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via cursed ai generated images

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If there is a God, his plan is very similar to someone not having a plan.

I finished "Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration" - I'm glad the podcast "Get Played" covered it, and reminded me to treat it as a museum exhibit, rather than a collection of games that happened to include a proper version of "Food Fight".

Some things I learned or was reminded of about Atari:

1. The arcade game "Crystal Castles" has a cool feature where the current high score initials are turned into structures behind the first level. That's pretty dope!


2. The bat in 2600 "Adventure" is one of the best NPCs ever. I used to lock him away by stuffing him in the golden castle, but playing a round of Version 2 and letting him add his chaotic element to the game... it's brilliant, he just flaps around, carrying random items doing inscrutable bat things - you just catch these glimpses, then he gets interested in whatever you're carrying and swoop into steal it... but often you can grab him at the same time, so you and him and the item move around in lock step and you try to get done what you needed the item for before he wriggles free... just pure genius.


3. The comic book that came with Yar's Revenge goes hard, like a Moebius comic. (Well... completely stupid story but the art is really cool.)


And three criticisms:

1. They really failed in covering 3rd party games (Activision, Imagic, etc) and even big licenses (Star Wars the arcade game, the Indiana Jones games, or even the infamous E.T.) I could understand if the ROMs would be hard to license, but as a historical reference they could have made SOME kind of referencing or cataloging.

2. I think they shortplayed the whole Atari BASIC scene (and maybe the magazines, like Antic and Analog). Not to mention stuff like the Atari Program eXchange APX - the first big attempt to make a shareware community happen, like a "Steam" store for the 80s... But also the BASIC was good for sound and simple graphics, but it barely gets mentioned, except indirectly via ads from the era.

3. Ernest "Ready Player One". Cline. Ugh. Such an overrated work, its tongue bath of the 80s pop culture is embarrassing even to a Gen-Xer like me who sometimes swims in the 80s retro. (Yeah I do have a grudge, having consulted on a much better novel centered on video games, "Constellation Games")

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Everyone's always going through something, aren't they? Just life, basically. Just more and more stuff to go through. You have all that shit going on with your dad that you never talk about. Nobody's going through nothing.

Jung popped up in some reading I was doing, and along with some vague recollection that maybe he used the term "committee" to describe the mind, I decided to zip through "Introducing Jung: A Graphic Guide".

So, I dunno. From this very limited introduction, he seems to promote yet another sense of duality of self, rather than the more motley assortment of internal players I've been leaning into lately.

Right now, the committee idea is enormously powerful for me: I know that any particular dark or weird thought doesn't represent me in my entirety. And yet, there is no member of the committee that isn't part of me - and I as a whole have to take responsibility for the resulting actions.

But I've sort of given up identifying specific members, at least for now. Like is it always "Id, Ego, and Superego" or "The Rider and the Elephant" or one of them being "inner child", or maybe the cast of specific emotion players from "Inside Out" or what. (Or it might be more of a clamoring multitude akin to Minsky's "Society of Mind".)

I used to think my inner voice, my internal narrative was, like, "all of me" Now I don't even know if it's one of the individual parts sitting in the committee -- perhaps it's more like the podium that various members can take! But that's uncertainty I can live with for now, while still finding the committee concept enormously helpful.

Anyway, back to Jung. I can't say that one morning's reading has given me a real understanding of his ideas, especially the more out-there mystical ones, so I don't have a ton to say... I do think the underlying split in world views (including the synchronicity, collective-unconscious laden ones Jung describes) is if the making of the world is more top-down or bottom-up. Is it closer to created, by some overarching force, or does it emerge from the mundane matter (well, mundane matter fizzing with quantum weirdness.)

While discussing Meghan O'Gieblyn's "God, Human, Animal, Machine" at my Science and Spirituality group the other night, it was asked what is the significance if the world is top-down vs bottom-up, like why do I emphasize it so much? I think the importance is intentionality and meaning. A top-down approach means there might be a singular, definite point to the world, something that should inform every purpose we set for ourselves, a bottom-up approach means that we're more free to find our own meaning, or maybe creatively channel and reshape the meaning that is in the process of emerging.

(btw let me know if you want to join my UUSS Science + Spirituality group. We meet monthly via zoom and discuss a book or other bit of content... (usually we provide excerpts instead of expecting people will read the whole shebang book or whatever, but the conversation is still pretty good.))

