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PaperclipPerfector  23d ago (text post)   2449 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 14, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Tonight I got a harsh reminder that house party/illegal show reputation has a very low transference to club environments. Oof. Something to learn from, no where near resting on my laurels yet.

More Chefs On The Piss!

I'm a big fan of Blade Runner (1982). I don't want to bother listing all its positives, but one of the things I like about it is, as far as I understand it, the movie ends ambiguously. Is Deckard a replicant or not? I was pissed when Blade Runner 2049 came out and removed all doubt: turns out he's a guy after all. Still a good movie though.

This ambiguity at the end was also something I liked about John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). I have a family member who works in Hollywood and somehow we got onto the subject of The Thing. She said she didn't like it because of the same ambiguity, but then as a matter of course in doing her job she got to spend time with John Carpenter and asked him to clarify the ending. Apparently he gets this question a lot.

Turns out he has no idea what the confusion is about. The last frame of The Thing is Kurt Russel and Keith David staring each other down, harshly backlit, and it's completely, glaringly obvious that Kurt Russel is breathing and Keith David is not.

I said it seemed to be a bit too subtle for a movie where a head grows spider legs and scuttles away. She said no, it's why Carpenter is a genius.

Does BR2049 remove all the ambiguity? My read of the film is that it studiously refuses to pick a side in that debate. In fact, that's one of the things I love about it. Rather than simply come down on one side or the other (even though Deckard is clearly a replicant in the original cut of the original film), Villeneuve takes a third path: it doesn't matter. He's Deckard. The films have already made it abundantly clear that the line between human and replicant is merely technical, that if anything the replicants are "more human than human," at least in all the ways the films actually care about.

The mere suggestion that Deckard is a replicant pisses me off honestly because it reeks of "midwit twist" and directly plays against the very theme of the movie and of the book it's based on. The point is Deckard is an asshole. He's a shitty person, and the replicants show more genuine emotion, more humanity than Deckard does. The whole keeping animals thing, the Voigt-Kampf test, it's performative, it's technical, it's irrelevant. Which is a great point, a poignant message, and is completely fucking ruined if Deckard is a replicant himself. Ridley Scott is an infuriating director to enjoy the works of. He seems to be an accidental genius, but as soon as he's self aware of having made something significant, he just fucks with it until it's ruined. Remember Prometheus?

Carpenter deserves respect, here's a director who's smart enough to resist the lure of fucking with something good. No matter how much midwits (and dumbers) cared about "but wha happen to Michael?" at the end of Halloween, Carpenter was smart enough to know that it's not important and if you really need to know then another director can make that stupid schlock for you.

I think Scott's reputation as one of the all-time greats is almost wholly unearned. Alien is a masterpiece and Blade Runner is brilliant, but aside from those two, can you name a third film he directed which rises above the level of "pretty good"?

Black Rain? It was okay. Gladiator? Haven't seen it in full since I was a child, remember thinking it was pretty good. Ditto Black Hawk Down. Matchstick Men was elevated by a predictably great Nicolas Cage performance, but was ultimately a pretty shallow and predictable conman movie. The Martian was a lot funnier than I expected it to be, but I watched it for a second time a few months ago and found that I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the first.

Obviously there are stacks of other films in his filmography I haven't seen, but of those I have, none are even approaching the standard set by Alien.

Isn't The Martian's rewatchability something of a victim of it being so plot-heavy? Watney's a good enough character to keep us invested, and the setting is realistic enough to delight space fans while feeling novel to non-space-fans, but the great fun of the story is the series of suspenseful "how's he going to get out of this shit?" and "how much more shit is his hack for the last shit going to get him into?" questions. Once you know all the answers you lose that suspense, and the tiny bit of extra dramatic irony doesn't make up for that.

Still one of my favorite movies and books of all time, but it is what it is.

I also liked the book better than the movie [edit: not sure how I wrote the opposite originally], but that wasn't flawed directing; it's hard to turn a long novel into a short movie and retain as much quality as they did.

Before seeing it, I was expecting a rather gritty survival movie, sort of like The Revenant IN SPACE! When I finally got round to watching it, what surprised me about it was its lightness of tone and comedic elements. In principle that's the sort of thing that should survive a first watch, but on the second watch I was disappointed that I didn't find it nearly as funny as the first time round. A lot of the quippy dialogue sounded positively MCU-tier to my ears.

on the second watch I was disappointed that I didn't find it nearly as funny as the first time round. A lot of the quippy dialogue sounded positively MCU-tier to my ears.

This is just Andy Weir's style of writing and if the movie captured that (I have not watched the movie) it succeeded surprisingly well at adapting the book, I guess.

I have DNF'd all of Weir's books because of that. His prose and dialogue is just grating; the constant ironic quipping and attempts at relatable humour in impressively dire and panic-inducing situations feel very out of place. One of the most horrendous examples of millennial ahh writing in existence. I find it honestly surprising that he isn't actually within their age range because he shares that same pathological inability to take anything seriously that is so typical of that whole cohort.

constant ironic quipping and attempts at relatable humour in impressively dire and panic-inducing situations feel very out of place

I get it and I do understand that my professional life's stakes are far lower than an inaugural interplanetary astronaut.

But this is also my coping mechanism during disaster so it's not quite as grating as it may be for some.

I also think this style of humor works better in the story's context than it usually does elsewhere. As a modern (near future) astronaut, Watney should realistically be a massive nerd who handles stressful situations really really well. And as the book explains, he was chosen for the mission explicitly because he has an easy-going personality that will help morale and won't cause conflict with his crewmembers after over a year of close confinement, which seems like something NASA would plausibly do.

An astronaut in a movie not about the early days of space flight should generally be a little dorky.

attempts at relatable humour in impressively dire and panic-inducing situations

I think it's not the direness of the situation that doesn't fit. When a situation is utterly dire, with nothing to be done to escape the worst of it, gallows humor (see the Real Life tab) often kicks in. Later when a dire situation is over, for better or worse, the people who worked on the situation are also often prone to humor: consider the facetious "towing bill" Grumman sent to Rockwell after Apollo 13 for an example of "better", or Giuliani's SNL appearance after 9/11 for "worse". A situation which merely may become dire isn't an exception either; the disastrous explosion on Apollo 13 wasn't the first "bang" the astronauts heard, because Haise thought it was funny that he could futz with the cabin repress valve and his cabin mates would feel "our hearts jump in our mouth".

I think it's the precise timing of the humor where modern writers fail. Loads of people joke about dire situations when they're fine afterward, joke when they've merely survived afterward, and even joke when they're doomed not to survive and there's nothing to be done, but I'm having a hard time finding good examples of people being jokers in the very middle of dire situations in real-life, at the points when every second counts and the outcome is still up in the air ... and yet that's exactly when too many e.g. MCU writers think it's the perfect time to balance out the tension with a quip.

Georges Cadoudal, a Catholic Royalist guerrilla fighter during the French Revolution, was arrested and sentenced to death in 1804 after a failed assassination attempt on Napoléon. On the guillotine, as he was reciting the "Hail Mary", he stopped at "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now". As the priest who assisted him encouraged to finish the prayer, he answered: "Why? Isn't now "the hour of our death"?"

My sides. Programmer humour over a century before the invention of the computer.

The Duellists and Hannibal are worth your time.

YMMV, but you should see Legend for Tim Curry.

Kingdom of Heaven is excellent.

One of my favorite non-horror movies, probably in my top 5.

Assuming we're talking about the extended editiion that came out on DVD, i agree. Maybe not in my top 5 but easily competing for a spot in my top 10 alongside Alien, Gladiator, and Blade Runner.

Alien probably makes my top 5, and I would argue that when one director has 4 movies in the running for your top 10 favorite movies its disingenuous to claim that he doesn't know what he's doing even if you think that Napoleon and Promethius were both bad movies and that everyone involved in thier production should feel bad.

