Sam's L33t Journal

Erica is away with Julie's parents this week, on a road-trip to the Grand Canyon.

On Thursday, I had a birthday dinner with Julie at Bogie's Place which is a tiny steakhouse tucked between jm Curley and The Wig Shop in downtown Boston.

I went to a concert with Julie on Friday at Sonia , one of the music venues at the Middle East in Central Square. Hadn't been there before, though I'd been to some of their other stages. Was EDM, the headliner was Shingo Nakamura, the openers were a B2B (collab set) with Cloudcage and rshand, followed by OTR. Been a while since I caught live music, and also a long while since I was out late in Central. Lively place, was a good time.

I watched a bunch of the runs from SGDQ this week, but I still feel like I want to catch some of the replays. Not as much stood out to me this year of the things I caught. The Super Metroid race is still always a good time.

Yesterday, managed to get out to Ingress coffee get-together in Arlington for the first time in a while. Saturday evening, we had dinner at Black Ruby, which was pretty cool. This evening, I got together with gaming group at Xave's to play more of The Far Roofs.

Random favorite thing from the last few weeks: This video titled What is PLUS times PLUS? about the Lambda Calculus. The visualization for that used in the video (Tromp's Lambda Diagrams) are a really striking way to look at that mathematical system. I was familiar with the concepts in the video before, but it's still a mind-blowing foundational piece of computer science that all you need to do literally any computation is just the simplest sort of function definition and function application, nothing more, that's it.

Back in the "I don't know what to write", but I said maybe I'd write more about Magic: the Gathering, so that's a thing I can write about.

I play Magic these days mostly on MTG Arena, almost entirely Standard (with cards from a rotating cast of the most-recent sets). Fairly recently, Standard rotation was extended to a three-year cycle from two. This year, two new things are happening to Standard.

First, there's a new core set out, released last week. Core sets in Magic are meant as an introduction and retrospective, they tend to feature a lot of reprints and have a greater breadth of theme and setting instead of focusing on one particular setting and story. The latest set, Foundations, will get special treatment in the rotation, with a current plan that it will stay in Standard for at least five years. Foundations seems like a great core set, but I wonder if it will start to overstay its welcome before the time is up. I haven't been the biggest fan of the extended Standard rotation, the changes don't seem to shake things up as much as I like. (Speaking of core sets, the superb Magic video essay channel Rhystic Studies took the occasion to do a retrospective on 7th Edition, the 2001 Magic core set that was also a turning point for the role that sort of set plays in the game.)

Second, the other-IP-as-Magic sets "Universes Beyond", are coming to Standard. Wizards has been doing a lot more of that recently. Alternative card art aside, unique cards based around existing media franchises have been coming into various Magic formats. They did a Lord of the Rings set that went straight into Modern (a non-rotating format of cards from mainline sets starting in 2003, plus some newer sets added directly to Modern and older non-rotating formats), and a Warhammer 40,000 set for Commander (a popular non-rotating format with a multiplayer focus and a few twists to the rules). But this year, Standard will include sets based on Final Fantasy (which fits well enough, I guess), Marvel: Spider Man (??!), and something TBA (who knows).

It's interesting because Magic is a game that invests pretty heavily in its aesthetic elements. Obviously, those elements function in a mnemonic role as well: "Deal three damage to any target" is easier as "Lightning Bolt" than "spell 261". But I do get the impression that Magic-but-bland would be a much less memorable and enjoyable game. So how about Magic-but-whatever-the-heck-this-is? Magic has always drawn all sorts of influences from all sorts of media franchises and tropes, but "pop-culture mashup" is still not its primary aesthetic. But at some point, it might be. The Universes Beyond stuff has been a commercial success for Wizards so far, and these "what ifs" have an appeal, so it's natural for them to give the goose a squeeze. I still get the sense it's different when that becomes the thing the game is. Unsurprisingly, in addition to excitement, this trend in the development of the game has also caused a lot of at least apprehension in the player-base. I don't know how it will play out.

I'm home sick with a cold (I think) early this week, so I have time to write but not energy.

