Chilly Weather in Cities: Skylines

Just as I was starting to consider putting Cities: Skylines aside for a while, a sale offer shows up in my inbox for the After Dark and Snowfall expansions.

Lot of white landscape on the winter maps.

The deal was essentially two expansions for the price of one, not bad especially when you consider that both are fairly recent. After Dark released just over a year ago, and Snowfall last February.

I started a new city after enabling the upgrades, using a map with the Winter theme. A winter map feels like living in Alaska or Greenland. It gets really cold in the winter, snow is everywhere, and you can provide amenities like ice sculpture parks and hockey rinks to beautify your city. The occasional snowstorm will cover everything, including the roads, requiring plows to keep things running.

Those extra requirements make building a winter city more challenging than the more temperature climes. All the other services are still in demand as well, so managing finances to provide it all is more difficult. I found myself expanding much more slowly than I had previously, and paying more attention to the details of my city finances.

There's a temperature gauge to keep an eye on - the colder it gets, the more your citizens will demand heat. At first, I didn't realize that a new heating system was available, so a lot of money and time was spent on extra power production for electric heating. Eventually I discovered the ability to build a heating utility and run heating pipes along water lines, and that made things significantly easier to manage. Adding that heating system isn't cheap, though, and slows growth even more.

Between the two expansions, there's plenty of other additions besides the cold weather. New transportation options like taxi stands, requirements for road maintenance facilities, commercial zones specializing in nightlife, etc, etc. Some existing features have been tweaked as well, such as a smaller footprint for certain buildings (like the high school). And of course there are new unique buildings to unlock.

The new features certainly bring new life to the city-building experience. Plenty of new things to try out, and the cold-weather challenges are fun to work with. Looking forward to more of the same with future expansions.

ArtPrize 2016

Fall in Grand Rapids is ArtPrize season. The annual art competition is in its eighth year, and I've found time to see at least some of the pieces in all eight. I plan to spend a few hours roaming around the event this year, probably on a few different occasions. Expect a lot of pictures each time I go out. (Apologies for the quality...cheap camera phone.) Larger versions in my ArtPrize 2016 photo album.

 I generally like pattern-based pieces and this one is no exception.

Robots are always interesting subject matter, in this case out "watering" mechanical flowers with a gas can. That's the artist on the floor, putting on some finishing touches. Most pieces are finished before being installed, but you see work still being done on occassion.

I'm a sucker for space and stars, too. Hard to see in the picture, but this one has some figures hidden in the image...like the whale in the lower right.

Another pattern-based piece. You can kind of see land and sky, but mainly it's abstract.

I thought this was an interesting series of paintings, meant to signify struggle against life's circumstances.

This piece was done entirely by using different colors of duct tape to form the image. 

A metallic eagle, posed as if in flight.

This entry had a whole table full of metal wire figures.

Large painting of lions on the savanna. Hard to see scale, but it took up an entire wall.

Each of the small Christmas-ornament-style balls in this entry was painted with the face of a Native American. You can only see one side here - there's an entire circle of displays.

Another wall-sized painting, this one of a forest on fire. Meant to draw attention to the dwindling rain forests, according to the author's note nearby.

This may look like a child's drawing, but it required some complex construction since it's entirely made of plastic lids.

"Grand Rabbits" - enough said.

Not sure entirely what this thing is, but it looked interesting out on the lawn beside the GR Public Museum.

About a dozen little metal cages with metal animal models made up this installation.

The other side of that same entry, showing different animals.

Another picture done in duct tape. Apparently duct tape art is a thing. Who knew?

As I first caught sight of this one from a distance, I thought "huh, wonder what that thing that looks like a tin-foil giraffe is." Thought maybe it would be part of another robot or something. Turns out, it actually was a tin-foil giraffe, along with various other animals.

You can't see this in the picture, but there are a bunch of small desks in front of the paintings in this installation. Kids were encouraged to sit down and write out a goal or dream, and put it up on the wall with many others.

Nice landscape that covered probably a good 15-20 feet along the wall.

Map of the United States made of colored glass, with lots of images representing the various states/regions.

This fish is a long, flat piece in the GR Ford Museum. Didn't look like much from ground level, but when you went up the stairs (where I took this picture) you could see the whole thing as intended.

A large, inflatable, rainbow-colored...something. Kind of looks like an elephant from a distance, but when you get closer it's clear that there's just a bunch of legs. Whatever it was, plenty of kids were very happy running around underneath it.

A very long model of a railroad bridge - it stretched down a hallway for about 30 feet. There's a train that's a bit hard to see behind the bridge supports.

