Adaptive Curmudgeon

Join me today as I skate on thin ice. I’m going to recommend a book that’s enjoyable fluff. I have an ulterior motive I’ll mention at the end.

I recommend Beware of Chicken: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel by Casualfarmer.

Is it an excellent work of literature? Nope. Is it deep? Nope!

Then why read it? Because it’s amusing, because it’s OK to read literature’s equivalent of “junk food”, and because it’s good natured. That last part is important. There’s enough doom scrolling & dark foreboding out there. We all benefit from things that have not a single word about America’s corrosive politics. Read about the damn chicken… you’ll be glad you did.

Also, craftily hidden in the humor and fluff is a honest and surprisingly meaningful concept. (More on that later.)

Get your posturing out of the way now. We all know you’re way too smart to read fluff. You plan to read good stuff. You’ve got a copy of Meditations but you haven’t gotten around to it. You tell people you liked Ulysses (but you’re not fooling anyone, nobody liked Ulysses… not that I know because I didn’t even pretend to read it). You might have enjoyed Atlas Shrugged and wish someone would chat with you about it, but every time you mention Ayn Rand people get skeeved out. Fine, you read deep stuff too.

Now put your ego away and read some crap… but pick the better of the genera. Please. Because I want to talk about it and nobody will understand why I’m blathering about a talking rooster. (Go ahead and make a joke about “cock”. You know you want to.)

First of all this is a “cultivator novel”. I didn’t know what “cultivator novel” meant when I started reading. It’s a genera that would have caused my high school teacher, who is part of the idea of Edna Campset (the Grammarian / the Inspector in my Squirrels draft) to toss my ass out of the room.

That’s ok. We’re all adults here and we’ve got nothing to prove. Most of us have watched stupid shit on Netflix so why not read something that’s stupid on the surface but mildly deeper as you ponder. Also, cancel Netflix, those guys suck.

You just have to accept the book is what it is. And then have fun.

I’ll muddle through a rough explanation. Cultivator novels “follow a pattern”. The protagonist starts weak and gets strong… often inhabiting new bodies over time or progressing spiritually. This is usually pasted over a Medieval / Fantasy setting with some monsters; Fae or Dragons or Demons or some shit. Swords are required. There are magic potions. You get where I’m going.

The levels can be ridiculously pedantic. I mean like they hit you over the head with levels of progression.

I think this is a generational thing. It’s definitely a “youth” thing. What do I know? I’m a geezer and it’s their genera. I think younger generations effortlessly default to thinking like a video game, or Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying, or Pokemon(?), or Magic the Gathering. This doesn’t break their willing suspension of disbelief that a guy has “leveled up” or has “hit points” or “mana” (I feel like like that’s a Magic the Gathering thing that’s everywhere now). Anyway “digital / game kids” rock through “cultivation” like nobody’s business but I, an older mind from the analog age, took a bit of coaxing to roll with it.

The “cultivation” backdrop is often a combination of Asian “mythology” with swords and sorcery. Sometimes with an AI or a video game framework… because why not? I didn’t say it was Shakespeare!

Of course the main character cultivators can be nerds. They gradually grind out enormous power. I presume the audience is nerds. Nothing wrong with that. Harry Potter was a bit of a dweeb at first too. He didn’t get to be an awesome wizard on day one… he had to get bullied by Malfoy a bit to make the story work.

Nothing is subtle. It doesn’t have to be. We live in a world where actual grownups watched two decades of Marvel Universe. (I’m so old I liked Zorro and the Lone Ranger when I was a kid… at least the horses were realistic.) We’ve all enjoyed stories where a dude in tights get his ass pummeled by a supervillain who’s got a flying robot or some shit. Then, when the chips are down, the superhero gets his awesome on. He beats that dang robot and he’s now an even awesomer leveled-up superhero. It’s in every movie that wasn’t ruined by a girlboss that started out perfect because of shut-up-for asking-about-it.

You watched Iron Man fight Thanos over a magic glove. You’re not too adult to roll with a cultivator novel.

It does get extra funky during fight scenes. I mock it like this:

“The evil wizard that just attacked is a level 4 beastmaster! He has six minion weasels that are sentient, poisonous, and weigh 200 kilos each. One just tore my warhorse in half! The wizard himself can blow a mountain down with his left nostril!

But I’ve got a chance! The wizard doesn’t know I’ve got a potion of ‘weaselploding’ and I haven’t skipped leg day in 286 years!

I sneak behind him and perform my special move ‘super, ultra, extremely graphic, disembowel’! It works! The wizard’s head flies off and the weasels flee in terror.

I have now leveled up to ‘galactic brass balls’ level. I will never die and I can see infrared! Girls will like me now.”

I said to roll with it… this ain’t Hamlet. Enjoy the ride. Be happy.

One more thing, buy several books. They’re super fast reads. It’s just for fun so I tend to crush a book in a night or two.

These are the books in that series that I’ve read so far:

• Beware of Chicken: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel
• Beware of Chicken 2: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel
• Beware of Chicken 3: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel
• Beware of Chicken 4: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel

Clever titles eh? There are several. I’ll read the rest sooner or later. I should also mention that there’s a whole bunch of back to the land homesteading in it too. (Which I love!)

Imagine Little House on the Prairie but occasionally they get attacked by monsters.

