Mornin’. Merry Pubski!
After quitting my lackluster sales job, I managed to land a position with a non-profit near me. Now, instead of peddling some ironically “shady” solar panels door to door, I spend my days researching misleading or false advertising, compiling examples, and helping our legal team will to file complaints with the relevant agencies. Other roles: filing all of our media mentions, reviewing the legislation we are asked to endorse, adding to our website (WordPress HTML, but unlike the last project I had to do on WordPress this one wasn’t first coded by a stoned radio DJ), and more. In short, it’s kind of a dream job, and my partner and I are shifting other dreams to various back burners in order for me to keep it. Edit: My big project right now entails going after MLMs for misleading/false income claims. There’s a big one I’m working on right now that targets young men all across the developing world. It entails infiltrating their social media and marketing by pretending to be a struggling young man in need of direction (what a stretch...) and saving everything I can. In a couple months, we’ll file our complaint with the FTC.
The Superb Owl happened. But maybe more importantly, pitchers and catchers report in 7 days!?
It’s been my first winter in New England, and we have avoided winter almost entirely. Rhode Island had sharks because of how much warmer the waters were last year. Global warming is wild, and it is so frustrating sometimes to be an American in the midst of this (as well as the bigger headline news these days). Part of the reason I am so appreciative of this job is that it has given me new drive to try for elected office in the next few years. Hopefully that won’t be too late.
Oh yeah, and galen gave me a copy of The Art of Fielding, which I’ve been tearing through. Highly relatable for any young man who grew up in the rural US, I think.
hallo huebsch
things are continuing to go well - i had a lovely friday-saturday-sunday visiting my parents with my boyfriend. we had a little super bowl party and feasted on texmex abominations that would have made mr. bl00 cry - anyway it was the first time they had met and it went well: my mom said he was sweet and welcome back anytime, my dad said he seemed like a good guy (but quiet) - it'll take some time but i have every reason to be optimistic :)
anyway, hope you all had another good week
Superbowl watching parties are without a doubt the best place to express Tex-Mex. My beef is when people get all boujie about it and pretend it's some sort of "regional cuisine" rather than the kids' menu version of what the guy cutting the grass eats. Seven layer dip? Should absolutely be eaten with Tostitos and Michelob.
That said, I put out iberico, brie, apples, grilled kielbasa and TJ's finest yogurt spinach and kale dip to go with our Amstel. We ate lamb stew and homemade biscuits.
sounds fantastic, brie and apples is a deadly combo - normally for the super bowl we either make a big pot of beef stew, chicken ala king on mounds of tea biscuits, or make endless bacon-cheese melts but this year my dad wanted to mix things up a bit
the super bowl is at the perfect time of the year to have something rich so it's a time where getting bougie seems against the point - there's all year to be a fancy daniel, there should be a time to break out the pabst and go full kids' meal once in a while
No, no. Superbowl is where I go bougie AF. I enjoy the irony.
Brie and pears is even better but I didn't plan ahead (because I enjoy not planning ahead) and your pears need to be four or five days ripe. Often I'll go champagne as well - but the wife and mother-in-law were busy so it was me and the father-in-law and he barely tolerates Amstel.
The kid, meanwhile, pretty much had brie and apples from 3pm until bedtime. I'm obnoxiously proud of the fact that my daughter knew five different kinds of cheese before she was four.
Her upbringing has been nothing like mine.
minibl00 is a lucky girl :) i was probably half made of cheese as a kid too, my parents kept me supplied with goat cheese and other soft stuff to spread on sandwiches n all that
if a kid's gonna be spoiled with anything it should be tasty food in my opinion, starting out with a wide diet makes cooking hecka more interesting to kids - i loved cooking stuff with my mom and i think that's why i like to cook so much now
i like the idea of a fancy-dress-and-wine super bowl party - i'll keep that in my head for next year.
My friends started their own Super Bowl about a decade ago, I guess. The premise is that, because everyone - even the Bad Guys - are watching the Superbowl, superheroes can take the day off ... and go bowling.
The Super. Bowl.
So everyone shows up as their own made-up superhero, in their own superhero costumes, and they spend the day bowling.
