Whither the beef?

When I was a kid, the only thing I liked to eat was hamburgers.

For my own children, it was more about the chicken nuggets (at least for the first two).  But, for me, it was hamburgers.  At home, my parents would cook hamburger helper a lot, but that’s still hamburger, right?  I didn’t eat chicken, period.  Wouldn’t touch pork (well, unless it was disguised as bacon, of course).  And seafood?  Don’t get me started.  My grandparents on my mom’s side loved seafood.  They would often go out to eat at very nice seafood restaurants, and sometimes they’d take me.  And there was literally nothing on the menu I would eat.  Oh, sure: nowadays, almost every restaurant will offer a hamburger or some chicken nuggets on a kid’s menu, regardless of the actual cuisine.  But not in my day.  In my day, if you didn’t like the type of food they had, you were just supposed to suck it up and eat it anyway.  But I was a stubborn child.  I would eat nothing rather than eat seafood.  I spent many a meal eating Captain’s Wafers sandwiches with butter in the middle that my grandmother would make me, and that was literally all I’d get.  Once when I was perhaps 8 years old my grandfather gave me a few dollars and told me that, if I wanted a hamburger so bad, there was a McDonald’s next door: I could go get it myself.  I was a painfully shy kid, and the thought of going somewhere (even directly next door to a restaurant where my grandparents could easily see me from their table by the window) and actually interacting with adults was horrifying, and, in retrospect, I think my grandfather knew this and the whole thing was sort of a challenge.  But I ate a hamburger and fries that night.

I was committed to the beef, is what I’m saying.

Besides the fast food hamburgers and the hamburger helper, there was “hamburger steak,” a dish (and I’m being very generous in calling it a “dish”) that my father made by serving a hamburger patty in onions and gravy rather than on a bun, bologna sandwiches (always beef bologna, of course), spaghetti and meatballs (meatballs composed either solely or primarily of, you guessed it: beef), beef stew, the occasional beef pot roast at my grandmother’s house which then turned into something she called “beef hash” the next day, and probably a few more ways to dress up cow meat that I’m not even remembering right now.  The only thing I can really remember eating as a child that wasn’t beef was hot dogs (we didn’t really do beef hot dogs back in those days).  And the occasional meal of chicken chow mein (my foodie grandfather again) that was served in that particular way that they used to make it on the East Coast before they decided that it should be full of bean sprouts (bleaaugh).  It was a whoooole lotta beef.

Of course, most of it wasn’t very good beef.  I didn’t care for steak (too chewy), and my parents and grandparents were just as happy not to have to pay for one for me anyhow.  I didn’t do prime rib either, on those super rare occasions when the parents or grandparents would spring for it.  So the vast majority of the beef I ate didn’t taste much like beef: the hamburgers tasted of mustard and ketchup; my dad’s “hamburger steak” tasted of gravy; most of those meatballs tasted like my grandmother’s spaghetti sauce; hamburger helped tasted mostly like MSG.  And, you know, back in those days, that might have been for the best.  Beef was pricey (chicken was the “cheap” meat back then), so most of what I was eating was right down at the lower end of the quality spectrum.  Which is fine: I was a dumb kid.  Don’t waste the good stuff on me.

Of course, as I got older, I did get a little more discerning.  I never really developed a taste for seafood, but I started liking various forms of chicken, and even started appreciating pork chops, not to mention all the really delightful disguises that pork can assume, like pepperoni, salami, capicola (for Italian subs), andouille sausage (for red beans and rice), country sausage (for biscuits and gravy), country ham (for ham rolls on Christmas morning), etc etc etc.  I even started liking the finer forms of beef ... somewhat.  I’ve always been the sort of person who appreciates a good filet mignon but otherwise can take or leave a steak, and as far as I’m concerned the attraction of prime rib lies almost entirely in the au jus.  Even what is probably my all-time favorite beef dish, steak au poivre, is, again, all about the sauce.  Curiouser and curiouser.

Of course, in recent years, even the once-lowly hamburger is getting new appreciation from the culinary world.  First they told us to stop using so much damn ketchup (or mayo, or thousand islands dressing, or whatever your slathering of choice may be) so we could actually taste the meat.  Then, once we decided that was a terrible idea, they started telling us to seek out a better class of meat.  Organic, pasture raised, grass-fed: all that stuff became all the rage.  Even kobe, if you want to get really pricey.  And, as the much better qualities of beef have gradually become more and more commonplace, and we’ve all become more and more able to actually taste the meat, and I’ve become more and more discerning, I’ve discovered a very curious thing about myself.

I don’t actually like the taste of beef.

When I look back on my life at the quantity of beef I’ve packed away, this is practically shocking.  I mean, how can I not like beef?  Everyone likes beef.  It was the most consumed meat in my country of origin for the first twenty-five years of my life, and #2 for the last thirty.  In 2020, the U.S. consumed 20 billion pounds of beef, which is roughly 90 pounds of beef for every man, woman, and child in the country.  And for 50 or so years, I was perfectly happy with beef.  Until I could actually taste it.  Now ... not so much.  Now, I would have to rate it as “meh” at best.  Quite often, in a beef dish made with particularly high-quality grass-fed beef, I actually dislike it altogether.  Sometimes, when someone in my house is cooking beef (especially in combination with garlic), it can actually make me a bit queasy, even though I know I’m going to enjoy the taste once it’s done.

And of course the silly thing is, it’s not particularly good for me.  I know there’s some debate about whether beef is healthy or not, but I think a lot depends on the individual.  For me, I can tell you definitively that there are only a few things I know for a fact help me lose weight, and one of them is to cut out red meat.  So what occurs to me is, why should I bother continuing to eat a meat that makes me fat and I don’t even like the taste all that much?

Oh, I don’t propose to cut out beef altogether.  I still like a nice filet every now and again, but for me “every now and again” means about once a year.  When it comes to meatballs or hamburger-helper-style meals or tacos—at least when we’re cooking it ourselves—I find that ground turkey is perfectly lovely.  And for the ever-popular hamburger itself ... well, I’ve started eating Impossible burgers.

I tried it on a whim, really.  Just to see if it could really live up to the hype.  So, can I tell it isn’t beef?  Of course.  Then again, that’s sort of a plus from my perspective.  The more important question is, can I tell it isn’t meat?  And the answer is, no, not really.  It sort of tastes like an exotic meat you might get at a fancy chain, like an ostrich burger from Fuddrucker’s (and, yes: I’ve had one of those before).  Like a turkey burger, but different enough that you probably wouldn’t think it actually was turkey.  Point being, it’s a perfectly acceptable meat substitute.  And they say that plant substitutes such as Impossible are better for the planet, so that’s a win-win in my book.  It does contain soy, so I try not to eat it as a regular thing (soy has its own set of pros and cons), but, as a sometime food, it’s probably better (and better for me) than actual beef.

So that’s where I’ve landed on the topic of America’s #2 favorite (formerly #1) processed animal protein.  I think I just don’t need it any more.  And I think that’s going to be good for me in the long run.  No need to go full-on vegetarian, I don’t think, but getting a bit closer has got to be a good thing.

I wanted to be with you alone ...

This week, we got both hail and snow in Southern California.  I’ve written about this whole climate change thing before ... about six years ago, now that I look back on it.  For my first ten years in California, it rained about twice a year—granted, it rained for a week solid every time, but still: pretty much twice in a given year, every year.  And, as near as I could tell, everyone else in SoCal considered this perfectly normal.  Then, about six years ago, the rain began coming more often and lasting longer.  And now suddenly L.A. county has gotten its first blizzard warning in 34 years.  Only for the mountains, true, but ... I mean, multiple co-workers posted pictures on our Slack this week of hail.  Hail!  When was the last time it hailed in L.A.?  Hell, I can’t even remember the last time I saw hail when I lived on the East Coast.

