Fifth Twelve

It's the 60th day of Childwinter. There are two weeks left to the season. 

The Universal Solar Calendar calls this day Fifth Twelve. Every year has a 60th day, but Fifth Twelve only occurs every four years, Leap Years, to adjust for Earth's orbit around the Sun. In other years, the 60th day is just Day of the Once Without.

My daughter, who has been with her partner for some seven years now, purchased a house with him in 2020, and is helping him raise his child from a prior relationship, is planning on going to a Justice of the Peace today to make their partnership an official marriage. I'm not invited, but I don't believe that anyone else is, either. It's personal business, something just for the two of them.

I believe they chose today just so they anniversaries would occur only once every four years.

The Unspoken Vows

 

Things aren’t always as they appear. My grandfather took a civil rights case to the Florida Supreme Court and was characterized in the press as “a Negro World War I veteran.” My great-grandfather was named by W.E.B. DuBois’ The Crisis magazine as “the first Negro banker in Florida.” And my great-great-grandfather was a field slave on a plantation near Hartsville, South Carolina before emancipation. I apparently got my last name from the same place as my light skin - the white plantation owners who raped my great-great-grandmother.

Broom Day

My little routines to give the passing of time some semblance of structure include getting off my fat ass and out the door every other day to go for a walk. 

I live within walking distance of a portion of the Atlanta Beltline, and I have a route that's about 2¼ miles door-to-door from my house. I can stretch it out to a 3½-mile loop and even a 5-mile route, but for now I'm keeping it short and sweet. But still, I've covered some 25 miles just since February 6.

Sunday, I walked with my adult daughter along the Cochran Shoals National Recreation Area, which sounds pretty wilderness, but it's really just a stretch along the Chattahoochee  River on the edge of Atlanta. I used to run the 3-mile trail regularly back in the 80s and 90s; now I occasionally (if even that) walk it. But at least I'm still getting out.

The only drawback to the Cochran Shoals trail is I have to drive to get there, and parking is kind of a hassle, but I can walk to the Beltline. I prefer my walking routine to not include an automobile trip, but I may revisit that preference to give my walking routine more variety.

This 58th day of Childwinter is called Broom Day. I tried to coax the AI image generators to produce an action picture of curling, but the AI models have no idea what a curling broom looks like and kept depicting players with hockey sticks or ski poles. And it also insisted on showing the players wearing ice skates, although curling is actually played with specially soled shoes.

Trying to visualize images for the word "broom" got me to nostalgically think of Ken's Broome Street Bar, probably still one of my favorite spot in Manhattan, and a bar I used to visit frequently in the 1970s.

I was also fond of the koan-like concept of a blindfolded person sweeping the street. The streetscape, naturally, became the Soho neighborhood around Ken's back in the rough-and-tumble '70s, back before the Giuliani gentrification to the neighborhood. But the AI generators kept letting the blindfolds slip - apparently, they wanted to make sure the street sweepers could see what they were doing.  

 

The Crippled Vision

Retired life, when I'm forced to describe it, is like a weekend that never ends. But after a while, a never-ending weekend begins to lose any sense of rhythm, any flow, and falls in on itself into a kind of dissolute ennui.

So, I observe certain routines and schedules to give my time a semblance of structure. For example, the city collects trash in my neighborhood on Tuesdays, which means I take the trash out on Monday nights, rolling the bins down the steep hill of my driveway, and then back up again every Tuesday. 

That might seem like a pretty minor event and it is, but taking the trash out on Mondays also means I change the kitty litter on Mondays, which in turn means Mondays are general house-cleaning days, a tidying up after the long (six-day) weekend that preceded it. Mondays are the day to vacuum, to scrub toilets, to attempt to dust a little around the house. 

Mondays are also my politics day. On Mondays, Rachel Maddow does her live, weekly show on MSNBC and Jon Stewart hosts The Daily Show. I might watch either or both shows on other days, but Mondays are the must-see evenings.  So instead of playing video games or bingeing out on Netflix, on Mondays I'm watching television and catching up with two unique and entertaining views on current events.

I also don't drink on weeknights. I might allow myself a drink or two on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings, but starting Mondays I observe abstinence. And I've found that observing abstinence during the week makes me less inclined to drink on weekends. I lose my taste for it. 

So housecleaning, ritual rolling of the trash bins down the hills, Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart, and abstinence from alcohol define my Mondays, and make them unique from the rest of the week. And as Mondays come up every seven days, a rhythm emerges and the dissolute fog of the endless weekend begins to lift, if just a little.

Body of Love

The 56th day of Childwinter is Body of Love. How do you visually depict "Body of Love" without resorting to nudity, pornography, or cliched exploitation of women? Or of men?

Most AI image generators forbid nudity and block anything they deem unacceptable. There are some porno models specifically designed to produce nude images, but the results are almost always banal, cliched, and exploitative, seemingly intended for horny 15-year-old boys. In any event, my concept of "Body of Love" isn't necessarily D-cup boobs.

Can Body of Love be depicted as an abstract black-and-white study in the manner of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams?

Or should it be shown as a romantic portrait of lovers in the embrace of passion?

Perhaps we should take a broader look at love, beyond human intimacy and into the realm of the spiritual.

Or perhaps it shouldn't be depicted at all, at least not with AI, but left to the poets and musicians to interpret through their artistic means. 

The Unrecovered Ocean

The 55th day of Childwinter is known as The Unrecovered Ocean. It's not the day after a multiple of 12, like First Twelve, Second Twelve, etc., so it's not akin to First Ocean, Second Ocean, and so on. It's simply the day between The White Spheres and Body of Love.   

The sun rose this morning at 7:12 a.m. here in Atlanta and will set at 6:29 p.m. for 11 hours and 17 minutes of daylight. We're less than a month away from the vernal equinox, when day and night are equal, balanced, in equipoise. It's staying light noticeably later than just a mere few weeks ago.  

The Moon orbits Earth in an elliptical path, so at times it's closer to the Earth than at others. The point in the Moon’s orbit when it's farthest from Earth is known as the apogee. When a Full Moon occurs around the apogee, it’s called a Micromoon, Minimoon or Apogee Moon. 

The Snow Moon occurs tonight as a Micromoon, although that's not so every year. The Snow Moon is named after the abundant snowfall in the Northern Hemisphere. The Cherokee named it the Hungry Moon and the Bony Moon due to the scarce food sources and hard hunting conditions during mid-winter. The Ojibwe and the Tlingit called it the Bear Moon, referring to bear cubs being born this time of year. Celtic and Old English names for the Snow Moon translate to Storm Moon and Ice Moon.

A Full Moon, whether Micro or Super or anything in between, always rises at sunset and sets at sunrise.

 

Do with this information what you will.

The White Spheres

You'd be excused for still thinking it was still The Supernatural Bride today based on the picture, but the 54th day of Childwinter is actually The White Spheres.  You probably know it as February 23rd.

