tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12122858575713361062024-03-17T20:03:23.906-07:00 DO NOT READ THIS BLOG!<br>
A blog that no one should ever read. Ever. Seriously. Nothing to see here, move along.Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.comBlogger726125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-59062393710673548912024-03-17T18:39:00.000-07:002024-03-17T18:39:35.423-07:00Something to Have Said<div><br/>
<p>It’s long been a tradition on this blog that, when I’m having trouble coming up with a regular post, I take the opportunity to reflect on the blog thus far. There are, in fact, 5 previous posts in this informal “series,” which you can find links to on <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2015/07/series-listing-informals.html">the informals</a> listing page (search for “Nothing to Say”). Some of those posts were because I truly had nothing to say, some were because I had too many ideas but none of them were working for me, and some of them were because I ran out of time for a post and wanted to buy myself some extra time to finish up properly.</p>
<p>This is a bit like that last one: I did have a post all planned out, and I <span style="font-style: italic;">thought</span> it would be fairly quick to write, but, once I started looking into it, it seemed like it was going to take more time than I could properly devote to it this weekend. But there was also a bit more going on this time around, because I discovered a number of problems that needed attention. None of them were particularly difficult to solve, but they added up. And all these problems centered around blog maintenance.</p>
<p>See, writing a blog is about more than just the actual writing of the words, in the same way that making YouTube videos is about more than just standing in front of your webcam and talking. There’s also editing, and the technical process of getting the work published on the web site, and, occasionally, going back and correcting mistakes.</p>
<p>In this particular case, I found of number of small typos in old posts while rereading them to get into the necessary flow state. I also noticed a post or two that <span style="font-style: italic;">should</span> have been added to a series listing page but had gotten overlooked. And, even after I decided to turn this week’s post into a “nothing to say” post, I found still more issues. See, in order to get a proper word count for blog posts, I’ve separated out my rough draft posts from the published posts, and I’ve written a little Perl script to count the actual words while ignoring the non-content bits.<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="#note1">1</a></span></sup> So, the first thing I discovered is that there were a bunch of posts which I had neglected to move from my “drafts” folder to my “published” one. Then I discovered that my wrapper script which ran the word counting script on “all” my blog posts had neglected to consider my ongoing novel, whose chapters and subchapters were indeed blog posts.<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="#note2">2</a></span></sup> Then, which I had fixed all <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span>, I ran it and it said it couldn’t find the word counting script. So I had to track that down and fix that too.<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="#note3">3</a></span></sup></p>
<p>And part of the reason for all this required maintenance is that I only do those sorts of cleanup tasks when I need to for one of these “nothing to say” posts ... and I just haven’t done one of those in a while. The first such post was a year into the blog, and the second was a year later; after that, they fell into a fairly steady biannual pattern. And, if I had kept to that schedule (loose as it was), this post should have landed in ... let’s see ... 2020.</p>
<p>Right in the middle of the pandemic.</p>
<p>So ... yeah. <span style="font-style: italic;">That</span> didn’t happen.</p>
<p>And now it’s been <b>six</b> years since the last time I counted up how much time and effort I’ve put into this blog, which means it’s been 14 years in total that I’ve been doing it. Which is ... a lot. In that time, the landscape of the Internet has changed significantly. Text information has largely been replaced by videos; some opine that this is a sign that people don’t like to read any more, but I say it’s the nature of Internet commerce. If you want to get paid for Internet content, good luck trying to make a buck writing posts of the length I typically do on this blog. But it’s easy to monetize video content on YouTube, as long as it’s of a certain length. Which is why the one sentence answer to a “how do I ...?” question is now a 2½ minute video which you watch at 2x speed because you’re just trying to GET TO THE FUCKING ANSWER: <b>no</b> I’m not going to like and subscribe and hit the bell icon, I just need to know how to reset my fucking garbage disposal!!!</p>
<p>So people don’t much write blogs any more. Hell, I’ve even read that the entire <span style="font-style: italic;">concept</span> of blogging is now considered passé. Enh. That’s okay: I’m old. Although the truth of the matter is that this really has nothing to do with old vs youn<nobr>g—</nobr><wbr/>it’s just that different brains work in different ways. Some brains need to see and hear a real person explain a thing to them. Some people prefer to read words. My brain is a word brain; videos are ... I dunno, meh, I suppose? I enjoy watching videos for entertainment, but not so much for information. Unless they’re edutainment or somesuch. But whatever. The point is, I enjoy reading, and I enjoy writing, and I’m going to keep on writing this blog, and I don’t much care if it’s considered old-fashioned. Or if no one reads it, even. I even <span style="font-style: italic;">tell</span> you not to read it right there in the blog title. So obviously I just don’t give a shit. I’m a rebel like that.</p>
<p>So, where <span style="font-style: italic;">are</span> we in terms of stats? Well, we’re about a week away from being <span style="font-style: italic;">exactly</span> 14 years into it; this week is 729 weeks from the first post,<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="#note4">4</a></span></sup> which means that this <span style="font-style: italic;">should</span> be the 730th post (because, again, you have to count both endpoints, ’cause there’s a post at either end). Whereas my Blogger interface tells me I have 725 posts, not counting this one, so I’m actually 4 short. Still, only 4 posts missed in 14 year<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>that’s not a bad track record.</p>
<p>I also used to consider how many were interstitial and partial and all that. But that’s less relevant with the <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2017/12/a-modest-proposal.html">new blog schedule</a> (which came into existence right before the last “nothing to say” post), since now every other post will be one of those two things. Still, for completeness, I’ll run the numbers: of the 725 posts, 102 are interstitial (that’s 14%), and 100 are partial (basically the same percentage). Which is not so bad. But how about the big one? how many <span style="font-style: italic;">words</span> are we talking?</p>
<p>Well, discounting all the quotes and footnotes and all that, the grand total comes out to 798,583 words. So nearly 800K words in 14 years: 57K words per year, or 1100 words per week on average, even <span style="font-style: italic;">with</span> the interstitials and partials. That’s not too shoddy, if I do say so myself. Nothing to sneeze at, I don’t think.</p>
<p>And whither hence? I mean, I said years ago (in the aforementioned blog schedule post, in fact) that I would like to break this blog into several sub-blogs, each one aimed more specifically at its target audience. And thus far I’ve totally failed to make good on that. I still want to, of course, although blogging platforms to make that easier are getting harder to come by as the popularity of blogging declines. But I have some thoughts. Maybe ChatGPT (or other AI competitor) can help me figure out how to get going on that. I have hopes. And, occasionally, dreams.</p>
But I see from my handy-dandy word counter that this “partial” post has once again grown into a full post. Which I can’t really complain about, so I shan’t. I’ll just say that I’m looking forward to ... what, another 14 years doing this? I’m not sure that makes sense, at the pace technology is advancing these days. But another 14 years of putting out <span style="font-style: italic;">something</span> for you not to read, that’s for sure.
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<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note1">1</a> I outline the exact specs of this script in the <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2018/05/something-to-say-but-no-time-to-say-it.html">most recent nothing to say post</a>, if you really care.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note2">2</a> This undoubtedly means that my last official stats were off too. But I’m not going to bother going back to correct <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note3">3</a> As it turns out, I had just renamed it since the last time I ran it from the wrapper script. No biggie. But it took much longer to figure out than it did to fix.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note4">4</a> You may recall that I used the Perl date module which I wrote to work that out last time, and I lamented that it really ought to be simpler. Well, now it is: <code>perl -MDate::Easy -E 'say ((today - date("3/28/2010")) / 7)'</code> prints “729.”</span></p>
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-79277566913081567202024-03-10T00:30:00.000-08:002024-03-10T00:30:00.135-08:00Thou wast not born for death ...<div><br/>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">[This post contains light spoilers for all three campaigns of Critial Role. Well, not “light” in the sense that they’re not very meaningful, but light in the sense that they’re almost definitely facts that have already been spoiled for you by now. Still, read on at your own risk.]</span> </span></p>
<p><br/></p>
<p>One day I hope to live long enough to see Liam O’Brien play a D&D character who actually <span style="font-style: italic;">cares</span> whether they live or die.</p>
<p>If you’re not familiar with <span style="font-style: italic;">Critical Role</span>, you have no idea what I’m on about, and you can probably just check out now. If you <span style="font-style: italic;">are</span> familiar with CR, then no doubt you know <span style="font-style: italic;">exactly</span> what I’m talking about. In Campaign 1 (Vox Machina), there was Vax, who almost eagerly promised his life to the Raven Queen to bring back his twin sister from the realm of the dead. It took years (and dozens of episodes) for that promise to be reaped, but it did eventually happen, and Liam has staunchly refused to consider resurrection for Vax. In Campaign 2 (the Mighty Nein), Caleb’s crushing guilt at what he had done in his past often made him feel his life was worthless, and that it wasn’t worth living unless he could find a way to turn back time. Liam has spoken of Caleb’s willingness to sacrifice himself to defeat his archenemy Trent. And now here we are in Campaign 3 (Bell’s Hells), and Ory<nobr>m—</nobr><wbr/>who at first seems like a bright, sunny character, but eventually reveals a classically tragic backstor<nobr>y—</nobr><wbr/>has now offered to give up the remainder of his life in service to a powerful archfey in exchange for the tools to keep his companions safe.</p>
<p>It isn’t limited to just D&D either: Liam’s character for his run (as a player) on <span style="font-style: italic;">Candela Obscura</span> was Cosmo Grimm, a 97-year-old occultist who, due to his advanced age, had a built-in reason for being willing to sacrifice himself at every turn. Even several (though admittedly not all) of his one-shot characters seem to have a bit of a death wish ... and even the ones who don’t often end up dead anyway.</p>
<p>To some extent this makes sense. O’Brien started out as a stage actor doing, among other things, a lot of Shakespeare. When asked once what books he would keep with him at all times if he had a real-life version of Caleb’s “book holsters,” Liam replied Hellboy and Hamlet. There is absolutely no doubt that Liam has a strong affinity to tragedies, and tragic characters in particular. And, don’t get me wrong: he’s <span style="font-style: italic;">excellent</span> at playing these characters. He’s a brilliant actor, and his talent for the dark, brooding hero with the tragic backstory can’t be overstated.</p>
<p>But, just once, I’d love to see him play a character with some joie de vivre, with no tragic circumstances either before or behind, someone who really lives life to the fullest and is in no hurry to die any time soon. I mean, I think he’d be really good at that too. And I think it’d be fun to watch.</p>
But I’m getting old enough nowadays that I ain’t holdin’ my breath.
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-46317591275411220632024-03-03T16:51:00.000-08:002024-03-03T16:51:59.013-08:00Be Liberal in What You Accept<div><br/>
<p><blockquote>If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.<br/><br/>—<wbr/> Winston Churchill</blockquote></p>
<p>You may have seen this quote floating around online. Certainly it’s a darling of modern conservatives. And if so great a luminary as <span style="font-style: italic;">Churchill</span> said it ... well, then, certainly it must be true.</p>
<p>Except, of course, <b>Churchill never said that.</b> The <a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/quotes-falsely-attributed/">International Churchill society</a> points out that:</p>
<p><blockquote>There is no record of anyone hearing Winston Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University made this comment: ‘Surely Churchill can’t have used the words attributed to him. He’d been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?’</blockquote></p>
<p>By “Clemmie,” Addison is referring here to Clementine, the Baroness Spencer-Churchill, a.k.a. Winston’s wife. So I think these are pretty compelling points that attributing this quote to Churchill is just wishful thinking.</p>
<p>If you really want to know the convoluted origin of this quote, you can read all about it on <a href="https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/">the Quote Investigator</a>, but basically it likely started off as this:</p>
<p><blockquote>A boy of fifteen who is not a democrat is good for nothing, and he is no better who is a democrat at twenty.<br/><br/>—<wbr/> John Adams, 1799</blockquote></p>
<p>which then evolved to this:</p>
<p><blockquote>Several of my friends urged me to respond with Burke’s famous line: “Anyone who is not a republican at twenty casts doubt on the generosity of his soul; but he who, after thirty years, perseveres, casts doubt on the soundness of his mind.”<br/><br/>—<wbr/> Jules Claretie (translated from the original French), 1872</blockquote></p>
<p>Along with many, many variations along the way, and since. Here’s my favorite of the ones QI cites:</p>
<p><blockquote>An excited supporter burst into the private chambers of the old tiger Clemenceau one day and cried, “Your son has just joined the Communist Party.” Clemenceau regarded his visitor calmly and remarked, “Monsieur, my son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.”<br/><br/>—<wbr/> Bennet Cerf, writing about Georges Clemenceau, 1944</blockquote></p>
That one at least is clever. The rest are all at least moderately clumsy in the phrasing, not to mention <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> uttered by anyone as famous as Churchill. Although John Adams is close. But also pay attention to what Adams is really saying here: that, by the time you’re merely <span style="font-style: italic;">twenty</span> years old, you should have learned not to have faith in democracy. I know we Americans have a great belief that we live in a democracy, and that we do so because of our revered founding fathers, but often we forget that irksome things like the electoral college exist precisely <span style="font-style: italic;">because</span> those founding fathers (or at least a majority of them) felt that the common man couldn’t be expected to be informed enough to vote sensibly, so the best they could be trusted to do was to elect someone smarter than they were.
<p>Of course, as I wrote in my very first blog post about <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-in-quote.html">quotes</a>, “really it doesn’t even matter who said it: the wisdom or truth of the words is contained within them, regardless of any external attribution.” So who cares <span style="font-style: italic;">who</span> said it, if it’s true.</p>
<p>Except ...</p>
<p>Well, except that it’s crap. Even confining ourselves to the fairly modern definitions of “liberal” and “conservative”—<wbr/>and completely ignoring the <span style="font-style: italic;">far</span> right (MAGA, QAnon, etc)—<wbr/>I can quite trivially provide two counterexamples: my father was the same conversative he is today at 25, and I continue to be just as liberal as I ever was well beyond 35. Or 45 ... hell, I’ve now moved beyond <span style="font-style: italic;">55</span>, even, and I continue to be, what I’m sure is to my more conservative friends, annoyingly liberal.</p>
<p>And, yes, I do have conservative friends. Remember: I said we were not defining “conservative” as meaning the MAGA crow<nobr>d—</nobr><wbr/>I’m definitely not friends with any of them. But, using the normal definition of “political conservative” to mean small government, taxes bad, trickle-down economics good, capitalism great, unions suck, etc. ... sure, I have friends like that. People like that can be very reasonable and even fun. The fact that they’re wrong doesn’t make them bad people. (I’m kidding. Mostly.)</p>
<p>No, this lovely idea that liberalism is founded on idealism, which is something you really <span style="font-style: italic;">ought</span> to have when you’re young, but you really ought to grow out of at some point, is just crap. Doesn’t make any sense, and doesn’t bear out in reality. The best proof of this concept that I’ve run across is in <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/conservative-and-liberal-brains-might-have-some-real-differences/">an article from <span style="font-style: italic;">Scientific American</span></a>, which posits (with some interesting studies to back it up) that conservative and liberal <span style="font-style: italic;">brains</span> are just different. Liberals have bigger cingulate cortices, while conservatives have bigger amygdalae. Which means, broadly speaking, that liberals are better at detecting errors and resolving conflicts, while conservatives are better at regulating emotions and evaluating threats. Nothing wrong with either of those characteristics, of course: each are good, in different situations. And there’s still some disagreement over which comes first:</p>
<p><blockquote>There is also an unresolved chicken-and-egg problem: Do brains start out processing the world differently or do they become increasingly different as our politics evolve?</blockquote></p>
<p>But I find this whole area fascinating. Especially because there isn’t anything black-and-white about it, which as you know appeals to my sense of <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2010/08/balance-and-paradox.html">balance and paradox</a>. Sure, conservatives are less likely to question the status quo, but that means they’re often happier because they’re more willing to accept and enjoy their circumstances. Sure, liberals may be better at processsing contradictory information, but we’re also prone to waffling and it can take us forever to make up our minds about an issue (that one hits particularly hard for me). And, yes, all this is a whole lot of generalization, and individuals will differ in how they approach things regardless of their overall tendencies, and obviously we <span style="font-style: italic;">can</span> rise above our programming ... but, at least to me, it’s actually a bit comforting to think that, when a friend expresses some surprisingly conservative viewpoint, I can say to myself, oh: they’re just wired differently. And that’s okay.</p>
<p>As I’ve said <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2014/12/obstreperousness-as-virtue.html">before</a>, the world would be a pretty boring place if we all agreed on everything. So, while I continue to believe that my politics are the best politics, I don’t hate the other side ... hell, I don’t even dislike or distrust the other side. But, I must once again stress: Trump supporters are <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> the other side. Those are the folks who’ve gone way beyond the other side and out the door and down the road and across the field. Even my <span style="font-style: italic;">father</span>, bastion of conservatism that he is, is no longer a Trump supporter. Trump gives conservatism a bad name, sadly. And I think that Trump will likely not win in the presidential race this year precisely because more and more conservatives are realizing this. I could be wrong about that ... but I don’t think I am. And that’s a good thing.</p>
<p>I think proper conservatism deserves a reboot. I still think they’re all wrong, of course, but it’s never great to have people in charge who all think the same way. Diversity is important (again, ignoring those ultra-right-wingers who foam at the mouth when you talk about diversity), and, just as having diversity in the workplace makes your business more profitable (look it up if you don’t believe this; there are <span style="font-style: italic;">multiple</span> studies which support this fact), so too is diversity of opinions in government important. If the government were entirely run by liberals, we’d probably be in just as much trouble as we would be if it were run entirely by conservatives. Finding the <span style="font-style: italic;">balance</span> is what’s important ... but of course I would say that (<a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2010/08/balance-and-paradox.html">balance and paradox</a> again).</p>
<p>What I really wish is that our two political parties would <span style="font-style: italic;">both</span> split in two. The Republicans have become sharply divided between the MAGA crowd and the “traditional” conservatives, while the Democrats have become too crowded, and people as different as Biden and Sanders both claiming the same party feels weird. If we had four parties, they could perhaps be led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and I think the vast majority of Americans would know exactly which quadrant of the spectrum they fall into just from that alone. I’d love it, personally. I would probably vote for AOC’s party the most often, but I’d vote for the Harris ticket plenty, and probably even the Cheney party every now and again. (The less said on how I feel about the Greene-led crowd, the better.) But we’d truly have some meaningful choices again, that’s the important bit. And I think that would be good for our country, for our government, and for our sanity.</p>
<p>Sadly, I think it’s mostly just wishful thinking. I think the two-party stranglehold on our political system is not giving up its deathgrip any time soon, and we’ll be the poorer for it. But, as fraught with emotion as the current times are, I think we should still all remember that conservative, libera<nobr>l—</nobr><wbr/>they’re just a difference in how we’re wired, and that’s fine. We can still all get along, and we can still see the good in others. And I think that’s a worthy goal.</p>
<p><br/><br/><br/></p>
<span style="font-size: smaller;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">[Today’s title is the latter half of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle">Robustness Principle</a>, a.k.a. Postel’s law: be conservative in what you emit; be liberal in what you accept. So perhaps it’s just my technogeek nature to recognize that both philosophies have value.]</span> </span>
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-88525744600076615082024-02-25T23:48:00.000-08:002024-02-25T23:48:54.754-08:00The Return of Stew-beef<div><br/>
<p>I have, to my knowledge, seen nearly every episode of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Daily Show</span>, since the very beginning. That means I’ve not only seen what I believe to be every single episode hosted by Jon Stewart and every single episode hosted by Trevor Noah, but every episode in between and since, and even the majority of the episodes hosted by Craig Kilborn, who preceded Stewart. It was a very different show back then, but I watched ’em all. There’s been a lot of individual bits of various shows that I’ve disliked, but I don’t think there’s been a single show in these past 28 years that hasn’t made me laugh at least once, and most of them far more often than that.</p>
<p>So obviously I was pretty happy to see Stewart come back to the show a couple of weeks ago. I thought his first show back was pretty awesome: as his Apple+ show (<span style="font-style: italic;">The Problem with Jon Stewart</span>) proved, he really hasn’t lost a step since his “retirement.” He’s still got the rhythm, and the biting commentary that’s perfectly happy to skewer public figures on both sides of the aisle. I laughed plenty.</p>
<p>Both not everyone appreciated his homecoming as much as I. There was, in fact, quite a bit of criticism, perhaps most emblematically summed up by Keith Olbermann, who <a href="https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/1757263279318053196">tweeted</a>:</p>
<p><blockquote>Well after nine years away, there’s nothing else to say to the bothsidesist fraud Jon Stewart bashing Biden, except: Please make it another nine years</blockquote></p>
<p>Of course, Olbermann has been a critic of Stewart for years, going back to saying that he’d <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olbermann-jon-stewart-shark-rally_n_776829">“jumped the shark”</a> back when Stewart (along with co-host Colbert) put on the “Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear)” (which I <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2010/10/sanity-restored.html">quite enjoyed</a>, personally). So it shouldn’t have been news. But, somehow it was ... perhaps boosted by similar criticism from Mary Trump, the hosts of <span style="font-style: italic;">The View</span>, and a bunch of people described as “liberal media figures” whose names I’ve never heard in my life. Basically, they accused him of “both-sides-ism.” Well, fair enough: as I noted above, Stewart is fond of not letting anyone off the hook, regardless of “sides.” But what did he actually <span style="font-style: italic;">say</span>, actually?</p>
<p>Well, he said this:<sup><span style="font-size: larger;"><a href="#note1">*</a></span></sup></p>
<p><blockquote>What’s crazy is thinking that we are the ones as voters who must silence concerns and criticisms. It is the candidate’s job to assuage concerns, not the voter’s job not to mention them.</blockquote></p>
<p>and this:</p>
<p><blockquote>Look, Joe Biden isn’t Donald Trump. He hasn’t been indicted as many times, hasn’t had as many fraudulent businesses, or been convicted in a civil trial for sexual assault, or been ordered to pay defamation, had his charities disbanded, or stiffed a shit-ton of blue-collar tradesmen he’d hired. Should we even get to the grab the pussy stuff? Probably not.<br/><br/>But the stakes of this election don’t make Donald Trump’s opponent less subject to scrutiny. It actually makes him <b>more</b> subject to scrutiny.</blockquote></p>
<p>Which ... sounds pretty reasonable to me. I’m not sure what Olbermann and friends <span style="font-style: italic;">expected</span> Stewart to d<nobr>o—</nobr><wbr/>was he supposed to pretend that Biden isn’t old, or that no one <span style="font-style: italic;">realizes</span> he’s old? I mean, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/jon-stewart-daily-show-biden-democrats/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Nation</span></a> expresses it better than I ever could, so I’ll just quote them:</p>
<p><blockquote>Stewart’s segment was fundamentally pro-Biden, a shrewd use of comedy to address unease while also, as Stewart at his best always does, keeping the big political picture in mind. It’s a way to address the age issue on pro-Biden terms but still maintain the trust of independents and nonpartisan Democrats, who are the swing voters in danger of abandoning Biden or staying home.</blockquote></p>
Yep, that’s what I thought too.
