.

Another “nice bike” compliment. Also saw two Dutch bikes rolling around.

Here’s this amazing bit of kit as you slide into Gilman from the new ped/bike bridge. Yes, America, it’s [FX: thoroughly checks history] the first railing in California that separates bikes/peds from death machines, the ones they put in Japan on every block ever in any city. Gilman connects you to the Ohlone Greenway, but not before a few blocks of shitty old-time no protection bike lanes. I ride on the sidewalk as much as possible. Is it against the law? I don’t care, fuck cars, we live in the stupidest auto-centric hellscape bullshit fuckup clown down virustown scenario. Which reminds me, gotta order the helmet.

Phil Gaimon: Please Share This When I’m Killed by Someone Driving a Car.

I liked Cardhouse when it was less bikey wah wah wah [FX: wees self]

Space Feather: On Max Headroom ‒ The Most Misunderstood Joke on TV.

Ride #12-13. 14.6 miles today. 138 miles total. Got the plug-in lock and the frame lock keys in the mail the same day. The bike fell and torqued the unused front light a bit so I removed it. Now there’s the front light mounting bracket to remove which requires the whole steering column be pulled out which no. I’ll put the bow on the bracket. The panniers are both too forward (I kick one with my heel occasionally) and too much to the rear (the kickstand barely snaps into place). These are not going to be long-term bags, but I’m going to relax my bank account for awhile wrt “optional” upgrades. I can deal, bags.

The rides themselves are losing half a grade, down to a B, because the amount of car fuck-ups grates, just like it does driving, but you know, instead staring at someone’s muffler from the underside. One guy went way over the line, I stopped, stared at the car’s tire, then started making moves to go around the back. The bike is not a sleek sleeky thing, it’s clunky and takes effort to manuever in tight spaces. So he starts backing up. Then he says he’s sorry, and I nod, then he says he’s sorry again, and I nod, and he says “I said I was sorry” which yeah. “Yes thank you, I deal with this every day.” It just ... adds up. The ones that kill me are the ones that are totally oblivious. I’d rather have someone go “yeah I saw you, FUCKHOLE” than the zombies. Maybe.

I’m riding, for the most part, on a designated parkway path. This was on a street, which is about 10% of my “usual” 14-mile route. Anyway, add cement to level the sidewalk across the streets, make the cars go up and down little ramps (oh no they will be an additional .7 seconds late to their destination), fuck Armor Tile. There’s tons of wonderful ways to deal with this, and it’s all WORKING CURRENT infrastructure tech but heaven forbid a car has to slow down when running over a child or your pet or you or your whole fucking family. If I actually routinely purchased anything other than art supplies/food/tools I’d certainly avoid all the businesses that were whining about the West Portal changes. “‘Where are the people going to go? They are just going to avoid the West Portal and go somewhere else,’ said Pankaj Shah, owner of Roti Indian Bistro.” Yep, that’s how it works, or it’s actually totally the opposite, I can’t remember which. PEOPLE GO WHERE CARS AREN’T. Surprise, I’ve eaten there, never again. Anyway, make the drivers push buttons and carry flags and wait for the signal and wear hi-vis vests and wear white and wear helmets and look both ways. Fuck HAWK crossings, fuck beg buttons, fuck your stupid flexposts twice, fuck sharrows. In conclusion, fuck cars.

That’s one reason I’m getting rid of my car. US infrastructure is soooo good at hiding people so cars=fast they’ll just pop up suddenly and you think “oh am I going senile?” No, this is how the system is designed.

I also need to start BLORTing to different destinations, the novelty gene in me is whining again. “Cool your jets, dear, we got some surprise packages coming.” “Okay.”

Ride #14-15 ... I am doing errands with the bike now. Mailed some letters, bought some envelopes to make more letters to mail. Bought groceries. Really motivated to get rid of car. Especially since, as it turns out, one of the few times this year I’ve been on the freeway, I ended up behind a gravel truck dislodging rocks, one hit the windshield, and the crack is spreading. The race is on. Can I get rid of the car before I have to replace the windshield.

I removed the sticker from the rear fender using a plastic razor and isopropyl alcohol, which I had lying around because I used to use it for cuts and scrapes and now the winning formula is apparently to just use soap and water. I didn’t know plastic razors existed until I went looking for sticker-removal solutions. They’re like a regular razor, except plastic. The one I have is a holder; one side holds a disposable metal razor blade, the other side a disposable plastic razor blade. Stay tuned for the oral history of plastic razor blades.

Someone asked about the bike while I was parked up. I started explaining a few things about it and said that it makes you sit up straight, so you’re higher up than a regular drop-handlebar racer speed bike. He had a drop-handlebar racer and said “I sit up when I ride ... I think I do.” His bike had the serious curly drop handlebars. You can sit up if you ... want to ride hands-free. Otherwise, you’re bending over. Look how sleek. #sleek I mentioned Not Just Bikes and he said he loved Not Just Bikes and I gave him the url for the Dutch Bike video which I know by memory since I’ve posted it here 2,738 times. “lowercase a, uppercase E, uppercase S ...”

The tiny dog tried to attack my bike again. It’s going to get spoked. Calling animal control tomorrow, avoiding the area in general, it’s a shitshow. I have to go out of my way for 2+ blocks but that’s life in these here United States.