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("Jung and Restless" via "The Big Book of American Humor" - I can't believe what an influential tome that was for me.)

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Guess I'm off by a week, but here is my dad lighting the third Advent Calendar 30 years ago for The Salvation Army in Salamanca NY.

(Scanning a pile of clippings and photos my mom had saved.)

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White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this--which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never--the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.

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To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.

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If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.

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Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.

Adding that last one to my collection of quotes on mortals.be Half tempted to end it at "the conundrum of life" but It think the whole passage is good.

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sometimes when i'm struggling w/ self-care i remind myself that i am, at my most basic, a hamster in an enclosure.

i need food & water & a safe environment

i need enrichment & the right level of stimuli. i get exhausted if exposed to too much stress & handling.

i am a being with needs, and i deserve to have those needs met, by a responsible and loving caregiver. i just happen to also be that caregiver.

when i think about it like that, it's easier somehow

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I learned two things in this tweet:
1. There is a world class darts player who respects his eggplant farming roots.
2. Darts players have walk-on music, like pro-wrestlers, and cheerleaders. I like this skeleton:

from this staff tumblr post that offers the matching fitted dress.

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It would take 11,407 years to spend 1 minute with 6 billion different people. No one will ever meet everyone. Enjoy every moment with the people that are in your life, because you are sharing your life with them and they are sharing their life with you.

I like pills for the same reason that I prefer liquor to wine: gin and whisky are chemistry, carefully formulated and distilled to create a single repeatable experiment in intoxication, the same precise flavor and effect across the brand, bottle after bottle, glass after glass. Wine, on the other hand, is like religion. It's mysterious. Sometimes literally opaque. And there are too many kinds of it. You never really know if a particular wine is good or bad, you just have to take it, on faith, from some judge-y wine priest, an initiate to its mysteries. And wine is also like religion because the people that REALLY get into it tend to be fucking unbearable.

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Best skeptical twitter thread on the latest UFO hubbabaloo.

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To quote Marsha Appling-Nunez (friend from church back in Cleveland): Out with the old and in with the new! Euclid Mall was where my sisters and I along with friends, and a boyfriend hung out, shopped, ate, and even worked those famous Salvation Army kettles. #EuclidSquareMall Welcome #Amazon.

Man, tough to see, even though it's been on the outs for a long time.

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My part of the country usually said "N.E.S." not "Ness", and now I'm hearing SNES pronounced as one word ("Sness") on podcasts and youtube and it's kind of freaking me out.

advent day 19 Man I was all chuffed about getting back into the habit of Boston's two main public radio stations instead of Boston's two main sports radio stations, but at 11 AM Saturday options seem to be "Zombie Car Talk" or "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (Again)"

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advent day 19

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Enjoyable and very aware take down of the word 'classy'

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Listening to 80s holiday themed hiphop as I rap presents. Wonder if anyone ever formed a Sucka MC support group.
advent day 19

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My housemate and I decorated the Tuba for Christmas this year, plus I used my traditional family folk-artsy tree-- with a piece of art my mom just rediscovered, a wooden board with a cool magazine advert of Santa my dad and his cousin shellacked to it...

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No I won't stop 'screaming obscenities in your baby's face.' The first amendment is too important

advent day 19

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nobody tell dogs that they are made of bones deep down inside or they'll all just rip themselves apart out of joy

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whoa, actual hari krishnas at park street station? no robes though...

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I am at once amused, appalled, and approving that Wahhabism's outlook on idolatry is letting them turn Mecca into Vegas.

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Christopher Hitchens quotes.

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Poor Kim Jong-il. He's with L. Ron Hubbard now.

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Paint.NET is so good that it's probably time for me to retire using Paint Shop Pro 5 (1998 called, it wants its software back) The thing about the program is it's a little tough to find a download... there's this malware-looking GIMP download masquerading.
--from the NY Times correction July 17, 1969, right after Apollo 11 launched and a few days before it landed on the moon...via -- regrettheerror seems to be a blog about this kind of thing.

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All energy is only borrowed and one day you have to give it back.

Heck of a flick! (and 3D IMAX was worth the 9:15AM start) My office is almost deserted, and downtown is kind of empty as well...

The photographic negative of Boston's radar map weather from radar.weather.gov looks a bit like Pac-Man about to eat Boston...

It's like 495 is providing some protective barrier, at least for the time being.

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Quote of the Moment

We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic.

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Video of the Moment
Embedding disabled, alas, but Pinball Collector Tetris is worth a quick peek.

