hotelelectrico

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In a late but decisive victory, the song of the summer is this jam from La Gatta Cenerentola, a 1970s Neapolitan-language stage version of Cinderella, which I heard on a podcast promoting a folk-horror bluray box set

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Ladies, gentlemen, enbies, and spambots of Tumblr, I present: probably the dorkiest thing I've ever done, and that's saying something.

This is a Magic: the Gathering deck that's legal to play in the Legacy format, which is not only capable of turning a paper card game into a working Turing machine, but can do it fairly reliably and even (potentially) through the opponent's attempts to prevent something that silly from happening.

A Turing machine is a theoretical construct outlined by Alan Turing in 1936, which follows a few simple(ish) rules and can do any computation that the device you're reading this on could do, given enough time. The original Turing machine was conceptualized as an infinitely long tape made of a sequence of cells, each cell containing a symbol; a read/write head goes along the tape, reading each symbol it comes across and then following instructions encoded in that symbol. In place of a tape, this version of the machine creates a series of creature tokens whose position is indicated by their size and color, and whose symbols are indicated by their creature types.

Here is the paper that announced that this kind of Magic deck was possible, which includes a detailed explanation of how it works for anyone familiar with the rules of Magic: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.09828.pdf The sample deck given in the paper uses some very different cards, but the core function is the same. I read that paper near the start of the pandemic and for the past few years I've been tinkering with it off and on to find ways to upgrade it from "it's theoretically possible for this to work if you draw exactly the correct opening hand" to its current state of "the majority of properly-mulliganed opening hands can get you there by turn 3 or so, and you might even be able to protect your combo from your opponent's interference". A decklist for my version can be found here; a more powerful version that's beyond my budget is here; and my rundown of the changes I've made to the deck from the original paper is here.

I don't have any plans to play this in an actual tournament, but it tickles me all to hell that it's possible. Based on this video, it would take this deck zillions upon zillions of years to do any sort of calculation, so slow play penalties are a concern. If you run into the Halting Problem and your program never ends, the game is a draw.

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Ten of my favorite older movies that I saw for the first time in 2023, listed in the order I watched them. Looks like the theme for the year was "visually exuberant fantasy" which is a pretty good theme! 1. The Heartbreak Kid (1972, USA, directed by Elaine May) 2. Strange Days (1995, USA, dir. Kathryn Bigelow) 3. Sanjuro (1962, Japan, dir. Akira Kurosawa) 4. Portrait of Jennie (1948, USA, dir. William Dieterle) 5. Millennium Mambo (2001, Taiwan, dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien) 6. Deadful Melody (1994, Hong Kong, dir. Ng Min-Kan) 7. Speed Racer (2008, USA, dir. Lana and Lilly Wachowski) 8. Green Snake (1993, Hong Kong, dir. Tsui Hark) 9. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992, USA, dir. Francis Ford Coppola) 10. Lovers Rock (2020, UK, dir. Steve McQueen)

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This is so good. Like, what a great critter. Fantastic.

Weevil, Sternuchopsis nero, Curculionidae

Found in Southeast Asia

Photos (free use) by Tiểu Bảo Trương

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Tonight's millennial-nostalgia banger is this Sesame Street bit from 1988, which I probably haven't seen in 30 years. Animated by the legendary Sally Cruikshank!

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Gefilte fish banh mi.

There are currently zero Google results for “gefilte fish banh mi,” and I’m both proud to have brought a new idea into the world & worried that I’m the first person who thinks this might be a good idea.

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This is... maybe less interesting than the jizz thing (wow), but there were people who predicted the idea of cells before anyone observed them. Cyrano de Bergerac (who was a real person living in the 1600s whose fame has been eclipsed by the fictionalized version of him from an 1897 play) wrote a story where he goes to the moon and has philosophical conversations with the people living there. One of his conversation partners suggests: “Perhaps our Flesh, Blood, and Spirits, are nothing else but a Contexture of little Animals that correspond, lend us Motion from theirs, and blindly suffer themselves to be guided by our Will which is their Coachman; or otherwise conduct us, and all Conspiring together, produce that Action which we call Life.“ This was published in 1657, well before van Leeuwenhoek‘s discoveries. It’s a work of satire, so it contains ideas ranging from “clearly joking” to “this is probably what de Bergerac actually believed, but it was too heretical or unpopular to print without some deniability.” I don’t know how seriously this particular idea would have been taken, or if it had been proposed by earlier writers, but *someone* at least called the field of microbiology in advance.