I have my bike helmet. I went and got it: with my bike. Haven’t tried it on, today is pretty hot and I don’t like things on my skull when it’s hot. Other than a tiny, talkative rat that controls my amazing French cooking via hair-pulls. Don’t know how it’s going fit in the helmet.

What a strange sign. Sure, push the button, but they’re still going to run you over. Bon appetit.

no one: yay the new cdc bullshit guideline cartoon is here

look, some people need to die because you went back to work while you were still contagious (usually, it’s 10 days with covid). we are america’s oil, just this large flow of expendable people keeping the lights on. please die so your supervisor’s supervisor can get his catamaran waxed.

a whole 24 hours, wow. [FX: slowest fucking golf clap ever] / absolutely no mention of checking to see if you’re contagious. zero. this bit of the cartoon is the alternative ‒ “Prevent Spread ASTERISK FOR PRO-BUSINESS DEFINITION OF THE WORD ‘PREVENT’”

Every Frame A Painting: Jackie Chan ‒ How to Do Action Comedy (2014).

occasionally i think about a news story that was covering the ongoing ramp-up wrt in-cab tracking computers for long-haul truckers

at one point the trucker was supposed to pull the computer from the mount and turn it into the dispatcher or some such because at this point we’re in the early-middle of the sneakernet-to-skynet revolution

this is the thing that’s constantly telling him to slow down speed up you need to go here go there you’ve been docked you’ve been demoted etc

so he opened the door to his cab and high-kicked the computer straight out of its mount

yeah i’ve been working on the new api calls, why do you ask

B. A. Stevens Billiard & Bar Supplies ‒ Refrigerators and Ice Boxes for Every Purpose. Spring 1894 (pg 99). Toast water.

Bike ride #16-22. Truck man doesn’t notice me in the Xing, so I air brush him. Do I have to explain this. I refuse. He wasn’t paying attention and there was a car coming the other way which obscured the lower 40% of my body/bike. He stopped 50 feet later in the middle of the street. I’m not sure what was going to happen, maybe he was hoping i’d turn around and he could back over me indignantly?

I got a pair of padded bicycle shorts. A net positive, these will do until I get a deluxe padded seat. The helmet has its pros and cons. Can’t hear as well as I’d like with all the padding smooshed up against my ears. The visor fogs up. The weight doesn’t bother, that was a concern.

People continue to “gun” their cars after they have to endure the excruciating business of stopping for a bicyclist in a crosswalk. It’s usually trucks that are really just slamming that gas pedal after I pass.

I have accidentally come up against a difficult “use case” wrt bicycle freight, so soon into my bicycling “phase.” 2x4s. I need about four of them. I can either walk to the nearby shit national hardware chain or ride the bike to my preferred 2x4 vendor. I have a nice wheel for one end of the grouping, but for the end that is next to the bike, I need some sort of pivot/joint, like a tow rope that attaches to all four boards etc. Something. I’ll figure it out.

Clown ass on bike with cheap bullhorn pointed backward, blaring some sort of continually-looped screed that was so distorted by the volume I couldn’t understand a word of it. He also had a flyer taped to the side of his bike that had been weathered to illegibility. The yelling sounded militaristic, blah blah blah BLAH, blah blah blah BLAH. Normally, you hear something like that, the person passes, you pass, whatever, water off your back. We were stopped waiting for a freight train, so it really got on my nerves. I reluctantly pulled my phone out to take a photo, knowing that something would happen such that I’d just miss it, and yeah, he decided to leave. Just as he was out of sight, photo app was ready. “I’ll run into him again.” Like a half-hour later. He saw me and started saying something like “I have a message” as he was approaching me and I could barely understand that; I was going to yell something back at him, like “no one understands your dumb-ass manifesto, jagoff” but then realized he wouldn’t understand me either. Then I ran into him another half-hour later. I concentrated really hard on the important information and pulled out the phrase “innoculate society” so it must be a pro-vax message. Clearly. Given the way he was riding “around” and not “to” a thing, I think this is his mission, to be a blaring dickhead in the east bay to turn people off of his pet cause, The People’s Campaign to Blah Blah BLAH. I’ll trade him for the old people putting up the giant RFK banner on the ped bridge every weekend. Just to be clear, “trading” here means that he would be sent to Moon Jail, a construct I have created solely within my mind for the world’s assholes. It’s getting pretty full. Also, again, for clarity, “Moon Jail” is a jail; on the moon.

Phil Edwards: The real reason suburbs were built for cars.

Bike ride lucky #23. Total 236.6mi. I noticed that the back was losing a small bit of air. First time using new pump on new-to-me tires. SCHWALBE! Get down low, squint at valve. “Mmmm.” EVERYONE knows there are two valves, Schrader (like on cars), and Presta (like on fancy-schmancy touring bikes that weigh three ounces and bicyclists routinely eat). Not a Schrader, so it’s gotta be a Presta. Yeah? [FX: furious image search] Uh. What? Whut? Surprise, there’s a third type of valve, the “Dunlop” valve, which also has an adapter to magically turn it into a Schrader valve. It’s a cheap little thing, a bit of metal, a smaller bit of rubber. SCHWALBE! So we’ve all learned something today, except for bike shops. Let’s visit some! First though, let’s break one of our locks, and get a slow flat on the spare bike. Check ... check.