Yes, I was thinking about the extended version too. The movie itself is pretty ahistorical if you’re read up on the history around that time period. The first time I watched it it took a little adjusting to suspend my disbelief for the sake of enjoyment, but eventually I overcame it.

At the expense of getting lynched by most people on TM I must confess I’ve never watched Blade Runner. Not even a YouTube clip of it, :(. I’m a geek myself who’s skipped out on his religious duties and I do intend on watching it at some point. Alien is one of those movies I love but it’s a cinematic hill I will die on and insist that it’s properly thought of as a science fiction movie and not a horror film (which is what it really is). Event Horizon is a proper horror film set in a sci-fi context.

Blade Runner exists in a weird space where on one hand it's visuals are stunning and it features one of the greatest villains/villain arcs in all of cinema but on the other hand it's pacing and plot are kind of a mess which is why there are half-a-dozen different cuts of it floating around.

On the Gripping hand while Alien, Gladiator, and Villeneuve's sequel are all better "movies" than the original Blade Runner I still think that Blade Runner is worth watching if only to appreciate Rutger Hauer's performance and to see what everyone else in the cyberpunk dystopia genre has been cribbing off of for the last 40 years.

Blade Runner is worth watching if only because of what a long shadow it casts on the science fiction genre. The sequel is also excellent, and for my money better than either of the Dunes Villeneuve later helmed.

Recently watched with my sons. I remember reading somewhere on Reddit probably about the reveal that you mention in the spoiler tags, but really you can still make up your own mind.

In BR, Ridley Scott insists Deckard was a replicant, Ford says he wasn't, Villeneuve (director of 2049) says it's still ambiguous (which it is-- there is evidence both ways.) In the PKD story Deckard's character is definitely not a replicant.

Edit: My point being the director can vague himself into not being definitive.

In the PKD story Deckard's character is definitely not a replicant.

One twist I'd love to see in a novel/short story:

  1. The narrator is inside the main character's head.
  2. It describes smiling, heart-pounding, flinching, crying, etc. in the appropriate situations.
  3. You (the reader) don't notice that it never described feeling an emotion.
  4. The main character is revealed to be a philosophical zombie who only has physiological and behavioural responses to stimuli.

Yes, Carpenter is a smart man who knows he doesn't need to go and make a new cut to answer the question because the work stands on its own, and the question is, ultimately irrelevant to the point of the movie so it needs no clarification.

For some reason I love 2049 more and I almost love The Thing prequel as much as the original - I just enjoy it.

My next OG Blade Runner watch I’ll have to watch one of the ((5)) cuts I haven’t watched. Maybe without the narration? Or maybe the commentary.

I’ll have to keep the ending of The Thing in mind - I’m up for a watch soon with the kids.

I must have watched that movie five times and I never noticed that. I might suggest putting the third paragraph in spoiler tags for people who haven't seen it though.

Jason Arday killed himself today, but based on his track record, there’s a chance he faked his own death.

Pretty annoying. He would have been fine, long term. Jussie Smollett still works, and this mutes the most necessary criticism we needed to hammer home against his enablers.

According to Wikipedia, since Smollett's hoax the only things he's appeared in were movies he directed himself or documentaries about said hoax.

That’s in pretty poor taste, but I will admit that I chuckled.

Cross-posted from /r/rational:

Fall (2022 Film): When two best friends who climb a 2,000-foot-tall television broadcasting tower become stranded at the top, it is up to them to think of a way out.

Holy shit.

When I put on Fall this afternoon, I was expecting another random Netflix movie; low-budget, second screen dialogue, ham-fisted politics, etc. But it was about to leave the platform, and I've always been a sucker for stories about characters trapped in a survival situation, so I decided to give it a chance. I was not expecting... this.

The movie begins with a trio of adrenaline junkies climbing a cliff. They consist of married couple Dan and Becky and their friend Hunter. Unfortunately, Dan has an accident and falls to his death. A year later, Becky is an alcoholic mess, still unable to deal with Dan's passing. Hunter, who has since become a YouTuber, persuades Becky to climb an abandoned television tower with her and spread Dan's ashes as a way of moving on. Inevitably, things go wrong, and the girls get stuck on top of the antenna. It is now up to them to find a way out before they succumb to thirst, hunger, exposure, wildlife, or simply fall off the edge.

Okay, so right off the bat I was impressed by the way the girls reacted to their predicament like level 1 intelligent characters. They remain calm, or at least as calm as they can realistically be under the circumstances, and they keep looking for ways out. They don't break down crying or get into emotional fights or throw down precious resources in a fit of rage to create a dramatic moment. This already makes them better than most Hollywood movies.

But what made me post this on /r/rational proper instead of the Monday Recommendation Thread is when the characters started solving problems with previously foreshadowed materials and mechanics. Not just things that were mentioned once briefly, but things that were mentioned over and over again or were given prominent focus. For example, Hunter's push-up bra is brought up early, and her huge tits take up a lot of screen time, but it is not just fanservice; the same bra is used to stuff the shoe on the first attempt to throw a phone down the tower. Likewise, I literally said "of course!" when they used the lifehack to charge up the drone off of the same lightbulb that had been flashing for half the movie. These characters are not just level 1 intelligent; they are level 2 intelligent.

On top of that, they are fucking awesome. Hunter is great from the beginning, encouraging Becky to get out of her funk and doing crazy stunts like hanging off from the tower's platform one-handed. Once things get serious, she is the one doing risky maneuvers to increase their chances of survival, like climbing down on a rope to try to get reception for Becky's phone. Becky takes a little longer to grow into her power, since she starts out the movie as a grieving widow, but by the end of the story she's got her mojo back; she displays creativity worthy of Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres and a will to live that would make Carissa Sevar proud. Playing dead to lure a vulture so she can fucking eat it was goddamn beautiful, as was cushioning her phone in Hunter's body to make sure it survives the fall.

And then there is all the other things. The dialogue is very strong, naturalistic and witty; no second screen here. The girls had great chemistry, to the point where I kept wondering if they were going to lez out. The background shots are gorgeous, with luscious visuals from 2000 feet in the air. The film has a great sense of tension; it's basically r/SweatyPalms: The Movie. And the music was just right, from the diegetic cellphone videos to the credit sequence.

Flaws? The twist that Hunter died halfway through and Becky has been hallucinating her ever since is just stupid and the movie would have been much better off without it. And the bit where the ladder falls looks fake AF. Other than that, everything was great.

TL;DR: This movie is fucking awesome and you should watch it immediately before it leaves Netflix.

Other movies I have watched recently:

The Last House (2026): Again, I have a weakness for isolated survival movies. But this one was a disappointment. I couldn't take the disaster seriously (everyone is locked up inside by magic rain), a lot of the survival stuff is opaque (like the building of traps and weapons), and the ending displays the worst tendencies @KulakRevolt called out in "Hollywood Anti-Justice: The Morality of Modern Depravity". At least the CGI was decent. Only reason to watch this film is if you are into WMAF couples (with children, even!).

Labyrinth (1986): Watched this one more because it was an old fantasy movie than for any other reason. Huge letdown. The special effects mostly hold up (except the battle against the robot gate guard, which seems to happen in slow motion) but the writing is atrocious. The supernatural elements get introduced with no buildup, the protagonist is an annoying brat who does nothing to make me root for her, there are no rules which means anything can happen which means I have no reason to care what happens (at one point, the Goblin King alters his own arbitrary deadline!), etc. The most interesting thing to appear onscreen is a basic-bitch knights and knaves puzzle. Maybe if I was a tween girl who could shlick to David Bowie's enormous package I would have enjoyed it more, but I'm not.

Just watched Fall - that was one of the most stressful movies I've watched in a long time! Definitely an awesome movie.