So, I'm sure you're probably  wondering how I'm coming along on my newly downloaded virtual modular synthesizer. Short answer - horribly, or at least horribly slowly.  I'm slightly past the "bloop-bleep" phase and am now in the "strange outer-space noises" phase. At my best, I can kid myself that I sound like Sun Ra during his most self-indulgent solos. It's amazing what playing with the frequency of an oscillator or two can do.

The best part of living alone is no one has to endure hearing me experiment.

The Supernatural Bride

And so the torture begins.

Today, The Supernatural Bride according to the Universal Solar Calendar, Knoxville's Big Ears Festival released it's full schedule, including set times and venues.  Naturally, as in years past, so many of the sets I want to see are scheduled to occur simultaneously, and there are many hours-long intervals with nothing of particular interest to me.

Case in point: the festival kicks off Thursday evening with a multi-media performance of Just Charles & Cello in The Romantic Chord in a setting of Abstract #1 from Quadrilateral Phase Angle Traversals in Dream Light, a composition by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela for cellist Charles Curtis and gradually shifting light projections. It's a three-hour performance, so naturally it overlaps with many other sets, and while Just Charles is playing, there are also simultaneous sets by Henry Threadgill’s Very Very Circus, Mary Halvorson's Amaryllis sextet, and the Tord Gustavsen Trio (ECM-style Norwegian jazz piano).

There are other performances of Just Charles scheduled for the weekend so that could safely be skipped on Thursday, but the other three sets at that time have significant overlap in performing time. Gustavsen plays from 6:00 to 7:15 at the Bijou Theater,  while Halvorson plays just up the street at the lovely Tennessee Theater from 7:00 to 8:15, so one could conceivably see most of Gustavsen's performance, skip out early, and miss only the earliest part of Halvorson's set. But Threadgill's Very Very Circus, probably the most exciting and unique of the three sets, plays a half-mile away at The Mill & Mine (or as a friend calls it, "The Swill & Swine") from 6:15 to 7:30.

I take little pleasure in leaving sets early and arriving late. Not only does it interrupt the whole experience, but watching the clock and plotting time-speed-distance calculations throughout a set is a stressful distraction. Most likely, I  will make my way up to the "Swill & Swine" for Very, Very Circus, and regretfully pass on Gustavsen and Halvorson. Very, Very Circus was Threadgill's band in the early 1990s (or as kids say these days, "the late 20th Century"), and it's unlikely I'll ever get the chance to see them again. Plus, it's probably the liveliest of the sets at that hour, and should be a good way to kick-start the weekend. For the record, Threadgill's set also overlaps with performances by Third Coast Percussion, The Tennessee Sheiks, Yvette Janine, Zoe Keating, and Zsela (most of whom I never heard of.)

The whole weekend is full of difficult decisions like that.  After Threadgill finishes at 7:30, I have to decide on hanging around the Swill & Swine until 8:45 to see Secret Chiefs 3, an eclectic ensemble led by guitarist Trey Spruance of Mr. Bungle, or high-tailing it down to the Bijou by 8:15 to see Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin. I've seen Bärtsch at Big Ears before and enjoyed it thoroughly, and Secret Chiefs 3 will be playing again later in the weekend, so it's another difficult choice. Curiosity and inertia will probably keep me at the Swill & Swine for Secret Chiefs 3.

Finally, the day's headliners, the 90s post-punk/post-rock band Unwound, will be taking the stage at the Swill & Swine at 11:00, while at the same time at the nearby Old City Performing Arts Center, keyboardist John Medeski and cornetist Kirk Knuffke will be starting a set as The Angelic Brothers for a performance of Sun Ra compositions. Unwound disbanded in 2002 and have only recently gotten back together for a tour, and there's no telling if they'll still perform after the tour is over.  On the other hand, I've seen Medeski interpret Sun Ra before on solo piano and it was amazing. Again, I could go either way, but the Unwound set will be very popular (in other words, crowded) and I'll most likely go with my introvert instincts and head to the Old City PAC.

So, as things stand right now, I'm leaning toward Henry Threadgill's Very Very Circus, followed by Secret Chiefs 3, and then The Angelic Brothers.  Mind you, all of this and I still haven't even mentioned other performers that day, including Kurt Vile & the Violators, Adrianne Lenker of the band Big Thief, André 3000's ambient flute project New Blue Sun, jazz legend Charles Lloyd, electronic musician Jlin, and European jazz artist Francesco Turrisi.  

I could probably Groundhog Day this night over and over again at least three times, seeing different sets each time, and still enjoy myself on each incarnation.

Invisible Half Man

Nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from power plants contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone, also known as smog. Exposure to ground-level ozone can cause respiratory issues, aggravate asthma and other lung diseases, and lead to missed days of work or school, emergency-room visits, and premature deaths. The public health impacts can be especially harmful to children and older adults and disproportionately affect people of color, families with low-incomes, and other vulnerable populations.

EPA promulgated health-based air quality standards for ground-level ozone in 2015. However, many states found it difficult to meet the standards because of NOx releases coming from upwind states. In response, EPA developed the so-called Good Neighbor Plan in March 2023 for 22 upwind states to reduce pollution that significantly contributed to problems downwind states faced in meeting EPA’s ozone standards. The Good Neighbor Plan built on existing power-sector emissions trading programs EPA had been administering since the mid-1990s. 

A wave of litigation followed passage of the Plan, and seven federal appeals courts blocked the Good Neighbor Plan in 12 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia). The Plan is currently being implemented in the ten remaining states (Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin). 

Three states (Ohio, Indiana, and West Virginia), along with energy companies and trade groups, challenged the federal plan in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. When a divided three-judge panel of that court refused to put the rule on hold while the litigation moved forward in the lower courts, the challengers asked the Supreme Court to step in.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the cases today.  A lawyer for the states supporting the Plan said, “A stay of the good neighbor rule would undermine that statutory goal and the public interest by sending ozone pollution into downwind states, including Connecticut, Wisconsin and New York, that receive substantial pollution from the particular upwind states that are currently in the rule, including Ohio and Indiana.”

However, conservative members of the Court seem to be leaning toward blocking the Plan. Several justices suggested the EPA had failed to adequately explain why the lower-court rulings that blocked application of the rule against 12 of the states does not undermine its overall validity. "It's just not explained," conservative Justice Beerkeg Kavanaugh said. The Agency "pretended nothing happened," he added.

But Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said it would be "fairly extraordinary" for the court to step in. "I'm trying to understand what the emergency is that warrants Supreme Court intervention at this point," she added. Justice Elena Kagan agreed, saying it remained unclear whether the challengers had met the requirements for the Court to block the rule. "The idea that you can be here and be demanding emergency relief just because states have kicked up a lot of dust seems not the right answer to me," she said. 