<br/><br/><br/><br/><div style="line-height: 80%;">
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<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note1">*</a> If you want to follow along at home, you can watch his monologue <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpBPm0b9deQ">on YouTube</a>; my first quote starts at 15:53, and the second starts at 17:30.</span></p>
</div><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-33999009211215064172024-02-18T22:05:00.000-08:002024-02-18T22:05:54.480-08:00Creeping Rageaholic I<div><br/>
<span style="font-style: italic;">"Set Shit on Fire"</span>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">[This is one post in a series about my music mixes. The <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2015/07/series-listing-music-mixes.html">series list</a> has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use. You may wish to read the <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2015/02/all-mixed-up.html">introduction</a> for more background.<br/><br/>Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguou<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week. Just that I will eventually finish it, someday. Unless I get hit by a bus.]</span> </span></p>
<br/>
<p>This is one of my longest idea-to-realization mixes. I originally had the idea for this mix back in 2003, when the guy who had been hanging out with a cartoon dog and entertaining my kids put out an album, and the first song on it sucked me in with a serene opening and then just exploded into existence about a minute in. It reminded me rather forcefully of driving back and forth from where I went to college in Northern Virginia to my parents’ house in southern Virginia and belting out ”‘cos it already is!” at the top of my lungs, and I knew I had to pair those two somehow. But I didn’t finalize this first volume (or at least get it as close to “final” as any of my mixes ever get) until just this year.</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that mix has a very specific mood. Musically, the hook is that these are songs which lure you into a false sense of security, then just burst into being. It’s a little more than just dropping the beat; many of these transform fully from ballads to full-on rockers, if not heavy metal bangers, somewhere between verse and chorus, or even between one verse to the next. But, emotionally, that’s a very specific mood to capture. Some of these songs are about loss, or about violent discovery, or about reflecting on one’s own faults and the inevitable frustration that comes when you know you need to be better but somehow just can’t manage to achieve it. I’m just not in the mood for that very specific energy all that often. But, when I am, these are the songs I reach for.</p>
<p>To give you an idea of the vibe you might get from this mix, I’ve assembled you a little <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-cento-for-sunday.html">cento</a>, cobbled together from lines of the songs in this first volume. When it comes to naming a mix volume, there’s two camps that most of them fall into: either there’s a perfect line from one of the songs that instantly suggests itself as perfect, or there’s nothing that really jumps out at me and I have to go scouring. But this volume is a bit of an outlier: there’s an embarrassment of riches here, and I ended up with so many great candidates that I started piecing them together in my head. Here’s what I ended up with (attributions given at the end of the post):</p>
<p><div style="margin-left: 1em; line-height: 150%">Day after day after sorry day,<br/>the sun makes me sick.<br/>One, ’cause you left me.<br/>You hate the things that I lik<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/><br/>that fascist faith will kill you.<br/>I think I’m just paranoid;<br/>I’m fucking lazy ...<br/>there’s just too much pressure to take:<br/>I’m just another soul for sale.<br/>It’s not my time to wonder why ...<br/>You monkey, you left me.<br/>Set shit on fire.</div></p>
<p>So that should give you a rough idea of what you’re in for.</p>
<p>For the most part, these tracks fulfill the original pattern: they start out slow, or mellow, or understated, then burst into a sudden sonic explosion (though we’ll see a few songs which subvert expectations in one way or another). The mix title ... well, the imagery is a bit unusual, but overall this is one of my most intelligible mix names. The volume title is the last line of the little cento above, of course.</p>
<p>So, the first two tracks of this mix were pretty much always going to be Steve Burns’ epic opener “Mighty Little Man,” from his Steven-Drozd-of-the-Flaming-Lips-produced debut album, closely followed by “For Nancy,” the midpoint banger from Pete Yorn’s debut. Both songs play with quiet/loud dynamics in a way that’s quite different from the standard grunge pattern. In grunge, the contrasting dynamics are just a part of the structure of the songs; bands like Nirvana and the Pixies have refined the pattern to an art form, but you can’t really claim to be surprised when they do it.<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/creeping-rageaholic-i.html#note1">1</a></span></sup> These tunes hit with more emotional impact when they explode: they lull you into a false sense of calm, then burst into emotional being. There’s really nothing like that feeling.</p>
<p>“Shutterbug” was the next most obvious choice: it’s a magnificent dichotomy of almost-whispered vocals punctuated by raw guitar chords that are almost metal in their ferocity. It was easily the most standout track from Veruca Salt’s excellent <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/eight-arms-to-hold-you-mw0000082720"><span style="font-style: italic;">Eight Arms to Hold You</span></a>. It was perhaps a bit unimaginative of me to just tack it on as the third track in the mix, but, honestly, these three really combine to form an opening triptych that firmly establishes the mood. After that, there were a few other obvious choices: Linkin Park’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Hybrid Theory</span> is basically composed of nothing <span style="font-style: italic;">but</span> tracks that fit this pattern (from which I thought “Crawling” was the best exemplar), and the amazing “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence was still fresh and darkly glittering at the time I was putting together the mix. It opens with a simple piano melody and Amy Lee’s sweet, understated vocals, then Beny Moody’s grinding guitar licks kick in, and there’s that beautiful single beat of absolute silence before each chorus bursts forth ... it’s quite transportative. Likewise, PJ Harvey was a no-brainer: I was pretty blown away by <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/rid-of-me-mw0000096498"><span style="font-style: italic;">Rid of Me</span></a> when I first heard it, and in particular the way that the title track starts very softly and makes you lean in, only to rock you on your heels with PJ’s aggressive guitar and Rob Ellis’ thundering drums. There was never a world where this tune didn’t appear on the first volume of this mix.</p>
<p>After that, I looked a bit to the industrial scene. Stabbing Westward’s “What Do I Have to Do?,” with its sparkly synth-noodling intro, was a pretty obvious choice. Meanwhile, Machines of Loving Grace’s biggest hit “Butterfly Wings” inverts the pattern by starting out with standard industrial intensity, then dropping down to quiet moments between verses. “Kiss Off” by Violent Femmes was another obvious choice: it starts with Gordon Gano’s acoustic guitar and quiet vocals, giving it almost a folk song vibe, and this time it’s Brian Ritchie’s bass that provides the burst of feeling; the song quickly turns and becomes a bit of a rant, which makes it fit perfectly here. In the exact opposite department, it’s the slinky toms and bass of Green Day’s “Longview” that provides the calm before the storm of the guitars and snare. Obviously <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/dookie-mw0000107965"><span style="font-style: italic;">Dookie</span></a> was going to have to feature here, and I thought “Longview” was a great choice (plus it leads into “Kiss Off” quite nicely).</p>
<p>This mix was also started at the height of my fascination with Magnatune,<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/creeping-rageaholic-i.html#note2">2</a></span></sup> so it’s not surprising that several of its artists ended up here. Perhaps most obviously, spineCar’s “Waste Away” follows a similar pattern to “Longview”: the rhythmic bassline is joined by a studied, pulsing drumbeat, then muddy guitars and quiet vocals join in, building to the crescendo where the lead singer breaks into a scream on the third syllable of the song’s title. It’s a piece of undeservedly little-known nu-metal from the late 90s. Then there’s “Dirtbag”: the original version of this tune, by Brad Sucks, is a perfectly lovely piece of alt-po<nobr>p—</nobr><wbr/>the lyrics are a bit edgy, sure, but the melody belies that. But part of the deal with Magnatune is the artists explicitly give permission for other Magnatune artists to remix their work, and what producer Victor Stone (working under the moniker Four Stones) does with “Dirtbag” is transcendant: he adds a seething undercurrent of anxiety and simmering rage by adding echoes and contrasting drones. It’s really something to hear. We’ve heard from Jade Leary before;<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/creeping-rageaholic-i.html#note3">3</a></span></sup> “Meaner than Winter” is a short, not-quite bridge track that never really explodes, but always seems on the verge of doing so. I felt it was a pretty good transition from the first half of the volume to the slightly harder edge of the second half. Then we have “Charming Gun,” by trip-hop artist Artemis. Honestly, I’m not sure this track really fits the theme all that well, and I was on the verge of taking it out several times. But, in the end, I think it maintains just enough contrast (not only quiet/loud, but also slow/fast) to keep its place.</p>
<p>After that, two later additions were Metric’s “Black Sheep” from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Scott Pilgrim vs. the World</span> soundtrack, and “The Pretender” by the Foo Fighters. The former is just a solid post-punk offering that actually punctuates its quiet verses with strong guitar/bass/drum licks <span style="font-style: italic;">between</span> the lines in a way that I found irresistible. The latter ... well, I’m not one to think that Dave Grohl learned his craft from his time in Nirvana, because I think he was always pretty damned talented. But I can’t help but wonder if his unerring talent for knowing when to crank up the vocals into a a full-on scream and when to back off is at least a <span style="font-style: italic;">little</span> influenced by Kurt Cobain, who was undoubtedly the master of that technique. When I first heard “The Pretender,” I knew unquestioningly that it had to be on this mix.</p>
<p>I follow that track with another one that manages to simmer without exploding and yet never feels unsatisfying: “Glycerine,” by Bush. The only proper grunge song on this frist volume, the contrast here is provided by Nigel Pulsford’s crunchy guitars and strings, of all things. <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/sixteen-stone-mw0000125267"><span style="font-style: italic;">Sixteen Stone</span></a> is a revelatory album, and I’m kind of surprised it’s taken me this long to feature a track from it. And I close with Smash Mouth, who, along with Nickelback, it seems to be fashionable to hate on these days. But <span style="font-style: italic;">Fush Yu Mang</span> is a pretty important album itself, and “Let’s Rock” is a great tune that hits a lazy, almost ska vibe for its verses, then bursts into a beautiful metal-inspired crescendo of emotion. “Fuck it, let’s rock” indeed.</p>
</div> <br/> <br/>
<div align=center> <span style="font-size: larger;"> <b>Creeping Rageaholic I</b> </span> <br/> <span style="font-style: italic;">[ Set Shit on Fire ]</span> </div> <br/> <br/>
<div class='post-body entry-content'>
“Mighty Little Man” by Steve Burns, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09L1HRGS6"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Songs for Dustmites</span></a> <br/>
“For Nancy” by Pete Yorn, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K4XQ57K"> <span style="font-style: italic;">musicforthemorningafter</span></a> <br/>
“Shutterbug” by Veruca Salt, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000V698PG"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Eight Arms to Hold You</span></a> <br/>
“Part 2 [Dirtbag Remix]” by Four Stones, off <a href="http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/fourstones-magnaremix/"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Ridin' the Faders</span></a> [Remixes]<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/creeping-rageaholic-i.html#note4">4</a></span></sup><br/>
“What Do I Have to Do?” by Stabbing Westward, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00138J74S"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Wither Blister Burn + Peel</span></a> <br/>
“Vinegar & Salt” by Hooverphonic, off <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006JHVZLQ"> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Magnificent Tree</span></a> <br/>
“Big Mistake” by Natalie Imbruglia, off <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001BKCSYO"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Left of the Middle</span></a> <br/>
“Butterfly Wings” by Machines of Loving Grace, off <a href="https://molgband.bandcamp.com/album/concentration"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Concentration</span></a> <br/>
“Charming Gun” by Artemis, off <a href="https://artemis.bandcamp.com/album/undone"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Undone</span></a> <br/>
“Meaner than Winter” by Jade Leary, off <a href="https://www.laroquephoto.com/music/the-lost-art-of-human-kindness"> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lost Art of Human Kindness</span></a> <br/>
“Waste away” by Spinecar, off <a href="http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/spinecar-upmud/"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Up from the mud</span></a> <br/>
“Black Sheep” by Metric, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003YEOH76"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Scott Pilgrim vs. the World</span></a> [Soundtrack]<br/>
“Longview” by Green Day, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0011Z330C"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Dookie</span></a> <br/>
“Kiss Off” by Violent Femmes, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09B5QXB2F"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Violent Femmes</span></a> <br/>
“Crawling” by Linkin Park, off <a href="https://music.apple.com/us/album/hybrid-theory/528436018"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Hybrid Theory</span></a> <br/>
“The Pretender” by Foo Fighters, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073HXKSB4"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace</span></a> <br/>
“Glycerine” by Bush, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0773VB15L"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Sixteen Stone</span></a> <br/>
“Rid of Me” by PJ Harvey, off <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000W1SAZE"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Rid of Me</span></a> <br/>
“Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFZPZB6V"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Fallen</span></a> <br/>
“Let's Rock” by Smash Mouth, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DD3ZCXS"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Fush Yu Mang</span></a> <br/>
<div style="text-align: center; margin-top: 20px; margin-right: 150px"> <span style="font-size: smaller;">
Total: 20 tracks, 78:00
</span> </div>
<p></div> <br/> <br/> <div class='post-body entry-content' style="clear:both"></p>
<p>Which only leaves us with the two tracks that break up my two industrial picks. I’ve <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2015/09/smokelit-flashback-iii.html">talked before</a> about my discovery of Natalie Imbruglia’s amazing <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/left-of-the-middle-mw0000034741"><span style="font-style: italic;">Left of the Middle</span></a>, so I won’t belabor the point, but it’s a testament to her versatility that, in addition to all the other places we’ve seen her in these mixes,<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/creeping-rageaholic-i.html#note5">5</a></span></sup> here she is again. “Big Mistake” starts out sweet and synthy, then right at the one minute mark it turns on you and tells you what a big mistake you’ve made trying to pigeonhole the song based on its opening. Then there’s the truly stunning “Vinegar & Salt” from trip-hop impresarios Hooverphonic (who we’ve also seen on a pretty wide variety of mixes<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/creeping-rageaholic-i.html#note6">6</a></span></sup>). This track is barely more than three minutes long, but it packs so much emotion into its short span that it fairly makes your head spin. The verses are an almost matter-of-fact enumeration of the problems in a relationship, then the bridges crank up the tensio<nobr>n—</nobr><wbr/>“honesty’s your church”—<wbr/>and then the chorus explodes into the stunning revelation that “sometimes, it’s better to lie.” It’s a rollercoaster ride in all the best ways.</p>
<br/>
<p><span style="color: gray;">Next time</span>, I think we’ll dip our toes into the darker side of synthwave.</p>
<br/><br/>
<span style="font-size: smaller;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">[As promised, here’s my pseudo-poem along with which songs they derive from:<br/><br/><div style="margin-left: 1em; line-height: 150%">Day after day after sorry day, [“Meaner than Winter,” Jade Leary]<br/>the sun makes me sick. [“Shutterbug,” Veruca Salt]<br/>One, ’cause you left me. [“Kiss Off,” Violent Femmes]<br/>You hate the things that I lik<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/> [“Vinegar & Salt,” Hooverphonic]<br/>that fascist faith will kill you. [“Butterfly Wings,” Machines of Loving Grace]<br/>I think I’m just paranoid; [“Let’s Rock,” Smash Mouth]<br/>I’m fucking lazy ... [“Longview,” Green Day]<br/>there’s just too much pressure to take: [“Crawling,” Linkin Park]<br/>I’m just another soul for sale. [“The Pretender,” Foo Fighters]<br/>It’s not my time to wonder why ... [“Glycerine,” Bush]<br/>You monkey, you left me. [“Shutterbug,” Veruca Salt (again)]<br/>Set shit on fire. [“Dirtbag,” Brad Sucks, remixed by Four Stones]</div><br/><br/>Yes, I used “Shutterbug” twice; it really worked for this cento. Those lines, of course, are back to back in the Veruca Salt rendition, whereas I separated them by almost the length of the entire piece. I don’t think this is as good as either of my <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-cento-for-sunday.html">two</a> previous <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2022/01/a-second-cento.html">centos</a>, but it has a certain charm. At least I think so.]</span> </span>
<br/><br/><br/><br/><div style="line-height: 80%;">
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<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note1">1</a> I’ve mostly avoided using grunge tunes here, but you can expect to see at least a few in future volumes.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note2">2</a> I told the story of how I discovered Magnatune in <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2015/04/rose-coloured-brainpan-i.html">Rose-Coloured Brainpan</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note3">3</a> On <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2018/05/shadowfall-equinox-v.html">Shadowfall Equinox V</a> and <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2019/12/shadowfall-equinox-vi.html">VI</a>, and also on <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2019/04/fulminant-cadenza-i.html">Fulminant Cadenza I</a> and <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2018/06/slithy-toves-ii.html">Slithy Toves II</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note4">4</a> Original version by Brad Sucks, off <a href="https://www.bradsucks.net/releases/i-dont-know-what-im-doing">I Don’t Know What I’m Doing</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note5">5</a> Besides the aforementioned <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2015/02/smokelit-flashback-i.html">Smokelit Flashback</a>, there was <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2022/01/distaff-attitude-i.html">Distaff Attitude</a> and of course her triumphant tune on <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2021/10/cumulonimbus-eleven-i.html">Cumulonimbus Eleven</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note6">6</a> Starting with Smokelit Flashback <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2015/09/smokelit-flashback-iii.html">III</a>, <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2016/04/smokelit-flashback-iv.html">IV</a>, <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2016/08/smokelit-flashback-v.html">V</a>, and <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2021/05/smokelit-flashback-vi.html">VI</a>, and thence to <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2015/10/bleeding-salvador-i.html">Bleeding Salvador I</a> and <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/plutonian-velvet-i.html">Plutonian Velvet I</a>.</span></p>
</div><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-90791577002741296622024-02-11T23:59:00.000-08:002024-02-12T00:28:01.932-08:00The vicissitudes of feline dentistry<div><br/>
This week, one of our eldest cat’s teeth broke and/or fell out. So it’s been a crazy weekend, and I didn’t have time to do even a partial post. Still, there’s always next week. Hopefully.
