A kidney infection
Dehydration
Low blood pressure
A possible TIA
And a very adverse reaction to a medicine
The last caused caused by a resident’s blunder. Leonita* roared because of this
And I spent 2 weeks in the hospital. I’m so tired of Mike and Molly, Friends, and Gunsmoke. Truthfully I remember almost none of these I was feeling so bad.
Other than texts to the wife, I didn’t comment here or work on my next book till a few days ago.
So I got home yesterday afternoon. How am I doing? I played 11 innings of SOM baseball already and my kitty has spent time in my lap. Summary- I’m alive
Before coming to get me at the hospital yesterday, Leonita won a steaks race. Don’t you mean stakes race and what is she got a horse running a gulfstream? No I mean steaks. She went to BJ’s for groceries and while there found 4 packages of fillet mingeons mistakenly priced. They cost 20,99 a lb but someone priced them as chuck meat at 5.99. Christmas in July. We have plenty** of steaks for two months.s
Leonita will leave for work soon. I should be fine by myself.
*- Leonita the little female lion. She is normally a pussycat but when angered she can roar.
**- We have a 30 year old Sears freezer to store them in. I once told its story “The tale of prodigal freezer”
After watching the Acolyte, I’m left with one question.
For about the nth time in Star Wars lore, we find a bunch of Jedi completely unaware of the existence of Sith, thinking them all extinct.
Ok. But then if the Jedi would be the only people armed with light sabers, why do they train so much on light saber duels? Wouldn’t it be like today’s naval powers training in XVIII and XIX century close range naval encounters and lines of battle?
Oh, and I believe there was some sort of story amid the light saber battles. It’s too bad, because the actor who plays Mae and Osha was very good.
The season ended with promises of fan service for next season, if there is one.
@Bill Jempty: Glad you’re well enough to come home. Yesterday was filled with welcome news — Mu and de Stijl sightings, that Biden-Harris thing, and now we find out you were released from the hospital!
@Kathy: I don’t think the story was served well by the structure of unreliable narratives. They didn’t need two entire episodes to tell the flashback from different angles. The first one added roughly nothing to what we knew at the time.
As far as light saber training goes — the light sabers are partly ceremonial, but have also shown themselves to be useful in many situations. The Jedi aren’t an army, and are very eager to not be seen as one.
Plus Khyber crystals respond to the force, so it’s very natural that the ceremonial weapon would make use of them.
Finally, people train in martial arts to learn self-defense all the time, and it’s not like there is an expectation of being attacked by ninjas.
The History Guy does a quick overview of how the convention of 1968 happened and what happened during it
Actually I watched it live back in 1968 (yes, I am that old) and apart from the same venue and an incumbent president decling to run, there is little that is analogous to today.
In 1968 there was deep bitterness between then Vice President Hubert Humphrey and those who supported Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.
There is nothing similar today, that is unless you believe that Joe Manchin or Dean Phillips have widespread support as an alternative to Kamala Harris.
I finally got around to reading the first book in the Revelation Space Series, by Alastair Reynolds, and earlier I read “The Prefect” by the same author, which was written 7 years after the first. They have truly interesting and epic plot points, and better than average characterization, but they suffer from a problem that I don’t know the proper literary term for, so I’ll call “scale”. As an example, in the Prefect there is a well run, if autocratic, government with separation of powers and rule by law, but then in crisis everything turns out to be all based on personal relationships and loyalty to individuals. Both books have characters who can make the tough decisions that will result in the deaths of thousands or even millions, but then can’t bring themselves to order the death of a single individual who is actively plotting murder and treason and who inevitably gets away due to this inaction and causes many more to die. In “Revelation Space” there is a ship that contains an almost infinite number of weapons of immense power and precision, each designed for a different purpose, but somehow the ship has nothing that can be used to accurately target an escaping space shuttle – until it has almost reached safety and then suddenly it can.
Isn’t this what editors are for? To call bullshit on logical breakdowns? I don’t want to be an editor, but I’d happily be the guy who says, “hey, if in Chapter 1 your hero can punch through a steel wall, you need a better reason than plot-convenience for why he falls to three unarmed guys in Chapter 20”
Has anyone else read this series? Does the writing get any better?
@CSK:
Don’t know about that guy, but I’m back 🙂
Spent last week on holiday observing standard “no internet, etc” rules.