SHOP A. “Do you have a Dunlop adapter.” “Dunlop?” [FX: goes to back] “Dunlop” “No we don’t have that.” [FX: begins leaving] “No one has that ... that’s for European bikes.” [SFX: record scratch] Back in February, I asked someone at SHOP A for a suitable inner tube for Miss Lucy Legs, my beach bike. It has a weird rim, such that the valves need to be extra-extra long. It’s annoying, I want stuff to be standard. But this bike was a hand-me-down. Anyway, the guy says to me, he says, “yeah, this will work” even though it’s 10+mm shorter. I put it in, and can -barely- pump it up. It’s on the edge of not locking to the valve (this is not the tube that has the slow leak). Also annoying. Thanks guy. Two strikes for SHOP A.

SHOP B. “Do you have a Dunlop adapter.” “Dunlop? No ... only Presta and Schrader. But we -might- be able to order it.” “I can’t wait, thank you.”

SHOP C. “Do you have a Dunlop adapter.” “Dunlop? Dunlop? We have a Presta adapter ... " He showed me the adapter, and (a) it looked exactly like the Dunlop adapter and (b) it was $1.50. So I bought it. It worked, the tire held air and the village was saved. I wrote them a thank-you note so they also know that the next time someone comes in asking about a Dunlop adapter (2027), they can be all “we have you SET UP, my good consumerer.” I’ll go buy two more spares later, they’re tiny little nuts.

Vox: The surprising reason behind Chinatown’s aesthetic.

the store that had the self-service machines what had problems digesting cash came up with a new, tried-and-tested solution to put a permanent end to coin bugs

no cash allowed

so that’s five self-service kiosks, all that don’t take cash. there are no signs anywhere indicating this. you can put coins in, they just drop back out.

the funny thing is that i only buy crap coffee there. i tried to make the local coffee shop -my- local coffee shop, but ...

they don’t take cash.

here is a message to everyone who doesn’t take cash. message begins now:

fuck you.

2girls1bottl3: #intellectuals

goddamn ai is in everything

Bike ride #24-31. Total 307mi. / The Kryptonite lock I found in the dirt a year ago has given up the ghost. It locks, but it also happily unlocks with any combination. I’d like to use it as a “pseudolock” to create the appearance of a slightly-more secure bicycle, but I don’t trust it. It could flip the other way and decide to stay fully locked no matter what. In my mind, at least, I don’t know that technically that’s possible. Not worth the tiny bit of security theatre. This is bad timing for Reasons but then there’s never a good time to buy anything, really. Not into it. “Nothing? I’ll take as much as you got.”

I mentioned wanting to create some sort of half-cart device to carry 2x4s. “Well,” I thought with what purports to be a brain, “I could just slap ’em on the side instead.” Which ... could have worked for say, one board.

Let’s do some math. 10lbs per board, plus a 40lb Dutch bicycle. ~80lbs. Pretend I only had to wheel it a few feet, not like pfffft miles or something.

jes’ doin’ a little brain surgery: LIVE!

who’s lighting up randomly every other month now

who’s re-installing/un-installing the mouse control software with the insanely horrific ui every other month just to turn off the god damned light

no one, that’s who

(yes i pressed all the buttons repeatedly, thanks though)

logitech: never again

just doing a quick fly-by of the shooting events for the 2024 olympics

not familiar with this sport at all, have cheerfully ignored it for decades

they’re all lined up at the range taking turns pew pew

and the crowd is ... clapping?

wtf is this

all of the specific equipment they use to weigh themselves down and dial in super concentration just to get that 0.000001% boost and you let fucking yahoos sit behind them and cheer/clap/hoot?

don’t know why i’m surprised, given the ghastly uninformed/dangerous relaxed attitude toward preventing covid during the games

it’s just entertainment, fuck the contestants, we need money

Not Just Bikes: How American Fire Departments are Getting People Killed.

Travel Man: Richard Ayoade & Joe Lycett being AMAZING in Amsterdam (including a quick bit at FEBO).

Introvertedmadness: Surviving the Bay Area.

went to apple ring hq visitor center

they had these neat stair railings perfect for Hot Wheels®

didn’t have advance warning so didn’t have any on me

alert the childrens

the apple ring hq visitor center is three sections:

1) cafe

2) store w/a few “exclusive” items like logo’d t-shirts

3) large model of ring because you really can’t see the ring, even from the roof. you can see into one room in the ring, but that’s probably the room that has a door with a sign: “The Randos At The Visitor Center Can See Into This Room Conference Room”

and everything is precisely engineered/laid out (except the parking lot, which was way too tight for USA America’s Big Ass Cars and Truck Walls but then maybe that was a flex, who can say, really)

i got the impression someone kept shouting MORE GLASS over and over during the build phase

but the funny thing is that words/print are/is kept to strict minimum

and as my friend pointed out, there was a giant phrase painstakingly laid out in large letters both on the inside/outside of the building, lookin’ sort of permanent

so it (a) gave off this weird vibe that it was the MOST IMPORTANT THING and (b) it was such a dunk

[FX: goes absolutely BUG NUTS on design] “this could be better”

there also was this air of trying too hard

the flush button for the toilet was a 1.5" metal disc placed to the right of the toilet

just sitting on the wall like it was hiding a screw

“i guess it’s this” [FX: PRESS] [FX: WAITS] [SFX: flushing noise] “It was that”

the “dispense water” mechanic for a faucet was a ~4" vertical handle that you pulled toward you

me: “see that guy getting a cup of water ... guess what i did first”

friend: “you pushed it straight down”

me: “yep”

but at least i figured out the hot wheels railing immediately

[SFX: makes car noises with mouth]

