New Pin Map: Complete!

Jan. 15th, 2026 09:27 pm
canyonwalker: Walking through the desert together (2010) (through the desert)
[personal profile] canyonwalker
Replacing our USA travel map has been an odyssey. When I ordered the new one in early December I didn't think it would take just over 5 weeks until we hung the new one in its place. Though given the original had hung on our walls for going on 30 years what's an extra 37 days?

The delay happened first because getting the customized map printed and shipped took over a week. Then we delayed opening it as we were busy in the pre-holidays rush. Then we found the map was misprinted. Oh, no! The vendor courteously took full responsibility right away and printed and sent a new one, but again that process took over a week. It's only in the past week we've spent time moving our pin markers from the old map to the new one.

Moving 100s of pins from the old map to the new map (Jan 2026)

There were hundreds of pins in the map. We didn't count them precisely; that's just an estimate. Moving them was a laborious task. But it was a labor of love. Each time we removed a pin from the old map we noted the location it marked, recalled the time(s) we've been there, and inserted a new pin in the corresponding location on the new map.

Alas this labor of love was still labor. Moving all the pins made our hands achy, even with small pliers (you can see them at the bottom of the pic above) to help remove the old ones and press the new ones in. We worked on it across three sessions over the past week.

Our new pin map is complete! (Jan 2026)

But now it's done! And tonight we hung the new map on the wall in the place of the old one, in our upstairs landing.

What's custom, BTW? Aside from the frame we picked, which was one of about 8 choices the maker offered, we customized the message in the map legend.

We customized our pin map with a family motto in the legend (Jan 2026)

It's our riff on the theme of the 1976 Billy Joel song You're My Home. Y'know, the one that goes:

🎵 Home can be the Pennsylvania Turnpike
Indiana's early morning dew
High up in the hills of California
Home is just another word for you. 🎵
We've been to all those places. And hundreds more.


(no subject)

Jan. 14th, 2026 11:40 pm
sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
[personal profile] sorcyress
It's the cold and dark of winter and I made the daily challenge on my discord be "Screaming", because it's sorta how everything has felt. In revenge, I had to have an annoying conversation with my boss about some (uncompensated, non-contract) responsibilities I hold have been slipping, and had one of my cabinets literally collapse in the middle of proctoring a serious standardized test. It was very dramatic, luckily it was just me and one student to be very badly startled.

Also luckily, my anti-Nemesis (comrade? buddy? hero?) was able to quickly swing by, and as he always does, he made my life demonstrably better. Huzzah! Now, when can we have a building that doesn't use the cheapest possible materials? We have not been present long enough for things to be literally falling apart.

Before the mild disaster, I managed to do a bunch of what my therapist yesterday called "productive avoidance". Genuinely good things! Things that need done! I checked some serious stuff off my todo list! None of it was the stuff that's the highest priority right now, which not surprisingly, is also the stuff that's stressing me out right now. Maybe tomorrow I will finally do some grading? Hahahah oh god.

I dunno man, it's the cold and dark of winter and also it's the cold and dark of fascism. I should probably be texting a lot more often with my sister who's currently in a city overrun by government thugs. I hope she's okay. I hope she stays okay. I hope we all stay okay. That's not just sisters, I hope we all stay okay.

***

I wrote all the above during the department meeting, when I was still kinda sad and frustrated, but then Geometry PLC was quite good, and Clayton and I were able to walk home together and that was _excellent_. It's always pretty good, it's so _so_ valuable to have people I genuinely like to work with, but this time was also especially fun because he was filling me in his theory that Moby Dick is just an anime. It's very charming when he gets into things like that!

This evening has been...not terrible? Not amazing. Played a lot of video games, which is sometimes very good, and sometimes very avoidant. It wanted to be the really big push for packing for Arisia, since tomorrow night is dance class and I will be less inclined to do any packing work then. I did a non-zero amount of packing! It's nowhere near complete, but it was good progress! I also, critically, did all the laundry, so I'm actually set _up_ to do more good packing tomorrow.

And I helped Rey buzz her hair short which was quite fun --I always like a chance to play with the clippers! And I washed all the dishes, which is good --I've been only an intermittent dish fairy these past few weeks, so it felt good to do it proper.

I still need to update my dailies list, which I'm trying to pay better attention to this year than last. I think I sussed out it was ~130 days that I actually logged things last year? Which is...not great. I'd like to do better this year, I'd like to see if I can at least get 2/3rds of the days gone. Using Habitica too, helps. Having the double things to log is actually quite nice, they scratch similar but not-quite-the-same itches.

I hope you are well and happy and stay that way.

~Sor
MOOP!

Funny AI Rendering Fails

Jan. 14th, 2026 05:41 pm
canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
[personal profile] canyonwalker
2025 was the Year of AI. Content generated by AI started popping up everywhere. I even used it a bit myself. But just a bit, because one thing that was blindingly obvious in the Year of AI— obvious to anyone really paying attention, anyway— is that AI can produce some laughably silly results.