Week before was busy at work, and weekend before that at various family and election victory parties.
Now, what’s being going on while I was away? *opens news”
Oh. Oh my. *closes news*
I’d really like everyone to knock it off with the “interesting times” nonsense for a bit, OK?
So, a von Neumann probe is an interstellar probe that can replicate itself and launch the copies it makes to other star systems. as we don’t have any self-replicating machines, such a thing is currently impossible. It might be possible at some time in the future (who can tell?), insofar as the idea does not violate any laws of nature (that we’re aware of).
Some time in the late 80s, I read an argument, published in a magazine like Discover, that the absence of von Neumann probes all over the galaxy, including the Solar System, is proof that we’re the only intelligent technological species in the Milky Way (it might mean other things*).
Anyway, launching just one such probe, assuming they can be made, would result in exponential exploration, eventually covering the whole galaxy in a few thousand years.
Yes, but what about time? IN addition to being self-replicating, these machine are also probes. Surely a von Neumann probe sent to Alpha Centauri would keep reporting on conditions there for millennia. One assumes if it can self-replicate, it should also be able to self-repair (or self-replace if necessary).
Last, the closest thing to self-replicating machines we know are biological organisms, which are not machines (unless you’re a behaviorist who considers them such).
Still, seeing as how we are making great strides in synthetic biology, we might just make programmable organisms, in essence biological machines. Imagine now sentient beings made from scratch, who do what you program them to do.
More on that last later (it seems I’m supposed to be working or something).
*We might be the first, the last, we might have missed everyone, we might be under quarantine, etc.
@MarkedMan:
Read it, liked it, but as for logic? Nah.
Just have to turn off and go with the vibes.
(IIRC the excuse for the shuttle was the literal “ghosts in the machine” ie the Captain, and, it seems, others)
I’ll forgive a guy who thought up the starship name Nostalgia for Infinity almost anything. 😉
Suppose you want to undertake interstellar exploration, and are most interested in studying other sentient life forms.
Your species is ill-suited for prolonged space travel. You don’t take well to low or zero g. You can’t hibernate in cryogenic conditions to withstand trips taking hundreds of years. And more obstacles.
But your civilization is very advanced in synthetic biology. You could modify members of your species to be capable of interstellar travel, but you don’t want to do that. Instead, you make the programmable organic sentient beings as discussed in the previous post.
You don’t launch self replicating probes, as that is not within your capabilities yet. Instead, you send ships crewed by your organic robots to systems where you’ve detected exoplanets with oxygen atmospheres. Once they get there, they look for sentient life, or potential sentient life. If they find none, they move on to the next target system.
If they do find it, they begin to make biological robots like themselves, but who look like the planet’s inhabitants. Say they look like human beings when they find Earth (you knew were were going to wind up here, didn’t you?). And then they leave for the next target system
But these have a different programming. They live for 70 years, then spawn a successor and raise them over the next fifteen tears. The successor has all the memories of the parent organism, but they need to learn some things, ergo the fifteen year period. During these years, they grow to adult size. At the end of 15 years, the parent passes the rest of their memories to the successor, and then dies.
The successor repeats the cycle, ending with a successor who repeats the cycle, and so on. eventually the original organic robot ship returns, and they gather the last successors and download the data each line of organisms has been collecting for however long they were deployed, say 3000 years. These they radio “home.”
The problem is that biology is messy, and some of the organisms in question will inevitably malfunction sometimes.
@Kurtz: Here’s my “Homicide” story. The first time I lived in Baltimore it was in Fells point, in a higher crime era and when Fells was not the trendy neighborhood with fancy hotels it is now. My wife and I would do a 5K run down to the water and then east into the Inner Harbor, around the National Aquarium and back. Right at the beginning we would pass the local police station which was build on a pier right into the harbor (the building is now one of those fancy hotels). It gave me some reassurance (and some trepidation) to see cop cars there, uniformed police in the coffee shop across the street and even occasionally what I assumed was news reporters interviewing detectives in front of the building. A few months in, when I mentioned this to some neighbors, they started laughing. It turns out the police stations had all been shut down and consolidated into a couple of mega locations years before. What I was seeing was the set for “Homicide” and those news interviews were the hand held camera shots the series pioneered. I’m pretty sure I ruined at least one scene as once I ran in between a group of “police” and a “news camera” that was just off the sidewalk, not noticing the camera until I was right in the shot.