Typically, I use these types of opportunities to make fun of the climate change deniers.  But, honestly, I’m not even sure who’s still on that train: with more massive wildfires burning in increasingly unlikely places, so many hurricanes in a season that the National Weather Service now routinely has to start over at the beginning of the alphabet, so much flooding that it’s carrying away cars ... is there anyone who claims climate change is a hoax for anything other than performative reasons?  While I was marveling at the reports of snow and hail, one of my old friends from the East Coast was telling me that the temperature hit 80° for them: a new record for February.  I’m pretty sure everyone knows that it’s real at this point, primarily from personal experience.

The only question is, much like with the pandemic: are all these changes permanent? is this just the new normal now?  I don’t know ... I’d like to say I don’t believe it, or at the very least that I hope it’s not so.  But hope is a precious resource these days.  So I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.

OGL Doomscrolling

I’ve never been particularly susceptible to doomscrolling.  I didn’t do it during the height of the pandemic, nor on January 6th, nor even during the run up to (and aftermath of) Trump’s election.  I didn’t do it during the most intense times of the Black Lives Matter protests, nor during the most heinous parts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The closest I ever really got was an obsession with TV news shortly after 9/11, but that was technically before doomscrolling was a thing (although really it was the same impulse).  But, overall, I was starting to think I was immune to the syndrome.

And then Hasbro, the parent company of Wizards of the Coast (or WotC)—the company that makes D&D—started fucking with my game.

Now, on the one hand I suppose it makes sense that this thing, which is more likely to affect me personally than any of that other stuff (maybe even more so than COVID), was the thing that finally caught me in its web.  But that’s sort of a shallow assessment, and I would at least hope that there’s a better explanation than that.  After some introspection, I think I’ve put my finger on it: none of that other stuff really surprised me.  Anyone who was surprised that Putin would invade a country just hasn’t been paying attention, and anyone who was surprised that cops were killing black people is beyond clueless.  The US government wasn’t prepared to deal with a major health crisis? yeah, some “breaking news” there.  Corporations are using the pandemic to gouge us for more money? well, duh: it’s what they do.  As for Trump, I can’t say which is less surprising: that a politician would be a compulsive liar, or that a rich white guy would be self-absorbed and unscrupulous.

But this ... this actually caught me off guard.  I never thought that this could happen.

And that’s primarily because it already happened once before. See, what Hasbro is doing is trying to screw with the Open Gaming License (OGL), which was invented for the third edition of the game (3e), and tries to do for tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) what open source licenses did for the software industry.  Both 3e and 5e use the OGL, but 4e did not.  What happened?  Well, presumably, some dick executives at Hasbro decided that it sucked that other people were making money off D&D and decided to create a new version that wouldn’t use the OGL (I actually cover this is some detail in my discussion of what Pathfinder is).  And it bombed.  See, 3e made D&D the biggest TTRPG in the market—by a huge factor.  Other TTRPGs were, in those days, like browsers other than Chrome: sure, they exist, but the only people you know who use them are hardcore nerds.  4e killed all that, and other TTRPGs began to equal—or even overtake—D&D.  And it’s obviously an oversimplification to claim that moving away from the OGL was responsible for that ... but it’s hard to ignore it as a factor as well.

Especially when you factor in that 5e brought it back.  Basically, WotC said, “hey, guys, we know we screwed up, but now there’s a new version of the game, and it will use the OGL again ... please come back to us.” And it worked.  Oh, sure: once again it’s too neat and tidy to lay the massive success of D&D in recent years at the feet of re-embracing the OGL.  But, also once again, it’s hard to ignore that factor.  So it seems like the company learned their lesson, and now everything is good ... right?

Except corporate executives come and go, and often institutional memories are amnesiac.  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, warns George Santayana, and that’s exactly what’s happened now.  Thus, doomscrolling.

Well, today is my last allotted day to obsessively hit the refresh button to get the latest news on this topic, so perhaps I can declare it not a complete waste of effort by giving you, dear reader, a few links which can hopefully tell the story in a cogent, coherent manner.  I tried to focus on shorter articles and videos to make it quicker to get through, but there’s no getting around that this is a big topic, so don’t dive in unless you’re willing to spend some time on it.  But, for all that, I think it’s a really fascinating topic, with business aspects, legal aspects, issues of creative vs capitalist, and feats of journalism.  If you do have the time, it might just be worth it to take a look at this particular controversy.  And, even if you’re not into TTRPGs, considering the fact that the blockbuster D&D movie is scheduled for March, and a new D&D TV show was just announced, it’s possible that the fallout could impact a lot more folks than that, if only tangentially.

For each link below, I’ve indicated what format the media is in, and what expertise the author is bringing to the table.  I’ve tried to arrange things into an order that makes the story easier to follow (which is decidedly not chronological order of these things being published), and add a brief bit of commentary as to what I think the value of each is.  This list is highly curated, based on my own opinions; I tried to save you from going through a lot of the dreck that I did during my doomscrolling spree, but that inherently means that my bias about what to include and what to omit is on full display, so take with as many grains of salt as you feel appropriate.  Some of these I’ve marked “informative,” if they’re primarily to get raw data; some I’ve marked “entertaining,” if the authors have added a bit of flair to make the new go down more easily; and some I’ve marked “emotional,” if the authors are letting their feelings show as to how much this is impacting their lives and livelihoods.

I’ve explained most of the acronyms above; “3PP” means third-party publisher (i.e. someone who is not WotC or the consumer who is publishing D&D-related material).  The fate of the 3PPs are the main thing that’s in doubt with this move from Hasbro / WotC.  It’s also fair to note (as some of the folks below do) that, when we demonize the “company,” we need to be careful to disinguish the sleazy executives from the rank-and-file employees of WotC (and its subsidiaries, like D&D Beyond), who are really just trying to get along, and many of whom don’t agree with the policies of the “company” at all (and several of whom are, apparently, responsible for many of the leaks that are fueling the fire, precisely because they can’t stand idly by).

What the hell is all this about anyway?

• Best overall summary: (video) Mark “Sherlock” Hulmes (D&D streamer); emotional.  The first 13 minutes here are the best breakdown of almost every salient event that I’ve heard so far.

• Best summary of the situation pre-leak: (video) Profesor Dungeon Master (D&D streamer and third-party publisher); informative.  The first 4 minutes here are a very concise window on the situation up to the point where the leak happened (the leak was just a rumour at this point; it became official upon publication of the Gizmodo article—see below).  After that, the Prof goes on to make some fairly cogent commentary and predictions, but a lot of it was invalidated by later events.

Was the original OGL useful?

• Negative: (text) Cory Doctorow (author); informative.  Some people say the original OGL was useless or even harmful.
• Positive: (video) Roll of Law (lawyer); informative.  Others counter that this is too simplistic a view.

The business issues driving this

• Early predictions: Flute’s Loot (D&D streamer); informative.  Really, Flute is just collecting words of wisdom here from Matt Colville (founder of MCDM), but, since he’s done us the kindness of picking out just the good bits, we may as well take advantage.  (And he does add some useful commentary.)

• Assessment of the factors leading up to this situation: (video) Ryan Dancey (former VP at WotC and co-author of the original OGL); informative.  Nice short clip from a much longer discussion with the Roll for Combat folks (who were one of the third-party publishers involved in the leak) which explains very cogently the business side of things from someone with inside knowledge.

