Corned Beef Oats 3

It’s the week after St Patrick’s day, which means it’s time for more corned beef and oatmeal. Normally, when we make packaged corned beef we don’t use the spice packet, but this time we decided to go with it, just for fun. That was a mistake because it turned out way too peppery for us. After all was said and et, there was a cup of spiced water what had been used to cook the beef, the potatoes, and the cabbage. Perfect for breakfast.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, one cup spiced corned beef broth, and three dinner teaspoons of potato flakes. If I had thought of it, I’d have put in a fat pinch from the bag-o-shredded-cabbage. No salt because of the beef and the spices. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats. Add the potatoes at the end.

Results: Excellent. The pepper etc. was still there, but the oatmeal bland had pretty well fought it to a standstill. Now I just have to figure out a way to replicate this without buying a whole corned beef each time.

Rating: ****

The Defence of the West

Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland
Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island
Who rules the World Island commands the world

Halford Mackinder (1904)

World order is at stake.
Putin is trying to rewrite the map of Europe by force of arms.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R), SC

Herewith some thoughts on Putin’s War with Ukraine. Since he rose to power in 1999, Putin has been working towards one goal: to restore the Soviet Union. Not to restore communism, but to rebuild the territorial hegemony once maintained by the Soviet Empire. One short but plausible explanation from six years ago is that Russia feels threatened any time they don’t control all possible entry points to their borders. “Feeling threatened” does not, of course, justify killing your neighbor — unless you’re in Texas … or Russia.

Given that this is a long-term, persistent, overriding goal, it is foolish to assume that any half measures will appease the Russian desires for expansion. Any, any engagement with them will be just one more arena were they can work toward that goal. So, no cease fire agreement — the Russians will use that to build up and train their forces in preparation for a convenient end to that agreement. No “Territory for peace” deal — having a small chunk of Ukraine is but a step on the way to all of it. No negotiations to stop the war, as demanded by those who would have peace at any price — they have already displayed a congenital inability to negotiate in good faith. This is nothing new. We saw the same trends at work back in the days of the Cold War. Their approach to good faith was give me things I want.

The Russian word for compromise is компромисс (compromiss). It’s a loan word from French because the Russians don’t have that exact concept in their language.  Back in the day, the word we saw most paired with compromise in their writings was putrid.  Russians have always looked on compromise the way those of us in the post-WWII West look on appeasement.

As with their language, so too with their foreign policy. The Soviet approach was not like the Western one, focused on managing the relationships between and among nations. Instead, they treated it more like a military operation, always on the offensive, always seeking any little advantage they could exploit.

Russia’s goals in Ukraine are more than just securing all the territory of the two fake-breakaway regions. To hold the approaches to the Motherland, they have to hold all of Ukraine, and beyond.  If Russia wins, it won’t stop with Ukraine. Moldova will be next, or maybe Belarus. And then? Romania? The Baltics? Anything past those first two will mean a direct clash with NATO, but one could be excused for assuming that Putin doesn’t care. He may have started under the mistaken assumption that Ukraine would be a walkover, but Russia has always had an affinity for the long war. Russian despots have long proven themselves willing to accept massive casualties in order to achieve their goals.

Putin has already threatened to use nuclear weapons, and Russian doctrine includes the use of tactical nukes to solve battlefield problems. Given that the US is unlikely to be willing to trade New York for Warsaw, Putin may feel that he can use his tactical nukes under the umbrella of his strategic weapons. It’s the same thought process that allows him to threaten the use of tactical nukes whenever the West increases the sophistication of the weapons delivered to Ukraine. And of course, any use of nuclear weapons crosses a watershed, and threatens a slide into all out nuclear exchange.

If the West wants to minimize the chance of a nuclear exchange, the best way is to ensure that Putin doesn’t win in Ukraine. It is all very well and good to defend that country, but the real goal is to limit the possibility of a nuclear war between NATO and Russia. Defense of Ukraine is, in the truest sense, Defense of the West.

Green Thumb Up My Nose: Plans for 2023

We are at the tail end of a fairly strong La Nina year out in the mid-Pacific. The winter was cold and a little wet, with snowfall being near average and the snow that fell around Thanksgiving was still on the ground coming up on President’s Day. So, given that we’re still a little early for definitive plans, here’s how I see things going.

Continuing my two-field rotation, I’ll put squash in Section 1, and tomatoes in Section 2. I’m going to try putting early tomatoes/squash in the center row a couple of weeks before the rest so that they get a head start and stay unshaded.

For squash varieties, a recent YouTube I watched said that standard Zucchini were really too wet and seedy, and that specialty variants, like Trombocini, Scallop/Pattypan, and Delicata were a better investment. For winter squash, Acorn, Buttercup, Butternut, Spaghetti, and Pie Pumpkin. That makes eight, and since my seed starter has 32 cells, I’m starting four of each and winnowing down to one or two seedlings. Since I’m planning on only nine posts in Section 1, the last spot will be a store-bought Summer Squash.

A different YouTube listed the best tomatoes for our hot and dry, short season location. They included the locally available Early Girl, Beefsteak, and Champion, so that’s what I’ll be planting.

Current layout is:

Section 1: squash
Section 2: tomatoes
Section 3: lettuce, carrots, peas, whatever else strikes my fancy
Section 4: corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes.

House containers: tomatoes, sweet potatoes, potatoes, cucumber, peppers

 

ChatGPT and Learning

Over on the ACOUP blog, University of North Carolina Historian Bret Devereaux has produced a useful critique of ChatGPT as a tool for writing college essays. In it, he first presents his definition of an essay, the one that guides his classroom assignments:

Writing an essay thus involves a number of steps, of which communication is merely the last. Ideally, the essay writer has first observed their subject, then drawn some sort of analytical conclusion about that subject, then organized their evidence in a way that expresses the logical connections between various pieces of evidence, before finally communicating that to a reader in a way that is clear and persuasive.

…

ChatGPT is entirely incapable of the first two steps (though it may appear to do either of them) and incompetent at the third; it’s capabilities are entirely on the last step (and even there generally inferior to a well-trained human writer at present).

The reason that some people are saying that ChatGPT is a threat to the college essay is that they misunderstand the purpose.

[There is] a consistent problem in how we teach students, which is that we rarely explain our pedagogy (our ‘teaching strategy’) to the students. That tends to leave many assignments feeling arbitrary even when teachers have in fact put a great deal of thought into why they are assigning what they are and what skills they are supposed to train.

…

[The] most important thing I am trying to train is not the form of the essay nor its content, but the basic skills of having a thought and putting it in a box that we outlined earlier…. What we are practicing then is how to have good thoughts, put them in good boxes and then effectively hand that box to someone else. … at no point in this process do I actually want the essays. 

The reason I’m writing this blog…well…essay, is that Devereaux’s approach is similar to how our Senior Project worked back when I was teaching Management Information Systems. For their final class in the MIS major, students were broken into teams and given a Request For Proposal for some sort of computer system. They had to be small problems, because they had to be completed and documented within the eight week quarter. So, it might be an appointment scheduling system, or an inventory management system or the like. Students would first design the system (and turn in a response to the RFP), then build (and document) it, and then, finally, deliver the completed project, complete with user manual and budget documentation. It was great fun, for me, at least, but I had to keep pushing back against feature creep on the part of the students.

They were always going out and finding plug-in code that would produce snazzy calendars or pretty inventory graphics, even if there was no requirement for them in the RFP. I had to keep telling them that I didn’t want an inventory system, and I certainly didn’t want three different inventory systems by three different teams. What I wanted was for them to have the experience of team development of a project, to a schedule and with certain deliverables. From all reports, ChatGPT is not capable of generating workable code, and it certainly isn’t capable of producing a response to an RFP, a user manual, or a detailed budget.

 

Demographics

There’s a major demographic change headed our way.  Peter Zeihan explains it here. American birth cohorts are becoming smaller. That’s going to impact tax receipts, labor force size, and old age supports.

In the old days, the demographic pyramid really was kindof pyramid shaped. Lots of kids, fewer adults, not many elderly. A good example is Nigeria. On the other hand, the US is well into the modern demographic transition, with each generation having fewer and fewer kids. Some other countries, by the way — China, Japan, Germany — have it much worse.

Traditional Nigeria

Modern America

So in the US, as the Baby-Boomers age out of the active labor force, we’re going to have fewer and fewer people to take their place, and those people are going to demand high quality, well-paying jobs. Nobody (no modern American) wants a low-quality service sector job, like health care attendant for an aging Boomer, or field worker on an American farm. Enter the immigrants.

Or, rather, don’t enter the immigrants. For the last thirty years, the Republican party has been producing a drumbeat of propaganda warning that we’re about to be overrun by foreigners. Foreigners who raise American crime rates, take American jobs, and drain American services. Foreigners who are a burden on the system. None of that is true. Immigrants are no more criminally inclined than American citizens, start more companies than American citizens, and pose a lower strain on public services than American citizens. The jobs they take are the jobs Americans don’t want to do. Case in point: A few years ago there was a farm worker shortage in Georgia, and Vidalia onions were rotting in the fields. Any American who wanted a job could show up at the farm and get hired on immediately. Almost no takers. Why? “Americans don’t want to do the field work, they want to drive the truck,” said one farmer “We’ll hire someone in the morning and they’ll quit at noon.” That’s the truth of the matter.

But the Republicans are not interested in truth, they’re interested in power, and if they have to lie to the low-information segment of their base, the people who don’t look beyond Fox News and talk radio, and who can be scared into voting for a Republican like Trump, or Ron Santos, then Republicans have no trouble lying about immigrants. As a result, after a brief dip around 2020, the attitude towards immigrants has become more and more unfriendly. The effect is largest among Republicans but as a result of their propaganda the trend can be seen among all Americans.

No foreigners need apply

And so, just as we need them the most, we are turning against immigrants and turning them away. We are turning away people who have already bought into the American Dream, who want nothing more than a chance to become good, productive, citizens. These are people who spent their life savings for an opportunity to walk across thousands of miles of gang-infested mountains and jungles and deserts — catching rides when and as they can — in order to contribute to the American way of life, to pay taxes, and to take the jobs current Americans don’t want. People who will fill out that gap at the bottom of the demographic pyramid. They are almost all highly religious, with a strong sense of family values, and a conservative outlook. But they are brown, so the Republicans don’t want them.