<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-73407581495178649832024-02-04T16:08:00.000-08:002024-02-04T16:41:48.520-08:00The Cost of (Technical Debt in) Doing Business<div><br/>
<p>Ten and a half years ago, I wrote an article on <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2013/07/technical-debt-strategies.html">technical debt strategies</a>. It was one of my most commented-on posts, and even got its own <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1jgkx0/technical_debt_strategies/">discussion on Reddit</a>. The point wasn’t to explain what technical debt was, but I did so (briefly) anyway, near the top:</p>
<p><blockquote>In software development, there is always a tension between two opposing forces: the desire to do it fast, and the desire to do it right. ... If you do it right, then, later, when you want to extend it, or modify it, or use it as a jumping off point for branching out in a whole new direction ..., you can do so easily, with a solid foundation as a base. The downside is that it will take longer. If you do it fast, you get results faster, which means you can serve a customer’s needs before they change, fill a window of opportunity before it closes, or perhaps even beat your competitors to the market with your offering. But when you have to modify it later (which you will), it will end up taking even <span style="font-style: italic;">more</span> time to clean things up than if you’d just done it right in the first place.<br/><br/>You can see why we often call this “technical debt.” You’re saving time now, but you’ll have to “pay it back” later, and the amount of extra time it takes is like the interest. Primarily, we software people invented this analogy because it makes good sense to business people. ...</blockquote></p>
<p>And I still say it’s a good definition, despite the snarky commenter who said it was “actually a definition of bad coding practices.” If you want a more complete definitio<nobr>n—</nobr><wbr/>and some interesting histor<nobr>y—</nobr><wbr/><a href="https://www.productplan.com/glossary/technical-debt/">you can find that on the Internet</a>, though I’ll maintain that it’s not a <span style="font-style: italic;">better</span> defition ... just more detailed. Other Internet articles can <a href="https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2020/6/technical-debt-explained-plain-english">explain</a> even better than I could how the technical debt concept (more of a metaphor, really) neatly parallels the concept of financial debt, but, again: the analogy I used to follow the quote above is perfectly adequate for grasping the concept. If you have a business, and you need a piece of equipment that costs $1,000, but you don’t have that much in the bank, you have two choices: you either wait until you <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> have that much in the bank, or you borrow some money and buy the thing now. In the first case, you end up debt-free, but you’re paying what in business circles is called “opportunity cost”: if you lose money (e.g. to your competitors) because you couldn’t use that equipment while you were saving up the money, that’s the opportunity cost. Contrariwise, if you borrow the money to save the opportunity cost, you’re paying interest, which is what we call in business circles <span style="font-style: italic;">actual</span> cos<nobr>t—</nobr><wbr/>i.e., cash.</p>
<p>In fact, the concept of “opportunity cost” is a perfect companion to that of technical debt. In both cases, you’re not talking about “real” money, in the sense of dollars you can count, but you <span style="font-style: italic;">are</span> talking about real financial consequences, even if they can be hard to measure exactly. And the point of them is the same: to turn something that’s a bit abstract and hard to grasp into financial terms, which businesspeople are <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> good at understanding. If I had heard someone tell me that some business people were starting to think that opportunity costs were bullshit made up by other people to get them to do things they didn’t want to do, I would think that was crazy talk.</p>
<p>And, yet ... that’s exactly what I just recently heard said about technical debt. That business folks weren’t taking it seriously any more because they thought it was just this made up thing to get them to take software maintenance seriously. Which ... well, of course it is. Just like opportunity cost is a made up thing to get people to take seriously the idea that waiting has consequences. That doesn’t make the consequences less real, though; the fact that someone made it up at some point is true of everything in our society. The idea of “running a business” was made up at some point, as was the title of “CEO,” as was the concept of “management” and the practice of “accounting.” But no one questions that these things are real, because, you know, <span style="font-style: italic;">they are</span>. And technical debt is real as well. Trust me, I’ve been in software development for over half my life now: it’s <span style="font-style: italic;">very</span> real. Doing things fast (most often in order to avoid paying “opportunity costs”) is the choice most often made by the business side, and to be fair there are often really good reasons for choosing that. But the costs are quite real, and quite often painful down the road. Pointing out that someone had to invent a phrase for it doesn’t make it go away.</p>
<p>The thing that really frustrates me about this <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/12/27/stop-saying-technical-debt/">apparently</a> <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30284643">growing</a> attitude is that we (technical people, I mea<nobr>n—</nobr><wbr/>the term was invented by the same guy who invented <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-theory-about-agile.html">agile programming</a>) invented this stupid term so the business people would take the problem seriously. Ward Cunningham, bless his soul, came up with the perfect metapho<nobr>r—</nobr><wbr/>technical debt is the interest you pay when you borrow time to pay off your opportunity cost<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>and now the business people are rejecting it as “made up”? Perhaps this is the <span style="font-style: italic;">real</span> difference between “opportunity cost” and “technical debt”: the former is what business people use to justify expenses to their accounting departments, while the latter is what the tech departmnent uses to justify expenses to the business people. So when the business folks are the justifi<span style="font-style: italic;">ers</span>, the term makes total sense and we should all use it. When they’re the justifi<span style="font-style: italic;">ees</span>, though ... well, then it’s all bullshit.</p>
<p>To be fair, thoug<nobr>h—</nobr><wbr/>which I am very much <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> inclined to be on this issu<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>I should point out several of the articles I’ve cited claim that this is all our fault. The technical people, says one, overused the term and just applied it to all their problems. Engineers, it says, say “technical debt” when they really just mean “bad code.” And of course code can be bad for a myriad of reasons: technical debt is a big one, but certainly not the only one. It goes on to lament:</p>
<p><blockquote>When businesspeople don’t want to grant a “tech debt week” because they saw with their own eyeballs that the last one improved the team’s capacity zero percent, <span style="font-style: italic;">how can we expect</span> them to grant us another one with alacrity?</blockquote></p>
<p>Well, I’m not buying that. If a business person says to accounting, “I’m going to borrow money to buy this thing,” and accounting responds, “don’t do that! it will cost us a million dollars in interest!” then I’m pretty sure there’s going to be some fact-checking going on. What I’m saying is, the business folks have to bear some of the responsibility for not bothering to take the time to understand exactly what technical debt is being paid off in a “tech debt week” and what the benefits will be. Also, what are the chances that the team will achieve their goals? Because sometimes ripping out the kitchen cabinets and replacing them with ones where the doors <span style="font-style: italic;">aren’t</span> falling off takes longer than the contractor’s initial estimate. This is all very standard stuff that any businessperson worth their salt would consider when buying a physical item or hiring for a particular job. And, if the business side asks, and the tech side has to explain themselves, then they’ll rapidly become disabused of the notion of throwing all their problem code into the “tech debt” bucket.</p>
<p>Another post offers the tech side this advice:</p>
<p><blockquote>Instead, say: this is how long it will take to do.<br/><br/>Not “if we rush we could probably do it in...”; no, if you say that, then why are you not rushing now? Do you not care what the business wants? Do you not have ‘skin in the game’?<br/><br/>Say: This is how long it will take, we estimate. If you want it faster, we can cut some features.</blockquote></p>
<p>Again, this is not how things work in the real world. When the plumber comes by and says, “I’ll need to replace this pipe, because it has a hole in it. It’ll take about 4 hours to get it done. Or, I could do a quick patch job on it and get it done in an hour.” you don’t respond, “Why aren’t you rushing now?” You ask what the <span style="font-style: italic;">consequences</span> will be for that rush job. Is it going to keep leaking, just not as bad? is it going to stop the leak completely but only for a few days, and then you’ll just have to call the plumber back again? There’s obviously a <span style="font-style: italic;">reason</span> why they’re offering you the option of doing it right vs doing it fast, and you will certainly want to hear that reason. But under no circumstances is the fast option “cutting some features”: it’s delivering the same features with substandard quality. That is the entire point of technical debt.</p>
<p>But my favorite one is this, from the very first article I referenced:</p>
<p><blockquote>In an impassioned post, a long-time software development consultant, Uncle Bob writes “A mess is not a technical debt. A mess is just a mess. Technical debt decisions are made based on real project constraints. They are risky, but they can be beneficial. The decision to make a mess is never rational. It’s always based on laziness and unprofessionalism and has no chance of paying off in the future. A mess is always a loss.”</blockquote></p>
<p>This is such complete and utter horseshit that I’ve pre-emptively lost all respect for this “Uncle Bob” character, and I don’t even know who he is. The fact of the matter is, sometimes you make the decision to do the quick patch job, because you <b>really</b> need that pipe to work for just a few more weeks, and the inevitable resulting mes<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>which, depending on the size and location of the pipe, might be prodigious indee<nobr>d—</nobr><wbr/>is absolutely not the result of being lazy or unprofessional. The customer (who is in this analogy the business side) understood and accepted the risk; the contractor (here representing the technical side) was neither lazy nor unprofessional: they did exactly what was asked of them, almost certainly over their strong objections, and <span style="font-style: italic;">definitely</span> cannot be held responsible for the resulting water damage. I have to believe Uncle Bob never had to pull an all-nighter trying to “just make it work” for the customer demo the next day. A mess is not “always based on laziness and unprofessionalism”; a mess is, sometimes, just the best you could manage at the time.</p>
<p>So I suppose the business people will continue to crack the whip and the technical folks will continue to beg to be able to clean up their messes, and now they’ve even taken away the phrase we used to help them understand the urgency. I don’t really blame the business people in my own company: they’re just responding to the zeitgeist. And I’m still not buying this notion that I should blame the wider tech communit<nobr>y—</nobr><wbr/>it’s 100% true that some engineers have doubtless misunderstood the proper use of the phrase, and that’s contributed to its being misused and consequently watered down. But I find the parallel of “opportunity cost” very instructive: its challenges are similar, people often misunderstand its use and try to appropriate it for their own purposes. But it continues to be useful (and to be used) anyway. And I think that’s because its use benefits the business community, so they resist any abuse of it and hold onto it fiercely. The concept of “technical debt,” on the other hand ... that, they have have little use for, so it’s fine if it falls into disuse and neglect.</p>
Of course, one might argue that, by not understanding technical debt (and not devoting resources to pay it down), the end result is that the company has to spend more and more time to achieve the same results. That’s time that businesses could be spending making customers happier by delivering more quickly, responding to competitive threats more nimbly, or breaking into new markets with innovative new features. What I’m saying is, rejection of the concept of technical debt, in my opinion, has a real opportunity cost.
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-36953297359759913672024-01-28T21:04:00.000-08:002024-01-28T21:04:39.170-08:00TIL: Vibecession<div>
<p>Many years (and a couple of jobs) ago, I was part of a weird corporate experiment that was referred to as “swim teams.” I’m not sure this was a thing except at my one company, but there is a business concept called “swimlanes” that I think might be related. But, anyhow, what it was, was this: All the employees who were considered “squeaky wheels” were gathered up in a single room (and let me tell you, we were all looking around like, uh-oh), and were told that we were going to get assigned to one or two “swim teams,” and each team was going to work on one thing to make the business better. That is, don’t just complain about the problems: participate in coming up with solutions. And this was lovely, and a nice idea, and obviously it didn’t work at all.</p>
<p>You can probably guess why, but I’ll drill down a bit further. One of my “swim teams” (I really can’t even type that without the air quotes) was called “employee engagement,” and it was one of the only one<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>maybe <span style="font-style: italic;">the</span> only on<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>where our actual CEO was on the team. And, as she put it, the point of the team was to figure out how to get employees to treat the company as if it were their own, and not just a paycheck. Our team came up with a number of good ideas, none of which were ever implemented. One example: I proposed implementing financial transparency (long-time readers will recall this as <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-barefoot-philosophy-cornerstone-1.html">cornerstone #1 of the Barefoot Philosophy</a>). The CEO was scandalized: let all the employees have all that sensitive financial data? They can’t be trusted with that! Then, a couple of weeks later, I was forced to listen to her rant on about how “employees these days” feel like they’re entitled to a job but they don’t want to work very hard for it. And I thought to mysel<nobr>f—</nobr><wbr/>very quietly, because there was no point in getting fired over a zinge<nobr>r—</nobr><wbr/>wait, you think you <span style="font-style: italic;">deserve</span> employee engagement, but you won’t take any action that would earn that? <span style="font-style: italic;">Who</span> exactly is the party feeling entitled here?</p>
<p>But I tell you that story so I can tell you this one: I recently learned what ”<a href="https://www.fool.com/terms/v/vibecession/">vibecession</a>” means. It’s a topic of great interest in this political climate, with many high-level Democrats seeming to complain that people just aren’t understanding how good they’ve got it. Unemployment is low! wages are up! the stock market is booming! interest rates on things like savings accounts are higher than they’ve been in most people’s entire lifetimes! So why are people still complaining? These silly consumers just need to understand what’s <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> going on so that they can understand how awesome the Biden presidency has been. Hopefully they all wake up by the time the election rolls around.</p>
<p>But, you see, this attitude is exactly like my old CEO. Faced with two contradictory situation<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>the status quo of economic indicators vs the attitudes of the common peopl<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>then obviously the status quo must be right and the people must be wrong (and also ungrateful). I keep hearing so-called experts trying to work out how to spin the economic numbers so people will finally “get it.” What I <span style="font-style: italic;">don’t</span> hear is anyone questioning whether it makes sense to keep using the same old numbers when they obviously don’t reflect how ordinary, non-academics are being impacted in the current economy.</p>
They should maybe try that. I don’t think they will, but they should probably try. Just one man’s opinion.
