Category: Uncategorized

Anything and everything that I haven’t gotten around to categorizing

No Plan Survives First Contact

This post references the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Unverified blogs are not a trustworthy source for avoiding misinformation. For updated, reliable information on COVID-19, visit the webpages of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the World Health Organization.

No plan survives first contact with the enemy. This is a lesson that I had to learn in a hard way over several years. I am by nature a perfectionist, and it took me a lot of experience to realize that trying to plan and control everything in defiance of changing reality is a character flaw rather than a virtue. Once I was able to internalize that, I was not only happier, but better able to apply my talents and energies to achieve things. I still sometimes struggle to find the proper balance. I am still a perfectionist at my core. I want to have everything go perfectly to plan, and finding a happy medium between burning myself out chasing the white whale, and throwing my hands up in resignation because it’ll never be perfect, can be a painful struggle. But usually, once I get there, I am better for it.

One of the things about realizing that no plan survives first contact with the enemy is accepting that sometimes life throws a curveball. That’s not a reflection of your worth; life is just unfair that way. What matters is how you deal with it. Human nature is often to double down on the now-outdated plan. And sometimes that works out. Sometimes stubbornness and perseverance are virtues that can carry the day. But just as often, digging one’s heels in only leads to getting stuck in the mud. Moreover, often when it works out, there was a better option once things started to change. I’ve been having conversations like this with lots of people recently. The world and the future have become very uncertain. Many people are unsure about the plans they made to get where they want to be, if the path they chose even exists. For many, circumstances have changed beyond their control, and plans that seemed solid now seem quite questionable. So, the question comes, what now?

This is usually where my friends press me for my bet on how things will play out from here. But heck if I know what comes next. Like everyone else, I have my own personal bets, which have a mixed record. Back in March, I had pegged mid-July for my over/under on when things would start going back to normal depending on government action and factoring in the known unknowns about the virus at the time. Given the divergence we’ve seen in infection and death rates between the US and Europe, and among the American states, I actually think I was pretty on target here. Of course, if you had pressed, I would’ve bet under, on the assumption that now that people were paying attention, the suppression and mitigation measures would hold and continue, and I would’ve been laughably wrong in retrospect. 

The truth is, being “the smart one” of all my social groups doesn’t make me any better at predicting the future. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Life is unfolding day by day, and I’m doing my best to make peace with that and make the right choices as it happens. If that means betting this will all blow over one day, and then taking my losses and declaring that this is a grave threat that needs to be dealt with seriously the next, then so be it. No plan survives contact with the enemy, or in this case, life, and we should all aspire to learn from our experiences and mistakes, and deal with evolving circumstances like adults. As I said, I’m not always the best at finding this balance. But I do my best, and I’m doing my best. 

Case in point, I used to think that summer classes were either for remedial schmucks who couldn’t hack it in regular classes, or overambitious blowhards who are so tightly strung that the idea of taking time off is anathema. Summer is supposed to be for travel and relaxation; going places, meeting people, taking care of oneself, and generally having experiences outside of classes, so that by the time one is done with education and ready to go into a career, one has an idea of what it means to live a life. But since these activities are severely curtailed by public health and personal safety concerns, I’ve decided to take advantage of the moment and try to take some summer classes.

Sure enough, you will find plenty of both aforementioned kinds of people in summer classes. And normally that, plus getting up each day in order to sit at a computer and fill out worksheets, plus the stress of being graded, amid summer weather, would be driving me to self hatred. But since a change of scenery is not an option, working on something productive that gives me a leg up for the unknown future is as good a stay at home project as any. Moreover, the fact that everything is online and asynchronous has given me a unique opportunity to knock out troublesome diploma requirements without having to figure out how to slot them into a schedule. 

This won’t last forever. Even if things stay online through the fall, the university will eventually clue in to the racket they’ve created by allowing students to complete lab hours through the computer. Beyond that, I will need some downtime at some point before fall semester starts, which is why I’m not planning to take any courses after the current summer session, even though it lets me complete in a single month the same number of credits I usually take over the course of a half year semester. If Fall is on campus, I will need to recover my health and strength, and if it’s online, I will need a chance of routine to recharge my sanity and adapt to a routine of getting up to stare at a monitor. 

This is neither about avoiding all possible downsides, nor about charging headfirst into every opportunity, but determining which opportunities are worth taking for getting where I want to be. There’s a trade off and balance. That’s the lesson I’m trying to take from this whole affair. Nothing will make this horrible, miserable pandemic a positive, but if we can take lessons from it and grow, we will better ourselves for when we are able to move forward. 

Reflections on the Revolution

I’m enjoying being on break this week, so I’ve decided instead to post something I wrote but declined to publish roughly 2 years ago

I am presently writing from a well-worn park bench. It is not my favorite of the park benches, as that particular one is at such an angle relative to the setting sun that it is difficult to type. This is not a problem during the warmer months, when the trees’ leaves provide ample shade for work at all hours, but the trees are barren now, and so I am making due with an inferior bench for the purposes of this piece. Though annoying, this is an acceptable price to pay for a change of scenery and a breath of fresh air.

I spend a reasonable amount of time sitting on a bench at our local park. Our town being the stereotypical New England train village that it is, we have a charming little public park with picnic tables, a gazebo, and a small playground off of Main Street, just adjacent to the newly renovated library. 

