5 Thoughts for July 29, 2017

1. Pokemon Legendaries IRL: In real life, there's just no way people will grab the Legendary Pokemon from a raid. The number of people needed to beat a Legendary is impractical for most cities, even in urban centers. Two classes of players benefit IRL from the release of Legendary Pokemon -- those who attended the Chicago festival and cheaters who spoof their location. As most people have come to realize, Niantic isn't exactly responsive to reports of cheaters.
2. Speaking of Niantic: Some of those folks who attended the Pokemon Festival in Chicago are suing Niantic to recover flight and hotel costs after experiencing massive problems playing Pokemon Go during the festival. I understand their frustration and anger -- there is a reason why I don't do raids and it has to do with connectivity issues and random shutdowns owing to overheating from excessive CPU use. But they got their entrance fees refunded and $100 in Pokecoins, plus, they were basically given free Legendary Pokemons.
3. Football Season and CTE: Football season is rapidly approaching, but just as fall practice began, researchers released a study showing how CTE is a serious problem for football players, especially NFL players. Head-banging, it seems, is not a good thing. Yet, when I was in elementary school, I whacked my head so hard on the jungle gym, it left a permanent bump. See? I'm living proof that hitting your head dsadut afgrhIrti t eoyja ad. But seriously, as the football season starts up, I'm having trouble resolving my cognitive dissonance between my love of the sport and the inherent dangers of the sport. I have no answers other than to continue to beg and plea that refs take the issue seriously and flag every player who hits another player's head or uses their head to tackle another. The intellectually honest resolution is to ditch the sport but I can't bring myself to that point just yet.
4. Electric Cars: If I owned a house, such that I could install a fast-charge outlet, I would buy a used electric car, specifically, the Chevy Spark EV. Except for Teslas, all other electric vehicles lose half of their value (in large part because of the large federal tax credit) after a couple of years, which is a great deal for used buyers. While the range of the Spark EV is just over 80 miles on a charge, that's more than I drive in a week. With the recent release of the Chevy Bolt, I'm hopeful that in a couple of years used Bolts will be available for roughly $15~16K.
5. Solar Eclipse Viewers: In the past 30 years, they're made from mylar. Before then, people used B/W film negatives that were fully exposed to light and then processed, leaving a uniform coating of silver particles on it. People don't understand how ridiculously overpriced those "solar eclipse glasses" are. All you need is an emergency mylar blanket (which can be cut up into smaller pieces), some glue, and some scrap cardboard. Okay, I know, you don't believe me. So here's a 20-year-old post from NASA, describing these two methods.