Category: Richard G

TIL:

TIL:

historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel list 22 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison. They conclude that Edison’s version was able to outstrip the others because of a combination of three factors: an effective incandescent material, a higher vacuum than others were able to achieve (by use of the Sprengel pump) and a high resistance that made power distribution from a centralized source economically viable.

My man Humphry Davy heads the list, but this is beginning to sound like one of those cases where it was actually the Dutch Arabs Chinese in 2000 BC.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Need

Originally shared by Casey G.

Need

In 2017 zoologist Dani Rabaiotti’s teenage brother asked her a most teenaged question: Do snakes fart? Stumped, Rabaiotti turned to Twitter. The internet did not disappoint. Her innocent question spawned the hashtag #doesitfart and it spread like a noxious gas. Dozens of noted experts began weighing in on which animals do and don’t fart, and if they do, how much, how often, what it’s made of, what it smells like, and why.

Why do hyena farts smell especially bad? What is a fossa, and does it fart? Why do clams vomit but not fart? And what is a fart, really? Pairing hilarious illustrations with surprisingly detailed scientific explanations, Does it Fart? will allow you to shift the blame onto all kinds of unlikely animals for years to come.

https://www.amazon.com/Does-Fart-Definitive-Animal-Flatulence/dp/1786488264

https://www.amazon.com/Does-Fart-Definitive-Animal-Flatulence/dp/1786488264//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

I’ve been in favour of a radical rethinking of the economy for years, but I’m not reposting this for political…

I’ve been in favour of a radical rethinking of the economy for years, but I’m not reposting this for political reasons. Instead, it’s to share something that writing a gaming book has made me realize about the history of shipping. It’s super simple but I never really confronted it before.

Raising a spar/sail or an anchor is the one task that requires most strength on a pre-industrial ship. It can define the crew requirements for a sailing ship, in fact – you need n crew to pull that rope. Add a winch and you can cut the number in half, or a third.

So why don’t all ancient ships have winches? Had they not invented them?

Of course they had, winches have been around as long as anyone can remember.

But if the ships were sometimes sailed and sometimes rowed, then they needed oarsmen. So many that a winch was unnecessary – you just get all the oarsmen to pull the rope. A winch just takes up space.

The Dutch East India Company had trouble manning the ships returning to Europe full of pepper and tea in the 18th century. A 1200 ton East Indiaman needed 70 crew, and it was hard to scrape them together once malaria, accidents, desertion and war had taken their toll. But they went out to Asia with 200 men aboard, sent to man a whole fleet of ships circulating around Japan, China and what’s now Indonesia, gathering goods, fighting colonial battles, relieving merchant factories, maintaining an empire. So returning 70 men home at the end of their contracts seemed easy to Head Office, in The Hague.

But in 1780 they were forced by war to switch to simpler pinks that only needed 30 crew for 1000 tons. 30 men? How? Because pinks had evolved more efficient rigs, traded speed and battle-readiness for cost-shaving sail plans. They were automated, in simple ways. They were shaped by a harsher economic climate and reflected specialized needs.

And after the East India Company collapsed, ships based on pinks became the norm, and there were just fewer mariners per ton of cargo.

And as a side-effect, cargo ships were no longer easily convertible to war service. Or piracy.

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

This article is chock-full of not only good data, but good analysis of how automation has been changing the labor market for decades – and how, if you haven’t already noticed, this isn’t getting any better.

https://medium.com/basic-income/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart-8b95f9bad71b//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

so… rectilinear forms, repetitive columnar structures, atria and courtyards…

so… rectilinear forms, repetitive columnar structures, atria and courtyards…

this is what an anthropological approach to architectural history is all about, really.

Note also how “Ancient Greece” means the Acropolis/Temenos/temple quarter. Not where the Ancient Greeks lived.

Originally shared by Linux Inside

The old motherboard looks like ancient Greece.

So in general although this Willett rye is delicious I think it’s inferior to Rittenhouse for making cocktails,…

So in general although this Willett rye is delicious I think it’s inferior to Rittenhouse for making cocktails, because it has a really concentrated rye flavour that doesn’t play nice with others.

But. In a Boulevardier in particular it’s ridiculously good. And you can mix it pretty close to 1:1:1 rather than the 2 whisky: 1 Campari: 1 Italian vermouth that Doug Ford suggests.

Damn, this is good. Like, if I had a Negroni I’d be wishing I had a Willett’s Boulevardier.

for Cindern Block

for Cindern Block

A spirograph program that makes Islamic geometric patterns.

A puzzle game based on intuitive mathematics.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/415170/Engare/

I love it.

Via Isaac Kuo with thanks.

Originally shared by Jennifer Ouellette

Engare review: The geometry of Islamic art becomes a treasure of a game https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/10/engare-review-spirographs-math-and-islamic-art-blend-for-quite-the-game/

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/10/engare-review-spirographs-math-and-islamic-art-blend-for-quite-the-game///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Jack and the Beanstalk is a coded retelling of the Norse Myth cycle. The beanstalk is Yggdrasil.

Jack and the Beanstalk is a coded retelling of the Norse Myth cycle. The beanstalk is Yggdrasil.

