I’m supposed to appear on this show, titled “What’s peeving PZ”, on Sunday at 3.
I’m not sure what to say. When am I ever peevish? I am a pillar of placidity, calm and imperturbable. I am like the Buddha. I can’t think of a single thing that has irritated me, ever.
Summer, and my sabbatical, are slipping away at a terrifying pace.
The thing is, the teachers are probably more terrified of the end of summer than the students, so this cartoon is a bit off from my perspective.
I am OFFENDED. There’s this collection of pulp magazine covers featuring cephalopods, and they’re terrible.
Look at this one: I have a thousand questions. Why are they exploring an alien planet in skimpy clothes? Why is the man wearing a space helmet, but the woman apparently doesn’t need one? Why does the cephalopod have its mouth in the wrong place, and why does it have teeth?
Nice headlights, octopus-man. Also, why is his human face a couple of stories tall? Does the artist know nothing of perspective?
This is the worst one of them all. It’s asymmetric, with some arms on the left improbably long, while the ones on the right looking different. It’s got this hunchbacked, bug-like look with appendages coming off the mantle. This was drawn by a person who apparently never saw a cephalopod.
I swear, I’m going to stop this time-machine and turn it back 70 years just so I can slap a couple of bad artists.
OK, here’s a cosplay gallery from last weekend.
I recognized a few of the costumes, but that wasn’t what I was into. You know, there’s a heck of a lot going on during a con like this. There was the costume pageantry, the mainstage stuff. I wasn’t into that. There were the musical performances; not my thing. There was board gaming. No, pass. There was video gaming. Completely missed it. There were SF & horror movies playing nonstop. Tempted, but I didn’t feel like sitting down for a few hours. There were anime sessions, which again, I am not into. There were interactive kid demos. Nah, I’m too old. I missed 90% of the con.
I did get into a whole lot of panel discussions, though. That alone kept me busy for four days.
It’s a diverse bunch there — you might find something to entertain you there next year.
At first, it was cute. Her parents are big ol’ nerds whose idea of fun involves sitting in front of a keyboard (I have no idea where my daughter got this habit), so they got grandbaby Iliana a keyboard of her own. She looks so happy being just like Mommy and Daddy.
But there’s been an alarming progression. Now Iliana has gone all cyberpunky, bathing in the glow of the LEDs and gazing raptly into the digital future. I guess I’m going to have to get her some mirrorshades for Christmas, and before you know it, she’s going to be demanding cybernetic augmentation, an Ono-Sendai deck, and shiny new eyes from Nikon.
She’s a lucky girl…I mean, transhuman.
Convergence is over, we made the long drive home, I am now ready to flop down and pass out…except I’ve got to get organized for field work tomorrow.
Well, how I plan to spend my day. I might get carried away on a whim or stumble across something unexpected.
11:00am-12:00pm @ Hyatt 2 Greenway HI Weird Biology
12:30pm-1:30pm @ Hyatt 4 Great Lakes A2 N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy
3:30pm-4:30pm @ Hyatt 2 Greenway HI Books to Read Right Now
5:00pm-6:00pm Magic Schoolbus Party Room (5123) spider salon
7:00pm-8:00pm @ Hyatt 4 Great Lakes A3 AMC’s The Terror
8:30pm-9:30pm @ Hyatt 2 Greenway CDE Paranormal Minnesota
9:00pm-9:45pm @ Hyatt 1 Nicollet Ballroom Pounded in the Tingle
11:30pm-12:30am @ Hyatt 2 Greenway B ASMR
I’m presenting at the ones in bold. I’m bringing Common House Spiders to the Salon, I plan on that being more of an interactive demo.
I have the least confidence about making it to the ASMR panel. I’m curious, but it’s late and I might fall asleep. Actually, if I popped in I wonder if I’d find the entire audience asleep.
I’m at Convergence, which definitely does not suck and has been enjoyable so far, but I’m also becoming untethered from the Internet, which sucks horrendously. There are two problems so far.
One: I can’t connect to the hotel internet. Have you ever noticed how even the cheapest little hole in the wall motel will just give you free wireless that works, while every upscale hotel insists that you enroll in their special program to get the slowest possible internet connection, and then offers you faster connections at a price? All the extra layers and attempts to squeeze more money from you reduces reliability. I’m at a Hilton. Hate it.
Two: Fucking Apple. Speaking of high priced screwups, I HATE APPLE’S WEIRD CABLES. The charging cable for my iPhone/iPad, which is an official Apple cable, is disintegrating and has stopped working. Their computing devices will keep going for decades — my laptop is getting up there, and is fine and functional — but you’re going to have to get a new power brick every year, because the thin cable immovably attached to it will crack and fray. The charging cable for my iWidgets is even worse, and woe unto you if you buy a third party cable, because they have to be Apple-certified, and half the time they don’t work.
Their machines have code in them to sense some secret handshake from the cable, because I get messages when I plug them in to the effect that this is not an Apple approved “device”. This one nuisance is about to drive me out of Apple’s ecosystem, after 35 years of loyalty.
Anyway, it all means I have a laptop that won’t connect to the Internet, and a phone and tablet with batteries slowly dying because I can’t recharge them.
My god, I might have to interact with a purely physical world at the biggest SF conference in the upper Midwest. Will there be things to do? How will I survive?
I’m not going to explain this. It’s…a mystery.
This is quite a title: Aggressive Goats Addicted to Human Urine Airlifted Out of Olympic National Park, WA.
Hundreds of mountain goats in Olympic National Park, WA have become so addicted to the salt found in human urine and sweat that they are an aggressive menace to national park visitors, charging at hikers and trampling vegetation. They have a taste for salt and minerals in human urine, and sweat on clothes and backpacks, according to officials.
See also:
Park officials urged walkers not to urinate along trails, to avoid turning paths into “long, linear salt licks” and attracting goats.
Now I don’t know which are more disgusting, humans or goats.