Republican-led states often complain about EPA environmental regulations, frequently citing them as examples of federal overreach that infringes on the right of states to govern themselves. Industry groups say the Good Neighbor Plan would impose substantial costs if it is allowed to remain in effect.

Kavanaugh is certainly familiar with the Good Neighbor rules due to his previous tenure on the D.C. Circuit. A Trump appointee who was nominated only after a Republican-controlled Senate refused to even hold hearings on President Obama's prior nominee, he was the lead author of a 2-1 opinion in 2012 striking down an earlier version of the plan. Two years later, the Supreme Court largely reversed his ruling in a 6-2 decision written by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now Kavanaugh has the chance to avenge the latter decision and to himself reverse Ginsburg's reversal.

"What (states) are asking for is simply an opportunity to make the argument before the agency," said Chief Justice John Roberts.  The EPA proceeded "without a whole lot of explanation, and nobody got a chance to comment" on the rule-making process, added Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Gorsuch, another Trump appointee, is the son of Anne Gorsuch, a controversial EPA Administrator from the Reagan era. Ms. Gorsuch was despised by environmentalists, significantly reduced staffing at EPA impairing its ability to effectively function, hired Agency staff from the industries it was supposed to regulate, was mired in a scandal involving mismanagement of the Superfund budget, and was the first-ever director of any agency in U.S. history to be cited for contempt of Congress. She resigned within two years and her 22-month tenure was considered one of the most controversial of the early Reagan administration.

Day of Footfall

Happy birthday to Buffy Sainte-Marie, Phil Esposito, Jennifer O'Neill, Patty Hearst, Charles Barkley, Cindy Crawford, Lili Taylor, Lauren Ambrose, Trevor Noah, Rihanna, and Olivia Rodrigo, all born on Day of Footfall.

It was 10 years ago today that 108 civilian protesters and 13 police officers were killed in Ukraine's Maidan Revolution when police snipers fired on anti-government activists in Kyiv. Today, House Republicans, too cowardly to stand up to Trump, are refusing military aid to Ukraine to support their hard-won democracy from Russian aggression. Thy should be ashamed, as should the people who voted to put them in office.

In other news, today I downloaded my first virtual modular synthesizer. I'm not a musician and I have no idea how to use this thing, so right now I'm in the "bloop-bleep," "Look, I can make strange noises" phase. It remains to be seen if this becomes a conduit for results in hundreds of hours of creative enjoyment leading to a deeper exploration of self-expression and artistry, or becomes just another thing cluttering up my desktop that I routinely ignore.

Speech in the Glade

A mass email sent out by Canadian climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe reminds us that on a worldwide basis, sports and sporting events emit as much carbon as a medium-sized country. But the electricity that ran Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas for last week's Super Bowl came from a 621,000-panel solar farm in the Nevada desert. CBS News reports that the Raiders have a 25-year contract with NV Energy, the company that owns the solar farm.

The Paris Olympics plans to halve the carbon footprint of previous Olympics by using the “avoid, reduce, offset” model. By targeting every source of emissions and rallying all the parties involved, Paris 2024 hopes to show that another model exists, according to the games’ website. 

But the carbon footprint of big sporting events doesn't come solely from the games themselves.  Think of all those 100,000-seat college football stadiums every Saturday, with probably 50% of the fans driving personal vehicles to attend. The biggest source of emissions for the Super Bowl come from the astounding number of private jets that travel to and from the game. One jet flew all the way in from Tokyo just for Taylor Swift to attend the game.  

It's easy to become discouraged when talking about solutions to climate change, especially when you focus on how insufficient any one action is. But if you stop to think about it, every action by itself is insufficient; and focusing exclusively on what’s not being done is counter-productive. We can applaud and celebrate what people are doing right, and we can also advocate at the same time for what more is needed. We don’t have to choose one or the other, and we can use what’s already being done as an example to encourage even more positive change.

Meanwhile, climate change is threatening chocolate.  Studies show that rising temperatures could wipe out a third of cocoa production worldwide by the middle of this century, and climate change is already impacting cocoa crop yields. Just last week, cocoa futures hit a record high. The weather in the Ivory Coast and Ghana – the two West African nations that produce 60 percent of the world’s cocoa – has been particularly soggy this year, leading much of the cocoa crop to spoil due to rot and disease.

Cocoa is mainly cultivated by smallholder farmers, many of whom will face hard choices as cultivation of the crop grows more difficult. Cocoa farmers may start looking to higher-altitude regions where the weather is more favorable for cocoa cultivation, or may decide to leave cocoa cultivation altogether.

Lessening Heart Hums

We appear to be in the WTF phase of Childwinter.  According to the Universal Solar Calendar, yesterday was Quickwint Sidelong Blur, whatever that means. Today is equally ambiguous: Lessening Heart Hums. 

I have no idea what that means either. The diminishing sound of a humming heart? The humming of a failing heart?  "Hums" is plural, but it's not clear if it's supposed to be a noun or a verb. 

I meditated on the name a bit, and the best I can come up with is it refers to the way humans cling to fading love. The "lessening heart" is a metaphor for falling out of love, and "hums" refers to the sad, lonely music we use to console ourselves, or to deny the fact that the thrill is gone, as B.B. King would say.

The Buddha taught that the root of our suffering is our attachments, our human tendency to cling to things long after they're gone. The reason heartache is universally the cause of so much suffering - from Greek tragedies to country-and-western songs - is that we cling to the way we felt about a partner in the past, or the way we thought that partner felt about us in the past. We want what no longer exists, and we suffer as a consequence.

We are in the thick of Childwinter - the 49th day with 24 more still to go. It is when we are the most isolated from one another - nestled as we are in out homes, hunkered around the hearth for warmth. We lose ourselves in fantasies and nostalgia, and wonder where our love went wrong all those years ago.  The dead of Childwinter is as appropriate a time to observed Lessening Heart Hums as any.

There's a very high probability that I've got it completely wrong and old Angus MacLise had nothing at all like this in mind. The Universal Solar Calendar basically began as a poem. Perhaps he just liked the phonetic sounds of the words,  although chanting them over and over as a mantra doesn't reveal any new beauty to the sounds, at least not to me. We'll never know. I'll never know.

Quickwint Sidelong Blur

I have no idea what the word "quickwint" means and can't find it in the dictionary, but the 48th day of Childwinter is called not Fourth Twelve but Quickwint Sidelong Blur in the Universal Solar Calendar.

I may not know the meaning of "quickwint," but I know "schadenfreude" and felt a strong case of it when reading Judge Engoron's decision in New York v. Donald Trump, better known as the Letitia James financial fraud case.