• What WotC should have done to address “undermonetization”: (video) Tulok the Barbarian (D&D streamer); entertaining.  This is probably about as pro-Hasbro as it gets (spoiler: still not very pro-Hasbro).  While this came out before the ORC license annoucement (below) and way before WotC’s response (even further below), it is still the absolute best (and funniest) assessment of what WotC / Hasbro could have done—still could do, for that matter—to address their concerns that D&D is “undermonetized” without pissing off their customer base.

What’s bad about the (proposed) new license?

• The original leak: (text) Linda Codega for Gizmodo (journalist); informative.  This is what kicked off the controversy.

• Why it’s legally bad: (video) The Rules Lawyer (lawyer and D&D streamer); informative.  A good summary of the issues from a legal standpoint.

• Why fans are outraged: (video) DnD Shorts (D&D streamer and third-party publisher); entertaining.  Anti-Hasbro biased, obviously, but really encapsulates why people are freaking out.

Reactions from the community

• A typical 3PP reaction: (video) The Dungeon Coach (D&D streamer and third-party publisher); emotional.  I could list literally dozens of videos just like this one, but I think DC is honest and raw and lays it out straight.

• The #OpenDND movement: (video) The ArchCast (D&D streamer); informative.  A decent summary of the situation post-OpenDND but pre Paizo.

• The ORC license: (text) Charlie Hall for Polygon (journalist); informative.  Paizo are the makers of Pathfinder, you may recall, and are severely impacted by all this since Pathfinder (or at least the first version of it) is completely dependent on the original OGL.  This article is a nice summary of Paizo’s annoucement of the new Open RPG Creative (or “ORC”) license, and it includes a link to the full announcement if you want to read that.

• Community reaction to the ORC license: (video) No Nat 1s (D&D streamer); entertaining.  I don’t love this guy in general, but his joy at the Paizo annoucement (just above) is kind of infectious.

The campaign to send WotC a financial message

• A typical plea on Twitter: (tweet) Ginny Di (D&D stremer); interesting.  Ginny Di is a major influencer in the D&D space.  Note that she’s retweeting something from DnD Shorts (see above), but most people feel it was her signing on that really made this go viral.

• A typical plea on YouTube: (video) Indestructoboy (third-party publisher); interesting.  Reasoned and rational.

• The end result: (video) Tenkar’s Tavern (D&D streamer); informative.  Not necessarly the best on this topic, but probably the most compact.

WotC’s response

• What it is and why it’s bad: (video) DnD Shorts (D&D streamer and third-party publisher); entertaining.  The only person I’m linking to more than once, Will from DnD Shorts is definitely very anti-Hasbro, but he’s just so damned articulate and simultaneously so damned entertaining that I can’t not point you at his videos.  This video contains the entire text of WotC’s response.

• Why people find it offensive: (video) Dungeons & Discourse (UK legal professional^* and wargaming streamer); entertaining.  Originally an anti-corporate voice in the wargaming hobby space,^** this creator originally published videos under Discourse Miniatures.  She actually just started this new channel focussing on TTRPGs specifically because of this OGL debacle.  She’s informed, articulate, funny, and I adore her accent.^***  (I actually just signed up for her Patreon.)

So that’s it; pretty much the whole story.  There are more details out there, but don’t get sucked in like I did.  It’s not worth it.

And maybe now I’ve learned that even something this massively stupid shouldn’t surprise me.  Hopefully that’s armor against the next crazy-ass thing that might tempt me into wasting my life reading about shit that’s just going to depress me anyway.  One can always hope.

__________

* The UK has a few different professions which are licensed to practice law, and I don’t know exactly which one she is.

** Remember that D&D actually grew out of wargaming, so it’s definitely related.

*** Northern Ireland, perhaps?

Prolly not all it's cracked up to be

Welcome to 2023.  Please keep your hands and arms inside the new year at all times.  Side effects may include drowsiness and upset stomach.  Not recommended for children under 5 years old.  Risk of electrical shock: only qualified personnel should service this year.  Max load capacity 300 pounds.  If ingested, do not induce vomiting.  Read and understand operator’s manual and all safety instructions before using this year.  Authorized personnel only beyond this point.  Avoid direct exposure to year.  In case of damage or leakage, please notify the CDC.  Please mind the gap, and supervise children at all times.  Not intended for highway use.  Thank you, and enjoy the rest of your stay here in 2023.

Season's Greetings

After over a decade of researching the various holidays that exist at this time of year, I feel uniquely qualified to offer you the most diverse set of season’s greetings you’re likely to receive this year.  Here they are, in roughly chronological order of the establishment of the holiday.  Please believe that I sincerely extend unto you each sentiment, as serious or silly as each might be.  To you and yours, I wish you all:

Merry meet! (more about Solstice)

Shalom Aleichem! (more about Hanukkah)

Yazdaan Panaah Baad (more about Zartosht No-Diso)

Merry Christmas! (more about Christmas)

Greetings on Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (more about Sol Invictus)

Habari gani? (more about Kwanzaa)

Enjoy the Mystery Days

Jai Ganapati! (more about Pancha Ganapati)

Happy Festivus! (more on Festivus)

Merry Christmahannukwanzaakah!

Happy Candlenights! (more about Candlenights)

May you all know joy in all that comes your way.

Whither Animals?

I’ve spoken many times on this blog of my love of animals and my opinions on ”pets.” But lately I’ve started to think about a trend that is happening in our society.

When I was young, I went to countless zoos, and circuses, and animal parks, and aquariums, and marine mammal shows.  Much of what I knew and learned about animals, I learned from those experiences: sometimes directly, sometimes because I was inspired to seek out knowledge after seeing some animal or other in person.  I would never trade away those memories.

However, it’s completely fair to point out that many of the animals I took such pleasure in watching and learning about were miserable.  Today, the circuses are completely gone,^* thanks to numerous articles; marine mammal shows will soon disappear for good, thanks to documentaries such as Blackfish; and societal changes mean that even zoos are on the decline, according to many sources.  And I’m not saying any of these things are bad.  Certainly the terrible treatment of animals in circuses and marine mammals in parks such as SeaWorld makes me believe that such places do more harm than good.  I’m sure all those marshmallows we fed the hippo in Homosassa Springs weren’t very good for his digestion (although, miraculously, he appears to still be alive as I write this).  As for zoos ...

When I was young, there was a book at my grandparents’ house called How the Animals Get to the Zoo.  Published a few years before I was born, I assume it was bought for me, though I can’t remember specifically being given it as a gift.  I do remember that, even as a child, I was more horrified than fascinated at the examples given in this book, which ranged from throwing nets on zebras from a helicopter to taking ostriches down with bolas.  Also plenty of spring traps and tranquilizer darts and other very disturbing imagery.  So I am not insensitive to the idea that zoos are not always good for animals.

Still ...

My youngest child has never seen a circus, and she almost certainly never will.  She’s never seen a marine mammal show, and, while it’s possible that she might one day, it’s pretty unlikely (certainly it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll ever take her to one).  She’s been to a few zoos and aquariums, and maybe an animal park or two (or maybe not; I can’t think of a specific visit), but there’s no doubt that she has far less real-life experience of animals than I did.  Of course, there’s more instantly availble video of animals than I could have ever dreamed of as a child; YouTube alone allows me to show her any animal I happen to mention within minutes, if not seconds; if we ever idly wonder “what sounds does a <fill in animal here> make?” then it’s a simple Google search to turn up a soundfile or video that will settle the question.  But is it the same?  I can’t help but wonder.

PETA in particular is very much opposed to any sort of system where animals are kept for the entertainment of humans.  But, if humans never experience animals in any other context than as images on a screen, will they care about preserving them?  Sometimes I think that PETA is going to end up causing the eventual extinction of many species just because people won’t recognize them well enough to give a shit when they’re endangered.  There are always unintended consequences.

