Creeping Rageaholic I

"Set Shit on Fire"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—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.]

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.

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.

To give you an idea of the vibe you might get from this mix, I’ve assembled you a little cento, 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):

Day after day after sorry day,
the sun makes me sick.
One, ’cause you left me.
You hate the things that I like—
that fascist faith will kill you.
I think I’m just paranoid;
I’m fucking lazy ...
there’s just too much pressure to take:
I’m just another soul for sale.
It’s not my time to wonder why ...
You monkey, you left me.
Set shit on fire.

So that should give you a rough idea of what you’re in for.

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.

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.¹  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.

“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 Eight Arms to Hold You.  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 Hybrid Theory is basically composed of nothing but 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 Rid of Me 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.

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 Dookie was going to have to feature here, and I thought “Longview” was a great choice (plus it leads into “Kiss Off” quite nicely).

This mix was also started at the height of my fascination with Magnatune,² 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-pop—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;³ “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.

After that, two later additions were Metric’s “Black Sheep” from the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World 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 between 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 little 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.

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.  Sixteen Stone 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 Fush Yu Mang 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.

Creeping Rageaholic I
[ Set Shit on Fire ]

“Mighty Little Man” by Steve Burns, off Songs for Dustmites
“For Nancy” by Pete Yorn, off musicforthemorningafter
“Shutterbug” by Veruca Salt, off Eight Arms to Hold You
“Part 2 [Dirtbag Remix]” by Four Stones, off Ridin' the Faders [Remixes]⁴
“What Do I Have to Do?” by Stabbing Westward, off Wither Blister Burn + Peel
“Vinegar & Salt” by Hooverphonic, off The Magnificent Tree
“Big Mistake” by Natalie Imbruglia, off Left of the Middle
“Butterfly Wings” by Machines of Loving Grace, off Concentration
“Charming Gun” by Artemis, off Undone
“Meaner than Winter” by Jade Leary, off The Lost Art of Human Kindness
“Waste away” by Spinecar, off Up from the mud
“Black Sheep” by Metric, off Scott Pilgrim vs. the World [Soundtrack]
“Longview” by Green Day, off Dookie
“Kiss Off” by Violent Femmes, off Violent Femmes
“Crawling” by Linkin Park, off Hybrid Theory
“The Pretender” by Foo Fighters, off Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
“Glycerine” by Bush, off Sixteen Stone
“Rid of Me” by PJ Harvey, off Rid of Me
“Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence, off Fallen
“Let's Rock” by Smash Mouth, off Fush Yu Mang

Total:  20 tracks,  78:00

Which only leaves us with the two tracks that break up my two industrial picks.  I’ve talked before about my discovery of Natalie Imbruglia’s amazing Left of the Middle, 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,⁵ 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 mixes⁶).  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 tension—“honesty’s your church”—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.

Next time, I think we’ll dip our toes into the darker side of synthwave.

[As promised, here’s my pseudo-poem along with which songs they derive from:

Day after day after sorry day, [“Meaner than Winter,” Jade Leary]
the sun makes me sick. [“Shutterbug,” Veruca Salt]
One, ’cause you left me. [“Kiss Off,” Violent Femmes]
You hate the things that I like— [“Vinegar & Salt,” Hooverphonic]
that fascist faith will kill you. [“Butterfly Wings,” Machines of Loving Grace]
I think I’m just paranoid; [“Let’s Rock,” Smash Mouth]
I’m fucking lazy ... [“Longview,” Green Day]
there’s just too much pressure to take: [“Crawling,” Linkin Park]
I’m just another soul for sale. [“The Pretender,” Foo Fighters]
It’s not my time to wonder why ... [“Glycerine,” Bush]
You monkey, you left me. [“Shutterbug,” Veruca Salt (again)]
Set shit on fire. [“Dirtbag,” Brad Sucks, remixed by Four Stones]

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 two previous centos, but it has a certain charm.  At least I think so.]

__________

1 I’ve mostly avoided using grunge tunes here, but you can expect to see at least a few in future volumes.

2 I told the story of how I discovered Magnatune in Rose-Coloured Brainpan.

3 On Shadowfall Equinox V and VI, and also on Fulminant Cadenza I and Slithy Toves II.

4 Original version by Brad Sucks, off I Don’t Know What I’m Doing.

5 Besides the aforementioned Smokelit Flashback, there was Distaff Attitude and of course her triumphant tune on Cumulonimbus Eleven.

6 Starting with Smokelit Flashback III, IV, V, and VI, and thence to Bleeding Salvador I and Plutonian Velvet I.

The vicissitudes of feline dentistry

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.

The Cost of (Technical Debt in) Doing Business

Ten and a half years ago, I wrote an article on technical debt strategies.  It was one of my most commented-on posts, and even got its own discussion on Reddit.  The point wasn’t to explain what technical debt was, but I did so (briefly) anyway, near the top:

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 more time to clean things up than if you’d just done it right in the first place.