I don’t get out of the house nearly as much as I probably ought, but when I do I am immensely grateful to be able to find a place to sit down with my thoughts. I am particularly fond of our park. Though there are other benches, and indeed, other public spaces; there is, for example, a bench in front of our Town Hall, which has an arguably better view of the goings on of the town, none of these are truly community spaces in the same sense that the park is. 

Our town is divided by several different churches and political organizations. Yet we all hold the park in common. It is the default rallying point for after school plans. It is the gathering place after holiday parades. 

As far as aesthetics are concerned, there isn’t actually all that much to the park. There is some playground equipment off in one corner. There are some benches along the gravel paths, along with a spattering of rubbish bins and a few lampposts here and there. There is the gazebo, an old fountain that hasn’t worked since I arrived, and a small platform that is occasionally used as a stage. But other than that, it is basically just open space. This may make it sound as though I don’t appreciate the park because there are not activities hard-built into its design. On the contrary; that fact that it is an open possibility space is part of what makes it so vital to community life. 

On my way into the park, I passed several banners being flown on Main Street from churches, shops, and houses applauding the pluralism and inclusiveness of our town, and many posters attached to utility poles denouncing the actions of the new political administration. While I have my own thoughts on the nature of inclusiveness in our town which lead me to believe that these people may be overestimating the exact degree of integration in our decidedly upper-crust neighborhood, seeing this display of solidarity and, if nothing else, lip service, to the idea of equality was quite heartening. Seeing these images of resistance to the new political administration being plastered on and around historical landmarks which date back to the founding of this country lead me to reflect, naturally, on the American Revolution. 

One of the things which stuck with me having grown up in a formerly British, now commonwealth, country as an American expatriate was that the events which led to the formation of the United States were consistently referred to not as a revolution, but as “the American Independence war”. At the time, I brushed this off as an effect of colonial rule. However, doing a bit of reading, I have discovered that this distinction reflects not political whitewashing (at least not solely), but rather, a new consensus in understanding and interpreting history. 

The argument goes that the specific battles which comprised the campaign of independence were neither a new phenomenon, nor particularly unique in history. What made these battles relevant instead of just another backwater tax rebellion, was the organization of the rebel side. What made the American revolution truly revolutionary was not the fighting, but the organization of colonists into self-governing entities. It was not the audacity to take up arms, but rather, the audacity to put mere peasants on equal footing with kings and dukes in terms of the ability to self-govern, that defined the American revolution and its later national identity. 

Historians have claimed that this distinction means that the actual revolution started well before the actual fighting, and that, from a historical perspective, the correspondence committees and town meetings of the 1760s and the early 1770s were more critical than the battles of the later 1770s and 1780s [1]. For rebellions and insurrections come and go. But a revolution which has taken root in the hearts and minds of the people is far more difficult to quash. 

In light of this interpretation, it is easy to understand how the local park can be such an important institution; is is, after all, the foundation of all other democratic institutions in this country. It also underscores how important the banners and posters which are now appearing on churches, telephone polls, and outside houses could become. They are symptoms of organization. And while it is too early to say whether this wave of revolutionary activity will take root, if current trends continue, it is not unreasonable to expect that this could result in a movement akin to the Tea Party on the right wing. 

Personally, I would welcome such change. Since I arrived in this country from having lived overseas, it has struck me that the political climate has been consistently right of center, particularly when compared to other democratic societies [2][3]. The result, naturally, is a narrower selection of possible policy solutions to current ills. Even for those who are ardent supporters of the current political administration, this situation is still undesirable, as this kind of partisan intransigence undercuts the United States’ ability to be innovative in its policy. 

As I have previously explained, good-faith opposition is the life blood of a democratic society. So is citizens’ political engagement. The United States has suffered from a lack of both in recent years. 

1) Taxes and Smuggling: Prelude to Revolution. Crash Course US History. YouTube, 07 Mar. 2013. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

2) Gallup, Inc. “Wyoming Residents Most Conservative, D.C. Most Liberal.” Gallup.com. N.p., 31 Jan. 2014. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

3) “The American-Western European Values Gap.” Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. N.p., 17 Nov. 2011. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

A Distracted Post

Look here, I’ll level with you. I have several deep, meaningful posts that I’ve been working on, and which I intend to keep working on, but none of these managed to be finished by the time I needed to make a decision on what to post this week.

This week has been one of those weeks when I’ve been so busy, having so many mental browser tabs open at the same time, that I haven’t had an opportune moment to sit and refine my thoughts to a degree whereupon I feel comfortable posting them. It isn’t so much that I haven’t had breaks in my physical schedule as it is that my mind has been constantly occupied, mostly by stress, and the magnitude and uncertainty surrounding the events of this week have been enough to give me lengthy pause before clearing my mind in order to make time.
Although I hesitate to make promises, I do expect that after the first few days of next week, I will have a brief interlude before my life begins to pick up in tempo once again in anticipation of my summer travels. My hope is to spend the coming week taking stock and reorganizing so that I won’t be caught off guard with my travel days getting the better of me. Of course, I say this every time I am about to embark. Perhaps one of these times it will be true.
Even so, having a few solid days to knock items off my checklists will be, if not necessarily productive to the point of meeting goals, then at least, cathartic. By this time next week many of the things on my agenda will either be done, or so far past the point when they ought to have been that they are no longer priorities (which is done, in a sense).
This strategy, if it can be called that, won’t do much to solve the lingering questions that keep me up at night, but it will deal with the more pressing crises that have paralyzed me of late more by their multiplicity than by their merits alone. This isn’t a great plan. But as Patton was fond of saying, a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week. I disagree with Patton on a lot of things, but I think he was on point here.

