sawall

Ergh. Yes, if you could please resurrect that, thanks.

I’ve been experimenting with using an iPad as my primary laptop lately and some things seem to get really flaky with submits at times!

congrats on the shot, Chimpy!

My covid tests went fine after my flight. The n95 seemed pretty sufficient to me. I even ate on the plane but was careful to minimize breathing when I had my mask off to take bites.



Like Al, I keep being surprised by seeing parents who are masked but let their kids who look up to teenage years to be unmasked. I really don’t know what’s going on with that and from all the anecdotal infection accounts I am aware of, it’s nearly always an unvaccinated child who’s the carrier these days. The behavioral descriptions of Bristol sound pretty similar to what I was seeing in Texas.

I’ve been glad to be up in Washington State. When I go into a store, everybody is wearing a mask due to legal mandate. There’s no trying to figure out which shops are doing masking and which aren’t, and I almost never see anyone who isn’t masked unless they’re eating or drinking. This is fantastically less _awkward_ than I feel in Texas - the rules all make sense and just about everybody is following them. The pandemic is obviously happening but it’s way more chill. It’s amazing how technology is even different - when my cell phone GPS figured out I was in Washington I was suddenly presented with the option to download a contact tracing app which would have apparently infringed too much on my Texas freedoms.

This pretty much says it all about the state of some things in the US: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/polit...-covid-1220608/ (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/polit...-covid-1220608/)

One thing that seems to be causing a bit of a turnaround here in the States is that a lot of live venues, bars, and the like are now trying to enforce mandatory vaccinations or recent negative tests before they will allow entry. Pretty sure that there are a lot more people with money to spend who don’t want to enter spaces unless they are relatively safe vs. the people who are rabid anti-mask/vaxers. “You can only do this fun thing if you are vaccinated” is pretty compelling to the people who were just lazy or unmotivated.

I flew from Austin to Seattle a couple days ago to see my parents for the first time in about two years. I wore a n95 respirator pretty much the whole way, with a second cloth mask on top of it for… probably for no useful purpose, to be honest. But it made me feel better. I’m now quarantining for a week and will be getting a PCR test at the end of that to see how foolish my plan was. Luckily my parents’ attic isn’t attached to the ventilation in the main part of the house so I am just hanging out up here and am occasionally fed and watered.

I have to say, I was really anxious about the flight beforehand but the experience itself felt about as safe as I could imagine. I didn’t run into any idiots who were refusing to mask up, and everyone seemed really on top of keeping their masks on all the time. A few of us got meals on the plane and were only briefly taking the mask off to take bites.

Getting on a plane really demystified it for me. It’s not something I plan to do much in the near future but it’s something that is actually manageable. It felt WAY better than the restaurants I’ve seen where people still think that a 6 foot distance indoors is enough because nobody seems to get the memo about how this thing actually spreads indoors. ANYWAY.

I quite liked Loki, but I was already expecting it to mainly be setup for the upcoming movies so I didn’t have high expectations for anything being particularly resolved. I was surprised that a S2 was announced - I figured it would just spiral out into films.

Everything I have read about Black Widow has turned me off to the point where I haven’t bothered trying to watch it.

“What If…” episode 1 was kind of fun, not sure how much I’ll get into it. I am probably least interested in Captain America lore than any other Marvel lore, so… yawn.

The Delta variant is here and isn't scaring people much yet despite the fact that it can apparently affect and kill the vaccinated. A story made the news a few days ago about a five-person IT department at a mid-sized company being hit by it. Four of the team were unvaccinated and all got Delta, two of them died, and the fifth was vaccinated and was unaffected. It's only a matter of time before that happens to some southern Baptist church.

With businesses left to do pretty much what they want, social norms around masks and safety is very confusing. Some places are entirely unmasked. In other places the staff are masked but none of the patrons are - which brings with some weird classist feels; the dirty staff remain masked while their customers are clean and don't need it. Other places are still completely locked down and contactless pickup only. I went by one of those a couple days ago and they were open but apparently I needed to order on my phone and wait outside for at least 15 minutes so I just left.

I've taken to walking into a place with my mask on and then taking it off if it seems to make sense to based more on the comfort level of the staff than anything else. I've never been that bothered by wearing a mask so keep wearing one to places like the grocery store, often putting me in a fairly extreme minority. Austin is being plagued by dust from Africa again, which means I'm also wearing my mask outside, inviting strange looks and judgements about what my apparently extreme levels of paranoia.