Instead, the Republicans have a much different approach to the demographic shift: force American women to have more babies. This is why they’ve packed the Supreme Court with radical conservatives willing to overturn Roe v Wade. This is why the more forward-looking of them want to ban contraceptives — because every sperm should have a chance to become President. This is why Wyoming Republicans are voting against raising the age of marriage to 16. After all, if 13 and 14 year old girls are capable of bearing children, then these women should be given that chance. So yes, there will be a lot of unwanted births, yes, there will be a lot of non-viable fetuses born and mothers die, and yes, there will be a lot of complications from forcing underdeveloped children to bear more children, but that’s you price you pay to solve the demographics problem.

A big operation like this, you gotta expect some losses.

TLDR: Anime I never finished, Winter 2023 Part 3

It’s mid-season, and I’m running out of things to drop.

Handyman Saitou in Another World: Essentially a 4-koma isekai. Only works for so long.

Malevolent Spirits Monogatari: How Hyouma Kunato learned to stop worrying and love the tsukumogami. Too cookie-cutter. Too predictable. Too shouty. Surprised they don’t have spiky hair.

Spy Classroom: Remember how well Princess Principal did? Let’s do something like that, only without a coherent plot, and of course we have to put a man in charge of those girls, right?

Still, I am watching ten programs from this season, plus the compilation movie version of Magnificent Kotobuki — I liked the surprisingly informative infodump at the beginning.

Balloons Over Montana

Obviously they just wanted to see how we would react. That is, it was a trial balloon — Paul Krugman.

 

So, the media is all a-twitter over a reported Chinese spy balloon observed over downtown Montana this week. There’s been some reasonably informed opinion of what sort of intelligence it might be collecting in ways that satellites cannot, with an emphasis on signals intelligence rather than imagery. The problem is, everyone is treating it like it was an aircraft that can control its flight path and visit the various strategic locations in the northern U.S. It’s not an aircraft. It’s a balloon.

The thing about balloons is that they drift with the wind. Yes you can kindofsortof navigate by changing altitude to catch a different wind current, but your ability to do that depends on your knowledge of the wind, which is part of a chaotic system called weather. News programs have been pointing out all the varied strategic installations in Montana and related states, not mentioning that none of them are likely to be overflown directly by this balloon. Collecting surface data from a balloon is a bit of a crapshoot, and any images taken by this one are likely to be of the tops of clouds.

Here’s an example. Back in 1956 the USAF Project GENETRIX launched 516 balloons from Western Europe, hoping they would fly over key sites in the Communist world. Of the 516, only 46 were recovered, and only 34 obtained useful Intelligence, a six percent success rate.

An unknown number were shot down by the Soviets, due to the fact that nighttime changes in air density caused the balloons to drift to a lower altitude, just barely within reach of the MiG interceptors of the day.

So, this balloon poses no great threat to the US — we can tell because the reason given for deciding not to shoot it down was because of the threat to people on the ground … in central Montana! I suspect we’re getting our own Intelligence windfall out of this because we’re monitoring what the balloon sends back to its handlers.

Interestingly, this weekend marks the 65th anniversary of the last GENETRIX mission.

Larry Mayer/The Billings Gazette/AP

1951 RAND Corporation estimate of balloon coverage

Polar winds aloft, 01 February 2023

Sample GENETRIX imagery

 

TLDR: Anime I never finished, Winter 2023 Part 2

In addition to the anime I don’t like, there’s one that I am dropping because I just can’t get enthusiastic enough to watch even the first episode.

Sugar Apple Fairy Tale: Girl on her way to the big city buys a disgruntled fairy slave as a bodyguard. Of course the guy hates humans. I could see the bonding starting even in Episode 1. Too sweet. Too low budget.

The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten: High school RomCom. She’s the belle of the ball, he’s the odd man out. What does she see in him? She’s so far out of his reach that he doesn’t even try. She likes that.

The Fire Hunter: Post-apocalyptic journey. Doomsday with her dog, only not as funny and too long.

Kaina of the Great Snow Sea: Another post-apocalyptic journey. He’s from the upper canopy. She’s from the Great Snow Sea, which appears to be a middle canopy and the name implies there’s a Little Snow Sea somewhere. Together they set off to defeat the bad guys who want to enslave all the middlekins.

The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague: What’s with all these snow-themed anime this season? Even In/Spectre 2 started off with a yuki-onna arc. Anyway, IG&CFC is a 4-koma-ish RomCom with low-budget animation. They do their best with their one-joke premise, but it doesn’t quite work.

The Tale of Outcasts: Looks like it’s Ancient Magus’ Bride without the cool artwork. Never started.

Despite dropping all these I’m still keeping up with thirteen new anime. I’ve managed to do that because I am the proud owner of a low-end rowing machine, and the standard anime episode duration of 23 minutes is just right for a single rowing session, and three of those per day burns through a lot of content. I’m not only watching more anime, I’m getting caught up on my YouTube programs all the way back to 2005. Of course, the fact that Covid is shutting down all the outsourcing studios in China and forcing at least four, and maybe five, programs to put their releases on hold may have something to do with it.

 

Pickled Oats

Now and then we try making refrigerator pickles. We use the usual recipe: sugar, vinegar, water, sliced cucumber, chopped onion, fresh dill. MJ normally makes it, but she was out and about last night, and the cucumber was getting soggy and the dill was getting droopy, and the sugar was just sitting there, so I thought I’d try my hand. Put the chopped veg and dill sprigs in a container, pour boiling sweet vinegar over them, stick on the back deck to cool (we hit 21F last night). I tasted the results this morning (nothing like a forkfull of pickle at 5am to wake one up), and it …. wasn’t bad. A little sweet, and too much liquid. Maybe I could use the excess in my oatmeal.

Setup: Not quite one cup chicken broth topped up with several tablespoons of pickling liquid, 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, couple of semi-fresh dill stalks, two dinner teaspoons of potato flakes, salt. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats. Add the dill at the beginning and the potatoes at the end.

Results: Not bad. The dill signal came through in a muted way, as did the sweet. The vinegar, not so much. I think I had the sweet/sour ratio off. I didn’t put cheese at the bottom of the bowl the way I normally do, and that was a good idea. Fatpat of butter on top.

Rating: ***

Retirement, the five year point

It’s been five years to the day since I retired from professoring. Herewith, some thoughts on what’s happened since.

Mental State: Erratic Nostalgia.

In one of Terry Pratchett’s novels, Death is asked if it’s true that your life passes before your eyes before you die. He says that yes, that’s true, but it only does so once. I’m finding that that statement isn’t quite correct.

You see, my brain has a fairly rapid random access memory feature, and it makes all sorts of connections, based on the slightest hints, like a poorly designed (but still better than Microsoft) autocomplete. It drives MJ mad.

MJ: I’m gonna …

Me: Wash that man right out of my hair

MJ: … go shopping

What kept that ability/curse under control during my working life was the fact that I had to keep thinking about other stuff, like what does this item of Intelligence mean, or how best should I answer this student question. In some cases that ability to rapidly link disparate facts was actually helpful. But now, with no outside projects to distract me, and no time constraints other than my own, I find that little vignettes from the past keep being dredged up, more or less at random and with essentially no seed thought. School picture from 6th grade, getting yelled at by my boss in VietNam for sitting with my feet on the desk, listening to CBC Toronto during my morning commute into DC. Nothing traumatic. Nothing earth shaking. Just the detritus of a long-ish life popping at random into my forebrain. If I keep at it long enough it might just cover the whole of that life.

Health Status: So Far So Good.

Of course, it might not go on long enough. I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2017, which prompted my retirement the next year. Six months of chemo left me in remission, where I have been ever since. The most recent tests indicate it might be coming back, but I’m officially still in remission.

If the myelomas don’t get me the covids might. I am up to date on all my shots — five so far — and I mask up more religiously than Clayton Moore, but there’s always the chance that a mistimed inhale will start me down the road to becoming another statistic. A side effect (meaning an effect) of multiple myeloma is a suppressed immune system (even before chemo) and susceptibility to infection. That’s what killed Colin Powell.

Still, I appear to be beating my original personal prediction of five good years (~Sep ’22), two bad years (~Sep ’24), and 18 months in a pillowcase (RIP~ March ’26).

Activities: Mostly Sedentary.

So what have I been doing in between memory cascades from the Times Before? Not a lot. Reading. Doom-scrolling. Watching anime. Blogging (Hi there). Gardening. Rowing for exercise. Not much traveling — a couple of cruises and one trip to Japan before the pandemic. And naps. I like naps. About the only regret about my current timeline is the lack of travel. Between the pandemic and various frailties, I’m unlikely to get back to England or Japan, ever.

On the other hand, we have pulled off one post-pandemic cruise to Alaska. To do that we used a fairly strict protocol. N95 masks in transit and anywhere in the crowded parts of the ship. Unmasked only when walking the promenade deck or in our cabin. No entertainments (but we rarely did those anyway). No excursions that would pack us on a bus (but we’ve already done all that we are interested in). No eating in the main dining room or the buffet — small, uncrowded specialty restaurants only. That may sound like a pretty dull and restricted program but we’re primarily there for the boat ride and we enjoy spending our time on the cabin veranda with our collection of drinks with umbrellas in them.

Five years ago today was my last day of meaningful work. With luck I’ll be able to update this in 2028.

 

TLDR: Anime I never finished, Winter 2023 Part 1

I started out with an overly-ambitious schedule of twenty-two programs, not counting re-watches. Normally I have half that. Well, if there’s a won’t there’s a way, so here are some that I won’t be watching. This is Part 1 because I’m sure there’ll be a Part 2 Real Soon Now.

Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible He’s got all the presence of Sakurajima Mai from the first arc of Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl. She’s a girl who likes him, for some unknown reason. Or maybe she just likes teasing him. She looks like Minase Nayuki from Kanon. He looks like Yamori Kou from Call of the Night. The vibe is a little bit like Tonari no Seki-kun, except she’s trying to get him noticed.