But here's a thing I meant to link to in my last post: That Thanksgiving week was quite a monumental week for the game Celeste, featuring both a new any% world record under 26 minutes (for context, a normal first playthrough is ~8 hours, and that run is straight through with no major glitches or skips) and the first deathless max% run. Celeste is a beautiful, wonderful game, and the dedication and focus it inspires in its fans is just unreal.

Last weekend, I was in Cleveland for PyCon, so Erica got to spend the weekend with grandparents. The conference was really good this year. I very much enjoyed talking to people at the Google booth in the expo hall. The keynotes were phenomenal. Russel Keith-Magee gave the opening keynote on Python's "black swans", a fascinating look at the future of Python, how strategic research and development might be supported in open-source, and the history of Perth, Australia. And on Saturday (unfortunately not posted, at least not yet) Shadeed Wallace-Stepter shared his life story as a reformed criminal turned Python programmer and entrepreneur, then Python luminary Jessica McKellar gave a talk about the intersection between the tech industry and community and criminal justice reform, describing her work with The Last Mile and urging the audience to "hire people with records".

We had Shabbat dinner with my family that Friday, and Anne and Isaac joined us as well (Dan was unfortunately out of town). Was very nice to catch up. I had a great dinner with my colleagues on Saturday, and went to the conference dinner at the Great Lakes Science Center on Sunday night.

We returned to town Monday. Erica must have had an exciting weekend because she slept on the plane, took another nap at daycare Monday afternoon, then fell asleep on her own at about 8:30. Though after that she was back to her usual schedule of never going to bed.

Not much else going on.

We got in a little Ingress on Wednesday evening in Quincy Center. Been a while since I was down there, the new Quincy Center plaza is gorgeous. We're going to the Ingress Anomaly in Chicago in two weeks, which hopefully will be fun.

And I've been playing a bit of Magic. The prerelease tournament for the new Magic set, War of the Spark, was two weekends ago, and after a slow draw in the first match, I was just barely able to squeak by with a winning record overall. Thinking the office tournament for the set will be fun, too.

Sandy Island was fun this year. Erica had a wonderful time and slept very well indeed. Making sandcastles on the beach was definitely the highlight of her trip, but there's a lot of outdoor fun to be had. The weather was good, if very hot, but it did cool off sufficiently at night. There was only one rainy morning, and only the last night was chilly. Very nice to spend time with family!

I did manage to get in some reading, too:

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (finished) - A surreal fantasy novel about a war between the djinni and the strangeness that brings to the world. Entertaining and well-written.

We Were Eight Years in Power - This book is simultaneously a collection of essays Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote for The Atlantic during the Obama Presidency, a memoir by Ta-Nehisi Coates about writing for The Atlantic during the Obama Presidency, and a bit of historical nonfiction that tries to get at the significance of the Obama Presidency in the broader picture of American history. The title is taken from a speech by South Carolina legislator Thomas Miller highlighting the achievements of Reconstruction-era government, unsuccessfully opposing the new state constitution in 1895.

The High Price of Free Parking - If you watch this interesting video and decide what you really need is 700 pages of detailed academic text on the subject, then I definitely recommend this book. I thought it was really interesting, but I've meaning to getting around to reading the detailed version for years.

New York 2140 (started) - 2312 was a sprawling novel with a lot of sprawling set-pieces, perhaps the most down-to-earth of which was a partially-flooded New York City. 2140 focuses on an earlier iteration of that one part of the setting. Definitely the setting and ideas stand out more than the plot and characters, but I really enjoyed 2312, and I'm really enjoying this one as well.

I also got around to watching some of the videos from this year's SGDQ. The race between the top two players of Celeste and the TAS (pre-constructed optimized) playthrough of the same game are both wonders to behold.

Links post! Been far too long since I did one of those. Some very select stuff from the past few months:

Side Effected: A short-story film by my cousin Lev, now making the film festival circuit. Good stuff.

Daylight Savings Time is Terrible: A proposal to eliminate daylight savings time and move the continental US to two time-zones. It would certainly make working on the east coast for a west coast based company a bit more convenient.