You might want to use your kindle. I know we’re all outliers and we want to stay as analog as one can be. But there’s no point being foolish about it. Unless you use a flip phone and a FAX you might as well accept E-books. They’re good on the eyes, cheap to buy, and don’t clutter the house. Also, one reads cultivator novels like you eat Pringles. Just rip it open and blast through volumes. You’ll pay for the kindle itself in one 5 book series. Or don’t, read any way you want and it’s still better than drooling in front of the TV.

Now that I’ve outed myself as a reader of fluff (sometimes), I’ve set the stage for the discussion I really want. A main character in the ensemble cast is a rooster of uncanny nobility… yes he’s a cock… go ahead and laugh.

I like that character. He makes me happy!

Fa Bi De (that’s the name of the rooster) is not merely a launch and go cardboard cutout. (Wonder about the name? The book is vaguely Chinese style as written by a dude in Canada. Also it has to do with the nickname Big-D.)

Fa Bi De gains sentience. I wonder sometimes how much sentience I see in people in the real world. Fa Bi De immediately endeavors to self improve. Way to go! He does all the shit we should do but (generally) don’t!

Unlike the realm of the book, our “real” world is a crushed, battered, simulacrum of a better, more spiritually based one. The rooster does not have our cynical, limiting, defeatism. He legitimately shows the process of self-realization.

Sure, it’s a silly novel and the talking spirit animal was meant to satirize the genera but it came out better that you’d expect. I find it rather inspiring. The author accidentally (?)  created the best example of “show don’t tell” I’ve seen in years. Fa Bi De acts, thinks, behaves, and endeavors… better than us. It feels good!

A rooster deliberately seeking wisdom is the secret sauce that Tony Stark and his ilk never found. Maybe it’s just too much to ask of a CGI movie?

It’s all about the chicken. That’s why I recommend the book.

It’s worth a read, especially for that character.

I had some stuff about which I wanted to blog. Thoughts of import I was eager to put to text. Alas, life had ideas of its own. Sometimes the best you can do is “ride it out”.

Here’s my update of “riding it out”.

Not long after I returned from my travels, I picked up a cold. I’ve been sniffling along with that for several days. Nothing serious but I find it hard to think when ill. No thinkin’ means no bloggin’. These things happen. Sometimes they have to happen.

Another thing that “had” to happen was a hardware upgrade. I acquired Starlink to overcome my rural ISP’s um… decline. The decline was as predictable as the sun rising in the east.

I had shitty DSL some years back. Then some fund somewhere dumped what I called “Obamabux” on my rural county. I didn’t ask for the boondoggle but I did benefit from it. Improved service was deeply appreciated if not a wise capitalist use of funds.

However, “investing” in the finest infrastructure isn’t “investment” if it’s just pissing tax dollars away. I think it was a grant or whatever. Eventually, the ribbon ceremonies are over and the big cash infusion is depleted. Monkeys are left in charge after the money flow has passed. The system reverts to the mean.

I’m not saying my county is as far down the rabbit hole as South Africa (Los Angeles?). We don’t strip the copper from buildings! But a place as sparse as mine doesn’t always have the best human resources. Nor do we have hordes of people demanding (or paying for) huge bandwidth. We’re on the spectrum of “ignorable”.

The fiber optic that was laid (probably with great subsidy) to my homestead is just as good as it ever was, but the local workforce to maintain it just can’t keep the plates spinning. It got worse and worse but only gradually. Inch by inch the enshittification continued. I hardly realized how terrible it had gotten. Finally, I pulled my head out of my ass and made the change.

It is better to adapt than complain, and it make sense for me to outsource my service to literally anywhere more populous and advanced than where I live. I went for two way satellite on the grounds that a call center in Bangalore and a low orbit satellite is better than Gladys at the local ISP who talked the boss into hiring her grandson Hunter… who is barely capable of installing Windows but impressed Gladys who still can’t operate her TiVo. I’ve had too many conversations with “Hunter” and wanted out.

Elon, you magnificent bastard, I hope you build more rockets with my monthly payment. Keep it up until NASA itself weeps in despair at their fallen status as “rounding error”!

I haven’t yet mounted the antenna to the roof. Right now it’s propped on a woodpile. It runs about 300% faster than my local ISP.

A second “had to happen” event is some brush-hog work. I have a place that’s weeds 7′ tall. It’s a mess! Given my cold, I wasn’t physically fit enough to do much, but I hitched my brush hog to the tractor and ran around in circles as best I could. There’s a nearly empty Kleenex box in my tractor! Ick!

I did more than nothing, which is good enough. It’s an ideal biological window for such things. Right now that species of weeds are “easy pickings”. I can (and probably will) get back in there in June but by then it’ll be a real battle. Getting the upper hand now is wise.

While I was grinding back and forth and squinting through bleary eyes, I had the radio on. It is the absolute peak of “spring fire season” and the radio wouldn’t shut the hell up about it.

There’s a period of time when the grass is all dead from winter and new healthy grass hasn’t “greened up”. It’s pain in the ass. If the dead grass dries just right and there’s an ignition in just the worst spot and if there’s a stiff breeze to drive it… all hell can break loose.

The trick is to hang tight until things green up. It’s only a brief window. Just cool your jets and wait it out!

Adding to the drama, there was a big windstorm last year. It knocked down a lot of trees. Much but not all of it is cleared up. A fast moving fire of dry light materials could touch off the far heavier and difficult to extinguish fuels of downed timber… and that would suck.