Project Candlabra

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 714) zmhj
 715) yfno
 716) hkjj
 717) yujz
 718) tgab
 719) xjxl
 720) fqsc
 721) qvma
 722) uklh
 723) irre
 724) pbnl
 725) pkvy
 726) tsic
 727) mxyu
 728) guat
 729) ikhx
 730) fvoy
 731) aedy
 732) byug
 733) espr
 734) ynnb
 735) ibyy
 736) fgjo
 737) zsct
 738) xnrh
 739) rbmc
 740) epqr
 741) nbjq
 742) gesk
 743) kzrf
 744) epqb
 745) pexx
 746) lizq
 747) ukqt
 748) imtb
 749) tbqy
 750) nwsj
 751) cyjr
 752) prmf
 753) wgmm
 754) hlrt
 755) ivsr
 756) ohqy
 757) hagj
 758) mnvc
 759) cqdd
 760) wber
 761) fhri
 762) jmem
 763) spwe
 764) gdni
 765) xtnl
 766) uxvp
 767) kbiv
 768) yktm
 769) nwkw
 770) xbfa
 771) csfy
 772) crdb
 773) hhmc
 774) kfwz
 775) lyps
 776) swge
 777) bjmc
 778) fvkf
 779) ejnq
 780) fpar
 781) mtlz
 782) moke
 783) ovyo
 784) yuad
 785) vbdn
 786) igmo
 787) pbkq
 788) laej
 789) taeo
 790) zivs
 791) qfqc
 792) yfdd
 793) ygkr
 794) dhlm
 795) ciwj
 796) unbl
 797) nhtd
 798) zoht
 799) mgop
 800) sbsn
 801) zaxu
 802) onbk
 803) wfll
 804) zqjs
 805) becq
 806) tkcy
 807) mnan
 808) xijy
 809) lhdn
 810) nhon
 811) ovkz
 812) xqhy
 813) nrjq
 814) vhgi
 815) vboh
 816) dfys
 817) mdrh
 818) tgro
 819) bvgp
 820) nsol
 821) qnmu
 822) vgjs
 823) sgyu
 824) xtcb
 825) htei
 826) kkyo
 827) liel
 828) clol
 829) tyol
 830) ctxg
 831) rxua
 832) isbc
 833) omhz
 834) ailg
 835) viwc
 836) kzjw
 837) jttw
 838) tvod
 839) fcqd
 840) uxel
 841) lrwl
 842) ylgr
 843) nmcn
 844) edgv
 845) qsav
 846) lhpq
 847) fyya
 848) hhrk
 849) cyuj
 850) yrsg
 851) ewwn
 852) rivy
 853) wcsc
 854) jewe
 855) dzsi
 856) hxmd
 857) jvlo
 858) qstw
 859) gusw
 860) hsks
 861) kpxu
 862) rinm
 863) khvm
 864) oith
 865) kkrb
 866) fvbf
 867) myoe
 868) ervd
 869) pbbd
 870) nebj
 871) devi
 872) oqtu
 873) ejjw
 874) ofsp
 875) wqff
 876) beqz
 877) fbab
 878) smdt
 879) lvkf
 880) iqgm
 881) fozd
 882) xahi
 883) fuzh
 884) annb
 885) zfkf
 886) jbwe
 887) savo
 888) cyjv
 889) lrta
 890) jajp
 891) ezwd
 892) hhpt
 893) yzhz
 894) afbc
 895) gnln
 896) tvbk
 897) rors
 898) fags
 899) ugyz
 900) usmj
 901) stel
 902) qipq
 903) ckis
 904) spxn
 905) rqcv
 906) nnhq
 907) qdll
 908) wqbf
 909) uion
 910) ondx
 911) cuaq
 912) kemg
 913) snbr
 914) dsry
 915) kxye
 916) ajew
 917) vtpf
 918) trqi
 919) iqqw
 920) bjsk
 921) ewhb
 922) tims
 923) hblo
 924) ongy
 925) lhwx
 926) lqyp
 927) ifwk
 928) oknl
 929) qcob
 930) gfmb
 931) qnbd
 932) vuzc
 933) ebqy
 934) qmal
 935) smsm
 936) zkax
 937) ivfa
 938) jlkq
 939) oikm
 940) qoef
 941) lrwz
 942) dpfw
 943) zkzs
 944) kuuc
 945) dfko
 946) eipj
 947) fbcs
 948) wrlz
 949) ctey
 950) covl
 951) atzd
 952) scme
 953) ktoc
 954) akfy
 955) tbfd
 956) skgj
 957) dgpz
 958) eqgz
 959) aboz
 960) vhgr
 961) nxdn
 962) hjtq
 963) ivyn
 964) dxgc
 965) vafm
 966) dode
 967) twpp
 968) gtfn
 969) ojsl
 970) jpea
 971) uohe
 972) nqdv
 973) hydf
 974) qagw
 975) zfit
 976) avhi
 977) bfwe
 978) zron
 979) toeo
 980) pkmf
 981) nuur
 982) kwae
 983) ufre
 984) wcmw
 985) miow
 986) krws
 987) acer
 988) axuo
 989) wtyq
 990) prht
 991) fvkc
 992) fpvl
 993) slbz
 994) jorl
 995) iyog
 996) zawt
 997) caqw
 998) wlms
 999) plwk

MESSAGE ENDS

2017 in Review

Author’s note: I started writing this at the beginning of December, and then promptly got distracted. As a result, most of this piece is written from a while back.