This was an interesting series of paintings that each showed a circular grouping of different items - kitchen utensils, fruit, guns, medicines, toys.

A sculpture named Hand of God. There was a nice little booklet left by the author for people to write prayers in.

A complicated-looking device, complete with gears and circuits. I don't think it actually moved (and wasn't about to touch it to find out) but it looked like it might go into motion at any moment.

Nice painting of a hummingbird in mid-hover.

That's a whole lot of legos. And who doesn't love a little programming on their art?

Yep, those are painted toilets. The idea is to draw attention to colorectal cancer. Pretty sure that's working.

Metal stylized soldier surrounded by stones with names of various weapons, vehicles, etc used in Vietnam.

Dancing figure made of metal wires.

There was an entire series of these large wooden figures, representing some kind of fantastic story featuring the triumph of good over evil.

This large mural shows a battle scene from the history of Grenada.

An entire wall covered with a representation of a crowded poor neighborhood. In many of the windows were small screens, like you'd see on a cell phone, playing short videos of scenes you might expect to see in such an area.

Phone Update

A few weeks after my old phone died, I am once again phone positive.

The new phone is a Motorola Moto E, which is definitely on the lower end of the smartphone spectrum. Low amount of memory, not particularly impressive camera, and it can be slow. But I don't need much, and it didn't cost a lot, so it fits my needs right now.

On the plus side, the Moto E is smaller and lighter than my old phone, so it's easier to carry around. Especially handy when I'm out running, since it fits much easier in the armband I use.

All I really need on the phone is:

• Google Voice/Hangouts for incoming calls and texts. This lets me use my Google Voice number, so the actual phone number doesn't really matter.
• GMail for email.
• Player FM for podcasts.
• Runkeeper for tracking workouts.
• Google Maps for navigation.

Unsurprisingly, there's a whole lot of unnecessary stuff installed by default. I spent a while going through and disabling extra apps. On a more powerful device it might not be necessary, but on this one I want to make sure that I'm only spending resources on apps that I'll actually use.

I may upgrade if a great deal on a better phone comes along, but it's no problem to wait. For now, this one does what I need.

The First 2016 Presidential Debate

I watched the US Presidential Debate last night.

In most election years, I don't bother watching the debates. We already know what the candidates' positions are, since they've been all over the news for the last year or more. The only real question is whether one or the other of the candidates will stumble over a question, or come up with some kind of cutting remark. Do we really want to be basing our votes on who can come up with the better insults or comebacks? Pretty sure that's not how I want our nation's leader representing me in domestic matters and international diplomacy.

Nonetheless, I was honestly curious about what was going to happen this year since the two sides are so far apart. Trump is nothing like any presidential candidate we've ever had before. Clinton is the stereotypical political insider (except for being a woman, which is new). I knew going in that nothing said was going to change my vote - I've pretty much already decided on Clinton, for reasons I laid out back in primary season - so I tried to leave aside whether I agreed with what was being said and instead focus on how each candidate handled the process.

Things went pretty well for both parties in the first half-hour or so. Both more or less stuck to the time they were given, without a lot of interruptions and staying mostly on topic. Trump had some sort of problem with the sniffles, and Clinton came across as a bit wooden, but those were pretty minor things.

The tone changed pretty quickly as the debate moved along, though. Clinton made a few points that seemed to really upset Trump: about his taking advantage of the housing crisis in 2008, how little federal tax he paid, that he called climate change a hoax, his support of the war in Iraq. (According to the NPR fact check, all of those had some basis in fact, though she exaggerated at least the tax claim.) He interrupted her several times and flatly denied some of the points, though the fact check found evidence otherwise.

Through the remaining hour, Trump sounded more emotional and less measured. Several times, he seemed to forget that he was debating and instead went into a stump-speech style. It sounded like he was preaching to a supportive crowd and was waiting for the applause. Instead, he got a response from Clinton or moderator Lester Holt, often calling into question whatever he just said. Sometimes, that put him on the defensive; other times, he'd try to counterattack the point. Either way, it didn't seem like he was prepared for argument.

Clinton, on the other hand, seemed prepared for just about every topic. Even when the subject of her private email server was brought up, she had her response ready - admitted it had been a mistake and moved onto other topics. She seemed to always have a counter-point ready for whatever Trump brought up. And she stayed quiet when Trump was floundering. The exchange on Trump's support of the "birther" movement was a particularly good example of that.

I'd like to compliment Lester Holt on his performance as the moderator. He did his best to rein in both candidates when they went over time or off topic. Not that it always worked - they are politicians, going on at length and avoiding topics is what they do - but he made a good effort. I think he did call out Trump more often than Clinton, which is to be expected since Trump made more obviously false claims. I'm sure he'll be attacked for that from some quarters, but in my book that's good moderating.