I say it would suck because I’m not an asshole and I don’t like unnecessary destruction. I wonder if the opposite is the case in other minds?

Part of why I was brush hogging a bunch of tall but very burnable weeds was to eliminate (reduce) a risk. I turned a hazard into a not-hazard. The area I “managed” wouldn’t burn if you napalmed it now. Yay me!

After brush hog work I did some disking. The radio kept bitching at me that I ought not be doing stupid fire stuff. Which is annoying because anyone stupid enough to set off fireworks and pour gas on shit and generally misbehave ain’t gonna’ listen to radio warnings. Hell, there are people that fuck up and start fires that burn their own house trailers down. If “all your shit is gone” ain’t enough warning what is?

As I worked the tractor and sneezed thought my cold, I realized I had it all wrong. If you listen to the radio just right… it’s more like the people who benefit from fire funding are stroking a giant hard on. They’re hoping for the “big one”. They want it to happen!

I don’t think they’re going to get their wish. Thank God!

The grass is already starting to look green. It’s not overly dry. Things aren’t too bad. I think the “once in a lifetime” combination of spring fires borne of light fuels touching off big hot fires in blowdowns… just might not happen. It’s too wet.

Shucks! There might not be an orgy of spending. How sad!

I wrote some of this a few days ago. Since then it’s gotten a lot warmer. Also the wind picked up. If some fucknut creates an ignition today… yowzah!

I still have the cold but I was loading shit in my truck for a dump run. Then the wind went ape!

My Starlink antenna blew off the woodpile. Whoops. I’d better mount that better.

I gave up on my outside activities. Set the Starlink right and went inside to ride out the storm. I’m typing this as it happens.

What a doozy! The gusts are crazy. But now it’s raining. Huzzah!

There goes the last dream of a budget builder of a fire. I didn’t rain much but it doesn’t take a lot to “green up” vegetation. I think everything is going to be OK.

I’m glad because it’s still windy.

Whoa! Now I’m on generator power.

No shit. It just happened.

Grid went down, generator fired up. Nice to pass a real world test.

I guess it was REAL WINDY… somewhere.

I’m going to post this asap. Also, take a moment to savor this post:

You’re reading the random thoughts of a dude typing on a cheap computer using a whole house generator during a power outage. The post was sent directly from a hole in the power grid to satellite because the local ISP can suck it.

Everything about the situation amuses me. Country boy can survive!

Have a good day y’all.

As I wrote this Red Barchetta: Part 2 I thought about my rural life and how they’re pushing self driving for urban crowded streets. This is because driving on urban crowded streets sucks, but it’s a hard challenge. It’s possibly the worst place to try mixing unusual vehicles.

My daily driver is Dodge Ram 3500 dually; truly a Goliath machine. I regularly pass one horse Amish buggies. We’re on the same road. I wave to them. They wave to me. We have no enmity.

Say it again; the biggest truck you can buy (non-commercial) and a buggy from 1830 already share the road.

I’m a rural guy, I pass all sorts of weird shit on the road; like farm tractors and combines. Combines are enormous! It’s no big deal to us. ATVs and snowmobiles zoom around in the ditches adjacent to the roads. We don’t care. It wouldn’t be weird to pass a combine, an ATV, and a horse drawn buggy on the same road.

It’s not the same in a city. A horse and buggy clopping down the Strip in Las Vegas would wreak havoc! Imagine a tracked tractor pulling a big ass planter. Imagine the planter towing a bulk tank of anhydrous ammonia. Imagine the farmer’s kid following up that rolling assemblage with a side by side to get Dad back home. All of this driving right over the shit the horse just left! I’ve already seen that. Rural places can and have tolerated diverse machines forever.

To us it’s just a road and we just use it. Hay wagons and tractor trailers and horse buggies and motorcycles and dump trucks and people out walking their dog… all at once. There’s less bullshit. Cities will fight over “zoned for self driving” lanes (which is really the feeding frenzy over who gets to control how many millions of dollars of “technology funding”). Think about how much they’ve pissed away on cycling lanes. Cities will vomit forth reams of regulation, all sorts of licensing, official software updates(!), all the things government does to fuck things up.

For the hinterland self-driving is already “good enough” technology. A self driving car trundling down a rural two lane blacktop isn’t any weirder than a horse. I hope ti happens. I don’t want to see lawyers and politicians fuck up another bright future. I know people like to stampede over cliffs whenever a new idea appears, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In the long run it might be fine. Perhaps some day I’ll toss a recently shot elk into the cabin of a self driving vehicle? Wouldn’t that be a hoot!

Of course, I’ll still keep my truck and motorcycles!

[This is a follow up to a post from two weeks ago.]

I rode a driverless Zoox in Las Vegas. I wanted to see if “self driving” hype is for real.

First observation, I hate that self driving cars are intended to look like shit! CEOs of self-driving (and most EV) companies just hate pretty things. It’s like some douchebag in a suit kicks in the door and screams at engineers: “Make it look like Tupperware fucked a Lego and then birthed a lunchbox.”

Looking at that gimped out loaf of bread on wheels I secretly hoped it would suck. I like operating real machinery. I savor the skill of driving my vehicle well. It’s not just about getting from A to B; I think a lot about freedom. Also, a dude that willingly rides a motorcycle in the rain isn’t chickenshit about risk in traffic.