In the rare first editions Jack has a brother, Luke, whose pet dog threatens to eat the neighbourhood kids and also the moon.

It’s written in this coded form to keep it secret from adults who, having handled money, are no longer trustworthy.

I don’t want to defend Zak.

I don’t want to defend Zak. I don’t intend to, I’ve seen him do things that I feel are badly wrong. I tend not to call him on it because I know that I don’t know the whole picture.

It sounds like I’m a few months behind where you’ve got to with him, and that might be the whole reason for me not simply agreeing with you.

I have felt intimidated by Zak’s way of interacting, his demands to control speech, his ability (now reduced) to throw people out of the club. You could argue that he intimidated me into removing my supporting +1 for Patrick, although I feel like it was my own (conflicted and difficult) decision, based on my still not being sure what was happening on the reddit thing.

On the other hand, he’s one of very few people who can be relied upon to provide useful, honest feedback on my work. There’s a side to that disdain for feelings that’s valuable. It’s just not for everyday discourse.

The bullying is not valuable. I really, really wish he would listen to Patrick and change his behaviour, but I have little hope.

Honestly I don’t really ever want to take sides for or against anyone – I think this whole language of “supporting” or “standing by” people online is kinda silly, like sending hopes and prayers. I’ve kind of made a mental note to say “OK, this is bullying. Let’s try to find out if there’s a way to have this discussion where nobody gets hurt” next time I see it… but I think I’m probably 3 years too late with that approach. I don’t let him bully on my threads… and he doesn’t, but he still bullies on other people’s and it’s a problem.

So I’m not defending Zak. But. Here are some things I have in the back of my mind, when I’m weighing whether to wade into it with him:

1. lots of people hate him and have lied about him. I guess he has a siege mentality and an us or them perspective and I’ve watched that develop since 2008. It keeps getting worse. I would like to do an intervention before he hurts himself physically but again, I’m probably years too late.

2. it sounds like his girlfriend is dying slowly and that will inevitably bankrupt both of them before the end. I have no idea how he manages to do anything under those circumstances.

3. his whole persona, from porn to appearance to gaming to political advocacy has always been “fuck you I’m here and alive” plus “fuck you I care about these people and will fight for them” and while the “fuck you” aspect has served him well in getting attention (for his own work, for the advocacy, for being at the center of things) it seems like it’s also his curse. The mask that becomes the face. It should not surprise us that he is who he is. But I kinda think we all just got used to him, so his basic abrasiveness keeps sneaking up on us.

He’s talked himself into an untenable position regarding online discussion. I would still like to try to bring him back from that, because he has so much to offer that it’s a tragedy to let him go. I’m pretty sure that cannot be done by mirroring his own behaviour. And meanwhile people get hurt.

Anyway, that’s why I’m reluctant to take sides, even while I’m not willing to defend him.

A pair of Ocean Liners converted to auxiliary cruisers fought a pitched battle in 1914.

Originally shared by Host For the End

A pair of Ocean Liners converted to auxiliary cruisers fought a pitched battle in 1914.

Read that again.

Basically the Germans put some artillery and machine guns on an Ocean liner. The British did the same thing. Cap Trafalgar was actually disguised as the Carmania at the time the battle occurred.

An auxiliary cruiser would be a wonderful vessel for CoC characters venturing to the south pole, to visit the mountains of madness. And the implications for space vessels pressed into service as warships seems obvious.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/desperate-fight-death-rms-carmania-vs-sms-cap-trafalgar-1914.html//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

So I finally finished Black Sails.

So I finally finished Black Sails. And although I could gripe about its soap-operaness, the one-bound-Jack-was-free boss fight… it won me over in the moment with its sheer cheek.

– SPOILERS BELOW –

no, really.

Also discussion, so if you’re up for that, it’s not just a summary.

OK?

OK.

The cheek consisting of Rackham’s voiceover speech telling us “the story is more important than the truth,” while the pictures tell us that the stories we knew before (from Johnson, from Stevenson, from history books) are all secretly wrong.

Fine. They successfully sneaked out from under the tragic promise of the premise – that we were going to see the final downfall of the Great Pyrates into the squabbling over a dead man’s chest that animates Treasure Island (which itself can be seen as a diversion from RL Stevenson’s own island-hopping white man’s tropic hetertopic flight from England). Well done. Most piratical. And it’s nice that Mary Read finally shows up in the closing minute, for those of us who were wondering why she was absent.

But.

There’s a bigger tragedy lurking in the margins. And like the Mary Read bit, they don’t beat us over the head with it. It’s the tragedy Madi and Julius saw coming, and it comes out of the exact calculus of what it takes to make comfort for each of the different characters and the social classes the represent. And the conclusion – the happy ending that the camera lingers on – is happy only for the individuals. Flint’s incipient class war is nipped in the bud and Flint himself doesn’t get another word in while it happens; he’s explicitly bought off by directorly sentimentalism. Madi tells Silver how he betrayed her, but even she stops short of spelling it right out:

the pirates have the option of retiring, through a sufficient stratagem. With money and powerful friends they can make a space for themselves in the Empire – even continue to tweak its nose a little, within strictly set bounds. And they will die eventually in their beds and the Empire will smooth them over and Nassau will by degrees become a colonial town like any other and maybe that means that a little yearning voice will be left over, singing counterpoint to the great imperial march of the 19th century, but we all know about the inevitability of this. The bigger pirate project of 1776 will go the same way, yielding another empire with different serial numbers but no fundamental restructuring of the engine of power.