The photos are worth it: https://www.espressobuzz.net/Events/2020/02-02-Supers-Bowl/
Animal Names
The other day, Dala and I were watching a nature documentary following a family of wildcats over the course of a year. In true nature documentary fashion, each one was given a unique name, which is fine. Names build connections and all. I decided then and there though, if by some weird happenstance I'm ever part of a documentary, I'm gonna give all of the animals names you'd expect a five year old to name their new pet. Names like Princess Sparkle Butt, June Bug, Tankmaster Thunderhead or Mr. Jim. Tell me you wouldn't watch a documentary about the lioness, Princess Sparkle Butt, as she makes her way across the African Jungle.
Video Games
The wife and I recently came across a system that's coming out, The Evercade, that really appeals to me for a lot of reasons. With the exception of a few titles here and there, The X-Box One has seen the least use of any generation of console I have owned (actually, the WiiU and Nintendo 2DS get way less, so much so that I forget I own them). Lately, the majority of the time I'm playing the X-Box, I'm playing retro games like the Sega Genesis Collection or the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection. There's something about classic games that are hard to beat, like no constant needs for updates, getting the complete game out of the package sans DLC, local multiplayer, pixel graphics being a huge treat, on and on I could go. So when I heard about this new system, about how it's gonna have legitimately licensed games on swappable cartridges, it got my interest. I know emulation is pretty big these days, so much so that systems like the GP2X aren't really necessary anymore because people can emulate on devices like the Wii, the Playstation Portables, etc. But legit, emulation isn't for me because I don't want to deal with the hassle of programming a device, and more importantly, it's a legal gray (and sometimes black and white) area that I don't even want to wander into. Similarly, while it's great to see mini consoles like the Mini-Nes, the Mini-Genesis, the upcoming Mini-TurboGrafx16, etc., I got rid of a lot of systems a while ago to make room in my house, and if those mini-systems are gonna take up a lot of space and not have swappable cartridges? I mean, they're less than what I let go of. But the Evercade? It seems to fit a lot of what I want. It's small, but can still be hooked up to the TV, I can play it right out of the box, there's classic games coming out on it, and there's no legal gray area about it. So I'm gonna get one, and give it a shot. I'm a little bit concerned about build quality, since it's not from a major company and I know some of those small time game companies have major quality control issues, but if it's halfway decent, I think it'll be worth it. I'll probably post my thoughts on it when I finally get my hands on it, in case anyone is interested.
My only regret is, Amazon seems to be the only place carrying it, and we all know how I feel about them. But I dunno, maybe buying something from an underdog company through an absolutely evil corporation is a morally neutral thing. Besides, I think it's the first time the wife and I will be getting anything from Amazon in ages, so I can at least take comfort in that.
Personal Health
I'm not comfortable talking about this, but I promised you guys an update when I brought this issue up and a promise is a promise, so here we go. Went to the neurologist the other week to talk about what's been going on lately. They said they think I look good for the most part, that most of what I'm dealing with is the result of being really stressed basically all the time and maybe just a bit of aging. They said if it would give me piece of mind, they could order a bunch of tests for me, I said "No thank you. The less tests the better." I'm still not completely convinced I'm in the clear, because I can't imagine so many problems stemming just from stress, but a relationship has been established, I'm welcome to come back, and that's good enough for me for now. I'm just gonna keep an eye on things, do my best to be careful, do my best to be healthy, and do my best to be vigilant. Besides, hospitals suck, I know I have a distrust in doctors, and if stress is the problem, the less I have to deal with all of that stuff, the better. So I'm just gonna keep on keeping on, because really, what other option is there?
It's been a good year, so far, guys. I hope you're all doing well. Seeing what goes on with you guys on Pubski is honestly the highlight of my week.
- I can't imagine so many problems stemming just from stress
When my brother landed in hospital and we didn't even know if he's going to make it, let alone come out without being mentally impaired, it took a massive toll on me. Already lost a brother when I was seven, and the fact I now could process more information made it worse. I was oscillating between extreme emotions, under and overeating, no sleep or crashing from exhaustion etc. It didn't end even when he came out of tumour extraction and continued for a few more months.
It didn't impair my ability to think or remember (I'd even argue stress triggers better recall in me, although that might be biased bullshit), but there's a picture of us where most people would mistakenly pick me as the one on chemo.
I'm happy you went to a neurologist and that your nerves are, if not calmed, then at least put mildly at ease. Be responsible and keep on being awesome, man!