So that’s the first thing. A driverless car is a mirror. It shows you yourself. Your initial reaction to driverless cars matches how much as you like or hate driving.

The Zoox completely eliminated any pleasure I’d get from piloting my own vehicle. It eliminated any stress I’d get out of the same activity. People’s opinions about “self driving” are predictable and grouped. Commute in miserable city gridlock? You’re likely to go all in on “driverless”. Ride fast, know how to use a clutch, like to explore off road, or enjoy polishing chrome? You’re likely to detest the idea.

Anyway summoning a Zoox on the Las Vegas “strip” was a pain in the ass but that’s only because I’m a Curmudgeon. You need a smartphone surgically implanted in your head. (I’m exaggerating but only a little.) You need the app installed. You need to let the app know banking info. You need to let the app know location info. You you need to spread your cheeks for the probe, etc…

That shit pisses me off but it’s normal. Everyone else already lets their smartphone know everything. So Zoox is no different than the rest of the modern world.

Next thing is it was a pain in the ass to summon a Zoox to a useful location. It came only to certain places and would drop off at only certain places. And it would come only if was damn well ready to do so. Otherwise I’d say “please pick me up” and it would say “fuck you, I’m busy” and that was that. (It was more polite than that but only a little.)

I finally managed to summon one to pickup point A. I was a few blocks away. It bitched at me. “You’re not at Point A, you’d better fuckin’ run.” I ran. I got there in time.

The pickup point was jointly positioned for taxis, Uber, Zoox, and (I think) valet. When the Zoox showed up it only opened for me (or rather my phone). This is where it became so much better than mass transit like a bus.

I looked around the pickup point. One dude was so drunk I thought he’d barf. Another one reeked like he was birthed by Cheech and Chong. A couple was nearby, semi-drunk, half dressed, and not far from doing it in the streets and scaring the horses. Public transport necessarily involves a scrum of dipshits I’d rather avoid.

Self driving is a partial solution to the low trust society we are creating. You know what ain’t happening on a Zoox? This:

The machine drove smooth. Perfect actually. I’m going to say it was probably safer than a human.

When a tipsy woman stepped across the median on the strip(!) it slowed down and gave a wide berth. It should have had a recorded message to simulate a taxi driver: “Get off the fuckin’ road ya lunatic! I’m drivin’ here!”

We were locked in a little bubble of “safe”. Compared to light rail or a bus it’s a clear win. There are no meth heads, freaks, and murderers in the vehicle you hired for yourself. This may be the thing that makes them rise in popularity until they eat Uber for lunch.

Once you’re in a Zoox you’re in it. The doors close and you are no longer in control of anything. It’s a prison on wheels… but a nicely appointed one. The AC was great. There was an audio stream and you could pick your own music or turn it off.

Obviously, it could get dystopian fast. It doesn’t have to be a James Bond supervillain’s plan or HAL refusing to open the pod bay doors. Our existing commercial infrastructure is already evil. Corporations will do to you what you allow them to do and it’ll surely be annoying. “Our records show you were near the riot last week. You’re going to the nearest police station to explain why you’re an insurrectionist.” “As a white male, you will pay more for this ride.” “Records show you haven’t paid your taxes this year, you’ll be transported to the authorities.” “We have detected a MAGA hat, the ride stops here and you must leave the vehicle. Hater!”

How about this terror: “While you ride please enjoy this mandatory infomercial about our favorite brand of toilet bowl cleaner.”

All of that sounds ridiculous, but you were there in 2020. I don’t know if there ever was a “norm” beyond which things are “unthinkable” but there isn’t now. “Please provide your vaccination identification to complete this ride”.

When you’re not in control you’re not in control.

It would absolutely improve the life of people who can’t drive. Old people need to get to WalMart. Kids need to get to school. Maybe we can coax the fucknut with six DUIs out of his car?

How about special situations where you’re temporarily unable to drive? Zoox would be perfect to get a drunk back to their hotel. There have been times when I’ve needed a doctor but was in no shape to drive. Zoox might be perfect for “feeling bad but not ambulance bad”.

We’re still focusing on dweebs commuting to cubicles when there are so many possibilities. If I wanna’ go backpacking in the middle of nowhere, why not a driverless ride? One trip to drop me and my gear at the trailhead. A different one to pick me up on the other side of the ridge two days hence.

Could one be mildly hardened against civil unrest? Driverless supply of materials to cops? Or cops themselves? Driverless evacuation of injured people from mass accidents?

It already recognized it as a plastic prison; lets explore that idea. Consider cops using one. If you’ve The Joker in handcuffs you need a squad car to handle him but many times it’s a lesser issue. A tweaked Zoox could haul a low level dipshit college student protester or some dickhead who got in a bar fight. A self driving vehicle could haul a minimum risk offender straight to the jail for processing. During riots use a fleet of them, toss jackoffs in the vehicle, hit go, and line up the next vehicle. It takes care of that person completely and humanely. It gets them out of the crowd without depleting cop manpower. Right now we aggregate hyped up radical spazzes in a big handcuffed herd. It’s almost the worst possible way to defuse angry mentally ill whackjobs. Perhaps fifteen individual Zoox cars with a single dipshit in each would be better? A ten minute ride with nice air conditioning and quiet (and most importantly separation from peer pressure) might allow a person some cool down time?