But the maroons – the blacks – have nowhere to go, no victory, no accommodation . Nor will they, for centuries. They can stay on their island as long as obscurity lends them security – what, 10 years? But the pirates got their comfort and abandoned the project of making a place free of slaves. I bet Nassau still runs slave plantations, in fact, just outside that tavern the show offers us as synecdoche of the new order.

And eventually Madi comes round. She meets Silver on his lonely headland. Aww. Why? Maybe because it’s happened, the Empire has come, and she needs a white husband to keep her off the sales block. We don’t find out, the story’s the thing.

The story – the book we see Mrs. Hudson reading to children, that depicts the pirates as cannibals driven by a thirst for violence and ruin, each reassuringly put to a lawful end – is an elegy for an age that, in fact, still hasn’t finished. Rackham’s (and Max’s) protection racket tells us that – piracy is only officially gone from Nassau – and maybe the point of the whole show is that you can’t really trust any story you’re offered – certainly not this one, that has Long John Silver in it. But in the end the show continues to write the black people out of the narrative. Their more desperate nightmare is the one Silver can’t face.

So I finally went to the Mutter Museum of medical oddities in Philadelphia.

So I finally went to the Mutter Museum of medical oddities in Philadelphia. And it was about as fascinating and unsettling as I was expecting – pickled punks, preserved dissections, so many different kinds of conjoined twins. But the thing that sticks with me is the wall of skulls, because it was absolutely a random hireling/NPC generator a la Chris Kutalik – optimally each skull had place of collection, name, biographical remarks and diagnostic remarks, often tied to the cause of death.

My favourite:

Geysa Fekete de Galantha, Magyar

Calvinist, Hussar, deserter, guerrilla.

I could totally play that guy.

http://muttermuseum.org//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

A few pages into my first Neal Stephenson (Quicksilver) I’m alternately delighted and irritated.

A few pages into my first Neal Stephenson (Quicksilver) I’m alternately delighted and irritated. Nice turns of phrase – “a voice that carries on the air forever like the smell of smoke” interrupted by clumsy “well, young Ben Franklin, as you know the history of alchemy really got going 90 years ago when…” type exposition.

Opinions? Embarrassing anecdotes? Favourites?

Play report:

Play report:

a lot of planning, scouting. Chris P.’s mercenary woulda totally died if I’d had the Arduin tables ready to hand. As it turns out, he’ll be out of action for a couple of weeks.

Birds hate other birds. They also fear crocodiles, but if they’re assured the crocs are on their side, they’ll take out their death urges on other birds first.

Jason Kielbasa has discovered the Dick Move. I confidently expect that this will kill the whole campaign.

this is distressingly similar exactly the campaign I always run:

this is distressingly similar exactly the campaign I always run:

Bad cosmic weather, or too many beasts have attached themselves to the sails and weighed it down. The further you go without stopping to scrape of these horrifying barnacles the more dangerous the trip will be, eventually scraping your metaphysical hull against the tip of a sphere, causing reality to crash right in to you.

Keeping the ship running becomes a driving factor. Making the ship nicer, or getting a better ship, or hijacking and staffing a horizon fort.

http://whatwouldconando.blogspot.com/2017/10/campaign-ship.html//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

“Listen up, my good friend!

“Listen up, my good friend! I do not want to hide from you that we are still at terrible risk. Grab your gold and valuables and all your important papers and come back on deck. You never know what might happen. If those three emergency sails that we just brought up get broken then we’re lost… but come on up! And bring that bottle of Schiedam gin with you.”

Translated words of a sea-captain headed to the East Indies, reported in A. Voogd, De scheepvaart op Indie en de Rotterdamsche Lloyd (Rotterdam 1924)

An article about restaurant menus as guides to imaginary worlds (that overlap our own worlds via tourism).

An article about restaurant menus as guides to imaginary worlds (that overlap our own worlds via tourism).

James Aulds Tiki reference!

Me: steamship reference!

Just about any DM: these are the weirdest artifacts. Imagine trying to reconstruct a world via the information on restaurant menus. It’s not quite a potion recipe book, not quite a travel guide, not quite reliable as a guide to the Kitchen Levels.

article title: “Restaurant Menus and The Geographical Imagination:

Recreating The Exotic In America, a Glimpse Into 1940’s and 1950’s Menus”

At same page:

“Mediating Exploration: Missionaries and the Imagining of Indigenous Cultures”

“Taking Home the Pyramids: Andrew D. White, a Tourist in 19th-Century Egypt”

http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/Architourism/exhibition/Restaurant%20Menus%20and%20the%20Geographical%20Imagination/index.html//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

In 2049 women’s breasts will be uniformly perky but boring.

In 2049 women’s breasts will be uniformly perky but boring.

Robot boyfriends will be so common that there will be no need to advertise them or mention them in any way.

Also, what if you’d told Harrison Ford in 1977 that he would be reprising all his most famous characters in 30-40 years, mostly for them to get kicked around by vaguely Russian, vaguely sexy martial artist chicks?