THE NEXT DAY: i have slept on my visit to apple ring hq

and even w/o coffee i figured it out, i solved the apple puzzle

it now occurs to me that the giant panel that said “pardon our horribleness” was there because -that entire panel was originally glass but was cracked/smashed-

maybe by a visitor, maybe because buildings that are 99% glass are just gonna do that

so have a giant blank panel in storage, jic

don’t trust glass

never use glass horizontally, for example as a desk/coffee table/breathtaking your-weight-supporting view box high above the city

glass will let you down

it’s just glass don’t make it pretend it’s stronger

some days, glass doesn’t have enough spoons

now that i no longer drive a car around ... it’s time to build my bart bag.

1) white sunglasses. these are sunglasses that are spray-painted white. entirely.

2) headphones w/cable that leads to backpack, which is not plugged into anything. this is to keep people from talking to me which never happens, and to insulate my ears against shitty bart engineer disease noise. “we can RE-INVENT TRAIN TRACKS!” [SFX: insane screeching noise for 50 years]

3) lozenges.

4) trick can of peanuts which releases multiple springy snakes. “would you like some peanuts? it’s not a trick.”

Safecracker was this strange little 1996 pinball machine by Midway. It’s like they took the Addam’s Family pinball table and squeezed the hell out of it, made the flippers a tad shorter, etc. The machine also barfs out a token that rolls down the playing field glass if you Do A Thing which I never figured out what the thing was back in the day. Today, at the Pacific Pinball Museum, I also did not figure out the thing.

saddlebag ripped, dropped below tire axle

two tomatoes tried to make a break for it but are still scheduled to be salad

i had intended to sew up the saddlebag with leather needle/thread but i have a lot of intentions

i did take a photo of some street art though

[FX: STARTS TO DO AN ELECTRONIC WIZARD THING]

[FX: SPILLS COFFEE ON IMPORTANT DOCUMENT, SIPS IT OFF WITH WARM, LOVING MOUTHPARTS]

this is black heart or blackheart, i believe

i saw just one of these hearts on two blank yellow road signs during construction and my poor, undernourished brain thought for a second that it was some new official icon

also someone forgot to tell the road construction crew about “bikes” oh well maybe by 2097

someone dig me up, put my skeleton on a bike, push it into traffic

awoooo i’m a ghost skeleton

Sears Wishbook, 1946, pg 137. Make Lead Soldiers.

I remember very little of childing but I do recall being stymied by various “kits” that were above my mental pay grade. Chemical, electrical. But this, it’s just lead. Just pour the molten lead in. What a delight.

On occasion I like to go back to listen to bands that I’ve followed for years/decades, catch up, etc. I went to Spotify’s Stereolab page and in the top 5 track listing, there was a song “Gabriel” that was shown as their most-played track.

“Huh. Never heard of it.” [FX: listens] Uhhhhhhh. Yeah no. This is not Stereolab. The Spotify listing for the associated album, the 2003 ABC Music ‒ The Radio 1 Sessions, has 47 tracks. But both Wikipedia and Discogs show that the album has 32 tracks.

It is some sort of data problem, in that some of the tracks from the 2001 album What Sound by the band Lamb have been deftly woven into the track listing of ABC Music ‒ The Radio 1 Sessions, including their #1 track, “Gabriel.” Now you can enjoy the sounds of two different bands in one listening session without changing the dial.

We haven’t gachaponned in awhile so let’s gachapon gachapon.

I don’t know why the guy is naked. Don’t be naked in a gachaponnery.

Trading card. Ringo Starr places empty milk bottles on stoop (Back text: “No. 38 in a series of 60 photos / Photos with the courtesy of Nems Enterprises Ltd (C) A. & B. C. Chewing Gum Ltd”).

An early entry in the catching-celebs-off-guard photo category (staged or not). What was the first one? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Rockstar Games recently announced the inclusion of the anti-cheat BATTLEyE system to Grand Theft Auto Online. I quit GTA over two years ago but came back in August because reasons. Back in the day (since 2015), I was part of a three-crew “alliance” that totaled over 100 members. We could usually fill a lobby (30 people maximum), which made the lobby safe from modders and/or cargo griefers. The “objective” of GTA can vary from player to player, but most would agree that acquiring new toys/businesses/apartments/etc is somewhat high on the list. This requires cash. Cash is earned from jobs. Most well-paying jobs have you delivering cargo. Other players are awarded a piddly sum and some fireworks to destroy cargo. It’s ridiculously easy to do this ‒ some delivery vehicles blow up with one RPG, which is pocket change. Everyone is equipped with RPGs. Grenades, grenade launchers, sticky bombs, proximity mines, etc etc. GTA is actually, now, an urban war simulator. I cannot remember the amount, but someone totalled up all the guns/ammo you can carry on your person at one time ... it was something ridiculous like two tons.

Modders are fond of crashing sessions, either intentionally through a simple menu selection or accidentally through asset accretion (“I’ll spawn 100 cargo planes ha ha funny oh no what happened to the game”) etc. Avoiding sessions with modders/griefers was essential if you wanted to deliver your cargo safely or just fucking be able to play the game for more than a few minutes.