I will dispute the intelligence of the characters though. They do spend the movie problem solving, but their solutions are pretty contrived to build tension. For instance, when Hunter descends the rope to retrieve their bag, she ends up on the wrong side of the tower, and instead of climbing back up and repositioning, she decides to swing and jump. An insane decision that pulled me out of the action. Or: at one point Becky holds onto the top of the tower by arm strength while her drone charges, presumably for quite a while (unrealistically so). But she had a bag with a strap - any climber would think to hook the bag up there while it charged. I get that these were all set pieces to build tension but they still annoyed me. Not to mention the biggest issue- they had a 50 foot rope, which would be plenty to climb down that tower by wrapping it around, lumberjack / Mulan style. I kept waiting for them to realize and try it.

Anyway, thanks for the recommendation!

Can we ever have a climbing adjacent movie that does not start with a fatal accident caused by the characters' idiocy?

Because of the lack of an idiotic accident, Mission Impossible 2 remains the best climbing movie. (Actually the best one is Eiger Sanction.)

Flaws? The twist that [the companion] died halfway through and [the survivor] has been hallucinating her ever since

The exact same thing happens in Adrift (2018).

And Gravity (2013).

I was so disappointed in Gravity. I dragged my girlfriend to come see it with me in theaters.

At least in the above, you forgot a pretty amusing aspect of Fall—the realistic world-building as to female mate-choice copying in the form of Shiloh Hunter hopping onto her best friend Becky Connor's husband's cock, then a boyfriend/fiance.

Due to YouTube suggestions, a while ago I watched one of those movie channels recapping this film. Going into it, my suspicion was that it was going to be about two chicks having an extended coffee moment in a silly premise (who would be stupid enough to get stuck on a TV tower? I'm sure between the two they have a stepbro, or stepbro-adjacent).

The video did not exactly disabuse me of such an impression. However, perhaps the video undersold the film.

You're right. That bit of evopsych wouldn't have fit an /r/rational review, but I should have mentioned it here.

A lot of people think the girls are stupid for climbing the tower in the first place, but I'd file that under "the utility function is not up for grabs". Like I said, they are adrenaline junkies; they think life has no meaning unless you are willing to risk it all.

Everything that happens after they get trapped is the opposite of a coffee moment.

Man I find Labyrinth to just be so fun!

Wish they made movies like that still - still I’m gonna take the rec for your first film if only for the big knockers, and the second cuz bad horror is ok.

still I’m gonna take the rec for your first film if only for the big knockers

A fellow man of refinement, I see.

I've been enjoying the videos of Youtuber Bobby Fingers. A deadpan Irishman who makes dioramas of infamous incidents and goes to absurd lengths for throwaway gags. Due to the time it takes to create the dioramas and the time it takes to do all the stupid joke stuff, he releases a video every six months or so.

The most recent one, who crapped on Johnny Depp's bed?

That trial wasn't as entertaining as the Groundz guy's, but it was a pretty good watch, Ill have to check this out!

I had a real breakthrough in my understanding of music last night, and I'm pretty chuffed. I've heard lots of people talk about scale degrees, but never what the layout of the scale itself was. I couldn't quite figure it out, because neither of the intuitive options (counting up natural notes or counting up by whole steps) worked with what I knew. Anyways, yesterday I was watching a video on youtube where the guy explained the structure of the major scale, and finally a lot of things clicked into place for me. I assume that this is such basic knowledge that people online don't really mention it, but I didn't know it, and it feels great to finally understand what's going on with some of this music theory stuff.

Oh, man. You’re one of yesterday’s lucky 10,000.

What’s your background with music? Have you tried a guitar or something before? Edit: I see your comment below. Yeah, I think the string spacing masks the structure. At least it does for me. But I learned on a single-note-at-a-time wind instrument.

And did he talk about modes, or the minor scale??

Learning about this stuff is so cool.

Related: any introductions to the basics of music theory that people can recommend that are understandable by regards?

This video explained to me in a concrete way why the intervals defined by the 12-note scale actually do sound more harmonious on common physical instruments, and why less common instruments don't work as well in that scale, which is something I always noticed about the tubular bells or carillon.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tCsl6ZcY9ag&t=1236s

I'll second the link to http://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/ - there's some reading at https://www.hooktheory.com/books/one that I thought was a good complement, oriented more toward popular than classical music, but their books cost some money (despite them having other free resources) while the former link is free.

If you prefer video (which I normally don't for education, but music is naturally an exception to that rule), the best beginner music theory videos I've seen on several topics come from https://youtube.com/@SignalsMusicStudio, and my favorite videos using music theory to analyze popular songs are from https://youtube.com/@DavidBennettPiano and https://youtube.com/@8bitMusicTheory

Not sure if it applies because I played several instruments before discovering it, but https://www.musictheory.net/lessons pretty much taught me music theory 20 years ago

Not an intro, but I really like Alex Yard's Sonic 3 Music Theory series on YouTube.

It does a lot of going over why things sound the way they do. Also plays the track with alternate choices and you can hear how it sounds different. It assumes some music theory knowledge, but I only have a little formal education, and I still find them enjoyable.

How highly regarded are you?

On a scale from "can read sheet music" to "can't always tell two notes apart", what's your current ability level?

I've taken a few drum lessons so I have some prior sheet music experience. Does that count?

I think I can tell two notes apart, but to be honest I don't think I have a good grasp of what a "note" even is.

Check out musictheory.pugetsound.edu

Thanks, this guy is literally from the University of Sound so I think this is promising.

Do you play an instrument? I ask because scale structures never really clicked for me until I started playing bass. At that point the shapes were as plain as day.

Yeah, I play guitar. But I have zero formal training, it's just been whatever bits and pieces I picked up along the way. I've been trying to learn more and so I've been watching the "absolutely understand guitar" series on youtube, which is where I saw the explanation of the major scale which made things click for me.

I came across the link to a Facebook page for Vanished Florida. I see a lot of hotels in Miami even back to 1910-1920. How did hotels work in 1920?

My understanding of the transportation system in 1920 is a northerner going to Miami the trip would take days. I don’t think you could drive a car from NYC to Miami in 1920. So maybe railroad or boat? I’m guessing a 2-day trip that was fairly expensive?

A modern hotel is essentially transients that stay on average probably 2-3 days. Would a hotel in 1920 in a place like Miami be much longer stays? For the obvious reason that you’re not traveling to a place that takes 4-5 days travel time round trip to stay for a day or two.

If my assumptions are correct it would be interesting staying in a fancy hotel in a vacation destination where everyone is staying month. There would be value in meeting other guests.

Here’s the link. https://www.facebook.com/share/1UKPu8znC9/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Here's a highway map

Keep in mind that outside cities these might not be paved, might not even be gravel, just an old dirt road.

As far as Miami in particular, I suspect many of the photos are from 20s and 30s or that many 1910s are referring specifically to 1918 or 1919 or so. Spot the introduction of cheap enough residential AC in the population growth presented below.

Year 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Population 4,955 11,933 42,753 142,955 267,739 495,084 935,047 1,267,792 1,625,781 1,937,094 2,253,362

I was guessing 1915 because that’s when growth accelerated but I’m seeing more like 1940’s when it became affordable. I don’t see it in data.

30s for luxury, 50s for middle class residential, 60s-70s for working class. I suppose it isn't that visible because early doubling and tripling by decade, but the additional hundreds of thousands really were only possible because of AC units instead of high ceilings and porches and other classic ways of mitigating heat in humidity.

Another story: after my grandmother passed, we found a little black notebook from her mother describing a trip from Illinois down to Florida in the late 30s or maybe the 40s. It was more or less the first time she’d traveled. She noted every time they had to stop for gas, the prices, and whether my great-grandfather had to top off the oil. Apparently that was every few stops. Beautiful handwriting, too. Point is, I could see a vast expansion in mobility as automobile and road coverage took off.