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-37486944138289099932024-01-21T18:41:00.000-08:002024-01-21T18:41:53.295-08:00Hot Potato<div>
<p>My grandmother used to make potato soup.</p>
<p>Well, that’s what she called it anyhow. I thought it was closer to liquid mashed potatoes. Which, considering how she made mashed potatoes (and how any leftovers inevitably became potato soup), was probably not all that inaccurate.</p>
<p>I’ve talked <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2015/09/a-tale-of-two-eggs.html">before</a> about my two grandmothers and their widely varying styles of cooking. At that time, I said that mashed potatoes was one of the things they came to make the same way, and that I could no longer remember which one changed to match the other. Well, I must have been having a heavy duty brain fart that day, because it seems pretty clear to me now. My working class, North-Carolina-raised farmgirl grandmother, with her muscular arms, used a potato masher, because that’s how it’s done. My social climbing, mountains-of-Virginia-<span style="font-style: italic;">far</span>-in-the-rearview, slightly supercilious grandmother thought that was far too much effort. She used a stand mixer. Making mashed potatoes was just like making cake batter, as far as she was concerned. My other grandmother (on the paternal side) didn’t think of this as cheating, per se, I don’t believe ... but certainly she thought it was unnecessarily fancy. The regular old masher and regular old puttin’-yer-back-into-it had been good enough for <span style="font-style: italic;">her</span> mothe<nobr>r—</nobr><wbr/>and, no doubt, her own grandmother, and great-grandmother, and so on all the way back to whichever of her ancestors arrived with John Smith in Jamestown<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="#note1">1</a></span></sup>—<wbr/>so it was obviously good enough for her. Just a masher, a few pats of butter, and some salt: that was literally all you needed. If she ever even added milk (before she started trying to please me, that is), I don’t recall it. Whereas my other grandmother (on the maternal side) added enough mil<nobr>k—</nobr><wbr/>or even, sometimes, crea<nobr>m—</nobr><wbr/>that it became almost the consistency of pudding. After a while of turning up my nose and/or begging, my paternal grandmother gave in and started using the mixer and the milk too.</p>
<p>And this is what I prefer for my mashed potatoes: they should be smooth, and creamy, and buttery, and salty. I don’t need sour cream, per se (though it’s okay if you want to add that in), or any other fancy-schmancy spices, and I certainly don’t need gravy. Like ketchup for fries, you only need gravy for mashed potatoes if they’re particularly crappy mashed potatoes (like you’d get from most fast food places<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="#note2">2</a></span></sup>). The mashed potatoes my paternal grandmother used to make (before I cajoled her into using the mixer) were lumpy, and more mushy than creamy, and <span style="font-style: italic;">definitely</span> not smooth. And some people like that sort of thing. But it was not for me.</p>
<p>But, if you take creamy mashed potatoes and just add more milk to it, I’m not sure you get to call that “potato soup.” I suppose I might be misremembering and there was more to it than that, but I do recall not thinking that much of it. It was only years and years later that I had some potato leek soup from a decent restaurant that I realized that potato soup might be a pretty cool thing after all. Another popular restaurant version of potato soup is sort of the soup version of a baked potato: it’s usually served with bacon, and cheese, and often chives. Now, potato leek soup is a pretty lovely dish, and (baked) potato soup is just fine, but at some point a few years back I decided I wanted to try combine the best of both versions. I’m not sure what got into me, but I ended up making something that has become a family favorite: my youngest, in particular, asks for it quite regularly, and soon she’ll be able to make it even better than I can.</p>
<p>I started by scouring the Internet for recipes. I was looking to see how other people were making it so I could figure out what elements I wanted to keep and which I wanted to toss out. Now, in my view, the primary thing to get right in potato soup is the consistency: my grandmother’s was too thin for my taste, but obviously you don’t want it as thick as actual mashed potatoes. And the way that the vast majority of recipes online achieve the proper consistency is the same way you get thickness in gravy: flour. Now, at the time, I was either doing a Whole 30 or just fresh off one, and I certainly was looking to avoid grains.<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="#note3">3</a></span></sup> Surely there were better options than regular old flour! And, I resarched <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span>, I discovered a curious thing: one of the big alternatives to flour is ... potato starch.</p>
<p>And, I thought, well, you know what has lots of potato starch? Potatoes!</p>
<p>So essentially my recipe contains about twice as many actual potatoes as most recipes you can find on the web. But I think it’s all the better for it. Certainly the consistency can’t be beat. Instead of leeks or chives, I use yellow onions and celery, and I retain the thyme common in the potato-leek varieties, and the cheese common in the baked-potato-adjacent varieties. It makes for a thick, creamy potato soup with a lot of flavor, but still tastes enough like good old mashed potatoes to qualify as comfort food. My family<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="#note4">4</a></span></sup> really seems to love it too. So here it is, for your perusal, and (possibly) enjoyment. Bon appétit.</p>
<br/>
<h1>Potato Soup</h1>
<h3>Ingredients</h3>
<ul><li >1 large yellow onion</li><li >6 – 8 stalks of celery</li><li >8 large potatoes(*), either Russets or Yukon golds, or a mix of the two</li><li >1 – 2 tbsp of ghee</li><li >4 – 5 large pinches salt</li><li >15 grinds black pepper</li><li >2 cups milk</li><li >1 carton chicken broth (about 32 oz)</li><li >a “large amount” of thyme</li><li >a “small amount” of garlic powder</li><li >1 – 2 handfuls of “pizza cheese”</li></ul>
<p>(*) When you buy a bag of potatoes, of course, you don’t get any say in the size, and I’ve never seen a Yukon gold that I would classify as “large” in any event. My rough ratio is that 3 medium potatoes count as 2 larges, and 2 small potatoes count as 1 large. Just err on the side of too many rather than not enough and you should be fine.</p>
<h3>Hardware</h3>
<ul><li >a good chopping knife</li><li >a good potato peeler</li><li >a large pot (what my grandmothers would call a “stewpot”), preferably with a lid</li><li >a stick blender (a.k.a. “immersion blender”)</li><li >a spoon for stirring (I like wood, but you do you)</li><li >a ladle for serving</li></ul>
<h3>Directions</h3>
<p>This one is actually pretty simple. Rough chop the onion and the celery; peel and rough chop the potatoes. The cutting board we use has a tray (a little like a <a href="https://www.nordicnest.com/brands/tefal/comfort-cutting-board/">Tefal</a>, only a bit larger), and basically a large, rough-chopped onion fills that tray; the celery should work out to roughly the same amount, and the potatoes should be about four times that amount.</p>
<p>Honestly, peeling the potatoes is the only pain in the ass part of the whole procedure. I often make the other family members help with this part. We also sometimes use an electric potato peeler, but it’s a bit fiddly, and it also seems to waste a bunch of the actual potato, so I’m not saying I’d actually recommend that.</p>
<p>Anyhow, parallel to that, melt the ghee in the pot. You can peel and chop everything first, and then do the ghee, but what I like to do is start with this step: turn the heat on just long enough to melt the ghee, then turn it off again while I chop everything. That way I can just dump everything straight into the pot. The ghee should be enough to cover the bottom of the pot with a slightly thick layer.</p>
<p>The veggies, salt, and pepper all go into the pot, and you’re going to cook it, covered, at medium to medium-high heat, for about 5 minutes. Stir it every now and again to keep it from burning on the bottom, or, if you have a tightly fitting lid, just do what I do: hold the lid on and just shake it up and down a bit every minute-and-a-half or so. We’re basically just trying to give the veggies a head start and sort of pre-soften them up a bit.</p>
<p>Once your 5-minute timer goes off, pour in your milk and chicken broth. Now add the thyme and the garlic powder. I never bother measuring it; I just use a system very similar to what I do for <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/09/family-dinner.html">spaghetti and meatballs</a>: cover the surface with with a thin layer of thyme (that’s a “large amount”), then add anywhere from ¼ to ½ as much of that amount of garlic powder, depending on how much you love garlic (that’s the “small amount”). Stir it up, cover the pot, crank up the heat, and bring it to a boil. Now lower the heat and simmer it for about 15 minutes, stirring perhaps every 5 minutes or so.</p>
<p>When <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> time goes off, turn off the heat entirely (trust me, it’ll be <span style="font-style: italic;">plenty</span> hot) and hit it with the stick blender. I like to move the blender up and down a bit to get everything really really smooth, but I also like to be a little haphazard so that every once in a while you get a surprise chunk in your bowl. Once you’ve got the consistency like you want it, gradually stir in the shredded cheese. In our house we favor a 3-cheese blend that we refer to as “pizza cheese” (because it’s great on pizza, natch): it’s always cheddar, mozzarella, and one other white cheese (if you’re using the <a href="https://www.becomebetty.com/trader-joes-shredded-3-cheese-blend/">Trader Joe’s version</a>, that’s Monterey Jack; <a href="https://shop.burnettdairy.com/products/3-cheese-blend-shred">other versions</a> may substitute provolone). But you can use a Mexican cheese blend, or straight cheddar, or whatever floats your boat. Just stir it in bit by bit until it essentially disappears: you’ll never see it in the soup, but it adds another layer of creaminess that’s tough to beat. I like about two handsful in mine, but adjust to taste. Or sprinkle a bit more on your bowl when serving. Or both.</p>
And that’s it! Ladle it up and enjoy. But be careful: it’s hot. (Our youngest always puts a big bowlful in the freezer for a couple of minutes so she doesn’t burn her tongue.) But, honestly, it’s so good I usually don’t mind burning my tongue a bit. On a cold winter day, it’s the perfect warm-you-up meal, and it’s full of those comfort food vibes that warm your soul as well. Tough to beat.
<br/><br/><br/><br/><div style="line-height: 80%;">
__________
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note1">1</a> Note: I don’t know for sure that my grandmother’s ancestors came over with the Virginia colonists, but I <span style="font-style: italic;">can</span> say that all the ancestors I was able to trace were never more than 100 miles away from that landing spot.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note2">2</a> The only “fast food” place I would eat ungravied mashed potatoes from is Boston Market.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note3">3</a> This is less of a gluten thing than a general carb thing, at least for me.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note4">4</a> Except for our picky middle child, who won’t eat much of anything that we cook.</span></p>
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-36180572015114840612024-01-14T22:40:00.000-08:002024-01-14T22:40:06.851-08:00GPT FTW<div>
<p>This week I’ve been fighting my <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2011/06/curse-of-computer-gods.html">computer curse</a> again. Still, despite the fact that the computer gods still really hate me, I’ve managed to accomplish a few things. I’ve managed to get the version history from my <a href="https://syncthing.net">Syncthing</a> replicating to my <a href="https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage">Backblaze B2</a> account, I’ve updated the OS and a bunch of packages on my <a href="https://www.synology.com/en-us/products?product_line=ds_j%2Cds_value">Synology NAS</a>, fixed a long-standing annoyance with my use of <a href="https://www.nomachine.com">NoMachine</a>, and I started building my first <a href="https://openai.com/blog/introducing-gpts">custom GPT</a>. And all that was made <b>much</b> easier with the use of ChatGPT.</p>
<p>Perhaps this deserves a longer pos<nobr>t—</nobr><wbr/>and perhaps that’ll be what I put up next wee<nobr>k—</nobr><wbr/>but I’m still seeing a lot of AI skepticism out there. Last night I saw an interview with a tech reporter who agreed that, yeah, AI might be useful for helping developers with their coding, but beyond it wasn’t good for much. And, hey: it’s true that trying to make it useful for searching the Internet is tough (though not impossible), and trying to make it work for handling things like customer service is just a horrifyingly bad idea. But that doesn’t make it useless. In point of fact, for things like helping you integrate different software packages together, configure your hardware, or design a solution to an ongoing problem, things like ChatGPT are actually pretty useful. And I think it’s only going to get more useful as time goes on. Once they figure out how to integrate ChatGPT (or one of its competitors) into something like Alexa or “Hey Google” (as it’s called in our house), the utility of “smart devices” is going to go way up. Because our smart devices are actually kinda stupid right now, so they could really <span style="font-style: italic;">use</span> that AI boost.</p>
<p>Anyhow, I don’t think I want to turn this blog into an AI evangelism vehicle or anything, but ... <span style="font-style: italic;">damn</span>, ChatGPT shore is useful.</p>
That’s all I really wanted to say.
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-86358598784999273932024-01-07T16:57:00.000-08:002024-01-07T16:57:46.001-08:00Discordia, discordiae [f.]: A Misunderstanding<div>
<p><br/></p>
<p>I don’t understand the appeal of Discord.</p>
<p>Oh, sure: I understand it for things like gaming. The few times that I’ve run D&D games with remote participants, I happily used Discord, and found it to be excellent for that purpose. Nowadays, there are fancier platforms for such purpose<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>Alchemy, Owlbear Rodeo, or even things like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds, which have been around so long they’re starting to show their ag<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>but honestly I might just stick to something like Discord for its simplicity.</p>
<p>The thing I <span style="font-style: italic;">don’t</span> understand is that it seems to have become the flavor of the decade for hosting online communities. Web forums are considered passé nowadays: downright old-fashioned, some would even say. How many times have I heard lately “if you have a question, just pop into our Discord”? People are actually using it for <span style="font-style: italic;">product support</span>, and it just makes no sense to me.</p>
<p>Now, on the one hand, you might say: well, that makes perfect sens<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>Discord is primarily <a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/27749/discord-popularity-by-country-gcs/">popular among Zoomers</a>, while you are very old. And, sure, I can’t argue the first part, and while I might protest the second one a <span style="font-style: italic;">bit<nobr></span>—</nobr><wbr/>I’m not a freakin’ <span style="font-style: italic;">Boomer</span> (I am in fact, an elder Gen-Xer, if one believes in those sorts of things<sup><span style="font-size: larger;"><a href="#note1">*</a></span></sup>)—<wbr/>I’m not going to deny that it’s a fair observation. But I have one foolproof argument that absolutely proves that this has nothing to do with my age: IRC.</p>
<p>Because, in exactly the same way that Reddit is just Usenet reborn, Discord is 100% just the second coming of IRC. And IRC was invented in 1988, and by the time I was in the age range that Zoomers occupy no<nobr>w—</nobr><wbr/>the upper age range, granted, but still: within the rang<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>it was <span style="font-style: italic;">the</span> way that cool tech people communicated. And I didn’t understand the appeal of it then either.</p>
<p>See, Discord (just like IRC before it) has several fundamental problems that make it really bad for online support in particular, and long-lived online communities in general. And please don’t think I’m trying to bring back webforums here: I always thought they were pretty awful too, at least compared to the interface of something like Usenet. But it’s pretty easy to look good when you’re put up against something as terrible as Discord. And, as much as I’ve always hated webforums, I’ve had some experience with them: I’ve been the moderator a popular <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-heroscape-is-cool.html">Heroscape</a> website for coming up on two decades now. Of course, most of the younger fans (such as they are for a game that’s been discontinued for years now<sup><span style="font-size: larger;"><a href="#note2">**</a></span></sup>) have moved to YouTube and, I suppose, Discord, but please don’t imagine that I’m upset about that. Being a moderator of a forum whose traffic is declining means I have less work to do, so I’m all for everyone moving on to other venues. But my point is, I have a bit of experience not only participating, but even managing, a long-running online community. So I’m not just talking out of my ass here.</p>
<p>So, what can a webforum do that Discord can’t? Well, first off, the organization is just better. A webforum has forums, which have threads. The vast majority of them also have dedicated areas for file uploads, and often a separate one for images. Many have blogs or something similar attached to them. Threads can be moved to another forum when they’re posted in the wrong place by a clueless user, or split apart when they get too crowded, or merged when people are trying to have the same conversation in multiple places at once. Discord has ... channels. That’s pretty much it. There are a couple of different types of channels, but (as near as I can tell, in any event) that has more to do with the method of communication than anything else (e.g. text channels, voice channels, video channels, etc). So, channels are the only way to organize things, so everything is sort of forced uncomfortably into that model.</p>
<p>A bigger problem, which Discord shares with IRC, is that it’s all real-time. If I show up on a webforum, I can post a question, then sign off and check back in a few hours (or the next day) for an answer. On Discord, I post a question, and <span style="font-style: italic;">if</span> someone is there who can answer the question, I get the answer instantly, which is certainly nice. But if there <span style="font-style: italic;">isn’t</span> anyone there at that exact moment, I just don’t get an answer at all. I guess some people do go back in time to read all the messages that came in since the last time they were online, but that’s not easy to do, and it might be <span style="font-style: italic;">way</span> too many messages anyway, if the community is large, and even if the person sees the question and knows the answer, they’re probably not going to post it because the conversation has moved on since then so now their answer has no context, and <b>even if</b> the person makes it through all that and actually posts the answer, then I very well might not be online to receive it. It is quite possibly the worst possible model for customer support that could be imagined in this reality or any other.</p>
<p>But the biggest problem with Discord is that it’s very difficult to search. At least IRC had logging: most IRC chats were saved and posted to web pages, where you could do minimal, primitive, Ctrl-F-type searches. A webforum, on the other hand, typically has sophisticated searching: I can find all threads in a certain group of forums that have posts from a given user that contain 2 or more words, not necessarily adjacent. Not to mention I can use Google to search instead if that’s somehow advantageous. Meanwhile, searching in Discord is a miserable affair, and can only be done <span style="font-style: italic;">on</span> Discord. I can set up my own Discord server, but I can’t log those messages to a separate location, because it’s not <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> my server: it’s just a virtual server controlled by Discord. And the inability to locate old messages easily means that people just ask the same questions over and over, and people have to spew out the same answers over and over, which everyone no doubt gets sick of doing, and I can tell you from experience that everyone <span style="font-style: italic;">definitely</span> gets sick of reading them. Lack of easy and versatile search means that the community has no history ... no memory. And a community with no memory is cursed to just do the same things over and over, not even expecting a different result: just expecting no result whatsoever. Which is exactly what it gets.</p>
<p>So I don’t see the appeal of Discord, just as I didn’t see the appeal of IRC. Personally, I was happy to see the latter fade in popularity, though of course there are still corners of the Internet where you can still find IRC communities, presumably inhabited by gray-bearded programmers of COBOL and Ada reminscing about the good ol’ days of JCL and PDP-11s. But everything that fades comes around again. AIM is gone, but now we have WhatsApp. Usenet is (mostly) gone, but now we have Reddit. And here’s Discord, with the exact same interface that didn’t work with IRC, trying to make it work again. Honestly, Reddit has the best user interface, I think: subreddits are like forums, threads are threads, and the conversations are displayed heirarchically, so that a response to a given message goes <span style="font-style: italic;">with</span> that message rather than just being tacked on at the end (as they would be in a webforum thread). This is exactly how Usenet worked (and Slashdot, for that matter), and I still think it’s the superior way to display and store community conversations. But Reddit has its own issues, which are eerily similar to Usenet’s: it has a reputation for being a cesspool, which certain parts of it deserve, and it often makes it easy for misinformation to thrive and multiply. Perhaps that’s because the moderation tools for webforums are better ...</p>
<p>Or perhaps it’s because each webforum was run by its own community. They owned the servers and they set the rules. Usenet and IRC were like that too: very decentralized, with each community having near complete autonomy. But Reddit is a company, as is Discord; in fact, it’s very rare these days for a comunity of any type to set up its own servers and run its own software. You set up virtual servers at Amazon or Microsoft, web sites at Squarespace and WordPress, you put your photos on Instagram and your blogs on Tumblr. Well, assuming you even bother with blogs at all: these days, it’s more common to just tweet, which of course means you’re using Elon Musk’s personal dumpster fire. Each one is its own company, with its own goals, and none of those goals are to help your online community thrive, unless of course your thriving can line their pockets in the process. And obviously the un-decentralization of the Internet is a much broader topic than this meager blog post can address, but I do think Discord is symptomatic of that issue.</p>
So I continue not to “get” Discord, even though I occasionally use it, because often there just isn’t another option. But it’s always an option of last resort. Unless, as I noted initially, I’m gaming online. It’s still pretty good at what it was originally intended for. I just feel like, somewhere along the way, they got a bit lost trying to be everything to all people. That hardly ever works.
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<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note1">*</a> And one mostly shouldn’t. Personally, while I think it <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> bullshit to imagine you know what any given person is going to do or say based on an arbitrary “generation” label assigned by the Pew Research Center, I do think it’s okay to use the labels as a convenient shorthand for talking about demographic differences between age groups, which are absolutely a thing that exists.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note2">**</a> But is now <a href="https://www.dicebreaker.com/series/heroscape/news/heroscape-reboot-picked-up-by-renegade-after-crowdfunding-failure">officially making a comeback</a>, for what it’s worth.</span></p>
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-37748052021451391752023-12-31T23:28:00.000-08:002023-12-31T23:28:51.847-08:00Transition Disposition<div>
Goodbye 2023. Looking forward to a better 2024.