In the end, I doubt the debate changed the mind of anyone who already had an opinion. We didn't learn anything new about either candidate: Trump plays fast and loose with the facts, appeals to emotion, and promises radical change; Clinton is more measured, less exciting, and unlikely to significantly alter the status quo. The question is whether the undecided voters out there were influenced by Clinton's better preparation and handling of the debate format, or if they will overlook that in favor of Trump's promise of major changes regardless of the possible consequences. With two more debates to go, the answer may be that fence-sitters will be staying right in the middle for a while yet.

MTG: Kaladesh Pre-Release (2HG)

After playing in an individual event on Saturday, Sunday was team day for Kaladesh pre-release weekend.

My friend Dan and I played in this two-headed giant limited format event for the last set release, and it was a lot of fun. So I was happy to do it again for Kaladesh. We played up at Big Kidz Games, and the turnout was great - 13 teams, 26 players.

Considering how heavy Kaladesh is with artifacts, our shared card pool didn't have very many of them that were useful. We only had about 5 vehicles between the two of us, very few useful artifact creatures, and our only mythic rare was Aetherworks Marvel. Could be an interesting combo card, but not that useful in limited. We ended up building a red-green deck for me, with fairly aggressive creatures and some removal, and a black-white deck for Dan, with a lot of fabricate creatures and several combat tricks.

Unfortunately, it didn't really matter much what was in our decks. That's because three of the four rounds we played were decided by land draws (or lack thereof) for one team or the other. Round 1, one opponent had to mulligan multiple times and still ended up with only one land for the whole game, so we won easily. Round 3, one opponent got stuck with a bunch of high-casting-cost stuff in his hand and never drew into enough lands, so again we won easily. Round 4, I kept a two-land hand with several two- and three-cost playables but never drew the third land, while Dan was flooded with all lands. Lost that one badly.

Only round two was a real game, and that one we lost as well. Both sides played a whole lot of ground creatures, resulting in a stand-off where neither team could attack. The only threat we managed to get on the board was a Sky Skiff, the only vehicle I had in my deck, but then they stole it with a Shrewd Negotiation. Then the better card quality of their pool showed up, with an Aethersquall Ancient and Wispweaver Angel on one side, and multiple graveyard recursion effects on the other. The game ended quickly from that point.

That put us at 2-2, firmly in the middle of the pack. Too bad about all the poor shuffles, and we didn't win any extra prizes, but that's all right. Still had a good time hanging out with Dan and the rest of the folks up at Big Kidz Games!

Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie

Joe Abercrombie's First Law world features a wide variety of characters across its six novels. The Sharp Ends collection of short stories features many of those familiar faces.

There are thirteen stories in Sharp Ends, most of which took me 15-20 minutes to read. Many had been published previously, in various anthologies or special editions. They take place all across the First Law world, revisiting people and places from the novels. It's been a while since I read those, but I remembered enough to recognize key people and events. You could read these stories without any knowledge of the novels, but I don't recommend it - you'd lose a lot of added depth.

For instance, "Freedom" is a tale recounted from the perspective of a writer paid to publish the life of famous mercenary captain Nicomo Costa. It's written in an amusing over-the-top florid style, clearly a whitewashed account having little to do with the actual events. The story is entertaining on its own, but it's even more so when associated with the way that Costa actually operates as recounted in the novels.

Each of the stories in Sharp Ends stands on its own, but there are also some recurring characters. Most notably, the thief Shevedieh and warrior Javre are the leads in four stories and appear in a fifth. They're a mismatched pair in almost every way, but still end up forming a friendship that lasts over a decade through misadventures of all kinds. Those stories were my favorites and I'd be happy to see Abercrombie write a few more Shev and Javre tales.

As with the First Law novels, Sharp Ends has plenty of adult themes. The world is a pretty dark place, with largely unsavory characters, plenty of wars, and betrayal around every corner. The language is harsh and graphic violence is everywhere. Despite all this, Abercrombie writes characters and dialogue to find the humor in many situations. And when a good deed or kind person does make an appearance, the dark nature of the majority of people and situations serves to make it stand out all the more.

The First Law world isn't for everyone, but if you enjoyed any of the novels, then Sharp Ends is a good companion. Lots of familiar names and places, and alternate viewpoints for some key events. An entertaining read.

My Guest Spot on the QT3 Games Podcast

Quartertothree.com is one of my favorite gaming websites, and I spend a good amount of time on the forums there as "ineffablebob". Recently I was fortunate enough to have the chance to do a guest appearance on the QT3 Gaming Podcast with Tom Chick.