I need to see if I can find it again.

I’d love a write-up of this if you ever find it again.

Traveling back then sounds a lot like the transition the older posters here have had in their life with communications. As a kid there was no instant communications when doing something. You just showed up at a place and hoped your buddies showed up like they said they would. No instant text of “I’m 3 min away”. 1910 seems to be the first time the concept of travel outside of your state became an actual thing. 1910-1920 time period seems it happened for the affluent.

I grew up with answering machines. Which is a big reason why I thought vacationing in Florida in 1920 when I saw a hotel was an interesting topic.

Seems like one guy (who became filthy rich by involvement with Standard Oil, and who's wife liked the climate in Florida) basically built/acquired/standardized railroads and put up hotels all over the place:

https://flaglermuseum.org/history/florida-east-coast-railway

This all happened right around the turn of the century though -- by the '10s and '20s I'd think you could pretty easily interconnect up the Eastern Seaboard via Jacksonville -- apparently there was freight service to Cuba (!) even, accomplished by loading cars onto a ferry.

By the mid-20s it looks like you could do NY-Miami in about a day and a half:

https://streamlinermemories.info/FL/SAL26OrangeBlossomSpecial.pdf

https://streamlinermemories.info/FL/SAL27OrangeBlossomSpecial.pdf

Which I guess is a bit longer than driving down there now (Google says 19 hours), but considering that you could eat/drink/sleep/get a haircut on the way, not really that bad! (Certainly nicer than being herded around JFK and getting searched/felt up by the help along the way -- after all one is on vacation; what's the hurry?)

Nice research. 1.5 days of travel isn’t that bad and would make it possible for a 10-day vacation. My guess is most trips were still a little longer.

Initially I didn’t want to know exactly the logistics of travel in the time period to keep it more abstract on how vacation hotels worked when travel times were long. NYC to Miami may have been the first time there was any long distance vacation travel in world history that was more than a tiny elite or a summer house outside a city. The very first period when people could go from a cold climate to a warm climate.

The 3-day bachelor party trips would still be out but anything over 10-days for a somewhat wealthy family would seem to be possible in this time period.

Ya it was a fun dig -- I love that the Florida hotel scene was arguably developed by a single dude because his wife liked it there!

I already kind of new that trains were great, and I do like riding on them myself -- but it's kind of amazing how great they really were at the time. We've maybe halved the ground-travel time to Florida from New York in the last 100 years -- a hundred years before that it would have been a dangerous journey taking... months, I'm guessing?

I think they would've taken a ship instead of going by ground. Still quite a trip, but not "months" anymore.

Definitely longer stays. You can see it in a lot of period fiction. Some of that comes down to social class but it applied to labor too.

Prior to rail access, you had coaching inns for travel and boarding houses for longer stays. I think this shaded a little more smoothly from “staying” to “renting.” You had flophouses (where nobody would stay for long if they could help it) all the way up through factory town lodgings or urban apartments. The big hotels take off once railways concentrate a lot more traffic in one spot.

I’m pretty sure individuals used to offer rooms more, too. Some of the quirks of Remains of the Day come from the butler protagonist staying at various private homes which operate more like a bed and breakfast. This is as he’s making a multi-day trip across…England.

You had flophouses (where nobody would stay for long if they could help it) all the way up through factory town lodgings or urban apartments.

Yes, I’m sympathetic to people who say the rent is too damn high, but the period when young people could easily rent an apartment in the big city by themselves without inherited money was very brief historically speaking - it probably lasted less than thirty years (maybe 1955 to 1985?). A century ago, your current equivalent of a modern day 25 year old corporate striver (a young clerk at a bank or insurance company, say, or a trainee typist or secretary) would have stayed in a boarding house in a small room or sharing a small room for a large percentage of their income.

SROs are a casualty of zoning and other housing regulations.

would have stayed in a boarding house in a small room or sharing a small room

It's a shame there aren't many options like that anymore. The last SRO in the city nearest me closed down in the 1970s. I couldn't even tell you about boarding houses, though I'm pretty sure it was even earlier. These days it feels like your options go from house, to apartment, to homeless shelter, to underpass, without any real stops in between.

I’m pretty sure individuals used to offer rooms more, too. Some of the quirks of Remains of the Day come from the butler protagonist staying at various private homes which operate more like a bed and breakfast. This is as he’s making a multi-day trip across…England.

So... AirBnBs?

Yes, but with a particularly gormless, class-driven sort of trust.

It occurred to me the other day that there might well be people who don't know what "BnB" in the name "Airbnb" means.

It’s a dumb term since I’ve never heard of an AirBnB providing breakfast, if it did it would just be a small hotel (or, indeed, a bnb).

My sister went to one out in the New Mexico desert that did.

Unusual, yes, but the exceptions can be amazing. We stayed in an AirBnB in a small town in the middle of Missouri (pop. >5000), where the couple rented out three bedrooms of their enormous farmhouse, and everyone was expected to a shared sit-down breakfast of bacon, sausages, fried potatoes, and fresh-baked bread.

That's just a regular BnB.

I think initially the model was something like couchsurfing but for money. So you literally were supposed to stay at someone's house while it's being occupied as a temporary roommate, in which case sharing the breakfast is only polite. Of course, once it took off it basically turned into less-regulated apartments for (short-term) rent. And now it's just differently-regulated apartments for rent.

The BnB made more sense when people were renting out rooms in their apartment. I know someone renting out rooms in his place in LaTam and well he does provide espresso and usually a weekly barbecue. His dad died and inherited some money so he’s building a new house, but his existing residence his dream is to raise his prices and offer more. The issue is Airbnb people filter out shared spaces and I think it’s hard to raise prices to even equivalent of a standard 1br with kitchen. Not really sure how you would market it but he wants to go more towards I guess the bed and breakfast model.

I once stayed in an Airbnb where the host provided coffee and freshly baked scones every morning, probably the nicest Airbnb I've ever stayed in. But in general, you're right.

People travelled for much longer. One thing that is little commented upon is that white collar ‘PMC’ workers whose jobs existed in, say 1870 or 1920 work far longer hours today than they did back then. A banker (and not just, like, JP Morgan himself) and his family might take a 3 month vacation to Europe, and while he might send and receive the occasional telegram he wasn’t working full time through it. Going anywhere took time. In London, until the popularization of the automobile (which I gather became fully mainstream somewhere between 1910 and 1925 maybe) the smog was often so bad that you might find yourself stranded in some corner of the city and need to spend a night there before heading home in the morning.

People did stay on vacation for much longer periods. Spending ‘the summer’ or ‘the winter’ somewhere was common. In the Swiss mountains, a stay of several weeks, maybe months was common. The working classes would go to nearby resorts by rail for a week or two on an annual trip, but even that’s longer than a lot of trips today. Often railroads were highly vertically integrated, so you’d book travel and accommodation through them and perhaps through their partners. Communication was already pretty good in 1920, you could telegraph (or have the railroad booking office do so) a local hotel agent in Miami and check whether there were any spare rooms and where. I don’t think they would telephone, that was still quite expensive long-distance then. I expect the journey itself might take a couple of days, but they had luxury trains with berths and dining cars.

Also the whole second family phenomenon surely made a lot more sense where the proverbial traveling salesman would be spending a week or two afield for distances that are now a zoom call. Or a same day trip if it must be face time.

Miami having hotels stands out to me because it’s not exactly close to anything else in the States so everyone there I would assume is on a longer vacation - basically wintering. Europe in 1920 I assume people who summered in Europe would bounce around cities.