In order to borrow more (money) and at lower rates, defendants submitted blatantly false financial data to the accountants, resulting in fraudulent financial statements. When confronted at trial with the statements, defendants’ fact and expert witnesses simply denied reality, and defendants failed to accept responsibility or to impose internal controls to prevent future recurrences. As detailed herein, this Court now finds defendants liable, continues the appointment of an Independent Monitor, orders the installation of an Independent Director of Compliance, and limits defendants’ right to conduct business in New York for a few years.

The "few years" Engoron mentions are three: Trump is banned from serving in a top role at his company or any other company in the state of New York for three years. But the best part is Trump must pay $355 million penalty for his massive fraud. According to The New York Times, $168 million of the total amount represents the interest that Trump saved by getting those lower rates; and the rest represents his profit on the sale of two properties. Trump's sons, Eric and Don Jr., have to pay $4 million each and are banned from doing business in New York for two years.

Trump's former accountant, Allen Weisselberg, has to pay $1 million, and he and former controller Jeffrey McConney are permanently banned from ever serving in any financial control role of any New York company. Enjoy New Jersey, gentlemen.

Former judge Barbara Jones will remain for another three years as the Independent Monitor to oversee how the Trump Organization operates, but with even more authority to watch for fraud and call out suspicious transactions. She will also name an Independent Director of Compliance, a position that the Trump Organization never had, to monitor the company's financial reports.

Overall, Donald Trump rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial. His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility. . .  

[The defendants'] complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin. Defendants did not commit murder or arson. They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways. Instead, they adopt a “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” posture that the evidence belies.

This Court is not constituted to judge morality; it is constituted to find facts and apply the law. In this particular case, in applying the law to the facts, the Court intends to protect the integrity of the financial marketplace and, thus, the public as a whole. Defendants’ refusal to admit error  — indeed, to continue it, according to the Independent Monitor  — constrains this Court to conclude that they will engage in it going forward unless judicially restrained.

Indeed, Donald Trump testified that, even today, he does not believe the Trump Organization needed to make any changes based on the facts that came out during this trial.

Trump will, of course, appeal and request the order to be put on hold while his appeal winds through the courts. But despite the appeal, within 30 days he'll still have to produce the money or secure a bond -- using real estate as collateral -- to be set aside while the appeals play out. And it's not just $355 million, by the way. There is interest that has accrued, bringing the total to $450 million, plus in NY, the money that has to be posted is 120 percent of the award. And the deadline for him to produce the $83.3 million he owes E. Jean Carroll is also coming up.

Time to sell some real estate, Mr. Trump.  

Schadenfreude, the sensation of pleasure, joy, or satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, or humiliation of others. It's a dish best served cold. 

The Painted Timbers

How does the R.O.M. spend his days, I'm often asked, living all alone and with no job?

Yesterday, I awoke as I usually do when the alarm clock went off at 7:00 a.m. I have no real need for a wake-up alarm because I'm not required to be anywhere in the morning, but I enjoy the regularity. If I awake at a regular hour, I will become tired and fall asleep at a regular hour and I've found that without the alarm, I sleep in as long as I want but then tend to become nocturnal.  Which isn't a problem in and of itself, at least in theory, but stores, shops, banks, services, health care, and other businesses are generally open only in daytime hours. When I become nocturnal, staying up to 4:00 a.m. and then sleeping past noon, I miss out on a lot of things. Plus my circadian rhythms go all to hell and before I know it, I'm napping throughout the day and tossing and turning all night, never fully awake and never really asleep. I much prefer the regularity of a morning wake-up alarm, and some consistency to my hours.

A 7:00 a.m. wake-up alarm doesn't mean I have to get out of bed, though. It's a radio alarm clock, and sometimes I listen to the news on NPR for an hour or two before getting up. Sometimes I just pet the cat. Sometimes I sneak in a little light reading or just fall back asleep and start the day a couple hours later.

I'm usually up by 9:00 a.m., though.  If I was kind to myself the night before, I've already prepared a pot of coffee, and I just have to turn the maker on (if not, I have to count out the scoops and fill the water tank). I keep my blood-pressure meds next to the coffee maker, and while I'm there, I take my one daily dose. Then I check and record my blood pressure before I start any other tasks, because if I don't do all that on a regularly scheduled basis, I'll forget. If it's a routine, I don't have to think about it or "remember" to take my meds and my blood pressure, I just do it.

Breakfast, in addition to my morning coffee (black), usually consists of some combination of one or more of a bowl of cereal, a bagel (naked, no schmear), a banana, an orange, and/or a cup of yogurt.  It varies, depending on mood and what's in stock in my fridge, and it's casually eaten sometime between the hours of 9:00 and noon. While I'm drinking my coffee and taking my breakfast, I'm usually catching up on the news, both on MSNBC and from various email newsletters (NY Times, the Guardian, Axios, and local Atlanta services). 

Yesterday, I watched the live coverage of Trump's election interference case in Georgia, and the defendants' desperate, hail-mary attempt to have the case dismissed by questioning the ethics of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. I like to stay abreast of current events and use my free time to watch live coverage of hearings and trials when I can, rather than read someone else' description of what happened. But the hearings yesterday were combative and frankly kind of nasty, and I started developing a sort of PTSD from my own courtroom experiences giving expert testimony and depositions and being cross-examined in environmental cases. I enjoy a good conversation and even debate, but I don't like arguments or fights, especially when they become personal and nasty. My distaste for dueling with attorneys constantly trying to put words in my mouth and undermining my credentials and even integrity were part of the reason I decided to retire from my career. I didn't want to do that anymore, even for money, and certainly didn't need to relive it all over again over my morning coffee.

As is my routine, while watching the news over coffee and between breakfast portions, I solved the New York Times crossword puzzle on my phone. And the mini-crossword. And the Wordle, the Spelling Bee, and the Connections and Letter Box puzzles. I feel like the puzzles are good mental exercises to keep my mind sharp, and also mental-acuity tests to let me know when I'm doddering off into age-related dementia.  My challenge to myself is to keep improving my times or my scores, and if and when I can no longer think of, say, a five-letter word describing a non-fixable error ("fatal"), I'll know it's time to stop trusting my mind.

I write during the day, both this blog as well as separate posts to a Facebook sports group. Both formats also include generating, editing, and selecting images using various AI models. Yesterday's sports posts include updates on the Red Sox' spring training, the Bruins' loss to Seattle, and Caitlin Clark's record-setting performance at Iowa. While writing and composing, I listen to music over Spotify. If I recall correctly, yesterday I was listening to the new albums by composer Kali Malone (All Life Long) and jazz vibraphonist Joel Ross (nublues).  

By that time, it was the afternoon, and I took my usual walk along my usual route on a portion of the Atlanta Beltline, a 2.5-mile route. It gets me outside, it's some light exercise, and a modicum of social interaction ( I stopped to chat with a neighbor yesterday, one I hadn't seen in several months).