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.  ...

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 definition—and some interesting history—you can find that on the Internet, though I’ll maintain that it’s not a better defition ... just more detailed.  Other Internet articles can explain 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 do 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 actual cost—i.e., cash.

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 are 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 really 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.

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, they are.  And technical debt is real as well.  Trust me, I’ve been in software development for over half my life now: it’s very 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.

The thing that really frustrates me about this apparently growing attitude is that we (technical people, I mean—the term was invented by the same guy who invented agile programming) invented this stupid term so the business people would take the problem seriously.  Ward Cunningham, bless his soul, came up with the perfect metaphor—technical debt is the interest you pay when you borrow time to pay off your opportunity costs—and now the business people are rejecting it as “made up”?  Perhaps this is the real 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 justifiers, the term makes total sense and we should all use it.  When they’re the justifiees, though ... well, then it’s all bullshit.

To be fair, though—which I am very much not inclined to be on this issue—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:

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, how can we expect them to grant us another one with alacrity?

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 aren’t 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.

Another post offers the tech side this advice:

Instead, say: this is how long it will take to do.

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’?

Say: This is how long it will take, we estimate. If you want it faster, we can cut some features.

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 consequences 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 reason 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.

But my favorite one is this, from the very first article I referenced:

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.”

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 really need that pipe to work for just a few more weeks, and the inevitable resulting mess—which, depending on the size and location of the pipe, might be prodigious indeed—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 definitely 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.

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 community—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.

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.

TIL: Vibecession

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.

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 ones—maybe the only one—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 cornerstone #1 of the Barefoot Philosophy).  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 myself—very quietly, because there was no point in getting fired over a zinger—wait, you think you deserve employee engagement, but you won’t take any action that would earn that?  Who exactly is the party feeling entitled here?

But I tell you that story so I can tell you this one: I recently learned what ”vibecession” 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 really 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.

But, you see, this attitude is exactly like my old CEO.  Faced with two contradictory situations—the status quo of economic indicators vs the attitudes of the common people—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 don’t 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.

They should maybe try that.  I don’t think they will, but they should probably try.  Just one man’s opinion.

Hot Potato

My grandmother used to make potato soup.

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.

I’ve talked before 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-far-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 her mother—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 Jamestown¹—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 milk—or even, sometimes, cream—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.

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 places²).  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 definitely not smooth.  And some people like that sort of thing.  But it was not for me.

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.

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.³  Surely there were better options than regular old flour!  And, I resarched that, I discovered a curious thing: one of the big alternatives to flour is ... potato starch.

And, I thought, well, you know what has lots of potato starch? Potatoes!

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 family⁴ really seems to love it too.  So here it is, for your perusal, and (possibly) enjoyment.  Bon appétit.

Potato Soup

Ingredients

• 1 large yellow onion
• 6 – 8 stalks of celery
• 8 large potatoes(*), either Russets or Yukon golds, or a mix of the two
• 1 – 2 tbsp of ghee
• 4 – 5 large pinches salt
• 15 grinds black pepper
• 2 cups milk
• 1 carton chicken broth (about 32 oz)
• a “large amount” of thyme
• a “small amount” of garlic powder
• 1 – 2 handfuls of “pizza cheese”

(*) 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.

Hardware

• a good chopping knife
• a good potato peeler
• a large pot (what my grandmothers would call a “stewpot”), preferably with a lid
• a stick blender (a.k.a. “immersion blender”)
• a spoon for stirring (I like wood, but you do you)
• a ladle for serving

Directions

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 Tefal, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 spaghetti and meatballs: 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.

When that time goes off, turn off the heat entirely (trust me, it’ll be plenty 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 Trader Joe’s version, that’s Monterey Jack; other versions 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.

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.

__________

1 Note: I don’t know for sure that my grandmother’s ancestors came over with the Virginia colonists, but I can say that all the ancestors I was able to trace were never more than 100 miles away from that landing spot.

2 The only “fast food” place I would eat ungravied mashed potatoes from is Boston Market.

3 This is less of a gluten thing than a general carb thing, at least for me.

4 Except for our picky middle child, who won’t eat much of anything that we cook.

GPT FTW

This week I’ve been fighting my computer curse 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 Syncthing replicating to my Backblaze B2 account, I’ve updated the OS and a bunch of packages on my Synology NAS, fixed a long-standing annoyance with my use of NoMachine, and I started building my first custom GPT.  And all that was made much easier with the use of ChatGPT.

Perhaps this deserves a longer post—and perhaps that’ll be what I put up next week—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 use that AI boost.

Anyhow, I don’t think I want to turn this blog into an AI evangelism vehicle or anything, but ... damn, ChatGPT shore is useful.