In other distressing new, I heard back from the solicitor in the UK. It looks like I am already a UK citizen if I want to be, just need to apply for the passport. Last tuesday was an emotionally dicy day for me. One of the biggest impediments was I needed confirmation whether or not I was a legitimate child of my father. Turns out for the first two years and one month of my life I wasn’t. That added a lot of stress to an already unpleasant day. I ended up having to research IL law and get my dad’s divorce petition and their divorce decree.
Lucky for me IL has been generally ahead of the curve on dealing with problems. Reading cases from the 60’s about legitimate children is incredibly depressing. In the late 60’s IL changed it’s law so that that if your parents marry post birth you become legitimized. Provided it was a legal marriage, if not you’re screwed. Hopefully, between that statute and the divorce papers, that should be enough. The difference between being legitimate and illegitimate (born before 2006) is about 4 more months and an additional 3000 pounds.
The added wrinkle is that I’m fairly certain that the fact that I’m trans is going to cause a massive problem. If I also have to get a GRC I’m going to have a stroke. I’m hoping that my amended birth cert is good enough for that, but I don’t know. The solicitor was kinda shocked I was able to turn up the first tranche of documents as fast as I did, but I’m still in a queue to get the process moving. With luck that will all be handled prior to the election.
Assuming the worst happens in November, and I get my passport in time, 2 days after the election I’ll be heading to Edinburgh to scout apartments/homes. I hate that I have to do this. I think the worst part was talking to a close friend, who is quite conservative about what my plans were and to have him dismiss it. He finally came out late in life and seems to think that the Dems are the problem and that, even though he doesn’t like Trump, the GOP will be better. I’ll feel bad when the shit hits the fan for him. But I’m not waiting to hit the fan myself.
Back up plan wise is to present myself as a refugee in Mexico and wait down there for things to come through. I know i’m closer to the Canadian border, but the tacos are better in Mexico and i’m pretty sure the tacos are shit in the UK. If figure if they ask why I’m there as a refugee, my quip will be “Todos estamos jodidos”.
@JKB: I watched that. It reminded me of some stuff. For instance I watched the TV broadcast during which Johnson said, “I will not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party…” Those words are burned into my memory, it was so shocking. I was 12 years old.
I have since that time read about how the experiences of 1968 led Jesse Jackson and his partner Chicago Alderman William Singer unseated Daly’s delegation in favor of their own, more democratically selected delegation.
So, in that day, the primary was antidote to racially biased party bosses and “machines”, opening up the party to be more representative. I don’t regret that, but times have changed, and we face different problems now.
And, I really don’t see either the big floor fights OR the riots outside happening. So while I see the parallels, they are far from perfect.
While I hope the preparation proves unnecessary, I wish you (and all in your situation) good luck and godspeed in your efforts to find safety and live your life in peace.
Unfortunately, convicted felon Luddites of Scandahoovian ancestry can’t take advantage of such plans. OTOH, I can at least act as a speed bump for the idjits chasing you.
It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.
The use of Apple’s very expensive goggles for entertainment has been promoted from the start. I can see that watching movies in 3D in a very immersive manner would be appealing. I’m far less certain that interactive entertainment, other than video games, has much demand.
I won’t make predictions, not about the future, but will share some observations:
1) The piece says one can watch along friends, presumably not even in the same time zone (though it doesn’t say that). Nice, but each person needs an expensive set of goggles. You can’t invite friends over to see a show or movies or the super bowl in Apple goggles unless each had a set. Not the way you can crown people in front of a TV, even one with a rather small screen.
2) While there are cheaper headsets, the prices are still high. $300 is better than $3,000. But that’s more expensive than many large screen TVs in the market, and as noted one can’t share goggles.
3) Smart phones are partly subsidized or financed by cell carriers. Otherwise their penetration at higher price points would be lower. Unless headsets/goggles get the same treatment, expect a low adoption rate.
4) Some people I follow on Youtube who were very enthusiastic about the Apple goggles, making several videos about them. Since then, they’ve had very little to say on the subject. granted they do other things, but you’d expect more on the new, shiny, revolutionary device only a few months on the market.
I guess we’ll see if the VR/AR sets are more than a niche use case, or a fad.