Back home, I tuned back in to Trump's Georgia hearings and read a Marvel comic book on line. I subscribe to something called Marvel Unlimited which gives me access to almost the entire Marvel library, and right now I'm on The Runaways series (Issue 6, Nov. 19, 2003). I also subscribe to The New Yorker magazine, have since 2003, and at various times during the day I'm reading one article or another from relatively recent issues. There's usually around six or so recent issues of the magazine scattered at various places around the house - the kitchen counter, a bedside end table, by the sofa near the television, behind the toilet, etc. 

Lunch is in the late afternoon to almost early evening and almost always consists of a salad. My local Publix supermarket sells a great selection of premade salads - it's certainly not the most cost-effective way to eat, but it beats trying to maintain a refrigerator full of fresh produce and toppings, and trying to constantly think of new recipe combinations. On rare occasions when the store runs out of salads, lunch is a small sub sandwich and a bag of chips, but 9 out of 10 days, or more, it's a salad.

I don't play video games before 4:00 pm - a self-imposed rule to apply a bit of discipline. I don't want to be that guy hunched over a keyboard on a sunny afternoon playing games all day. Apparently, I don't mind being that guy hunched over a keyboard blogging or posting on a sunny afternoon, but somehow gaming feels different. Yesterday, after the Georgia hearing had ended, lunch had been eaten, and I was caught up on my reading and writing, I played a few hours of Assassin's Creed - Mirage (while also tracking the Bruins game on line).

Once I've had enough of that, it's time for dinner and some television. Last night, dinner was a baked and breaded chicken breast with a side of mac-and-cheese, a staple in these parts. I ate while watching Loudermilk on Netflix (I'm currently on season two). I'm also following Alex Honnald's Arctic Ascent on the National Geographic channel, and the current season (Night Country) of HBO's True Detective (I'm a week behind because of the Super Bowl). An old habit dying hard, I still try and watch The Daily Show every night, and possibly Stephen Colbert's opening monologue. The late-night viewing is also a ritual to tell myself it's time for bed, before I stay up all night and sleep through my 7:00 a.m. alarm.

I like to make sure there are no dishes left in the sink before I go to sleep, and that there's food in the cat's bowl. If I'm kind to myself, I'll get the morning coffee ready before I go to bed, so that all I'll have to do the next morning is hit the "on" button. I like to read in bed before falling asleep and I'm currently somewhere past page 300 of George Lewis' detailed and erudite history of the AACM, A Power Greater Than Itself.

And that's a not untypical day in the R.O.M.'s life. People I talk to seem unable to understand what I do with myself without a job or volunteer work or some eccentric but time-consuming hobby. Without a partner to order me around or children with demands on my time. For my part, I can't understand how they can confuse those distractions and obligations for a meaningful life. My best explanation to those folks is to "imagine a weekend that never ends."

And look at that, the news is now telling me that Trump was just fined another $355 million dollars and barred from doing business in New York for three years,  And it's now four o'clock, time to go back to Assassin's Creed.

Descent of the Host

The Gaming Desk has wrapped up The Last of Us, Part 1 in a total of 30 hours of gameplay.  A half hour more than it took to complete Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and five hours less than Dishonored 2.   

For reason I do not understand, after posting here about the game constantly crashing, it stopped doing that. I kept the framerate capped at 60 fps and my computer's fan still worked at top speed to keep the processors cool, but it wouldn't crash like before, even when opening the crafting menu (formerly the kiss of death). With that annoyance out of the way, I started to enjoy the game more - I might even go so far as to say that I liked it. It's a lot better when you're not screaming in frustration at the screen every hour.

Even though the story's basically a cross-country road trip, it's far from an open-world game.  You're constantly working your way through gauntlets of alleys or hallways or some paramilitary base, which brings up a ludonarrative anomaly - if you're in a zombie apocalypse and you know those zombies don't like direct sunlight, why in the world would you crawl through sewers, basements, and abandoned hospitals? If I were in that situation, I'd be outside all the damn time, and would only venture indoors if there were absolutely no other choice. 

But in the game, Joel and Ellie are constantly deciding things like, "Hey, let's cut through that boarded-up factory," or "That subway tunnel should make a good short-cut." It's necessary for gameplay, but it's ridiculous to think people would make those decisions in that situation. If it were me, I'd travel outdoors, I'd sleep outdoors, I'd piss and shit outdoors, and if you found me indoors, don't blink because I'd be back outside again before your eyes opened back up.

Spoiler alert: stop reading now if you haven't played the game or seen the HBO series.  There are two key moments near the end of the game where Joel has to make some major decisions, things that would have profound implications on the plot if they didn't come up near the very end of the game.  

First, after getting Ellie to the researchers looking for a cure to the zombie apocalypse, Joel has to decide whether to allow them to "harvest" her brain and save humanity, or to rescue Ellie and save her, but possibly doom the rest of humanity to the infection. In a role-playing game, you'd get to choose one course or the other, even if only a monster would agree to harvesting her brain (the scientists make a pretty good case for making the sacrifice for the good of humanity, though). But the game decides for you to rescue her, leading up to the final boss fight against a whole base of militants.

Second, after successfully rescuing her, Joel lies to Ellie about what the scientists wanted to do. He doesn't tell her that he rescued her to save her life, even though her death could have saved the rest of the world. Later, she stops him and makes him look her in the eye and swear he told her the truth, and he maintains the lie. That would have been the player's choice in most other games, too. Both decisions don't really matter in The Last of Us, Part 1 because right after he repeats the lie, the end credits start rolling on the screen. But in a perfect world, Part 2 would have at least two different paths depending on the choices made by the player.

So that's that. After a couple days off, I've moved on to my next game, Assassin's Creed: Mirage.  It's the fourth "historical" entry in the franchise after Origins (set in ancient Egypt), Odyssey (set in classical Greece), and Valhalla (set in Viking times), and this one is set in 9th Century A.D. Baghdad. I understand it's a shorter game than the last three, which is welcome as Valhalla definitely suffered from overbloating. I'm only 4 hours in, so it's too early to judge, but so far it seems like good, if slightly mindless, fun.

Day of the Inn Dweller

Beware of the inn dweller. He contributes nothing to society, he only takes but does not give. He has no place to be or time to be there, and owes nothing to anyone. He simply bides his time, taking each moment as it comes along, with no grand plans for the long or short term. 

The inn dweller has no boss to order him around, no partner to keep him in check, no children for whom he needs to set an example. He knows he's going to die and there's nothing to be done about it. He's learned to accept it. In short, he's freer than you can imagine, and if he wants he could fuck you up and there's nothing you can do about it. 

The inn dweller is probably the most dangerous person you'll meet, and you're almost guaranteed to underestimate him. He knows this, and as necessary will use it to his advantage. 