The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World  Overpowered protagonist (aren’t they all?) enrolls in a magic academy and proceeds to blow his cover. Bog-standard hero-at-Hogwarts plotline except for the room full of naked musclemen who he proclaims himself the leader of. I could take one or the other, but not both.

Ayakashi Triangle Starts out as a romcom about a guy (who hates yokai) and his plucky childhood girlfriend (who likes them) and quickly morphs into a gender-switching sit-com (why is it always a guy-to-girl switch?). Reinforces my long-held decision not to watch anything that involves spikey hair and I doubt it will follow-up on the yuri possibilities.

Farming Life in Another World Minecraft, the anime.

Garden Gantt — Ten Year Repost, with Commentary

Ten years ago today I was just getting started in gardening and I needed a way to keep track of what I was doing and when I needed to be doing it. Since part of my background is in project management I naturally turned to that discipline for my toolset. Now, gardening is not so complex as to require a PERT chart nor yet a Critical Path approach, but a Gantt chart is just the right technology. Fortunately I was able to find a Gantt chart program on the Internet, one that used the Libre Office Calc programming language to build a chart that let me fill in a set of start/stop dates for an activity and then display the result as a bar chart. I have used it every year since then to plan my garden. I was pleased enough with it that I posted it to this blog.

Since then, the post has been viewed 3210 times. That’s 321 times a year or just over six times a week. The first year it was up it got 123 views. Last year it got 456 views. Hopefully, when the next ten year anniversary comes by it will be up to 789 views.

One drawback of the spreadsheet as written is that it’s Northern Hemisphere-centric. Someday, I plan to rework the formulas to produce a Southern Hemisphere version that will allow one use in Oz, or The Shire.

You could do your own Southern Hemisphere version, in a crude-but-serviceable sort of way, by just changing the column headings — so February becomes September, and so forth. Just pick a month that aligns with the start of your indoor seed-starting season.

Herewith, a repost, to give it a bit of a signal boost.

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A Gantt chart is a tool for project management, developed by Henry Gantt back near the turn of the last century. It’s a horizontal bar chart that shows start/stop dates for various parts of a project.

In order to help plan my garden, I’ve developed a Gantt chart of my own. You enter the start date and duration, and it displays that information using a horizontal bar on the calendar.

Gantt Chart Calendar

Here’s the file. It’s in .xls format because WordPress won’t allow .ods (but it will allow .odt, go figure).

I based it on the writeup in the Squidoo blog

There’s two steps to building the chart.
Step 1. Write the formulas to define the status of the calendar cells.
Step 2. Define the cell formatting, based on that status.

In Step 1, you begin by numbering the dates across the top. In my case I used weeks from February 1. Then, in a set of columns at the left, you provide the start and stop dates. The duration isn’t actually necessary, but we’ll see how it helps in a minute. Finally, you write a formula in each cell in the calendar area for it to take on a 0/1 value, depending on the relation of the date of that cell to the start/stop dates. The pseudocode formula is:

IF (StartDate<=DateOfThisCell AND DateOfThisCell<=EndDate)
THEN ThisCellValue = 1,
OTHERWISE ThisCellValue = 0

As an example, for cell H11, the LibreOffice spreadsheet formula looks like this:
IF(AND($D11<=H$2, H$2<=$F11),1,0)

In Step 2, you format the cell with the formula so that it shows up white if it’s value is zero, and some other color, say green, if the value is one. That’s a two step process itself.

Step 2.1 is to go to menu item Format/Styles and Formatting and define two new format styles, let’s call them GanttON and GanttOFF. In the first one the cell background and font color are both green. In the second one they are both white. Changing the font color makes the numbers invisible.

Step 2.2 is to tie the style to the cell value. You do that using the Format/Conditional Formatting menu choice. For cells with a value of 1, set the contitional formatting to GanttON. For cells with a value of zero, set the contitional formatting to GanttOFF.

Now we tweak the Start/Time/End cells. Keep in mind that there are two basic approaches to planting — direct seed, and transplanting of seedlings started earlier.

Direct seed is simple. It uses one row. If you are planting in the Spring and want to know the harvest date, then you enter the Start date (say, date of last frost), and growing Time. The harvest (End) is determined by these two numbers: End = Start + Time. If you are planting for a Fall harvest and want it ready before a certain date, then you use Start = End – Time.

For transplants, you need two rows. The first row is to time the seedling growth up to some specific transplant (End) date, so Start = End – Time. The second row is time from transplant to harvest, so End = Start (transplant) + Time.

To tie the two together, you make the Start of the outdoor growth equal to the End of the transplant growth.

Anime Preview: Winter 2023

Unlike others, who use knowledge of the source materials, close observation of the previews, and who actually read the press releases, I’m going to base my decisions on what to watch on pretty much just the title and the cover art.

First, let’s say what’s not in here. Sequels and continuations of stuff I dropped earlier (Vinland Saga, Vampire Dies in No Time), movies and OVA’s (EVANGELION:3.0 -46h), and anything with more than one exclamation point in the title (Cardfight!!!Vanguard).

WILL WATCH: The title or the cover art is properly enticing (or I liked the first season), so I definitely will watch at least the first three eps

Ningen Fushin Hero with a really big…knife…meets girls in a city with really odd overhead transit system	Magical Revolution Can two women, as different as day and night, find love in a city of turrets?	NieR:Automata Blind warrior woman explores botanical garden

MIGHT WATCH: The cover art is off-putting, but I might watch it.

Handyman Saitou And that, children, is how you build a railroad	Misfit of Demon King Academy Handsome guy with laser finger romances bevy of buxom beauties	Giant Beasts of Ars Sequel to Thuvia, Aid of Ars

WON’T WATCH. The cover art and/or the title tells me more than I ever wanted to know on the topic.

Bungo Stray Dogs Batman wannabe poses in front of red moon	In/Spectre Mary Poppins wannabe sings under a red moon	Reincarnation of the Strongest Exorcist Cool smoker wannabe collects a middle school harem under…hey, wait a minute!

Oatmeal Bisque

In one of our more holiday festive moods, MJ brought home a box of lobster bisque. Actually, it was a bag-o-bisque, in a cardboard soup box. Just heat and eat. Very good. Since it was a biggish bag and we had a lot of other things that night (sea scallops anyone?), there was a fair amount left in the bag. I snuck some out for breakfast.

The thing to remember about thick/creamy liquids and oatmeal is that the oatmeal doesn’t absorb them very well and they can end up tasting underdone. My solution is to put in a largish amount of plain broth to start, cook the oatmeal in that, then add the creamy stuff at the end and heat until heated. You might want to microwave the bisque for 20-30 seconds before adding.

Setup: scant 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, 75ml lobster bisque, 175ml chicken broth, two dinner teaspoons of potato flakes, salt. Cook in the broth for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats. Add the bisque and cook for another couple of minutes, maybe turning up the heat. Add the potatoes at the end.

Results: Very good. Could have used maybe a little more bisque.

Rating: ***

Anime Postview: Fall 2022

This is not a real review of the anime season just ending. Instead, it’s a look at how well I did in my Fall 2022 Preview, which you might want to look at first.

Ones I said I WILL WATCH:

I’m the Villainess. I started it and liked it, just not enough to follow through after the first arc. It felt like they were reaching for new dilemmas.

Sorezore Uso. Dropped it after half an episode. I don’t mind highschool anime, but I draw the line at middle school antics.

I’ve somehow gotten stronger. Very much a kids show.

Ones I said I MIGHT WATCH:

Reincarnated as a Sword. Did watch. Surprisingly good. OK, so the protagonna gets seriously OP’d when paired with The Sword, but it all seemed to work out.

Urusei Yatsura. The original dates from 1981, and the 2022 rerelease looks like they didn’t do much in the way of updates. Forty year old drawing style I can live with. What passed for humor back in the Reagan administration doesn’t quite hack it now.

Raven of the Inner Palace. If I hadn’t just read “The Apothecary Diaries” over on J-Novel I would have liked this more than I did. As it was, I dropped it after the first arc.

Ones I said I WON’T WATCH:

Didn’t watch them. Well, I did watch a bit of Chainsaw Man, but it didn’t hold my interest.

So, WHAT DID I WATCH?

Eminence in Shadow. I know I panned it earlier, but I went back after reading some of the reviews, and it wasn’t bad.

KanColle Season 2. Mostly because I watched Season 1. Probably didn’t get tired of it because of the leisurely release schedule. We’re at the end of the season and KC2 has only dropped four episodes.

Rewatched Kotobuki, Gate, and Porco Rosso … again. Currently watching a really good lecture series on Ukraine on YouTube, but that doesn’t count as anime.

OVERALL

Very thin Fall Season. Worse than Summer. I get the impression that overall quality has dropped off. Or it could be that watching over a thousand hours of anime in the five years since I’ve retired has just worn me out.

Risottoats

The other day, MJ brought home a packet of instant risotto.  It was [no longer Uncle] Ben’s Original Cheese Risotto. It was exceedingly meh. I guess that’s because when you got right down to it, it was instant rice, and I lived on that stuff for years when I was an undergrad in the pre-ramen era. So naturally there were some dregs left in the pot, which got used for breakfast the next day.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, one cup broth, two fat dinner tablespoons of leftover risotto, two dinner teaspoons of potato flakes, salt. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats. Add the potatoes at the end.

Results: Very good. Surprisingly good. The rice blended in with the oatmeal so that it was no longer noticeable, and the cheese added a nice … well … cheesy flavor. I’d do it again, if somebody gives me a packet for Boxing Day.

Rating: ***

Green Thumb Up My Nose: Lessons learned from 2022

Summary of the Year

Yields for 2022 were disappointing, only half of last year’s record. Growing season started out cold — not hitting 70F until the end of May — and ended up scorching hot, with record-breaking warm into early October before crashing to frost at the of the month.

Lessons Learned from 2022

1.  For some reason, possibly because of shade from plants on the furring stakes, the plants in the middle column didn’t do well. That means we should only plant 8 plants per section, or maybe plant the central row early.
2.  Planting singleton potatoes in 10″ pots didn’t work out. Possibly too cold
3.  Planting carrots in a cooler works pretty well
4.  If I want to plant late harvest (October) determinate tomatoes, I need to plant out seedlings in early/mid July (except that the nurseries close out in mid June). Or buy seeds and start them in early-mid May.
5.  Cut spaghetti squash along the lines of latitude and cook the ensuing donuts.
6.  Soaker hose doesn’t cover a lot of ground, so young seedlings a few inches away get dehydrated. Maybe try a sprinkler hose, instead.

