5 Thoughts for October 31, 2017

1. Halloween: This will sound absolutely anti-Halloween, but one of the benefits of living in a secured, multistory housing structure is that you don't get trick-or-treaters. No money required to spend on candy. It's been this way for me for as long as I can remember. If I had a house, however, I might be tempted to deck it out in scary paraphernalia and reward those brave souls who made it through the Path of Horrors. All I need are a bunch of programmed Raspberry Pi devices to create a series of randomly unexpected events along this Path of Horrors.
2. John Kelly: His notional understanding of many things is astoundingly simplistic and superficial. In two weeks, he's gone from a man who brought order to the White House to a man who might best be described as what a restrained Donald Trump would look like (if such a thing existed) -- which is to say that the only thing that separates Donald from Kelly is restraint. A White man always has the opportunity to take the preposterous position that the Civil War occurred because of a lack of willingness to compromise -- it's not his existential conflict. Besides, how can he not get that the foundation of this country was, itself, a war for freedom -- is there a compromise in freedoms that would, should, or could have led us to not declaring our independence from Britain? Finally, perhaps no one's realized this yet, but Kelly just denounced Donald's penchant for red lines, especially the one he's drawn with North Korea and nuclear weapons. A thoughtful and well-considered person understands the implications of every position, not just his/her own. Kelly's more of an automaton.
3. About the Manhattan Truck Attack: Let it be known, today's attack was delivered via a foreign national who came from what is colloquially called the -Stans, otherwise known as Central Asia. We've seen this before, too. The Boston bombers came from this region. Guess who exerts the greatest influence over this region. Have you figured it out yet? Russia. This is where the alternative Cold War is being played out, between the US attempting to stem the flow of terrorism into these countries countered by Russia's fear of being surrounded by US-aligned nations. Donald has no share in the blame, mind you, but this attack highlights why he foreign policy is short-sighted and missing the targets. In his updated ban, Donald had lots of time to have his foreign policy and national security teams go over and create a new list. In the new list -- Chad, Iran, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, Somalia, and North Korea -- there isn't a single Central Asian country or region listed. Thus, any attempts to use this attack as an argument in support of a foreign visa ban is, in fact, incorrect and deluded.
4. Pokemon Go - Chansey: You can't pop more than one of any species of a Pokemon into a gym, so people pop in the highest-rated defensive mons into the gym to make it difficult to take over. What many people are beginning to understand, however, is that those massive CP Blisseys lose motivation fairly quickly, eventually making them very easy to defeat after four hours or so. Even weaker players can beat a Blissey on their own, after 8 hours. That's where Chansey comes into play. Chansey's a beast in the current system. If you power her up to her max -- 1469 -- then, even after 8 hours she'll be over 1000 CP. By comparison, a 3000 CP Blissey will have lower CP at the end of 8 hours. That's why I'm working to max out my Chansey's CP and why I won't be evolving my Chansey into a Blissey. Also, I'm 2/3rds of the way through level 35 and I still haven't spent any money.
5. Stranger Things 2: This is literally, my coming of age story. Except, the show gets all of the tiny details wrong. It's 1984 and, sure, you might hear some Devo, but we were already past that point and into Duran Duran's Seven and the Ragged Tiger album with Union of the Snake, The Reflex, and New Moon on Monday, and oh by the way, Prince's Purple Rain was at the top of the charts. This was a time when there were basically six genres on the radio: Classic Rock, Top-40, Classical, Talk, Oldies, Easy Listening (like Muzak's elevator music). And sure, there was something like an AV club, but by 1984 we geeks were already forming computer clubs and programming in BASIC. And OMG, what's with all of the clichés? Nonetheless, the underlying plot is interesting and fun.