His credit is impeccable and he has cash reserves and resources at his disposal. He may not be wealthy but he doesn't need to count his pennies and has nothing left for which to save. It would amuse him to max out all his credit cards right before he dies and make the bankers figure it all out after the fact. His only fiscal worry is leaving unspent money in the bank before he dies.  

You're not going to change his mind or his opinion. He doesn't give a shit about what you think or who you are or how you identify or what your opinions are. He will listen to you only as a form of cheap entertainment and to catalog information he may be able to use to his advantage.  

The inn dweller is not an evil person or some sort of malignant presence. He pays his bills, respects the hard work of others, and generally tries to leave things in better shape than he found them. He has no goal or desire to cause you or anyone harm, and takes no pleasure in the misfortunes of others. In fact, he could become a great friend and benefactor. 

But if things turn out otherwise, it's because you foolishly underestimated him and put yourself in a position where he had to cause you misfortune. That's not a threat or a warning, it's just advise for you to accept or ignore.    

Beware of the inn dweller.

The Invading Past

It's the 44th day of the year today, The Invading Past according to the Universal Solar Calendar. The fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, recounted in Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, occurred on this date in 1945. It's Peter Gabriel's birthday, and tomorrow, pitchers and catchers report for spring training. 

I understand that blizzards are pounding the Northeast today. A snow emergency has been declared in New York City and the schools are closed; it's not apparent yet if the Boston Celtics will get to play the Nets in Brooklyn tonight. The gusty winds and 3-5 inches of snow now forecast for Boston (down from the 12 inches forecast earlier) may still affect the Bruins game tonight at the TD Garden against the Tampa Bay Lightning.  

It's sunny today in Georgia, though. We had 2¼  inches of rain yesterday, just shy of the record 2.42 that fell in 1900, but that's all behind us now. The sun rose at 7:24 this morning and will set at 6:10 p.m. and mild temperatures are forecast for the mid 50s. The waxing crescent moon is 20% illuminated, and rose at 9:47 a.m. and will set at 10:53 tonight.

These are the times and this is my record of the times.

Day of the Cat

Today marks two months since my pet cat Izzy passed on. Impermanence is swift. He died on December 12, and I buried him on December 13. 

Of course, I miss the little furball and mourn his passing, but I also note that my other cat, Eliot, has seemed to thrive in his absence.  They both got along well and neither one seemed to bully or dominate the other, but Eliot lost a lot of weight while Izzy was growing obese.  Eliot also started losing a lot of fur and developed a bad case of gingivitis, and began to resemble Bill the Cat from the old Bloom County comic strip. I took him to the vet, who told me there was no big problem with his health other than old age, but I had long assumed that Eliot would pass on before Izzy. It was therefore doubly surprising when Izzy died two months ago while Eliot lived on.

But since Izzy passed, Eliot has recovered a lot of the weight he had lost. He's not getting fat like Izzy was, but he no longer looks as alarmingly gaunt as he had prior to Izzy's demise. And his fur loss is abating and his coat is coming back.  There have been no new medications or changes in diet to account for Eliot's recovery, and the only thing different is the absence of Izzy.

Alert readers may recall that Izzy died in his sleep on that December afternoon.  He settled on my bed for an afternoon nap and never work up.  To he honest, I actually kind of liked the peace and solitude I enjoyed that afternoon - it was nice not having cats compete for my affection for a few hours - but I became concerned when Izzy failed to show up at dinnertime. I went to look for him and found him where I had last seen him, curled up on my bed, but he no longer was in the body laying on top of the blankets.

Since Izzy passed, I become nervous anytime I don't see Eliot in more than an hour or two. Ever since Izzy's death, I'm more affectionate to Eliot and he, in turn, follows me around the house more closely than he had in the past.  I can't tell if his proximity is because of my increased affection or because of loneliness after losing his friend, but he's rarely very far from me.  He's laying behind me on the futon right now as I'm writing this.

Late yesterday afternoon, he curled up on my bed - as is his custom - for a nap.  Naturally, every time he does this, I check on him frequently to make sure he doesn't go all Izzy on me and pass on.  So far, so good.  But yesterday, the Super Bowl started at 6:30 while Eliot was still napping, and I was able to enjoy the first half of the game without a cat constantly trying to curl up on my lap or otherwise trying to compete for my attention.

By halftime, though, I got worried. He slept right through his usual 7:00 pm feeding and still hadn't shown up some two hours later. This was way to close to Izzy's behavior on that fateful day for me to ignore. While I'm normally fidgety and restless while watching sports on t.v. and don't want a cat trying to curl on my lap and pin me down to the sofa, I nevertheless went and got Eliot, still alive, from my bed and took him back with me to the den for the second half of the Super Bowl.

He enjoyed the attention and affection, of course, but seemed noncommittal about curling on my lap.  He'd repeatedly jump off, walk in circles around the room for a minute or two, and then jump back on. It was as though he liked the lap and the affection, but felt there was something else he should be doing.

I went to bed after the game.  Normally, Eliot joins me on the bed sometime after I settle in, sometimes jumping up and waking me just after I fell asleep.  Last night, I woke up from disturbing dreams to find Eliot hadn't joined me by 4:00 a.m.  I laid there a while trying to convince myself Eliot wasn't dead, but I kept thinking about his long nap through dinner, his disinterest in cuddling with me during the second half, and his highly unusual absence from the foot of my bed.  Animals often crawl off to be alone when they know they're dying, and it felt like Eliot was doing just that. I couldn't sleep, so I got up to check on him, and found him curled up on the sofa where I had been sitting hours earlier watching the Big Game. As I turned on the light, he lifted his head and offered a weak "meow" in greeting (he's a very  verbal cat). Okay, he's alive, I was relieved to conclude, and went back to bed, but Eliot didn't follow as I expected.

I again had disturbing dreams when I fell back asleep, ruminating as I was about Eliot's death.  I dreamed I was a young child playing in the waves at the beach with a dog, who kept disappearing underwater when the waves broke over us. The wave would recede but my dog wouldn't reappear until I groped around beneath the water's surface and pulled him back up. And then another wave would come, and the process would repeat.  

About 7:30 this morning, Eliot jumped up and finally joined me on the bed. He was fine and healthy in all of his new, post-Izzy heartiness, and I hugged him and petted him for a long time before getting up. I've been watching him this morning and he appears perfectly fine, and I can only ascribe his distant behavior last night to the infamous fickleness and capriciousness of  cats. Or to my own paranoia and feelings of guilt over Izzy. 

Then I look at the Universal Solar Calendar and realize that today is appropriately Day of the Cat.

Fifth Ocean

So now the Universal Solar Calendar is naming Ocean days like, well, like they were days of the week. Just two days after Fourth Ocean, today, the 42nd day of Childwinter, is named Fifth Ocean.  To be clear, First Ocean followed the First Twelve day and Second Ocean followed Second Twelve.  Third Ocean followed the 36th day.  But here we  are, not even to the 48th day of the year yet, and we already have Fifth Ocean. Go figure.    

