Monday: A sleepy day, in which I came up with a good solution at work

Now I just need to convince people that it is actually good.

And then more Assassin's Creed:

Huh.  Three more carefully arranged assassins.  How did that happen?

But later I met up with Zopheras and her mom.

Zopheras is on my list of romance characters.

We went to the only pink tree in the entire country.

 But I chose to get my horse for the horse race instead of using the generic one, so I lost, and apparently that's a deal breaker?  I think that's the only failure of the 16 possible so far (not counting Theletas, as that's either/or with Kyra).

Also this lady, who somehow got riddled with flame arrows after being a jerk to me and her workers.  Let's just say there was some "organization" and a "breakdown in negotiations between labor and capital."

•  While playing this game, I keep thinking about how cool it would be to use it as a history lesson, because that's the kind of weirdo who misses school that I am.  It turns out that that's actually a thing.
• A summary of Inescapable Rain in Yoshiwara, a Silent Hill soundtrack.
• What.
• The problem is contained entirely on one side.

Monday: Waking up early is no fun.

We should all agree that mornings are bad, and that we should ignore them.

I didn't take any pictures today, but looking though my history tells me that six years ago I made a very fall veggie/beef soup, four years ago I had a Mexican Coke in Austin, and two years ago I had a Mexican Coke in Alameda.

And eleven years ago, I took a picture of my rose bush.

That was rotated correctly when I previewed it, and I'm too tired to bother sorting it out.

• It's probably dead again, so millions of people get to not die or go bankrupt.
• Taxes should be higher on the rich, and that money should be used to subsidize poor people.  I know this seems obvious, but.
• I really want to buy this book, but I'm also still trying to stick to my "stop buying every book" thing.

Monday: Wait, it's only Monday? :(

It was rainy today.

It hasn't been rainy in a while.

They also fixed the AC in my office today.  It is now unpleasantly chilly, which is basically where I like it to be.  Getting warm is easy, especially here.  Getting cool is not.

Today's also September 11th, and I spent some time looking through my blog to see if I'd done a "this is where I was" thing.  It turns out I like to fly on this day (a lot) because it tends to be cheaper and less busy, but all I could find was this story about yesterday.

It was my first year of grad school, and I had a class that morning, I think at 9am.  When I arrived at my office, the first plane had already hit, and I mentioned that buildings had been hit by planes before, including the Empire State Building.  In any case, class wasn't cancelled, and so we sat through a super fun radiative transfer class while down the hall people watched the news on TV.

By the time class was over, it was pretty clear what was happening, and that work wasn't going to happen, so everybody went home to watch the news there.  I remember driving home, and driving past the mall and Best Buy, with pretty much every business closed.  Someone had parked a big rental truck in the mall parking lot, but had made sure to open the rear door all the way so no one thought it was a bomb.

My thought at the time, which was shared by the professor teaching the radiative transfer class, was that a real existential threat would have the industrial capability to wage a proper war.  Using terrorism and indirect methods shows that they have to go for flashy things that aren't as effective as say "a division of tanks" or "actual bombers".  It's unfortunate that so many people are too stupid to realize this fact, which is why it can be used as a tool against gun control among other things.

• Brought to mind because Krugman has basically the same though.
• Interesting gender bias tool, and I need to find more things to try it on.  Putting yesterday's Secret Wars thing through it suggests I need to stop breaking things into "Team Good Guys/Team Bad Guys".  For that story, it should probably be "Team Jen and Monica Plus Their Bossy Friends/Team Doom is Insufferable."  
• The housing crash was apparently driven by speculation.  Thanks, rich people who aren't rich enough to feel fulfilled.
• Food timeline.

Sunday: Something not work-related.

So it's apparently been like three years since I last went to the Bishop Museum.  After the movie yesterday, I thought this would be the most likely place to get a decent book on Hawaiian mythology.  I did, and like a third of the book is about Maui.

The main building.

The Bishop museum is like four buildings, each having different exhibits.  This is fine most days.

Most days aren't as rainy as today, however.

Maui.

Kaneikokala.  He is a shark god who helps people.  I suspect he's a form of Kane, as Kane has lots of forms.

Hawaiian Hall.

A model of a reconstruction of an ancient boat.

"Hey that looks like Manoa."  It was Manoa.  The mountains don't change.

One of the other buildings was taken over by Dora and Diego.

It did have a nice exhibit on the Bishops, though.

 Then the science building.

Yeah.

Glow in the dark pig.

Even though it was raining, I walked through the botanical garden.

Hibiscus.

 Last night, I watched this video:

It was wrong, and asserted that In-n-out was better than Five Guys.

So that was what I had for dinner.  Or late lunch.  Now I'm hungry again.  :(

• I thought about this burger today, and that didn't help make me less hungry.
• That's good.
• This is the best Star Wars rewrite ever.
• Best comic book store story ever.
• I couldn't watch this interview because the pre-interview clip made her look so painfully stupid that I couldn't stand it.  I'm glad I chose that option.
• The basic facts of the healthcare system.
• I will always love stories of helpful eldritch evil.
• Calm down, cat.  Sheesh.

Thursday: I think I'm going to do an weekly update on this sports thing.

But I probably should have believed in the heart of the cards numbers on those #12 ranked teams.

Also: this corned beef is not as good as pastrami.