Conclusion, driving on the road felt like a “solved” problem. At the moment it’s limited in scope but that’s just while it goes through growing pains and the rabid lawyer phase. Think of the limited scope as any other vehicle that limits it’s range of motion.

Zoox is a personal trolley car that runs on rails of software.

I didn’t hate it. The Genie won’t go back in the bottle. The machine drives well enough. It sure as hell beats riding with a seething mass of humanity on a bus. It could be used for evil.. and it will. It can be used for good… and it will.

What matters most is the degree to which the technology is voluntary. In a perfect world, passengers of driverless cars should have nothing against human drivers. Rednecks and gearheads rolling around with 33″ Super Swampers or restored Studebakers would have not reason to bitch about driverless cars. They could (and should) happily ignore each other; even on the same road.

Will they? Of course not! Americans are not mature enough to peacefully let both solutions persist simultaneously. I’m not sure any human society is that mature.

A.C.

I’m back!

I’ve been “on the road” much of the last six weeks. I posted in dribs and drabs when I could but technological hurdles finally got the best of me. Eventually I just called it and went largely off line.

I regret lugging heavy laptops. They were mostly for naught. Quixotic efforts to keep my smart phone on a leash are a greater hassle every year and this year might be a tipping point. To me a phone is a phone; at best a toy for playing in someone else’s sandbox. Meanwhile, a computer is (if one is so inclined) a tool for creation. I see now that most people do not create and therefore have no idea what I’m talking about. I can do just about anything I want while traveling in my personal vehicle (cash is fine), but once you’ve been separated from your vehicle (such as by an airplane) everyone hangs on the infernal glass slab and avoiding it gets hard.

I’ve been in something like ten states and a province. I learned I was wildly incorrect about the borders of certain Canadian provinces… though nothing dramatic happened.

I’ve used every common form of transport. I’ve gone several thousand miles each, in all sorts of technology; my truck (which is now in the garage for “Dodge-related minor repairs”), commercial flights, and (notably) a cruise ship. Despite my best efforts I couldn’t avoid the “third party” bullshit methods of transport commonly inflicted on the traveler; shuttles, busses, Ubers, taxis, a self driven car, urban light rail, some sort of pointless casino tram, airport trams, those Jetsons moving sidewalks, and lots and lots of walking. So much walking. Lots of fuckin’ walking.

Hell, I even paddled a kayak.

Was it worth it? Yeah. Travel is usually good. I did some for the purpose of attending to needful things. That which needed doing is done for now. I did some in happy exploration; which is definitely more my style. Some of it was simply because I got a chance to do a thing on the cheap. Regardless the reason, travel is good for you, provided it’s not overdone. Overdone, it’s brutal.

Overdone was definitely on the horizon. I was beat when I returned. We’ve all been there. Travel a glass of whiskey, the first sip is bliss but in excess you’ll hurl your guts out.

In keeping with my personality and finances… I did everything on the cheap. Extremely so. I didn’t quite hobo my way around the nation clinging to a boxcar* but I didn’t dig a debt hole and throw myself into it. (*Speaking of which, I was always of the opinion that most men dream of a bit of “hobo-ing” just like every young boy thinks he’d like to be a pirate. I’ve since been informed the two are not analogous. In fact nobody under 40 even knows the word “hobo”.)

I think I’ve got “travel” out of my system for a while. I’m back in my comfort zone and I feel like staying there. I already cancelled the next (much smaller planned trip). I had visions of returning to my icebox home climate to find it in full springtime glory. At first I thought I’d jet away on a nice motorcycle / camping trip. Then I thought I’d sneak away for a simple easy overnight camp. Then I looked at my bed and reasoned “it’s cold out there… I own a house for a reason” and slept for most of three days.

One last thought. A man goes through eras in life. I think I’ve entered a new one. I found myself sitting quietly, observing, thinking, pondering. Like the world at large is a puzzle to be observed but a scrum that no longer needs my participation.

I’ll explore this more as my head has time to level. All I can say is that I’m happy that my fellow human can run about like monkeys doing stupid shit; gambling, and drugs, and drinking, and sex, and profligate spending, probably a dozen other things I’m forgetting to mention. But I was of a mood to sit under a tree and contemplate. As a younger man I’d have picked my favorite vice (drinking) and gone at it with professional level abandon. Now, in a different phase of life, it feels different. Dear God, did I somehow attain wisdom? How pretentious of me!

Anyway, I’ll report more later. But for now I think I’ll catch up on sleep.

Thanks for waiting for me.

A.C.

I’ve been on sojourn in the land of the Lotus Eaters. It has been as excellent and odd as any sojourn should be. Nothing makes me happier than a rambling journey.

My plans to blog mid-trip didn’t play out well. Also my home ISP is “in flux”; so even when I return to my little muddy homestead I’ll be “offline adjacent”. These things are additive not concurrent. I’m at least three days out, or more; only then will I get to the challenge of “offline adjacency”.

So, I am coming back… just not yet. Odysseus won’t have to drag my ass back to the oar-seat and chain me down. I like my oars. Lotus is good but I was made for venison. Rest is excellent but I was never meant to be idle.

As a Major Tom with the wherewithal to pull his head out his ass and key the damn microphone, I’ll get back eventually. In the meantime I appreciate your patience.

Until I resolve some technical issues I’m super off line. See y’all again when I get my shit together.