I mean, dark matter, dark energy, and now dark oxygen.
But it’s not. I refers to oxygen generation in a place where sunlight dens’t reach. Effectively a place that’s always in the dark.
I find it most interesting that oxygen gets generated without lifeforms. Though it seems to be a physical (as in physics) means rather than a chemical one.
Thanks, I do too. I had a friend in undergrad who was of Ukrainian Jewish decent. She told us a story about how her grandparents always had a suitcase packed in case they need to flee. I never understood her; until now. We’ve got a main plan to leave, a back up plan to leave, and a plan to flee. I’m not sticking around to find out what they are going to do to me or my children. I’ll take my chances with terf island.
Although, now that I’ve committed to doing this, I’m extra pissed about Brexit. An EU passport (or however that would exactly work for my situation) would be much superior. But, what can I do, people like to shoot their own dicks off for sport.
1) The piece says one can watch along friends, presumably not even in the same time zone (though it doesn’t say that). Nice, but each person needs an expensive set of goggles. You can’t invite friends over to see a show or movies or the super bowl in Apple goggles unless each had a set. Not the way you can crown people in front of a TV, even one with a rather small screen.
Oddly enough, I think this is going to become more and more mainstream. I would have thought VR was a minor fad until I met a new-ish friend. He’s big into VR and has gotten another couple people involved in it too. Did you know there are people DJ’ing in VR basically around the clock? and for decent sized audiences who are also in VR. Hell, our next party has a bunch of VR DJs coming to play with our group’s reality DJ’s. It’s gonna be a wild time. The plan is to have them in VR DJ’ing while they play for us. I don’t get it, but it will be fun.
@Kathy: I wore my first set of virtual reality goggles in 1991 at SIGGRAPH. Had an amazing time putting a virtual slice of toast in a virtual toaster. A few years later I was at a Dave and Busters paying way too much money to play a virtual reality game involving flying monsters of some sort. VR goggles were going to take over! And then… about five more cycles of “this time it is the real thing!”, with Apple’s being the latest. In the end, it will take off when there is something compelling enough to actually do with it that it makes it worth putting the gear on, which will probably come about by a combination of better things to do and making the hardware less burdensome. Apple management convinced themselves they had something that reached the breakthrough point. It didn’t. I’ll withhold judgement until they release their next version, but if that doesn’t do it, I think we’ll go to the down part of the cycle for another 3-5 years.
@MarkedMan: Meta is working this AR thing from the other side. They seem to be taking a set of glasses that people will be willing to wear for an extended period of time, and that don’t look too strange, and seeing what they can cram into them. They are on their third or fourth generation or so.
You don’t launch self replicating probes, as that is not within your capabilities yet. Instead, you send ships crewed by your organic robots to systems where you’ve detected exoplanets with oxygen atmospheres. Once they get there, they look for sentient life, or potential sentient life.
…and starve to death. That’s the problem with biological self-replication — it requires complex foods, which are exceedingly rare in the universe, and tough to produce in interstellar space.
Von Neumann machines are meant to be much simpler robots that only do three things: (1) harvest local resources; (2) reproduce themselves using those resources; (3) occasionally report back.
Since any race intelligent enough to build Von Neumann machines would understand that they were polluting the universe irretrievably, we can hope that most of them would not do such a thing.
@MarkedMan: My only experience with VR was when I was getting an emergency root canal at the dentist (circa 1999). It was an adequate distraction but nothing more in my mind.
Glad I am to have checked out yesterday. So much so, I think I’ll do the same for the rest of the week.
A kidney infection
Dehydration
Low blood pressure
A possible TIA
And a very adverse reaction to a medicine
The last caused caused by a resident’s blunder. Leonita* roared because of this
And I spent 2 weeks in the hospital. I’m so tired of Mike and Molly, Friends, and Gunsmoke. Truthfully I remember almost none of these I was feeling so bad.
Other than texts to the wife, I didn’t comment here or work on my next book till a few days ago.
So I got home yesterday afternoon. How am I doing? I played 11 innings of SOM baseball already and my kitty has spent time in my lap. Summary- I’m alive
Before coming to get me at the hospital yesterday, Leonita won a steaks race. Don’t you mean stakes race and what is she got a horse running a gulfstream? No I mean steaks. She went to BJ’s for groceries and while there found 4 packages of fillet mingeons mistakenly priced. They cost 20,99 a lb but someone priced them as chuck meat at 5.99. Christmas in July. We have plenty** of steaks for two months.s
Leonita will leave for work soon. I should be fine by myself.