For awhile, Rockstar was actively fighting modders by scrambling and re-scrambling their own in-house anti-cheat system. So that gave you about three days of no one being able to use their mods. The problem was the p2p architecture of GTAV ‒ just a bunch of PCs talking to each other. Most other high-tier games, they have dedicated servers that “administer” the game, so one PC can’t falsely say to another PC, “your character dies” etc. After awhile, Rockstar started adding servers into the mix, but these servers were specifically for low-bandwidth players who were lagging in the game. If your connection was too slow, Rockstar would assign you a server and become your data transfer buddy to keep things moving along. [Update] A long clarification here. For all that I know, the servers that Rockstar added to help low-bandwidth players could be just repeaters. Just because those players were now being processed by a server instead of interacting with all the other players’ PCs, doesn’t mean that there was any additional processing to keep that player safer from modding than a normal-bandwidth player. Which is what you want in a large-scale properly-server-based game, but Rockstar doesn’t care about what you want. The only other good unintentional side effect from this is that it kept low-bandwidth player’s IP address hidden from modders/griefers/potential DDOSers. I was going to do tests to see if I could spoof Rockstar into thinking I was a low-bandwidth player, and also do tests with our tri-crew modder folks (see next paragraph) to see if it was just a straight repeater, but that was about the time our group started pulling rip cords in earnest to get away from the increasingly toxic/unstable sessions.

Despite Rockstar’s active attempts to flush modding, You could pretty much guarantee that in a full lobby, you had three or four modders. Some of them were “good” modders that were patrolling the lobby, looking for other modders to kick out of the session. We had two of these types of modders in our crew mix; our ability to take over a whole session was waning. People were quitting the game because of the endless modding. There were two random jackhole modders that became obsessed with our crew and would DDOS some of us, follow us around sessions messing up our games. More people quit. I started a side hobby of chatting with/at VPNs about who was harassing me that week.

I wrote my own modding programs. These were modding “lite” ‒ our crew modders were running off-the-shelf software that actually decrypted GTAV packets as they whizzed by so they could get player names/actions and also send spoofed encrypted code to the other pcs. I just played with IP addresses. One feature was a whitelist/blacklist (there were/are a few free white/blacklist programs available; I didn’t trust them). Press a button, keep my friends in the session, kick everyone else. Another feature was “flush” ‒ I could press a button, and everyone else in the lobby was “kicked” ‒ really in effect just a self-kick to my own lobby if a modder was trying to screw with me/crash the session (sometimes you would get various warnings that things were going awry and could jump before it took you down as well). But this also was handy for another problem ‒ the black screen. My understanding ‒ from reading other people’s writing about this ‒ is that Rockstar’s network code is sub-par. That other games don’t have the down time, and problems getting/keeping you connected to a session. How much of that is modding? Don’t know. But it would still happen when you were in a lobby, by yourself, trying to enter a building. No modders. Boom, black screen. So I could either sit and wait to see if it was just a delay or it was actually locked (and then go through the long exit/restart process), or I could hit my self-kick and get in a fresh solo session much quicker.

Then, in 2018 or so, Rockstar announced it was removing the anti-cheat system. This really helped almost all of my crew alliance to run for the exits. I finally gave up as well, modders were able to drill into solo sessions around this time. If only Rockstar had some walking around money to throw at the problem. Hold on, I’m getting word from hq ‒ GTAV is the highest grossing entertainment property ... ever.

If was just the greed, I might be okay with it. But in addition to this, Rockstar is butt-draggingly slow on improving aspects of the game that are just dead-drop boring or repetitive. Additionally, they’re very trollish, I mean, in a systematic way. I don’t want to go on and on about this but they seem to think that random annoying bullshit is a crucial, core part of the gaming experience. Sure, it’s frustrating to get calls from every goddamn character all the time telling you to buy a submarine or an auto shop or a casino penthouse or an office that you can not block/turn off, but what if those calls were timed to come when you were pre-occupied ‒ in a firefight, or parachuting to the ground ‒ and what if when the phone pops out with the 29th call from an idiot character pushing their business/vehicle/whatever you couldn’t pull your chute or shoot your gun because of the shit UI? Oh you died. Ha ha, funny! Multiple times funny. Hundreds of times funny! They took their troll call and pushed it through the shit UI to double-troll you to death! It’s like a layered sandwich, made of excrement. I call it Rockstar Jollies. What if cars exactly matched your speed to create the perfect T-bone, over and over and over and over? Ha ha funny! What about that bug w/NPCs dumping all the bullets of their gun immediately? Isn’t that a day zero bug? Oops you died. Ten-year bug! Funny! [put royalty-free image of harmonica pistol here]

I’m not explaining this well. Breaking it down. Rockstar programmers wrote code that detected when you were falling through the sky/in a firefight, and right around the time you were nearing the last moment you could pull your chute and actually live/were near death after being shot repeatedly, they’d have Random Jagoff call about a pretend agreement you made to buy an auto shop, let’s say. It would auto-pull up the phone so it was on the screen and ringing, maybe even auto-answer it so Jagoff could start talking. When the phone is on-screen you can’t pull your chute/shoot your gun because Rockstar logic. You die. Rockstar Jollies. It’s not gameplay, it’s “how can we fuck with the player.”