imagine being the guy who discovered microorganisms trying to explain to people that you promise there are millions of little secret guys on everything

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Needed a 650 on today's placement test in order to avoid repeating the level of Spanish I already took at UChicago in 2006. But I got a 620, so I get to relearn all the grammar I've apparently *almost* retained, while flexing my never-very-good speaking and writing "skills" that now have an additional decade+ of rust!

God, I'm doing much better than I used to, but I still have so much bitterness about how long it's taken me to get close to finishing undergrad and how little I've done with my life in general. And this is bringing all of that to the surface.

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The idea that Pokémon is a contraction of the English “Pocket Monsters” is blatantly untrue when put under any kind of scrutiny; the poke element is a Japanese rendering of Pokkim (”Undermountain”), a term originating from the Ainu dialect of Sinnoh, who believed that the creatures spawned from the depths of Tengansan (Mt. Coronet). It is due to this primordial connection that the Ainu held rock and ground pokémon in particularly high esteem, specifically Rhyhorn, who they honored as the “first” pokemon. It is only with the later settlement by the Yamato people that we see the cultural ascendance of “heavenly” pokemon - Dragon, Flying, Fire, Electric, and Water.

In the Kofun period, as the early Japanese courts adopted Chinese culture, plant-type pokemon rose to social prominence, as Chinese philosophers glorified plant-type pokémon for their value in cultivating land, sustaining civilization, and promoting social harmony with their aesthetics (and, as would be later understood, chemical manipulation of the human brain). For this reason, the bulbasaur, a ubiquitous pokemon in China, was adopted as the chief pokemon of the Japanese imperial courts, despite the creature being alien to Japan. Later Japanese emperors would enshrine the mountain-carving Korean Blastoise and, much later, the European Charizard as equal symbols of Japanese cultural reach, but Bulbasaur always held the position as the primal pokemon of Kanto.

This “plantmania” did have a literally toxic knock-on effect, as the Kanto population of plant-type pokémon are entirely poisonous, unlike those found in other regions (including the imported Sinnohan Tangela; note that Tangela only dwells in a patch of grass near the aging port of Pallet Town, and in the Safari Zone). This led to a disproportionate amount of power concentrating in the hands of the psychic-training mediums in Kanto society, including the notorious “shadow regime” of the Itako of Mt. Osore.

Due to the psychic stranglehold on Kantese politics, the people were unusually ignorant of Ghost-types (with their existence only confirmed with the Sylph Co.’s work at the end of the 20th century), and Dark-types had been completely exterminated from the region despite their presence in neighboring Johto (with the dark variants of Kantese pokémon establishing roots in Pacific Island chains such as Alola).

Oda Nobunaga introduced Steel and Dark-type pokémon into the region in his attempt to unify Honshu and wrestle power from regional psychic priesthoods; While these types remained in Johto, their population never stabilized in Kanto and faded quickly after Nobunaga’s death in Honnō-ji at the hands of Akechi Mitsuhide‘s Portuguese Charizard Kapadokya.

At the end of the Kofun period, the Emperor established a rule to curb similar excesses; the peasantry could only own normal and bug Pokemon, while those of the merchant class could use water and flying, and no more than three. The other types, especially the “heavenly,” were the domain of the nobility; a noble could train up to six pokemon, but they must be of the type of their house. The Dragon-class was the sole domain of the Emperor and his household, who alone could raise pokémon of any type, without restriction. The Dragon-class privilege was later extended to the shogun in the Tokugawa period, leading to the eradication of the Fairy-type from Japan, with most local varieties of those species bred into normal-types.

This legally enforced connection of the poke to the symbolism of the noble and imperial houses lead to their conceptual merger with the Japanese system of heraldry, the mon.