For example, some of my colleagues went big into using AI image generation to illustrate slide presentations a few months ago. I couldn't help but point out, publicly, when a person (in the picture) who was the subject of the story had, say, 3 arms, or when they had a laptop showing our product on its screen while the screen was bent around the wrong way. Maybe that makes me a bad person. But I've always been the one dumbass who, when the emperor strides onto the stage stark-fucking-naked, nudges people next to me and says out loud, "Look, the emperor's wearing no clothes!" And more to the point here, if we don't object to AI slop right now, its' going to become normalized and we're going to be completely inundated with it in 2026.

Anyway, this journal entry isn't supposed to be a screed against AI. I'm writing to share some in-the-know humor about some of the funny results AI image gen gives us.

A few months ago I used Google's Gemini image gen to illustrate panels for a story I wrote on my blog. It's the one I only finally finished yesterday: The Mystery of the Church Up the Hill. One of the images I created was of my father painting the inside of the church he attended decades ago. I wrote a prompt like

A man is painting the walls in a Catholic church. He is in his 30s and is dressed in clothes fashionable in the early 1970s.


And the first result was....

Disco Jesus paints his church. Funny AI rendering fail from Google Gemini. (Oct 2025)

Disco Jesus! 🤣

I literally gave this prompt next:

The man is not Jesus.


To its credit, the image generator came back with a new image that did not have the son of god painting his own church after rising from the dead inside a vintage clothing shop. 🤣

Ultimately there were more things wrong with the pic than just "My dad doesn't look like Jesus", so I prompted the AI to start over. On my second try I used a few more terms to describe the aspects of the scene I thought were most salient. I got the image I used in the story I shared yesterday.

AI rendering of a man painting a church (Google Gemini, Oct 2025)

Was the final image I went with at all like the church my dad painted? No. But it conveyed the parts of the story I thought were appropriate. Including a few key elements of my dad's appearance: age, body shape, hair color, and glasses. One thing I couldn't get right in a handful of prompts was managing to dress my dad like a dork from the early 70s. Gemini kept taking the "early 1970s" prompt as making my dad look like a dork who dressed up to go disco dancing. Though I can see now that Dad would've looked pretty sharp— for a dork— in Chelsea boots and a leather vest!

canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
[personal profile] canyonwalker
Three months ago I started telling the story of the church up the hill. Except for most of my life it was the mystery of the church up the hill.

An AI rendering of the church up the hill (Google Gemini, Oct 2025)

I grew up in a Catholic family, and we lived in a neighborhood where there was a Catholic church right up the hill from us. It was easy walking distance, about 3 blocks. But we almost never attended that church, at least not that I remember. Instead we were regular parishioners at the Catholic church in the next town over— a church a 20 minute car trip away, in a town we never lived in.

It always seemed strange to me, "Why don't we attend the church almost literally in our back yard—" the strip of land immediately behind our back yard was literally owned by the church— "Instead of driving to another city?" I asked my parents many times. The answers they gave never made sense. It wasn't until I was in my 40s, and my father was on his deathbed, that I pieced together the truth to unravel this mystery.

Follow me through the jump for the rest of the story.

Read the rest of the story... )
solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)
[personal profile] solarbird

I never got a chance to write an article about how much worse 2026 is going to be than 2025; it all got going with Trump’s invasion of Venezuela literally as I was getting to write it all out. But before I could, well, here we were, already ass-deep in it.

Today, I wanted to talk about subverting this year’s elections – a work already in progress – but we should probably start with what’s most loudly and visibly in front of us this week before going into that.

The first thing you have to remember – the first thing you have to keep in mind – is that the US Government is now a white nationalist government. Straight up. Little hedging or pretence remains; it’s a white nationalist government, and don’t try to tell me otherwise when the Shitweasel is openly condemning the civil rights movement and official US government accounts are openly sending out white nationalist propaganda and promoting white nationalist goals.

Which they are, if you missed it over new year’s.

Like here, for example, where the Department of Homeland Security posted how peaceful and great America would be after 100 million deportations of people from the “third world.”

There aren’t 100 million immigrants at all in the United States, much less ones from the “third world.” But if you take all immigrants (of all races) and all non-white American citizens, and yes, that includes those who have citizenship by by birth and add those numbers up…

…that’s right about 100,000,000.

They know that, of course. So given that, I have to assume that’s who they’re saying to get rid of. Everyone not white and every immigrant.

They’re literally propagandising for a mass ethnic purge of 100,000,000 people, most of whom are US citizens of colour.

Elon Musk has become even more openly white nationalist, by the way. The movement isn’t even pretending otherwise anymore.

(As an aside, why is anyone still on X? Particularly given all this? Why? Was it not obvious enough before? How about now that it’s an AI child porn generation site? Is that obvious enough? Seriously – WHY IS ANYONE STILL THERE?! If you are, get the fuck off X. For good. Now. I’m sick of excuses, get off of X, right the fuck now. If you have followers you care about, lead them off too. Now.)

But I digress.

The DHS “X” account is an official US government account owned and maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, which runs ICE. It’s not some unofficial fan club, it’s literally the US government in control of it, and they’re posting white nationalist propaganda.

The “100 million” post is only one example of such propaganda; there are many others. Not only have they not taken down this particular piece of white nationalist propaganda, when I started writing this, it was still pinned to the top of the account. They weren’t hiding it, they were highlighting it.