You will be pleased to know there is a tradition of giving AKC-registered pets ridiculous official names to go with their totally normal "call names." I dated a girl whose sister bought a purebred Bengal whom she named Gargamel (even though his cat's name was Azrael but whatever). On Gargamel's paper it said "Lord Gargle Mellifluent Stinky Bunghole Flubbercat" or the like.
This one might be a bit all over the place.
Tomorrow night is lecture one for the Glacier module of the intermediate climbing course I'm taking. Learning things like 6:1 (or > 6:1) pulley systems for crevasse rescue, ice climbing fundamentals, steep snow ( > 50 deg ) travel, other rope techniques. Very excited! Very excited for where the future leads with this. Snow is still my favorite, glaciers are beautiful and part of my "maybe I'll move to Canada" is I have higher hopes for the glaciers of northern British Columbia and Alberta than I do the lower 48 states. That and healthcare.
Still going to Montreal in a couple weeks, excited for that. Had a conversation with my boss last week, couple hours. Great conversation (perfect conversation, I have a manuscript!). His opinion of me is that I can basically do whatever I want if I really want to, from his level (manager) to his former level (Director) to above (Vice President) in a Fortune 500 company - but he also said he thinks it's equally likely that I get "tired of all the bullshit" at these levels and go do something else. Funny that he sees me about the same way I see me. If I don't move to Canada I still really want a little place up north, I think the Methow is about the most peaceful place I've been to when it's not on fire. Won't mean much to those of you who don't live in the great state of WA.
Song of the week / year for me right now is probably a tie between Fire by Waxahatchee and The Process by Chastity Belt. Couple of tunes about mental well being, something I always struggle with. Struggling with a bit right now with the state of this country, the state of my future intentions, and being 28, I think. 28 is weird. 27 was weird but I think things are getting stranger as more and more friends of mine get married and have kids or talk about how those are important things to them. Or people saying they'll become important things to me as I get older (most of those people aren't distance runners or mountaineers...). Who knows. I sure don't.
I'm at Disneyland for my daughter's 9th birthday. It's exhausting.
I like badass roller coasters and can easily spend a day riding them. I find themed ride attractions mildly amusing but get tired of them after a few. Disney is mostly ride attractions and my daughter can only handle a few real coasters a day.
The Harry Potter ride at Universal was pretty amazing, easily the best non coaster ride I've ever been on. I laughed with glee for about ten minutes after I got off.
Hey y'all, doing much better this week than last. Had some long talks with some great people, and while I'm still feeling emotional I'm also dealing with those emotions well. Not dropping a long update today, but I wanted to echo applewood - Pubski is one of the highlights of my weeks. Craft thread too (coming soon TM). I love this community, and I hope everyone is doing well :)
Good morning hubski!
We are getting snow here so the university is closed and I am sitting at home watching the birds on the birdfeeder.
I have a big survey paper that needs to be updated that I keep putting off because it's mostly busywork....but it is also the next thing I need to finish to make progress towards graduating. Other than that, I need to make sure to drive a lot of progress on one of the projects I'm on this semester as one of the really good undergrads is graduating in May, the MS student is probably switching advisors, and another undergrad on the project just started a PhD and will probably be pursuing a different project.
I also recently picked up a knockoff Noga indicator stand for $20 on eBay and I will probably buy another — it's quite nice and much better than my super cheap mini version. I'm sure it's not nearly as durable and will require a bit of modification here and there to make it perfect, but the magnet and the arm locking mechanism are quite strong!
Also gotta replace one of the fuel pumps in my truck as it's been whining for a while and one of its check valves has gone bad. Maybe if the ground freezes enough I can get it into the basement so I don't have to sit on the cold gravel for hours.
The last month has been a whirlwind at work. Things are finally starting to settle down, and for once I feel like I'm going to survive this and not crash and burn.
I've been using 90% of my idle time on Breath of The Wild still. It's still amazing. But also Dwarf Fortress released a new version, so I'll have to find some time for that too, and music, and maybe some of the many hobbies I've pushed aside since forever.
Dwarf Fortress is a roguelike-inspired fantasy world simulator. That is, it procedurally generates a whole world with civilizations, monsters, religions, instruments, individuals, wars and history et cetera et cetera. The player then interacts with this world. There are two game modes, but it is most known for fortress mode in which the player directs a starting population of seven dwarves to inhabit a small area of the world and do whatever. You could say it's akin to Minecraft in that sense, which has cited DF as an influence.