Results of Lessons Learned from 2021

1. Using 8ft furring strips for tomatoes in the main garden works best if you start them early and train the plants up. Start them earlier than that
2. Stake each of the cornstalks in the greenhouse. Do it early. Doesn’t have to be tall, but must attach. Didn’t plant corn.
3. Don’t plant squash in the middle of the bed. They get shaded out. How true.
4. Weed a couple of times a couple of weeks before planting. It helped.
5. Use bigger plant signs, particularly for the squash. Bigger than that. No, BIGGER, I said… Not big enough.
6. Photograph and map the initial planting better than I did last year. Maybe I’ll do that in ’23
7. In line with Item 10 from last year, don’t bother with bush varieties of tomato. The  fruit comes out plum-sized and acidulous. Didn’t do bush.
8. And while we’re at it, don’t bother growing vegetable crops on the deck. The containers are too small and the ‘bush’ varieties not particularly good. Maybe go with herbs. As a result, lots more room for my kamado grill.
9. Don’t worry about pollinating the corn until the female tassels appear then get in a big box fan. Didn’t do corn.
10. Greenhouse seems to work for corn and sweet potatoes, but not both at the same time. Try planting sweet potatoes in Section 3 and corn by itself in the greenhouse. Didn’t do corn and didn’t use the greenhouse.
11. And speaking of sweet potatoes, cutting up store-bought only gave us about as many as we planted. Let’s order some commercial sets for 2022. Didn’t order commercial stuff. Didn’t get much of a harvest.
12. Only order seeds from well-known US seed companies. When ordering through Amazon, check sourcing. Not making any accusations, but don’t buy from GardenSeedsMarket again. Didn’t order from them and it turned out fine.

A show of their own, 2022

This is the third, mostly annual, ASOTO. The idea, as I’ve said, is to search through this years anime to find some interesting supporting characters, characters that are interesting enough to deserve shows of their own, the way The Apprentice spun off The Donald J. Trump Presidency. I am selecting four three characters from the year just passed, one from each worthwhile season, and nominating them for their own series.

Of course, there are some constraints. It had to be a show I watched, and watched long enough to establish an opinion. It had to be a character who obviously had a backstory, or an ongoing futurestory, and it had to be a character who could stand on their own. It didn’t have to be a character I particularly liked. Also, and this is what removed a lot of good shows from the running, it had to be a character that wasn’t one of the primary stars.

As usual, there were lots of isekai and lots of highschool shows this year. The trouble with isekai is that they are usually wish-fulfillment fantasies, with all of the supporting characters entirely subordinate to the Hero. They can be fun, but they usually don’t have any character who can stand on their own. Likewise with high school anime. In this case, the characters are usually not old enough or distinct enough to warrant their own show.

Winter of 2022 was a little thin. Of the twenty anime I started, I only finished seven. Most of the ones I finished were wish-fulfillment isekai where the hero swept all before him (it’s always a him).

WINTER

Miss KUROITSU from the Monster Development Department — Megistus

The best of the few remaining was the story of a lab researcher in an evil corporation, and the best character there was a robot/mecha/cyborg named Megistus. He cares about his workers and he’s up on all the latest management theories. Where did he come from? How did he start work at EvilCorp? What business school did he go to? What were the early years like for a young mecha on its way up in the world.

Spring of 2022 wasn’t any better. Fifteen programs started, and seven completed.

SPRING	I’m Quitting Heroing — Shutina
	I’m Quitting Heroing had a collection of possibles, including the mage general Shutina. She’s Echidna’s senior general and is the embodiment of the highly competent, glasses-wearing blonde with a high-mounted ponytail. The show could cover the early days of the war, up to her defeat by Leo. A slice of life comedy, it would show how she’s buried in paperwork but refuses to delegate.

​Summertime was also thin, but that’s normal. Eleven started and, again, seven finished.

Summer	Parallel World Pharmacy — Eléonore Bonnefoi
	She’s Falma’s tutor and some years older than him. She studied under his father and became a pharmacist at a young age. The show would be another prequel, showing her early career as a pharmacist and her later job as a tutor. The ending would be her realizing that Falma is more than he seems.

More-so than Summer, Fall seems to be the most problematic season. I guess 2022 just wasn’t a very good year for anime. Maybe it’s me. Nineteen started and just three finished, although I did stick with another three until very near the end, when boredom led me to stop watching. And so, my final selection was, once again…

AUTUMN	Nobody
	Either there was no standout in the group (Do it yourself, KanColle), or the protagonoi just overwhelmed all the supporting cast (Reincarnated as a Sword,  Eminence in Shadow). Maybe if I’d stuck with Raven of the Inner Palace or Chainsaw Man things would have been different.

​

KanColle Season 2 Episode 4

So, KanColle is back, with Episode 4 airing almost a month after Episode 3. Normally, I wouldn’t do a episode by episode review, but there’s an interesting bit of trivial here.

We begin with destroyer Shigure waking up in hospital in Sasebo Naval Base, after the revised Battle of Surigao Strait. They won, and drove the Abyssals back. Unfortunately, most of 1st Striking Force, 3rd Section is wiped out — the girls survive but are too badly damaged to continue to fight with the fleet. Shigure is essentially the only survivor, a historically accurate situation.

As a reward for her efforts she is given one day off at an onsen near Sasebo.  As an aside, there’s a surprising amount of snow for a sea-side facility that’s thirty miles south of the latitude of Atlanta, GA.

While returning to base, she — and another destroyer she met at the onsen — pass by the Hairo Naval Transmission Center (20:16), which I noted last week was the facility that sent the “Climb Mount Niitaka 1208” message that was the go sign for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

At a fleet base in the far south….

…lies the Hairo Naval Transmission Center

Climb Mount Niitaka

In early December, 1941, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku was aboard his flagship, the battleship Nagato, swinging at anchor off Hashira Island, twenty-five miles south of the city of Hiroshima. The Pearl Harbor strike force, the Kidō Butai, had left its bases in late November and was proceeding on an easterly course, well out of the normal shipping lanes. While the attack on Pearl had been approved in principle, the final decision was not ratified by the Japanese Cabinet until the first of December.

On the second of the month, Admiral Yamamoto gave his Chief of Staff, Admiral Ugaki Matome, orders to send the ‘go code’ to the Kidō Butai. This was the famous “Climb Mount Niitaka 1208” order. Niitaka, on Japanese-occupied Taiwan, was the tallest mountain in the Japanese empire. The “Climb” order gave the go-ahead, and specified the date of the attack. If the attack had been called off, the message would have said “Mount Tsukuba is sunny”, Tsukuba being a mountain south of Tokyo.

Ugaki sent the “Climb” message to the Hairo Naval Transmission Center, on Kyushu Island, just south of the Sasebo Naval Base, where the IJN’s first long range radio communications unit was located, and Hairo retransmitted it to the rest of the fleet. This facility dates from just after the Russo-Japanese War, and was still used by the JMSDF and Coast Guard as late as 1997. It is currently being evaluated for restoration.

At a fleet base in the far south….

The Phantom Gang

Back in the early ’80’s there was a manga titled ファントム無頼 (Phantom Burai). The kanji 無 means without, or free, while 頼 is trust, or a request. The pair are usually translated as villain, or untrustworthy by the online dictionaries, but in this case the phrase seems to be best translated as Phantom Gang, about a JASDF F-4 squadron and the hijinks its aircrew gets up to. It has not appeared in English yet so I can’t be sure, but it seems to highlight a Phantom jet with the tail number 680, and various anime and manga have been tipping their hats to it ever since. I’ve found two examples myself.

Manga

HOTD

Gate

High School Of The Dead: In Episode 4, an RF-4D numbered 680 does a flyby of Takashi and Rei on their motorcycle as they cross over a bridge. The number shows in the manga, not in the anime.

Gate: In Episode 14, the F-4E that drops a laser guided bomb on the Imperial Senate Building has callsign 680.

It’s possible to buy copies of the manga through Amazon US, and I might just get Volume 1 to see what it’s all about.
:

Civilization Goes Away

So, today is the day after Thanksgiving and I’m just now getting my Thanksgiving post posted. Traditionally, I look at various disasters that haven’t befallen us, yet, so that we can give thanks that we’re still here. I do this because I worry about us, about the future, and in particular, the future of civilization.

The problem is this. Modern civilization is a one-time event. If it goes away, it isn’t coming back.

There’s a number of ways this could happen. Think of what a civilization-ending asteroid impact might be like. If a sufficiently large asteroid (or comet) hits in the Pacific Ocean — the most likely event — everything on the Pacific Rim disappears in the super-tsunami. Or maybe it lands in Siberia (the last two did), so we get world-wide firestorms. Whatever happens, the materials thrown into the atmosphere will likely give us two or five or ten years of nuclear winter. Everybody starves. Well, everybody in First World Europe and Asia and North America. Equatorial peoples are the most likely to survive. Even if there are enclaves in the First World, they’re not likely to include a particularly wide range of technology skills — they’ll be tinkerers, not engineers. I’m not going to go into detail because that’s not what I want to discuss. I’m assuming an impact big enough to destroy all but a fraction of modern civilization while allowing a biggish chunk of humanity to survive. How big of a rock is that? You decide. You want more detail? Read Niven and Pournelle‘s 1977 book Lucifer’s Hammer, then turn it up to eleven.

Or think of a catastrophe that’s somewhat less…catastrophic. Say, a fast-acting global pandemic. Or maybe a slow-acting global pandemic that one segment of our society ignores and downplays. One that, unbeknownst to most, leaves a long-term legacy of diminished physical and mental capacity. One which opens us up to other pathogens, enough to take down a significant majority of the world’s population, depopulate the cities where the technological knowledge is, and break down global supply chains.

Or maybe it’s a heat-driven catastrophe. One that brings drought to formerly green lands, and floods to all of the cities along all the coasts — all the ones that haven’t been leveled by wildfires. One that, like the pandemic, brings down global supply chains so that technology can’t be shipped around the world.