*- Leonita the little female lion. She is normally a pussycat but when angered she can roar.
**- We have a 30 year old Sears freezer to store them in. I once told its story “The tale of prodigal freezer”
Yesterday CBS and ABC pre-empted regular programming for hours of talking heads blabbering about Biden’s resignation.
After the golf was over, NBC put on a NASCAR race
Talking heads and auto racing. Both go around in circles endlessly but at least the races come to an end.
@Bill Jempty:
First sorry to hear you had another hospital trip. I hope things are better and there isn’t another one in your future.
Second, as you were one of the earliest Biden needs to step aside posters, I just wanted to acknowledge that you were right after all.
@Bill Jempty: Home sweet home. Feel better soon, fingers and toes crossed.
@Bill Jempty: Glad your feeling better; getting old is a bitch.
One of the reasons I tuned out of politics last week. I don’t like or enjoy crashes of any kind.
After watching the Acolyte, I’m left with one question.
For about the nth time in Star Wars lore, we find a bunch of Jedi completely unaware of the existence of Sith, thinking them all extinct.
Ok. But then if the Jedi would be the only people armed with light sabers, why do they train so much on light saber duels? Wouldn’t it be like today’s naval powers training in XVIII and XIX century close range naval encounters and lines of battle?
Oh, and I believe there was some sort of story amid the light saber battles. It’s too bad, because the actor who plays Mae and Osha was very good.
The season ended with promises of fan service for next season, if there is one.
@Bill Jempty: Glad you’re well enough to come home. Yesterday was filled with welcome news — Mu and de Stijl sightings, that Biden-Harris thing, and now we find out you were released from the hospital!
@Kathy: I don’t think the story was served well by the structure of unreliable narratives. They didn’t need two entire episodes to tell the flashback from different angles. The first one added roughly nothing to what we knew at the time.
As far as light saber training goes — the light sabers are partly ceremonial, but have also shown themselves to be useful in many situations. The Jedi aren’t an army, and are very eager to not be seen as one.
Plus Khyber crystals respond to the force, so it’s very natural that the ceremonial weapon would make use of them.
Finally, people train in martial arts to learn self-defense all the time, and it’s not like there is an expectation of being attacked by ninjas.
@Gustopher:
Good news indeed. But where’s JohnSL?
The History Guy does a quick overview of how the convention of 1968 happened and what happened during it
@JKB:
Actually I watched it live back in 1968 (yes, I am that old) and apart from the same venue and an incumbent president decling to run, there is little that is analogous to today.
In 1968 there was deep bitterness between then Vice President Hubert Humphrey and those who supported Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.
There is nothing similar today, that is unless you believe that Joe Manchin or Dean Phillips have widespread support as an alternative to Kamala Harris.
I finally got around to reading the first book in the Revelation Space Series, by Alastair Reynolds, and earlier I read “The Prefect” by the same author, which was written 7 years after the first. They have truly interesting and epic plot points, and better than average characterization, but they suffer from a problem that I don’t know the proper literary term for, so I’ll call “scale”. As an example, in the Prefect there is a well run, if autocratic, government with separation of powers and rule by law, but then in crisis everything turns out to be all based on personal relationships and loyalty to individuals. Both books have characters who can make the tough decisions that will result in the deaths of thousands or even millions, but then can’t bring themselves to order the death of a single individual who is actively plotting murder and treason and who inevitably gets away due to this inaction and causes many more to die. In “Revelation Space” there is a ship that contains an almost infinite number of weapons of immense power and precision, each designed for a different purpose, but somehow the ship has nothing that can be used to accurately target an escaping space shuttle – until it has almost reached safety and then suddenly it can.
Isn’t this what editors are for? To call bullshit on logical breakdowns? I don’t want to be an editor, but I’d happily be the guy who says, “hey, if in Chapter 1 your hero can punch through a steel wall, you need a better reason than plot-convenience for why he falls to three unarmed guys in Chapter 20”
Has anyone else read this series? Does the writing get any better?
Good news! Homicide: Life on the Street will stream on Peacock.