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Man, Back Bay and the office are both pretty deserted. That first flake is going to fall with a giant thud, echoing off the emptied blocks

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Thinking about piercings... the urge to get a trinket installed on your body. Why not something practical, like a coin purse? Wow. On the bus this morning I think I was sitting next to a Real Live Crazy Guy, writing a letter in big sprawling block letters to Dick Cheney, telling him that 9-11 was an inside job, and that the Patriot Act was ready beforehand, and maybe something about Halliburton.

Advice to Crazy Guys: learn to type, your handwriting impresses no one. (Though I was mildly impressed that he knew that the office of the VP is in the Old Executive Office Building when he was addressing the envelope.)

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Joke of the Moment

A man comes rushing into the psychiatrist's office, apologizing for being late because he overslept.

"But I had an incredible breakthrough in my dream," the man says breathlessly, "I was talking with my mother and she suddenly turned into you! That's when I woke up, got dressed, grabbed a Coke and a donut, and rushed to your office."

The psychiatrist says: "A Coke and a donut? You call that a breakfast?"

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Robot of the Moment
Cute little story about a jury-rigged "robot", a PC set up so its CD tray could hit the reset switch of another server. Melancholy in its own little way.

One of my favorite knock-knock jokes comes from a Dilbert cartoon
"Knock Knock"
"Who's there?"
"Not you anymore."
Which is my of saying...I'm gainfully unemployed! Work had a layoff, which depending on your perspective was either small (2 developers and a part time HR type) or big (1/4 of the company).

So I'm surprisingly relaxed about it, which is either because it hasn't really sunk in, or it seems like the best hiring environment that I've ever been laidoff in. (This is my 3rd layoff... first was classic dotcom, second was my supposed "safety job" still suffering an office closing, despite the division doing very well... heh, that might be one of the few recent cases of jobs being moved wholesale to Detroit...)

I really, really need some level of break. I jumped straight from my last gig to this one a year and a week ago, and I was terrible at setting up significant stretches of vacation early enough that I'd get approval from my manager at both places...I'd have to check my journal but I'm not sure sure if I've had more than a full week off for a long time, and even full weeks have been pretty rare over the last 2 or 3 years. So this break is, for the time being, welcome.

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War Commentary of the Moment

In other words, the alternative was never between a tranquil if despotic Iraq and a destabilizing foreign intervention, but it was, rather, a race to see which kind of intervention there would be.

That's a pretty bold claim, that variations on the staus quo just were not possible in Iraq, but I guess I can't think of convincing evidence that Saddam's regime was that unstable, sanctions and all.

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Video of the Moment

--Tony vs Paul in a stop action supernatural powers duel! Thanks Evil B!

Link of the Moment
The Hack FAQ...circa 1998, but still surprisingly relevant in what stale themes to avoid in standup comedy. (via Nick B's LJ)

Personally, I think trying to sit there and write something that will make people laugh, reliably, sounds like one of the toughest things in the world. I'm kind of afraid to try it.

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Nitpick of the Moment

New England is getting hot at the right time. The Patriots have won five of their last six games, including three in a row, and take on the Jets and Dolphins in their final two games, giving them a chance to enter the playoffs on a five-game streak.

Umm, wouldn't winning 5 out of 6 REQUIRE one streak of at last three in a row? I don't know if he meant to imply "the last three in a row" but still...

Fantasia of the Moment

Last night I did a Fourier transform on my attitude and wound up with an irreducible integral of despond. What was I to do. I thought long and hard. At last, I decided it would be worthwhile to find the eigenvector of my own ennui. Just as I started arranging my matrices on the page, though, I found an imaginary number jammed in among the memories of my childhood. Squared it, and found the square was negative, as I pretty much knew it must be. Cancelling this negative from both sides of the equation left me with a transcendental number, neither e nor pi, somewhere at the periphery of my imagination.

Contracted my imagination to a point, ran the number through a couple trigonometric polynomials until I arrived at unity. A couple sharp, upward pulls, right at the beginning, and I had acheived Unity.

Now I am larger than life, as anyone would be.

{BTW, did you know that e to the (pi * i)th power equals -1? [e^(pi*i)=-1] That's weirdness so big it realy is larger than Life.}

Which reminds me...sidebar people! Write something! Exchange of the Moment

"wouldnt you say suicide is a permenant solution to a temporary problem?"
"I'm a Buddhist, I'd say suicide is a temporary solution to a permanent problem."

bash.org is a 'best of IRC' site (kind of like yesterday's tehsux.com, but more egalitarian, and therefore has a worse signal-to-noise-ratio) LAN3 reminded me of bash.org and Sawers found this exchange, which he points out is a lovely example of chiasmus.