In many ways, my 2017 has been a sort of contrasting reflection of my 2016. My 2016 started off okay, got slightly better, before bottoming out in the end. My 2017 started at a fairly low point, but got better; incrementally at first, and then in larger strides. All in all, though, it is probably too soon to call 2017, for a few different reasons.

First, and most immediately relevant, is the fact that I am currently in the midst of trying to pull together college applications. This process probably should have been started with more time before my New Year’s deadline (Author’s note: We got it submitted in time). In my defence: I was told that the software my school uses would make the process streamlined and simple. It might have worked, if the school computers didn’t insist on purging my account from the registry no matter how many times it’s reactivated. Maybe I should have anticipated such problems ahead of time. Alas, I am too often too trusting.

I should say that whether or not I am accepted, or even whether or not my application comes together in time to be submitted will not have a great impact on my overall morale and views of the achievements of the past year. I should say this, but I would be lying. If I get accepted, likely then I will look back on this year as a moderate success overall. Else, I will probably view this year as equivocal; it had its good moments, and it had its bad moments.

In any case, it is difficult for me to internalize the year coming to a close while I have yet to wrap up my last great project of applications. Indeed, this difficulty in coming to grips with the rapid onset of the holiday season has led me, as it often does, to unknowingly procrastinate on gift acquisition. Here I must add that in addition to the considerable distraction of college application, and the unprecedented stress and anxiety which hath befuddled me amidst this process, I have also seemed to have taken ill with viral symptoms.

Among all this equivocating and qualifying, there are a few solid events and conclusions about the year with which I am reasonably comfortable. For one, I received my diploma (I still struggle to grapple with the term “graduation”, as that term carries implications which I believe are misleading), and ceased formal enrollment at my high school. Typing this sounds like I am underselling these events, but in all honesty the formalities were surprisingly anticlimactic compared to the struggling before it.

I traveled a fair bit, spending an appreciable proportion of time at Disney World, visiting the White Mountains and Bretton Woods, and seeing the eclipse, which, even with all the hype, did not disappoint. I attended a record number of Nerdfighter-related events, going first to NerdCon: Nerdfighteria, and then later to the release party for Turtles All The Way Down. Such events are invariably never what I expect, yet still good. Most recently, I embarked on a Disney Cruise which departed from New York and traveled to the Bahamas and to the Disney parks. And though I have not yet been able to fully collect and organize my thoughts on the subject, I must add that for what is otherwise a multi-day car trip, cruise ship is an excellent alternative.

Of course, I traveled a fair amount in 2016 as well, so it’s hard to call the travel record-breaking or year-defining. Nor has the sociopolitical convolution been particularly distinct from yesteryear. Certainly things have been active; chaotic even. But to a large extent this feels like an inevitable consequence of the momentum generated from past events. Indeed, many of the political items which I am inclined to focus on as being of singular historic importance – the mass demonstrations, the special counsel investigation, even the surprising turns of events in elections both domestic and abroad – seem more like reactions to the current conditions than like actions in themselves; and therefore do I feel that they are less relevant to considering this year separate from others.

What has been defining about 2017, at least the latter half of it, has been the appearance of free time in my life for the first time in recent memory. This has had two principal effects.

First, it has led to a proliferation of personal projects, ranging from simple items such as setting up a gallery page, and a crowdfunding campaign, to more ambitious endeavors such as restarting my creative fiction writing, and building a prototype board game. Even though only a handful of these projects have yet been achieved, and none have been the runaway success that my wildest enthusiasm might have daydreamed, I do believe that I am better off from having tried all of them.

Second, I am happier now than in school. Even though the process of wrangling college applications has caused a minor relapse into some of the less healthy mental patterns, and it is difficult to make meaningful data out of the minute to minute fluctuations in mood and happiness, I can say without reservation that I am happier on balance now than at any point since my first year of high school.

Like I said previously, the determination of how 2017 compares will likely be one made in retrospect, partly because the events which are likely to define it in retrospect are still ongoing, and partly because it’s nigh impossible to judge this year in particular devoid of its proper context. That being said, this year has defied my expectations, and has been, if not quite as good as my wildest hopes, then at least, better than the trajectory of the end of 2016 had led me to fear.

The Story of Revival

Okay, I’ll admit it. Rather than writing as I normally do, the last week has been mostly dominated by me playing Cities: Skylines. It is a game which I find distinctly easy to sink many hours into. But I do want to post this week, and so I thought I would tell the story thus far of one of the cities I’ve been working on.

Twenty-odd years ago, a group of plucky, enterprising pioneers ventured forth to settle the pristine stretch of land just beside the highway into a shining city on the hill. The totalitarian government which was backing the project to build a number of planned cities had agreed to open up the land to development, and, apparently eager to prove something, granted the project effectively unlimited funds, and offered to resettle workers immediately as soon as buildings could be constructed. Concerned that they would be punished for the failure of this city personally, settlers came to calling the city “New Roanoke”. The name stuck.