Friends are coming out of quarantine at different paces. I know some people who still have not really set foot anywhere yet and others who are doing a lot of parties and outings. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance in making the huge context switch to have contact again and some people just aren't ready. I won't be surprised if this causes a psychic ripple over the next several decades similar to the Great Depression.

I'm also two episodes in to Loki and digging it so far. They did a really fantastic job with the world building and design of the TVA. I'm genuinely intrigued to learn what's going on.

I enjoy the depiction of Loki but can see how he isn't everyone's cup of tea. Hiddleson does have more range as an actor - I recently watched the Night Manager and he's broody and stoic throughout most of that. It's fairly standard undercover spy fare but is an enjoyable watch if you like that sort of thing.

Folks are acting VERY VERY back to normal here but I just looked it up and the county Austin is in is only at 48% vaccinated. There is resistance to getting vaccinated from conservatives, young people, people who want to give the vaccine a few more months because they think it was rushed (spoiler: it wasn't), and so on. I hope it makes America look idiotic to the rest of the world because that's sure how it feels when I am looking out from the inside. Other countries are desperate for these vaccinations and we have a sizable portion of the population who just aren't bothering with it.

I'm rather concerned about that new UK variant due to transmissibility and mortality. I am expecting it to hit some unsuspecting conservative enclave here in the US and wreak havoc in the next month or two.

I loved WandaVision at first and then thought they belly flopped on the landing, and it's more and more problematic the more I think about it. I was assuming that there must have been some kind of villain that was influencing her to be as evil as she was - either Agatha, Mephisto, or some other entity. The fact that there WASN'T anyone else really driving her is pretty damning and came as quite a surprise to me. I hope they are going to set her up to basically go full villain in the next Dr. Strange film and get into that because otherwise they gave her a HUGE pass for no good reason.

OTOH, I was meh on the Falcon & The Winter Soldier at first and think the end was great. If you really like the Captain America films, it is totally worth it - it's basically Captain America 4 with some extra room to breathe. If you are not as into the Captain America films, you can probably give this one a pass. There are some genuinely good bits and it gives the characters a lot of time to sit with their struggles, and the heroes don't, say, take an entire town hostage but they're good guys because they're good guys. I especially loved Wyatt Russel's stint as the new Captain America. He recently came to my attention in his role in Lodge 49 and he's fantastic and extremely different here.

Well you might happen to know someone who has an extra ticket.......

Based on comics and some speculation I've seen, what matters is that Wanda cares about her fake kids. We don't have to care about them but they want us to care about her because she's affected by caring about them. It's probably going to be a major catalyst for whatever happens in the next Doctor Strange film.

I do agree that all felt pretty rushed, I am not sure why they didn't just make it appear as if this was going on for months instead of just a week or two. The rapidity of that makes her seem even more incredibly unstable if you think about it much.

I was just at an unmasked house party this weekend with 20 people who were all fully vaccinated. The transition was surreal and moving for all of us as we are all generally rather responsible and were sequestered into pods of 1-4 people for months. Things are opening up a lot more here now, too quickly based on the vaccination rates in the county, but most people who I know in Austin are all at least partially vaccinated by this point.

Primavera looks amazing next year! Planning to try to snag some tickets with some friends who are also fans of Barcelona!

I liked WandaVision in concept but felt like the execution was clumsy. I also fell into the trap of watching way too much youtube speculation about who the real big bad was and then ended up disappointed when everything was much more straightforward. I was also annoyed about how they decided to cast Pietro, if it really was more of an "easter egg" and not really a hint of what might be coming. Ultimately I think it's best taken as a character piece that lays some groundwork for future MCU films like Dr. Strange 2.

Overall I enjoyed it, but haven't been really strongly recommending it to anybody. I think the mystery went a bit too long and they should have started showing "real world" tidbits sooner. I got into it in the middle and towards the end, but then felt like the ending was a bit mangled. They really handwaved the ramifications of some of Wanda's actions. and the big MCU-film style epic fight at the end felt out of place. I do think they did a fantastic job emulating various historical sitcoms in terms of acting, camera work, and so on, but once they revealed why it was happening the whole thing felt a bit forced. I had been hoping for a reason that would open up some interesting canon like the Mojoverse.

I've been watching the Falcon and the Winter Soldier because... well I am not sure why. I did not love the first episode which was very actioney. It's actually been getting better by episode 3 and they are doing some interesting things with the internal landscapes of both of the main characters and also taking a look at the long term ramifications of the Avengers' actions. I'll have to watch the rest of it to figure out how I really feel about it but I have a suspicion that it might be more satisfying overall. The Captain America storyline has never been my favorite but watching his two closest friends grappling with his absence is great tv at times. There is also a low-key but persistent focus on American racism that's fantastic including how Falcon is treated, his family's struggles, as well as the plot including an aspect of the super soldier program from the comics where early experiments were done on black soldiers. They do not beat the audience over the head with it but it's there. I also love Wyatt Russell on Lodge 49 and think he brings a lot of nuance to the role of the new Captain America. I suspect that this show may end up being better than Wandavision but gets overlooked because it doesn't have any gimmicks.

