Information Exchange Strategy Model

It turns out that words can be plastic.

[Plastic words] are incredibly malleable yet empty when it comes to their actual meaning. Plastic words have surreptitiously seeped into our everyday language and dictate how we think. They have been imported from the languages of science, technology and mathematics, and thus appear to be imbued with their authority.

I think this goes someway towards explaining my fury at words like "curate" and "artisanal". It's not that in a proper context they don't have meaning, it's more that that original meaning is sapped when used to mean something much lesser.

And, as the article says, when it happens to words like "safety" and "security" and "welfare" then it facilitates all sorts unconscionable behaviour.

As an aside: I used to say this, and will still say it occasionally, about "evil". There are many things that are unpleasant, nasty or just plain horrible but calling these things evil means we have no word for when something truly evil happens. Of course, when something truly evil does happen we will probably need no words.

Sometimes When I Drink Too Much The Next Day I Can't Think

Over at Edible Arts, Wine Trends and Food Pairings,  they take a look at what people are drinking with dinner, find out it's beer and goes:

Mmmm. Perhaps they will grow out of it.

Hmm.

Elsewhere on the Internet some people are intent on helping the obviously confused: Beer with Dinner: The Basics of Pairing Beer and Food. In its own way this is almost as bad.

One the one hand it's true that wine often pairs better with much food than most beers. And the people in the survey probably aren't really that interested in finding harmonious combinations and synergies (I do find that synergy is often, but not infallibly, a bellend indicator). And that might be a pity. On the other hand fuck that noise. Drink what you want and enjoy it. If you want to find out more then Edible Arts and Kitchn will be there to give a helping hand.

He Will Surely Take Them Out On You

Trump Trump Trump

• Vox looks a The President's Conflicts of Interest
  They couldn't have done this a month or two earlier?
• A TINY FINGER POKING A GREASY TOUCHSCREEN -- FOREVER.
  There's no-one tweeting while I'm tweeting!
• President Windbag sets his sights on the Windy City
  It's not really "dog whistle" when you know exactly what he means, is it?
• Document the Atrocities, 1/24/17: Extreme Forced Birth Policies, Extreme Government Opaqueness, and Having a Thin Skin
  He's gonna fuck so many women while he's in power.
• Where's My Reward
  People are mean!
• Sources say Trump's CIA visit made relations with intel community worse
  Just make your own reality...
  

  Authorities are also pushing back against the perception that the CIA workforce was cheering for the president. They say the first three rows in front of the president were largely made up of supporters of Mr. Trump’s campaign. 

• Trump names his Inauguration Day a ‘National Day of Patriotic Devotion’
  Because he couldn't find any more sinister name for it?
• Let Us Dispel With This Fiction That Trump and Congress Aren’t On the Same Page
  

  But all signs are that Congress will let Trump loot the treasury and pack the cabinet with comically unqualified cronies, and Trump will pack the judiciary with neoconfederates, gut the regulatory state, and sign whatever legislation Ryan and McConnell put on their desk. One hand scratches the other’s back with an ivory backscratcher. They know exactly what they’re doing. 

• 

Everything Gives You Cancer

This time it's toast.

"I Don't See Colour..."

"... and neither does my video game."

Of course this is only one example in a very long tradition.

Short Shorts Redux The First

• Politico interviews Trump's biographers to understand his motivations
  

  So he has this deep fear that he is himself not a legitimate president, and I think that’s why he goes to such great lengths to delegitimize even the intelligence community, which is the president’s key resource in security, and he’s going to do this demeaning and delegitimizing behavior rather than accept what they have to tell him.

  
  
• Data Can Lie—Here's A Guide To Calling Out B.S.

  [T]hanks to the emergence of big data and the increasing availability of tools that help more people work with it, the amount of bullshit appears to have increased; with so much data out there, there is simply more potential for data scientists and designers to shape it to fit their own conclusions—or even intentionally mislead their audience.

•  Learning the Video Game Canon - How to deal with over 40 years of backlog?
  

  How many people write about Fallout 4 without ever playing Fallout 1? About Skyrim without ever playing Daggerfall? About Legend of Grimrock without ever playing Dungeon Master or a single 90's blobber?

• Architectural Relics: When Demolition Leaves Behind Nonsensical Structures
  
  

The Idiots Are Winning

In some quarters there's a fast held belief that Trump will be the outsider to truly bring something new to politics. He will selflessly drain the swamp and wash away the taint of neo-liberalism as practised by Hillary and her ilk.

The father-made billionaire who has previously been happy to stiff contractors will now be the friend of the working man. Despite, you know, everything he actually said and did.

He has, of course, as expected, in line with everything known and reported about the man, surrounded himself with people as venal and incompetent as himself. Some candidates even have the added bonus of being ideologically incompatible with the roles they have been chosen for.