They’re proud of it. It’s the goddamn goal. They are telling you it’s the goddamn goal. When will people listen?

(This is, by the way, what every single person who didn’t do everything they could to get Harris into the Presidency brought us, and amongst the many things I will never forgive are those people who sneered, jeered, and slandered me, accusing me of being pro-genocide, all for doing what was absolutely necessary to keep literal fascists out of the White House. And so they played saboteur, buying into bullshit, discouraging voting, depressing turnout, and now look where we fucking are.)

But again, I digress. I digress a lot, lately, I admit.

So. As MAGA leadership is white nationalist, DHS is also white nationalist. As DHS is white nationalist, ICE is white nationalist.

Remember again that ICE is DHS’s enforcement arm, their national semi-secret police intended to execute DHS policy. Their street white nationalism is the implementation of the political white nationalism.

One way you can tell is their recruitment of white nationalists, often using literal Klu Klux Klan language. “Defend Your Culture,” which is big in their advertising, was literally a KKK slogan, and the “culture” of the Klan was white supremacy through violence. I assure you, the white supremacists don’t miss it – Proud Boy leadership started telling their membership to sign up months ago, and I promise you that they are, where they can. The people they recruit will be onboard with the agenda.

(See also how the Republican Party’s MAGA wing – when it was only a wing, and not the whole party – gave the Proud Boys a quiet tryout as a militant street action wing, a kind of enforcement brigade without official status. It didn’t work out; the PB were too undisciplined and too independent. This is their solution. Their explicitly political recruitment, targeting the far-right of the GOP base, helps make the connection clear.)

They’re only starting with this purge of actual undocumented people.

Initially moving against undocumented workers – already an expansion after promising to only go after “violent criminals” – they’ve been generating new “illegals” since day one. They’ve been making people applying for refugee status into “illegals,” arresting them as they show up for entry interviews and appointments and court dates. They’re making people here with longstanding legal status “illegals,” breaking promises and revoking already-signed papers, often breaking the law to do so. The leadership are explicitly looking for ways to “de-naturalise” people, and going after the very explicit, very intentional birthright citizenship guaranteed by the US Constitution.

They’re openly setting up the concentration camps they need for such a mass expulsion. They brag about it. They’ve published the structure of how they’ll work.

It is, as it was always intended to be, a mass ethnic purge. It is, to use their word, “wartime” in America. And yes, they will get to citizens, unless we stop them before they can.

As with any such purge, it will be bloody. It already is bloody, of course, with ICE beating down citizens they have no authority to arrest and occasionally just murdering people in the streets. Good was not the first, she was just the most recent, and the first that looked like she could turn up at a MAGA rally. That whiteness is what’s made the difference in popular reaction. But it will get far, far bloodier – which is exactly what MAGA leadership want it to become.

Vance says ICE agents have “absolute immunity,” and are above all state and local laws. That’s not the law and never has been, it’s just fascism. But it’s more specifically giving ICE informal – but clear – permission to do whatever the hell they want, up to and including murder more ‘lesbian bitches‘ like Renee Good, a threat reportedly made by more than one ICE agent this past weekend.

And, as you’d expect once given the go-ahead like that, they’re using their murder of Renee Good to intimidate Americans, threatening citizens with the same kind of violence.

It will not stop in hotspots. Vance also says he wants ICE agents going door to door all across America. They’ve been doing that this past weekend in Minnesota, sweeping through neighbourhoods. Yes, of course they include citizens in that door-to-door, and yes, it’s government terrorism. They don’t care if it’s your property, they don’t care that you’re an American, they threaten to smash down your door if you demand to see a warrant and they threaten you with prosecution if you stand up for your rights.

Do I have an example on video? Of course I do. The terror you see and hear from this American family in their own home is what they want. Listen, you’ll hear them tell the family with infant child that if they make ICE wait for a warrant they’ll smash the door down. Listen, you’ll hear them threaten the family with Federal charges for not letting them in right the fuck now.

But stand your goddamn ground, and have your whistles, and get your neighbourhood out and loud. If you don’t know what the whistles are, find out, and if you hear them, learn to respond. This particular neighbourhood did. And, being mostly cowards, ICE left – for now. But they’ll seethe, and take it out on someone else later.

They want violence, they want fear, they want and have basically received permission to spill blood. None of that is compatible with a republic, but MAGA doesn’t really want that either.

I’m further pretty sure that MAGA leadership does want resistance, however. Underneath it all, it sure seems clear to me that Trump and Vance and Miller et al are salivating to use the Insurrection Act and declare martial law. Trump’s been openly talking about it since his first term, just like he’s talked about how it’d be “good” for America to have a “president for life.” He wants dictatorial power and he wants it bad, because he knows it’s the only way the party survives the 2026 elections, and without the party, he’s vulnerable.

He knows his movement is starting to come apart. He knows everyone not in his movement is done with his shit. So he’s going to do whatever he can, with absolutely no limits, to stay in power. That includes false prosecutions against political opponents, that includes declaring war on allies, that includes declaring war on citizens (as above), and yes, that does include subverting, stealing, or just trying to overturn the 2026 elections.

That last part can’t be surprising, can it? Are we going to pretend it’s a surprise, when he tries? It’s what he did in 2020, and he didn’t go to jail, so why wouldn’t he try it again? It’d only be surprising if he didn’t try. So, I think it’s clear that he will.