We could even see the catastrophe setting off local wars that turn into local nuclear wars that turn into a global nuclear war. And it doesn’t even need to be an all-out nuclear spasm. A modest exchange, followed by a sudden-but-too-late burst of sanity might be enough.

The real question is, what happens when the majority of the survivors of a global catastrophe get knocked back to at best an early 18th Century mode of existence (and at worst an early 8th Century mode), mitigated by a dwindling cache of manufactured goods and a vague memory of what is possible? It took us 250 years to go from the technology of colonial America to our current 21st Century position. Can we do it again? In 250 years? Not likely.

You see, modern civilization is knowledge intensive. Knowledge about what is possible and how to do it. And that knowledge is stored in three places: brains, books, and computer drives. Brains are obvious. Human experts hold the knowledge needed to build the things we need to maintain civilization. But if those experts have frozen, starved, or coughed themselves to death, the knowledge goes away. Books are obvious. They hold a cache of frozen knowledge in a relatively compact form, one that’s nicely flammable, and suitable to help desperate survivors survive another winter. And of course computer drives are where all the best and latest information is stored. Drives that can be wiped clean by an electromagnetic pulse, that require specific technologies and specific knowledge if their information is to be retrieved. Drives that will be so much rust pancakes and silicon slabs once we lose knowledge and technology and power.

Because in addition to knowledge, modern civilization is energy intensive. Cheap energy intensive. Which for the last couple of centuries has meant petrochemicals. The reason it’s so hard for us to give up our oil dependency is that oil is the only resource that checks all the boxes for energy density, transportability, and so forth — here’s a pair of comparison tables from Do The Math.

More to the point, the movement from a society dependent on 18th Century technology to one that wears 21st Century technology on its wrist requires an enormous amount of energy. So, solar panels can provide energy, but where do we get the energy to go from steam engines to a wafer fab for solar cells? Access to today’s coal resources requires the ability to dig tunnels a thousand feet beneath the ground, or to remove the top thousand feet off a mountain. Most of today’s sources of oil now require high-tech methods to access and process them. Can you spell deep ocean drilling? Hydraulic fracturing? Cyclic steam stimulation?  Combustion overhead gravity drainage? The few remaining sources of easy oil are likely to be used up heating the homes and powering the cars of third-world locals, until those resources are also gone. I’d be off on a rant about the last peasants using the last of the oil, if I weren’t pretty sure that at the same time the last Americans and last Europeans weren’t burning the last books, to keep from freezing.

This is not even a rant about our using all the easy oil. That’s a sunk cost. We thought we had good reasons for doing what we did, at the time we did it, and now we are where we are. This is a warning that we only get one shot at creating a viable civilization, one that doesn’t outgrow its planetary resources, and one that’s dispersed enough across the solar system to keep us safe from the real dinosaur-killer rocks that are out there. If we fail, it will be a double failure — a failure of vision and a failure of resolve. Vision, in that we, as a society not just some Cassandras, did not foresee the risks, and Resolve, in that we did not have the backbone to take the actions needed to offset the risks that we could foresee.

KanColle Season 2

This is a three-episode review to set the stage for the rest of the season.

Season 1 of KanColle was streamed seven years ago. It was of the cute girls doing cute things genre, this time refighting the first part of WWII in the Pacific. Only they didn’t call it that, of course. The KanColle Girls were fighting the nasty-uglies of the Abyssal Fleet, and the fact that their big carrier battles took place off the “Coral Islands” and the island known as “MI” was, as the lawyers say, purely coincidental. So the girls were cute and genki, and managed to get away from the Abyssals around MI with all their decks intact.

So slow forward seven years, and we finally get Season 2: KanColle 1944. Here, the mood is darker, there aren’t as many carrier-girls around, and the creators have given up all pretense. The two-battleship strike force is headed for Leyte Island, in the Philippines, via the Surigao Strait, to attack the Abyssal invasion force. In real life, the Japanese Southern Force, led by two battleships, sailed into a six battleship ambush (supported by clouds of PT boats), and was destroyed.

In KC2, the Southern Force is rescued by the Center Force which, instead of being sunk all to hell in the Sibuyan Sea, secretly cuts south — undetected for a day and a half — and joins in the night action at Suraigao. There, the two big battleships, Musashi and Yamato, turn the tables on the Abyssals. Meanwhile, destroyer Shigure helps toss battleship Yamashiro into the air to attack the agglomeration of uglies known as the Abyssal Night Strait Princesses. Yamashiro may or may not have sacrificed herself in order to save the others. End of Episode 3.

It’s impossible to write an honest story about the IJN in WWII without it being a tragedy. Six months after Pearl Harbor the IJN started a steady decline that was interrupted only briefly by the early actions around Guadalcanal. KanColle manages to avoid tragedy, so far, because it takes place on a different astral plane than ours. So the shipgirls in KC1 were aware of the defeats of the IJN at Coral Sea and Midway and worked to twist events to avoid the fate of the Japanese Empire on our timeline, and the KC2 high command was able to fabricate a plan that would allow the main battle force to punch through Surigao Strait.

On the whole, KC2 falls into the not bad/kirai janai category.  Some of the artwork was very good, but you could see they were having to skimp in places. The action sequences were OK, but there was too much standing around, staring at one another with concerned eyes while repeating names. Their villains are over the top and I could have done without the giggling.

I plan to do a more detailed wrapup at the end of the season. For now, if you liked KC1 you might like KC2, and if you didn’t watch KC1 you might be somewhat at sea about what’s going on in the character development department.

It’s 1994 all over again

1994 is the year the world discovered The Internet. Prior to that, as ARPANet and NSFNet and successors, the Internet was the plaything of a relatively few academic and DoD technicians. Once access to the Internet became commercialized, anyone could access it, an event known as The Great Internet Explosion. Of course the inevitable happened, and the Net was flooded with thousands of noobs, stumbling around, getting in the way, unintentionally committing horrific acts of sacrilege, and asking thousands of the most basic questions. And of course it was left to the old experienced Internet hands to help them out, show them the ropes, and send them on their way… before turning to the next horribly lost young fledgling. Which brings us to Twitter.

Twitter, even as I type, is suffering a horrific meltdown at the hands of its new owner, Elon Musk.  Musk may not be in over his financial head, but his mustache is certainly getting wet. As a result, he’s thrashing around, trying to cut costs and maintain cash flow. In today’s capitalist society, that means firing a large percentage of the workers and imposing additional costs, financial and social, on the customers. The employees are being driven out, and the customers are being driven away. Which brings us to Mastodon.

In the first week after Musk took over Twitter, over 230,000 new users joined Mastodon, a rise in membership of over 50%, undoubtedly the result of the Great Twitter Diaspora. The trouble is, as the new acronym might say, MINT — Mastodon is not Twitter. Yes, it uses short-form messaging to tie together communities of like-minded typists, but that’s about where the similarity ends, and reflexes and responses that became ingrained on the old platform don’t work on the new one. So you have thousands of noobs stumbling around, getting in the way, unintentionally committing horrific acts of sacrilege, and asking thousands of the most basic questions. And of course it was left to the old experienced Mastodon hands to help them out, show them the ropes, and point the way… before turning to the next horribly lost young fledgling.

I’m one of the post-Twitter noobs, and I take my hat off to the long-suffering server admins for helping me and all the other fledglings. You’re doing good work, guys. @FoundOnWeb@ci.m

Re-set your clocks tonight

And remember, we set them back in the Fall, not forward.

History Repeats

Sometimes History doesn’t repeat itself. Sometimes it picks up a club and says Weren’t you listening the first time? — Terry Pratchett

It’s been said that the reason we have a war every twenty years or so is because the younger generation forgets what it’s like. A corollary to that hypothesis is that the younger generation also forgets what the reasons for the war were. One of the few advantages of growing old is that one develops a sense of perspective on the events of the day. Sometimes this is an advantage, because it allows one to view the crisis of the day without panic. Sometimes it’s a disadvantage because you find yourself at the edge of your seat screaming at the monitor “Fools! Can’t you see what you’re doing?” The conservative reaction to events in Ukraine generates an example of the second type.

I grew up just after WWII, surrounded by participants, and with the events of the war and the years leading up to it as common topics of discussion. What would be called memes today were yesterday’s catchphrases. That’s why it is so frustrating to see history happening all over again.

Take Adolf Hitler. Remember him? Murdered six million Jews and caused the deaths of 50 million other people. Had a vision of the heaven-ordained dominance of Germany over the lesser races. Started out by nibbling away at bits of other countries with the excuse that he was protecting German ethnic minorities, and because those territories had been “traditionally” part of Germany anyway.

At the start the rest of the world (including the America Firsters) let him get away with it, claiming it wasn’t their problem, or that his meritless claims had some merit. That’s when he pushed harder.

When the other countries of Europe finally put their foot down he started WWII, and — just in passing — when Britain wouldn’t surrender he started terror bombing civilian targets. Europe today, tommorow the world. That Adolf Hitler.

Now we have Vladimir Putin. Has a vision of the heaven-ordained dominance of Russia over all the slavic and slavic-adjacent peoples. Started out by nibbling away at bits of other countries because they were “traditionally” part of Russia. [Another set of meritless claims. They were independent countries within the Soviet Union. That’s why Belorussia and Ukraine have their own seats in the UN General Assembly, and Texas and Georgia do not.] Putin’s war is not a repeat of WWII, but it has a surprising number of comparable situations.

Putin is demonstrably evil and he is at the head of a demonstrably evil system embarked on a demonstrably evil war fought by a demonstrably evil army. He is every bit as much a threat to the peace of the world as Hitler was. If he is allowed to win in Ukraine — and that’s what it would be, the West acquiescing to the takeover of a sovereign nation — there is no limit to his future goals. The Baltic States would be next, then Belorussia would agree to a merger, and then Poland would be at risk. And us oldsters remember what happened the last time Russia took part in an invasion of Poland.