This gets to something I would say is related to the paradox of choice. When people have a lot of people around them it can be more difficult to make friends. No one quite knows who to invest their time and energy into. But if it’s a 100 room Miami hotel in 1920 where the rich people are staying for 1-3 months then it feels like it’s worth meeting the other guest in the hotel.

I remember in Band of Brothers Nixon towards the end of the war said the South Beach clubs and hotels were packed again. Obviously he’s rich so perhaps he’s in the class of people who would know people that would go for months, but maybe by 1944 technology had changed enough to allow more people that experience. Though it still feels 20-ish year off to me before the upper middle class has those types of trips.

In every major war there are a class of people who make a lot of money even if overall people are poorer and indeed even if overall inequality declines (usually due to market crashes or broader asset price declines). War involves many government contracts, price fixing, import and export controls, sometimes currency controls, and all these things create huge room for profiteering and arbitrage.

The Miami of today is full of people who got rich in shady business in Latin America or in crypto. The Miami of 1944 already had plenty of the former but a lot of people who had done well off the war, too.

I doubt this story given the overall decline in yearly hours worked. Perhaps there's some (significantly sized) subgroup where the trend is different, but I'd want to see some evidence of it.

Definition of worked is a bit different when one is eternally on call digitally versus straight up office availability hours.

I've got a Nanny who comes from a subsistence agriculture society in deepest darkest Indonesia and she's pretty candid about her childhood of sub $1k USD per Capita poverty which I've always found interesting as a resource

Eternal digital on call, to the extent it exists, is a phenomenon of perhaps the past 15 years.

I think the shift probably happened in white collar work between around 1920 and 1950, there were a lot of quiet development around intra office memos, telephone calls becoming ubiquitous, a focus on data, corporate consolidation, vastly increased access to information etc. Also, any change would be swamped by falls in salaried or working class hours as paid vacation, weekends etc became more common.

OWID has a longer time series. A few countries show a postwar bump (the US included), but the overall trend since the late 19th century is one of decline.

I think 2rafa and you are talking about different things.

You are presenting data that includes factory workers and blue collar workers. This is a group that used to work 12 hour days, 6 days a week, and they have been getting protections and more leisure time over the last 100 years.

2rafa is talking about white collar professionals, upper middle managerial class type people. As someone who reads a lot of literature from before the 1950s, I can confirm that this group of people really did take months of vacations a year - sometimes taking a whole year sabattical. This group would be lawyers, stock brokers, writers, professors, etc. On the weeks they were working, a good portion of that was socialization, networking, etc. This is separate from the aristocracy (hard or soft) who didn't hold a profession besides the managing of their assets.

That only goes to 1950, though. By which point America is almost fully electrified and coming off a generational economic boom. I wouldn’t be surprised if working hours peaked right after WW2.

A casual search found this totally unbiased article, which suggests the U.S. started movements for paid time off, but Sweden and Germany adopted them first.

I know the eight-hour workday became popular over the course of the 1800s. I could see the paid vacation as a Progressive outgrowth of that sentiment.

The story is not impossible, but it also doesn't match what evidence we have. See also more data.

What are you all listening to these days?

Orville Peck has a new album and the newest single dropped this morning. I love how rich the instrumentals are. It almost reminds me of old Motown or Stax recordings.

I first listened to A Grand Don't Come for Free by The Streets a while back, but it never made it onto my regular rotation due to how heavy it is. Listened to Original Pirate Material the other day and like it a lot. The beats are extremely clean and his lyrics are dense and interwoven.

Also listened to Overmono's new album, but I have to agree with the general sentiment that it's just not in the same ballpark as Good Lies.

Bach, Zelenka, misc other baroque at work.

Miscellaneous non-Anglosphere rock/metal for commuting. Nightwish was kind of interesting. Galneryus is great.

Vysotsky and Iron Maiden for exercise.

Russian punk outfit called Kino

My 16 year old kid introduced me to them

Very soothing - I love not understanding lyrics

Mostly The Strokes new album Reality Awaits. I'm ready to concede that this might be their best album, despite having none of their best songs overall.

When the album launched, I was all prepared to post on the motte about its launch and reference their previous album, The New Abnormal. This is because I distinctly recall a post on the Motte about that album, and how good some of the new tracks were shortly before it's release.

Not trusting any kind of search, I went to the main page and sorted by 'Old', thinking that the launch of the Motte must have been pretty close. And I was right. Only about a year separated the 2, just in the wrong direction. Turns out the Motte was launched well past The New Abnormal, despite, as mentioned, my clear recollection of talking about it here.

Perhaps The Motte and /r/themotte simply blurred into one in my mind? I'm not really sure, seeing as a reddit search also didn't turn up the posts I so clearly remembered. In any case I was all prepared to turn this experience into a longer post on the ephemeral nature of time and my own personal passage of sites and forums that led me here. But then I figured no one would care that much and gave up

I would say that John Cage's 4'33 is definitely not better than those two albums so your assertion is false

Wouldn't that mean that his assertion is literally true?

I was talking about The Stroke's discography specifically.

I’ve been exploring Shia music (of “Shia rave” fame). They essentially have their own version of the traditional Christian Passion genre, but for their own central religious tragedy event. Most of it is junk but I found some that are good:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2l-Zm1brSag ; https://youtube.com/watch?v=kKwEWCckfvA ; https://youtube.com/watch?v=8M84TFhPj5s ;

In Iran this is tied at the hip to the theocracy. The same singers who lead the religious songs also sing the regime propaganda songs and some songs simply combine the two together. These are, apparently, wildly popular in the Shia world.

One of the most famous lines from Nick Hornby's High Fidelity is (I'm paraphrasing) "Which came first: the music or the misery? Do I listen to pop music because I'm miserable, or am I miserable because I listen to pop music?"

For many years I was an avid listener of music, and would constantly have my headphones on during my morning commute. I owned dozens if not hundreds of CDs and went out of my way to convert them to FLAC format, under the delusion that I could tell the difference from MP3s with my budget Sennheisers. When I read the above question in High Fidelity, I dismissed it as an obviously rhetorical one: of course I listen to music because I'm miserable!

Somewhere along the way I got out of the habit of actively listening to music in my own time, and rarely sit down to listen to an album from start to finish: most music I listen to is just something to put on in the background while I'm doing something else. And you know what? My subjective feeling of ease and well-being is dramatically improved compared to the earlier periods of my life in which I was an active and compulsive listener of music. There are many possible explanations for this improvement (I'm more physically active; I'm in a stable relationship; I've outgrown my depression; the period in my life in which I listened to music most compulsively was my adolescence, never an easy time for anyone), but I no longer think the question from High Fidelity is a rhetorical one with an obvious answer. Maybe listening to music did make me unhappier than I would have been otherwise.

All that preamble aside, I'm trying to get back into the habit of actively listening to music – not for the sake of enjoyment, but for research. I've been trying to write my next album and the riffs aren't coming as easily as I'd like. Surely part of that is because I'm not listening to music: the periods in my life in which I wrote the most riffs were also the periods in which I was listening to the most riffs. To that end, I drew up a list of albums which I've either been meaning to listen to for years, or which have a sound I'd like to emulate on the next album. I've been listening to them when I can get around to it. In no particular order, here are the ones I've listened to so far, and my thoughts.