Éliane Radigue's Occam V appears on a 2012 LP titled Performances & Recordings 1998​-​2018 by American cellist Charles Curtis, and consists of a solo performance (an "Occam" in Radigue's parlance) by Curtis. Here's Curtis in a 2013 recital of the piece.

The Infant Footprint

So, I've changed my mind. You can do that, you know. You are not your opinions, and there's nothing wrong with drawing new and different conclusions, even if still looking at the same data.  In fact, it's a far better way to think and to act than rigorously sticking by your opinions even in the face of changing conditions.

Anyway, the other day I grudgingly conceded that the U.S. Supreme Court had a point in Trump v. Anderson, the Colorado ballot case, that perhaps state election boards shouldn't be the ones to enforce the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. I still agree that "perhaps" they shouldn't (or shouldn't have to), but I now also hold the view that in the absence of anyone else enforcing the Amendment, there's no reason that state election boards couldn't. If a known insurrectionist is running for a Federal office, including the Presidency, state election board shouldn't be forced into the unconstitutional position of putting an unqualified candidate on the ballot, even if no one else first objects.

Also, the Justices, sadly including several of the so-called "liberal" judges, expressed skepticism of Colorado's decision on the basis of the political outcome.  Justice Kagan asked if one state should really be allowed to decide the outcome of an election for the rest of the country. Doesn't that effectively disenfranchise the rest of the country?, she asked.

That question doesn't hold up to scrutiny very well. If we're really going to look at the politics of this, Trump was never going to get Colorado's electoral votes anyway in the current, winner-takes-all system. And the concern that another state, say, Texas, could counter by taking Biden off the ballot ignores the checks and balances of lawsuits to protect the people from crass, arbitrary-and-capricious, purely political moves and overlooks the fact that Trump did indeed try to overturn the election by interfering with the electoral due process. But Biden was never going to get Texas' electoral votes in any regard, so there's really no net change.

Also, since when does the Supreme Court make decisions based on the potential consequences? They uphold their interpretation of Second Amendment rights to bear arms despite soaring handgun crimes, a staggering murder rate, and an escalating policing crisis. Taken from an originalist position, either the  Constitution bars an insurrectionist from holding Federal office or it doesn't, regardless of the fact that a current candidate engaged in a failed insurrection. 

I've changed my mind.  The Supreme Court did not get it right. They were wrong, and now the nation has to live and carry on with the weight of their wrong decision.

Fourth Ocean

For reasons known only to old Angus MacLise, unlike First, Second, and Third Oceans, which follow the 12th, 24th, and 36th day of Childwinter, Fourth Ocean does not follow four dozen days.  In fact, Third Ocean was a mere three days ago. But here we are, the 40th day of the year, which MacLise has chosen to call Fourth Ocean.

Today also marks the first new supermoon of the year. New moons, of course, occur when the alignment of the Earth, moon, and Sun leaves the side of the moon that faces Earth in darkness, also known as a conjunction or syzygy. New moons always rise at dawn and set with the Sun, making them difficult to see due to the daylight.  When a new moon occurs when the moon is near its closest approach to Earth, the perigee, it is called a new supermoon. This year, there will be three new supermoons in a row, with the other two taking place on Day of the Lamb (March 10) and The Long Dim Under (April 8).

Composer Éliane Radigue's Occam Ocean 4 consists of three works, Occam Delta XIX, Occam XXII, and Occam River XXII. In keeping with Radigue's naming convention, Delta is a trio piece, Occam is a solo, and River is a duet. All three are performed by Carol Robinson, a frequent interpreter of Radigue's music, Bertrand Gauget, and throat singer Yannick Guédon.

The solo, Occam XXII, posted below, was recorded in March 2021 at the Kubus of the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany during an artist residency.  It is a masterful demonstration by Guédon not only of throat singing but also breath control (just trying humming along with him), that builds to incredible levels of intensity. As Frank Zappa says near the end of his Burnt Weenie Sandwich album, "You'll hurt your throat, stop it."

The White Sun

 

I spent the morning and a good part of the early afternoon today listening to the Supreme Court arguments regarding Trump v Anderson, the case regarding removing the twice-impeached, multiply indicted, former "president" from the Colorado ballot. Based on the judges' questions, I'm convinced the court will overturn the case and allow him on the ballot, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear the decision was unanimous.  

I'm also convinced, as much as I despise Trump, that they're correct in their decision.

To start with, the case is a thorny one. Amendment 14 reads, in part, "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

Donald Trump clearly engaged in insurrection - prior courts have affirmed that much - and no reasonable person who hears Trump call the convicted January 6 rioters "political hostages" and promise them pardons can disagree that he's given them "aid and comfort." And even though he never held any public office before being elected "president" in 2016 (the first person since George Washington to do so), he took an oath "to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" during his inauguration (although there were very few people present to observe it). 

I'm disturbed by the wording in the Amendment and the way that it tip-toes around the word "president" without explicitly stating that the Chief Executive is also prohibited form holding office.  The final catch-all, "any office, civil or military" seems to include the President, but the Amendment specifically identifies Senators and Representatives, who are also included in the catch-all. So why doesn't it specifically say, "President and Vice-President?" 

I don't believe the authors of the Amendment thought that it was fine for an insurrectionist to be President. I personally believe that right after the Civil War, when the Amendment was added, they were focused on the States, specifically the Southern States, and therefore, specifically called out Senators and Representatives, as well as the state's selected electors of the President. But I don't feel that kind of "fine print" exception justifies overturning the Colorado decision.

What DOES concern me is the argument, articulated by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, that a single state, in this case Colorado, can effectively decide a national election and basically disenfranchise voters in other states. What if Texas, say, decides to keep Biden off the ballot because they feel his handling of the border is a dereliction of duty and some form of insurrection? It's a stretch, I'll grant you that, but never underestimate the so-called "logic" of MAGA Republicans.

The 14th Amendment states that an insurrectionist can't hold national office, but it doesn't say how that is to be enforced. Also, it only says that such insurrectionists cannot hold office but doesn't say they can't run for office. 

The president's lawyer argued that any authority to enforce the 14th Amendment and regulate federal elections should come from the federal government, not from the states, although they weren't specific on how the feds should enforce the Amendment. Federal elections, including for president, are held by the States, so enforcement of who can or cannot hold office shouldn't be at the electoral stage.

What could happed - what should happen, although I know that it never will - is that Congress, when certifying the results of an election, should not certify the election of a candidate not eligible to hold office.  In a perfect world, voters wouldn't elect a person ineligible for office, but the mere existence of Trump and MAGA Republicans proves we don't live in a perfect world.  