In fact, studying the Wikipedia page for “unintended consequnces” is quite instructive.  In China in the late 50s, sparrows were identified as pests who ate 4kg of rice grains per year—each.  So the government put sparrows in their “Four Pests” campaign, and millions of them were killed.  Of course, sparrows eat insects too.  By the 60s, “with no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned” ... and guess what locusts eat?  “The Chinese government eventually resorted to importing 250,000 sparrows from the Soviet Union to replenish their population.” As for the “Four Pests,” sparrows were replaced with bedbugs: yet another insect that, as it turns out, the sparrows were keeping under control, until their near-extinction.

Then there’s the Great Plague of London.  “The means of transmission of the disease were not known but thinking they might be linked to the animals, the City Corporation ordered a cull of dogs and cats.  This decision may have affected the length of the epidemic since those animals could have helped keep in check the rat population carrying the fleas which transmitted the disease.” And then of course there are the classic biocontrol-gone-awry stories, such as the Australian cane toad, which was supposed to control the grey-backed cane beetle, and ended up killing countless pets and endangering anywhere from 70 to 100 other species.

I miss some of these methods of exhibiting animals, even as I feel glad that fewer animals are suffering because of their decline.  But those unintended consequences are always impossible to identify, except in hindsight.  Will my children even have the chance to fall in love with animals in the way I did?  I can’t say.  I do what I can—taking them to whatever places are left that I believe are treating their animals in an ethical manner, watching nature documentaries with them, introducing obscure animals into games of “20 Questions,” and never failing to stop what I’m doing to bring up a video on YouTube if I think it can add to a conversation—but I never know if it will be enough.  And I think it will be important for this next generation: important for them to think of animals as awe-inspiring, as fascinating, as worthy of preservation, just as I always have.  If they don’t, if animals are just “ho-hum” or “yeah, I guess they’re okay” or “I suppose they’re fine, but they don’t really impact me” ... if they don’t realize how interconnected everything is, and how those unintended consequences can start falling like dominoes, then it might be too late to change course by the time someone realizes things have gone too far.

So, maybe it’s better that we have fewer zoos, and circuses, and all that.  Maybe animals are better off.  But wouldn’t it be a strange twist of fate if animals ended up suffering more because we are systematically removing all the places where people who live in the city and the suburbs used to interact with them?  I hope that’s not what ends up happening.  But I don’t know.  And I think maybe I’m happy I wasn’t born 40 years later than I was.

__________

* Unless you count things like Cirque du Soleil.  Which, you know, I don’t.

Isn't It Ironic? Why, yes: yes it is.

I’m not as big a fan of Seth Meyers as I am of Stephen Colbert, but I occasionally watch snippets of his monologues on YouTube.  And another thing that Late Night puts up on the web (as a web exclusive, actually) is “Corrections.” This is an absolutely hilarious segment where Seth reads YouTube comments in which people correct him—sometimes reasonably, sometimes pointlessly, sometimes even incorrectly ... but it’s always funny.  Seth has a pet name for people like this: he calls them “jackals.”

Now, here’s the thing: I empathize with the jackals.  Well, mostly: as I say, sometimes they’re are actually wrong in their corrections, and there ain’t no empathy for that bullshit.  But I understand the urge to correct people, because I have it too.  When I’m watching a show, or a video, or a movie, or a streamed D&D game (or listening to a podcast), and they say something totally wrong, I will definitely yell at the screen.  What I won’t do, however, is then post about it on the Internet.  Because then you’re just being a jackass.  Or, as Seth puts it, a jackal.

This post is, somewhat ironically, me posting on the Internet about things that people in streaming shows get wrong.  I’m justifying this to myself by pointing out that what I’m not doing is posting this anywhere where the poeple I’m correcting might read it—for that matter, I’m not even going to call out anyone by name.  These are things that I’ve seen lots of people get wrong, so I think they’re more general corrections.  Hopefully that makes me less of a jackal, though I can understand if you disagree.

Note that I use the word “ironically” somewhat cautiously, because the Alanis Morissette song taught me that people—meaning the jackals—can get pretty touchy about whether you’re using that word properly or not.  Oh, they eviscerated Alanis—positively crucified her.  And she let them beat her down: rather than stand up to them and tell them to go look at a fucking dictionary instead of being all superior, she “admitted” they were right.  Except, you know, they weren’t.

See, the thing about jackals is, they’re in such a hurry to prove their superiority by correcting you that they often get it wrong and “correct” something that was right in the first place.  People wrote articles and comedy sketches and even comic strips without, apparently, even bothering to check the dictionary.  (Well, some people did, obviously, but those were the pieces about how everyone else was wrong about Alanis being wrong.)  Merriam-Webster, for instance, defines “ironic” as “relating to, containing, or constituting irony” or “given to irony.” Fine, then: what’s irony?  Well, M-W offers a whopping 7 definitions for that, but we can throw a few out: both “an ironic expression or utterance” and “a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony” are pretty useless due to circularity, while defining irony as either dramatic irony or Socratic irony is obviously just a case of people trying to make the whole concept mean just one specific type.  Thus leaving us with:

• the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning
• incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result
• an event or result marked by such incongruity

You know, like rain on your wedding day.  It’s a happy occasion, but rain is sad, thus: incongruity.  Now, granted, rain on your wedding day isn’t particularly ironic ... just a little bit.  10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife, though: that’s pretty ironic.  Finding out that the ride that you just paid for was supposed to be free: also a bit ironic.  And a person who spends their whole life afraid to fly, then finally convinces themself to try it out, and the first flight they get on crashes?  That’s some big, fat, juicy irony to the max right there.  Yeah, the ones in the chorus aren’t as much, but it’s a fucking chorus.  Songwriters take shortcuts to make shit fit: don’t act like Alanis was the first person to ever do that.

So I know perfectly well that I’m opening up myself both to being judged as a jackal and to being judged by the jackals.  So trust me when I tell you: these are things that I just can’t hold inside any longer.  Some of them are things I know because I’m a technogeek.  Some of them are things I know because I’m a D&D nerd.  Some of them I just know because I’m a would-be writer and I’ve studied a lot of grammar, and I even wrote a blog post once on it that was, in hindsight, taking a stand against the jackals before I’d ever even heard that term.  But all of them are things that I assure you are correct, and I invite you—nay, entreat you—to research them for yourself to verify that I’m right.  Just make sure you check multiple sources: it’s easy to find another jackal on the Internet to tell you’re right, no matter which side of any given debate you’re on.

Without further ado, then, here are the ...

Corrections

The word “dais” is pronounced “DAY-iss.” If you have a dictionary that tells you that “DIE-iss” is a valid alternative pronunciation, get a new dictionary.  (However, special dispensation for you if you’re from Australia: that’s just your accent.)

URLs never have backslashes in them.  Never.  They’re always forward slashes—also known as just plain slashes.  Especially if you have your own web site, you should probably know better than to use the word “backslash” in conjunction with its address.

You cannot “run the gambit.” Perhaps you were trying to “run the gamut”?

The singular of “dice” is “die.” There is no such thing as “one dice.” Especially if you roll dice for a living, you should probably know this.

The word “ogle,” meaning basically “to leer at,” rhymes with “mogul.” It does not rhyme with “Google,” because it only has one “o.” It also does not rhyme with “boggle,” beacuse it only has one “g.” Check your dictionary if you don’t believe me.

When speaking of computers, “memory” and “storage” are two different things.  When you’re out of space on your hard drive, you did not “run out of memory.” Because of things like swap space (which is a way to pretend that storage is memory), modern computers hardly ever run out of memory.  But you can run out of storage space (or just say you ran out of space: that should be sufficient).