In the future people will be as shallow as robots, which is to say as shallow as this film thinks you are today.

NOTE: THE COMMENT THREAD BELOW CONTAINS SPOILERS. READ ON AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Best thing so far in The Atrocity Archives is that when they get into the archive and look at it, the jocular…

Best thing so far in The Atrocity Archives is that when they get into the archive and look at it, the jocular gallows-humoury writing style gets gut-punched and can only barely keep narrating.

It’s very elegant. He doesn’t tell you it’s a gut punch. He just lets it be, and communicates the change in mood through the narrator’s voice.

One for Scrap Princess – the British National Maritime Museum’s collection of Punch and Judy puppets, featuring…

One for Scrap Princess – the British National Maritime Museum’s collection of Punch and Judy puppets, featuring Death, the Devil and the Crocodile.

http://images.rmg.co.uk/?service=set&action=show_content_page&language=en&set=176&ref=news&utm_source=Royal+Museums+Greenwich+Picture+Library+Newsletter&utm_campaign=00e4e5b144-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_06_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_951cfb5066-00e4e5b144-37651429//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Why are the library search functions so broken on Apple’s iPhone Music app?

Why are the library search functions so broken on Apple’s iPhone Music app?

I have music on my phone – multiple albums by a single artist. The phone only finds half of it if you search for the artist’s name. If you search by song it finds the song, but there’s a whole album it can’t see if you search by album or artist.

Looking for a new MP3 player for my iPhone that isn’t broken. All it has to do is:

1. be searchable

2. find the music I have downloaded on my phone

3. not try to sell me a subscription service to stream other music that isn’t on my phone

4. not lie to me about what’s available. Yes I may own a song, but if it’s not on the phone right now, I don’t want it to come up in the lists and then I click on it only to be told I can download it thereby using cellular data and hard drive space.

that’s all. Anyone?

I’m not completely in love with Charlie Stross’s The Atrocity Archives – it feels a bit too much like the nerd-bait…

I’m not completely in love with Charlie Stross’s The Atrocity Archives – it feels a bit too much like the nerd-bait it appears to be on the surface, and 2004 is a surprisingly long time ago in internet years. And there’s a lot of ISO 9000 gags that remind me of James Raggi’s general complaint about cyberpunk – that it’s too much like looking out of the window. But then this:

“but if I do that… we’ll never find out if the last thought to pass through the mind of the captain of the Thresher was “it’s squamous and rugose!” or simply “it’s squamous!”

and the bugger’s completely won me over. Even though I can see the shiny hook under that fly.

So try this, via Alley Twenty Six:

So try this, via Alley Twenty Six:

Montego Lei

1 oz. Campari

1 oz. Hamilton Black

½ oz. Beefeater

½ oz. Punt e Mes

½ oz. orgeat

¾ oz. lime juice

Shake; strain into snifter filled with crushed ice.

Garnish with mint bouquet & edible flower [they use a nasturtium].

This is not sweet. It slows me down after having drinks like, say, a Mai Tai. If you like bitter stuff, it’ll be your bag.

I don’t know exactly when or why the US decided education wasn’t really important.

I don’t know exactly when or why the US decided education wasn’t really important. I’m tempted to say it was with the end of the Cold War, but it might’ve been before.

Late attempts to staunch the bleeding – the recent surge in favour of promoting STEM subjects and careers – are piecemeal affairs. There are online courses and private schools taking advantage of the new focus, but basic issues like providing teachers who can afford to concentrate on teaching are too complex for public institutions to face. In short, teaching just isn’t taken seriously in the US (or the UK).

And if you’re outside an approved STEM field, you don’t even get lip service: arts and humanities programs are cutting back or shutting down everywhere, because the government, investors, and even some parents and students have decided they’re not important. Language programs are where I see the biggest ironies – we know the economy is globalizing, which this decade means that the hegemonic status of English is slipping. Does that mean we should teach more languages to be competitive? No money, don’t be silly. Some fields and aspirational institutions can get by without paying living wages – there are enough independently wealthy people around who’ll do it as a hobby. That was how it worked in the 18th century, after all. And following the 18th century model, that means that some fields (art, music, history, literature) will only be fitting subjects for the rich.

A lot of this is to do with having less surplus in the economy – or at least less of it that’s available to be applied to public goods. A lot of that is governments and companies prioritizing other things (old fashioned corruption, I suspect).

I have kids rapidly approaching the age of college applications. I’ve been thinking about which majors seem like good bets, which places offer good opportunities, just what exactly constitutes value for money. But now I’m going to start asking another question: how many of the faculty here can live on their teaching? How many are valued sufficiently by the institution that we can be confident they’ll be back next semester, in good enough health to provide proper instruction?

Originally shared by Michael Verona

We build the future on the backs of the homeless.

Sex work is one of the more unusual ways that adjuncts have avoided living in poverty, and perhaps even homelessness. A quarter of part-time college academics (many of whom are adjuncts, though it’s not uncommon for adjuncts to work 40 hours a week or more) are said to be enrolled in public assistance programs such as Medicaid.