The Loki trailer looks pretty fun with time police and reality-bending!

I think I forgot to mention it at the time, but last year, a bunch of people from the local burn event that I go to had a "burn" on a Minecraft server to coincide with when an actual burn would have happened at the event. People had built a bunch of ridiculous structures and then the server admin filled them up with TNT, there was a lava storm, then a flood, then a plague of ducks and chickens, then everyone got set to survival mode.... Hardly a replacement for the real thing, but good fun.

Heather goes to Japan once or twice a year to train in Bujinkan and really misses it.

One of her teachers did an online seminar a few months ago that we attended. She has set her side of the garage up as a dojo and has a projector in there, so we projected the instructor onto one wall and it was almost-but-not-quite like actually training with a group. One funny bit was that he'd come up close to his laptop to look at the people who had cameras on to give helpful comments, so now and then we'd suddenly see a GIANT HEAD staring at us.

I'm really curious how they plan to negotiate reopening training centers once we're back. It's a big international community and there are a lot of libertarian sorts who are the kind of people who might not want to get a vaccine.

I really miss travel too. I am hoping for a vaccine soon and my first trip will be to see my parents up in Washington for a while.

Whhhhaaaaaaaaaat? That looks amazing. I keep bogging down playing Rimworld because I want it to be more like DF (especially the ability to go up and down levels) , and then when I try DF the UX + helper + insanity bogs me down. Real excited to see what comes from this.

I miss classic CWAL when the two of you had consoles from different vendors and one-upped each other.

I occasionally think about getting a VR headset almost entirely for Beat Saber. But I don't have a PC over here, so.... I am in total agreement with earlier posts in here about there needing to be some kind of a turnkey VR console solution for people like me.

Well, January 6 was insane, and I will be processing on that for quite a while. I keep an eye on right wing news and ever since the election I was worried something like this would happen at several points along the way. So Jan 6th was maybe the 3rd or 4th time that I had a sense of dread (as I guess you can see in my post above). Not sure if I'll be able to express how that felt, especially with the added context always being "oh yeah and we're in the middle of a raging pandemic".

I got a job offer early in January and set my starting date for January 25th because I was paranoid of all hell breaking loose leading up to the inauguration. I didn't want to be trying to ramp up at a new position in the middle of a coup. The fact that that was part of my calculation is utterly insane.

I watched most of this unfold on TV. I visited the Capitol when I was a kid and it was jarring to see what was happening. It's a beautiful gleaming building that is dripping with importance and history. You actually saw many of the rioters responding to it in the same way - some of them were just wandering around looking up in wonder at the architecture and artwork. As a symbol of democracy it's supposed to be open to the people, but not that way. To me, the Capitol building is like a cathedral, and it was an utter act of desecration to attack it.

From my time supporting the military, I was also very aware of the national security situation that was unfolding. While I am very glad that no Congresspeople were harmed, I also think that the fact that none were has led to the bizarre response to this attack on the country. To my mind, this attack should be taken as or more meaningful than 9/11. It's one thing for terrorists from the middle east killing Americans on US soil. It's another thing for terrorists from America physically breach the seat of government, at least some of them with the intent of killing our elected representatives.

My initial reaction to watching this unfold was to wonder why these people were not being dropped with overwhelming force. I was shocked to see that only one of them was shot. That shooting looks like it was a smart tactical decision - a room with Congresspeople in it was being breached and this held back the mob.

For about a day it seemed like everyone in politics was on the first page for the first time in years. The rift between the Democrats and the GOP has gone on for at least 10 years, with, from my perspective, the GOP taking an absolutely contrarian and obstructionist approach to anything the ever Democrats say or want. It took an angry mob calling for the Vice President's head while they breached the seat of our government to say "wow, that was maybe sort of bad". But by the weekend most of the Republicans were all whipped back into line and were all on the same page again. It was antifa, it might not have been incitement by legal standards so it was totally ok, whatever. If you thought they were weak on Trump, they were even weaker on this attempted insurrection.