In 1981 the nerdiest Canadian rock band to ever exist released Red Barchetta. I loved it. I still do.

It’s the story of a young man who lives in a dystopian future. His uncle possess a glorious little sports car but “motor laws” have outlawed(?) such things. As any true rock protagonist should, he ignores this and goes tearing through the countryside in the beautiful mechanical delight. Shortly a “gleaming alloy aircar” appears, then a second, both intent of destroying him and his little car. The antique sportscar enthusiast outdrives the behemoth machines and flits back to safety at his uncle’s farm.

Being Gen X I’d been hammered about environment since I was born. I assumed “motor laws” were an environmental thing. Later I read the sci fi story that was the song’s inspiration. The “motor laws” were a safety thing. The “gleaming alloy aircars” were so protected against collision as to be virtual tanks, so assholes with them took to hunting gearheads in their vulnerable machinery.

In song, a Canadian bass player with a 1948 Ferrari 166MM, faced a very dangerous foe; the faceless joyless future…

“The blur of the landscape
Every nerve aware…

Suddenly ahead of me
Across the mountainside
A gleaming alloy air car
Shoots towards me, two lanes wide
I spin around with shrieking tires
To run the deadly race
Go screaming through the valley
As another joins the chase”

The short story was from 1973, the song from 1981, yet it feels as likely today as any other time. We know why. Whether the justification is “safety” or “environment”, the result is always the same; a certain type of person finds simple pleasures to be insufferable. The plague of Karens that went into Covid rut in 2000 has been with us a long time.

I rented a scooter in Maui in 2025. It had a near silent engine the size of a football and got somewhere north of 100 MPG. So of course it shut itself off whenever idling at a stop sign. Idiots cannot (will not!) recognize the practical and meaningful difference between a 100 mpg scooter on a lonely one lane island coast road and a 15 MPG SUV soccermom’s special lumbering Karen and three children’s car seats through clusterfuck traffic to Starbucks.

There’s a difference. It’s a big one. But Karen is interested in compliance. Stated justifications are a means to an end.

Anyone who loves driving a real car has always been under attack by those who can’t or won’t operate a truly invigorating machine. Those attacks began with the Model T and will never end. I am literally the last generation of people who can use a clutch in a daily driver. It wasn’t a big deal but one can’t do it while brain dead and texting.

Why am I telling this story? Because I just rode a driverless… “car”. Ok it wasn’t a car, it was an ugly electric lunchbox on wheels. But it was legally piloting its ass through city streets and there was no human behind the steering wheel… which didn’t exist.

It was an experiment.

I haven’t written the rest of this post. Before I post my results, here’s your homework.

A nice drive.

Rush:

Recently, I bought a dozen eggs. This is no big deal. I’m very happy it’s no big deal.

American grocery stores have always been a miracle; not just occasionally, for my entire life. Even before recent times of madness, I would take a moment to appreciate it when I walked into a grocery store. Maybe I’m a bit of a loon; pausing at the produce section for 30 seconds of silent reflection… even awe… but I don’t block the aisles, I’m silent about it, and gratitude is a good thing.

I’d never seen empty shelves in America until 2020. Gaps in stock felt ominous. Undeniable cracks in a very big edifice.

It’s good to think and re-think about any event you’ve experienced. Most people revert to denial. They misremember it; either deliberately or because they were instructed to do so. “I don’t remember writing that stuff on Facebook.” “A neighbor got ratted out for walking on the sidewalk, but the Karen calling the cops has always been a jerk.” “Sure it was statistically absurd but we got the results I wanted.” “Minneapolis was a one off, as was Portland.”

Denial is infantilizing. A fully realized adult saw what he saw and chooses to remember. We (and many other nations) went to hell so fast it’s clear the people craved it. It wasn’t one event, it was a cascade of them. “Two weeks to flatten the curve.” Cops arresting a lone surfer. Citywide riots aren’t new, but official consent sure is. The nation’s most statistically unlikely election might just be statistically unlikely, but it’s new that asking rude questions could get you censored, debanked, fired, or jailed.

When things collapse there are consequences. Within a year I was on a list of who was going to get fired. My job performance was stellar, and irrelevant. A mandatory medical injection was the only thing that mattered.

Imagine that. One month you’re in a workplace where HIPPA makes it illegal for an employer to even ask about your cancer treatment. The next month your job depends on submission to an injection. What happened to HIPPA? It wasn’t repealed. It just became moot. A lot of laws became officially/unofficially not laws anymore. People just accepted that it’s morally wrong to fire a man with AIDS but morally right to fire a redneck who hasn’t got the shot.

The people complied until they didn’t. Like the peak moment of a flood cresting and slowly ebbing back to normal, it ended. Or at least it’s mostly over. For now.

Some actions, once done, can never be undone. It’ll never be exactly the way it was.

When I go to the doctor I’m asked if I recently left the State. To what end? You don’t live in a nation where travel between States is an issue; until you do. Five years ago a medical decision was printed on a piece of paper that you carried around as a form of ID, now my doctor wants to know if I’ve flown to Texas. These are not unrelated.

Who knows where it ends? Maybe it didn’t really end? All I know is that some part of that interregnum of chaos is when eggs briefly vanished from the store.