They resort to food banks and Goodwill, and there is even an adjuncts’ cookbook that shows how to turn items like beef scraps, chicken bones and orange peel into meals. And then there are those who are either on the streets or teetering on the edge of losing stable housing. The Guardian has spoken to several such academics, including an adjunct living in a “shack” north of Miami, and another sleeping in her car in Silicon Valley.

[…]

…institutions also recognize the allure of part-time professors: generally they are cheaper than full-time staff, don’t receive benefits or support for their personal research, and their hours can be carefully limited so they do not teach enough to qualify for health insurance.

This is why adjuncts have been called “the fast-food workers of the academic world”: among labor experts adjuncting is defined as “precarious employment”, a growing category that includes temping and sharing-economy gigs such as driving for Uber. An American Sociological Association taskforce focusing on precarious academic jobs, meanwhile, has suggested that “faculty employment is no longer a stable middle-class career”.

Six-figure educations and minimum wage professors – where does all the money go?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/28/adjunct-professors-homeless-sex-work-academia-poverty//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

This is genius.

This is genius.

And terrible. It’s the sort of clever clever intellectual exercise I love as a joke but I can still see the weft of a deeply stupid nationalism waiting to be activated out of it.

Maybe I’m suspicious because this is exactly what Turkmenbashi’s government did to the Turkmen language in the 90s, “cleaning it” of Persian, Russian, Arabic and English “incursions.” Making the next generation unable to read the works of the countries next door.

Also, if you really want this, speak Dutch.

Originally shared by Frank Mitchell

For GMs or players who like to talk funny in character, I present Anglish.

Anglish is English stripped of its non-Germanic influences, primarily French, Latin, and Greek. If you’re in an alt-history where the Norman Invasion (1066) failed, or just want to pepper your speech with strange-sounding words, learn a few Anglish equivalents to our English.

For bonus points, use Middle English syntax and pronunciation. No one will understand you.

http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/Main_leaf//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

This is a private message regarding Paolo:

This is a private message regarding Paolo:

….I genuinely don’t know what to do this time. I’ve known Paolo for years and he’s a good guy. I’ve seen Zak bully people for years and I find it credible that he’s continued to mess with Paolo after Paolo blocked him. This time, for the first time, for me, it’s personal and I feel like I should do something, but I don’t know what.

I totally agree that the answer is not a crusade or high horses (that’s how we got to this point, too many damn Lone Rangers), but I don’t want to just be a bystander, to let it happen without speaking up. I think there’s a real problem and I think I’m not the only one who feels like enough is enough, so… I understand the feels going around.

The more excitable people get, though, the more depressing the come-down when it all blows over, again.

My son’s high school curriculum has firmly embraced Gunder Frank and is teaching that China was the center of the…

My son’s high school curriculum has firmly embraced Gunder Frank and is teaching that China was the center of the world economic system before the 17th century.

Good.

………but it’s making a bunch of dodgy claims along the way.

Is it really true that the advent of gunpowder broke the power of the aristocracy in Europe by knocking down local castles? Hmmmmm up to a point but I have a bunch of star-shaped cannon fort plans that suggest the transition was expensive and painful but not overnight bourgeoisie. And who drove those cannons around, right up to Napoleon?

Was the compass not important to Asian traders? Maybe not as important as it was to Europeans, but on one hand, we’re told that Chinese traders already knew the way to the Spiceries, on the other, that Muslim traders spread quickly and changed the markets throughout the Indian Ocean oecumene partly using the compass. Sooooooo…. no you must decide: compass good or compass bad?

And none of that’s as harmful to understanding as the idea of modern nations being projected backwards, and making decisions as interested historical actors. So we’re told that gunpowder was good for Europeans because it ushered in Capitalists and helped Europeans spread into the Americas, Africa and Asia, and that it was bad for China because it helped the Mongols swipe their territory and overcome the Great Wall.

But then what;’s Mongol China? Are we saying gunpowder didn’t revolutionize China because it wasn’t in the hands of someone we call a Chinaman?

It wouldn’t surprise me: I’ve already learned that my son’s course splits sea mechants up into “Chinese,” “Indian” and “Muslim.” So what that does to a Chinese Muslim like Zheng He I don’t know.

I’ve been limping toward a post on Tim Powers’s monsters for a while, but I always have one more book to read before…

I’ve been limping toward a post on Tim Powers’s monsters for a while, but I always have one more book to read before I can do the topic justice.

Is anyone else on this trek with me? Does anyone even know what I’m talking about? Kenneth Hite?

So now I’m finishing up Medusa’s Web and it turns out… it’s not quite the same monster as in Declare and/or Stress of Her Regard but it’s right in the same constellation of ideas. So close, in fact, that these all might be the same monster refracted through different observers.

And of course much of the time it doesn’t really behave like a monster at all, more like just a set of routines that people can’t leave well enough alone.

Features:

1. looks like a mundane thing – rocks, squiggles, whirlwinds/cloudy gusts

2. behaves like a wave form – can be destructively interfered-with, subjected to double slit experiments, reflected/refracted into prisons etc.

3. kind of intelligent and motivated but mostly on the level of “I eat you now” or “we remove threat.”

4. impossibly ancient/eternal.