The reason people fight over how to pronounce “GIF” is because of English’s dual nature.  While English is technically a Germanic language, it received a very strong Romance influence via French when the Normans conquered the Anglo-Saxons in 1066.  This is why we have two English words for many concepts, and one of them people may think of as “fancier” than the other: “work” is a good, solid Germanic word, while “labour” is a Romance word; “gift” is Germanic, while “present” is Romance.  And the rules for Gs are different in the Germanic vs the Romance.  In Germanic words, a “G” is always pronounced as the “hard” G: get, gift, gird, begin, lager, burger, target.  In Romance words, a “G” is pronounced hard before “A,” “O”, or “U,” but “soft” (that is, like “J”) before “E” or “I”: gem, giant, giraffe, genius, gesture, germ, ginger, angel, emergency, fugitive.  (Note that this also applies before “Y,” as in gymnastic or energy.)  But of course “GIF” isn’t either a Germanic word or a Romance word ... it isn’t even a word at all, properly speaking.  It’s an acronym, and a pretty new one, as such things go.  So we lack any concept of what the “right” way to pronounce that initial G is, so everyone makes up their own.  Some people claim to believe that it should be a hard G because the G in this case stands for “graphics,” which uses a hard G, but this is nonsense.  Would you pronounce ICE as “eye-kee” because the “C” stands for “customs”? or ACID as “a-kid” because the “C” stands for consistency?  Obviously when the letters become a new word, the old pronounciation is left behind.  So what you’re really left with is, how fancy a word do you think it is?  If you believe it’s a solid working-class word, then you likely think it should be a hard G.  If you think it’s a fancier, technical term, then you probably think it should be a soft G.  But, in the end, the whole debate is silly: stop using GIFs.  Use JPGs (pronounced “jay-pegs”), or PNGs (“pee-en-geez”): they’re better formats, with fewer moronic legal restrictions, and they don’t have this whole stupid pronounciation problem.  And, if you just call any computer image a GIF, then seek professional help.

If you are playing with D&D-style polyhedral dice, and you can’t read the number, just flip it over and read the number on the other side.  The opposite sides of a polyhedral die always add up to the number of sides plus one.  So, on a 20-sided die, the 1 and the 20 are opposite each other, as are the 2 and the 19, the 3 and the 18, and so forth.  They always sum to 21.  So, if you can’t read one side, just flip it over, subtract it from 21, and Bob’s yer uncle.  Also works with 12-sided (subtract from 13), 10-sided (subtract from 11), and so on ... well, okay, not with 4-sided’s (because they’re shaped like pyramids, so they don’t really have an “opposite side”), but with everything else.  Unless your dice are manufactured by people who don’t do things the standard way, at which point I’m not sure I’d trust that die anyhow.  I’m constantly amazed at how often people who throw dice for a living don’t understand this very basic principle.

I am sick and tired of people claiming that “people can’t multitask.” Because, you know, you can’t literally do multiple things at once: what you’re really doing is switching back and forth between them.  Exactly.  That’s what multitasking means.  People (mostly jackals) seem to think that computers are literally doing multiple things at once.  With a few exceptions, that’s not what they do at all.  In fact, when multitasking was first invented, it wasn’t even an option: multi-processor machines doing distrubuted computing would have been decades away.  Wikipedia even explicitly states that “a computer executes segments of multiple tasks in an interleaved manner, while the tasks share common processing resources” (in the case of a person who’s multitasking, that “common processing resource” is their brain, and “interleaved” is just a fancy way to say “switching back and forth”).  Now, I’m not saying that multitasking is a good thing to do—many studies have shown that you’re typically more efficient if you just do things one at a time vs trying to do several things at once.  But that also doesn’t take into account that sometimes a thing won’t get done faster whether or not you devote your full attention to it: that hour-long TV show is going to take you an hour to finish, whether you’re multitasking or not.  But, again, I’m not trying to say whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent.  I’m just telling you to stop claiming it’s not possible.

That’s enough corrections for today.  I hope the jackals are suitably chastened.  Probably not, but one can dream.

I’ll probably think of more corrections later.  Perhaps this can become a recurring series.  Certainly Seth manages to do around 20 minutes every single week, so I don’t see why I couldn’t manage 1500 words every six months or so.  But we’ll just have to see which egregious mistakes start irking me next.  Until then, don’t let the jackals get you down.

To Know Them Is to Distrust Them

Recently I was listening to Mayim Bialiks’ Breakdown and I had a thought.  Now, if you’re not familiar with the podcast (also available in video form on YouTube), it’s generally speaking a mental health podcast, but it ranges around from interviews with celebrities about their mental health struggles, to very hard science guests to talk about it from a neurological or psychological perspective, to talking to people who approach it from a more spiritual or even New Age perspective.  The interesting thing about that is that Mayim, known originally for Blossom and more recently for The Big Bang Theory, is often criticized for “pushing pseudoscience” and for being a “vaccine denier,” and yet, if you actually listen to the podcast, it’s her partner Jonathan Cohen who most embraces the New-Age-y stuff, while Mayim demands more rigorous evidence.  (I actually find it fascinating how Mayim’s statement that she chose not to vaccinate her children as babies gets twisted into her not believing in vaccines—she’s actually gone on record saying that she and her children got vaccinated for COVID as soon as possible, which absolutely makes sense, because they’re not babies any more.  But it just goes to show you that pigeonholing someone’s beliefs is so much easier—and gets more clicks, I suppose—than taking a nuanced view of them.  Or maybe it just goes to do show that people require absolute statements to live by ... I’ve often said that “vaccines are good” is just as idiotic a statement as “drugs are bad,” and for exactly the same reasons.^*)

In any event, that’s a bit of a tangent.  The point that struck me was while listening to Mayim and Jonathan’s interview with Michael Singer.  Now, you may not know who Singer is (I certainly didn’t, before listening to the show), and really you don’t need to for this discussion.  Suffice it to say that he had a spiritual awakening and then wrote a bunch of books about it and many folks consider him to be a sort of guru.  Personally, I felt the same way about his thoughts that I do about nearly all New-Age-y type folks: some of what he had to say was interesting, and actually made sense if you can reframe it from the touchy-feely / airy-fairy language that these types of folks tend to use;^** and a lot of what he had to say was just crap.  I do think it’s important to note that it’s perfectly fine to believe some of the things people have to say, even when other things they say are ridiculous.  But, again, that isn’t the interesting part.

Jonathan, of course, was a big fan of Singer: at several points, he jumped in and said the exact same things that Singer was saying, using slightly different words, and Singer would give him some approval in that “yeah, you get it” sort of way.  It was obvious that Jonathan was a student of Singer’s philosophy and really did get it.  It was even more obvious, from the back-and-forth between Jonathan and Mayim, that he had been trying to convince her of all these things for a while now—maybe even for years.  And she wasn’t having it.  From him.

But—and this is the fascinating part—she was convinced by Singer.  At the end of the interview, she said this:

There’s so many things about the way—not just that you think and the things you’ve experienced—but, again, the way that you communicate them, that just really ... it pierced something, it really broke something open for me ...

Now, should she have been so receptive?  I don’t know, maybe not—I did feel that she wasn’t as critical as she often is, and I think that Singer may have used some language that really snuck past her skeptic’s defenses—but that’s not the point.  It wasn’t fascinating at all that Singer convinced her of something ... what was fascinating, truly thought-provoking to me, was that Singer only said the exact same things as Jonathan—who is, remember, not just her podcast hosting partner, but her life partner—things that this man who she loves has been saying to hear for years.  When he said it, nothing.  Some “expert” comes along, and bam! enlightenment.  And, again, I really want to stress that Singer absolutely did not, in my opinion, say it better.  I honestly thought Jonathan stated it more clearly and logically, although I do give Singer the edge in having a lot of real-life stories that illuminated the philosophy.  So this is the part that caught my attention: why do we discount the words of the people we love the most, and then happily accept those same words when they come from strangers?