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Bad News of the Moment
Ugh....slashdot has a link to a CNN report that a quarter of a million fewer programmers will be employed by 2015, or 25% of the work force. (Huh, only a million programmers now?) Gah, sometimes I wonder if I need to diversify, look at different career possibilities. Other times, I figure I'm probably at least in the top 75% of all programmers, so...

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News Commentary of the Moment
Freedom Tower to rise from ashes at 1,776 feet at the location of the WTC towers. I can't be the only person who thought "Freedom Tower? Huh, why are they naming it after the French?"

Still, world's tallest building? I hate to say it but it makes for an awfully large target.

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Activism of the Moment
Mo writes

Go vote online at
http://www.afa.net/petitions/marriagepoll.asp
This is a poll by the American Family Association (right-wing) about gay marriage. The results will be presented to congress. At the moment it's 48% pro, 43% against, 8% for civil unions, but that could tip depending on how big a push different factions make. So take 2 seconds and vote!

Of course, being a soon to be ex- of Mo, I want to chime in "Yeah! Why should they be deprived of the trauma and heartbreak of divorce!" but you know. Also, I'm vaguely amused by the "family" moniker anti-gay-marriage people have adopted. Yeah, lets be pro-family by trying to deprive gay people of it. News of the Moment
So they busted some guys from Infocom for possible terrorists. While I don't think it's the same Infocom who made all those text-only games in the 1980s, it brings to mind some funny ideas...

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> look
You are on a sidewalk. There is a bus stop to the north.
What do you want do now?

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> i
You have:
a cheap wrist watch (being worn)
a vest of explosives (being worn)
a can of diet coke
What do you want do now?

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> north
You are at a bus stop. There are many Israelis here. It is sunny.
What do you want do now?
> martyr myself for the glorious jihad of the palestinean people!
Sorry, I don't know how to "martyr".
> wage jihad and smash the infidel jews in a rain of fire!
Sorry, I don't know how to "wage".

Ok, maybe not quite as funny as I envisioned.

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Movie Link of the Moment
FilmWise's Invisibles are a very cool idea...they photoshop out people's bodies from scenes from movies, leaving just the clothes, and the results are surprisingly difficult to identify. This here is a famous scene from "Basic Instinct". Only a hardcore movie buff will be able to guess more than one or two.

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Movie Quote of the Moment

If pictures have anything to say, it's this: I was here, I existed. I was young and happy and someone cared enough about me to take my picture.

Haven't seen this one, actually, but it was the imdb.com quote of the day.

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Graffiti of the Moment

SANTA IS REAL

(I just found an example of what the link was talking about, this was taken at the 7-11 by the "Garage" at Harvard Square.)

Portraits of the Moment
The other day Mo and I watched Henry & June. It might just be my favorite movie ever, I wrote a review of it for the loveblender back in 1997--the penultimate paragraph of that review is kind of interesting. I was looking around for some information on the movie. It introduced the NC-17 rating; unfortunately the idea of movies for adults that aren't porn but still get nationwide release is still a bit of a pipedream. There's a book of the same name, a selection from Anais Nin's diaries that inspired the film.

I believe that the portrait up and to the left is the one that appears tacked to Henry Miller's wall in the film. (From the planet out movie review) And on the right is one with Fred Ward. He gives me hope for bald guys looking good. (I never saw what all the geek chicks see in, say, Picard on Star Trek.) But in general, I wish I could learn to take photographic portraits like these. (The two on the right are from a Kevin Spacey fansite, though Spacey was relatively a minor character in the film.)

These are about the best two portraits I've ever done. I hope it's mostly a matter of composition, since I'm sure my digital camera, no matter how beloved by me, won't win any awards by itself. (In fact, these were both taken with primitive Kodak digital cameras.) I wish I could find a photography class that talks about composition without going through all the "mechanics of 35mm film" first. I suspect the main factors are interesting lighting, framing the shot, and getting the person not to smile. (Speaking of photos, I think I need to pick the most interesting photos and make a new "photobook" rather than all the random collections listed on the sidebar.)

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Quote of a Previous Moment

Uma Thurman on a Hog Harley: now that's heaven.