A cloverleaf interchange was built to guide supplies and new settlers towards settlement, with a roundabout in the center of town. The roundabout in turn fed traffic down the main streets; Karl Marx Avenue, Guy Debord Boulevard, and Internationale Drive. Within a year of its establishment, New Roanoke began making strides towards its mandate to build a utopia by mandating strict sustainability guidelines on all new construction. With an infinite budget, the city government established large scale projects to entice new settlers.

With its zeppelins for transport, its high tech sustainable housing initiatives, and its massive investment in education and science, the city gained a reputation as a research haven, and began to attract eccentric futurist types that had been shunned elsewhere. New Roanoke became known as a city that was open to new ideas. A diverse populace flocked to New Roanoke, leading it through a massive boom.

Then, disaster struck, first in the form of a tornado that ripped through the industrial district, trashing the rail network that connected the city to the outside world, and connected the city’s districts. The citizens responded by building a glittering new monorail system to replace it, and with renewed investment in emergency warning and shelters. This system was put to the test when an asteroid impacted just outside the rapidly expanding suburbs of the city.

Although none were hurt, the impact was taken by the population as an ill omen. Soon enough the government had walled off the impact site, and redirected the expansion of the city to new areas. Observant citizens noticed several government agents and scientists loitering around the exclusion zone, and photographs quickly circulated on conspiracy websites detailing the construction of new secret research facilities just beyond the wall.

This story was quickly buried, however, by a wave of mysterious illness. At first it was a small thing; local hospitals reported an uptick in the number of deaths among traditionally vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly, and the disabled. Soon, however, reports began to appear of otherwise healthy individuals collapsing in the middle of their routines. The city’s healthcare network became overloaded within days.

The government clung to the notion that this massive wave of deaths was because of an infection, despite few, if any, symptoms in those who had dies, and so acted to try and stop the spread of infection, closing public spaces and discouraging the use of public transport. Ports of entry, including the city’s air, sea, and rail terminals, were closed to contain the spread. Places of employment also closed, though whether from a desire to assist the government, or to flee the city, none can say. These measures may or may not have helped, but the one thing they did do was create traffic so horrendous that emergency vehicles, and increasingly commonly hearses, could not navigate the city.

With a mounting body count, the government tore up what open space it could find in the city to build graveyards. When these were filled, the city built crematoria to process the tens of thousands of dead. When these were overloaded, people turned to piling bodies in abandoned skyscrapers, which the government dutifully demolished when they were full.

By the time the mortality rate fell back to normal levels, between a third and a half of the population had died, and tensions New Roanoke sat on a knife’s edge. The city government build a monument to honor those who had died in what was being called “the Great Mortality”. The opening ceremony brought visiting dignitaries from the national government, and naturally, inspired protests. These protests were initially small, but a heavy-handed police response caused them to escalate, until soon full-scale riots erupted. The city was once again paralyzed by fear and panic, as all of the tension that had bubbled under the surface during the Great Mortality boiled over.

Local police called in outside reinforcements, including the feared and hated secret police, who had so far been content to allow the city to function mostly autonomously to encourage research. Rioters were forced to surrender by declaring martial law, and shutting down water and power to rebellious parts of the city. With public services suspended, looters and rioters burned themselves out. When the violence began to subside, security forces marched in to restore order by force. Ad-hoc drumhead courts-martial sentenced the guilty to cruel and unusual punishments.

The secret police established a permanent office adjacent to the new courthouse, which was built in the newly-reconstructed historic district. The city was divided into districts for the purposes of administration. Several districts, mainly those in the older, richer sections of the city, and those by the river, cruise terminals, and airports, were given special status as tourist and leisure districts. The bulk of rebuilding aid was directed to these areas.

New suburbs were established outside of the main metropolis, as the national government sought to rekindle the utopian vision and spirit that had once propelled the city to great heights. The government backed the establishment of a spaceport to bring in tourists, and new research initiatives such as a medical research center, a compact particle accelerator, and an experimental fusion power plant. Life remained tightly controlled by the new government, but after a time, settled into a familiar rhythm. Although tensions remained, an influx of new citizens helped bury the memory of the troubled past.

With the completion of its last great monument, the Eden Project, the city government took the opportunity to finally settle on a name more befitting the city that had grown. The metropolis was officially re-christened as “Revival” on the thirtieth anniversary of its founding. Life in Revival is not, despite its billing, a utopia, but it is a far cry from its dystopic past. Revival is not exceptionally rich, despite being reasonably well developed and having high land values, though solvency has never been a priority for the city government.

I cannot say whether or not I would prefer to live in Revival myself. The idea of living in such a glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete, with monorails and zeppelins providing transport between particle colliders, science parks, and state of the art medical centers, where energy is clean and all waste is recycled, or treated in such a way to have no discernible environmental impact, sounds attractive, though it would also make me skeptical.

Halloween Video Games

With Halloween imminent, I thought I’d review some video games that I think are apropos for the season, and that I might recommend if one is looking for something to kill some time on for a solo Halloween. None of these are horror games, but I consider all of them to be in some form or another, dark. Not in aesthetics either. Not from aesthetics either, but in theming and story.

DEFCON

The tagline is “everybody dies”, and they’re not too far off the mark. If you’ve ever seen the movie WarGames, then this is basically that game. This game simulates global thermonuclear war. You have a complete arsenal of strategic weapons, including nuclear-armed aircraft, fleets, and ICBMs. In the base game, you gain two points for every million enemies killed, and lose one point for every million casualties taken. The game isn’t detailed, and it prioritizes gameplay over realism wherever there is a tradeoff, but it is still haunting. You are in complete control of a superpower, and yet are nigh powerless to prevent massive and irreversible devastation, because even if you’re merciful to your enemy, your enemy won’t be to you.