DF has been in development for 13 years continuously, programmed by one person who does this full time via donations. He has said it will be his life's work. It's remarkable for it's unparalleled depth. For example, DF is anatomically detailed down to bones cartilage and nervous tissue, and combat between two creatures is a simulation of the material properties of the weapon being used against said organs and parts. That sort of depth is present in pretty much every facet of the game. Oh, and it's in ASCII. Currently, alpha version 0.47.01 is out.
Worth mentioning that it's going on Steam before too long because the brothers needed money for medical expenses.
If you decide to get into it now, download the "Lazy Newb Pack," a launcher for the game made by fans that includes some helpful utilities for getting started (as well as a tiles system that makes the game easier to look at for people who don't like interpreting ASCII).
OH BOY.
- Dwarf Fortress is barely a blip on the mainstream radar, but it’s an object of intense cult adoration. Its various versions have been downloaded in the neighborhood of a million times, although the number of players who have persisted past an initial attempt is doubtless much smaller. As with popular simulation games like the Sims series, in which players control households, or the Facebook fad FarmVille, where they tend crops, players in Dwarf Fortress are responsible for the cultivation and management of a virtual ecosystem — in this case, a colony of dwarves trying to build a thriving fortress in a randomly generated world. Unlike those games, though, Dwarf Fortress unfolds as a series of staggeringly elaborate challenges and devastating setbacks that lead, no matter how well one plays, to eventual ruin. The goal, in the game’s main mode, is to build as much and as imaginatively as possible before some calamity — stampeding elephants, famine, vampire dwarves — wipes you out for good...Dwarf Fortress may not look real, but once you’re hooked, it feels vast, enveloping, alive. To control your world, you toggle between multiple menus of text commands; seemingly simple acts like planting crops and forging weapons require involved choices about soil and season and smelting and ores. A micromanager’s dream, the game gleefully blurs the distinction between painstaking labor and creative thrill.
- NYT
Here's a comment I left about it:
Dwarf fortress is complex and challenging to master. The pursuit of mastery is why I keep coming back to it - there's so much to do, to see, to create. It's a massive, spiraling game and discovering what it has to offer brings me stupid amounts of entertainment. My first fortress was a hovel of dwarves eating planted mushrooms in a bloodsoaked dining hall made of dirt. My most recent fortresses have hundreds of citizens, living in marble bedrooms and drinking from golden goblets. I learned how to play, and it opened up other avenues for mechanical exploration. Recently, I've started a fortress defended entirely with ballista towers instead of a traditional military.
It's my favorite game of all time (at the moment), and I hope to keep playing it for years.
Here's one of my favorite bugs that rose from the complexity of the simple systems comprising the game's whole:
- I added taverns to fortress mode, so the dwarves will go to a proper establishment, get mugs, and make orders, and they’ll drink in the mug. And, you know, things happen, mugs get spilled, there’s some alcohol on the ground.
Now, the cats would walk into the taverns, right, and because of the old blood footprint code from, like, eight years ago or something, they would get alcohol on their feet. It was originally so people could pad blood around, but now any liquid, right, so they get alcohol on their feet. And then I wanted to add cleaning stuff so when people were bathing, or I even made eyelids work for no reason, because I do random things sometimes. So cats will lick and clean themselves, and on a lark, when I made them clean themselves I’m like, ‘Well, it’s a cat. When you do lick cleaning, you actually ingest the thing that you’re cleaning off, right? They make hairballs, so they must swallow something, right?' And so the cats, when they cleaned the alcohol off their feet, they all got drunk. Because they were drinking.
But the numbers were off on that. I had never thought about, you know, activating inebriation syndromes back when I was adding the cleaning stuff. I was just like, ‘Well, they ingest it and they get a full dose,’ but a full dose is a whole mug of alcohol for a cat-sized creature, and it does all the blood alcohol size-based calculations, so the cats would get sick and vomit all over the tavern.
- Tarn Adams, co-creator of DF
Use Dwarf Fortress wiki for tips on everything from interface to construction and more.
Here is a DF crash course:
And because there's been a new major release, I'd personally recommend trying previous one (0.34 or 0.44 from above video) first. At least until most game-crashing bugs and exceptions get ironed out.