The egg supply shouldn’t have anything to do with a human virus, or an election, or anything political. But we made everything politics. Sometimes that means killing a lot of hens. Killing hens affects the egg supply exactly like you’d expect. Now we’ve got a new generation of hens. Eggs will remain reasonably priced until the next time we freak out and mess up the supply.

I don’t remember what I paid. When a cheapskate like me buys something without bitching about it, the price is reasonable. Eggs aren’t as cheap as before. No shit! Nothing is. On average, nothing ever will be again. Inflation is a one way ride. A cycle of inflation is just another bullet point in the apocalypse we recently lived through.

Regardless, eggs are a lot cheaper than they once were. Have you taken time to appreciate it?

I’m more removed than most people. My homestead is a parachute. I can and have “raised” my own eggs. I had chickens for maybe a decade or so. Farm fresh eggs for the kitchen and a zillion dozen sold on the side. I could do it again. I don’t have to. Yet.

My homestead and capitalism are tools that solve many things. If eggs go to $10 a dozen I’ll have several dozen chickens running around my yard faster than you can say “invisible hand”.

I’m glad that’s unnecessary. I enjoy fully stocked stores. Savor it. We’ve regained something lost. Take a moment for gratitude.

I’ve thought about how eggs became a slogan and then were memory holed. I’m too lazy to Google it. Was it a year ago? What was the emotional attack word? “Oligarch?” “Authoritarian?” No that’s not it. Oh yeah “affordability”. They flogged the word a while.

Somewhere, right now there’s a person who shrieked about eggs because they were told to. The idea was implanted by whatever media they consume. Eggs weren’t important the month before, they aren’t now, but for a while they were all encompassing. That person isn’t appreciating plentiful eggs because it was never a thing that truly concerned them.

They’ve received new orders. They’re bellowing about Iran, or the newest disease, or “inequality”, or that dude on one side that schtoinked Fang Fang the spy but got tangled in a sexual harassment scandal, or the chick on the other side who’s scandal was a husband that liked to wear enormous balloon fake tits (what is it with perverts?). If all else fails the complaints get personal. Elon Musk looks weird and the Orange Beast is scheming to steal their cat.

The worst chumps bellow about what might happen. They imagine something somewhere potentially might turn bad. Then they scream about it.

The future is uncertain. Part of being adult is knowing that. Part of wisdom is knowing most fears never manifest. Part of resilience is knowing you’ll handle whatever happens. We are all going to die. The dumbass losing their shit about hypotheticals is a person who’s burning the present because they fear the future.

I think a lot of people like being ordered about. They’re happy bellowing about whatever reason they’re told is a source of terror. Anger feeds the hollow where a contented soul should reside. All they really want is attention. That’s why they like to carry signs and march in the streets. “Look at me! I’m so very angry. Pay attention to me.”

If you’re unwilling (or forget) to enjoy the resolution when a crisis (manufactured or not) is over, it wasn’t really a crisis. It was a tantrum.

If you were bitching about eggs, now’s the time to be happy. Buy some. Make an omelet. Get fancy and make a soufflé.

If they’re still too expensive, quit protesting and get a chicken. Hefting feed bags in a chicken coop is good exercise. Homestead raised eggs taste better. The soul benefits when you work to solve a situation. Whining that the government isn’t fixing your life is wasting your life.

But what do I know of such weakness? Maybe the sweet seductive cry of sorrow is delicious? I can’t be that way. I’m too enamored with the goodness in the world. I breathe life through motorcycle rides and pondering at quiet campsites. I find satisfaction in stacks of firewood and newly homebuilt things and new skills. I listen to the cranes cry out and think of dinosaurs. I smell cowshit and read the tides in the cycle of life.

I’ll never hold office. I’ll never take or give orders. A man who smiles at the smell of cowshit will never be on TV. I’m thus shielded from the addictions of political victimhood.

I think I’ll make an omelet today.

[Warning: Math follows. And some geometry. And lots of finicky details. I’m nerding out. If that’s going to freak you out, skip today’s ruminations. I won’t judge.]

Nerd video below:

If you get bored, don’t blame me. I think this shit is fascinating!

You’ve been warned…

I’m trying to 3d print a thing. It has become a huge (but interesting) challenge. I want it to scale, it includes parts that are shaped in ways that vex a 3d printer, and I’m trying to make it specifically not look like plastic.

All of that is not as weird as you think. The shape thing happens all the time. Unless you’re Microsoft, the machine is less important than the job it must do so you hammer the machine and finesse the orientation. As for not looking like plastic, people do all sorts of colors and materials and textures. Plus, all 3d printer guys are at war with the ultimate evil… layer lines. So I’m messing with that too.

All this is beyond my pay grade… or it should be. So far I’ve happily focused on  making things mechanically strong (which is a rabbit hole itself). Once I’ve got that handled I’ll dabble in making things “pretty”. Or not. I sometimes pick a nice color or make things match, but often I just use whatever color I’ve got hanging around in the material I’m printing. I’m a guy. Colors are… meh.

I’m trying to “level up” so reluctantly but eagerly (if that’s a thing), I’ve branched out into printing wood. I know what you’re thinking. “Wood does not turn liquid. It won’t flow through a nozzle. Weirdo!” But nerds are smart and they’ve been doing this for years. There really are filaments that are “wood impregnated”. (Note: my experiments with wood impregnated should teach me shit I need for carbon fiber impregnated later this summer.)