Tom owns the Quartertothree.com site and posts many game and movie reviews there. Unlike me, he's famous enough to have his own Wikipedia page. (I'm good with not having one, by the way. Under the radar!) He's on Patreon, and is one of a few different folks that I support there.

Tom does a regular gaming and movie podcast. The games podcast has recently shifted to a format where Tom and one guest (generally from the forums) talk about a game of the guest's choice. This is actually a revival of a similar format from a few years ago, and everyone on the forums has been enthusiastic in support. It's a good chance to get to know the other folks on the forums a bit.

When Tom asked if I'd like to be a guest on the podcast, I jumped at the chance. I always like talking about games - especially when I get to choose the topic! I've enjoyed listening to the other guests, and hopefully people will find the podcast I'm on interesting as well. Here's a link directly to the QT3 page for my guest appearance.

We spent the first half hour or so in pretty standard interview format, with Tom asking me some "get to know you" questions. He's good at it...the discussion was smooth and easy. Then we got into the games. I'd chosen Cthulhu Realms as my game, largely because it's the one I've been playing most over the last several weeks. (Well, I've also played a lot of Cities:Skylines also, but I wanted to have some multiplayer discussion.) Tom warned me that he wasn't a big fan of it, but that's fine, I like having discussions with differing opinions.

Turns out that the reason Tom doesn't like the game wasn't so much the game itself, but the theme. He's much more into the Lovecraftian mythos than I am, and Cthulhu Realms is a very light and irreverent take on that world. It's funny, but I can certainly see how someone who is a big fan of the dark, existential horror of that world wouldn't much like the way that Cthulhu Realms presents it.

Having said that, we still had a good discussion about the game and its mechanics, leaving aside the theme. We even played it while we talked, which was easy enough to do through the Steam version of the game. Bit hard for the podcast listeners to follow without seeing the game, but I think our discussion was still interesting enough as the game went along.

Thanks to Tom for letting me do a guest appearance on the podcast! I had a blast, and would love to do it again if he ever runs out of new people to talk with.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

On recommendation from some friends, I picked up The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet from the local library recently.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a far-future space opera, focused on a small independent ship and its crew. Sound familiar? That formula has been used to good effect before - I thought of Firefly almost immediately upon getting a grasp of the setting and characters, and there have been others. The galaxy at large is populated by many different sapient races, of which humanity is by no means the most powerful or important. Again, not an uncommon idea. I don't bring up this use of familiar themes and settings as a negative - used properly, the oldest story ideas can still be great - but I'd be remiss not to mention it, since it's very noticeable as you read through the opening chapters.

Most of the story takes place on the Wayfarer, a ship that builds stable wormholes which are used as a sort of galactic highway system. That's an interesting way to represent interstellar travel - not unique by any means, but not nearly as common as something like a Star Trek warp drive. Making the builders a small group of independents is different, too. I think of big transportation projects - and there's not much bigger than bridging star systems - as the domain of huge corporations and governments. It's a bit of a shift to think of it as something you can hire a small businessman to build - more like getting your driveway paved than building a super-highway.

Chambers puts a good amount of effort into building up the reader's knowledge of the current state of galactic affairs, and a good chunk of history. Mostly this is made integral to the story by using the newest Wayfarer crew member, a human woman from Mars named Rosemary. The society on Mars is fairly close to present-day Earth, and insular enough that she doesn't have a lot of first-hand experience with other intelligent species. So when Rosemary encounters some aspect of culture shock or meets a new race, the reader has much the same reaction. It's an elegant way to handle explaining how the book's society works without simply dumping information onto the reader.

The viewpoint in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet shifts among the Wayfarer crew, several of which are non-human. I felt like each was fairly well developed, at least within the constraints of the character. Ohan, for instance, doesn't get much time...but that's because the character is very isolated by choice. Other than Rosemary, everyone in the crew is a larger-than-life personality in some way. That's common in space operas, so I was expecting it, but every once in a while I still had to chuckle a bit when someone (usually Kizzy) did something so over-the-top that it felt like it belonged in a cartoon, not a novel.