I have some thoughts on how it’ll go. You can figure them out for yourself if you paid attention in 2020, because basically it’s the same plan. But this mess of an article is already too damn long, so that’ll have to wait. We’ll call that part two.

And if you’ve made it down this far through this absolute mess of an article, good job. Because holy crow, it is a mess. But that doesn’t make me wrong. Moments in history like this are messy, too.

So get organised and get used to turning out, because all this is going to keep getting worse. If there’s no ICE around, today’s a Tesla Takedown day; you might join an existing protest, or start a new one. I’ll see you again in a couple of days with part two.

Be good out there.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

canyonwalker: Walking through the desert together (2010) (through the desert)
[personal profile] canyonwalker
Yesterday I wrote about Oh, The Places We've Been and the pin map we hang on our wall. Before the holidays I realized that we hadn't updated our map in a while. We needed to add several more pins for places we've been! But our supply of pins was out.

Okay, no problem, I figured. I can jump on Amazon.com and find probably a bazillion different kinds of map pins. But then a funny thing happened.

When I searched for map pins my results also included matches for pin maps. It's kind of an anagram, right? Mathematical property of commutation? 🤣

Some of the pin maps were really nice. Some of them were basically like the DIY project I put together on my kitchen table over 25 years ago except... nicer than DIY. As much as my AAA-map-stapled-to-a-cork-bulletin-board still has sentimental value to me I decided I was ready for an upgrade. I checked with Hawk— because while I started the project we have updated it for 25+ years— and $250 we had a new, custom map in a hardwood frame on the way.

A new, customized pin map of where we've been-- without pins yet (Jan 2026)

The new map arrived in December, before the holidays. It was like a birthday present for me. A present for the birthday which I otherwise didn't celebrate and received no gifts for. But there was a problem. The custom legend, which you can see toward the lower right of the map in the pic above, was wrong. It was only a slight mistake, but it was still there. I considered whether to keep the map as-is because the error was so small. But at the same time I knew that every time I looked at it— every time, daily, for the next 25+ years— I'd see that error. My spirit sank.

Fortunately the maker was really cool about fixing the problem. I sent a brief note explaining the error and asking what we could do. She immediately accepted responsibility for the mistake (her team had botched the custom message in the legend) and said she'd print and send a new one after Christmas.

Indeed, the new map arrived around New Year. And it was perfect. My spirit once again soared.

Old map and new, ready to transfer pins (Jan 2026)

Now all we'd need to do was move pins from the old map to the new one. Hundreds of pins, all marking places we've been (in the USA) over the past 25+ years. It'd be another project, a labor of love.

canyonwalker: Mr. Moneybags enjoys his wealth (money)
[personal profile] canyonwalker
I had a pretty quiet weekend again this past weekend. Boring, too. How boring? So boring that I started my taxes. ...And I don't mean my taxes that are due April 15. I started next year's taxes. The ones for 2026 that aren't due for another 15 months!

Brace Yourselves, Tax Day is Coming!Why start so soon?

As I've mentioned before, I start my taxes a year in advance. Obviously I can't fill out forms yet. I mean, I won't have the numbers for at least another 12 months... and even the forms won't be available until around this time next year! But what I do start a year in advance are estimates.

I like to know in advance approximately what I'm going to owe for taxes. With that knowledge I can adjust my withholding rates, if necessary, and also pay quarterly estimated taxes accurately. My goal is not to be surprised by a big balance due or refund come April— whether that's April 2026 or April 2027. A big balance due can mean penalties owed to the IRS... and a big refund means I've lent them money at 0% interest! Either way, ugh.

Working on these estimates now for the tax return I'll file 15 months from now already has proven worthwhile. As I plan to retire soon this year I'll be shifting from earning significant amounts of money in wages to getting most of my taxable income from dividends and capital gains. That has tax implications. Dividends and capital gains are taxed lower than wages. There's an interesting edge case where some dividends and cap gains can be taxed at 0%. That provision never applied to me before because my wages were always too high. I worked through that edge case in my planning this weekend. It lowered the tax I expect I'll owe by several thousand dollars. Hooray! And by knowing that now I know not to overpay on quarterly estimated taxes and give Uncle Sam a big, interest-free loan. That makes my advanced preparation a double win.

Fresh Starts

Jan. 12th, 2026 11:00 am
[syndicated profile] gnomestew_feed

Posted by J.T. Evans

It’s a new year! Time for resolutions (I don’t do those, BTW). Time for fresh outlooks on life. Time to plan some goals (I do make goals for the year, BTW). Time for some fresh starts. These fresh starts can come in many forms. New characters. New campaigns. New games. New Systems. New gaming groups. New you! Let’s talk about that for a bit.

Characters

 Time for a new character? 

If you feel “stuck” in your current game, maybe it’s time for a new character to come into play. This can be a replacement character for your current campaign if you’re a player. This can be a new, very important NPC for the group to interact with if you’re the GM. Changing things up can really introduce new energy and vitality to your ongoing campaign.

However, don’t rattle the cage too hard. The overseers will hear you and come down with their stun batons. Make the change smoothly and in flow with what’s going on in the campaign.