Then there's the ultimate Constitutional crisis - "ultimate" in the sense of the last crisis. If the voters do go ahead and elect an ineligible candidate, and a partisan and corrupt Congress goes ahead and certifies the vote, can the Chief Justice legally administer the oath of office to a candidate constitutionally ineligible to hold that office? Wouldn't administering the oath be itself an unconstitutional act? After a failure by the voters and by Congress, wouldn't that be the final check and balance to uphold the 14th Amendment?

The 14th Amendment, coming as it did at the end of the Civil War, is an imperfect tool for these modern circumstances. 

The Doubletake Walk

The 38th day of Childwinter is called The Doubletake Walk, whatever that means. I don't know, but it gave me the opportunity to experiment with double-exposure imagery in AI.

I'm old, but that means I'm afforded a long view of current events, long enough to even border on history. My lifetime, short as it is in the long view of earth processes, evolution, and cultural development, has allowed me to watch the pendulum swing from the classic Great Society liberalism of JFK and LBJ, to the law-and-order conservatism of Nixon and Reagan, to the neo-liberalism of the Clintons and Obama, to the current MAGA neo-fascism of Trump.  I'm sure that the pendulum will swing back again and I'm quite unsure of exactly how, but I see and hear younger people who've only known adult life under the current set of conditions despair that the game is rigged and that things will never change. "We live in capitalism," Ursula K. LeGuin once said, "its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings." 

"Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings."

The current inequality in wealth distribution makes the moneyed capitalists and their elected stooges seem unstoppable, and that's exactly how they want to appear.  They've got the wealth, they've got the power, and there's nothing you can do about it, they want you to believe - you're better off just accepting it and not trying to change anything. But their folly is in ignoring impermanence, their supposition that things won't change.  It's like trying to ignore the tides. They're building what seems like an unpassable wall at high tide, thinking it will keep the others away forever, to only have the tide go out and the masses able to simply walk around their wall.  

Then those masses build their villages and homes at low tide, only to have the tide roll back up again and submerge everything they've accomplished.

Anyway, I'm already seeing cracks form in the seemingly invincible façade of MAGA neo-fascism. Just yesterday, House Republicans failed in their quixotic campaign to impeach Homeland Security Administrator Alejandro Mayorkas. This week, after loudly complaining for months about a crisis on the border, they effectively torpedoed the very legislation they've been demanding, laying bare their callous cynicism. Monday, an appeals court ruled that no, America doesn't have kings, and that an ex-president isn't above the law and is not immune from criminal prosecution. This week, House Republicans couldn't even pass their own bill to provide aid for Israel. 

None of these embarrassments are the death knell for conservatism, but as I described them above, they're cracks in the wall.  The tide is slowly turning and will eventually burst the cracked, weakened wall apart.

And then the tide will then turn again and leave the sunken edifice high and dry and exposed for all the world - and history - to see. 

Third Ocean

Just as First Ocean followed First Twelve and Second Ocean followed Second Twelve, Third Ocean occurs after three dozen days of the year in the Universal Solar Calendar, even if that 36th day wasn't called "Third Twelve." We re now officially into the second half of Childwinter.

Composer Éliane Radigue's Occam Ocean 3 consists of three works, Occam River II, Occam VIII, and  Occam Delta III. In keeping with Radigue's naming convention, Occam is a solo piece, River is a duet, and Delta is a trio. All three are performed by the string trio of Julia Eckhardt (viola), Silvia Tarozzi (violin) and Deborah Walker (violoncello).  

The duet, Occam River II, posted below, was performed and recorded in September 2019 at the Abbazia di Santa Maria Assunta in Bologna, Italy. The icy high register of Tarozzi's violin is underscored by the gliding lower end of Walker's violoncello contours, creating a unique mid-air dissonance over the composition's sustained length. 

The Ancient Village

This 36th day of Childwinter is called The Ancient Village. There have been three dozen days so far in 2024, but today is not known as Third Twelve, unlike the 12th and 24th days being called First and Second Twelve. These recent days are noticeably longer than at the beginning of the year, with the sun setting almost a half-hour later than it did on the First of Childwinter.

The Gaming Desk finished playing the space opera, Starfield. Total of 180 hours since December 20.  It had its good moments and it had frustrating moments, and it had more moments of tedium than either of the other two. Some of the missions felt more like chores and mainly consisted of being told to go somewhere else and do something mundane, and then return for another tedious assignment. The main story missions were mostly alright, and some even good, but the side missions were so obviously filler that it was almost insulting.  

I've now moved on to The Last of Us. I'm late to the game, I know, but it's only recently come out on PC. I watched the HBO show, and realize now that the program was remarkably faithful to the game. There were a few embellishments in the show, but they were almost all good and didn't divert the plot from the main points at all.

I loved the story in the television show and in the game, but I really hate the game itself. At least in its PC version, it's a nearly unplayable mess. It crashes all the goddamn time. If I can get two hours in of solid playtime without the game crashing, it's a cause for celebration.

There are other aspects of the game I don't like.  There is no "save game" option, so you can't save your progress during a chapter before facing some other danger ahead.  The game autosaves fairly regularly, so that if you do die, you usually respawn again not too far back in time, but if you log off mid-chapter (or if the game crashes), it starts back up at the beginning of the chapter and you're forced to replay long sections of the game over again.

There is no HUD map or destination markers, so you often have no idea of what direction to proceed or where to go. It's not an "open-world" game by any means, and you usually discover pretty quickly that going the wrong way usually just winds up at a dead end.  That's not normally too bad, but when you're in stealth mode trying to sneak through a horde of infected clickers, it's frustrating to learn you have to turn back and try again.

The game is visually quite rich, with remarkably detailed textures and light. But these details, which are arguably richer than needed to enjoy the game, use up a lot of system resources and probably result in some of the frequent crashes. I've capped the fps all the way down to 60 to compensate which helps some, but I still get crashes almost every time I'm in crafting mode.

The Last of Us is one of those games where you never have enough ammo or supplies, and you have to constantly scrounge for more resources. It's rare to have more than a half-dozen bullets, and it usually takes two to three bullets to kill enemies, and that's assuming you don't miss any shots.  And the game relies on the use of shivs to kill both infected and living enemies, but they break after one use. To craft a replacement requires a lot of resources, so it's back to scrounging, only to find you need to break your brand new shiv again to pick a locked door. 

Okay, I get it that the "make every bullet count" ethos adds to the suspense of the game and it's not a shooter game anyway, but the constant scrounging and constantly being underequipped only adds to the frustration of the constant crashing.

Still, the competitive nature in me hates to quit any game before I've beaten it. I've logged 22 hours since January 25, but I swear if I hadn't watched the HBO show, I probably wouldn't have stuck with this buggy mess. 

So long story short - love the plot, love the characters, hate the game mechanics. It's so easy to make a game that actually works - almost every other game managed at least that much - so it's beyond frustrating that they can't make it work for a game I really wanted to enjoy.