Artist Album Genre Thoughts
Ulver Silence Teaches You How to Sing Dark ambient I encountered this as excerpts from it
were used in the film "Sinister". It only really
works in context, not as a standalone piece.
Ulver Bergtatt – Et eeventyr i 5 capitler Black metal There are a million bargain-bin second-wave
black metal albums just like this one.
Botanist Photosynthesis Black metal Legitimately unique. Intend to listen to it again
Accurst Fragments of a Nightmare Dark ambient I turned it off after the first five minutes. Corny af.
Aghast Hexerei Im Zwielicht Der Finsternis Dark ambient A track from this was also used in the film "Sinister".
Unlike the Ulver one, this one can stand on its own.
Particularly liked the fourth track.
Katatonia Brave Murder Day Doom metal The fifth track is pretty cool,
but I have no intention of listening to this one again.
Shining V: Halmstad Black metal Profoundly silly. Barely even warrants the "black metal"
genre tag, never mind "depressive/suicidal black metal".
The vocalist supposedly said that he wants people
to be so affected by his band's music
that they kill themselves after listening to it
– I certainly would if I had to listen to
boring corny dreck like this for the rest of my life.
The cover art is the most interesting thing about it
Killswitch Engage The End of Heartache Metalcore Great album, on the level of "Alive
or Just Breathing", even if I prefer Jesse Leach as a vocalist.
Thantifaxath Sacred White Noise Black metal There used to be a website called Metal Ireland,
which was both a forum and published reviews of albums and EPs.
One of their critics reviewed this album
and said something along the lines of
"I know as critics we're meant to be 'objective'.
But it's hard in this case, because
this album is pretty close to the Platonic ideal
of what a black metal album is supposed to sound like".
I finally got around to listening to it
(twelve years after release) and wasn't disappointed.
Jaw-droppingly brilliant.
Daughters You Won't Get What You Want Noise rock Contra Fantano, I don't know if I'd call this "perfect",
but even as someone who normally disdains noise rock
and spoken-word vocals I can say it didn't disappoint.
Corrupted Paso inferior Sludge Pretty good, but hardly memorable.
Eyehategod Take as Needed for Pain Sludge I like the sound collage, and the tenth song.
Gnaw Their Tongues All the Dread Magnificence of Perversity Black metal I first heard of Gnaw Their Tongues
when a recording engineer compared my band to them.
They collaborated with Dragged into Sunlight (immediately below)
on an EP which included samples of actual serial killers talking about their crimes.
It creeped me out, but I wasn't sure of how much of that
was because of the music and how much was the enormously tasteless sampling.
This album employs no such gimmicks, and I can say that Gnaw Their Tongues can produce some genuinely horrific soundscapes.
Dragged into Sunlight Hatred for Mankind Death-doom I really liked it. I should listen to it again.
Isis Panopticon Post-metal Meh. I once heard someone quip that if a band
describes their music as "post-[anything]", that means it's boring.
While this isn't true of every band, it's true more often than not, and certainly true of Isis.
Mastodon Leviathan Sludge Its reputation is entirely deserved.
Meshuggah Chaosphere Progressive metal Great, perhaps even better than ObZen. Buy it
Portal ION Death metal Loved it. All the compositional insanity of "Swarth",
but with production improved just enough that you can follow what's going on.
Spectral Wound Songs of Blood and Mire Black metal Heard this album playing in a record shop in Athens
and decided to check it out. Loved it.
The Angelic Process Weighing Souls with Sand Drone metal Meh, did nothing for me. Getting signed to
Profound Lore Records is now considered a hallmark of quality,
but this was back when they were still finding their feet as a label and couldn't afford to be so choosy.
My Dying Bride The Dreadful Hours Doom metal Rather corny
Cryptopsy None So Vile Death metal Pretty cool, but so technical and complex
that your brain can't really process it all in one go.
Type O Negative World Coming Down Gothic metal More of the same. "Slow, Deep and Hard"
had more stylistic range.

I have a very similar experience. Never been depressed but i've found that listening to music while walking around town or doing work decreases my net happiness. Personally I think it's because my train of thought gets derailed several times a minute by catchy lyrics, taking me out of the moment and forcing me to reorient myself each time. Not that I'm walking around in a distracted haze while listening but these microdistractions take a toll on my mental attention.

This could be a symptom of the genres I listen too though, lots of trap, rap, and drill so it's not exactly calming mozart. I do find that while working out this "violent" music actually helps because it takes me out of the direct unpleasant feelings but also keeps my pulse high. I guess dissing the opps is good for preacher curls but not autumn afternoon walks.

Personally I think it's because my train of thought gets derailed several times a minute by catchy lyrics, taking me out of the moment and forcing me to reorient myself each time.

I find that I, should I want to do serious creative work and listen to music at the same time, must listen to a piece of music I've entirely memorized. Which is why I tend to prefer simple songs; chiptune tends to do this due to the lack of complex instrumentation, lyrics, and the simplicity of the music brought on by pretending to be limited to only X number of voices at a time. You can do a lot with only 5 voices, but the other way to do it is to listen to something that only really has a few patterns but has a depressing effect.

In that way, the [fact that listening to the music is pleasurable] is decoupled from the distraction of ultimately being distracted by trying to digest its patterns; if the pattern is not digestible, or the instrumentation (generally lyrics but percussion as well) is distracting, it won't work.

It's you.

I've had the opposite experience. When I'm miserable I don't have any desire to listen to music, and when I'm in a good mood I'm more likely to want music on. One would think that a compulsive listener such as myself would take advantage of the 8 to 10 hours a day I have available to listen to music at work, but I rarely do. And when I do, it's usually because I have a lot of work to do, there's a long album that's on the list due to completeness but I don't have much faith in and am thus dreading to listen, and I save it for a time when I have a ton of work to do and not a lot of time to do it and hope that the tedium of listening to a long, lousy album dilates time to the extent that allows me to finish in a reasonable amount of time. Worst case scenario, the time evaporates along with the album. It's basically a hedge.

Fortunately I mostly listen for enjoyment, and I try to combine my listening with activities that I find enjoyable as well. The upshot is that if there's something I want to listen to I'd rather save it for when I'm on the bike, or out walking in the woods. I've put entire bands on hold for the winter because I know I'll enjoy them more when exercising outside in warm weather. Typical itinerary, some years back, which has changed only because the music I listen to changes based on what I haven't heard yet: Bike ride, late Saturday morning into the afternoon, maybe I have a picnic to attend later in the day, so I'm on a schedule. Enough time for a 20 mile trail ride. Start with Krautrock, something repetitive to get me in the pedaling rhythm. Then move on to 70s hard rock like Humble Pie or Faces, something a little more exciting, as the heat of the day builds. This is what I'm listening to at the turn around point. Then switch over to something more Americana, maybe Ry Cooder, as it's now afternoon. Totally different if I'm going for a 6 mile walk after dinner, which I was doing every day for a while on the same path: Start with Southern Rock while it's still broad daylight. As the sun gets low in the sky, switch to British Folk, like Dando Shaft or Lindisfarne, and as I'm approaching my car at dusk let things get a bit darker, like early Pink Floyd or Procol Harum.

Start with Krautrock, something repetitive to get me in the pedaling rhythm.

Have you been following the CAN archive releases? Or perhaps you knew them from the circulating bootlegs, but either way, some amazing stuff in there. The first release, Stuttgart 1975, remains my favorite.

Also, the Beat Club channel out of nowhere 2 weeks ago dropped new CAN footage from 1971: "Halleluhwah". The footage for "Paperhouse" has been around but as far as I know the new one was never previously available.

No. I generally don't follow archives, as I find live albums in general to be superfluous, with certain exceptions (most notably the Grateful Dead). I'll check out the Can archive, though, since you mentioned it. I woul add that I'm one of those weirdos who likes their later period.

If by later period you mean '77-79, you're in luck as 2 releases so far have been from '77. Like the Dead, the Can live shows are very improv-heavy, so they're not typical "louder faster sloppier" live albums.

What is it about metal that grips you so much? Whenever I listen to modern metal, I bounce off. Between the blast beats and the technical-first guitar style, it feels like it's for the players rather than the audience. What am I missing?

When you say "modern metal", what kinds of bands are you referring to? I think Songs of Blood and Mire is the only one of the albums listed above that came out this decade.

I'm old, so "modern", probably means "post Iron Maiden".