In the Kamakura period, Johto became a major cultural and commercial center, as its rich soil allowed the production of Apricorns, which could be ritually altered with carving and mercury inlaying to seal away pokemon in a small, weightless space. These sealing spheres allowed the development of a far more efficient and mobile pokémon warrior class, leading to the ascension of the pokésamurai and a strong ronin underbelly, with Minamoto no Yoritomo generally acknowledged as the first pokemon master.

In the Meiji period, these noble houses’ type-monopolies were disposed of, and pokémon training was reorganized into the Gymnasium system of continental European origin.

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I’m choosing to interpret this as good news about time travel because all the other ways for this to make sense are pretty distressing

Made another generator, if you’d like to know how you die.

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Hello, people of the world! If you haven’t heard, on May 8th, Uber drivers in several cities are planning a 24-hour strike to protest pay so please do not use Uber’s services that day! Don’t cross a picket line!

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In the first draft of my first assignment for poetry class, without particularly trying to, I've referenced This Is Just To Say, Ozymandias, and Steamed Hams, so maybe I’m a hack but at least I'm an extremely online hack

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‘am i Having A Brain Problem or Being a Shithead’: a short procrastination checklist

aka why tf am i procrastinating on The Thing (more like a flowchart, actually)

lots of people who have executive function difficulties worry about whether they’re procrastinating on a task out of laziness/simply wanting to be a jerk or mental struggles. this checklist might help you figure out which it is at any given time! (hint: it’s almost never laziness or being a jerk.) (obligatory disclaimer: this is just what works for me! something different might work better for you.)

1) do I honestly intend to start the task despite my lack of success?

yes: it’s a Brain Problem. next question

no: it’s shitty to say one thing & do another. better be honest with myself & anyone expecting me to do the task.

2) am I fed, watered, well-rested, medicated properly, etc?

yes: next question

no: guess what? this is the real next task

3) does the idea of starting the task make me feel scared or anxious?

yes: Anxiety Brain. identify what’s scaring me first.

no: next question

4) do I know how to start the task?

yes: next question

no: ADHD Brain. time to make an order of operations list.

5) do I have everything I need to start the task?

yes: next question

no: ADHD Brain lying to me about the steps again, dangit. first task is ‘gather the materials’.

6) why am i having a hard time switching from my current task to this new task?

i’m having fun doing what i’m doing: it’s okay to have fun doing a thing! if task is time-sensitive, go to next question.

i have to finish doing what i’m doing: might be ADHD brain. can I actually finish the current task or will I get trapped in a cycle? does this task really need to be finished?

the next task will be boring/boring-er than the current task: ADHD brain. re-think the next task. what would make it exciting? what am I looking forward to?

I might not have enough time to complete the task: ADHD brain wants to finish everything it starts. (if task is time-sensitive, go to next question)

i just want to make the person who asked me to do it angry: sounds like anxiety brain trying to punish itself, because I know I’ll be miserable if someone is angry at me. why do i think I deserve punishment?

no, I seriously want to piss them off: okay, i’m being a shithead

7) have I already procrastinated so badly that I now cannot finish the task in time?

yes: ADHD brain is probably caught in a guilt-perfection cycle. since I can’t have the task done on time, i don’t even want to start.

reality check: having part of a thing done is almost always better than none of a thing done. if I can get an extension, having part of it done will help me keep from stalling out until the extension deadline. i’ll feel better if I at least try to finish it.

no, there’s still a chance to finish on time: ADHD brain thinks that I have all the time in the world, but the truth is I don’t. 

reality check: if i’m having fun doing what I’m doing, I can keep doing it, but I should probably set a timer & ask someone to check on me to make sure I start doing the task later today.

8) I’ve completed the checklist and still don’t know what’s wrong!

probably wasn’t honest enough with myself. take one more look.

if I’m still mystified, ask a friend to help me talk it out.

hope this helps some of you! YOU’RE DOING GREAT SWEETIE DON’T GIVE UP ON YOU

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truth coming out of her well to shame mankind (tumblr safe version)

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voting for candidates is about choosing the best available enemy

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third week of the semester is a great time to start going down in flames, right?

maybe if I try very hard I can get this English degree without ever expressing an actual thought in written form