Now, I am not a psychologist, so I don’t know for sure, but I found it a very interesting thought experiment to ponder, and I eventually came up with a theory.  Bear with me as I follow this thread logically and try to bring you along.

We are all human ... I think we can agree on that.  And no human is perfect: again, hopefully not too controversial.  Sometimes we have moments of brilliance, but we also all have moments of sheer stupidity.  And who is around to see all the dumb things we do?  Well, us, first and foremost, which is why so many of us struggle with self-esteem—it’s a bit hard to think of yourself as smart and good when you know perfectly well how dumb and bad you can be sometimes.  But hopefully we struggle through that.

But you know who else is there to see all our dumbest moments?  Our family.  Our partner.  Our best friends.  And I think they may also have a bit of trouble seeing us for the intelligent, articulate people that we are (or want to be, at any rate), when they know perfectly well that we’re too forgetful to remember where we left our keys, or that we make the worst puns, or that we’ve proven that we can’t understand what’s going on half the times by asking them really moronic questions that demonstrate our complete lack of understanding.  And, sadly, we think the same things about them.  It is perhaps inevitable—some fundamental trait of humanity—but I think we would all benefit from recognizing it, and maybe even working towards overcoming it.

Because, to circle back to something I said earlier, a person can say a dumb thing without being incapable of saying a smart thing.  This Michael Singer fellow said some things that absolutely made me roll my eyes and say to myself, oh, come on.  But that doesn’t mean that everything he says is silly.  It’s possible for him to say some things which are profound and to say some things which are just pretentious twaddle.  Likewise, it’s possible for Jonathan to say some stupid things, and for Mayim to recognize that and know that he’s not as smart as he likes to think he is, and yet still be right sometimes.  And Mayim probably ought to think about that whenever she’s dismissing what he says out of hand.

And your partner, or your parent, or your child, or your BFF, they ought to think about that when they’re dismissing what you have to say out of hand.  But you can’t really control that.  What you can control, though, is that you need to think about it when you’re dismissing what your loved ones are saying.  Sure, your immediate reaction may be to snort and say “dude, you’re not even smart enough to remember to zip up your pants before you leave the house!” But, if you consider it logically, this is a form of ad hominem fallacy: you can’t prove someone’s statement is false by proving that they’re a horrible person, and you can’t prove that someone’s current statement is not smart just because you know they’ve said dumb things in the past.  Statements have to be evaluated on their own merits, and our emotional reaction to the people we love mustn’t lead us to discount what they have to say.

Of course, the opposite is true as well: we can’t let our love for someone blind us to the fact that they might be saying something spectacularly stupid right now.  But I think that becomes less and less likely the more maturity we achieve.  I think we’re more likely to be critical than to blindly trust.  Which is kind of depressing, if you think about it.  Think of how you feel when your partner or friend dismisses what you have to say on the grounds that “that’s just so you!” or “you’re just being you again.” I’m sure you find it frustrating.  Now, if you can manage to remember that when they’re saying something that is just so them ... then maybe we’re making progress.

__________

* This also ties in to my discussion of grammar proscriptions; while the topic is different, the principles are the same.

** And which is the actual cause of many people’s dismissal, I think.  I have a blog post brewing about how often we as humans just reject ideas which actually have a lot of merit strictly based on the words used to present them.  Hopefully I’ll post that soon.

Isolation Report, Week #100

It’s been 100 weeks since the start of the pandemic for me.  It may be a bit more or a bit less for you, but it’s probably right around the same ballpark.  Perhaps some might argue that this isn’t the same pandemic—maybe they count each “wave” or new variant as a separate one, or perhaps there are even some people that think it’s basically over now.  I’m guessing those people are the minority though.  I can tell you that it’s been 100 weeks since I’ve seen a single one of my coworkers though ... and I think that qualifies my blog post title as less than hyperbolic.

There was a time late last year when some of the folks from my old office got together to work at one of those shared workspaces (WeWork, if you’re familiar).  At least one other person and I said perhaps we’d hold out a bit longer.  Then omicron hit, and even WeWork was off the table.

Things are better in some ways: don’t get me wrong.  I no longer have to wait in line to get into the grocery store, for instance.  Every food place in my city delivers now ... but of course that’s because all the ones that don’t have gone out of business.  Even for the places where you still have to physically go there (like Target), most of them will let you order online, they’ll bag it up in the store, and bring it out to your car.  I suppose that’s more convenient, in many ways.  I have way fewer meeting to attend at work, I suppose ... but now I’m floundering, trying to look for positives.

I was never a hugely social person.  I don’t particularly care for being alone, but I also don’t like strangers.  This is probably why I spent so many years living with roommates: there’s always someone else around, and it’s always someone you know, at least a little.  The idea of going out shopping and it being a fun thing has always seemed mildly insane to me.  I sort of dug amusement parks and ski vacations and beach trips, but really only if I could go with a group of friends or family.  And I find I don’t really miss them all that much now.

But I do worry that, lacking any reason to go out any more, perhaps I’ll just stay in my house for the rest of my life.  I mean, I go out to the grocery store (although it’s only biweekly instead of weekly now), and occasionally to the chiropractor if I’m feeling particularly inflexible, but that’s about it.  The last time I had to buy gas was December 20th; the last time I had to go to the ATM was November 13th.  There are many satisfying things about having more time to myself to do things, and certainly it’s great to have more time to spend with my kids, but ...

Of course, even if things were to get different, I don’t know how well I’d do.  I’ve gained so much weight at this point that I only have one pair of pants that even fit any more.  The thought of getting on a plane, or sleeping in a bed other than my own, seems ... unpleasant.  The less I’m around people, the less I want to be around people.

And seeing other people on television is definitely not helping.  I really can’t believe there are still people protesting wearing masks.  But also I can’t believe there are still no consequences for not wearing a mask.  To me it feels analogous to seatbelts: people protested wearing seatbelts for a long time too, but eventually they got fined enough that they shut the fuck up about it.  I’m personally in favor of letting all people that want to not get vaccinated and not wear a mask do whatever they like: they just have to sign a waiver that says that they won’t get any hospital treatment once they get COVID.  If that’s too harsh for you, I would also support an alternate plan where such people have separate hospitals—all the health care workers who don’t believe in vaccination could go work there.  See? it’s a free-market solution.

I’m also somewhat at a loss as to how to feel about our current political situation here in the US.  The Republicans seem to have given up entirely pretending that they care about democracy: they just blatantly say nowadays that they’re restricting voting rights so that they can win.  Our former President is back, saying insane things (as usual).  Personally, I think that when “people who did crimes with me” is a large enough demographic that it’s worth appealing to, that ought to indicate a flaw somewhere, but I think those days may be gone for good.  And as to why someone like Kyrsten Sinema would defend an obvious tool of racism like the modern filibuster ... I think I’m in good company in being completely in the dark on that one.  I’m not sure anyone knows—hell, I’m not sure she knows.  (In Joe Manchin’s case, I suspect the answer is just good, old-fashioned racism.)  It’s a whole lot of what-the-fuckery.

In our house, we were all fully vaccinated, for a hot minute.  Now, of course, you’re not considered fully vaccinated unless you’ve gotten a booster shot, so we have to start all over again.  Appointments have been made.  But, even then: I feel like there’s just going to be another booster required eventually, and then another, and then another.  I’m of half a mind to just wait around until I can get ’em all in one go.  There’s really no hurry as far as I’m concerned.  I hardly ever leave the house any more.  I’m not really much at risk at this point.