Fair.

It's a difficult question to answer, as the genre has become enormously stylistically diverse over the last four or five decades. Of the nineteen metal albums listed above, I think only five used blastbeats in any capacity, and only seven could be described as "technical" under even the most generous definition of that term. (Paso Inferior sounds downright primitive, like the guitarist only learned how to play the day before.) Maybe if you tell me some non-metal bands you like, I can recommend some albums that might serve as gateways.

Maybe if you tell me some non-metal bands you like, I can recommend some albums that might serve as gateways.

Orville Peck is a good example, with the link above being a solid song.

Poor Man's Poison is another, with "Hell's Coming With Me" being their most famous song.

Billy Strings is great. I love the song "Wargasm".

I'm a big fan of Kels, with "Daddy's Got a gun" being a solid example.

The general trend is stuff that's rhythm-forward, with strong instrumentals and a solid groove.

I could see you liking Clutch, Eyehategod or Crowbar, and probably a lot of bands in the "stoner rock/metal" wheelhouse, although I'm not very knowledgeable about that subgenre. Possibly the Mastodon album mentioned above (this song should give you a feel for it).

I have mixed feelings about Clutch. The songs tend to be great, but after a while the vocals feel like they're so redlined that they lose any impact.

I'll give the other two a shot. Thanks for the suggestions.

“Which came first: the shitty rave music, or the drugs?”

Henry's contempt is so real. I saw a post earlier joking that, with AI "musicians" now becoming a thing, DJs must feel so relieved that there's someone even they can feel superior to.

Video Game Thread

What are you playing these days?

I'm playing a lot of Palworld. I've reached level 37 in one week. I'm having some trouble with achieving self running bases though. I don't seem to have full chain connection, not even for food. No one is carrying the flour from the mill to the cooking pot and starting the bread production process there.

And I want to move my primary base elsewhere. The beach, where I started out, isn't the best spot. I want somewhere flat. I've already got one secondary mining base set up on a mountain top. Which means I can't build a 3rd pal box because my limit for those is still just 2. Is it possible to move fully loaded chests across the map?

Has anyone played La Mulana? According to its fans it's one of the best games of all time, a true puzzle adventure where every detail is a clue or hint to progress. I've got it in my Steam library from a bundle years ago and never started it - wondering if anyone had an opinion if it's worth the alleged 100 hour investment?

I haven't played it, but nobody else has responded, so I will make a comment. I watched a playthrough of the entire game, and it looked extremely annoying to play. Not only are the boss fights a hassle with your limited mobility and short melee range, but for the puzzles you have to take copious notes outside the game. The soundtrack is worth buying, though. (All this also applies to the sequel.)

100 hours in Warframe

I’m done - at least for a bit

Waiting for one of the big Diablo-likes to get out of EA

Have you tried Path of Exile 1? It's 13 years old now so very much matured out of EA with insane complexity.

I've been playing Quasimorph. It's sort of a hardcore roguelike thing with guns in space. I use the term "roguelike" rather than "roguelite" because it has the core grid based movement with the numpad, although combat is usually from a distance with various guns. It probably doesn't count as a true roguelike though due to having short missions and most progression occurring between missions. It kind of reminds me of Cataclysm DDA in some ways, although way less complicated. It's got a lot of inventory management, wounds you take requiring long periods of time and medical items to heal (and in severe cases getting amputated), and you can't leave a map until you finish the objective, often leading to doomed scenarios where you slowly bleed out (or starve) even after you killed the guy who got you.

But it's got a strong meta progression element. Your people are disposable, and even though their level and skills reset and you lose all their items if they die, you have a dozen other semi-unique characters and classes to choose from, and can equip them with any stuff you've brought back from previous missions. I tend to die about half the time, and escape half the time with cool new stuff, some of which is more gear for future missions, some of which is rare meta-progression items you can use you upgrade your ship and unlock new features.

Edit: (It also kind of reminds me of XCOM. Not sure why I didn't think of that comparison earlier. Less meta-punishing roguelike XCOM.)

I've been a little bit at a loss as what to sink my teeth into as of late, so I've mostly been playing a slightly-modded run of The Long Dark to work on getting my 500-day acheivement.

If anyone has the urge to play a survival walking game, I do endorse it, even if I think Hinterland has been a little shizoprenic in terms of how they've been developing the sandbox side of things as of late.

Elden Ring: The Convergence with my brother.

This is a borderline-total-conversion mod for one of the best games of the decade. It removes almost all of the progression gates to focus on remixing areas and playstyles. Instead of cruising every region to see if there’s a relevant spell or talisman, your starting class gets a shopping list of places to try. That’ll take your character on a tour as you accumulate relevant gear and stats. And there’s plenty to see; in addition to the new and redesigned items and spells, entire areas have been expanded. Surprisingly, most of it has a pretty high quality level and looks like it could have been cut content.

I’m playing an archer using the talisman which gives you infinite ammo. It would normally have a drawback, but with my choice of gear, I’m able to dampen that and spam arrows without worrying about the cost. My brother has built full tank with greatshield. He keeps aggro and breaks poise while I needle them. It’s broken but in a silly, fun way.

Highly recommended if you’ve seen all the vanilla Elden Ring you want. Combine it with Seamless Co-op to make it even more casually enjoyable.

Do you know if that's compatible with seamless coop?

That’s how my brother and I are doing it.

That sounds really cool. I liked Elden Ring a lot but haven't gotten close to finishing it. In fact I'm probably less than 1/3 through the vanilla game. It requires quite a bit of time and effort to get through.

There’s just so much. I keep finding a new cave or treasure which I somehow missed on all previous playthroughs.

And that map! That beautiful, sprawling map.

It's a beautiful world. I took lots of screenshots while playing it, just because the landscapes were so good.

Helldivers 2 recently had a content update, so I'm back in it with a few friends. So far, it's disappointing.

I've never played a game quite like HD2 before. It genuinely feels like the developers resent the game's success.

Judging by their previous games, they’ve never understood how to manage success.

Guild Chests are level 41, and act as shared storage across multiple locations.

May just be easier to condense everything from your main base into a couple discrete chests at your mining base, dismantle your first base, and then rebuild at a new location with better geography, though. The weight limit slows you down a ton, but it doesn’t stop you from just loading more items on your character, so long as you don’t run out of inventory slots. And the grappling gun ignores weight.

For pseudo-automation, make sure your production facilities have ‘allow Pals to transport’ turned on, and a nearby eligible storage. But I don’t think there’s a way to automate future production beyond scaling batch crafts, short of mod use.

Oh thank heavens, I was hoping there would be universal chests.

Maybe I should just grind xp like mad for a couple of hours and reach level 41 before attempting a new base/inventory move.

Edit: I did that and reached level 41 and unlocked the Guild Chest. It's pretty expensive in terms of resources. I'll have to grind bosses/dungeons for ancient technology parts if I want more than a couple of chests.

Item 1 of 4

  • A person is observed wheeling himself along a road in a manual wheelchair away from the scene of a single-vehicle car crash. He is drunk, and refuses to submit to a blood-alcohol test when a police officer accosts him.

  • Whoops! Overwhelming evidence indicates that the person was the driver of the car. But there is no indication of when the crash occurred, so the officer had no grounds to suspect that the person was drunk when he crashed the car (as opposed to crashing the car and then getting drunk off the half-empty bottle of liquor that was found in the car), and therefore no grounds to demand a blood-alcohol test in the first place. No problem! The prosecutor argues that the officer had grounds to suspect the person of driving the manual wheelchair drunk, and on that basis charges the person with refusing a blood-alcohol test. On that basis, he is found guilty, and his driver's license is suspended for 18 months.

