Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer. Interesting world where people choose their nationality and legal structure independent of physical borders.

Recently saw a video where the boss of a contracting company, apparently a good guy, looking out for his employees and honestly trying to help everyone prosper from their shared work, explained that he hired new people at the 10th percentile wage from BLS statistics for their job description, raised them to median after six months, and eventually worked them up to 90th percentile over a few years.

On the one hand, making sure his people are paid a fair wage for their work. On the other, participating in an information sharing scheme to fix wages. BLS data is generally a year out of date, so he’s actually paying people last year’s wage, but the sense of implicit collusion only increases as the data becomes closer to real time.

Glad the Biden administration is closing the loophole, but I’m skeptical that it will really work in today’s information-rich environment.

Who are these kids under 20 with $14,000 to give out to scammers? Retirees with a spare $35k, I believe, but I’d really like to see the distribution for both. I’m guessing the means and medians are very different.

Onion & carrots, anywhere from 1:2 to 1:1 by weight, boil in just enough water to cover, grate in some fresh ginger, salt, puree. Add more water if it’s too thick. Throw in some chicken bouillon if you like.

It sounds like his teacher thinks games should be evaluated for their development of tension and consistent messaging. It sounds like they would penalize a game for having a story with twists and surprises, because those either break messaging consistency or deflate tension. And, of course, quicksaves are evil.

I can kind of see where they’re coming from, but it feels like a very academic, navel-gazing place, akin to pretentious art critics talking about color, composition, and allusion to past masters, or a film critic talking about Dutch angles and long takes. Things that may contribute to the artistic quality and even the enjoyment of a piece, but are not components that us rubes actively look for. The fact they try to lump BG3, soccer, and chess all together under one system of evaluation tells me that they’re going to use some really bizarre criteria.

No doubt. Enjoy your video games the way you want to enjoy them. I picked up RDR2 again recently, got to the point where you’re supposed to break Micah out of prison, and I’m just like, fuck that guy. I’m going hunting and playing dress-up.

I thought Apple was on to something with their cylindrical form factor. It’s inconvenient from a mobo perspective, but a central core motherboard, with CPU, GPU, even memory and M2 sticking out like fins. Get the mobo down to segments like 25mm x 250, and stack the whole thing over a massive -like 250-350 mm- low rpm fan would be great for heat management and noise. Heck, put it in a venturi tunnel driven by a 500mm fan.

Yes. US elementary school in the 1970s. Can’t remember how high they wanted us to climb, but it was a 2 story gym.

human nature remembers negative experiences much better than positive, so it only takes like 5% assholes before it feels like everyone is toxic.