And on, and on, and on. It’s Rockstar’s trollish choice that cargo griefing means you lose all of your product. When you quit a session in the middle of a delivery, you lose ~5-10% of your product. They could make it the same small percentage for someone blowing up your cargo. They could beef/speed up vehicles, give you alternate ways of delivering, let you select delivery mission type, etc. There’s a whole laundry list of solutions, you (Rockstar) can easily access these helpful suggestions just by watching videos of GTA veterans getting pissed about this for the last decade. [side note: again, this is Rockstar system trolling. “Make them make a delivery with a really underpowered moped/boat of a van up a hill so steep to the point that they’re not sure it’s going to crest ... that’s tight gameplay right there”] People play this game despite all the poor decisions and broken UI and lackadaisical coding.

Why all the phone calls? Because Rockstar wants you to spend fake money. Why? Because you probably don’t have enough time to grind, so instead you can buy “Shark Cards,” spend real money to get some fake money. So those calls are basically ads. Ads ads ads ads. Unless you want to grind some boring-ass delivery missions in slow-ass trucks (several different types of delivery missions feature underpowered vehicles) for the nth time w/the griefers and modders, or by yourself in a solo session.

And on the other side of the fence, you can actual-pay various modders for fake cash as well. A large number of modders have created bots that join a session, spam text on how to give them money for an account with millions or billions of dollars etc, then bounce to a new session, rinse, repeat. Text messages that are impossible to minimize/stop in any manner, except if you had a “computer programmer” on your staff. I mean, here’s something that would ease 90% of the pain associated with these bots. Get your pencils ready, Rockstar.

IF (there’s a text message from someone that is the exact same as the text message they sent w/in 60 seconds ago)
THEN (maybe don’t send that same text message to everyone again)

I’m having a sale, that bit of code only costs $199.99. I accept checks drawn on real, actual banks IRL. No cryptocurrency, thank you. [added sidenote: yes, it will end up being an escalating war, but since all the bots are going to join multiple sessions just to advertise the exact same url/discord links, you can focus on that. A session-hopping url-dropper is 100% going to be taking money out of your mind-boggingly immense vault I mean back pocket, Rockstar]

Okay, so now we’re all caught up. Battleye is apparently a kernel-resident anti-cheat system, so it can do essentially anything with your data. Every time you run GTAV, you give it the keys to your system. If it finds anything that’s playing hinky with GTAV, ding, you get a system-id ban.

I don’t know if my programs will trigger Battleye. At this point, I’d be fine with a GTAV ban. But that will probably also apply to GTAVI w/a system ban. I could get a low-end PC and another copy of GTAV to do a test run, but that’s not worth my time/money. Just writing the code, that was already a ridiculous notion. It was like a game within a game, dude ... trippy, right? [FX: brushes your face with a giant pair of emu feathers]

You’ll be completely surprised to know that within 24hrs of the Battleye announcement, modders crashed my game twice, and also screwed with my inventory. Also, there’s a new type of crash that Rockstar will probably fix, in that (it appears) if Battleye removes the “host” of the session (one PC is given this designation, it’s coordinating the session in some small manner), GTAV flips out and throws everyone into the campaign/single-player mode. Fun.

[update] I got the bad host message while in a private session, when I was the “host” of said session. Wasn’t doing anything of note. This is (apparently) a new type of error that is just randomly happening to people, either individually or everyone grouped in a session. I am assuming here it’s not modders trying to tunnel into private sessions again, I think they have enough on their plate trying to navigate around Battleye at the moment. [end update]

This whole Battleye thing, people with more brainses have indicated that it’s either/both because they’re not making enough money on their subscription-based monthly GTA+ additional-cash-cow, and a pre-cursor to the way they want to run GTAVI. We’ve already “taught” them that they can earn an Uncle Scrooge-sized vault of money by avoiding the game industry standard of acquiring actual servers, so what’s stopping them from doing that for VI? Additionally, various sources I’ve run into over the years indicate that their earnings from the PC version are only ~10-20% of their whole GTA pie. The rest is console-based, and those are locked down, very little modding happening. So I don’t know, just be glad that they’ve made chirps that GTAVI is actually coming to the PC at all. Have they made chirps? I thought they made chirps. That’s another thing, they’re incredibly tight-lipped about everything. “Saving a bundle on PR, I hired my nephew! He’s the whole team!” It’s ... exhausting.

Looking at my own personal scorecard, Battleye has both taken away my ability to compensate for Rockstar’s black screen/modding/etc problems with my own programs, and in return is not adequately stopping modders from fucking shit up. Perhaps the contract with Battleye is dynamic ‒ the Battleyers will be continually hunting down the types of modding problems that escaped their original coding and will be diligent enough that constantly creating new/modifying extant mod menus will no longer be lucrative enough to bother. That still doesn’t fix the network problems GTAV has, hanging when trying to get in a new session, buildings, or even a solo session. That, I suspect everyone gets to live with until they grow up and get away from broken-ass p2p architecture. Never going to happen, glad to be future-wrong. Let’s check back in in 2026.

SuperfastMatt: It’s Finally Time To Put A 3D Printer In Your Garage. If you need to catch up to speed on the state of the state of 3D printing, this is a pretty good place to start. “This video is sponsored by Bambu but it’s not because they reached out to me it’s because I reached out to them ... I bought this printer with my money about six months ago [...]” Matt is using the machine to (among other things) create printed prototypes for machine parts that will be made out of metal, after clearances/alignment/etc is all sorted out with this quick prototyping. The last chunk of video has Matt creating a functioning adapter for “the intake,” a car part that you are all familiar with and need no introduction to. “I actually already made this part out of aluminum and I kind of hate it.”