The Turning Point in Freestyle Chess: Chess computers play at grandmaster level, but for now humans plus computers are the ultimate chess-playing team. But will that stay the case?

Barcelona as Airport Suburb: Housing prices have become so high in London that it might be cheaper to live in Barcelona and commute via Ryanair four days a week. Crazy stuff, though I wouldn't want the economic viability of my living arrangement to be dependent on the exact pricing model of a single discount airline.

The 120 Hour Workweek: An interesting experiment in productivity and self-quantification.

More Guests, Empty Houses: An article on the effect of AirBnB on housing prices in Marfa, Texas.

21 Amazing Hotels: Pretty pictures!

Sure has been a while since I did one of these, but here are a few recent tidbits.

Teach A Kid to Argue: On why teaching kids good argument skills is a better idea than you might think.

The Upside of Ugly: On plastic surgery and technological solutions to social problems.

Jay-Z’s "99 Problems," Verse 2: A Close Reading With Fourth Amendment Guidance for Cops and Perps: Musical "life lessons for cops and robbers".

The Problem with Witness Testimony: One thing people should keep in mind, especially if they ever serve on a jury in a criminal trial.

The Toothbrush That Saved the ISS: Low-tech solutions in a high-tech setting.

Six Thoughts on the Case of the Breast Feeding Professor: The discussion prompted by this story is way more interesting than the story itself. Also, this.

Why Greece's Neo-Nazis Are So Popular: Not so different from other historical occurences.

Life Spans Shrink for Least-Educated Whites in the U.S.: Dimitri Orlov saw this coming.

The Spiritual Crisis of Zionism: A fascinating essay in response to Beinart's The Crisis of Zionism.

The Google Glass demo from Google I/O is without a doubt the most spectacular tech demo I've ever seen. Bit of behind-the-scenes footage for the demo here, part of the keynote about Glass here.

ETA: The TechCrunch writeup is also pretty good.

The dancing robot Keepon is awesome, and now you can buy one for about $40. (Hope the mass produced version has the charm of the original!)

Never has this icon been so appropriate.

Anime: Japanator's top 50 for the decade. An interesting selection. I've watched all of 22 of those and touched on 6 more.

Clothes: Ties! Also, the other kind of ties! umbrellas! Blue shoes! Double monks!

It occurs to me that I've gone from two pairs of shoes (running shoes, black oxford dress shoes; three if you include beach sandals) to seven (running shoes (which I still wear at least 95% of the time), black oxford dress shoes, cheap old wingtips, moar better wingtips, thrifted fringe loafer, cheap blue canvas sneakers (CVOs), casual slip-ons (I like the idea of using those as beach shoes much, much more than sandals, which I hate)). Basically, if I ever win the lottery I'm in danger of becoming this guy. (Not really. I hope.)

Education: Here's a method of learning phonetic alphabets (like Japanese kana): transliterate random things.

An interview with the Olin College president. I find the answers both interesting and disappointingly moderate.

A Wellesley student discusses Wellesley's admissions office's discrimination against transgendered students. Yet another "the writing is on the wall for Wellesley as women-only" story, there were several others during my Olin days. A good example of how overt, allegedly acceptable discrimination leads to covert, obviously shady discrimination.

An MIT researcher turns his house into a (self-directed) panopticon, with interesting results. I discussed this at length on my other blog.

A discussion of the World Peace Game, an educational game of global politics played by fourth graders.

Random Interesting: Broken lottery scratch-off games and their relation to security, math, and crime.'

Overthinking It analyzes Rebecca Black's "Friday", which must be the most successful vanity video of all time.

Playing video games while blind.

A bit of randomly interesting math: What is the highest value of n for which the decimal representation of 2^n has no 0s?

An article on a handbook for overthrowing dictators, which has evidently been quite influential this year.

An article on the psychology of (media) overabundance.

Better libertarian rhetoric with regard to "anti-privilege" liberals. Good stuff.

Dinosaur Comic's take on polyamory. Read the extra title text. I love that brand of subtle snark.