So, 100 weeks in, some stuff is different; many things are the same.  The future is ... not bright, surely; not hopeless, exactly; not really anything other than inevitable.  It shall be what it shall be.  I know many folks out there are happy to go back to eating at restaurants on a regular basis, or happy to go back to the movies on a regular basis—some have even done so already.  But I don’t think I’m ready for that, and I don’t know how much I miss it.  I miss eating out for lunch with my colleagues, and going to museums with my kids, and our annual Heroscape tourney.  But we’re doing okay.  And we’ll survive.  And, perhaps one day, we’ll get back to being around other people.

One day.

Isolation Report, Week #53

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

It’s been one year and two days since my personal pandemic began: I count it as having started on the Thursday when I got the message “don’t bother coming in to work; we’re sending everyone home for the foreseeable future.” That was March 12th of last year.  People all over have been “celebrating” this mark; Colbert has dubbed it his “quaranniversay.” At this time, perhaps it would be instructive to look back to our very first isolation report and see how well my thoughts have held up over the year.

• Numbers are flying around right now, and you don’t always know whether you can trust them, but by some estimates as many of 70% of the entire population (worldwide) will get it, and of those who contract it maybe 20% will have severe reactions and perhaps 2% will die.

This is a tough one.  First of all, most reported numbers don’t bother to distinguish between “getting it” and “severe reactions”; secondly, reported numbers likely don’t represent total cases; and finally, the death tolls have varied widely among different countries.  The first thing that should tell us is that how a country reacted to the pandemic really makes a huge difference.  The death tolls we’re seeing are really less about how fatal this disease is and how well equipped our healthcare systems were (or weren’t, in many cases).  But, taking the latest stats from Worldometer, worldwide infection rate has been about 1.5%, and death rate has been 0.03%.  On the other hand, the US infection rate has been closer to 9%, and the death rate more like 0.2%.  That’s a massive difference: only about a dozen countries are higher, and they’re all in Europe.  Many nations which are supposedly less “advanced” than us Western countries are beating the snot out of us in terms of responding to this virus.

So, overall, the rates didn’t live up to the boogeyman numbers that were being spouted, but then again, even at these rates it’s been pretty awful.  So let’s call that one a wash.

• But even on Monday when Christy tried to go to Costco, the toilet paper was all gone.  At this point we won’t even go out there any more: you have to wait in line to get in, apparently.

Oh, the naïvete.  Waiting in line to buy groceries is now just an everyday thing.

• Now, on the one hand, I find this somewhat silly.  It’s a cold, people.  ...  On the other hand, I do understand what the health care people are saying.  There are basically two scenarios here:  In the first one, everyone gets the virus all at once, the number of serious cases spikes insanely, and the health care system is overwhelmed.  With insufficient resources, some people could die not because the virus killed them, but because they couldn’t get the care they needed to weather the sickness.

This is an interesting one.  Was I too dismissive of the danger of overwhelming our healthcare system?  Perhaps.  On the other hand, going back to those breakdowns by country, the death tolls in places like India (~0.01%) and South Korea (~0.003%, a full order of magnitude less than the global numbers) seem to prove that, with the proper response, it really could have been comparable to any other cold or flu.  Even if those nations are radically underreporting to make themselves look better, they still come out way ahead of the US, where an intense lack of leadership, and an unwillingness to infringe on people’s “rights” even so far as to say people must wear masks caused the ultimate situation to be far worse than I ever imagined it would get.

On the other hand, is it possible that less draconian recommendations might have met with less resistance, and therefore would have been, in the end, more effective?  I think it’s possible, but it’s really hard to hypothesize.  We also have zero concept of how many lives were lost by ancillary causes: how many people committed suicide due to isolation? how many lost sleep, depressed their immune system, and ended up getting some completely different fatal disease?  These are unanswerable questions.  My final gut feeling is that if our leaders and health experts had been suggesting even looser restrictions, we probably would have ended up coming out even worse.  But, then again, if there had been looser restrictions, but those restrictions had been messaged with consistency and lived by example by the people actually in charge of the country?  That could have made a real difference.  But we had what we had, so speculation is pointless.

• I’m struck by what Trevor Noah said on The Daily Show one night this past week: COVID-19 has killed somewhere in the ballpark of 5,000 people in the past 3 months, worldwide.  In the U.S., just one country in the world, 3,000 people die in car accidents every day.

Okay, first thing to note is that either I misheard Trevor, or he himself was confused: 3,000 deaths per day is not what we have in the US; that’s closer to a worldwide figure (in fact, according to the WHO, it’s a bit low).  But I think my point was still valid, if a bit over-hyped, for all that—at the time.  So, let’s compare how good COVID turned out to be at killing us vs automobiles.  Worldwide, cars take out around 1.35 million of us per year.  COVID, over the course of the past year, has hit about 2.66 million.  COVID wins, beating out automobiles by about 2 to 1.  So I guess my point didn’t stand the test of time: we really should have been more worried about this virus than about going to work in the morning.  In the US, as always, it’s much worse: traffic deaths have been trending downwards from around 40k per year since 2007; COVID deaths broke half a million a month or so ago.  Overall, looking at the numbers, you were over 15x as likely to die from COVID in 2020 as you were to die in a car wreck in 2019.  So ... yeah.  I biffed that one, for sure.

• Colbert aired a single show with no audience (as did Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me), but that’s it (at least for Colbert; not sure if WWDTM will continue, albeit audience-less).  The Daily Show said at first they would continue to do shows sans audience, but they too gave it up late on Friday.  And here’s where I worry that we’re going too far.

But, dammit, I’m going to stand by this one.  Both Colbert and Noah (as well as many other folks like Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers) did come back, eventually, and I think it’s made all the difference.  That first month or so, without any trusted source for news of what was going on in the world, was what was really isolating for me.  Once those guys came back, the whole sorry sad situation got a lot more bearable.  Nowadays, while I really hope things get back to normal at some point, I’m doing okay.  This is survivable.  It’s not been to much to ask after all, I suppose.

• Because, at the end of the day (or more likely month, in this case), it will be difficult for us to quantify how many lives our choices have saved.  But I worry that the fundamental changes to our way of life will be all too apparent.

Okay, first let us all laugh at the dumb innocence of “more likely month” ... oh, how little I suspected that I would still be writing these crazy-ass isolation reports twelve months later.  Beyond that, I do think it’s impossible for us to quantify how many lives we saved by telling people to sing “Happy Birthday” while washing their hands, or not to touch their face (which I still maintain is essentially unachievable).  I think it’s impossible to quantify how many lives we saved by telling people to wear masks.  But, then again, it’s also impossible to guess how many lives we lost because of people refusing to do these things.  About the only thing I do feel confident in stating is that we could have done better ... because many other countries did.

I do still worry about the fundamental changes to our way of life.  Not in a “I refuse to do these things” sort of way, because I recognize that the things were, in the end, necessary, at least to some extent: those countries where they were more successful at containing the virus were often those places where they really did lock down the populace and force people to comply with the rules.  But more in a wistful, “I’m sad for what we lost” sort of way.  Will I be returning to the office at my company any time soon?  No.  My company no longer has an office: the lease expired over the course of the year, and it didn’t make sense to renew it.  So the working from home is the new normal.  Of course, I’m lucky: there are many businesses that will never recover.  Will we ever go to movie theaters as we once did?  What about museums?  Will in-person learning ever really be the standard way to do it again, or will it just be a fringe thing that only diehard students attempt?  Will we ever sit down in restaurants on a regular basis again, or will all food places just keep on delivering, because all the ones that don’t have fallen by the wayside?  I have no answers for these questions.  Perhaps we’ll know in the coming months.  Perhaps we will only truly understand the extent of the changes in the coming years.  I’ve no doubt that some history class somewhere will be studying this period in our lives as some sort of turning point ... I just don’t know exactly what we’re turning towards.