As important, NBC apparently was able to secure the necessary music rights, so it should run as it was intended to be seen.
Though I doubt they would release a poorly mastered version, I hope the quality is better than the DVD releases.
How would you like driving this around while people point and laugh?
https://x.com/TheSnarkTank99/status/1815196770382549206/photo/1
@CSK:
Don’t know about that guy, but I’m back 🙂
Spent last week on holiday observing standard “no internet, etc” rules.
Week before was busy at work, and weekend before that at various family and election victory parties.
Now, what’s being going on while I was away?
*opens news”
Oh. Oh my.
*closes news*
I’d really like everyone to knock it off with the “interesting times” nonsense for a bit, OK?
So, a von Neumann probe is an interstellar probe that can replicate itself and launch the copies it makes to other star systems. as we don’t have any self-replicating machines, such a thing is currently impossible. It might be possible at some time in the future (who can tell?), insofar as the idea does not violate any laws of nature (that we’re aware of).
Some time in the late 80s, I read an argument, published in a magazine like Discover, that the absence of von Neumann probes all over the galaxy, including the Solar System, is proof that we’re the only intelligent technological species in the Milky Way (it might mean other things*).
Anyway, launching just one such probe, assuming they can be made, would result in exponential exploration, eventually covering the whole galaxy in a few thousand years.
Yes, but what about time? IN addition to being self-replicating, these machine are also probes. Surely a von Neumann probe sent to Alpha Centauri would keep reporting on conditions there for millennia. One assumes if it can self-replicate, it should also be able to self-repair (or self-replace if necessary).
Last, the closest thing to self-replicating machines we know are biological organisms, which are not machines (unless you’re a behaviorist who considers them such).
Still, seeing as how we are making great strides in synthetic biology, we might just make programmable organisms, in essence biological machines. Imagine now sentient beings made from scratch, who do what you program them to do.
More on that last later (it seems I’m supposed to be working or something).
*We might be the first, the last, we might have missed everyone, we might be under quarantine, etc.
@MarkedMan:
Read it, liked it, but as for logic? Nah.
Just have to turn off and go with the vibes.
(IIRC the excuse for the shuttle was the literal “ghosts in the machine” ie the Captain, and, it seems, others)
I’ll forgive a guy who thought up the starship name Nostalgia for Infinity almost anything. 😉
The headline of the day- Pro soccer game suspended when fans rain fish cakes onto the field
@charontwo:..Let’s Go Brandon!…
Obviously a fan of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson…
@Kathy:
Suppose you want to undertake interstellar exploration, and are most interested in studying other sentient life forms.
Your species is ill-suited for prolonged space travel. You don’t take well to low or zero g. You can’t hibernate in cryogenic conditions to withstand trips taking hundreds of years. And more obstacles.
But your civilization is very advanced in synthetic biology. You could modify members of your species to be capable of interstellar travel, but you don’t want to do that. Instead, you make the programmable organic sentient beings as discussed in the previous post.
You don’t launch self replicating probes, as that is not within your capabilities yet. Instead, you send ships crewed by your organic robots to systems where you’ve detected exoplanets with oxygen atmospheres. Once they get there, they look for sentient life, or potential sentient life. If they find none, they move on to the next target system.
If they do find it, they begin to make biological robots like themselves, but who look like the planet’s inhabitants. Say they look like human beings when they find Earth (you knew were were going to wind up here, didn’t you?). And then they leave for the next target system
But these have a different programming. They live for 70 years, then spawn a successor and raise them over the next fifteen tears. The successor has all the memories of the parent organism, but they need to learn some things, ergo the fifteen year period. During these years, they grow to adult size. At the end of 15 years, the parent passes the rest of their memories to the successor, and then dies.
The successor repeats the cycle, ending with a successor who repeats the cycle, and so on. eventually the original organic robot ship returns, and they gather the last successors and download the data each line of organisms has been collecting for however long they were deployed, say 3000 years. These they radio “home.”
The problem is that biology is messy, and some of the organisms in question will inevitably malfunction sometimes.