As a player, if you feel you need a new character to introduce new passion into your gaming, talk about it with the table. Not just the GM. The entire table. See what everyone has to say about your new character concept and how well it’ll mesh with the current party of characters. You definitely need the GM’s permission to swap out characters. You don’t need permission from your fellow players, but you should at least get their buy in. Get them all on board with the chemistry change to their adventuring party.

As the GM, throwing in a new, important NPC can be jarring unless that NPC is somehow related to something else that already exists in the material you’ve presented to the players. Make it a relative of an existing NPC, even if it’s a minor one. Introduce another NPC’s boss and/or subordinate. Show how the new NPC is related (not necessarily by blood) to an existing frame of the campaign. The NPC can be there to help or hinder the PCs. Heck, the new NPC can be there to grant a new mission/job/quest/goal to the PCs, but make sure the NPC is presented as a trustworthy fellow to avoid the PCs from doubting the new job’s sincerity or validity. You can do this by tying the new NPC to ongoing events or other NPCs.

Campaigns

 Time for a new campaign? 

Sometimes (especially after the rough scheduling of holiday break), it’s time for a new campaign. If you can, plan for this. No one likes a surprise “new campaign” at the new year because it was hard to get the group together for the last two months. Yeah. I know this advice is coming a bit late since the holiday season just passed. Keep this in mind for the end of this year. If you can wrap up the current campaign around mid-November in plans for a long hiatus as the multitude of holidays hammers into your family life, you can return after the new year refreshed and ready for a good start on a new campaign.

This isn’t necessary, but it might be easier to launch into something new instead of asking, “Where were we two months ago?” Of course, if you have a good scribe in your group that tracks events, dates, characters, and game status at the end of each session, you should be able to pick up where you left off with relative ease.

Genre/Systems

 Time for a new system or genre? 

If you’re going to change up campaigns, maybe it’s time for a new genre and/or system! Maybe. It depends on your group. Most gaming groups encounter the dreaded monster known as the “Long Hiatus” between November and December, and it’s finally releasing its grip on the group in early January. Of course, for those of us in the northern hemisphere of Earth, January and February (and sometimes March) can bring some pretty miserable winter weather, so that Long Hiatus might increase its grip on the group at random times.

If you are prepared and thoughtful enough for the Long Hiatus, you might have a chance to start an online conversation (email, Slack, Discord, etc.) along the lines of, “What genre or system do we want to tackle next?” Obviously, if everyone is happy with what you currently have, this conversation isn’t necessary. If you need a change of scenery from epic fantasy to something else, then mid-December through early February is a great time to bring up this topic.

Conclusion

Regardless of what you might need or want to change at the new year, make sure you communicate your desires with the rest of your group in an open and honest manner. Don’t surprise folks with a new genre or system or campaign at the start of the new year. Don’t ambush anyone (especially the GM) with a fresh character to integrate into the group just because the Gregorian calendar ticked up a number in years. I guess the point I’m trying to make is collaborate and communicate with everyone at the table on any “fresh start” you want to bring to the table.

Happy New Year!

May your 2026 be wonderful!

Where We've Been: We Keep a Pin Map

Jan. 11th, 2026 04:03 pm
canyonwalker: Walking through the desert together (2010) (through the desert)
[personal profile] canyonwalker
Years ago I got the idea, "Let's make a map of all the places we've been!" I made it a simple, DIY craft project. I bought a cork bulletin board sized about 24"x36", got a folding USA roadmap from AAA, trimmed the map to fit, then stapled it into the frame. With the cork board surface beneath the paper map we could stick colored map pins into it.

At first there weren't many pins. Understand, we started this back in the mid-late 1990s after we'd moved out to California together. Most of the original pins were where we'd lived in college and where we stayed on our cross-country drive moving to California. But over the years we've added a lot more pins. Here's a pic from a few weeks ago:

Our (original) pin map of where we've been in the US (Dec 2025)

Our homemade pin map has been a fixture in our house for a few decades at this point. For the first few years it'd be a ritual— no, a celebration— when we'd come home from a trip and add a new pin, or possible a few new pins, to the map. Over the years as we've filled in the map with pins in places we've wanted to visit we often come home without a new pin to add. So now it's a special celebration when we visit a new place and can add a pin!

(A note on pin meaning: We decided from the beginning that pins would only mark places we stayed overnight. If we marked every place we simply visited, some areas of the map would get extremely crowded. Plus, what counts as "visited" if not an overnight stay? Is there a minimum visit time, like it has to be over 3 hours to count? What if we just pause somewhere scenic to take pictures? We limited it to overnights to make it simple and sane.)

Playing D&D. Soon. I Hope.

Jan. 11th, 2026 09:06 am
canyonwalker: Roll to hit! (d&d)
[personal profile] canyonwalker
I posted a week ago about how I'm looking to get a Dungeons & Dragons game started soon. It's been taking a while. And it's not even a big game. It's purposefully a small one! First, there was fleshing out the story enough to start making plans, then finding the right group of players, and now the challenge of figure out when we can all play.