• Mobile ads are stupid.  I have never found a useful mobile ad, and I will actively not buy things from companies that use mobile ads.
• I like unagi.
• I wish people weren't so stupid.
• But see, I'd rather go to a museum to see art.  Airports are places I try to get through as quickly as possible.  I wonder if this means my next trip, I'll need to schedule extra "art time" at SFO.
• This is dumb.
• I really like Lion.  Lion is the best.
• I'm curious as to how they're going to try and investigate this without damaging things.
• On a related topic, that story led to reading about Nefertiti, which led to this interesting article on Neferneferuaten, who might have been Nefertiti ruling as a king.  Or, you can read down into section 4.3 and discover that no matter how fucked up you thought ancient Egypt might have been, I guarantee it's worse.

Saturday: For doing very little today, I have a lot of things to include in this post.

I've spent a large chunk of this week thinking that I had things to do both days this weekend.  I know I was planning on going to Kailua for that chicken place, but I couldn't figure out what the other thing to do was.  Go shopping?  I was going to hit up Target when I was over there, so that doesn't seem right.  Go to the museum?  Probably about time to do that again, but that's kind of just a constant "always be beeping visiting museums" thing.  

So instead, I spent the day watching youtube and reading.

And I went to get the pork chop/pancake power combo.  I had to have them recook the chop, though, because as much as I'm cool with pork, I'm not cool with pork that's still kind of pink and fleshy inside.  It was probably fine, but it never hurts.

But back to the reading.  I bought SPQR by Mary Beard like forever ago, and have been slowly getting through it, mostly because I keep starting and finishing other books.  Still, it's a good read, and I've been enjoying it, but today I noticed something weird.

Do you see it?  You can cheat and look at the next picture where I've circled the issue.

What?

"Identikit"?  I guess this is ok to use as an adjective?  That seems weird.  This next one seems weirder:

Page 344.

Page 345.

Is it just me, or does it seem like there's a line missing to conclude the sentence on 344?  I reread those two paragraphs like a dozen times trying to figure out of I was crazy or if there was an editing issue.

And then I ate an apple bunny.

Apple bunny.

See?

• This dog seems sad.
• This dog seems surprised.
• Duck.
• Kiki.
• Necromancer.
• Star Wars.
• More Star Wars.

Sunday: Even though this is only a 4-day week, I'm still not looking forward to it.

It's also one of the holidays that doesn't get shifted around, so this week is a weird "001101100" kind of thing.

This is almost certainly a photoshop, and by someone who actually took the time to do actual research.  The real Chigi vase has a piece missing where "panic soldier" is standing, but the scene depicted does show that the left army (shown here) is basically in the process of being surprised by their foes.  Actual research to understand the scene and then draw in something to fit.

• This is the best thing on twitter.
• This is cool.
• This first comic is crazy.
• This looks delicious.

Monday: Again, it simply refuses to rain

Making my apartment super humid.  Stupid lazy sky.

Mr. Doughnut.  I going to say that he and Pyramid Cat travel around and solve mysteries, like Scooby Doo.

• Today is the day that Rome was founded.  In a day.  By Aeneas.  Or Romulus and Remus.  Frankly, I stopped bothering trying to sort it out and I actually like this stuff.  You can read Livy's version here, but that just sounds like a giant retcon.
• This showed up in my watch later list, and since what I watch tends to lag by 1-7 days relative to when I put things in it, I have no clue where I saw it.  I watched the video first, and assumed it was just someone with way too much time had decided to sync the symphony up with a previously existing music video.  Discovering that the video was made exclusively for this project led to the conclusion that someone with way too much time also had way too much money.
• I pretty much have no clue what to say about today's Adventure Time.  It's mostly all "but..." and "wha?" and "I really thought you'd just leave that as a thing for an undefined 'the future'."
• Interesting plot, although I think the real lesson is, "Just use C, because it's effectively as fast as fortran, but infinitely easier to write and debug."  A secondary lesson could be, "Fuck python."  I just noticed octave there, so I guess the tertiary lesson is, "use octave to sort out an answer, but don't do real calculations there, that's just silly." 

Saturday: And then I remembered I had cake

Had. Past tense.

And I guess it's now becoming a common thing to do weekend rainbows:

Because there are always rainbows everywhere.

I also had to close my windows today.  It's like 64 right now, with wind gusts that blow everything across my apartment.

Today's also the Ides of March, which means you can read about how the ides were originally designed to signify the full moon in the original lunar Roman calendar.  Then, you can read about how Julius Caesar, who was not ever actually an emperor, but was pontifex maximus, used the religious power that position gave him to convert Rome to the far more accurate solar based Julian calendar.  This calendar was likely derived from Greek and Egyptian calculations that Caesar came into contact with while he was in Egypt, in pursuit of Pompey, during the Roman Civil Wars.  Because Caesar triumphed, returning Rome to a state of relative stability, he was named dictator perpetuo, a position which others thought would lead to him claiming a kingship of Rome, prompting them to form a conspiracy to kill him.

On the Ides of March.

Sometimes history is just so wonderfully perfect.

• This story is just so absolutely stupid.  Not the writing of, but the very concept that someone in Russia really thinks that a new Cold War is a good idea.  Not because that's obviously stupid and no one wants nuclear war, but because of basic economics.
• Ok, so I just now realized that my first sub link is from someone in Ukraine.  That was totally not intentional.  Anyway, he lists the GDP of the USSR and the US in decade intervals, with the takeaway being that the Soviet economy was effectively 1/2 to 1/3 that of the US during the height of the cold war.
• Here's a different source that confirms that, although it pushes hard for 1/3.
• Great, now look at things today: the Russian economy is 1/8 that of the US.  
• The conclusion I see is that guy is basically an old lunatic, who doesn't realize that reality puts a fairly hard constraint on things.  How do you start up a cold war when you can far more effectively 
• Plus, you know, having this much of your economy dependent on one source is not really a stable way to run things.
• Bear.
• Lion.
• Taco cat.
• Pizza burger.