Additionally, as a side note, Youtube needs to develop a futuristic technology I’m going to go ahead and call a “button” labeled “SPONSORED” or some such. It needs to be uniform, in your face, obvious. Perhaps even sassy.

Bike ride #3X-4X. I haven’t been riding as much, the novelty has worn off and just getting “out” of this area to places that are “nice” to ride is a pain. A freeway cuts off access to the bay in a horrible, insistent manner. Miles of Not Getting Across Me. Traffic continues to traffic. Today got almost-brushed by a school bus. Two weeks ago, was riding along a generous two-lane parking lot service drive next to a fast food dump and the person following slowly behind. No one else on the road. I stopped, they stopped. In a parking lot. No one is around. The car is twenty feet behind me. I have my foot on the curb. I’m not going anywhere. Let’s see how long this lasts. Waiting ... waiting. After a minute I got bored and pulled into the fast food place so they could continue on their way unimpeded by my arrogance. Have the bicyclists coined a term for this? Over-courtesy? Cars, in general, usually pull some sort of boner around three times per each biking trip. Which is about the same as when I was driving. Difference now is the sometimes the boner is that the driver has to SLAM on the brakes to avoid hitting me (there’s only been one time I didn’t have the situation under control, it was that asshole who gunned it through the Seabreeze dirt parking lot because his small penis needed an off-road workout [PENIS: “It’s dirt, dumbass, HIT THE GAS” CLOWNASS: “You got it, junior-junior YEEEEEHAWWWWWOH SHITTT”]). Though, as mentioned before, my favorite people are the oblivious ones, who either go the distance not even realizing I’m right next to them, or are startled after they’ve passed me. My post-glow go-to these days is to yell out that I love them. Because I do. I love all people. Did that sound convincing? Hold on, let me warm up a bit. I lOvEEEEE all pEoPLLE Anyway, a novel about a bicyclist who kills errant drivers would be a best-seller, I think. The bicyclist would not have to go to prison, just like all the drivers that kill pedestrians/bicyclists. “Golly, I killed a family! Hrm, what’s for lunch.” Laws: sensical, fair.

My bike lights and reflectors arrived, so I happily pitched the old light. It’s not going to serve anyone any function whatsoever. The new front bike light arrived with a rusted port and died w/in a week or two. The two rear lights are still happy and bright. I had to make a wooden mount for one of them, the second fit right into the slot of the old bike light.

Got a bunch of valves and adapters, though that’s pretty pointless until I have some sort of road bike pump that I can use. The hand pump I have is not going to pump to 80psi, pretty sure.

The bell is ringing w/the littlest of bumps now. I pulled it off to take it apart and there’s no clear way to open it up. Another vote for buying a new bell with a good ringy-dingy. Let me just order my dream bell, I pointed to it earlier in the year. Bell USD13, shipping USD54. Hrm no, I’m allergic to spending more on shipping than product. My dream bell is just a dream. [later] Now the bell doesn’t ring randomly. Dunno.

The city of El Cerrito has a restroom key thing wherein you give them $25 and they give you a restroom key. There are ~12 or so keyed restrooms in city buildings, scattered about, like a poopin’ treasure hunt. So I bought a key. You get your money back, apparently. They didn’t give me a receipt; having the key is good enough for them. I have paid attention to “government” for decades now and I posit that they will somehow “fuck this up” when I try to get my money back years from now.

In GTA news, Rockstar is enduring DDOS attacks from whiny modders who can’t cheat in the game any more for the most part and/or whiny mod sellers who can’t profit from selling mods any more. Again, for the most part. It’s not a single event, more like an argument over weeks/months. I need to find/make a crew before I decide to chuck it again for a year or so. Occasionally going up to the roof of “my” “office” to snipe at griefers is entertaining, but it’s not game sustenance.

Rockstar still hasn’t taken ONE damn step to block messages from people advertising level-unlocks/modded billionaire accounts etc. You’d think that would be high on their list, because those accounts are taking morsels off of Rockstar’s HEAPING plate of cash. I don’t know, they move in a bizarre fashion and basically don’t have a PR division. The one thing to always remember is that they farm out DLCs and etc to different countries/divisions, so every damn time the UI is inconsistent, the game objectives are inconsistent, everything is different. Each division is reluctant to touch any other division’s code. Additionally, they have no clue what future-proofing is. “We made a gun locker that stores all your guns!” [FX: months later new guns are added to the game] Gun locker: “I don’t know what those guns are” Ten years of this.

Now that modders are ~90% gone, hanging out in public lobbies is again a thing. So I’m being re-introduced to GTA Player Mental Acuity. I was talking with a crew member, one of the only ones that shows up on the regular, and we were hashing out the frequency of players who would kill you, then you’d kill them back and they’d say “why?” and you’d say “well, considering everything, I think it has a lot to do with when you killed me first unprovoked, five minutes ago” and they’d say “What? Whut? I didn’t kill you.” This happens a lot. Is there something in the young child’s brain that suppresses memories? It happens so much I don’t think it’s just kids telling porkies. You’re young, you can’t remember anything, you’re old, you can’t remember anything. The sweet spot is 25-39, I think. 25, you can rent cars and crash them into buildings and you’re also good at fuckin’, if you (you personally, not “you” as in “people”) actually have the ability to get good at fuckin’.. You hit 40, your ranking on any dating profile auto-nosedives and the memory starts going. Find a steady someone by age 39.99973 at most.