It reminds of me this very true D&D meme:

d&d-easy-normal-hard-scheduling.jpg

Yes, scheduling a D&D game is the hardest part of running a D&D game. Especially once you and your players all have regular lives— with jobs, families, and other activities and obligations. So frequently the discussion goes like:

"How about we do Saturdays, 7pm 'til late?"
"I'd need to be home by 10pm."
"I have another D&D game already Saturday evenings."
"What about Saturday afternoon?"
"I can't start before 2."
"I can't stay past 6, maybe even 5:30."
"How about Sunday?"
"I'm busy in the daytime."
"I'm busy in the evening."
"Oh, and I can't do the 4th, the 11th, or all of February and March."
"Could we do a weekday, like Friday night?"
"I couldn't be there until 7pm, at least.'
"I'd need to turn into a pumpkin by 10."
"I'm still out all of February and March."

Pretty quickly you start to feel like this:

d&d-schedules&conflicts.jpg

Is Venezuela Really About Epstein?

Jan. 10th, 2026 08:35 pm
canyonwalker: Cthulhu voted - touch screen! (i voted)
[personal profile] canyonwalker
As people discuss competing ideas for why the US invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its sitting president last weekend, and even President Donald Trump and his various surrogates offer rotating justifications for it, I keep coming back to one sickening possibility that struck me when I first heard news of the invasion/abduction a week ago:

Trump did it to flush discussion of Jeffrey Epstein out of the news cycle.

It's clear that Trump has getting hit hard by Epstein news up until a week ago. After campaigning on the issue for many months as a candidate, he and his seemingly crooked Attorney General, Pam Bondi, clammed up on releasing the files once they took office. Bondi went from saying, "The folders are on my desk," to saying that no folders ever existed. The controversy stayed in the news, as some of Trump's own supporters began wondering if he was hiding personal involvement with the now-deceased child sex trafficker. Enough Republicans in Congress crossed over to join Democrats in voting on a bill last month to compel the DOJ to release the files. Trump, always wanting to portray himself as the winner in any fight, suddenly switched from suppressing the files to signing Congress's bill into law.

But Trump has an even more powerful media play than switching sides at the last moment to align himself with the winning side. When he's getting too much negative coverage in the media he does something outrageous to flush it out of the news cycle.

Anyone who's earnestly watched Trump for the past 10 years has seen him do this countless times and knows it's true. But for those who are unconvinced by my saying it, the idea behind it was memorably articulated by Trump's first chief strategist and propagandist, Steve Bannon:

"The Democrats don't matter... The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."

Flooding the zone takes two forms. One, Trump and his surrogates spin an issue in favorable terms. They outright lie about what actually happened. That's the "shit" part. The media will try to fact-check the lies, but if lies are repeated and added to frequently enough, it overwhelms the fact-checking and all the media can do is repeat it. That's the "flood" part. We're seeing a textbook example of this right now with the ICE shooting of an unarmed American citizen in Minneapolis.

Two, a new issue can be used to flood an older issue right off the page. News focuses on what's new. They'll stick with one issue, like the Epstein files, until something new and pressing demands attention. Trump has shown himself to be a master of media manipulation at flooding unwanted stories out of the news cycle by saying or doing something provocative. He's been doing this for 10 years as a candidate and president. And it seems like that's exactly what's going on here.



Comments will be screened because I don't care to deal with drive-by insults from internet randos.
canyonwalker: Mr. Moneybags enjoys his wealth (money)
[personal profile] canyonwalker
There seems to be a cottage industry writing articles for the mainstream financial press about why affluent people are unhappy. "A Nation of Miserable Millionaires" touts the headline of one such article from MoneyWise in December. "Millionaires Don’t Feel Affluent" reads the section header in another MoneyWise article from last month. One I saw in my newsfeed last month but can't find by search right now asked something like "Why are there so many whiny millionaires?" in its title (perhaps it was retracted or retitled).

To the broad, general question of "Why don't millionaires feel rich?" I can tell you why. The simple answer is it's because we're not rich. ...Or at least not rich like you think we are.

Yes, I'm using first person pronouns here. I am a millionaire. But before you write me off as yet-another 1%-er complaining I'm not wealthy, understand first that millionaires are not the 1%. It's estimated that there are 24 million of us in the US. That's 9% of US adults. In high cost of living (HCOL) states like California, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Washington, DC we may not even be in the top 10%.

Being a millionaire isn't as ritzy as you might think it is. The term has been in popular use for over 100 years, and you're probably reacting to it based on connotations from 50 or 100 years ago. The writers of these mainstream financial articles sure seem to be counting on such misunderstandings as subtext. Consider these historical reference points:

  • As a cultural concept, "millionaire" first appeared in regularly print in late 1800s, in the Gilded Age. The industrial titans it described, though, didn't have just one million dollars, they already had tens of millions, or more. And that's in 1890 money. In today's economy they would be billionaires. The wealthiest people today are centi-billionaires. Elon Musk has an estimated net worth of $700 billion— that's 700,000 times as much as being a millionaire.

  • Millionaires as a social class were portrayed and romanticized by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby (1925). The story's protagonist, Jay Gatsby, was said to have $1.25 million in 1922. By a simple inflation calculation that's $20 million today. But the lifestyle Gatsby led in the book would not work on $20 million today. A mansion in The Hamptons, fancy cars, lavish parties, and a devil-may-care attitude? Yeah, maybe you could front that for a few years on 20 mil, but then you'd be broke. (Source: a friend's parents who own a starter home in the Hamptons and have zero fancy cars, zero household staff, and have only ever hosted two lavish parties— the wedding celebrations for two of their children.)