Trump hasn't brought anything new to politics, he's brought something very old. Although perhaps  the scale of all this self-regarding corruption is truly new.

Well Done, Mortal

Peter Molyneux may or may not be a pathological liar but this post-mortem of Populous is charming.

Say What?

This quote (“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.” if the pic isn't there) seemed to be ever present on Facebook for me for a while. I think someone had put it on a T-shirt and the algorithms had decided that I would want something like that.

I'm not entirely sure, though, that he ever said it. Doing a search on Zappa + Parachute only ever brings up the quote but no actually source -- a song, book or interview -- it just hangs there and we have to assume he said it because a lot of sites have dutifully copied and pasted it from a lot of other sites and every so often it gets propagated by signature. To me it sounds like the sort of faux deep bullshit that Ol' Francesco would have lampooned in one of his songs and, anyway, it turns out that an earlier usage is from the 1936 film Charlie Chan at the Circus. So there's a part of me that likes to think that, if Zappa did ever say it, he was ironically quoting Chan.

My immediate thought when reading it, though, is to come up with counter examples or, well, one counter example.

A mind is like a parachute. If you need to use it you're probably fucked already.

What Next?

The Digital Antiquarian's USP is writing long, well researched, articles about computer games, their making and their makers, from a relatively narrow time (late '70s to very early '90s) and mostly about a specific genre, adventure games (Interactive Fiction, if you really must and if you must I have a graphic novel just for you).

This means he covers companies like Infocom, Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9 as well as Lucasarts, Sierra and Cinemaware.

If any of the above makes any kind of sense to you then know that the site's articles are both thorough and fascinating. Jimmy Maher, the site owner and author of all the articles, also seems to have cultivated a loyal and engaged commentariat that provide encouragement and extra information as well as pointing out his mistakes (errors of fact or simple spelling mistakes) and keeping him honest.

The latest article is about the end of Magnetic Scrolls and the creation of their last game, Wonderland. A Time of Endings, Part 4: Magnetic Scrolls is as readable as anything there and worth a few minutes of your time.

The Weekend House At The Weekend

Views from the fornt door.

Too Late, Too Late

The Truth About Turmeric (Curcumin) & It’s ‘Benefits’

So, I'd suddenly noticed Turmeric is now a "thing" (see below, possibly) as even Interspar were stocking fresh tumeric roots and the moment I do an article comes along to cast doubt on it's thingness.

I'll Have A Skinny, Artisanal, Raw-Milk, Gluten-Free, Sea-Water Dough Pizza, Please

Jay Rayner has a list in the Guardian of "Seven things in food to stay livid about in 2017".

It confirms to all of my biases, even if I think he's a little late to the "artisanal" rage. That and "curate" are sure signs that who ever uses them, outside of their more specific meanings, is a bellend.

I did like this bit too:

Which brings me to all those who point at clumsy, ill-written, pseudo-science as proof that their desperate, self-aggrandising food choices are better than yours; people who don’t know the difference between a causal link, correlation and sheer coincidence. They make me really, really angry.

Stuff like this can't be said enough times.

Know Where Your Towel Is

Douglas Adams comes across a something of a fascinating bastard. You can imagine how great some of these early meetings and dinners could have been, the polymath nature of them and the enthusiasm for a project not yet started. But you can also imagine the frustration of  working with one of the all-time greatest procrastinators.

News Indistinguishable From The Onion

Junk food cravings are triggered by the mere thought of being low class

Just an "Area Man" short, I'd say.

I Just Can't Resist Digs At QT

I was directed to this review of movies, A Savagely Partial Look At The Films Of 2016,  by Rock, Paper, Shotgun  whose "Sunday Papers" posts oftentimes have links to interesting articles that I wouldn't normally have seen. This one is worth checking out if only for the way it neatly encapsulates the problem with Tarantino:

The Hateful Eight was what we can presumably expect from Tarantino forever now, a sort of edit-yourself-a-film kit which comes with plenty of exciting materials but without a single decision in the box.

 It seems to be mostly in tune with me on the films that I have seen. So maybe I'll have to have a go at some of the movies that Nathan Ditum does like.

Want To See A Magic Trick?

Watch this video and see your respect for Penn disappear:



To be honest, once you get past the definition of Libertarianism ("I don't know what's good for me, so how can anyone else? Therefore government is bad") it's not all face-meltingly awful but the video never really recovers from it.

... So As I Was Saying

Obviously I wasn't saying much. And may still not but I thought I might give here a go again as I was reminded elsewhere that this is a "web log".

That is it's a log of things that interest me on the Internet and, well, for doing that Facebook isn't really fit for the purpose.