The level of detail is minimalist in such a way that it gives your imagination just enough fodder to work with. You can see the renditions of individual, nameless pilots, and real life cities, and can’t help but fill in the details. Each point measures a million people dead, and you can see how many survivors are still around to kill. All rounded of course. At this scale, you can only ballpark to the nearest million or so. You have as much data and detail as a real nuclear commander would have, and nothing more.

One of the things I found most chilling: the default speed for the game is in real time. Let that sink in. If you’re playing in a basement away from windows, it is entirely possible to imagine that a WarGames style scenario has happened, and you’re watching the end of the world in real time. And just like in real life, you can’t pause or quit once you’ve started, until there is a victor (yes, this is annoying when you’re actually playing, but the statement gets through). The online manual takes this a step further, including in its instructions on setup and play strategies, pages copied directly from actual Cold War civil defence pamphlets, describing in terrifying detail, how to build a fallout shelter for you and your computer.

Plague Inc.

Back when I was in primary school, there was this game called Pandemic II (it still exists, it’s just really old and outdated), and the basic idea was that you were a disease trying to wipe out humanity. Plague Inc took this idea and ran with it, adding all kinds of new features, new interactivity, and new scenarios. The game calls itself “hyper-realistic”, which seems to be their way of saying it parodies the real world and takes everything to extreme, video-game/cartoon logic ends (One guy in China is coughing. Clearly the world needs to go to full scale pandemic alert).

Perhaps others disagree, but I always felt this rather undercut the game. Sure, it’s amusing to see that “Apple$oft is working on the iCure app”, but this doesn’t really make it emotionally engaging. It’s just too easy to wipe out the puny humans without really pausing to reflect on what you’re doing. I can see the juxtaposition they were going for, using cutesy bubbles and highly stylized graphics to display information about millions of casualties. The artist in me can even appreciate, and applaud the effort. I just don’t think they managed to pull it off.

This doesn’t make the game bad, by a long shot. It’s a great app game to kill some spare time, say, in the hospital waiting room (no, I’m not joking). For a game with such a heavy subject matter, it just doesn’t carry the weight well. In many respects, this makes it a better app game than a video game. You can wipe out all the humans in a short play session between IV changes, and without actually having to commit emotionally. But on this list, that’s a bad thing.

Prison Architect

As proof that you can tackle a heavy subject while still keeping simplistic, cartoon graphics, and a sandbox game, Prison Architect tackles a whole slew of heavy material. The game itself is pretty much all in the name: you build and administer a prison. In doing so, you make a variety of choices, big and small, which have moral, political, and strategic implications and consequences. Do you maintain order through the brute force, or balanced incentives? Do you aim primarily to rehabilitate, or punish? Are you willing to bend human rights to satisfy a tight budget?

These aren’t questions that are pitched to you directly through narrative. Even in a sandbox game, these are all still legitimate strategic questions that you have to contend with. There aren’t developer-ordained right answers, though there are consequences. If you treat your prisoners too badly, and they will be more motivated towards violence and escape. Forget to lay down the law, and they will walk all over you; to say nothing of your company’s shareholders, who are footing the bill for all this expensive “rehabilitation”.

This game does a lot to show, in an approachable, understandable way, a lot about the current situation in regards to criminal justice and the debate about reforming it. It shows how you can get to a place with such an atrocious system as we have in the US today acting from perfectly good (or at least, defensible) intentions, while also demonstrating some of the paths forward, including the costs that need to be considered. It tackles real world themes that we often shy away from, because they’re dark and ethically charged, without, as I usually put it, “The author standing over you and beating you with a sack of morals”.

Papers Please

This game is often described as a “bureaucracy simulator”, which is dark and depressing in and of itself, but the theming and story of the game take this further. Your work as a border checkpoint officer takes place in a brutal totalitarian regime, where failure to follow the rules means certain death. Even the unwritten rules. Especially the unwritten rules.

It is incredibly difficult to be a “good person” in this game, because in order to have the resources to do the right thing, you have to be good enough at your job to not be replaced (or arrested, or killed, or some combination thereof). Which means you have to be good at picking out the smallest discrepancies in paperwork, and ruthlessly enforcing the order of the day. Which means you develop a certain paranoia and disdain towards, well, everyone. (“You changed your name. A likely story. Guards, arrest her!”)

The game manages to not be ham-fisted in the way it presents player choices (most of the time) while also not pulling any punches. This game also manages to humanize a particular kind of job that tends to get the brunt of a lot of criticism: the poor schmo on the ground responsible for implementing bureaucratic orders, in this case, government security and immigration directives, and absorbing the abuse of the people on the receiving end. You can see how this position is both terrible to start with, and could easily wear a person down into being a terrible person.

Honorable Mention: Democracy series

This isn’t exactly dark, though it can be. It is, as the name implies, a democracy simulator. You play as someone in a position of power in a country, and you need to balance your policies carefully, not just to keep your country afloat, but to appease your constituents. It isn’t realistic by a long shot, but it does a good job of getting across the central message: every policy comes with a cost and a tradeoff.