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-79046726413043274462023-12-24T16:38:00.000-08:002023-12-24T16:38:50.234-08:00Here's My Beard ... Ain't It Weird?<div>
<p>I grew my first beard at 17 or 18. I <span style="font-style: italic;">told</span> people that I did it to look old enough to buy beer, but the truth is, I just wanted to look <span style="font-style: italic;">older</span>. The combination of being a short ki<nobr>d—</nobr><wbr/>my “growth spurt” between 7th and 8th grade consisted of going from 4’1” to 4’6½”—<wbr/>and having an extreme babyface meant that I always felt like my outside wasn’t reflecting the maturity I felt on the inside. Not that anyone is actually mature at that age, but it’s the age when you <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> want people to stop treating you like a “kid.”</p>
<p>By the time I turned 21, I’d been repeating the “it’s just so I can buy beer” line so much that I had managed to convince even myself, so I shaved it off on my 21st birthday: I didn’t need to <span style="font-style: italic;">look</span> older any more, I said, because now I <span style="font-style: italic;">am</span> older. Except ... it really felt <span style="font-style: italic;">wrong</span> somehow. I didn’t really care for the way my face looked in the mirror, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Must be that babyface, I thought. For a few months I tried just a moustache, but that was disastrous. Soon I was back to the full beard.</p>
<p>Now, many people say that, the first time they try to grow a beard, it itches too much. Some give up entirely at this phase; others just perservere and eventually the itching goes away. But I’m a freak of nature, I guess, because my beard <span style="font-style: italic;">never</span> itches when it starts coming in.</p>
<p>But, for some insane reason, once I’ve had it for about 10 years or so, <span style="font-style: italic;">then</span> it starts to itch.</p>
<p>The first time this happened, I suffered for a couple of days, and then I knew that I just <span style="font-style: italic;">had</span> to shave my chin and start over. But I was still scared of the babyface. So I decided to go for a “General Burnside” cut. (This is the <a href="http://civilwar150th.blogspot.com/2013/04/burnside-cracks-down-on-copperheads.html">fellow for whom “sideburns” are named</a>.)</p>
<p>And this was when I realized: I have no chin. I come by this hones<nobr>t—</nobr><wbr/>it’s my mother’s chin. To call it a “weak chin” is being overly generous: in order for a chin to be “weak,” it must first exist, and mine ... doesn’t. Once I had the full sideburns but a clean-shaven chin, I could see it instantly. The beard was defining my jawline, and, without it, I just looked like a complete goober. But it is what it is: every 8 – 15 years, the itching starts, and the shaving must be borne, despite the visual horror it produces. The second time I went with the Burnside again; the third time, I did more of a <a href="https://www.barbershopforums.com/talk/famous-mens-beards-and-facial-hair-styles/the-zappa-mustache-of-ben-stiller-in-dodgeball-(pictures)/">Ben-Stiller-in-<span style="font-style: italic;">Dodgeball</span></a> sort of cut. Now we’ve come to the fourth time around, and I’ve done that again (mostly due to lack of imagination); of course, being older now, my facial hair is mostly white, so it’s not nearly as cool as Ben’s was. My youngest child had never even <span style="font-style: italic;">seen</span> my chin before (or at least not that she’d remember), so it came as a bit of a shock. And pretty much all my friends and coworkers have had the experience of being able to say to me, at least once in my lifetime, “oh, hey, you’re right ... you really <span style="font-style: italic;">don’t</span> have a chin.”</p>
<p>So that’s why I look the way I do this week. Luckily, my facial hai<nobr>r—</nobr><wbr/>unlike the head hai<nobr>r—</nobr><wbr/>grows <span style="font-style: italic;">very</span> fast, so it won’t take long before I’m back to looking like an itinerant hobo riding the rails. Until then, I remain a stubbled, chinless wonder. But not an itchy one.</p>
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<span style="font-size: smaller;"> [Our title comes from an old George Carlin routine that I used to know by heart. If you haven’t heard it, you <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpGxsFaQuIM">really should</a>.] </span>
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-68782283814090096102023-12-17T20:07:00.000-08:002023-12-17T20:07:53.595-08:00Third Party Blind<div>
<p>Less than two weeks ago, I was listening to <span style="font-style: italic;">Election Profit Makers</span>, and they read a letter from a younger fan who said that they were not going to vote for Biden because of his approach toward Israel, and they wanted the hosts (David Rees and Jon Kimball) to weigh on in that situation.</p>
<p>At the time, I didn’t realize this was A Thing. Sure, I’d heard that there’s a growing movement in the U.S. that thinks that the government of Israel shouldn’t be allowe<nobr>d—</nobr><wbr/>much less encourage<nobr>d—</nobr><wbr/>to wipe the Palestinian people from the face of the Earth. I’d even heard that this utterly radical stance was mostly held by younger people, and that they blamed Biden’s willingness to just go along with whatever Israel does (including offering them weapons to do even more of it) on his being a very old man. After all, blind allegiance to Israel is sort of an American tradition. Because otherwise you’re antisemitic ... right?</p>
<p>So, sure, I knew it was a thing, and that it was mostly a thing with younger people, but I didn’t know it was A Thing. But apparently it is: <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=105039646">ABC News</a> says it is, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/09/israel-hamas-war-ceasefire-young-democrat-voter">The Guardian</a> in the UK says it is, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1213754905">NPR</a> says it is. So I guess it is. Apparently it’s quite popular for political experts to weigh in and say that Biden’s pro-Israel stance might seriously jeopardize his chances next year.</p>
<p>So what did the hosts of EPM have to say in response to their young interlocutor?</p>
<p><blockquote>Rees: When it comes to young voters saying, “I’ll never vote for Joe Biden, this is a, this is a bridge too far (his support of Israel),” I’m like: all right. I don’t even feel interested in trying to convince young people that they should vote for Biden because Trump would be worse. ... I used to <b>totally</b> be the third-party, protest-vote guy. Now I am much older than I used to be, and I see electoral politics now as nothing more than harm reduction. ... One thing I have <b>no</b> interest in, and I will not support, is older voters scolding younger voters for deciding to vote with their principles, even if I happen to think, like “yeah, good luck, let’s see how that turns out, champ.” I’m not gonna ...<br/><br/>Kimball: Totally agree.<br/><br/>Rees: I’m not gonna get on a high horse and try to shame young people. I think that’s tactically stupid, and also demeans what’s so exciting about politics when you’re younger, and, for some of us, even when you’re older. It’s like, it is a mechanism by which you can express your idealism. And that’s beautiful to have that.</blockquote></p>
<p>(For the full discussion, check out <a href="https://epm.fireside.fm/237">Episode 237</a>, starting at about 24:20; the quotes above kick in about 5 minutes into that discussion.)</p>
<p>And I identified with what David is saying there. First of all because I have totally been the person voting for a third party, and second of all because I’m much older now than I used to be, and also when he says that trying to shame people into not voting for third parties demeans everyone’s idealism, young or old. Beacuse, here’s <span style="font-style: italic;">my</span> dirty secret: I <span style="font-style: italic;">still</span> vote for third parties (sometimes), even now that I’m old. Now, as I’ve pointed out, I live in California, so I have a luxury that many Americans do not: the Democratic candidate for President <span style="font-style: italic;">will</span> win my state, regardless of how I vote. Therefore, I’m free to vote for the person whose stated opinions and policies most align with my own. Sometimes that’s the Democrat, it theoretically <span style="font-style: italic;">might</span> be a Republica<nobr>n—</nobr><wbr/>while I have voted for Republicans before for other offices, there’s never been a Presidential candidate who’s impressed me sufficiently to get my vot<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>or it might be a different party entirely, and I don’t give a flying shit if that’s a Green party candidate, a Libertarian party candidate, or just a raw independent. Your “party affiliation” is just a box next to your name. It means nothing to me, especially these days, when people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema can claim to be Democrats, and the Republican party still (mostly) encompasses people like Liz Cheny and Adam Kinzinger (I could actually see myself voting for that guy for President, depending on the opponents). What matters is what you (claim to) stand for, and how well your actions match your rhetoric. If that stuff comes closer to what I want to see than any other candidate, then I don’t care if you’re a member of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Raving_Loony_Party">Monster Raving Loony party</a>: you get my vote.</p>
<p>But, as I say, I have the luxury of living in California where I actually <span style="font-style: italic;">can</span> vote my conscience and still know that it won’t end up screwing the country. I used to live in Virginia, where the margin of victory for the Republicans was frequently less than 10 points; I did (sometimes) vote third-party there, but then again I was younger. If I still lived there today, would I still be so bold as to vote for whoever is the best candidate? Or would I succumb to the “truth” that you may only vote for the <span style="font-style: italic;">better</span> candidate?</p>
<p>What amuses me most about David Rees’ statement (which so strongly resonated with me and which I found most eminently reasonable), was that I was watching an episode of <span style="font-style: italic;">Democracy Docket</span> with Brian Tyler Cohen and Marc Elias less than a week later, and Elias said this in response to a question from BTC about third parties:</p>
<p><blockquote>So I, I just got to speak directly to your audience, because I imagine your audience is a lot of good Democrats, but also people who have very high standards for their elected officials. And let me just tell you something: if you think voting for Jill Stein is doing anything other than electing Donald Trump, you are wrong. If you vote for Jill Stein you’re voting for Donald Trump. If you vote for Bobby Kennedy you are voting for Donald Trump. If you vote for the No Labels candidate, whoever he or she is ... if you vote for the No Labels candidate you are voting for Donald Trump. And I’ll tell you one more thing: if you sit at home, because you’re disappointed, or you sit at home because you think your vote doesn’t matter, or you sit at home for whatever reason, and you don’t vote, you’re helping elect Donald Trump. So you know I’m tired of the people who are saying ... you know, “I’m gonna have a protest, or I’m gonna sit out ...”. If you don’t participate in this election, and enthusiastically drag your friends, your neighbors, your family, drag ’em to the polls, make sure they’re registered, drag ’em to the polls and make sure they vote, then you are you are feeding into what Donald Trump wants for this country, which is a dictatorship.</blockquote></p>
<p>(Again, if you want to follow along, this was the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV1EtgF5o9E">12/11 episode</a>, and the question and answer happens at about 8:10.)</p>
<p>And, if you don’t know who Marc Elias is, he’s sort of the epitome of what David Rees was talking about when he said “older voters scolding younger voters for deciding to vote with their principles”: he’s a balding, old white guy (not quite as old as I am, according to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Elias">Wikipedia</a>, but damned close), he’s a lawyer, and just <span style="font-style: italic;">listen</span> to what he’s saying there. “If you don’t vote for my political party, your vote <span style="font-style: italic;">worse</span> than doesn’t count: it counts for the bad guy.” If a salesman was telling you, if you don’t buy their product, it’s the same as giving your money to burglars so they can come take your stuff, you’d roll your eyes at them. If a realtor told you that, if you didn’t buy <span style="font-style: italic;">this</span> house, you’re just giving permission to people to come knock your current house down, you’d probably look for another realtor. But, when it comes to politics, we not only don’t think twice about this sort of rhetoric, we <span style="font-style: italic;">expect</span> it. Worse, we <span style="font-style: italic;">believe</span> it. And, regardless of whether it’s true or not, our belief <span style="font-style: italic;">makes</span> it true.</p>
<p>Here’s a simple example: two Democrat groups (Third Way and MoveOn) have issued a statement about the potential new “No Labels” party. An <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/08/02/no-labels-publicly-denounce-movement-biden-2024">article</a> says:</p>
<p><blockquote>Third Way and MoveOn followed up Tuesday by asking the staffers to convince their bosses to publicly denounce the effort.<br/><br/>“We, the undersigned elected officials, recognizing the urgent and unique threat to democracy in the form of right-wing extremism on the ballot in 2024, call on No Labels to halt their irresponsible efforts to launch a third-party candidacy,” reads the statement for the lawmakers’ signatures.<br/><br/>“Their candidate cannot win, but they can and would serve as a spoiler that could return someone like Donald Trump to office. I therefore commit to opposing a No Labels third-party ticket in 2024 for the good of the country.”</blockquote></p>
<p>Now, I’m not saying voting for the (potential) No Labels candidate is a good ide<nobr>a—</nobr><wbr/>I’ll have to make that determination when we’re closer to the actual election, but I will say that so far I’m unimpressed with any of the names being floate<nobr>d—</nobr><wbr/>but just look at this statement. This is what oligopolies do: a small handful of companies in a space very aggressively lobby their customers against considering any possible competition. You may think the Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on <span style="font-style: italic;">anything</span> these days, but they absolutely agree that they don’t want any more players on the field. You get to pick one of these two, and yes they’re both shitty, but that’s just the way it is and no one can change it so you might as well get used to it.</p>
<p>Definitely don’t look over there. Yes, the UK has nearly a dozen major parties, 5 of which have 10 or more representatives in Parliament; Japan has the same, only with <span style="font-style: italic;">six</span> parties holding 10 or more members of the National Diet; Germany has 8 parties with 10 more members in the Bundestag and closer to <span style="font-style: italic;">two</span> dozen in total; France has only 5 major parties, but every single one has more than 60 members in their Parliament. But pay no attention to those countries. Just pick one of these two shitty options. It’s your duty to do that. And also not to question it.</p>
<p>Look, it’s perfectly acceptable for you to do the electoral calculus and come to the conclusion that, if you don’t vote for Biden, you’re throwing your vote away (or, worse, that you’re effectively voting for Trump). That’s a lovely thing for any individual “you” to do. But don’t think it’s okay to try to shove that down everyone else’s throat. And maybe also think about whether it’s okay to just accept that blindly and not believe it can ever change.</p>
<p>While researching this blog post, I came across <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/biden-democrats-dont-get-hes-in-trouble-on-gaza/">this article</a> from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Nation</span>. Now, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Nation</span> is, admittedly, a pretty liberal news outlet, and it should be read with the understanding of that bias going in. But this article (which you really should read in its entirety) makes some pretty compelling points, which I will quote here.</p>
<p><blockquote>The astute reader will note that I’ve been comparing Trump to Biden as if this will be the choice facing American voters next fall. But this is a false choice—a false binary that I subscribe to, but that many young voters do not. ...<br/><br/>... Many young people felt pressured into voting for him in 2020 because of the unique threat to democratic self-government posed by Trump. That threat is no less real in 2024, but this time around, Biden’s foreign policy is giving young voters a moral stance to pin their dissatisfaction to. And many voters of color who already viewed voting for Biden as merely a harm-mitigation strategy are wondering how the guy who ran against white supremacy now <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/1/headlines/baited_by_fox_white_house_likens_palestinian_rights_protests_to_charlottesville">lets his team smear protesters</a> who call for peace as equivalent to the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.<br/><br/>Responding to these valid moral criticisms with “Well, I hope you like it when Trump deports your family and takes away your voting rights” might feel like a cutting retort, but it’s actually a schoolyard bully’s threat masquerading as a political position. ...<br/><br/>... But just know that your use of Trump as a threat is not convincing them. The people saying they won’t vote for Biden know that Trump would be worse. They’re saying Biden should be better.</blockquote></p>
Perhaps the primary difference between Marc Elias and the author of this piece, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Mystal">Elie Mystal</a>, is that Mystal is <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> an old white man. He’s not necessarily a young man either, but being a person of color perhaps gives him a much better perspective to see how this “strategy” is becoming tiresome. The Democrats tell us that democracy is at stake ... just like they told us the last time, and the time before that. Even if they’re righ<nobr>t—</nobr><wbr/>and I’m certainly not saying they’re wron<nobr>g—</nobr><wbr/>they need new material. And they need to stop using it as an excuse to muscle out any other party that tries to horn in on their territory.
<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-82320102375768867352023-12-10T17:01:00.000-08:002023-12-10T17:01:53.517-08:00Call and response<div>
<p>Have you ever been listening to a podcast (or watching a show, or reading a book), and someone in the podcast/show/book says something so crazy, so outrageous, that you just respond out loud? You know they can’t hear you, but it doesn’t matter: you just feel the need to correct, or clarify, or just answer.</p>
<p>This happens to me <span style="font-style: italic;">all the time</span>. And I often really do respond out loud. This week, since it’s an off-week, I thought I’d just a quick rundown of my responses-to-the-air for this week.</p>
<br/>
<p><blockquote>There’s probably somebody in your life who you, you feel maybe you’re disconnected from. ... Maybe ... send them a letter, write ’em a handwritten letter and send it to ’em. They would really appreciate it.<br/><br/>—<wbr/> Cody Johnston on <span style="font-style: italic;">Even More News</span>, <a href="https://app.podscribe.ai/episode/92535757">“Santos’ Little Cameos, New House Resolutions, And EVEN MORE GTA VI Reactions”</a></blockquote></p>
<p>No, they wouldn’t, because they wouldn’t be able to read it.</p>
<p>[Context: <span style="font-style: italic;">Even More News</span> is the “in between weeks” podcast that goes along with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@SMN"><span style="font-style: italic;">Some More News</span></a>, and every week they start with some wacky holidays that are listed on the various wacky-holiday-calendars around the Internet and comment on them. This helps inject a bit of levity before they have to descend into the actual news, which is often hard to be humorous about. In this case, it was National Letter Writing Day, and this was an easy response: my handwriting is terrible.]</p>
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<p><blockquote>And for Prosperity to be built, there is only one way only, Prosperity can be built. Prosperity is built by entrepreneurs.<br/><br/>—<wbr/> Magatte Wade on <span style="font-style: italic;">Drilled</span>, <a href="https://app.podscribe.ai/episode/89444587">“Messy Conversations: Magatte Wade, Atlas Network’s Center for African Prosperity”</a></blockquote></p>
<p>To quote <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:According_to_whom">Wikipedia</a>, according to whom?</p>
<p>[Context: The Atlas Network is a web of “think tank” organizations with one goal: funded by the oil and gas industry (as well as the coal industry, lumber industry, mining industry, etc), they produce intellectual-sounding opinion pieces and “studies” that they then pass off to media outlets in order to spread the word that fighting climate change is bad. Magatte Wade is an African native (she was born in Senegal) and she pushes the idea that it’s unfair to try to curtail oil and gas production in Africa, because that just keeps Africans locked into poverty. Obviously what they need is for people to come in and help them exploit their natural resources, and that way they’ll develop their economies. As you can imagine, this makes her a darling of right-wing talking heads (the first time <span style="font-style: italic;">Drilled</span> used a clip of her rhetoric, it was from an appearance on Jordan Peterson’s show). The sad part is, she actually has some valid points buried in there. But, in this episode, where she challenges climate journalist Amy Westervelt to a “debaite,” you can see that she’s far more focussed on running roughshod over the arguments of the other side and “winning” the debate than in any sort of honest exchange of ideas. She certainly isn’t afraid to play the “I’m from Africa and you’re not, therefore I know what I’m talking about and you don’t” card, nor is she (as you can see from the quote above) afraid to just state <span style="font-style: italic;">very</span> shaky premises as “facts” upon which she then builds entirely unsound arguments. What I found the most infuriating, though, was her tendency to just talk faster and more forcefully and just ... <span style="font-style: italic;">more</span> ... than Amy. This quote is from the first ten minutes, during which Amy lets her go on until she finally winds down; at the end of that, she lets Amy talk for about two minutes before trying to interrupt her. She’s clearly from the “whoever talks the most wins” school of debate.)</p>
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<p><blockquote>[affecting nasal voice] And I would sing like this, which I never sang like before.<br/><br/>—<wbr/> Fred Schneider on <span style="font-style: italic;">Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me</span>, <a href="https://app.podscribe.ai/episode/92592709">“Fred Schneider”</a></blockquote></p>
<p>Give it up Fred: we have ears.</p>
<p>[Context: Fred, talk-singer of the B-52’s and utterer of such iconic lines as “it wasn’t a rock ... it was a rock lobster!” and “love shack, baby!!”, was responding to a description of the improv game “Hey Fred Schneider, what are you doing?” He apparently doesn’t think he sounds like that. This is reminiscent of Kurt Cobain adamantly insisting that Nirvana wasn’t a grunge band, or George Bush Sr’s response to Dana Carvey’s spot-on impression of him, wherein he claimed he’d never said anything like that in his life. The problem with such denials is, <span style="font-style: italic;">you’ve been recorded</span>. We can <span style="font-style: italic;">hear</span> you. Yes, Nirvana, you <span style="font-style: italic;">are</span> grunge (in no small part because the word was coined to mean “music that sounds like Nirvana”), and, yes, Mr. Bush, when you try to say “not gonna do it,” it quite often sounds like Carvey’s “na ga da,” and, yes, Fred Schneider, when you call out “hop in my Chrysler, it’s as big as a whale, and it’s about to set sail!” ... you sound kinda nasally. You just do. Own it, man.]</p>
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And that’s all for this week. I thought you might enjoy hearing my (normally solitary) mini-rants. If you didn’t, you can just wait around till next week, I suppose.