  • The appeals panel reverses. It is illegal to refuse a blood-alcohol test if the officer has grounds to believe that you have driven a "vehicle" while drunk, where "vehicle" is defined to exclude both "self-propelled wheelchairs" and "electrical mobility devices". The prosecutor interpreted "self-propelled wheelchair" to mean propelled by the wheelchair, so that a manual, human-powered wheelchair is not self-propelled, and the trial judge accepted this interpretation. But this interpretation would lead to the absurd result of making the blood-alcohol test law applicable to a driver of a manual wheelchair but not to the driver of a more powerful electric wheelchair.

Item 2 of 4

Continuation of last week's lawnmowing shenanigans:

  • Sunday: I bring my corded electric lawnmower from home, and rent a gasoline generator from Home Depot. In three hours, I manage to cut the less-overgrown front one-third of the lot. This effort leaves me quite sore (which is why I don't try again until Thursday), and the more-overgrown back two-thirds still remains to be mowed.

  • Monday: The contractor claims once again that it "is getting someone to get it done".

  • Thursday (one day before govt.-imposed deadline): The contractor still hasn't cut the grass. I rent the generator again. This time, I've brought from home both a lawnmower and a string trimmer. However, (1) the lawnmower has some internal wiring that I previously fixed come loose in a weird way that I can't correct immediately⁎, and (2) the string trimmer is extremely inefficient, eating up two spools of string in cutting only a small area of grass. At this point, the owner of an adjacent lot (where he is constructing a house much larger than mine) suggests that I pay him 100 dollars to get the grass cut by the Friday deadline. I accept this offer.

Hopefully, at least one of these two contractors will not flake out and leave me on the hook for a 300-$/d govt. fine.

⁎I previously put three wires into a wire nut. But I guess the wire nut was too small or something, because not only did one wire come loose, but the exterior plastic part of the wire nut also detached from the internal metal part. I'll have to cut the wire nut off entirely, re-strip the ends of the wires, and add a new wire nut (or maybe one of those fancy Wago connectors).

Item 3 of 4

  • A person files for bankruptcy in the Northern District of Iowa. Among his debts is a 190-k$ loan from a bank. The Northern District's nearest courthouse is 10 miles from the debtor's house, 60 miles from the debtor's lawyer, 10 miles from the bank's headquarters, and 160 miles from the bank's lawyer (as measured by me "as the crow flies" in Google Maps; the measurements made by the judge in the opinion linked below are slightly different).

  • The bank points out that the person actually lives in the Southern District of Iowa, and moves for a change of venue. The Southern District's nearest courthouse is 60 miles from the debtor's house, 70 miles from the debtor's lawyer, 70 miles from the bank's headquarters, and 160 miles from the bank's lawyer.

  • The bankruptcy judge's "general practice is to retain improperly venued cases absent an objection from an opposing party". He is frustrated by the bank's motion here, since "all factors related to convenience and cost savings for all parties favor venue in this district" (emphasis in original), and "in other cases, like this one, the bank or its attorney appears to simply want to make things harder for the debtor". But the statute gives him no discretion, so he cannot avoid transferring the case to the Southern District.

Item 4 of 4

Absolute saga:

  • 2017-04: Kevin dies intestate. His estate is split evenly between his four children, including Kareem. The estate includes a property on which property taxes of 7 k$ are owed.

  • 2017-06: The municipal govt. sells a "tax-sale certificate" for the property to a company for 25 k$.

  • 2019-10-01: The municipal govt. deems the property abandoned. The notice of abandonment is mailed only to the property itself, even though the govt. literally just said that it is abandoned and no one is living there. No one files a challenge to the decision.

  • 2019-10-14: The company files a foreclosure complaint. Most of the possibly-interested parties are served personally (with letters addressed to them). However, "served" merely by publication (with an advertisement in the newspaper) are Kareem and his mother (not married to Kevin) Shadeerah (who has a child-support judgment against the property).

  • 2020-06: No one redeems the tax-sale certificate for the govt.'s price of 47 k$, so the company successfully forecloses on the property.

  • 2020-08-12: Kareem and Shadeerah move to vacate the foreclosure, arguing that they were not served properly. Shadeerah claims that all four heirs have authorized her to enter into a contract to sell the property for 185 k$, which would be more than enough to satisfy all debts.

  • 2020-08-28: The trial court finds that the company was sufficiently diligent in trying to find addresses for Kareem and Shadeerah before giving up and serving them by publication. In particular, Shadeerah's abrupt move from her previous address just a few days before personal service was attempted, and her failure to leave a forwarding address with the landlord or the post office, thwarted the business's use of three different address-lookup services.

  • 2022: The appeals panel vacates and remands in part. The trial judge failed to make any findings regarding the diligence of the business's search for Kareem, and must do so on remand.

  • 2023: The trial judge finds that the company was sufficiently diligent in trying to find an address for Kareem. At the time, he was in jail, so in theory he should have been easy to find. However, in practice, (1) the aforementioned three address-lookup services showed no criminal activity for him, so the business had no reason to check the electronic court records, and (2) even if they had shown criminal activity, the electronic court records would have revealed only a bunch of people with the same first names and last names but different middle names.

  • 2024: The appeals panel affirms on the topic at hand, but remands so that the trial judge can consider whether, under the federal Supreme Court's new ruling on "equity theft" and new state laws on the same topic, the foreclosure here was excessive.

  • 2025: The trial judge finds that (1) the 2020 foreclosure was an invalid taking of property since it extinguished Kareem's excess equity on the basis of unpaid property tax, and must be vacated, but (2) the 2019 determination of abandonment remains valid, since it was based on the property's need for rehabilitation rather than on Kareem's failure to pay taxes.

  • 2026: The appeals panel vacates and remands, reinstating the 2020 foreclosure. Kareem asked only for the return of his "stolen" excess equity. He didn't ask for the entire foreclosure to be overturned, and his three sibling co-owners definitely didn't ask for it! And the trial judge failed to properly investigate whether the municipal govt.'s determination of abandonment was appropriate in the first place.

So this court case is still going on, nine years after the tax-sale certificate was sold.

At this point, the owner of an adjacent lot (where he is constructing a house much larger than mine) suggests that I pay him 100 dollars to get the grass cut by the Friday deadline. I accept this offer.

Could have also probably gotten a neighborhood kid to do it for half the price.

wire nut

Wire nuts-style devices are not meant for applications under continuous vibration. The "correct" way to splice wires like this is a ratcheting crimp or soldered Western Union splice, both preferably finished with adhesive-lined heat shrink to provide mechanical strain relief.

I'd like to see a Tesla Model S redefined as an "electrical mobility vehicle". Particularly if it's in self-driving mode.

But there is no indication of when the crash occurred, so the officer had no grounds to suspect that the person was drunk when he crashed the car (as opposed to crashing the car and then getting drunk off the half-empty bottle of liquor that was found in the car)

I never thought I'd see a 4chan meme show up in a real life court case.

Direct quote:

Here, it is uncontested that DOT could not meet its burden of proving that Licensee had been driving the vehicle involved in the accident while under the influence of alcohol or controlled substance because Trooper Moran truthfully testified that he did not know when the accident involving Licensee’s vehicle occurred. As it is possible that Licensee consumed the half bottle of Jägermeister after his accident, DOT concedes that it did not satisfy its burden. Accordingly, the only issue before this Court is whether Licensee’s wheelchair is a vehicle within the meaning of the Implied Consent Law.

In Canada, the government doesn't have that problem. Instead, they have to prove that A) you are currently drunk, and B) You drove recently. If you want to avoid the charge, you have to prove your innocence.

Apparently this particular aspect of the case is sufficiently common to have its own Wikipedia article.

For this particular case a big problem for the charge is:

B) You drove recently

The investigators weren't even able to determine when the crash happened.

Assumption fast has started, see you in two weeks.

Good luck!

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