What’s right may not be popular. What’s needed to keep the country from plummeting into fiery chaos tomorrow may not be popular, or even workable, today. This can be really frustrating and depressing if you’re the idealistic type, or if you favor niche policies that aren’t added into the game. If you really just want to force your agenda through, you can always fiddle around with the difficulty settings, and can exploit some quirks of the game. Or you can do as I do: invoke emergency powers to have your critics dragged from their homes and imprisoned without trial. Admittedly this won’t do much for your approval rating, and won’t stop you from being voted out of office (somehow, your fanatical police state can’t seem to rig elections properly), or being assassinated (an unlimited secret police budget, and they can’t stop one idiot with a gun?).

My biggest complaint about this series is that the fingerprints of the developer are all over which policies work and which don’t. Policies are blunt and one dimensional (maybe this is more accurate than I give credit for), and change is either immediate and dramatic (you can effectively abolish religion, capitalism, and liberalism in one term) or nonexistent (I have complete censorship, and yet somehow attack ads against me are sending my administration into a tailspin), and the policies you can implement tend to be, with a few exceptions, pretty bland and generic.

A Book Review: Turtles All The Way Down

Recently I received a free signed copy of Turtles All The Way Down, by John Green. Well, actually, it was two weeks ago. Also actually I got more than one copy, but the second copy, which I received before I got my hands on the first copy because I got it in person on launch day, was part of the goodie bag for the book tour event that I went to. And while the book wasn’t something I purchased per se as a discrete product, I did pay for the ticket to the event. Or rather, my family paid, because this was a family outing, and so everyone came and got signed books.

All that is to say that there is now an appreciable stack of signed Turtles All The Way Down books sitting, conspicuously arranged in a sort of spiral stack (Turtles All The Way Down, all the way down), on our countertop, and that these books were acquired, depending on how you average the cost per book and whether you factor in the intangible value of the book tour event, either for free, at a very inflated price, or somewhere in between.

I was told when I was promised my free copy and asked for a shipping address that this was meant as a token. Not payment, nor tribute to curry favor, but a gift. Because I was part of a community, and had been following and involved in the book’s development, even when neither I nor anyone else knew that John was working on a book, and my participation was worth something, and that this signed copy was a token of that meaning.

Maybe I just have trouble accepting compliments and credit. It wouldn’t be the first time that this has come up. Even so, there is a sort of convention whereby if you are set a free copy of a book by an author or their publishing staff, that you will endeavor to review it (preferably with glowing praise). And while I am generally not a stickler for social convention, this one is close enough to the thing that I was going to do anyways. So here goes.

One more note before I begin: there is also a convention of referring to authors by their last name when reviewing them. I’m not going to do that for a couple of reasons. First, because John Green has a brother, Hank Green, who also writes. Second, because, as noted, receiving this book is a personal token of sorts. And while I may not be strictly on a first name basis with John Green, insofar as I do know him and have had limited contact with him, he has always been John to me. To call him otherwise would feel strange and insincere.

People with only a passing familiarity with John and his work might be surprised that I am such a staunch fan. After all, his works, and especially his previous work, The Fault In Our Stars, are often pigeonholed as stereotypical “teen-girl gushy romance novels”. Like in all stereotypes, there are some elements of truth in this, especially if one is of the inclination to consign anything containing teenage girl protagonists and a romantic arc to a lesser status.

Nevertheless I maintain that TFIOS also manages to effectively introduce several hard-hitting themes and questions. It tackles, among other things, chronic illness in a way that is, if not always perfectly realistic in the strictest academic sense, then at least realistically personal. That is to say, TFIOS tells an accurate first-person story, even if telling the story from the perspective of the protagonist makes it somewhat dubiously personal from other perspectives.

You will notice that while I talk about John’s use of themes and ideas and other English class topics, I have barely mentioned the actual plot, characters, and related. This is, at least in my interpretation, an important distinction and recurring theme. John is decent enough at plot and characters and all those other things. But this is only one element of writing, and in John’s case, I will submit, not the main event. Where John excels is at integrating themes, questions, ideas, and concepts into a digestible and empathetic narrative. And Turtles All The Way Down is John doing this at his best.

In TATWD, John discusses important questions about mental health, chronic pain, the nature of love and friendship, inequality, loss, privilege, and the philosophy of consciousness, all bound up in a nice YA novel.

The parallel I keep coming back to is George Orwell’s work. Most likely, if you’re reading, say, 1984, you’re not doing so to hear about Winston and Julia’s thrilling romantic relationship, nor to see how Winston climbs the workplace ladder at the Ministry of Truth. You’re reading to have the big ideas unpacked for you and presented in a way that you can grapple with. You’re exploring the world, and Winston just happens to be your vessel for doing so.

Sure, you could skip Animal Farm in school, and get everything you’d need to know from skimming a history textbook on the Soviet Union. But reading the story version is probably going to make it easier to understand and digest. Simply hearing that a bunch of people were shot a long time ago in a country far away, doesn’t click in the human mind the same way reading about animals you’ve come to love turn on each other does.

Similarly, you could skip Turtles All The Way Down, and go over the Wikipedia pages for OCD, Anxiety, and the philosophy of consciousness. But in addition to missing the story aspect (which is good, despite my maintaining that it takes a backseat), it’s probably not going to have the same hold on you. Humans are first-person creatures, and having something framed as a first person view is immensely powerful.