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-59551345642609539462023-12-03T17:24:00.000-08:002023-12-03T17:24:17.259-08:00We All Need a Little Guidance Sometimes<div>
<p>The D&D community rarely shows concensus about anything. Give them pretty much any topic and you’re nearly guaranteed to find an equal number of rabid fans both lauding and decrying it. And yet, there are a few topics that tend to unite D&D gamers, and one of them is that the <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> cantrip is overpowered.</p>
<p>I probably don’t need to tell you, but <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> is a simple little cantrip that grants you or an ally a 1d4 bonus to one ability check within the next minute. It’s a nifty bonus, for sure, and it’s nearly always going to be useful, but the main thing that the Internet objects to is that, as a cantrip, you can cast it over and over again, without limit. In general, cantrips are minor spells where it’s <span style="font-style: italic;">okay</span> for someone to cast it over and over. Sure, a wizard with <span style="font-style: italic;">fire bolt</span> can cause 1d10 of damage every round (or as many times as they can hit their enemy’s AC, at any rate), but then so can any twit with a pike. A bard with <span style="font-style: italic;">mending</span> can cast it over and over to fix a completely destroyed chain, or clothing which has been ripped to shreds, but since it takes a minute for every casting, it’s often possible that a skilled craftsperson could do the same job in less time. This <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> though ... the Internet seems pretty convinced that being able to grant this bonus over and over is appalling, if not apocalyptic.</p>
<p>There is quite a lot of discussion out there that supports this claim. It’s regularly found on lists of the most powerful cantrips: in the <a href="https://screenrant.com/dungeons-dragons-best-most-useful-cantrips/">middle of the list</a>, <a href="https://screenrant.com/dungeons-dragons-best-cantrips-worst-spells/">mentioned second</a>, listed at <a href="https://www.cbr.com/best-cantrips-dnd/">#5 out of 10</a>, all the way to <a href="https://www.fandomspot.com/best-cantrips-dnd-5e/">#1 of 15</a> or even <a href="https://www.cbr.com/best-cantrips-dnd/">#1 of 20</a>. A Redditor asks <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/7wfr36/5e_guidance_cantrip_is_op/">“5e Guidance Cantrip is OP?”</a> One EN World poster laments <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/guidance-what-1d4-to-every-check-ever.358263/">What, +1d4 to every check ever?</a> And the Alexandrian simply says <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46797/roleplaying-games/guidance-sucks-in-fifth-edition">“Guidance is a terrible spell.”</a></p>
<p>Well, I don’t agree. I think that what the Internet overlooks (or sometimes deliberately ignores) is that <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> has a number of important limiting factors. And it further frustrates me that you can quite often see these limits being steamrolled over in popular streaming games, played by professional TTRPG gamers. And I hate to pick on <span style="font-style: italic;">Critical Role</span>, but it <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> the OG streaming D&D game, and almost certainly the most popular, and I find it fascinating that Matt Mercer, its very brilliant DM, is sometimes very obviously frustrated by his players’ over-reliance on <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span>, and yet he often doesn’t seem to adhere to the simple limitations I outline below.</p>
<p>Now, I’m a firm believer that an article that tells you that a thing isn’t as bad as you think it is isn’t all that likely to be useful: it’s hard to dislodge strong opinions. So I’d rather you consider this a list of advice, especially if you’re a GM whose players are overly fond of shouting out “Guidance!” at the drop of a wizard’s hat, but even if you’re a player who is starting to feel like you’re breaking the system somehow by casting this useful cantrip at every opportunity. Remember these limitations, and maybe police yourself so your GM doesn’t have to.</p>
<br/>
<p>Without further ado then ...</p>
<h1>The reasons why <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> isn’t overpowered:</h1>
<h2><span style="font-style: italic;">Guidance</span> requires touch</h2>
<p>You have to be able to touch the person you want to guide. How many times have I watched someone on screen call out “Guidance!” when their fellow party member tries to do something, and watched the GM struggle to figure out a reason why it doesn’t apply? “Um, I’m going to say you can’t use <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> in this case because ... um, you didn’t know they were about to do that, so you didn’t have time to cast it.” So silly. How about, there are 3 people between you and them, so you just can’t <span style="font-style: italic;">reach</span> them? How about, you’re holding your spell focus in one hand and your weapon in the other; what are you going to touch them <span style="font-style: italic;">with</span>? No touch, no guidance ... it’s just that simple.</p>
<p>This is most applicable in combat situations where maneuvering to get to an ally comes with its own risks. Definitely not applicable if the character is guiding themselves (which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do).</p>
<h2><span style="font-style: italic;">Guidance</span> requires concentration</h2>
<p>Absolutely no one seems to remember this. If the caster is already concentrating on another spell, <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> would instantly end it, and <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> is hardly ever worth that cost. I’m not saying that you as the GM should use that to engineer a “gotcha” moment: “haha! since you cast <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span>, you lose your other spell!!” No, I’m just saying that it’s perfectly reasonable for you to remind your player of the consequences of their action<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>perhaps “you know that if you use <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> you’ll drop concentration on your other spell, right? are you sure you want to do that?”</p>
<p>Most applicable in combat, but surprisingly pertinent even out of combat. “Sure, you can do <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> if you want, but everyone will lose their <span style="font-style: italic;">pass without trace</span> bonus ...”</p>
<p>Also rare, but if the caster throws out <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> in those situations where they’re worried that their party member <span style="font-style: italic;">might</span> need help on an ability check, they’re then concentrating on a spell. They either can’t cast another concentration spell at that point, or the ally will lose the <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span>.</p>
<p>A more commonly encoutered limitation: having to maintain concentration means you can’t cast <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> on multiple allies. That means that grandiose statements like <a href="https://www.cbr.com/best-cantrips-dnd/#guidance">“a spellcaster with Guidance can make their entire party better at anything they set their mind to”</a> necessarily comes with a pretty big caveat: as long as they only set their minds to things one at a time.</p>
<h2><span style="font-style: italic;">Guidance</span> requires an action</h2>
<p>For some reason, it’s very common for people to use <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> on themselves during combat, to give themselves a little juice on whatever cool thing they’re trying to do. And I have <span style="font-style: italic;">never</span> seen a single GM object to that, despite the fact that it can almost never work. Trying to use <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> on that Athletics check to escape the monster’s grapple? Well, too bad: the Athletics check is an action, and the <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> is an action, and you don’t have two actions. I suppose you could use <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> this turn and apply it to the Athletics check <span style="font-style: italic;">next</span> turn, but do you really want to do that? for a measly 1d4 bonus? Even when the thing you’re doing is <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> action, it’s rarely worthwhile to actually use <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> on it. Let’s say you want to maneuver through the crowded battlefield to get to an enemy, and your GM says you can only do that if you can make a decent Acrobatics check. Since the Acrobatics is part of your movement, you <span style="font-style: italic;">could</span> use <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> to help out ... but then, when you succeed and get to the enemy, you don’t have an action left to attack or cast another spell. So you’re probably worse off than if you’d just taken the straight roll.</p>
<h2><span style="font-style: italic;">Guidance</span> requires it to be your turn</h2>
<p>This is another thing that I often see GMs letting people get away with in streaming games. Player A: “Okay, I’m going to spend this round trying to figure out the puzzle.” GM: “Okay, give me an Investigation check.” Player B: “Guidance!” Except: no. Even if player B is close enough to touch player A (see first bullet), <span style="font-style: italic;">it’s not player B’s turn</span>. And they can’t cast a spel<nobr>l—</nobr><wbr/>not even a dinky cantrip like <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance<nobr></span>—</nobr><wbr/>when it’s not their turn, unless the spell is a reaction (which <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> isn’t) <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> the situation fulfills the requirements of the trigger (e.g. you can’t cast <span style="font-style: italic;">feather fall</span> unless <span style="font-style: italic;">someone</span> is falling). And there’s isn’t any trigger for <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span>, because it isn’t a reaction spell. So, you know ... no. You can’t cast <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> on the player doing the Investigation check. It isn’t your turn.</p>
<h2><span style="font-style: italic;">Guidance</span> requires somatic components</h2>
<p>Now, this one doesn’t apply as often, but it <span style="font-style: italic;">definitely</span> is yet another case where I see people getting away with it on streams when the GM really should know better. The party goes up to talk to a group of suspicious NPCs, and the party’s face starts to spin a tale to keep things from escalating. Simple enough: the GM calls for a Deception (or Persuasion) check. Inevitably, someone in the party will yell “Guidance!” Except ... <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> is a <b>spell</b>. You’re a group of oddly-dressed, dangerous-looking, often only vaguely humanoid people, talking to a bunch of nervous, twitchy folk who are already a bit suspicious of you, and someone in the back starts casting <span style="font-style: italic;">magic</span>? Yeah, that ain’t gonna go down how you hope. Again, I’m not recommending you as the GM use this as a “gotcha” moment; just gently remind the guidance-happy caster that there <span style="font-style: italic;">will</span> be consequences if they start breaking out the funky hand gestures and mystic words in the middle of the tense negotiations.</p>
<p>To be fair, this is one I <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> hear GMs (particularly Matt Mercer) call out on occasion, as well they should. I just don’t hear it enough.</p>
<h2><span style="font-style: italic;">Guidance</span> requires verbal components</h2>
<p>This is a lesser requirement, but the caster <span style="font-style: italic;">does</span> need to be able to speak to cast <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span>. No guiding if you’re gagged, no guiding inside the radius of a <span style="font-style: italic;">silence</span> spell, and I would at least call for another Stealth check if someone tried to cast <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> while they were hiding or otherwise trying to avoid discovery.</p>
<h2><span style="font-style: italic;">Guidance</span> only lasts for a minute</h2>
<p>Don’t forget that <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> only lasts for a short time, so any ally you cast it on has to use it or lose it within the next minute. This doesn’t come up that often, but I have seen players try to cast it on an ally who was about to head off on a scouting mission (to help with their Perception checks), or one about to sneak into an enemy encampment (to help with Stealth). But that only works if they can achieve the objective in under a minute. Also consider that if the task takes longer than a minute to complet<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>say, an Investigation check to search a room, or a Sleight of Hand or Thieves’ Tools check to disarm a tra<nobr>p—</nobr><wbr/>the GM is well within their rights to say that the guidance doesn’t last long enough to grant the bonus.</p>
<h2><span style="font-style: italic;">Guidance</span> only benefits ability checks</h2>
<p>I mean, it’s pretty clearly laid out in the spell description, and I don’t really notice people trying to use it on attacks or saves, but I do think this is a pretty obvious limitation that should be more thoughtfully considered when people are trying to talk about how “overpowered” <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> is. <span style="font-style: italic;">Guidance</span> is hardly ever going to turn the tide in combat, and, even outside combat, saving throws are way more imporant than ability checks in terms of influencing game outcomes.</p>
<h2><span style="font-style: italic;">Guidance</span> requires the caster to <span style="font-style: italic;">know</span> about the ability check</h2>
<p>This is a subtle one. But, to take a simple example, I have difficulty imagining <span style="font-style: italic;">any</span> situation where <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> could be used on an Insight check. How could the caster possibly know that the ally was trying to figure out whether or not someone was lying? Unless the caster is the one doing the insight-ing, but then you have the problem described under the somatic components bullet: your target is bound to suspicious if you start waving your hands around mystically while you’re talking to them.</p>
<h2>At the end of the day, <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> only gives you a d4 bonus</h2>
<p>Seriously. It’s just a d4. Sure, you can do it for every single ability check because it’s a cantri<nobr>p—</nobr><wbr/>well, every single ability check made by a person you can reach, when it’s your turn and you have an action and you’re not concentrating on anything else and you have at least one hand free and you can tal<nobr>k—</nobr><wbr/>but ... so what? As a GM (or, even worse: as an armchair game designer), why would you get all hot and bothered to an average improvement of 2.5 points on a bunch of ability checks? Let the characters have this one. They get so few pleasures in life, and those 2 or 3 points are not going to make your story any less challenging. Trust me.</p>
<p>And this works in the opposite direction as well. The Alexandrian, as much as I admire him, is going a bit overboard when he says you’re just making your party worse when you <span style="font-style: italic;">don’t</span> cast it. It’s just a d4. Your party will be fine if you forget once or twice, or if your GM points out one of the reasons above and shuts down your last-minute casting. Use it when appropriate, skip it when inapplicable ... it’s just a fun little bonus, no biggie either way.</p>
<br/><br/>
And that’s why <span style="font-style: italic;">guidance</span> is not overpowered, and it’s just fine to allow in your games. Keep your players honest, but let them have fun. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about, right?
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-34615185794376410582023-11-26T21:15:00.000-08:002023-11-26T21:15:19.793-08:00Thanks were given<div>
We’ve survived another Thanksgiving, and we’re all pretty much still thankful for the same things: family, friends, job, health, fuzzy children and videogames and having enough disposable income to spend on the things we enjoy doing. If you happen to celebrate this holiday, we hope you had a lovely one, and, if you live in a country that doesn’t celebrate it, or celebrates it on a different day, or if you just believe that people shouldn’t celebrate taking advantage of our indigenous population, we hope you had a lovely week in any event. Till next time.
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-83188145386119304392023-11-19T17:15:00.000-08:002023-11-19T17:15:55.031-08:00The Salesman's Tale<div>
<p>As far as stories about one’s life go, everyone has a few that all their friends and acquaintances have heard ad nauseum, and a few that they love to tell and may or may not be a hit, and, if they’re very lucky, a few that they only tell occasionally, but are always entertaining when they do. This is one of those for me.</p>
<p>Now, I’ve alluded to this story before, most particularly in my discussion of <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2012/02/amor-fati.html">fate</a> (or whatever you wish to call it). In that story, I talked about how it was I came to work in a restaurant, even though I had been a professional programmer for several years at that point. That restaurant was a small joint about a mile off the campus of George Mason University called the Mason Jar Pub. We served sodas in Mason jars (get it?), but also beers and pizza and all the stuff that college students require. This place was run by a snotty punk named Brian whose dad was in “construction” (air quotes used very advisedly) and had obviously been gifted the pub as baby’s first business. He ran it with his girlfriend and a friend of theirs named Dana. They ran it very poorly, and eventually the business ran out of money and Brian and friends ran out of town and none of us got to cash our final paychecks, which led to a number of uncomfortable days in court as we tried to get paid by the father. Lessons were learned all around. But, in the run-up to this inevitable debacle, the following thing happened which ended up changing the course of my life far more than my one missed paycheck.</p>
<p>Now, because I had gone to college previously, then dropped out (during which time I did the aforementioned professional programming), and was now back for a second tour, I was a bit older than most of my peers. I was, in fact, just a wee bit older than Brian himself, and this was the point in my life when I learned that most people really can’t handle managing employees who have more age and experience than they themselves do. The prime example of this was the reaction I got when I pointed out to Brian that I had some experience with computers, and I could give him a hand if he ever needed any help. Said reaction was basically just a sneer. I was one of the dumb college kids he had hired; obviously I was not to be allowed in the club with him and his girlfriend and Dana, who was the only one trusted with “the books.” I shrugged and went back to making calzones: no skin off my nose if he wanted to struggle with his new computer.</p>
<p>You see, there was this fellow named Tom Cooney was working for Sharp and had sold the Mason Jar Pub its first cash register. He then sold them a computer to which you could download all the data from the cash register and then load that all into QuickBooks. Provided you knew what you were doing, of cours<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>this type of process was still a bit fiddly back in the early 90s. And Brian and company most certainly did <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> know what they were doing. They struggled with that damn computer constantly, and Dana was constantly calling Tom asking for help.<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="#note1">1</a></span></sup> So I knew they could use my expertise. But, if they were too proud to accept it, it was none of my concern. I had been hired to sling pizzas and clean up the joint, and I was perfectly willing to do just that.</p>
<p>Now, the three twitbags couldn’t be around all the time. Especially on the night shifts, there were often times when none of the three of them were available (or just didn’t want to be bothered). For these occasions, there were two “assistant managers,” who happened to be senior ROTC students, as well as roommates and very good friends. One was a pale, freckled redhead whose name I think was Lou; the other was a confident black man with glasses named Wayne.<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="#note2">2</a></span></sup> These were both big, burly men who were training to be Marines, older than most of my coworkers (still a bit younger than I was, of course). I think that Brian thought that they were going to be “on his side” in the imaginary divide in his mind that existed between “management” and the rank-and-file. But, the thing about middle managers is, if you treat them (and pay them) as badly as you do the low-level employees, they tend to side with the majority rather than the upper echelon.</p>
<p>So, one slow night I was working with Wayne and a couple of other people, and Wayne was bitching about how badly all us employees were being treated and how little we got paid compared to Brian and his coterie, who seemed to be pocketing all the money. At some point, the discussion turned to sneaking a peek at the books. After all, it was all on the computer, and the computer was right there in the office. The office was locked from us paeons, of course, but Wayne, as the manager-in-charge, had the keys. For emergency use only, theoretically, but ... perhaps finding out what was going on <span style="font-style: italic;">was</span> an emergency, dammit! (Had we known what was coming, we would have felt even more justified.) The problem was, only Dana had the password to QuickBooks. So Wayne turned to me. “You know computers, right?” he asked me. “You could hack in!”</p>
<p>I was not surprised at this misconception: that all us programmers know how to hack things. I <span style="font-style: italic;">was</span> a bit surprised to hear this future Marine lieutenant suggest something so morally ambiguous. But, then again, Wayne himself often told us that his Marine instructors taught them to make a decision and stand by it: making a poor decision in the heat of battle can be bad, but hesitating and making no decisiono at all is often disastrous.<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="#note3">3</a></span></sup> So, after my initial shock, I set about explaining that I was never much of a hacke<nobr>r—</nobr><wbr/>in fact, the only thing I had ever successfully hacked was a copy-protected videogame on my Commodore 64, which tried to tell me it couldn’t run after X times because my trial period had ended. I did in fact show that snarky videogame message who was the boss, but breaking a QuickBooks password was a whole different animal. Computer security had advanced by about a decade at that point and I had spent zero of that intervening time keeping up with it. “Well, take a look,” Wayne encouraged. So I said I would.</p>
<p>And, perhaps 15 minutes later, I was ready to admit that there was literally no chance that I was smart enough to break into a password-protected QuickBooks account. “Sorry,” I said, not all that sorry. But Wayne was not deterred.</p>
<p>“Okay, but there’s got to be something you can do to fuck with them, right?” he suggested. Well, okay, I was not bothered by being unable to hack, but this now felt like a challenge. Surely any programmer worth their salt could do <span style="font-style: italic;">something</span> to fuck with people, given free access to the physical machine. I had certainly engaged in a few juvenile pranks with coworker<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>both as the fucker and the fucke<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>but a lot of those things were only effective against other programmers. What I needed was something that would get under the skin of a normie. So I started poking around to see what tools I had available to me.</p>
<p>And what I found was a hex editor. Now, if you’re not a technogeek like myself, you might not know what this is. It’s a program that will let you edit <span style="font-style: italic;">anything</span> on the computer: data, commands, even the operating system itself. It was exactly the thing I had used in my one and only successful hack. You see, a videogame that keeps track of how many times it’s been played and then refuses to run necessarily has to store that count somewhere, and that means you can find that place and edit it, and change it to zero. But there are two problems with this approach: first of all, you’d have to constantly change it back to zero every time the count got too high again, and secondly the people who programmed the videogame have obviously thought of this. They don’t store the count as a raw value; it’s encoded somehow, so that even if you <span style="font-style: italic;">could</span> find it and change the value to zero, that wouldn’t be read as “zero” by the program itself. So I quickly realized that my “brilliant” plan could never work. But I realized that, in my attempt to find where the data for the count was stored, I had stumbled across something even better: the place where the <span style="font-style: italic;">code</span> to compare the count and show the snarky message was stored.</p>
<p>You see, on the one hand, figuring out exactly how a given piece of software works should be easy: it’s all just numbers, and the software authors can’t keep <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> from being able to read those numbers without also making it impossible for the <span style="font-style: italic;">computer</span> to read them. So, theoretically, you can just look at all the numbers in the software and see what it’s doing. But, the tricky part is, the same number can be interpreted differently depending on context. For instance, say you look at one byte in a piece of software and it happens to be hex 49. Now, that might represent the number 73, which is just the hexadecimal number converted to decimal. Then again, it might be a capital “I,” because that’s what hex 49 is on the ASCII chart. Or it might be the lower byte of a two-byte number, or the upper byte, or the middle byte of a four-byte number. Or it <span style="font-style: italic;">might</span> actually represent an instruction: say, an immediate exclusive-or of the next byte with the “accumulator,” which is assembly-speak for “the current number we’re working with.”<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="#note4">4</a></span></sup> Which of those many things it actually <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> depends entirely on context: the only number that you’re 100% sure of is the very first one, and, after that, you have to deciper every number, in order, to figure out what the next one means. If you lose your place, or if you miscount how long something is, then all of a sudden you’re interpeting number as letters and letters as instructions and instructions as numbers and you’re just fucked. So, while it <span style="font-style: italic;">should</span> be simple, in practice it’s very much not.</p>
<p>In the case of my videogame, the code which checked how many times it had been run and then conditionally displayed the annoying message was not near the beginning of the code, but it was <span style="font-style: italic;">jumped</span> to near the beginning of the code, because that check was one of the very first things it did. So I was able to find it and trace through it and eventually I found the “branch” instruction: the part that said, if the value is no good, jump to the code which displays the message and terminates the program. And I replaced the “branch” instruction with hex EA, which is what we technogeeks call a “NOP”: a no-op. So then, instead of branching when the number was too big, it just ... did nothing. And, after the nothing, it proceeded with the regular videogame code.</p>
<p>And I could do all that because I had a hex editor, and that allowed me to search for certain byte sequences, identify them, and replace them with different sequences. And then save the file, overwriting the old program with a new version which was <span style="font-style: italic;">almost</span> identical to the old, but with one slight tweak. Once you know how to do this type of thing, it’s pretty easy to extend that to other changes. And one of the simplest edits of all is to replace one string with another.</p>
<p>See, your hex editor knows perfectly well that sometimes numbers represent letters, so you can tell it to search for a string, and it can do that fairly easily. The longer the string, the more likely it is that a given set of sequential numbers will represent those letters and not just be a stunning coincidence. And, once you find the string, you can easily overwrite it with a different string, <span style="font-style: italic;">as long as</span> the new string is exactly the same length as the old one. Now, if you happen to know something about the way the program was written, you can pretty easily replace a longer string with a shorter one: anything written in C, or a language that derives from C, will use a zero byte as a marker to mean “the string ends here.” So a 10-character string will actually be eleven bytes long: one byte per character and the zero byte at the end. You could easily replace that with a 5-character string and just fill in the last 5 bytes with zeroes and Bob’s yer uncle. What you <span style="font-style: italic;">can’t</span> do (or can’t do safely at any rate) is replace a 10-character string with a 20-character one, because those last 10 bytes are going to overwrite something entirely different: if it’s another string, the program will end up displaying the latter half of your replacement string intead, which is maybe not <span style="font-style: italic;">too</span> bad, but if it’s code, then the program will likely do <span style="font-style: italic;">very</span> bad things as it starts interpreting your characters as instructions. But, as long as the string is equal or shorter, you’re golden.</p>
<p>And, the thing is, it’s very rare to find a hex editor on a random computer. The vast majority of users have no need for one. Finding a hex editor on the accounting PC for a small college-town restaurant was just weird ... surreal, even. I would eventually discover that our salesman friend Tom needed the services of an engineer-type, and the one he was using at that point was a bit sloppy. He had been using the hex editor when he set up the computer, and just never bothered to delete it. But, at the time, it felt almost like destiny: there wasn’t a whole lot I could do to this computer, but the presence of a hex editor opened up my possibilities quite a bit.</p>
<p>Now, back in those days, we didn’t have Windows. Well, technically speaking we did, but its use wasn’t prevalent yet. Most programs, including QuickBooks, just ran on the primitive system underlying Windows: DOS. When you booted up a DOS computer, you were faced with what we called a “C prompt”: <code> C:\> </code>. And you just typed the name of whatever program you wanted to ru<nobr>n—</nobr><wbr/>perhaps <code>qb</code> for QuickBook<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>and it ran. Now, if you mistyped something (say, you accidentally fat-fingered a key and typed <code>wb</code> or <code>qv</code> instead of <code>qb</code>) you would get an error message. Specifically, it would say “Bad command or filename.” Not that you’d be likely to mistype a two-letter command, but something longer, you might. And the thing is, “Bad command or filename” is a really excellent string to search for in a piece of software, if you happen to know which piece of software is responsible for printing that “C prompt” and running whatever commands you enter. Which I did. So it was fairly trivial, given the hex editor, to find “Bad command or filename” and just replace it with a shorter string. Like, say, “What the fuck?!?” Which is exactly what I did.</p>
<p>Needless to say, Wayne was tickled pink at the thought of poor Dana mistyping something and getting cursed out by her own computer. I was a bit proud of myself: it was basically trivial for me, but it could seem like magic to the uninitiated. And I thought nothing more about it.</p>
<p>Until ...</p>
<p>You see, what happened was that, sometime in the next few days, Dana was having some troubles with getting data downloaded from the cash register system and, naturally, she called Tom for tech support. Not that tech support was really Tom’s thin<nobr>g—</nobr><wbr/>he was the salesman, recal<nobr>l—</nobr><wbr/>but the whole computer thing was, strictly speaking, on the side from his job at Sharp. So he was tech support that day. And, when you do tech support over the phone, you get into a sort of rhythm: “Okay, type this. And what does it say? Okay, then, type this next. Now what does it say?” And so on and so forth, back and forth, until eventually poor Dana flubbed whatever she was supposed to have typed.</p>
<p>“Okay, type this command; now what does it say?”</p>
<p>“Ummm ...”</p>
<p>“Just tell me what it says on the screen.”</p>
<p>“Well ... it says ...”</p>
<p>“Yes? what does it say?”</p>
<p>“Well, it says ... ‘what the fuck’.”</p>
<p>Without missing a beat, Tom responded: “Somebody there knows computers.”</p>
Or at least that’s the way <span style="font-style: italic;">he</span> recounted the story when he told me about it later. Because he started dropping by the Mason Jar Pub quite regularly after that, hoping to ferret out which employee had the secret computer knowledge. And, eventually, he stumbled onto me. And that’s how Tom Cooney became my first business partner: I became his new, not so sloppy, engineer, and I was introduced into the weird world of running your own business. It’s part accountant, part movie producer, part one-man-band (even when you have partners or employees), part having the weight of the world on your shoulders, and part ultimate freedom from being told what to do by idiots with no vision. I owe Tom a lot, but I think maybe I owe Wayne even more. Without that juvenile prank, my life would have turned out very differently. And maybe not better.