There are some elements of the American political scene who decry support for Ukraine, comparing it to Vietnam and Afghanistan, either because their short-sighted perspective lets them believe what they say or because they are lying for  domestic political advantage. But the fact is, the only solution is for Russia to be totally defeated and driven from all occupied territories. There is no compromise with evil. There is no compromise with Putin. The only compromise* possible is to give him what he wants. The only alternative is to defeat him utterly.

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*By the way, the Russian word for compromise is компромисс (kompromiss). It’s a loan word, because they don’t have that concept in Russian.

 

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 221024

The lovely 70F weather that we’ve had for the last month continued through Thursday, after which the bottom dropped out. End of the week highs were in the upper 40s, about what last week’s lows were, and we had a drenching cold rain.

The rain was predicted to start on Friday and run off and on through all of next week with a chance of frost Sunday night, so I decided to close out most of the garden on Wednesday and Thursday. In the event, we had frost on both Friday and Saturday nights, which pretty much killed my ‘late harvest’ hopes.

Got ~60 tomatoes, ~ten of which were some shade of reddish. The remaining 50 greenies were barely enough to fill one box, a quarter of what we usually get.

Four nicely shaped Zucchinis this week. Probably more picklefodder.

Eight nice acorn squash. Maybe a little early — the leaves hadn’t turned yellow yet — but we’ll let them rest inside for a month or so.

One delicate little Delicata. What I thought was a Delicata now seems to be a pumpkin. It’s turning very slightly orange.

The problem is, the plants planted in the center of the garden (Spaghetti, Delicata, Pumpkin this year) tend to be shaded out, and to get lost in the jungle. This accounts for the Beefsteak tomatoes the size of grocery store standards, hanging off the cherry tomato cage, and Delicatas the size of …well… very small squash hidden behind what may be a pumpkin. I think in future I’ll try putting those in a week before the others.

Harvested the sweet potatoes from Section 4. As with the regular potatoes, the yield was nothing like what I got from the grow bags — 14, totaling 400g. I suspect I may have under-watered that part of the garden. When I was digging it up I noticed it was very dry. Also, the grow bags got a lot more sun than did the traditionally-over-shady Section 4. Sweet potatoes are supposed to cure for a month at 85F and 85% humidity. One YouTube website suggested putting them in a covered container with a bottle of water and a thermostat probe controlling a seed bed warmer. I took an old styrofoam cooler and rigged that up with a $20 thermostat from Amazon and a sawed off juice bottle full of water. The temperature is holding, but I’ve no way to measure the humidity. We’ll see in December.

	Vegetable	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomatoes	61	4311	70	262	23.23
	Potatoes				63	9.96
	Sweet Potatoes	14	400	29	50	0.89
	Pumpkin	1	985	985	1	0.98
	Summer Squash	3	335	112	9	2.87
	Zucchini	4	506	126	25	9.73
	Delicata	1	172	172	1	0.17
	Acorn Squash	8	8000	1000	8	8.0
	Cucumber				1	0.56
Grand Total						56.39

So, as I hoped, the Acorn squash drove us over 50kg for the year, which is just slightly over half of what we got last year.

Memories of my youth: RAF Mildenhall

For the first half of the 1970’s, we lived in and around the English market town of Mildenhall, hard by the RAF base of the same name. One of the interesting parts of living in England was the wealth of history there. For example, the airbase itself was the starting point for the London to Melbourne Air Race of 1934, 88 years ago today.

Closer to home, at the bottom of our lane in West Row was a bridge over a small stream, and next to the bridge was a pillbox from WWII, alas now gone, a victim of modernization. Less than two miles away, in Barton Mills, was the house where Alexander Fleming lived when he wasn’t discovering penicillin. Twelve miles away was Bury St Edmunds (Saint Edmunds town and abbey, where the barons met to agree to force King John to sign the Magna Carta).

But Mildenhall’s main claim to fame was a simple field five miles away from our home, where the Mildenhall Treasure was found, in 1942.

The Mildenhall Treasure was the name given to a large assemblage of silver tableware, dating from the 4th Century and buried sometime later, during an extended period of upheaval at the end of the Roman occupation, by a rich Romano-Christian family, who never made it back to recover it.  It’s currently in the British Museum.

We really enjoyed our stay.

TLDR: Anime I never finished, Fall 2022 Part 2

Eminence in Shadow: It’s been compared with Overlord, but the real inspiration is Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions. Full of himself hero wannabe meets Truck-kun and ends up in his own isekai wet dream.

Akiba Maid: Yakuza-controlled maid cafes fight turf battles with more deaths by gunshot than the whole nation of Japan sees in a year, and almost as many as Detroit sees in a long weekend. It’s OK, if you like a third of any given episode to be given over to firefights. On the positive side, Ranko Mannen looks like she learned her shooting style from Kotobuki’s Johnny.

Love Flops: Second day of school starts with potato-kun doing faceplants into assorted body parts of various hot chicks, all of whom turn out to be transfer students into his class. Ends with a confession of love from one of them, with the promise of more to come in Episode 2. This will probably include the Home Room teacher, from China — you can tell because of her green hair. Every boy’s lifelong dream. Well, some sort of dream. Best part is all the cool tech.

Shinobu no Ittoki: Scion of a clan of Iga Ninjas lives the quiet life of a HS student until an assassination attempt forces the Big Reveal. [inhale] His father was the clan chief until murdered by an opposing ninja clan which forced his mother to take over until he was old enough to go to Ninja Academy but meanwhile he was protected by his uncles and his childhood girlfriend [exhale]. Too over-the-top for me. Besides, I once attended a conference at Mie University, which offers a degree in Ninja Studies, and was given a tour of Iga by a couple of CS grad students. Kindof spoiled me for the anime.

Ninja lecturer

Ninja tools

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 221017

This week continued warm (74+/- 1) and dry. The coming week continues more of the same, except that the mid range forecast is for much colder by Friday, with up to 2″ of rain over the weekend.

Picked ten small ripe tomatoes ones this weekend. I’ll close it out next week. It looks like we’ll only have 40 or so greenies to let ripen in the bathtub. About one flat box worth. In prior years we’ve had four or five boxen.

Seven more Zucchinis this week, some of them somewhat misshapen. More picklefodder.

Harvested the potatoes from Section 4. Only 15 larger than a walnut, totaling 1.2kg. That’s about 15% of what came out of the grow-bags, from twice the area. Next week I’ll get the sweets.

Beefed up the berm around the Dawn Redwood. Planted grass in many of the areas killed off by the summer heat.

	Vegetable	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomatoes	10	925	92	201	18.92
	Potatoes	15	1231	82	63	9.96
	Sweet Potatoes				36	0.49
	Carrots				0	0
	Beets				0	0
	Summer Squash				6	2.54
	Zucchini	7	1352	193	21	9.22
	Delicata
	Acorn Squash
	Cucumber				1	.56
	Late harvest tomatoes
Grand Total						41.67

I’m seriously thinking about closing out most of the garden next week, before the cold sets in. We’re still less than half of last year’s crop.

TLDR: Anime I never finished, Fall 2022

The Autumnal Anime Season is shaping up to be pretty good. There are 31 shows streaming on Crunchyroll and HiDive, the only ones I subscribe to, and there are 19 of them that look good enough to at least try. Having said that, not all of the 19 will make the final cut. Consider these:

The Human Crazy University: Unkillable crazed killer is recruited by mad scientist to a research project aimed at killing him. Characters look like they came out of a poorly designed VN, and they move like they were cardboard cutouts. First episode was a too, too long look at the Japanese execution system as a setup to the Big Reveal.

I’ve Somehow Gotten Stronger When I Improved My Farm-Related Skills: They claim it has nothing to do with Farmville, but We Know Better. Young protag in a video game style world (complete with status screens) farms a few thousand hectare truck farm all by himself, finds he ups his combat stats as he improves his farming (just like it says on the tin). Meets a princess who really likes his eggplants and offers him a job running the palace farm. Did I mention that I hate eggplant?

Legend of Mana: Very much a kids show. Costumes are all frilly-flowy and the place is overrun with terminally cute creatures that like nothing more than to help out humans. I can imagine the minifigs for sale already.

Wait, I don’t have to imagine.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 221010

This week was record-breaking warm (75+/- 2) and dry. Next week the highs are expected to stay around 70F, with the lows dropping into the upper 30’s —  keep in mind that we are now into the ‘chance of frost’ period through the end of the month.

We’re at the tail end of the harvest season. The tomatoes are getting tired. Picked an even dozen small ripe ones this weekend, and it looks like we’ll only have 40 or so greenies to let ripen in the bathtub. About one flat box worth. In prior years we’ve had four or five boxen.

Two Summer Squash and one Zucchinis early this week. MJ will use them, along with last week’s cucumber, in a pickling recipe.

The Dawn Redwood appears to have survived the transplant process. Now to get it through the winter.

	Vegetable	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomatoes	12	500	42	191	18.0
	Potatoes				48	8.73
	Sweet Potatoes				36	0.49
	Carrots				0	0
	Beets				0	0
	Summer Squash	2	355	177	6	2.54
	Zucchini	3	452	150	14	7.85
	Delicata
	Acorn Squash
	Cucumber				1	.56
	Late harvest tomatoes
Grand Total						38.17

This time last year we had already closed out the garden ahead of an on-time frost. Total take was a record 107kg, mostly due to tomatoes and Zucchini.  I think we’ll catch up somewhat when I harvest Section 4.

ZucchiniWater Oats

Remember, folks, I eat terrible food so that you don’t have to. Also remember that no experiment is a failure if it leaves a big enough crater.

It was about seven years ago that I first tried dehydrating a bunch of zucchini and using the ground up powder in my oatmeal. Very good. What zucchini would be like if it were a root vegetable. This summer we also made pickled zucchini. It, too, was very good but obviously not for use in oatmeal. There is, however, another byproduct.

The recipe said to slice up the zucchini, salt it, and leave it in a colander to deliquesce for a couple of hours. The now-waterless zucchini make an excellent pickle mix. The liquid that drained out made about a quarter cup of very salty zucchini water. Figuring that oatmeal needed lots of salt, and that dilution would bring down the salt flavor, I mixed it with three quarters of a cup of salt-free chicken broth and used it in my morning oatmeal. Not a good idea.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, 3/4 cup broth chicken broth, 1/4 cup zucchini water, two dinner teaspoons of potato flakes, one dinner teaspoon of zucchini powder from an earlier dehydration exercise. No salt, ’cause it already had more than enough. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats. Add the zucchini powder at the start and the potatoes at the end.