  • The fictional character of Thurston Howell in Gilligan's Island is repeatedly described as "A Millionaire". It's right in the show's catchy theme song! But based on the wealth he's described to have in 1964 when the show premiered— owning a corporate conglomerate, extensive real estate holdings, etc.— I'd peg him at at least $100 million in 1964 dollars and at least a billionaire today. In fact he was a billionaire in 1964. It's in the script of the first episode. A radio announcer describing the accident states "Billionaire Thurston Howell III" is among the missing.


So, when you hear "millionaire" and picture someone who lives a life of ease, someone who owns a huge house, fancy cars, has lavish possessions, employs household staff, wines, dines and travels extensively, someone who does all the above without having to work, you're at least 100 years out of date. The threshold for that kind of lifestyle today is at least $50 million wealth and more likely $100+ million.

Ratchet back that lifestyle to owning an upper-middle class house, one modest vacation home, a couple nice cars worth merely $100,000 each, and a cleaner who comes in twice a week, and— unless you're living paycheck-to-paycheck while earning $800,000+ a year to pay it off— we're still talking probably $10 million minimum.

You can see from these examples that being a millionaire no longer buys the "millionaire" lifestyle.

That said, being a millionaire sure still beats being poor. I know, because I grew up in a family of modest means. There were times I walked to school in shoes with holes in them. However much I have today, I don't forget where I came from.

So, why are millionaires like me not feeling rich? Popular news media— the kind I started this article by referencing— offers all kinds of answers that are simple, neat, and wrong.

  • Lifestyle inflation is one popular canard. As we've traded up from ordinary goods to luxuries, this argument goes, we've renormalized luxuries as basics. Trading in our starter homes for McMansions, our Toyotas for Mercedes-Benzes, and public school for our kids for tony private academies, we've forgotten that plenty of people live fulfilling lives with 3bdr/2ba houses, Toyota Camrys, and kids attending Lincoln High. In actual fact many US millionaires in 2025 still lived in middle-class homes, drove cars like a 5-year-old Toyota Camry, and earned State College degrees. My family's two cars are 7 and 14 years old, and we live in a townhouse.

  • Social media comparison is another frequently cited ill. We're all so obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses— which sometimes means keeping up with the curated, fake image they portray on social media— that we see ourselves as poor in comparison. It's true that some people fall into this trap, particularly younger people who've never had to leave their socioeconomic bubble, but it's far from all of us. Especially those of us who've worked hard, saved aggressively, and invested carefully for decades to raise ourselves up a few levels on the wealth and income scale.

  • Inability to stop counting our wealth is a fanciful hypothesis I encountered just recently. All I can say about this one is the author seems to have watched a cartoon of Scrooge McDuck hunched over his desk obsessively counting his gold coins and thought, "Yes! That's what real-life millionaires must be like!"


One thing none, none, of these authors appear to have done is ask an actual millionaire, "Why aren't you happy?" Instead they pile on stereotypes and class warfare notions. So let me, a real-life millionaire, tell you what I think worries us plain, old millionaires in 2026. It's one word:

Security.

I don't mean physical security, like living in a mansion behind wrought iron fences with a team of attack dogs I can sic on intruders by calling out, "Smithers! Release the hounds." No, that's billionaire lifestyle. Montgomery J. Burns in The Simpsons is a billionaire. The fabulously wealthy people today who are building extensive underground bunkers in their compounds? They're billionaires. Even centi-billionaires. (Mark Zuckerberg has estimated net worth of $250 billion, Elon Musk upwards of $700 billion.)

We mere millionaires are not worried about riding out the zombie apocalypse in style. We're worried, simply, "What if our wealth runs out?" Especially in the US that's a grim and all-too-real prospect. And it does not require lavish living! Putting a few kids through four-year college can chew up a fair fraction of a million. Then there's medical bills. The prospect of getting sick in the US, especially getting sick with a debilitating disease, is scary. Plenty of survivable conditions can chew up over $100,000 a year to survive. And a portfolio of $1 million doesn't go far in retirement, even if you don't get sick and face crushing medical expenses. Heck, just being really old and needing a managed care home can cost $100,000 a year— for something that doesn't look and feel like the setting from a horror movie. One of my grandparents faced that situation in her 90s, and it drained most of her life savings, including all the money from selling the house in outside Washington, D.C. she lived in for 50+ years, in 4 years.

rimrunner: (Default)
[personal profile] rimrunner
Andrea Pitzer, “The Century-Long Year

Pitzer is the author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, which I recommend reading to anyone who wants to understand an important facet of what’s going on in the United States right now. Her newsletter and podcast are worthwhile; they mirror each other, so you can absorb this content in whichever way works best for you.

This entry is an elucidation of the idea that Trump is less a cause of the U.S.’s current situation, than a symptom. Even once he’s gone—and he will be, someday—the circumstances that put him in power will remain. If that doesn’t sound great to you, Pitzer has some advice at the end.