@Kurtz: Here’s my “Homicide” story. The first time I lived in Baltimore it was in Fells point, in a higher crime era and when Fells was not the trendy neighborhood with fancy hotels it is now. My wife and I would do a 5K run down to the water and then east into the Inner Harbor, around the National Aquarium and back. Right at the beginning we would pass the local police station which was build on a pier right into the harbor (the building is now one of those fancy hotels). It gave me some reassurance (and some trepidation) to see cop cars there, uniformed police in the coffee shop across the street and even occasionally what I assumed was news reporters interviewing detectives in front of the building. A few months in, when I mentioned this to some neighbors, they started laughing. It turns out the police stations had all been shut down and consolidated into a couple of mega locations years before. What I was seeing was the set for “Homicide” and those news interviews were the hand held camera shots the series pioneered. I’m pretty sure I ruined at least one scene as once I ran in between a group of “police” and a “news camera” that was just off the sidewalk, not noticing the camera until I was right in the shot.
@JohnSF:
Great to have you back again. Sorry I screwed up your screen name.
In other distressing new, I heard back from the solicitor in the UK. It looks like I am already a UK citizen if I want to be, just need to apply for the passport. Last tuesday was an emotionally dicy day for me. One of the biggest impediments was I needed confirmation whether or not I was a legitimate child of my father. Turns out for the first two years and one month of my life I wasn’t. That added a lot of stress to an already unpleasant day. I ended up having to research IL law and get my dad’s divorce petition and their divorce decree.
Lucky for me IL has been generally ahead of the curve on dealing with problems. Reading cases from the 60’s about legitimate children is incredibly depressing. In the late 60’s IL changed it’s law so that that if your parents marry post birth you become legitimized. Provided it was a legal marriage, if not you’re screwed. Hopefully, between that statute and the divorce papers, that should be enough. The difference between being legitimate and illegitimate (born before 2006) is about 4 more months and an additional 3000 pounds.
The added wrinkle is that I’m fairly certain that the fact that I’m trans is going to cause a massive problem. If I also have to get a GRC I’m going to have a stroke. I’m hoping that my amended birth cert is good enough for that, but I don’t know. The solicitor was kinda shocked I was able to turn up the first tranche of documents as fast as I did, but I’m still in a queue to get the process moving. With luck that will all be handled prior to the election.
Assuming the worst happens in November, and I get my passport in time, 2 days after the election I’ll be heading to Edinburgh to scout apartments/homes. I hate that I have to do this. I think the worst part was talking to a close friend, who is quite conservative about what my plans were and to have him dismiss it. He finally came out late in life and seems to think that the Dems are the problem and that, even though he doesn’t like Trump, the GOP will be better. I’ll feel bad when the shit hits the fan for him. But I’m not waiting to hit the fan myself.
Back up plan wise is to present myself as a refugee in Mexico and wait down there for things to come through. I know i’m closer to the Canadian border, but the tacos are better in Mexico and i’m pretty sure the tacos are shit in the UK. If figure if they ask why I’m there as a refugee, my quip will be “Todos estamos jodidos”.
@JKB: I watched that. It reminded me of some stuff. For instance I watched the TV broadcast during which Johnson said, “I will not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party…” Those words are burned into my memory, it was so shocking. I was 12 years old.
I have since that time read about how the experiences of 1968 led Jesse Jackson and his partner Chicago Alderman William Singer unseated Daly’s delegation in favor of their own, more democratically selected delegation.
So, in that day, the primary was antidote to racially biased party bosses and “machines”, opening up the party to be more representative. I don’t regret that, but times have changed, and we face different problems now.
And, I really don’t see either the big floor fights OR the riots outside happening. So while I see the parallels, they are far from perfect.
@Beth:
While I hope the preparation proves unnecessary, I wish you (and all in your situation) good luck and godspeed in your efforts to find safety and live your life in peace.
Unfortunately, convicted felon Luddites of Scandahoovian ancestry can’t take advantage of such plans. OTOH, I can at least act as a speed bump for the idjits chasing you.
It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.
The use of Apple’s very expensive goggles for entertainment has been promoted from the start. I can see that watching movies in 3D in a very immersive manner would be appealing. I’m far less certain that interactive entertainment, other than video games, has much demand.
I won’t make predictions, not about the future, but will share some observations:
1) The piece says one can watch along friends, presumably not even in the same time zone (though it doesn’t say that). Nice, but each person needs an expensive set of goggles. You can’t invite friends over to see a show or movies or the super bowl in Apple goggles unless each had a set. Not the way you can crown people in front of a TV, even one with a rather small screen.