5. possessed of or manifested through “spin” – more literally than quarks, less literally than actual whirlwinds.

6. capable of bestowing great gifts on humans but only to their destruction, because the kinds of people who want the gifts and are willing to pay the price are uniformly assholes.

7. kinda vampiric, or psychic-vampiric, or full-on blatantly vampiric.

So far the only books I’ve found that don’t participate at all in this pattern are the first Powers books I ever read: Anubis Gates and Drawing of the Dark.

on the uselessness of medieval pictures of dragons:

on the uselessness of medieval pictures of dragons:

“I found that dragons, as shown in the old pictures, were just plain goofy… done by a sculptor or painter to fulfill the function needed by the art piece that was under way — basically a one-purpose dragon. If the dragon were shown in the air, for example, it would look very nice; but there would be no explanation of what this dragon does when it’s not in the air. Or, if it were shown on the ground, it would be this amazing ferocious thing, and it would have little bitty bumblebee wings…”

…what changed in our aesthetics?

I suspect 3 things:

1. universal education in biology and mechanics has reinforced a modern aesthetic of “naturalism,” where we feel like we know roughly what it might take to keep something airborne. I imagine our collective prototypes for this are small birds and aeroplanes.

2. the age of dinosaur discoveries and/or increasing secularism might have made us think of dragons as animals rather than demons. For a supernatural entity, out-of-scale body parts might increase rather than decrease the horror, lending an uncanny wrongness to the proportions that destabilizes our assumptions about the creature’s abilities.

3. children’s book illustration, where things are often made squatter and more bubble-like to show that they’re cute/non-threatening/just for fun. I don’t know exactly when chibi came to mean suitable for pre-schoolers or who’s responsible (Disney? Warner?) but it’s within the last century and now it’s the standard, anything that uses those proportion cues is instantly and lazily ridiculous. Round things that you can see all of are reassuringly graspable. When film directors want to make something scary they have it frame the scene and bleed off the edge (in the celebrated example of Alien, the moment you get to see the whole monster is widely cited as the moment it loses its mystique).

But the one-purpose dragon – that’s an interesting idea. One with tactical implications. Or, what if it could shape-change between scenes – a legless amphiptere in the air, a wingless wyrm on the ground? What if it were always just what it needed to be for this moment – squeezable enough to slide under the door, strong enough to carry off the cart, broad enough to block the gate? As a demon or genie, why shouldn’t it be?

Originally shared by Michael S (chgowiz)

Say what you will about the CGI wizardry that went into creating Smaug or the dragons from GoT… but after reading what was done to bring Vermithrax Pejorative to life, I still think that 1980s dragon is still the gold standard. It’s also relevant in that I’m preparing a Ral Partha Great Fire Dragon figure for painting… and Vermithrax is likely to be my model for coloring.

https://monsterlegacy.net/2013/04/14/vermithrax-pejorative-dragonslayer/

Ral Partha figure: http://ironwindmetals.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=7010

https://monsterlegacy.net/2013/04/14/vermithrax-pejorative-dragonslayer///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Hey – I know you experimented with having multiple profiles on G+, did you ever figure out a way to have…

Hey – I know you experimented with having multiple profiles on G+, did you ever figure out a way to have posts/comments from one forwarded to the other, or anything like that?

I’m sidling toward getting something published and I probably don’t want my personal/work email attached to my G+ face that everyone uses, so I’m wondering if there’s some way I can migrate my current traffic/circles across to another account – one that I could quietly shut if I had to.

Jacques Cousteau proposed building cities under the sea.

Jacques Cousteau proposed building cities under the sea. There are arguments in favour of it, especially in the event of climate change or stripping of the ozone layer.

Still, I immediately think of post-apocalyptic explorers finding the abandoned shells of these subaqueous cities and going “so they were air breathers who returned to the depths, even though that meant they had to live in a bubble?”

“Decadent!”

http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/issues/22/ideas-of-living/766/conshelf-ii?utm_source=ENnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2017-09-25_newsletter//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

There is a debate regarding who wrote Captain Charles Johnson’s Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates,…

There is a debate regarding who wrote Captain Charles Johnson’s Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, the source out of which 90% of the pirate genre is built. Some people say it’s not that surprising we know nothing else about Johnson because nobody was keeping good records in the 1730s. Other people say it’s actually Daniel Defoe because it’s too well written to be anyone else.

Either way, as the book that launched a 300 year pop culture love affair with Blackbeard and all the other Caribbean pirates, it’s clearly one of the most influential works of English letters. So my question is, is it the most popular example of popular history ever, or the most enduring example of historical fiction? Or both/something else?

Listening to Carmina Burana, eating buknade, it occurs to me that I’m really glad I’m not living in the Gothic…

Listening to Carmina Burana, eating buknade, it occurs to me that I’m really glad I’m not living in the Gothic Revival. Because although I admire quite a few Gothic Revival works, wanting things to be more medieval is stupid.

I’m also kind of glad not to be living during that shock of the new high modernism moment, but really Gothic Revival is the bullet I’m glad I dodged.

what’s your position on uncircling Greg Gorgonmilk?

what’s your position on uncircling Greg Gorgonmilk? I just caught up with his Captain America/Nazis/violence threads and, while I’m not in the “punch a Nazi for American Freedom!” camp, and both those threads were dumpster fires, I also don’t want to ditch him because of stuff other people in his corcles said.