My spool of “wood” from Bambulab is around 15% wood sawdust (actually very fine powder). This is combined with normal plastic (PLA). It is said that the resulting object can be sanded, stained, and otherwise treated as wood. Results on the internet look impressive. Then again any photo of a person you find on the internet is also filtered to be inexplicably hot so maybe I’m just seeing good lighting or something?

It looks just like PLA. It supposedly prints like PLA. Except it doesn’t. Why? Because it ain’t PLA. I didn’t know the details at first and had some “bed adhesion” failures. The print curled up off the print plate and started shifting all over. My precisely drafted components became globs of filament spaghetti. (You can get the same feeling of “this ain’t the same thing” by running E85 in a car that’s not designed for it.) Except nothing was damaged on my 3d printer. I just had to clean up, tweak settings, and try again. (Try that with your E85 experiment.)

That’s just part of the puzzle. I want to make an array of interacting cylinder shaped objects… to scale. Meaning there’s all sorts of math I’m not sharing yet that forces me to do stuff the slicer software doesn’t like.

I suspect a cylinder printed horizontally is a pretty decent challenge of your 3d skills. Anything you print must have bed adhesion (remember a couple paragraphs before this?). The best path to bed adhesion is lots of surface area on the bed. (There are other details like having a bed so clean you could use it for surgery. Also, the bed is heated so that’s a thing. Plus you can have different bed plates with different properties. The rabbit hole goes deep.)

The contact area of the tangent of a circle perpendicular to a plane is zero… in theory. Also repeat that sentence… it’s English I swear. It’s a true thing. Don’t blame me that the universe is complicated.

The contact area of the tangent of a circle perpendicular to a plane is zero… It’s not my fault!

So I’m trying to print something that’s theoretically impossible? Nah. Nothing is impossible! The software knows what to do. It smacks me upside the head and says that I’m printing layers which have a minimum dimension that’s NOT zero. I think .2 mm layers? So the contact patch is .2 mm… which is what it feels like when I bank my motorcycle hard on slick pavement in rain. Then there are things called “brims” which aren’t the object but surround it… presumably to bully it into staying put. When the print is done you peel the brim off.

Confused yet?

Any cylinder will have an overhang. Like an overhanging cliff. I think the software calls it a “cantilever”. (“Cantilever” is also a small brand of bourbon made in an obscure town on the Minnesota/Ontario line. I don’t know what the experts say but I rate Cantilever bourbon as good shit. I’m just sayin’.)

Printers can handle some overhang but not too much. So I can mess with the scale of the cylinder to reduce the cantilever? Maybe. Or I could just tell the slicer to quit yelling at me and print the damn thing already. Or I could add supports… except supports are a PITA I’d like to avoid.

I’m even confusing myself! Here are some pictures to help.

Here’s a standard 0.4 mm print head and a PLA cylinder. See how it looks weird on the top? I can live with that. I can tweak the top. I’m interested in the sides. This is about the diameter of a pencil. (The print head is dirty… dunno’ why. It’s got well over a thousand hours on it. I don’t think it matters?)

The image below is me experimenting with different diameters. Notice the “brim” at the base. I’m getting OK bed adhesion. The color is irrelevant, this is all PLA. I decided that larger diameter looks better at the top, but I don’t care about the top. I will be tweaking the shape in other ways at the upper layer. So, big diameter isn’t that important… at least that’s what I tell the ladies.

I wanted the sides of the object to look more like a thing that might occur in nature. The lowest object in the image below has a setting called “fuzzy skin”. The setting introduces a bit of random jitter to the print head as it loops around the outside perimeter of the object. I think it is an improvement… but maybe I’ve been staring at plastic too long? Also, the top two rods are straight PLA but the third rod is Wood PLA. So many interacting variables!

Time for empirical evidence. I compared “fuzzy skin” to default PLA with a wooden stir stick in the middle. (Do you notice that the top half of the stir stick has coffee on it? That’s some real world testing y’all!) I really do think the goofily named “fuzzy skin” matters.

I have more pictures (especially of the wood) but I think I gave my iPhone a stroke. The photos live in the iPhone but aren’t uploading to iCloud photos… which is the least interesting thing that could happen. I will fix that too, but not today. Besides… this is the internet, it’s all about text. Who cares about photos? Right?

Also, enshittification wins this round. I did all that 3d modeling and slicer settings and 3d printer tweaks… only to be defeated by a fucking iPhone? I’ve been geezered!

Anyway I have so far figured out the following (especially about “wood” PLA):

1. Dry it.
2. For fuzzy skin on a horizontal cylinder, that’s about the size of a pencil, and made of wood PLA… slow shit down.
   1. Outer wall 60 mm/s.
3. For bed adhesion with wood PLA I also slowed shit down:
   1. Initial Layer 300 mm/s.
   2. Just give up and accept a brim. It’s not that bad.
   3. Keep your bed so clean Adrian Monk would eat off it.
4. Switch to a 0.06 nozzle. That’s a huge improvement!
   1. Everything I listed in 2 and 3 was determined on a 0.04 nozzle.
   2. This may mean everything I figured out is either moot or changed and needs to be re-figured out. I did this to myself. I wanted a complex hobby.

So that’s that… until I figure out more stuff.

AC

P.S. No matter what, always wipe the bed with alcohol and a microfiber rag after every print. That’s never a bad idea. Monk would approve.