2) While there are cheaper headsets, the prices are still high. $300 is better than $3,000. But that’s more expensive than many large screen TVs in the market, and as noted one can’t share goggles.
3) Smart phones are partly subsidized or financed by cell carriers. Otherwise their penetration at higher price points would be lower. Unless headsets/goggles get the same treatment, expect a low adoption rate.
4) Some people I follow on Youtube who were very enthusiastic about the Apple goggles, making several videos about them. Since then, they’ve had very little to say on the subject. granted they do other things, but you’d expect more on the new, shiny, revolutionary device only a few months on the market.
I guess we’ll see if the VR/AR sets are more than a niche use case, or a fad.
Duke Fakir, 88, the last of The Four Tops, has died. RIP.
Baby, I need your lovin’
Now, this sounds like a fad.
I mean, dark matter, dark energy, and now dark oxygen.
But it’s not. I refers to oxygen generation in a place where sunlight dens’t reach. Effectively a place that’s always in the dark.
I find it most interesting that oxygen gets generated without lifeforms. Though it seems to be a physical (as in physics) means rather than a chemical one.
From my email from The Atlantic:
Suddenly? Bwa ha hahahahahahaha.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/07/trump-looks-older-and-more-deranged/679186/?utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20240722&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=The+Atlantic+Daily
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Thanks, I do too. I had a friend in undergrad who was of Ukrainian Jewish decent. She told us a story about how her grandparents always had a suitcase packed in case they need to flee. I never understood her; until now. We’ve got a main plan to leave, a back up plan to leave, and a plan to flee. I’m not sticking around to find out what they are going to do to me or my children. I’ll take my chances with terf island.
Although, now that I’ve committed to doing this, I’m extra pissed about Brexit. An EU passport (or however that would exactly work for my situation) would be much superior. But, what can I do, people like to shoot their own dicks off for sport.
@Kathy:
Oddly enough, I think this is going to become more and more mainstream. I would have thought VR was a minor fad until I met a new-ish friend. He’s big into VR and has gotten another couple people involved in it too. Did you know there are people DJ’ing in VR basically around the clock? and for decent sized audiences who are also in VR. Hell, our next party has a bunch of VR DJs coming to play with our group’s reality DJ’s. It’s gonna be a wild time. The plan is to have them in VR DJ’ing while they play for us. I don’t get it, but it will be fun.
@Beth:
Sounds like Solaria with goggles instead of holograms.
Not that I object to avoiding physical contact with others, but I want it to be my choice, not unbreakable custom.
@Kathy: I wore my first set of virtual reality goggles in 1991 at SIGGRAPH. Had an amazing time putting a virtual slice of toast in a virtual toaster. A few years later I was at a Dave and Busters paying way too much money to play a virtual reality game involving flying monsters of some sort. VR goggles were going to take over! And then… about five more cycles of “this time it is the real thing!”, with Apple’s being the latest. In the end, it will take off when there is something compelling enough to actually do with it that it makes it worth putting the gear on, which will probably come about by a combination of better things to do and making the hardware less burdensome. Apple management convinced themselves they had something that reached the breakthrough point. It didn’t. I’ll withhold judgement until they release their next version, but if that doesn’t do it, I think we’ll go to the down part of the cycle for another 3-5 years.
@MarkedMan: Meta is working this AR thing from the other side. They seem to be taking a set of glasses that people will be willing to wear for an extended period of time, and that don’t look too strange, and seeing what they can cram into them. They are on their third or fourth generation or so.
@Kathy:
…and starve to death. That’s the problem with biological self-replication — it requires complex foods, which are exceedingly rare in the universe, and tough to produce in interstellar space.
Von Neumann machines are meant to be much simpler robots that only do three things: (1) harvest local resources; (2) reproduce themselves using those resources; (3) occasionally report back.
Since any race intelligent enough to build Von Neumann machines would understand that they were polluting the universe irretrievably, we can hope that most of them would not do such a thing.
@Beth: Good luck.
@MarkedMan: My only experience with VR was when I was getting an emergency root canal at the dentist (circa 1999). It was an adequate distraction but nothing more in my mind.
@MarkedMan:
Sorry, just got around to the open thread. Haha. That’s fantastic.