Results: Not good. Too salty. Way too salty. I suppose I could try to fix it by using only twenty or thirty milliliters or so of the zucchini water, but that would also throw away most of the zucchini flavored water. Better to just stick with the zucchini dust and use the zucchini water to kill dandelions.

Rating: One star   *

Anime Preview: Fall 2022

Having skipped the Summer season because of lack of interesting cover art, I’m back with my totally unbiased previews for Fall. Unlike others, who use knowledge of the source materials, close observation of the previews, and who actually read the press releases, I’m going to base my decisions on what to watch on pretty much just the title and the cover art.

First, let’s say what’s not in here. Sequels and continuations of stuff I dropped earlier (My Hero Academia), movies and OVA’s (Choujigen Game Neptune), and anything where the title is all caps (BLUELOCK, BLEACH).

WILL WATCH: The title or the cover art is properly enticing (or I liked the first season), so I definitely will watch at least the first three eps

I’m the Villainess: Young girl takes square dance lessons from a vampire

Sorezore Uso: Aliens conquer Earth, force all students to wear house dresses

I’ve Gotten Stronger: Remember how well Farmville did, Fred? Suppose we made it an isekai?

MIGHT WATCH: The cover art is off-putting, but I might watch it.

Reincarnated as a Sword: Generates some sort of envy in all the guys who see it.

Urusei Yatsura: High wind at the Macey’s Thanksgiving parade.

Raven of the Inner Palace: Pregnant princess wonders which of the five is the father

WON’T WATCH. The cover art and/or the title tells me more than I ever wanted to know on the topic.

Chainsaw Man: I refuse to watch anything with machines as body parts

Bocchi Rock: How many guitarists does it take to change a lightbulb?

Love Flops: I refuse to watch anything with hairstyles by Crayola

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 221003

Hot week (mid-80’s) ending in a record-setting rainfall (~0.5″) followed by a slight cooldown (upper-70’s). Forecast is for continued warm (77+/- 1) and dry.

Planted another two rows of lettuce in Section 3. The earlier planting is just starting to sprout. We’ll see if we get anything before the frosts come. The late harvest tomatoes and Acorn Squash probably won’t produce anything useful. I put them in too late.

Nothing in the way of tomatoes this week. I’d pretty much cleaned everything out last week. Maybe forty greenies coming along.

One Summer Squash and two Zucchinis early this week. Fat banana sized. Plus at the end of the week an almost 2kg Zucchini what was hiding under a bunch of smaller ones — too big to be salad-worthy, but too small to take prizes. More dehydration is in order. It looks like we’ll also get a single Delicata Squash, which is a winter squash the size of a Spaghetti Squash that tastes like a Butternut.

I started to close out the two non-tomato grow bags next the house, and found that we did have a cucumber! Only one, but sizeable.

Harvested the House Container sweet potatoes. Eighteen puny sweets totaling not quite 500g. Quite a bit less than the regular potatoes. Soil in the bags was very dry, so perhaps the irrigation system wasn’t set right. Perhaps more fertilizer was needed also. I plan to wait for first frost to harvest the garden potatoes.

We now have a new Dawn Redwood to replace our old Cypress. It don’t look like much now, and since it’s the only deciduous member of the Sequoia family (it drops its needles in the Fall), it will shortly look like less. We’ll check back in come Spring.

Little Red

Big Green

	Vegetable	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomatoes				179	17.52
	Potatoes				48	8.73
	Sweet Potatoes	18	490	27	36	0.49
	Carrots				0	0
	Beets				0	0
	Summer Squash	1	380	380	4	2.18
	Zucchini	3	2327	776	11	7.40
	Delicata
	Acorn Squash
	Cucumber	1	563	563	1	.56
	Late harvest tomatoes
Grand Total						36.88

This time last year we still had ~30kg more than now. Mostly from tomatoes, with some squash. I’m just as glad we don’t have that much this year. I think we’ll catch up when I harvest Section 4.

Getting Vaxxed

So, yesterday I got my latest Covid vaccination — the bivalent anti-Omicron variant. I’ve had every available vaccination as soon as they came out, plus the Evusheld immune system booster. I do this because the virus keeps mutating so that we’re still in a Red Queen situation. In addition, I have grave concerns about Long Covid, particularly those aspects dealing with brain fog. I like my brain just the way it is.

Up until now, all my shots have been Moderna, but the local clinics are all out, so I got the Pfizer drug instead. Some reporting I’ve seen suggests that a mix-and-match of vaccines gives slightly improved protection. On the other hand, there have also been reports that when you do that, the side effects are worse.

So far, the only side effects are a slight pain at the injection site, and a golfball-sized knot on my arm a few inches below the injection site. Plus a mild case of the dire-rear.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 220926

No report last week because nothing much happened. About the biggest thing was the onset of meteorological Autumn. Over the last two weeks we’ve had highs in the mid 70’s, lows in the upper 40’s to low 50’s. One day was down to 60F, while another was 76F. So cool Autumnal, not crisp. End of the week started Indian Summer, with turning in a nice 80F. Next week will start with four days around 80F, then cool to the low 70’s.

Section 3 has been pretty much of a bust. The beets came up small and misshapen, and the carrots didn’t come up at all. Early last week I dug most of it up in order to try again with some late season lettuce-on-tape (see the Planter Tracker), despite the fact that we’ll be at risk of frost any time after Halloween.

I left the tomatoes on the vine for an additional week. With cool temps they won’t ripen too fast. At the start of the week we had four baskets of the little red buggers to go through, but i managed to foist off about 20 of them to the four guys on the tree removal crew. Yield was down, I think because the plants are wearing out. I’m going to prune them heavily, because I don’t think they can set and grow any decent fruit before the first frost. We’ve been ignoring the cherry tomatoes, only harvesting a handful at a time. On Sunday I went out and did a full sweep, just pulling them off by hand. Got a nice round kilogram, not included in the total because I don’t count cherries.

I say potato

You say tomato

Or maybe cherry

Harvested the House Container potatoes. Eighteen white potatoes totaling not quite 2kg. Twenty-five Red potatoes totaling over 6kg. Not counting the LTWS — less than walnut sized. There were a couple of grocery-store sized reds, but most were half that size — just right for an individual serving.

I’ve started dehydrating the Zucchini. One 600g Zuke gives 28g of powdered concentrate, a roughly 95% reduction. Good in soups, stews, and oatmeal.

Meanwhile, our 60 year old cypress finally died. Two drought/heat wave-stricken summers did it in. Looking to get a Dawn Sequoia to replace it.

This old tree…

Going

Going

Gone

	Vegetable	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomatoes	32	2415	75	179	17.52
	Potatoes	45	8466	188	48	8.73
	Sweet Potatoes
	Carrots				0	0
	Beets				0	0
	Summer Squash	1	368	368	3	1.80
	Zucchini				8	5.07
	Spaghetti Squash				0	0
	Acorn Squash
	Cucumber				0	0
	Late harvest tomatoes
Grand Total						33.12

This time last year we still had ~30kg more than now. Partly because we had lots more squash than now. I’m just as glad we don’t have that much. I think we’ll catch up when I harvest the House Sweet Potatoes and everything in Section 4.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 2200912

Not as hot, but still in the low 90s. Forecast is for highs around 80F. Some smoke from OR fires.

More tomatoes this week, including some cherries.

Running out of baskets

We eat these tonight

In addition, we got one Summer Squash and a few early potatoes.

	Vegetable	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomatoes	30	2462	82	147	15.11
	Potatoes	3	263	88	3	0.26
	Sweet Potatoes
	Carrots
	Beets
	Summer Squash	1	176	176	3	1.80
	Zucchini				8	5.07
	Spaghetti Squash
	Acorn Squash
	Cucumber
	Late harvest tomatoes
Grand Total						22.24

This time last year we still had 20kg more than now, including some nice big Spaghetti Squash.

Anime Physical Media

Over on Reasons to Anime, there’s an article by Casper on the declining quality of extra content/bonus features on physical media anime. In passing, they say Why spend 30 bucks to buy a 480p DVD when you could stream that anime in 1080p for a fraction of the cost? Unless your internet is spotty, a lot of physical media just exists for collectors now. Well, it’s strongly possible that my internet is more than spotty, that for a specific title, it’s nonexistent.

I buy lots of DVDs/BDs, although fewer than previously. I don’t do it for the bonus features, and I don’t do it because I’m a collector. I do it because once a physical product is in my hand it’s mine, and there’s nothing the anime industry can do about it. The trouble is, a customer of any streaming service is at the mercy of that services business model, licensing agreements, and existence.

So, Crunchyroll no longer streams Mekaku City Actors, and it dropped Eureka Seven when I was only on Episode Three. Funimaton, before its merger with Crunchy, lost the streaming rights to Darker than Black, and Crunchyroll didn’t step up in their place. Funimation also dropped Interspecies Reviewers for its adult content, despite it being heavily censored.

Of course, you can’t always be assured of being able to buy the anime you want in physical media. Hibike! Euphonium Season One doesn’t seem to be available anywhere, and the aforementioned Interspecies Reviewers was available on RightStuf only until they were bought out by Crunchyroll. But that’s an argument for buying the DVD/BD as soon as they come out instead of waiting for the Director’s Cut with Bonus Features.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 2200905

Hot, then hot and windy, then just windy. At least the nights were cool…ish. Next week is more salubrious.

Big tomato haul this week, initially from the house plants. That’s to be expected because they are both early style (Early Girl and Bonnie). At the end of the week we got an equal load from the Main Garden.

Garden

House

Squash

In addition, we got some more biggish Zucchini and Yellow Squash. That’s what we get for failing to keep an eye on them. I blame the heat.

	Vegetable	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomatoes	68	10108	149	117	12.65
	Potatoes
	Sweet Potatoes
	Carrots
	Beets
	Summer Squash	1	540	540	1	1.08
	Zucchini	4	2424	606	8	5.07
	Spaghetti Squash
	Acorn Squash
	Cucumber
	Late harvest tomatoes
Grand Total						18.08

This time last year we had 20kg more than now, including some nice big Spaghetti Squash. Probably won’t get any this year.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 220829

Lovely weather this week (temps in the mid 70’s), with more lovely weather, followed by more hellish heat predicted for the week ahead.