I'm very concerned that the role of the Trump admin's role in this is not being taken seriously enough. I listened to the head of the DC National Guard say in Congressional testimony this week that he had guardsmen on busses ready to roll and didn't get the approval to go forward for at least two hours. He was given immediate approval during the BLM protests over the summer. There continues to be talk of an "intelligence failure" regarding things that I saw coming. My hope is that that intelligence failure was a lack of imagination and that the feds are catching up quickly. Nobody believed that anyone would steal planes and fly them into buildings. Nobody believed that the "blue lives matter" cop-loving real Americans would be willing to kill cops to get at evil Democrats and the Vice President.

McConnell had his last opportunity to greatly reduce Trump's relevance in the party by supporting impeachment and he turned it down. The GOP is now absolutely the party of Trump and will be for years to come. At a straw poll at CPAC about who they would like as President if Trump doesn't run in 2024, Donald Jr. got third place. The fact that 40-45% of the country is consistently supporting this party, who also has a lock on many State-houses through voter suppression and other means, is massively concerning to me.

I tried Skyrim on the Switch and I agree with the clunky assessment. I couldn't get over the UX so didn't put much time in, which is unfortunate since it seems pretty amazing in other dimensions. It might have also been pushing the limits of the hardware by quite a bit. (I've also never been a giant fan of first-person with a console controller, mouse+kb still seems like the way to go with those...)

Wow! I remember that mob farm. Blast from the past.

A local friend of mine set up a server for his family and I've played around on there a bit. There is gobs of content that I hadn't seen before - all sorts of new block types, enchanting, repairs, mapmaking, and so on. The last time I had played was with you folks right around when the Nether was added. One thing I explored a bit that I love is all of the cool third-party shaders that you can add in. Cell shading and improved lighting can turn into some awesome screen shots (although my 5 year old laptop is under a lot of strain making that happen).

Ooof, yeah, I'll steer clear of those. I often spoil myself on content but not for Gloomhaven! We've only opened a couple of the envelopes and one of the new characters so far and I'm excited to keep that at a slow and steady drip.

A couple other thoughts to give you a sense of what's going on:

1) An Iraq/Afghanistan expert on Preet Bahara's podcast said a few months ago that America during COVID reminds him of a "failed state" in a lot of ways, specifically because there is no clear messaging from leadership about what people are supposed to do, which leads to everyone having to make up their own best practices and then arguing about them. That has really sat with me because I think it's the source of a lot of the angst I'm experiencing - it shouldn't be up to me to negotiate with everybody around me about basic public health issues, all the time. It feels like some sort of Ayn Rand dystopia.

2) Human pile of refuse, Ken Paxton, Secretary of State of Texas, i.e., the guy who sued Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to try to invalidate the Presidential election, i.e., the guy who was somehow voted in as Secretary of State while under active investigation for securities fraud (if it's Republican, Texas votes for it!), is threatening to sue Austin and Travis county for trying to limit opening times and dine-in options at bars and restaurants over the New Year's holiday. COVID rates are steadily getting worse in the city and Texas is acting like the lockdown back in May is still working as planned.

Ugh, I hope your friends are ok.

I have been taking calculated risks to support my sanity and local businesses, especially places that are completely "contactless and curbside". I don't buy food from restaurants that are seating people indoors, but there are some places that are extremely locked down. My local Thai place has completely blocked off its dining room and has customers come up to a closed in window one at a time to get their food through a tiny slot near their knees, so that's become a favorite. The local Christmas art bazaar is in a warehouse with a high ceiling and only let a set number of masked people in for an hour at a time, so I risked that to get money to some artists who I know depend on that for a lot of their yearly income. I still sometimes walk into local grocery stores during off-hours when there aren't many people around. I have constant background anxiety from knowing that all of this is rolling the dice, even though I'm engaging in far less risky behaviors than most.

It's been really weird to not travel this year. On the weekend after the election, I went to a small socially distanced campout on a friend's property a few hours away. It was utterly surreal to be around more than a few people at once, and I know that I'll have more issues re-acclimatizing to people. I thrive on novelty and love things like street fairs so not being able to go to much of anything like that is depressing. Like Al, I don't think about it for a long time but I also realize that I'm existing in a sort of weird disconnected limbo because of it.

SXSW is "digital" this year, and I've been experiencing some annoyance with the org over some reimbursement issues. Moogfest is probably canceled again (they were extremely lucky and had planned to take a break this year, well in advance of the pandemic). Fenchurch and I have tickets to see New Order + Pet Shop Boys at the Hollywood Bowl. They were for this fall and got cancelled then rescheduled by a full year, and now I'm not sure if even that will be happening. If I ever DO get to see concerts again, that should be a pretty good show.