<br/><br/><br/><br/><div style="line-height: 80%;">
__________
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note1">1</a> This led to Tom and Dana actually dating briefly, if I recall correctly.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note2">2</a> I mentioned Wayn<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>and this very stor<nobr>y—</nobr><wbr/>in passing when discussing how much I owe to <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2012/09/guides-bernice-pierce.html">Bernice Pierce</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note3">3</a> I stress this is all second-hand information from a single source, diluted by decades of intervening time and degrading memory. I apologize to any of my readers with military experience if I’m misrepresenting the advice.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note4">4</a> Note: I’m not stating categorically that 0x49 is an immediate XOR for a 6502 CPU; I’m about 4 decades out from even being able to follow the reference docs for that particular flavor of assembly, much less actually remembering it. But I did look it up, and I’m pretty sure that’s right.</span></p>
</div><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-43926605997128983862023-11-12T23:22:00.000-08:002023-11-12T23:22:47.758-08:00Another trip around the sun ...<div>
<p>I really thought I was going to be able to do a full blog post this time, despite it being my <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2014/04/another-birthday-weekend.html">birthday weekend</a>. But, apparently, I’ve relaxed too hard, and the time has just slipped away. I would love to tell you I’m sorry, but ... I too relaxed to feel all that sorry about it. Sorry for not being sorry. Sort of.</p>
Next week: the thing you should have gotten this week. See how it all works out?
<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-41595803044892266962023-11-05T21:45:00.000-08:002023-11-05T21:45:55.206-08:00Post-Halloween recap<div>
<p>Another Halloween put to bed, another birthday weekend upcoming. Nothing overly exciting to report so far: the smallies went out for what is likely their last trick-or-treating ever, while I stayed home to pass out candy to any children who knocked on our door, of which, it turns out, there were exactly zero. Then we all met back at the television for our annual viewing of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0862856"><span style="font-style: italic;">Trick ‘r Treat</span></a>, which is surely the greatest Halloween movie of all time (even counting the actual <span style="font-style: italic;">Halloween</span>). Our youngest managed to stay awake until the last 5 minutes of the movie, then we all went to bed and, presumably, had lovely dreams.</p>
Until next year!
<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-78036795531374478042023-10-29T22:23:00.002-07:002024-02-18T22:42:11.580-08:00Plutonian Velvet I<div><br/>
<span style="font-style: italic;">"Ministers of Night"</span>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">[This is one post in a series about my music mixes. The <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2015/07/series-listing-music-mixes.html">series list</a> has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use. You may wish to read the <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2015/02/all-mixed-up.html">introduction</a> for more background.<br/><br/>Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguou<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week. Just that I will eventually finish it, someday. Unless I get hit by a bus.]</span> </span></p>
<br/>
<p>As we approach the pinnacle of spooky season, I thought it appropriate to present one of my spooky mixes. And I have several of those, many of which we’ve already encountered. As a connoisseur of all things creepy and crawl<nobr>y—</nobr><wbr/>as an aspiring author whose pentagram of literary idols include Stephen King and Clive Barke<nobr>r—</nobr><wbr/>I distinguish among <span style="font-style: italic;">many</span> different flavors of spooky. We’ve seen <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2016/10/phantasma-chorale-i.html">Phantasma Chorale</a>, for instance, which is lightly creepy, with a bit of child-like thrown in for good measure. We’ve seen <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2015/11/darkling-embrace-i.html">Darkling Embrace</a>, which is creepy but pretty, and <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2019/01/dreamscape-perturbation-i.html">Dreamscape Perturbation</a>, which is creepy and dream-like. <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2022/04/darktime-i.html">Darktime</a> was all about dark music, and <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2017/02/penumbral-phosphorescence-i.html">Penumbral Phosphorescence</a> was full on goth. But how about some music which is downright spooky? Well, you’ve finally come to the right place.</p>
<p>For this mix, we’ll be concentrating on music which <span style="font-style: italic;">sounds</span> a bit scary or unsettling. If it has some creepy lyrics, that’s a bonus, but it’s not the focus. Mainly these are songs from artists which <span style="font-style: italic;">usually</span> are perfectly normal-sounding bands, putting out perfectly normal-sounding albums, except for that <span style="font-style: italic;">one</span> track that makes the fine hairs on your arm stand on end. The name of the mix is drawn from a few lines from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Raven</span> by Edgar Allen Poe, the patron saint of Hallowe’en if there ever was one. The ends of two different stanzas of <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48860/the-raven">that excellent poem</a> are:</p>
<p><blockquote>“Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shor<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/><br/>Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”<br/> Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”<br/><br/>On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,<br/>But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,<br/> <span style="font-style: italic;">She</span> shall press, ah, nevermore!</blockquote></p>
<p>So, as we sit here, on the violet-velvet cushion of Night’s Plutonian shore, let’s see what dark and festering cobwebby corners of alternative music we can find to chill our bones.</p>
<p>When I first discovered Falling You, back in the early days of the Internet,<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/plutonian-velvet-i.html#note1">1</a></span></sup> I immediately fell in love with them<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/plutonian-velvet-i.html#note2">2</a></span></sup> and started trying to download every single thing I could find by them. Which is how I stumbled on this “remix” of “Hush” by Abney Park. The original is pretty goo<nobr>d—</nobr><wbr/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16ssKE540XY">listen to it</a> if you lik<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>but it’s not significantly creepy. What Falling You did was to entirely mute Robert Brown’s lead vocals, kick up Abney Park keyboardist Kristina Erickson’s almost whispered backing vocals, cut out nearly all the instruments except for the synths (which are perhaps even enhanced a bit), and add some creepy sound effects. The result is something entirely different from the original ... and insanely dark and excellent. For years I had it paired with “Mad Alice Lane” as the opening to <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2022/04/darktime-i.html">Darktime</a>, but honestly it transcends just being about darkness. It’s a wonderfully creepy tune that serves as a wondeful intro.</p>
<p>And it’s followed by my other great find from those early Internet days: “Mad Alice Lane” by Peter Lawlor, founder of the Scottish band Stiltskin. It took me forever, but I finally tracked down the CD single of this excellent (and excellently spooky) song; the version I’m using here is the slightly longer “A Spooker Ghost Story” one.<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/plutonian-velvet-i.html#note3">3</a></span></sup> The <a href="https://vocal.media/beat/the-story-of-mad-alice-lane-a-dark-masterpiece-by-peter-lawlor">story of the song</a> is just as creepy as the song itself, so defnitely give that a look-see.</p>
<p>Once I divorced these two excellent tracks from <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2022/04/darktime-i.html">Darktime</a>, I decided they should form the core of their own spooky mix. And instantly I knew the first two companion tracks that had to be added: both are by Siouxsie and the Banshees and both are off <span style="font-style: italic;">Peepshow</span>. “Scarecrow” is one of my favorite tunes to play at this time of year, and, while the choruses are a bit rockin’ (as much of the Siouxsie œuvre is wont to be), the verses are super eerie. As for “Rawhead and Bloodybones” ... well, based on a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Bones">disturbing British tale</a> of child-snatching boogeymen (or a single boogeyman with a compound name; versions conflict), the song has a lot of discordancy and notes that just jangle your nerves. It made for the perfect closer.</p>
<p>After that, “The Lights are Going Out,” the closer for OMD’s 1985 masterpiece <span style="font-style: italic;">Crush</span>, was so unlike anything else on that album that I’d always had it in the back of my mind as a candidate for a spooky mix, and the Cure’s short “Subway Song” is a little two-minute gem with a little jump scare built right in. I follow up the latter here with “Barrowlands” by the Bolshoi. The Bolshoi were contemporaries of OMD, though not nearly so well-remembered these days. They had a similar sort of new-wave/synthpop sound, and “Barrowlands,” the penultimate track on <span style="font-style: italic;">Lindy’s Party</span>, is similarly conspicuous in its dissimilarity to everything else on that album. It’s got a great graveyard feel to it, and also provides our volume title.</p>
<p>Rounding out the 80s contributions (though I embarrassingly didn’t think of it until quite recently) is “Sanctum Sanctorum” by the Damned. I was looking for a replacement for another track that just didn’t seem to fit, and it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have anything by the Damned. And, while the Damned may not be a proper goth band, lead singer Dave Vanian is the gothiest motherfucker on the planet: black leather and huge white streak in his jet-black hair (at least <a href="https://www.tumbex.com/nyguro.tumblr/post/189120255475/">during the <span style="font-style: italic;">Phantasmagoria</span> era</a>), married to Patricia Morrison of the Sisters of Mercy (which <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> a proper goth band)—<wbr/>hell, he even used to be a gravedigger before becoming a rock star. And <span style="font-style: italic;">Phantasmagoria</span> has some goth gems on it, of which “Sanctum Sanctorum,” with its Phantom-of-the-Opera-style opening organ chords and backing thunder-and-lightning effects, is easily the spookiest.</p>
<p>Other obvious, if more modern, choices were “Shadow of a Doubt” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl (with Elysabeth Grant breathily telling us how she “met a stranger on a train” and Sam Rosenthal’s goth-soaked arrangement), “Mary of Silence” by Mazzy Star (more organ, sludgy percussion, and echoey vocals by Hope Sandoval), and “Danny Diamond” by Squirrel Nut Zippers (a taste of New Orleans creepy accompanying a song of tragedy sung by Katharine Whalen). Those fell naturally into a little block, starting with “Diamond” and ending with “Mary,” that closes out the first third and sets us up for the middle stretch.</p>
<p>A few more self-evident choices: modern goth masters Faith and the Muse, who here give us the breathy, bassy track “Kodama,” and dark ambient, strings-heavy Amber Asylum, who provide “Cupid.” The lyrics of “Kodama” are actually about the commodification of Hollywood,<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/plutonian-velvet-i.html#note4">4</a></span></sup> but the song still retains enough sinister to secure its position here. As for “Cupid,” it’s a rare vocal outing for band founder Kris Force, and those vocals soar and swoop; it’s not always clear exactly what the words are, but the arrangement is a bit menacing and a bit tortured, so it works well here.</p>
<p>Tossing in a bit of early-to-mid-’aughts trip-hop, the Belgian band Hooverphonic can go dark with the best of ’em, and I always thought “L’Odeur Animale” was one of their darkest. The whole song just feels ... <span style="font-style: italic;">off</span>, and that creepy little tag at the end just seals the deal. When Geike Arnaert sings “deep inside,” it makes you shiver, even if you don’t know quite why. My other choice was Germany’s Trost, whose <span style="font-style: italic;">Trust Me</span> is normally fairly uptempo, if a bit surreal.<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/plutonian-velvet-i.html#note5">5</a></span></sup> But the last track,<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/plutonian-velvet-i.html#note6">6</a></span></sup> “Filled with Tears,” has more of that bass-driven, echoey and breathy vocals that have popularized so many of the other tracks I chose. Plus the one-two punch of Hooverphonic and Trost makes a fantastic wind-down to our closer from Siouxsie.</p>
</div> <br/> <br/>
<div align=center> <span style="font-size: larger;"> <b>Plutonian Velvet I</b> </span> <br/> <span style="font-style: italic;">[ Ministers of Night ]</span> </div> <br/> <br/>
<div class='post-body entry-content'>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__qnDtZ47XQ">“Hush [Flashback Mix]”</a> by Abney Park [remix by Falling You] [Single]<sup><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/plutonian-velvet-i.html#note7">7</a></span></sup><br/>
“Mad Alice Lane (A Spookier Ghost Story)” by Lawlor, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KAQ7S8U"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Mad Alice Lane (A Ghost Story)</span></a> [CD Single]<br/>
“Cupid” by Amber Asylum, off <a href="https://amber-asylum.bandcamp.com/album/the-natural-philosophy-of-love"> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Natural Philosophy of Love</span></a> <br/>
“Scarecrow” by Siouxsie and the Banshees, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q6P0LJS"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Peepshow</span></a> <br/>
“Kodama” by Faith and the Muse, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003207YWC"> <span style="font-style: italic;">:ankoku butoh:</span></a> <br/>
“The Lights Are Going Out” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, off <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SNW0W0/"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Crush</span></a> <br/>
“Danny Diamond” by Squirrel Nut Zippers, off <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013K1KGO/"> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Inevitable</span></a> <br/>
“Shadow of a Doubt” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl, off <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BQRVMYY/"> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Scavenger Bride</span></a> <br/>
“Mary of Silence” by Mazzy Star, off <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000TENKV8"> <span style="font-style: italic;">So Tonight That I Might See</span></a> <br/>
“Now, When I'm This” by the Black Queen, off <a href="https://theblackqueen.bandcamp.com/album/fever-daydream-3"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Fever Daydream</span></a> <br/>
“Ghost Children” by Bruno Coulais, off <a href="https://www.juno.co.uk/products/bruno-coulais-coraline-soundtrack/535835-01/"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Coraline</span></a> [Soundtrack]<br/>
“Toccata” by Nox Arcana, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FYEOH9C"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Legion of Shadows</span></a> <br/>
“Waltz of the Damned” by Lee Press-On and the Nails, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00004S35K"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Swing Is Dead</span></a> <br/>
“Subway Song” by the Cure, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000002H5V"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Boys Don't Cry</span></a> <br/>
“Barrowlands” by the Bolshoi, off <a href="https://soundcloud.com/thebolshoiofficial/sets/lindys-party-1"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Lindy's Party</span></a> <br/>
“Sanctum Sanctorum” by Damned, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YZPJC4N"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Phantasmagoria</span></a> <br/>
“L'Odeur Animale” by Hooverphonic, off <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006JHVZLQ"> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Magnificent Tree</span></a> <br/>
“Filled with Tears” by Trost, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-TROST/dp/B001J6IS2Q"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Trust Me</span></a> <br/>
“Rawhead and Bloodybones” by Siouxsie and the Banshees, off <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q6P0LJS"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Peepshow</span></a> <br/>
<div style="text-align: center; margin-top: 20px; margin-right: 150px"> <span style="font-size: smaller;">
Total: 19 tracks, 79:13
</span> </div>
<p></div> <br/> <br/> <div class='post-body entry-content' style="clear:both"></p>
<p>And that just leaves us with the centerpiece of the volume. We start with 3 instrumentals: a rare double-bridge leading into a hardcore synth-driven update of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor.” First up, the Black Queen, a dark synthwave band composed of former members of Trent Reznor’s touring band for Nine Inch Nails. I discovered these guys while checking out the veritable cornucopia of dark synthwave that’s springing up these days (such as Urban Heat and Light Asylum), and while dark synthwave doesn’t necessarily mean creepy, there’s certainly something ominous about “Now, When I’m This,” which is the short intro to the Black Queen’s debut album, <span style="font-style: italic;">Fever Daydream</span>. And the transition from “Mary of Silence” straight into “Ghost Children” wasn’t working for me, so this little track made a nice bridge to the bridge, if you see what I mean. And “Ghost Children” itself was picked to be a little bridge into “Toccata”: it’s a nice (but creepy) little track off of Bruno Coulais’ excellent soundtrack to <span style="font-style: italic;">Coraline</span>. I mean, all of <span style="font-style: italic;">Coraline</span> is pretty creep<nobr>y—</nobr><wbr/>it’s the entire raison d’être for <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2016/10/phantasma-chorale-i.html">Phantasma Chorale</a> after al<nobr>l—</nobr><wbr/>but I tend to think that “Ghost Children” is one of the few actually spooky ones. And it tees up the Nox Arcana take on Bach’s classic, given its uncanny bona fides by association with early silent horror films such as <span style="font-style: italic;">Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</span> in 1931 (it didn’t become associated with <span style="font-style: italic;">The Phantom of the Opera</span> until 1962, by which point it was already cliché horror film music). Nox Arcana does some excellent work here, keeping it lively while also providing the appropriate amount of darkness for being the anchorpoint of an album named <span style="font-style: italic;">Legion of Shadows</span>.</p>
<p>And all that takes us to perhaps the only surprising choice of the volume: Lee Press-On and the Nails. Retroswing auteurs LPON are often silly, but also occasionally gothy, and their album <span style="font-style: italic;">Swing Is Dead</span> contains a few tracks that aren’t out of place in the Halloween season. But only one is truly spooky: “Waltz of the Damned” sounds almost exactly like what you would hear while waiting in line to see the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. The amusement-park-style sound effects fade into some New-Orleans-style dirge before leaping into LPON’s more typical big-band sound, with Lee’s vocals heavily processed through a voice-distortion unit spewing lines like “and when the leader waves his fiery baton, the band begins to scream in three-quarter time!” It’s eerie, spooky fun.</p>
<br/>
<a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2024/02/creeping-rageaholic-i.html">Next time</a>, we’ll sneak up on some sonic explosions.