In conclusion, I think Turtles All The Way Down is a very good, very powerful book. It’s not perfect by a long shot, and I waver on whether I like it better or worse than TFIOS, which has long contended for my favorite book I have yet read. It isn’t exactly an apples to apples comparison, which will come as good news to those who felt TFIOS struck too close to the teen-girl romance stereotype. Even so, my signed copy of TATWD has earned its place in my collection next to my beloved signed copy of TFIOS, which is among the highest honors I can bestow.

A Hodgepodge Post

This post is a bit of a hodgepodge hot mess, because after three days of intense writers’ block, I realized at 10:00pm, that there were a number of things that, in fact, I really did need to address today, and that being timely in this case was more important than being perfectly organized in presentation.

First, Happy Esther Day. For those not well versed on internet age holidays, Esther Day, August 3rd, so chosen by the late Esther Earl (who one may know as the dedicatee of and partial inspiration for the book The Fault In Our Stars), is a day on which to recognize all the people one loves in a non-romantic way. This includes family, but also friends, teachers, mentors, doctors, and the like; basically it is a day to recognize all important relationships not covered by Valentine’s Day.

I certainly have my work cut out for me, given that I have received a great deal of love and compassion throughout my life, and especially during my darker hours. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that on several occasions, I would not have survived but for the love of those around me.

Of course, it’s been oft-noted that, particularly in our western culture, this holiday creates all manner of awkward moments, especially where it involves gender. A man is expected not to talk at great length about his feelings in general, and trying to tell one of the opposite gender that one loves the other either creates all sort of unhelpful ambiguity from a romantic perspective, or, if clarified, opens up a whole can of worms involving relationship stereotypes that no one, least of all a socially awkward writer like myself, wants to touch with a thirty nine and a half foot pole. So I won’t.

I do still want to participate in Esther Day, as uncomfortable as the execution makes me, because I believe in its message, and I believe in the legacy that Esther Earl left us. So, to people who read this, and participate in this blog by enjoying it, especially those who have gotten in touch specifically to say so, know this; to those of you who I have had the pleasure of meeting in person, and to those who I’ve never met but by proxy: I love you. You are an important part of my life, and the value you (hopefully) get from being here adds value to my life.

In tangentially related news…

Earlier this week this blog passed an important milestone: We witnessed the first crisis that required me to summon technical support. I had known that this day would eventually come, though I did not expect it so soon, nor to happen the way it did.

The proximal cause of this minor disaster was apparently a fault in an outdated third-party plugin I had foolishly installed and activated some six weeks ago, because it promised to enable certain features which would have made the rollout of a few of my ongoing projects for this place easier and cleaner. In my defense, the reviews prior to 2012, when the code author apparently abandoned the plugin, were all positive, and the ones after were scarce enough that I reckoned the chances of such a problem occurring to me were acceptably low.

Also, for the record, when I cautiously activated the plugin some six weeks ago during a time of day when visitors are relatively few and far between, it did seem to work fine. Indeed, it did work perfectly fine, right up until Monday, when it suddenly didn’t. Exactly what caused the crash to happen precisely then and not earlier (or never) wasn’t explained to me, presumably because it involves far greater in depth understanding of the inner workings of the internet than I am able to parse at this time.

The distal cause of this whole affair is that, with computers as with many aspects of my life, I am just savvy enough to get myself into trouble, without having the education nor the training to get myself out of it. This is a recurring theme in my life, to a point where it has become a default comment by teachers on my report cards. Unfortunately, being aware of this phenomenon does little to help me avoid it. Which is to say, I expect that similar server problems for related issues are probably also in the future, at least until such time as I actually get around to taking courses in coding, or find a way to hire someone to write code for me.

On the subject of milestones and absurdly optimistic plans: after much waffling back and forth, culminating in an outright dare from my close friends, I launched an official patreon page for this blog. Patreon, for those not well acquainted with the evolving economics of online content creation, is a service which allows creators (such as myself) to accept monthly contributions from supporters. I have added a new page to the sidebar explaining this in more detail.

I do not expect that I shall make a living off this. In point of fact, I will be pleasantly surprised if the site hosting pays for itself. I am mostly setting this up now so that it exists in the future on the off chance that some future post of mine is mentioned somewhere prominent, attracting overnight popularity. Also, I like having a claim, however tenuous, to being a professional writer like Shakespeare or Machiavelli.

Neither of these announcements changes anything substantial on this website. Everything will continue to be published on the same (non-)schedule, and will continue to be publicly accessible as before. Think of the Patreon page like a tip jar; if you like my stuff and want to indulge me, you can, but you’re under no obligation.

There is one thing that will be changing soon. I intend to begin publishing some of my fictional works in addition to my regular nonfiction commentary. Similar to the mindset behind my writing blog posts in the first place, this is partially at the behest of those close to me, and partially out of a Pascal’s Wager type logic that, even if only one person enjoys what I publish, with no real downside to publishing, that in itself makes the utilitarian calculation worth it.

Though I don’t have a planned release date or schedule for this venture, I want to put it out as something I’m planning to move forward with, both in order to nail my colors to the mast to motivate myself, and also to help contextualize the Patreon launch.

The first fictional venture will be a serial story, which is the kind of venture that having a Patreon page already set up is useful for, since serial stories can be discovered partway through and gain mass support overnight more so than blogs usually do. Again, I don’t expect fame and fortune to follow my first venture into serial fiction. But I am willing to leave the door open for them going forward.