That stuff he said to More en was stupid and wrong, though.

The Lego Batman Movie is, quite genuinely and without reservation, the best movie I’ve seen this year.

The Lego Batman Movie is, quite genuinely and without reservation, the best movie I’ve seen this year. Certainly the best comedy I’ve seen in several years. Unreservedly the best Batman movie since 1966. Except possibly the Heath Ledger one, but I haven’t seen that yet.

The batdogmech bit alone is worth the price of admission.

I had zero interest untilI saw this bit, without sound, on the aeroplane. And then I watched like 7 forgettable, formulaic movies on the flight. Man the general standard right now is bad.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VFk5LBW_EBc//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Reading Ulan Dhor, in which our pseudo-medievalish hero goes to an ancient city, wakes up the sleeping ultratech…

Reading Ulan Dhor, in which our pseudo-medievalish hero goes to an ancient city, wakes up the sleeping ultratech “mage” Rogol Domedonfors and starts a genocidal civil war.

So damn LotFP.

Also so replete with “applicability” and satirical spirit that I suspect it’s a roman a clef – which would let it off the hook of being kinda a big pile of incidents with only the slenderest connecting thread (I’m waiting to get to the end of the collection before passing judgment on that).

Is Rogol Domedonfors in fact Robert Moses? He’s a classic Oz wizard who prefers his own architecture to the people who are supposed to live in it.

look this is just a thought, but…

look this is just a thought, but…

what if there’s life on Saturn?

How much damage/contamination can Cassini do?

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/radioisotope-thermoelectric-generator/

How mad would we be if some alien jerks crashed it into us as a “clean” disposal method, because they didn’t want it littering uo the sky and thought they could learn something from the descent flare and impact crater?

Originally shared by John Hattan

So Arnold K. started a discussion about combat damage being determined by margin of success and:

So Arnold K. started a discussion about combat damage being determined by margin of success and:

1. several games do that

2. if every combat round is a contested roll and damage is the delta between participants’ roll results then you can just mod the roll with:

+ skill

+ init bonus

+ weapon bonus

+ armour (it makes it harder for them to hit you and improves your ability to wade in and hit them)

OK so far so simple.

BUT I like the feature of Pokemon combats that they take multiple rounds and you can learn how strong your enemy is and actually do tactical planning based on that.

What if:

if you give up your ability to strike this round, you can double your skill/init bonus? That makes you (possibly) much harder to hit.

And in return, you get to know your enemy’s roll result. Not what they rolled on the die but roll + bonuses total. So if they roll a really high number and you manage not to take the damage b/c you gave up your strike, then you now know how dangerous they are and can decide what to do about that.

What if sides in a mass combat can do this, too (provided they maintain discipline/morale)?

In Liane the Wayfarer, Jack Vance offers an amazingly prescient portrait of the Internet Sexist Troll:

In Liane the Wayfarer, Jack Vance offers an amazingly prescient portrait of the Internet Sexist Troll:

“Behold, golden witch, here is Liane. He has come to welcome you to Thamber; and he offers you his friendship, his love …”

….Liane entered the hut and lunged for the girl, but twenty thin shafts darted out, twenty points pricking his chest. He halted, eyebrows raised, mouth twitching.

“Down, steel,” said Lith. The blades snapped from view. “So easily could I seek your vitality,” said Lith, “had I willed.”

Liane frowned and rubbed his chin as if pondering. “You understand,” he said earnestly, “what a witless thing you do. Liane is feared by those who fear fear, loved by those who love love. And you—” his eyes swam the golden glory of her body—”you are ripe as a sweet fruit, you are eager, you glisten and tremble with love. You please Liane, and he will spend much warmness on you.”

“No, no,” said Lith, with a slow smile. “You are too hasty… how have you gained the right to my love?”

“Absurdity!” stormed Liane. “Look at me! Note my perfect grace, the beauty of my form and feature, my great eyes, as golden as your own, my manifest will and power … It is you who should serve me. That is how I will have it.” He sank upon a low divan. “Woman, give me wine.”

……An odd creature, the golden witch. But, indeed, she was worth some exertion, and he would make her pay for her impudence.

One for Casey G.: the vicissitudes of war, featuring privateer George Walker.

One for Casey G.: the vicissitudes of war, featuring privateer George Walker.

In 1744, when war broke out with France… [Walker] was offered the command of the Mars, a private ship of war of 26 guns, to cruise in company with another, the Boscawen, somewhat larger and belonging to the same owner. [The Boscawen was a recently French frigate, originally called the Médée]

They… fell in with two homeward-bound French ships of the line, which captured the Mars after the Boscawen had hurriedly deserted her. Walker was sent as a prisoner on board the Fleuron. …[Walker] was landed at Brest as a prisoner at large; within a month he was exchanged, returned to England, put in command of the Boscawen, and sent out in company with the Mars, which had been recaptured and re-bought by her former owners.