Bret Devereaux, “Tolkien and Éowyn Between Two Wars

I always had this feeling that much of what happens in Lord of the Rings was in the intersections between Tolkien’s deep love and knowledge of ancient literature, his Christian faith, and his experiences in World War I. This excellent essay directly addresses two of those things, thus highlighting some key differences between battle scenes in Tolkien’s work and, say, the Iliad (which sometimes enumerates exactly which internal organs a spear impales when it kills someone).

Isaac Saul, “The ICE Shooting in Minneapolis

There’s tons out there about the killing of Renée Good; this is probably as decent a summation as any. If you’re not familiar with Tangle, its habitual approach is to round up sources from the political left and right that are representative of what’s being said on a topic or story. Note that it does not claim that these are the most accurate reports, just the most representative. I link to this one because I think Isaac is probably saying what a lot of people are thinking right now, especially those who haven’t been anticipating (by which I mean dreading) something like this.

Something that I don’t think is getting enough attention, at least not yet, is just how quickly the Trump administration framed the entire event to suit its purposes. It’s not new for the administration to do this, but they’re getting bolder about it. (Have a look at what the official White House website says about January 6th, if you can stomach it.)

To that latter point, and how we got here, Sherrilyn Ifill’s “Whether It Is ICE or Local Police, the U.S. Has Normalised Anti-Democratic Law Enforcement Practices is an important read. This week’s shooting is an outcome of something that’s been building for a long, long time.

David Williams, “Ten Reasons to be an Urban Naturalist

I’ve been a subscriber to Williams’s (no relation) newsletter for awhile now, and appreciate the lens he brings to the natural world with which our cities are enmeshed. Nature’s not out there, somewhere—it’s on our streets, in our backyards, in our homes, and in us. While I can attest that seeing an elephant in its home environment (for example) is an amazing experience, so was the screech owl I spotted outside my house by following a ruckus of crows. What he calls Birding by Butt here is very similar to the practice of sit spot: go find a place to sit on a regular basis, and see what turns up. My city backyard has featured rabbits, cats, robins, raccoons, red-tailed hawks, barred owls, and one memorable season, a junco nest.

Junior Kimbrough, Bellinzonia Blues Festival 1993

I’ve been going through some CDs I haven’t listened to in awhile (and sending some off to donation), and came across a few Junior Kimbrough albums. There’s not a lot of videos of him out there, but I found this one today. This is hill country blues, similar to but distinct from Delta blues. If you like Mississippi Fred McDowell or R.L. Burnside, you’ll like this.

Weekend protests – SHOW UP

Jan. 9th, 2026 08:45 pm
solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)
[personal profile] solarbird

PROTESTS. SATURDAY AND SUNDAY. LOTS OF THEM. SHOW UP.

Here’s a bunch on the Washington State wet side. All over the place, and I do mean all over. Like Tulalip, and Sequim. Don’t get me wrong, I like Sequim, but it is not a big place. Here’s the list. All kinds of times, all kinds of places.

Sundays are further down but this list isn’t in good date order, idk why. So keep scrolling.

I’m sure wherever you are has some too. Pick one and get out there.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

canyonwalker: I'm holding a 3-foot-tall giant cheese grater - Let's make America grate again! (politics)
[personal profile] canyonwalker
This week I read a hilarious article in The Atlantic: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Be Declared Honorary Virus. It's satire, of course, making of the fun nutty, conspiracy theory-spouting health secretary Donald Trump appointed as part of his kakistocracy. "The ceremony will feature roadkill hors d’oeuvres, goblets of beef tallow, and a sewage plunge," the subheader reads— referencing some of the ridiculous things Kennedy has said/done in office.

The line that really got me laughing out loud was this one: “Where other Kennedys mindlessly rushed to broaden access to health care, advocate peace, or improve children’s circumstances, only RFK Jr. had the courage to take a step back and say, ‘Let’s hear the other side.’”

Need for Surgery Getting Contagious

Jan. 8th, 2026 08:09 pm
canyonwalker: Uh-oh, physics (Wile E. Coyote)
[personal profile] canyonwalker
It's like the need for surgery is getting contagious. Or in this case, it seems to run in the family.

Hawk is having a planned foot surgery later this month. It's like the one she had a few months ago, just on the other foot this time.

In February I have a 4-day business trip that's high priority. Hawk won't be self sufficient after the surgery at that point. She'll need someone to help her with getting food and drink, plus being nearby in case something bad happens, like slipping and falling.

Our plan was for Hawk's mom to fly out here for a week and stay with her. We'd bought her first-class plane tickets from the east coast.

It was a good idea... until a few days ago when she called to tell us she has a fracture in her spine. But she didn't tell us, "Oops, my doctor says I need surgery urgently, I won't be able to come." Instead she offered to put off her surgery for 5-6 weeks and come out here to take care of Hawk first. Yes, she'd come out here with a literal broken back. 😳

We told her no. Thankfully she didn't fight us. Though Hawk's father told us she fought him. She wouldn't listen to her husband saying, "Y'know, you really shouldn't put off surgery for 5 weeks and fly coast-to-coast with a broken back." 😦

Hawk inherited her mom's stubborn streak. But at least not her martyr complex.

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