<br/><br/><br/><br/><div style="line-height: 80%;">
__________
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note1">1</a> Which is when I also discovered a bunch of other crazy things I’ve shared with you, like <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2016/10/phantasma-chorale-i.html">Ensemble of the Dreamings</a> and <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2018/07/dreamtime-i.html">Zoolophone</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note2">2</a> Well, him: Falling You is almost entirely composed of John Michael Zorko.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note3">3</a> That single also contains the nearly-ambient “Dogs of Breakfast,” which we heard on <a href="http://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2016/11/shadowfall-equinox-iii.html">Shadowfall Equinox III</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note4">4</a> Or at least that’s my interpretation.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note5">5</a> We’ve heard from Trost once before: her weird little ditty “Even Sparrows Don’t Like to Stay” was featured on <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2021/08/gramophonic-skullduggery-i.html">Gramophonic Skullduggery</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note6">6</a> These sorts of weird, creepy songs are often used as closers for their native albums.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: smaller;"><a name="note7">7</a> This one is so damned hard to find that I just gave up and uploaded it myself. You’re welcome.</span></p>
</div><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-42318642572776076652023-10-22T00:00:00.000-07:002023-10-22T18:37:42.504-07:00Rumble in the Jungle<div>
<p><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ADCreHdD-2SLjNiMtECIhpwKZR2C2oI_C2kh8K0mDTBd07XfpO2dpeBBYg4LTWG1vxiR6u_CgjzXd-NivHQMJbWEEu3snfYqkXLadob6C2etOIfsfO6-ziE4=w1000"><img width="800" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ADCreHdD-2SLjNiMtECIhpwKZR2C2oI_C2kh8K0mDTBd07XfpO2dpeBBYg4LTWG1vxiR6u_CgjzXd-NivHQMJbWEEu3snfYqkXLadob6C2etOIfsfO6-ziE4=w1000" height="600"></a></p>
<p>After a break of a little over a year, we’re finally back to the Family Campaign (which is what I call the D&D campaign that I’ve built around my children’s characters, who happen to be all animal-based). Why so long? Well, a big reason was the return of <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2022/12/progeny-rebound.html">my eldest child and their partner</a>. You’d think that would make it easier to do a thing called “the Family Campaign,” but not so much, as it turned out. But another reason was that this was the first really big battle that I’d planned for the campaign. Now, if you watch actual play games like <span style="font-style: italic;">Dimension 20</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Critical Role</span>, you might recognize that this is <span style="font-style: italic;">very</span> light in terms of combat: <span style="font-style: italic;">D20</span> typically has a major (as in, episode-long) combat every other episode; <span style="font-style: italic;">CR</span> is usually a <span style="font-style: italic;">bit</span> less often, but not by much. However, I’m a much more combat-light (and therefore story-heavy) GM. While I pepper in short combats, done using theater of the mind, I save big set-piece combats utilizing fancy battle maps for special occasions that come along <span style="font-style: italic;">maybe</span> once a level.</p>
<p>So, with the arrival of the party in <a href="https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Maztica">Maztica</a> (a jungle-dominated continent with cultures influenced by Aztec, Incan, and other Mesoamerican cultures), I figured it was time to pull out all the stops. You can see the array of enemies I put up (with apologies for my limited Phtoshop skills); there’s a few evil cultists (always fun to battle, with no pesky moral quandaries to worry about) and then a number of creatures taken straight from Legendary Games’ <a href="https://www.makeyourgamelegendary.com/product/latin-american-monsters-5e/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Latin American Monsters</span></a>, which I purchased specifically for this purpose. There’s a jaguar in the right foreground, with a werejaguar right behind it, a couple of pumas, and a werecaiman. That red furry thing with the horns is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honduran_folklore#el_timb%C3%B3">timbo</a>; the scary horse-headed woman is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sihuanaba">sihuanaba</a>, and the big snake with antlers is a <a href="https://abookofcreatures.com/2019/01/25/mazacoatl">mazacoatl</a>.</p>
<p>And, yes, I built a full map for it. Here’s some pics we took to mark our place when we had to pause this mega-combat:</p>
<a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ADCreHeuCi5mbyllk-5lnnPTrv-vnPZjjfb6_xzthdFpOiJAz6jnfm2mC_SKJuE834mB91-so71DgPcudFXWItqmKHUJZahkFJXvGxB1pMzdkPgKMCDxkT5h=w1000"><img width="800" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ADCreHeuCi5mbyllk-5lnnPTrv-vnPZjjfb6_xzthdFpOiJAz6jnfm2mC_SKJuE834mB91-so71DgPcudFXWItqmKHUJZahkFJXvGxB1pMzdkPgKMCDxkT5h=w1000" height="600"></a>
<p><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ADCreHf6S930N7Qcxuv1_DPJS9pRNhQliP8fDC8HFd5C-vZmWDtDGIxt7l5lAKy3-I0cCMvPsQyG6J3sJanVuW9gjxaZGaXMzUkuCcfNIieU7bz_vcKrqgSB=w1000"><img width="800" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ADCreHf6S930N7Qcxuv1_DPJS9pRNhQliP8fDC8HFd5C-vZmWDtDGIxt7l5lAKy3-I0cCMvPsQyG6J3sJanVuW9gjxaZGaXMzUkuCcfNIieU7bz_vcKrqgSB=w1000" height="600"></a></p>
<p>As you can see, I had to use a number of proxy figures: my jaguar is here represented by the tiger (and the werejaguar is a weretiger figure), the timbo is the wrong color (but otherwise surprisingly accurate), the werecaiman is really just a lizardfolk, that “wolf” is actually supposed to be a black panther (one of the good guys), etc etc. But the overall scen<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>a bar on a beach with a jungle right behind i<nobr>t—</nobr><wbr/>is actually pretty accurate for what I had in my mind. The kids seemed to have a good time with it anyhow. (Fun fact: the legs you can see in one of the pictures belong to my middle child, who was taking their own pictures of the battle.)</p>
<p>Oh, and you might wonder: what the heck is up with the Bazooka Joe wrapper? Well, I asked my youngest to find a way to mark that space, and that’s what she came up with. We had to mark the space because one of the powers of the timbo is called “Gravedigger”: in a single turn, it digs a grave, pushes you into it, and covers you up so you start suffocating. So that bubble gum wrapper is actually a grave marker, and there’s someone in there buried alive. So that’s fun.</p>
We’ll pick it up here next week, if we can wait that long. It’s a tough battle, but I provided a few allies to help them out, and I think they’ll prevail in the end. I’m anxious to find out how it all comes out!
<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-34885419311274644882023-10-15T18:25:00.002-07:002023-10-15T21:57:55.130-07:00I thought Jared Kushner was going to fix this ...<div>
<p>When the WGA went on strike earlier this year, I was miffed for an entirely selfish reason: I get almost all of my news from places that employ writers, like <span style="font-style: italic;">The Daily Show</span> and Steven Colbert on <span style="font-style: italic;">The Late Show</span>. Just as when <a href="https://barefootcoder.blogspot.com/2020/03/isolation-report-week-1.html">the coronavirus first hit</a>, I was abruptly plunged into a news-free zone. As I noted back then:</p>
<p><blockquote>Sure, I could sit around and watch CNN or something along those lines, but I gotta tell you: I spent a <span style="font-style: italic;">long</span> time doing that right after 9/11, and all I got for it was way more stressed and not particularly more well-informed. In fact, study after study has shown that “fake news” shows such as <span style="font-style: italic;">The Daily Show</span> produce more well-informed viewers than almost any other outlet. So right now I’m losing not only my major source of news about the world, but also the coping mechanism I was using to deal with the stress of said news: being able to laugh at it.</blockquote></p>
<p>During this year’s stoppage, I found some new outlets, mostly on YouTube, where creators are not writing for the AMPTP, so the strike allowed them to continue. Most of them, however, were not nearly amusing enough. I’ve grown somewhat fond of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@briantylercohen">Brian Tyler Cohen</a>, for instance, but there’s no denying that he’s not only a radical liberal (which I don’t mind so much), but also a staunch Democrat (which I’m far less tolerant of). Generally speaking, the Democrats are not nearly as liberal/progressive as I’d like, and they fuck up just as badly as the Republicans (case in point: <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12549609/Democratic-Senator-Bob-Menendez-wife-Nadine-INDICTED-corruption-allegations.html">Bob Menendez</a>). Then there are the “dirtbag left” and their less extreme offshoots, who will happil<nobr>y—</nobr><wbr/>even gleefull<nobr>y—</nobr><wbr/>attack Democrats, but traffic more in manufactured outrage than incisive and funny commentary. About the only truly postive find during this long dry spell was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng"><span style="font-style: italic;">Some More News</span></a>, who are not so much current news like Colbert and whoever ends up being the next Trevor Noah, but more like John Oliver’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Last Week Tonight</span>: deep dives into an single problematic situation, trying to use humor to explore the nuances of the story that traditional news outlets (even the “fake” news ones) just don’t have time to cover.</p>
<p>But now the strike is over, and Colbert is back, Meyers is back, Oliver is back, and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Daily Show</span> will be back tomorrow night. And just in time for the most violent flare-up between Israel and Palestine in decades; by the time it’s ove<nobr>r—</nobr><wbr/>and I’m being optimistic just in assuming it will eventually be ove<nobr>r—</nobr><wbr/>it will almost certainly jettison the “almost” from that description. This is the type of thing that it is <span style="font-style: italic;">very</span> difficult to inject even a modicum of humor into, but one of the reasons I truly respect these folks is that they always find a way: you can’t make jokes about the tragedy itself, of course, but you can make jokes about the idiots <span style="font-style: italic;">talking</span> about the tragedy, or trying to “manage” it. You can point out hypocrisies and people being greedy and foolish. They figured out a way to do it about 9/11 (eventually), and they figured out a way to do it about the pandemic. And, I have to say: I’m a bit disappointed by the lack of even trying that I’m seeing from my usual outlets. That probably sounds a bit crass, like I’m complaining that this humanitarian crisis, where thousands are being killed, isn’t funny enough for me. But that’s not what I mean to imply. I’m more disappointed in how <span style="font-style: italic;">this</span> is the line that my comedic news idols are afraid to cross. A world-wide pandemic that killed 7 million people? Sure, we can find a way to make jokes about that. The Middle East? Fuck that, man: I’m not touching <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span>.</p>
<p>I think the main source of the problem is, perhaps more than any other hot-button issue in the United State<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>perhaps more even than abortion, or gun right<nobr>s—</nobr><wbr/>there are reflexive reactions to stating a position on either side. If you refuse to say you stand with Israel, well then of course you’re supporting terrorists. And, if you <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> say you stand with Israel, then you’re supporting apartheid at the best and genocide at the worst. Best just not to take a side. Except ...</p>
<p>Except I reject this false dichotomy. I do not stand with Israel, nor do I stand with Hamas (or any of the other Paletinian terrorist groups-du-jour). I stand with the innocent civilians.</p>
<p>Numbers are hard to pin down, but the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/israeloccupied-palestinian-territory-un-experts-deplore-attacks-civilians">United Nations</a> says that “More than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, the majority of whom were civilians, were reportedly killed ...” and that ”... at least 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, including older persons and 290 children ...” <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/palestinian-civilians-suffer-israel-hamas-crossfire-death-toll/story?id=103828889">ABC News</a> reports that “In Israel, at least 1,300 people have been killed ...” and that “Palestinian authorities said at least 2,329 people have been killed ...” Would it really be so controversial to posit that killing innocent civilians is bad, regardless of which side is doing it?</p>
<p>This conflict has been going on so long that people don’t even bother going back to its beginning in their lists any more: the United Nations <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties">lists</a> casualties only going back as far as 2008; Wikpedia’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_operations_of_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict">list</a> of military operations headed “Gaza-Israel conflict” only goes back to 2006 (and has 21 entries in those 18 years). But, trying to extrapolate from Wikipedia’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict">timeline</a>, I think there have been more than 50 incidents <span style="font-style: italic;">just in my lifetime<nobr></span>—</nobr><wbr/>the first of which started when I was 7 months ol<nobr>d—</nobr><wbr/>ranging from plane hijackings to full-on wars. And I was only trying to count incidents in which multiple innocent bystanders were killed: I skipped all the assasinations of military and political figures by both sides. Also, once it became clear I was going to hit 50 (easily), I actually quit counting, because it was just so goddamned depressing. The Israelis and the Palestinians have bcome the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield%E2%80%93McCoy_feud">Hatfields and McCoys</a> of our lifetimes, except if the Hatfields and McCoys were wiping out huge swaths of the West Virginia population.</p>
<p>And I understand the issues of conflating the state of Israel with the Jewish people, but I don’t think it’s antisemitic to criticize the <span style="font-style: italic;">government</span> of Israel. If it were, there would quite a few antisemitc Jews these days: Jon Stewart has done some of this, not to mention there’s an entire <a href="https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org">organization</a> of Jews for whom it is the raison d’être. But it’s harder for non-Jewish people (such as myself) to do so. In fact, there are, bizarrely, actual <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws">laws in 35 states</a> (including my own) saying that you’re not allowed to boycott Israel in protest of its policies. You know where it’s <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> illegal to protest Israel? Israel. <a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a45499605/haaretz-times-of-israel-netanyahu-critiques/">Many Israeli newspapers have been extremely critical</a> of Netanyahu in particular, which is only sensible: in a democracy, people are <span style="font-style: italic;">supposed</span> to be critical of their governments. They are supposed to hold them accountable. There are no laws in the US about not being able to protest the <span style="font-style: italic;">US</span> government (probably), but it’s okay to make it illegal to protest other countries’ governments? It’s just surreal.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the Palestinians have the opposite problem: too often the face of their people is a group like Hamas (or Hezbollah, or Fatah, or the PLO, or ...), which <span style="font-style: italic;">everybody</span> condemns, and rightfully so. But condemning a terrorist group that operates in a country is not the same as condemning the <span style="font-style: italic;">people</span> of that country, and expressing support for the people is not the same as expressing support for the terrorist group. Netanyahu has said that “the enemy will pay an unprecedented price”; does that mean that Hamas will pay this price? Because it sure seems like it’s the Palestinian people paying it right now. If the Israelis wanted to hunt down every single Hamas soldier who participated in this henious attack on their country, who would speak out against them? But bombing innocent civilians back to the stone age because of the actions of some madmen who claim to speak for them? Does that really seem “justified”?</p>
<p>So I would like to take the (hopefully!) uncontroversial stance that people in <span style="font-style: italic;">both</span> Israel and Palestine have the right to live their lives without fear of being shot, kidnapped, or bombed. I dunno ... that just seems like common sens<nobr>e—</nobr><wbr/>and common decenc<nobr>y—</nobr><wbr/>to me.</p>
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Even More News</span>, the current news discussion podcast from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Some More News</span> folks that I mentioned way back at the beginning of this post, had an almost entirely humor-free discussion of the current situation in Israel and Palestine that you could <a href="https://www.podcastone.com/episode/Hamas-Israel-Bloodlust-and-Where-We-Go-From-Here">check out</a> for more in depth discussion. The episode of <span style="font-style: italic;">Some More News</span> that they reference is actually two years old at this point, but (as Cody says) it’s eerily relevant to today’s news, so you should probably <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INCXqWzH5vk">watch that</a>. The older video does lean more towards the Palestine side, but the recent podcast is more balanced. And all the information is good regardless.
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-7223034148201691492023-10-08T20:06:00.000-07:002023-10-08T20:06:36.090-07:00Trying not to ruin the apology<div>
<p><br/><br/></p>
<p>There should be something longer here.</p>
<p>But there isn’t.</p>
<p>I should have found the time to write it ...</p>
<p>But I didn’t.</p>
The vagaries of life have struck me down,
the minutiæ causing me to drown,
hopefully I won’t have a breakdown ...
<p>I’m feeling insufficient.</p>
<p>Perhaps next week will be much better.</p>
<p>Then again, perhaps it won’t.</p>
<p>I typically strive to produce some content.</p>
<p>But then sometimes I don’t.</p>
Not that you should pity me
(I’m not asking you for sympathy),
I’m just sayin’, that’s all I have for thee:
’cause this is all I wrote.
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212285857571336106.post-53226770396642995142023-10-01T23:28:00.000-07:002023-10-01T23:28:02.547-07:00In a house with unlocked doors<div>
As I sit here rewatching <span style="font-style: italic;">The Meg</span>, which really isn’t as bad as it’s cracked up to be, in preparation for watching <span style="font-style: italic;">The Meg 2</span>, which probably <span style="font-style: italic;">will</span> be as bad as it’s cracked up to be (but it’ll be entertaining enough, I expect) ... as I sit here, pondering old Jason Statham will be before they stop casting him in action movies, I appreciate the fact that I took this blog to a biweekly schedule. See ya next week.
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</div>Barefoot Coderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02318070650381051837noreply@blogger.com0