…the Boscawen, a weakly built ship, iron-fastened, almost fell to pieces; Walker managed run it ashore at St Ives on the north Cornish coast on 24 November 1745.[2] He was almost immediately offered a larger command. This was a squadron of four ships — King George, Prince Frederick, Duke, and Princess Amelia – known collectively as the “Royal Family”, which carried in the aggregate 121 guns and 970 men.

This is my latest internet time-waster.

Originally shared by Casey G.

This is my latest internet time-waster. Just clicking around the alphabetical list will get you something interesting immediately.

I quickly found these:

Striking the Flag

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/s/striking-the-flag.html

General Mess Manual and Cook Book 1902

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/g/general-mess-manual-and-cook-book.html

Diversity, Inclusion, and Equal Opportunity in the Armed Services 2016

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/d/diversity-inclusion-equal-opportunity-armed-services.html

The Constitution Gun Deck

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/c/the-constitution-gun-deck.html

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room.html//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

It has become trendy to denigrate the iconic, conical martini glass.

It has become trendy to denigrate the iconic, conical martini glass.

Here’s the thing: there are many reasonable arguments against it as a piece of drinking technology.

But it also has style. When it first appeared it promised a sleek new mechanical world. Its unnaturalism was the point. It said “this is no ordinary drink.”

And even today, when it’s everywhere and used for everything, it still signifies a particular kind of commitment to the ridiculous, to hedonistic pleasure without fear.

You don’t like the martini glass? That’s OK. But if I make you a martini, it’ll be straight-up in a straight-edged cone, like the Robot Maria and Geoffrey Sonnabend intended.

http://www.mjt.org/exhibits/delson/oblisci.html

Originally shared by Alex Scrivener

The Champagne coupe, it’s often said, was originally inspired by the curves of Marie Antoinette’s breast. That’s to say, it was something natural and nurturing. But then came the 1920s and the stem grew upward and thinner, the bowl flat-sided and broader across the top. The modern Martini glass is nothing if not unnatural. It appears to have been invented by someone in a white lab coat who was comfortable using the word “hypotenuse” in casual conversation.

…

The Martini glass became the guest that wouldn’t leave. Its size continued to grow, as if overfed on Spanish olives, until the glass became obese. The 12-ounce versions were preternaturally top-heavy and unstable even when parked, easily toppled by a boisterous laugh or an errant knee. A full Martini glass on a small table is Chekov’s gun waiting to be fired in the third act.

As the glass grew larger it became ever more unwieldy to maneuver, the result of an uncompromising geometry. The steep side angles ensured that the liquid’s surface area grew disproportionately as the volume increased. This meant that even minor tremors escalated into major sloshing events, the bane of every server attempting to navigate across a crowded bar with a full tray. Bringing a full glass to one’s mouth was a process fraught with tension.

http://imbibemagazine.com/martini-glass/

late thoughts about Game of Thrones and Westworld

late thoughts about Game of Thrones and Westworld

I’m up to ep 3 of the latest season of GoT, so spoilers follow, but please don’t spoil me!

1. it looks to me like someone other than George is writing the plot of GoT… I had this feeling last season too, because I think I see a moralizing bent (pride comes before a fall, dramatic irony) and more obvious consequences coming through, stuff that’s is familiar from every other TV thing ever but which was refreshingly absent from GoT in particular. When I see Madboy Greyjoy having too much fun all over the set I just know he’s going down hard.

….so this is a gamer’s observation. I hear GoT started out as GRRM’s GURPS campaign (hence the dwarf, the animal companions and that one player who chose a witch advisor). And the cheerful amorality of the first seasons looked exactly like a long-running wargame with really attentive players. But the last couple of seasons it looks like meaningful drama has taken over from the semi-randomness of the RPG, and that means a smaller, more predictable set of surprises, more moral content (see above) and stupider principals. Yeah, sure, you just arrived in Westeros and you don’t have a proper spy network set up, classic invader’s problem. DO YOU NOT HAVE AN AMAZING INTEL-GATHERING SPY PLANE ADVANTAGE? “Oh noes their army was not at home.” PERHAPS YOU COULD’VE KNOWN THAT or partnered with someone who did. In short, the Tyrells deserve to die if they can’t notice that the people they just betrayed have mobilized against them. And Denise deserves to fail if she can’t do basic scouting.

2. oh my parade of respected British character actors. Pryce was nice in the previous season, but now we’ve got Broadbent and the guy who plays Mycroft and Billy Bones and every shot I’m like “oh hai.” Distracting. Did everyone have to get in before it closed?

3. Westworld must’ve been totally different to write this time around, since the entire audience has now spent hundreds of hours playing MMORPGS. And of course it’s a little bit about that, still a lot about machine consciousness, quite a bit about consumerist cringe.

But it’s also about the principal-agent problem – Ed Harris, representing the corporation than runs the park and the most committed class of player, winds up being one of the central conflicts of the story (although he never lets on about being conflicted). Because what he wants as a player is not at all what the corporation wants as a steward of a property (and GoT faces similar conflicts – the optimal investment strategy is a series that keeps running as long as it’s making money, not a limited engagement with an ending, which is much more satisfying as entertainment). And Bob gives him what he wants in order to stiff him (possibly literally). Is he pleased? Does he fulfill his destiny and escape the cycle of incarnations? Maybe kinda under the surface panic?