Jon Stewart On How Tech Companies Are Changing Entertainment / Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend.

Cabel Sasser, Panic ‒ XOXO Festival (2024).

Do not sleep on this one. It pays out, pays out, pays out, pays out.

Why NYC’s Grand Central is So Hard to Build Around ‒ Walking Tour ‒ Architectural Digest.

TLDW: Elevators need “elevator pits” for sleeping and mating purposes. The Grand Central station area is, oddly enough, infested with train lines below the surface because ground-level NYC real estate is very very very valuable indeed. Solution? Staircases so everyone has to climb one level to get to the elevators, or position the shafts between the train lines so the pits are all snug: line, shaft, line, shaft, line. A problem I was unaware of until I watched this video production, shown above.

[FX: weeks of sleepless nights, tossing and turning] the ... PITS ... oh god ... pits ...

Aubrey Plaza vs. Patti LuPone | Hot Ones Versus

I found a recent study on the internet of value that listed several key components of intelligence and at what age these factors “peaked.”

A lot of them were in the late 20s.

I left it open for awhile. Thought about taking a screen shot of the listing of the attributes.

Then I immediately closed the tab. My brain, though in steep decline during the Waning Years, is very self-protective.

Japanese Kitchen Tour: The Amazing Story of a Man Who Sold Pound Cakes by Bicycle for 30 Years ア・ラモート.

“Live each day desperately.”

1935 Anglo-American Chewing Gum Ltd.: Kidnapped (Thriller Chewing Gum) #36.

they used a cheetah for distraction

it was a thing in the early-mid 1900s

Back in the time before time, farmers looking to get away from the exorbitant cost of telephone infrastructure would just clip onto extant barb wire fences. A 1965 episode of Petticoat Junction used this as a plot device in which “Uncle Joe” creates his own barb wire fence telephone system. The clip below will start at the beginning of the barb wire fence telephone sales presentation so you can best evaluate for yourself the advantages and disadvantages of using said system in your own personal lifestyle ... system.

“I am a barbed-wire fence.”

Hello I have updated the strips page with the 2023/2024 strips. It took me this long to find a working solution which did not charge money and also was not brute force/overly annoying. I am providing the solution below, if you need to make small versions of a website in a somewhat similar manner.

First, get a snapshot program ready. I am using Clockmix, a program I wrote that does timed snapshots (you will have to find something else). The default is every two seconds. Great. Now load up the website page in your favorite browser. Hit F11 to make it full screen. In my case, 1920x1080. Now F12 to pull up the website inspector. Move the box to a different screen if you can. Start your snapshot program, and paste this into the inspector command line:

setInterval(function(){ window.scrollBy(0,1080); }, 2000);

This will move the screen 1080 pixels “down” every two seconds. Hit enter, whoosh, you’re off to the races. Go get a third cup of coffee, come back. You have many screenshots now that can be stitched together. I use Irfanview, which unfortunately has a 65XXX pixel limit. For 1080, that’s 60 images max. So tear off 60, push them into the Irfanview panorama stitch, save it off. Irfanview is not good at image resizing. I use a different program for that (and to trim the scrollbars off, so 1920px becomes 1900px). I resize the 1920x(whatever) images to 186x(whatever). Rinse, repeat. Then take all of those images back into Irfanview, stitch them together, save file, you’re all set.

Not a one-click solution but also free.

Grand Forks Herald, 1920 June 11. “Hey hey whoa ... you know, actually, cancel my order ...”

2024Mixtape: Intermission. (spotify playlist)

Linus Boman: This hidden Swedish design is very mindful.

Song Exploder: Le Tigre “Deceptacon"

Huhn Starch System ad. The Manufacturing Confectioner (1927apr, pg 25).

Finally, a website for my generation

I have updated my auction-processing program to work with an auctionary house’s new api (the old api is being deprecated at the end of the year). They also recently made a change in the quality of matches given for your search strings. This is day two of production with the new api, and I was greeted by this collage of “vintage german hand blown rocker glass doll eyes brown” though my search term in this case consisted of -none- of these words.

My search term included “chocolate.” “Chocolate” is close to “brown,” sayeth the algorithm. Here are two dozen scary doll eyes on stalks. I could have given you actual matching guesses, I just thought maybe you would like the disembodied eye pairs more.

I don’t know why anyone would find this sort of awful seemingly-random guesswork to be helpful in any manner whatsoever.

Angela Collier: The sham legacy of Richard Feynman [2hr 48min].

Secret Base: The History of Slipping on Banana Peels [33min].

Process X: Model Train Making Process. A 73-year-old Japanese artisan crafting model trains for decades. Inami Railway Model Works.

Secret Base: That’s not entirely accurate / Pretty Good, episode 15.

Toucan Purrs When Petted.

Daisies (1966; 1, 2)

Billie Eilish: Same Interview, The Eighth Year | Vanity Fair.

Barnyard Follies: Five Short Skits [50sec].

Shank Mods: What Happened to the World’s Largest Tube TV? [35min]

Brick Technology: Building a Cat-Sized Lego Train [14min].

Maggie Mae Fish: Is Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” bad actually?? [22min] [37min]