- If this is a free indie game, why is it closed-source?
There's no obligation to make it open-source, especially considering how the donation model rarely works for those and DF is their only source of income. Also, it's developed in, IIRC, C without version control (ToadyOne said so during reddit AMA) for over a decade. Even if it was released, it's probably a mangled idiosyncratic mess that would take years to refactor or get anyone up to speed well enough to contribute anything.
Dwarf Fortress is awesome.
I am terrible at it.
This story is hilarious.
https://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introduction/
I'm rushing through the Ruhr valley at 300kph on the German high speed train network, on my way back from our yearly company ski trip to Austria. After weeks of mild weather and little to no snow, the weather decided to drop all snow all at once with 8-9 BFT wind and some rain to go by. So I had one day of wet snow skiing, and one day of braille-skiing as my colleague called it (visually impaired, all white, and only being able to trust your extremities). But it went pretty darn good! My skiing lessons have definitely paid off, and I have made some damn good progress in these two years.
We had a 40 minute transfer time in Zurich today. I couldn't help myself but spend my first time in Switzerland buying a new watch that I've been eyeing for forever now; a small Mondaine watch in the SBB station clock design style. It fits my incredibly small wrist well (I recently found out my wrist diameter is a notch smaller than my girlfriends' wrist), and I not only love the design because it signals my love of trains but also because it's incredibly easy to read the time on quickly.
Yesterday the skiing weather was so sucky (not only iced up pistes, but also severe avalanche warnings and even more rain) that I finally got around to finishing up the submission details for my academic paper and handing it in to the journal. Fingers crossed! I kind of expect it to be thrashed, but let's see. I have something I'm proud of and that's what matters.
The Dems couldn’t run a church bake sale, let alone a caucus. Trumps SOTU was powerful. Theatrical and will solidify his base. Clearly, he’s looking to get enough African American votes to retain swing states in the election. He’s playing to win.
Biden needs to fade away. I think this Friday’s debate is do or die for Biden, Klobuchar and Yang. Look for a a much more heated debate.
The top 3 in Iowa are likely to be the top 3 from here on out in my opinion. I’m still Yang Gang 100% but he needs to be way more aggressive on Friday.
I still think Trump will win. I don’t want him to. I’ll support the dem candidate no matter who it is.
Who do you think has the best chance to beat Trump?
I think Yang, of course. But if the top polling candidates, I think Bernie. That’s who I’d be most afraid of if I was Trump.
Personally, my #2 choice is Klobuchar.
Wish you were here, though I completely understand that you’re grateful you’re not.
If you had to bet 20 ETH on who the Dem nominee will end up being, who’d you pick?
My guess is that Pete is our next president. Biden isn’t going to get the turn out, because people aren’t excited about his candidacy. Warren can’t eclipse Bernie. Independents matter in the end, and Bernie can’t court them as well as Pete.
Bernie could make it tough for Pete by choosing a moderate VP early, but I’m not sure that’s his style.
Pete needs to improve his support in the black community, and he could do so with a smart VP pick.
Trump just doesn’t want his Deutsche Bank records to come out. I think he cares about that more than the presidency. Barr is already trying to get ahead of that by giving protection for 2020 candidates.
If you had to bet Re who the nominee will be, who is your choice?
Also, do you think the nominee will defeat trump?
Man, I just don't know.
I think Warren may be out of contention and she was my first choice.
I think Pete could knock Biden off the moderate slot with whites but he's got nothing with Blacks and unions.
Too many ways it could go for me to call it one way or the other.
I think Pete would have it worst against Trump but his online game is getting pretty sophisticated.
I think Trump is all base and isn't going to get many moderate votes but that he's been expanding his base the last few months.
Watched the debate. Yang is toast. Klobuchar was amazing. I have her money tonight. Buttigieg and Sanders both had strong nights.
Interested to see what happens in NH. Liz needs a big showing.
I don’t disagree with any of that. I bet there’s some life left in Liz. She could pull off a big debate night and she’s very like able in person. I had the chance to meet her briefly and I was immediately impressed. I like her. I think it’s likely Bernie is the nominee. A Bernie v Trump debate would be HIGH entertainment.
He’s definitely sticking around for a bit, but I don’t think he’ll be the nominee. I sure hope not. I have a gut feeling that Friday’s debate will actually bare consequences that will impact NH.