That’s all I really wanted to say.

Discordia, discordiae [f.]: A Misunderstanding

I don’t understand the appeal of Discord.

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 purposes—Alchemy, Owlbear Rodeo, or even things like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds, which have been around so long they’re starting to show their age—but honestly I might just stick to something like Discord for its simplicity.

The thing I don’t 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 product support, and it just makes no sense to me.

Now, on the one hand, you might say: well, that makes perfect sense—Discord is primarily popular among Zoomers, while you are very old.  And, sure, I can’t argue the first part, and while I might protest the second one a bit—I’m not a freakin’ Boomer (I am in fact, an elder Gen-Xer, if one believes in those sorts of things^*)—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.

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 now—the upper age range, granted, but still: within the range—it was the way that cool tech people communicated.  And I didn’t understand the appeal of it then either.

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 Heroscape 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^**) 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.

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.

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 if someone is there who can answer the question, I get the answer instantly, which is certainly nice.  But if there isn’t 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 way 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 even if 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.

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 on Discord.  I can set up my own Discord server, but I can’t log those messages to a separate location, because it’s not really 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 definitely 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.

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 with 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 ...

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.

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.

__________

* And one mostly shouldn’t.  Personally, while I think it is 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.

** But is now officially making a comeback, for what it’s worth.

Transition Disposition

Goodbye 2023.  Looking forward to a better 2024.

Here's My Beard ... Ain't It Weird?

I grew my first beard at 17 or 18.  I told people that I did it to look old enough to buy beer, but the truth is, I just wanted to look older.  The combination of being a short kid—my “growth spurt” between 7th and 8th grade consisted of going from 4’1” to 4’6½”—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 really want people to stop treating you like a “kid.”

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 look older any more, I said, because now I am older.  Except ... it really felt wrong 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.

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 never itches when it starts coming in.

But, for some insane reason, once I’ve had it for about 10 years or so, then it starts to itch.

The first time this happened, I suffered for a couple of days, and then I knew that I just had 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 fellow for whom “sideburns” are named.)

And this was when I realized: I have no chin.  I come by this honest—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 Ben-Stiller-in-Dodgeball 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 seen 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 don’t have a chin.”

So that’s why I look the way I do this week.  Luckily, my facial hair—unlike the head hair—grows very 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.

[Our title comes from an old George Carlin routine that I used to know by heart.  If you haven’t heard it, you really should.]

Third Party Blind

Less than two weeks ago, I was listening to Election Profit Makers, 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.

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 allowed—much less encouraged—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?

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: ABC News says it is, The Guardian in the UK says it is, NPR 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.

So what did the hosts of EPM have to say in response to their young interlocutor?

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 totally 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 no 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 ...

Kimball: Totally agree.

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.

(For the full discussion, check out Episode 237, starting at about 24:20; the quotes above kick in about 5 minutes into that discussion.)

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 my dirty secret: I still 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 will 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 might be a Republican—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 vote—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 Monster Raving Loony party: you get my vote.

But, as I say, I have the luxury of living in California where I actually can 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 better candidate?

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 Democracy Docket 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:

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.

(Again, if you want to follow along, this was the 12/11 episode, and the question and answer happens at about 8:10.)

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 Wikipedia, but damned close), he’s a lawyer, and just listen to what he’s saying there.  “If you don’t vote for my political party, your vote worse 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 this 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 expect it.  Worse, we believe it.  And, regardless of whether it’s true or not, our belief makes it true.

Here’s a simple example: two Democrat groups (Third Way and MoveOn) have issued a statement about the potential new “No Labels” party.  An article says:

Third Way and MoveOn followed up Tuesday by asking the staffers to convince their bosses to publicly denounce the effort.

“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.

“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.”

Now, I’m not saying voting for the (potential) No Labels candidate is a good idea—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 floated—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 anything 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.

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 six parties holding 10 or more members of the National Diet; Germany has 8 parties with 10 or more members in the Bundestag and closer to two 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.

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.

While researching this blog post, I came across this article from The Nation.  Now, The Nation 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.

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.  ...

...  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 lets his team smear protesters who call for peace as equivalent to the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.

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.  ...

...  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.

Perhaps the primary difference between Marc Elias and the author of this piece, Elie Mystal, is that Mystal is not 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 right—and I’m certainly not saying they’re wrong—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.

Call and response

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.

This happens to me all the time.  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.

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.

— Cody Johnston on Even More News, “Santos’ Little Cameos, New House Resolutions, And EVEN MORE GTA VI Reactions”

No, they wouldn’t, because they wouldn’t be able to read it.

[Context: Even More News is the “in between weeks” podcast that goes along with Some More News, 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.]

And for Prosperity to be built, there is only one way only, Prosperity can be built.  Prosperity is built by entrepreneurs.