Well, that about wraps it up for my serious lookback on a year of isolation reports.  Next week, I’m going to attempt to look back on a lighter side, as I try to figure out—and report!—all the television I’ve watched over the past year.  Spoiler alert: it’s a lot.

Isolation Report, Week #51

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, our family is heading into the March birthday season, that annual time when we have two birthday weekends of our own, not to mention one of the two birthday recipients’ best friends, who also has a birthday in there.  In happier times, we’ve sometimes combined hers with one of ours and had joint celebrations.  This year, of course, it will be a pandemic birthday.

And, what makes me sad, and angry, and frustrated, is that, being that we live in America and are talking about March birthdays, this will be the first crop of kids now experiencing their second pandemic birthday in a row.  That sucks for them.  It would suck for anyone, but in this case I’m talking about kids celebrating birthdays ranging from their 7th (our youngest child, last year) to their 15th (our middle child and their friend, this year).  I mean, I can’t imagine how hard it would suck to have your 16th birthday, or your 18th, or your 21st, in all this shit, and I know there are people going through that too—I don’t happen to know any, but just stastically there have to be.  But at those ages (yes, I would argue even at 16) you’re starting to develop some maturity.  You’re starting to understand that, while the world is often awash with possibilities, sometimes it just sucks, and you have to learn to start accepting that.  But 7 – 15 ... man, those are your peak years of innocence, I feel.  Those are the times when, unless you’ve had some hard luck or some hard circumstances, you shouldn’t really have to be aware that life sucks sometimes.  You shouldn’t even have to think about it sucking for other people, much less yourself.

But, this is the world we live in, so we make the best of it.  We do Zoom birthday parties, and hold online gaming events, and, if we’re lucky enough to have social bubbles, maybe do very small parties within those.  And we make sure we let our kids know that they are still loved, even if the world is kinda shitting on them right now.  And we keep telling them that this won’t be forever.

Hopefully, we’re not lying.

Isolation Report, Week #43

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, there’s been a little bit of $work (mostly catching up on some stuff I never seem to have time for under normal circumstances), and way too many videogames (primarily Portal Knights, except not on the PlayStation any more, because: fuck Sony), and there was a New Year’s Eve celebration in there somewhere.  We watched The Iron Giant, which I’ve always said is one of the greatest kids movies of all time, because a) it’s not a musical, b) it has some pretty great animation (being the first cinematic directorial effort from Brad Bird, who would go on to do The Incredibles), c) it proves, as fas as I’m concerned, that Vin Diesel (who voices the giant) is capable of complex characterization no matter what people think, d) plus a surprisingly great performance from Harry Connick Jr (as a beatnik-turned-scrap-dealer) and a dependably hateable villain from Christopher McDonald (whose Kent Mansley—“works for the government”—has an oily despicableness exceeded only by his Shooter McGavin), e) it has an equal number of very funny moments and very emotional moments (it makes nearly all of us in our family tear up at least once, and often more than once), and f) it has an amazing message, which I once used as the centerpiece of a blog post on individuality.  But mainly it’s not a muscial, a virtue I appreciate more and more as the years go on.  After that, the smallies and I played some Trine 4 until 11pm, when we gathered everyone up to celebrate the arrival of 2021 in Denver (because I didn’t really expect the Smaller Animal—who, to be fair, is now mere inches away from being the biggest person in the house—to make it to midnight), and then we played a bit more, and then it really was midnight, so we celebrated again, albeit on a smaller scale, and then everyone went to bed except for me, and I sat up and fucked around trying to finish the giant bottle of pink “champagne” I had bought at Trader Joe’s.  I did have both The Mother and the eldest helping me out this time, but no one really likes sparkling wine but me (and, honestly, I’m a bit “meh” on it myself), so I wasn’t able to polish it off.  But then the next night I did, on account of a giant bottle of sparkling wine always has less in it than you think, partially because a lot of it disappears into bubbles, and partially because most of the weight of the bottle is in the glass.  (Pro tip: sparkling wine will not survive until the next day unless you have some wine stoppers, which I finally bought some of this year.)

And that’s our New Year’s for 2021.  It’s only been a few days, but so far it’s seemed pleasant enough.  It certainly feels like 2020 was a low point, but I will not tempt fate by trying to claim that it couldn’t get worse.  Rather I shall just point out that we have a few early indicators that 2021 could be better—such as a new President and a couple of new corona vaccines—and, while neither of those things are going to be perfect, at least they’re positive signs, and I will choose to take them as such.  I wish a better 2021 to all of you, to all of us, and pretty much to all of the world.  I think we sort of kind of deserve it.

Isolation Report, Week #41

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Happy pandemic holidays!  And if you’re pissed off that I didn’t say “merry pandemic Christmas,” I will refer you to my (now classic) happy whatever post.  And, also: suck my left nut.  Not the right one—I’m not rude or anything.  Just the left.

Also, it’s worth noting that that very post contains my first volume of Christmas music that I ever shared with you guys.  Back in those days—nine years ago now—I considered trying to share my mixes via some sort of Internet playlist ... Pandora, Rhapsody, what-have-you.  But the only decent option that would be free for everyone was YouTube, and, while there was a lot of music on YouTube, there was also a lot of music not on YouTube.  And, especially given my eclectic tastes, there was just too much that wasn’t already out there.  But much has changed: YouTube handles licensing for songs you upload differently nowadays, resulting in way more songs being uploaded, and it’s also easy to upload them yourself.  So there really is no excuse any more.

Thus, here you go: my inaugural holidy mix, as a YouTube playlist:

Yuletidal Pools I [featuring Michael Buble]

You’ve still got 5 days or so to listen to it.  And it’s quite peppy, and it’ll put you in the holiday spirit.  You know, unless you’re all grinchy.  Actually, there’s a few songs in there for the grinches out there as well.  Fun for the whole family.

Actually, I don’t know why I said that: there are quite a number of F-bombs in those songs.  So, you know: share with children at your own risk.  In my house, I just listened to my 8-year-old tell a mother on television who had just said “Language!” to her daughter “oh, just let her say ‘fuck’ ...” But, hey: I’m not in charge of your kids.  Probably you should be happy about that.

But, speaking of my kids, they’re all getting ready for Christmas, as they do, and (mostly) not letting the pandemic put a crimp in their holiday spirit.  We’ve been buying our gifts nearly 100% online for years anyhow, and we never travel for Christmas ... when you’re trying to organize 5 humans, 2 dogs, and 3 cats (and even more various animals in years past), the idea of traveling is pretty insane.  We just figure, if our families want to see us, they can drag their asses to our house.  We’ve got more room, and all our furniture is pre-chewed.  So far, not too many takers.  But we don’t mind.  Sometimes just having each other is enough.  This year, of course, we’re mostly sick of each other ... but I think we’ll be okay.

Hopefully.

Anyhow, you’re very unlikely to get any sort of substantial post next week, as it’s that fallow time between Christmas and New Year’s.  So I’ll avail myself of this oppotrunity to wish you merry christmahannukwanzaakah,^* and here’s hoping next year will be better.  I think it probably will be, but I don’t want to be too confident.  Don’t want to jinx it.  But, for your sake as well as ours, I’m definitely wishing it.  For us, for you, and for everyone around the world.  Just a little bit better ... doesn’t have to be a lot.  I’m not greedy.

__________

* Again and as always, ™ previous co-worker Jon Sime.