The only plants producing pickable product are the tomatoes. The Zucchini has turned into a bushy monster, with no produce. The Acorn Squash is starting to produce, but they won’t be ripe for another couple months.

Just the beginning

All hat and no cattle

More on the way

Lots of cherry tomatoes coming in, but they don’t count for weight.

	Vegetable	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomatoes	19	1400	74	49	2.54
	Potatoes
	Sweet Potatoes
	Carrots
	Beets
	Summer Squash				1	0.54
	Zucchini				4	2.65
	Spaghetti Squash
	Winter Squash
	Cucumber
	Late harvest tomatoes
Grand Total						5.73

I’ve given up on setting any kind of records this year.

How we survived a seven-day cruise to Alaska and didn’t get deaded by Covid

We did it. We’re back. And we’re ready to do it again. See the Third Trip to Alaska page on the right hand column for deets.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 220822

Just got back from a week-long Alaska cruise — of which more, anon — and the garden is doing surprisingly well. Better than the lawn. Must be the automatic watering system.

The Zucchini managed to sneak in another monster ~2.5kg. Not sure what to do with it.

Got our first Summer Squash.

Surprisingly few ripe tomatoes, other than the cherries.

Garden Plants

Harvest

House Plants

Week Ending 08/15	Vegetable	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomatoes	20	1140	57	20	1.14
	Potatoes
	Sweet Potatoes
	Carrots
	Beets
	Summer Squash	1	540	540	1	0.54
	Zucchini	1	2400	2400	4	2.65
	Spaghetti Squash
	Winter Squash
	Cucumber
	Late harvest tomatoes
Grand Total						4.33

We continue to run behind last year, but I have hopes for the upcoming couple of weeks.

Spam and Oats

Spam has gotten a bad name, despite the fact that it’s the most economical source of salt infused cholesterol that you’ll find. Maybe it’s because of the email plague of the same name. Anyway, we had a can of 25% less salt spam — see how light the can is? — so I thought I’d try some in my oatmeal.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, one cup broth, a 1cm slab of diced spam, two dinner teaspoons of potato flakes, no salt because spam. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats. Add the potatoes at the end.

Results: About average. I put the spam cubes in at the start, so the salt would have time to infuse into the oats and thus disappear. It turned out just enough this side of bland that it would be worth trying again if one was short on more interesting things, or long on spam.

Rating: ***

Evangelion Reboot: You can (not) get me to watch any more of this — Part 2.02

The first two thirds of the second NGE movie continue the look and feel of the first. Once again, the NERVists demonstrate their total inability to manage anything more complex than a lemonade stand. Little-Miss-With-Her-Own-Problems Asakura introduces herself by insulting everyone, and then decking Shinji, in front of their boss, who does nothing about it. NOTE:The first rule of team building is, no hitting, unless it’s under carefully controlled conditions. And the second rule is that it’s the job of the boss to keep the troops in line. And what’s with letting all, as in all, of the EVA pilots go off on a school trip together. Shouldn’t at least one be at home, sitting strip alert? For that matter, why are they enrolled in a highschool that’s half the width of Tokyo³ away from NERV HQ? If the powers that be feel that children need to socialize in groups larger than three, why not establish a highschool closer to home. Like next to the NERV elevator shaft?

And speaking of bed-to-plug distance, again, why is Rei living in a six mat walkup on the wrong side of the Shinkansen? What happens if there’s an alert after normal duty hours? Does she ride the subway, or call  a cab?

I’m not bothered by the changes to the plotline since I didn’t like the original anyway. In any event, the word that best describes the last third is pretentious.

As for the characters, as Mark Twain said (roughly), in fiction it is necessary that the reader like the good characters and hate the bad characters and always be able to tell them apart ; but in Evangelion, the reader hates the good characters and is indifferent to the bad ones, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

I watched the original because it’s considered a classic, by people who’s taste I no longer trust, but the Evangelion reboot movies are merely an attempt to milk the franchise by appealing to the children of the original audience. Life is too short, and as Kirie, from Magnificent Kotobuki says I’m super busy with all my own can kicking and soul searching. Despite what Karandi says, I shan’t be watching the final two movies.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 220815

Not as hot this week, with highs in the mid to upper 80’s. Next week in the mid to upper 90’s.

Our lone Zucchini is finally producing. Harvested two small ones so we won’t get overwhelmed. Our Spaghetti Squash is running all over the place, and I’m working to tie it up to the stakes.

The cherry tomatoes are putting out a dozen or so every few days. The other tomatoes are producing lots and lots of greenies.

The determinate tomatoes and the the Cocozelle Delicata are surviving, but not much in the way of growth.

So we start the scoreboard.

Week Ending 08/15	Vegetable	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomatoes
	Potatoes
	Sweet Potatoes
	Carrots
	Beets
	Summer Squash
	Zucchini	3	148	74	1.15	1.25
	Spaghetti Squash
	Winter Squash
	Cucumber
	Late harvest tomatoes
Grand Total						1.25

We continue to run behind last year, but I have hopes for the upcoming couple of weeks.

Ukraine vs Russian casualties

One reason militaries today are reluctant to issue estimates of enemy casualties is that The Press and everyone else (hi me!) will immediately assume the estimate is rock solid gold and go on to draw all sorts of fantastic conclusions from it. So it is with the latest, unofficial, estimate out of the Pentagon, that Russia has suffered something approaching 80,000 casualties in the war. If we look at my earlier estimate, that RU KIA were ~20,000, that would give a killed/wounded ratio of just about 3/1, within reasonable historical bounds.

Simple arithmetic then says the Russians have been losing ~500 troops per day (killed and wounded), while the Ukrainian losses have been around half that — note that President Zelensky’s statement of 100-200KIA per day was during a much more intense period of the fighting.

In all of WWI, the French suffered something over 3000 casualties per day, more than six times the casualty rate of Ukraine, a country with roughly the same population.

Our conclusion is the same as before, Ukraine is doing much better than the French did in WWI, and  nowhere near running out of people to fight this war.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 220808

The week went from hot to bearable to hotter, peaking out at 97F on Sunday. Next week is forecast to peak at 100F, but be mostly in the mid-90’s.

Our lone Zucchini has been growing like a weed, and producing lots of fruits … that get to about 10cm long and then die. One, however, did better, hiding out by hanging down into the hole in one of the cinderblocks where it could grow undisturbed. Came in at 35cm and 1.1kg.

The cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen, but nobody else has any color.

Planted out one of the grow-cups with the determinates and the big cup with the Cocozelle Delicata. Both survived the operation. Also tried planting a bunch of seeds from a melon what I bought. We’ll see what comes up.

So we start the scoreboard.

Week Ending 08/08	Vegetable	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomatoes
	Potatoes
	Sweet Potatoes
	Carrots
	Beets
	Summer Squash
	Zucchini	1	1100	1100	1	1.1
	Spaghetti Squash
	Winter Squash
	Cucumber
	Late harvest tomatoes
Grand Total						1.1

We’re running well behind last year, when we had 10kg of harvest already, split evenly between the tomatoes and the zucchini.

TLDR: Anime I never finished, Summer 2022

Summers are usually thin, with few shows and fewer good ones. This summer is shaping up to be a little better than most. Out of 40 shows airing on Crunchyroll and HiDive, including sequels, I picked 10 that looked good, and I’ve only dropped three.

Smile of the Arsnotoria

K-On x I’m quitting Heroing without the uplifting human-demon thread but with PTSD? Cute Girls part is too, too sweet. Flashback/dystopian part is too, too confusing. Is there any significance to the fact that the key title word includes snot?

Utawarerumono

This appears to be the third (or maybe fourth) installment of a franchise that started in 2006, unless there was an earlier VN. It has gotten so involved and convoluted that the entire first episode was an expository lump. Hero Hak is missing, presumed dead. Some other guy assumes the role of body double by putting on a domino mask, which totally disguises him. Maybe it’s the XM digital radio antenna glued to his forehead. At the end of Episode 1, they mount up on their wargeese and ride off into combat.

Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World

What is it with slavery isekai this year? There’s been six so far, and this one’s the most blatant of the lot. It tries to walk the line between gross (take your clothes off and lie down) and teen-agers-in-love (I…I want to be with you always), and doesn’t quite succeed.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 22/08/01

Looks like we’ve survived the heatwave. Didn’t hit 100F here, but Spokane was 102F and we peaked at 99.7F, so close enough. The coming week will be breezy, with highs around 90F.

Section 1:

All are doing fine. Small tomatoes already showing.

Row 1: [ Sunsugar Yellow | S100 | EarlyGirl ]

Row 2: [Brandywine | Superfantastic | Big Beef ]

Row 3: [ Champion | Red Beef | Bonnie ]

Section 2 :

Growth continues uneven. Some are doing very well but others are just hanging on. The Zucchini keeps throwing off fruit that grows to <10cm long, then dies.

Row 1: [ Acorn | Summer | Zucchini ]

Row 2: [ Acorn | Spaghetti | Pumpkin ]

…………………….[Delicata]

Row 3: [Butternut | Butternut | Straightneck ]

Section 3 The only thing left here is the row of beets.

Section 4  The sweet potatoes and of regular potatoes continue doing OK.

House Container Bags:
Potato | Potato | Sweet Potato | Sweet Potato | possible Cocozelle | Bonnie Tomato / Basil | Cucumbers | Early Girl / Oregano |

Potatoes are going wild. Sweets are hanging on. Tomatoes and herbs are doing OK. The remaining cucumber is doing … OK. The year-old Cocozelle seeds have produced two seedlings.

The irrigation system is now working pretty well. Have not switched to soaker because I realized I’d put the beets in too far from either arm.

Indoor Container:
The big container has some very strong growing seedlings (indeterminate), and the four planter cups have two seedlings (determinate). I’m not sure either one will produce anything by the next frost. One planter cup suddenly produced a fast-growing Cocozelle, I’m waiting for the weather to improve before I plant it out.