— Magatte Wade on Drilled, “Messy Conversations: Magatte Wade, Atlas Network’s Center for African Prosperity”

To quote Wikipedia, according to whom?

[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 Drilled 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 very 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 ... more ... 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.)

[affecting nasal voice] And I would sing like this, which I never sang like before.

— Fred Schneider on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, “Fred Schneider”

Give it up Fred: we have ears.

[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, you’ve been recorded.  We can hear you.  Yes, Nirvana, you are 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.]

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.

We All Need a Little Guidance Sometimes

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 guidance cantrip is overpowered.

I probably don’t need to tell you, but guidance 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 okay for someone to cast it over and over.  Sure, a wizard with fire bolt 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 mending 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 guidance though ... the Internet seems pretty convinced that being able to grant this bonus over and over is appalling, if not apocalyptic.

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 middle of the list, mentioned second, listed at #5 out of 10, all the way to #1 of 15 or even #1 of 20.  A Redditor asks “5e Guidance Cantrip is OP?” One EN World poster laments What, +1d4 to every check ever? And the Alexandrian simply says “Guidance is a terrible spell.”

Well, I don’t agree.  I think that what the Internet overlooks (or sometimes deliberately ignores) is that guidance 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 Critical Role, but it is 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 guidance, and yet he often doesn’t seem to adhere to the simple limitations I outline below.

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.

Without further ado then ...

The reasons why guidance isn’t overpowered:

Guidance requires touch

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 guidance 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 reach 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 with?  No touch, no guidance ... it’s just that simple.

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).

Guidance requires concentration

Absolutely no one seems to remember this.  If the caster is already concentrating on another spell, guidance would instantly end it, and guidance 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 guidance, 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 actions—perhaps “you know that if you use guidance you’ll drop concentration on your other spell, right? are you sure you want to do that?”

Most applicable in combat, but surprisingly pertinent even out of combat.  “Sure, you can do guidance if you want, but everyone will lose their pass without trace bonus ...”

Also rare, but if the caster throws out guidance in those situations where they’re worried that their party member might 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 guidance.

A more commonly encoutered limitation: having to maintain concentration means you can’t cast guidance on multiple allies.  That means that grandiose statements like “a spellcaster with Guidance can make their entire party better at anything they set their mind to” necessarily comes with a pretty big caveat: as long as they only set their minds to things one at a time.

Guidance requires an action

For some reason, it’s very common for people to use guidance on themselves during combat, to give themselves a little juice on whatever cool thing they’re trying to do.  And I have never seen a single GM object to that, despite the fact that it can almost never work.  Trying to use guidance on that Athletics check to escape the monster’s grapple?  Well, too bad: the Athletics check is an action, and the guidance is an action, and you don’t have two actions.  I suppose you could use guidance this turn and apply it to the Athletics check next turn, but do you really want to do that? for a measly 1d4 bonus?  Even when the thing you’re doing is not action, it’s rarely worthwhile to actually use guidance 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 could use guidance 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.

Guidance requires it to be your turn

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), it’s not player B’s turn.  And they can’t cast a spell—not even a dinky cantrip like guidance—when it’s not their turn, unless the spell is a reaction (which guidance isn’t) and the situation fulfills the requirements of the trigger (e.g. you can’t cast feather fall unless someone is falling).  And there’s isn’t any trigger for guidance, because it isn’t a reaction spell.  So, you know ... no.  You can’t cast guidance on the player doing the Investigation check.  It isn’t your turn.

Guidance requires somatic components

Now, this one doesn’t apply as often, but it definitely 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 ... guidance is a spell.  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 magic?  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 will be consequences if they start breaking out the funky hand gestures and mystic words in the middle of the tense negotiations.

To be fair, this is one I do hear GMs (particularly Matt Mercer) call out on occasion, as well they should.  I just don’t hear it enough.

Guidance requires verbal components

This is a lesser requirement, but the caster does need to be able to speak to cast guidance.  No guiding if you’re gagged, no guiding inside the radius of a silence spell, and I would at least call for another Stealth check if someone tried to cast guidance while they were hiding or otherwise trying to avoid discovery.

Guidance only lasts for a minute

Don’t forget that guidance 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 complete—say, an Investigation check to search a room, or a Sleight of Hand or Thieves’ Tools check to disarm a trap—the GM is well within their rights to say that the guidance doesn’t last long enough to grant the bonus.

Guidance only benefits ability checks

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” guidance is.  Guidance 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.

Guidance requires the caster to know about the ability check

This is a subtle one.  But, to take a simple example, I have difficulty imagining any situation where guidance 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.

At the end of the day, guidance only gives you a d4 bonus

Seriously.  It’s just a d4.  Sure, you can do it for every single ability check because it’s a cantrip—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 talk—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.

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 don’t 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.

And that’s why guidance 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?

Thanks were given

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.