In terms of story flow, I thought The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet felt a bit disjointed. There are sections that read more like several short stories strung together rather than a coherent whole. Almost felt like reading an adaptation of one season of a TV show: some introductions early, the reveal of the season's big plot device, a bunch of small independent stories with occasional reference to the big thing, then the big wrap-up finale. Worked out all right, I think, but it does feel a little odd for a novel.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet packs a whole lot of concepts into a single book. Rights and privileges for artificial beings, wars of genocide, racism (or species-ism, I guess), the aftermath of unchecked colonialism and exploitation, inter-species relationships (sexual and otherwise), environmental catastrophe and recovery, genetic and physical body modification, different handling of children and the elderly across species...all sorts of ideas crop up. With so many different concepts to deal with, it's not really possible to address them in depth, so most are just touched on briefly, as a part of galactic history. Others, though, are important to the story of one or more of the crew. It all enriches the story, but at times I did feel that Chambers was trying to cram too much into a single book. That's a better problem than being boring, though!

As a fan of the space opera genre, I found very little to dislike about The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Well worth the read, and even if you're not fond of space opera, it might surprise you.

Tablet Down

It's been a bad month for my electronic devices. First the phone death, now my tablet gave up the ghost.

Ignore all that gunk on the screen. Just haven't cleaned it since it doesn't work anyway. The crack is the problem.

Unlike the phone, which just stopped working without obvious reason, the tablet was totally my fault. A couple of weeks ago, I accidentally dropped it when getting my stuff out of the car. The lower left corner cracked, which you can see in the picture. Everything still worked at that point, but it obviously weakened the screen, because yesterday a big crack appeared across the entire screen. At that point, the touch functionality stopped working.

I used this tablet almost exclusively for two things: reading comics with ComicRack/Comixology, and playing games like Star Realms and Cthulhu Realms. In both cases, the only thing I really need is a good-sized screen. 9 inches is the minimum to be able to read most comics without constantly having to zoom in and out. This one was 10.1 inches, so it worked well for that.

This wasn't an high-end device to begin with. It's an ASUS Transformer TF300T, which I bought almost exactly 18 months ago. Not a lot of memory, fairly slow processor speed, mediocre camera, etc. Your basic low-end Android tablet. I'd rather have something nicer like a Google Nexus 10, but the low-end device worked for me.

Since I have other options for both the comics and gaming - using my PC - I'm in no hurry to replace this particular electronic device. Probably keep an eye on sales coming my way (I certainly get enough emails about such things) until a good deal comes along. Or better yet, wait until Christmas time. Maybe someone will replace it for me.

Silent Running

Since my phone died, my jogging outings have been sans audio distraction. Hasn't been as problematic as I'd expected.

It's not really silent, of course. Lots of stuff going on in the world, after all. But I'm used to having either music or podcasts going while I'm out exercising, so it feels very quiet. Except when I have to go along a busy road, when the traffic noise is pretty overwhelming. I avoid that as much as possible. Fortunately, the area around my place is pretty quiet, and I can range across a pretty wide area with minimal distance spent alongside heavy traffic.

Having something to listen to has always seemed like a requirement for exercise. Figured that I'd get too focused on being tired/sore/etc if I didn't have something to distract me. But it turns out that as long as I'm constantly busy, it doesn't bother me to be without something else to focus on. I think I'd have a bit more trouble if I was doing weight training or something else that requires downtime as part of the process. For the constant effort of jogging, though, I find that I do all right with the silence.

The thing I miss most about not having the phone while running isn't the audio, but the distance and time tracking. I've been trying to go about 10k on each outing, and I know it takes me around an hour. It's easy to lose track of your pace with no guide, though. I know more or less what routes to take, so I'm still somewhere in the neighborhood on distance. Time is harder to gauge, though I have some idea based on my pace. I'm certainly looking forward to having a GPS-capable device again for more accurate tracking.

About that dead phone...I actually ordered a new phone from Amazon, and got it in the mail. Opened it up only to discover that it wouldn't recognize a SIM card. A bit of online searching showed that other people had seen the same issue and had to get a replacement phone. So I'm doing that, at no cost to myself thanks for Amazon's easy return/replace policy, but it does delay the new phone timeline. Annoying, but I knew it was a possibility going in...the disadvantage to going cheap on technology. I still think it's the right move, since I really need very little from a phone and paying for features I won't use seems silly. Just going to take a bit longer to get set up.

I suspect things will be different when the weather turns colder, and I have to resort to running on the treadmill in the exercise room. Then I will definitely need something to listen to. I certainly plan to have the phone issue resolved before then, though.

Ahoy, Donuts

Ahoy, mateys, it be Talk Like a Pirate day!

The pirate face donut was a little worse for wear after the trip home. But hey, what pirate doesn't have scars?

Krispy Kreme donut stores have been celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day for the last few years with free donuts. Ask for your donuts like a pirate, get an extra donut. Dress like a pirate, get a dozen free donuts.

I generally need very little excuse to eat donuts, and not much more to say "Arrrr." So this worked out very nicely. It's a bit of a drive up to the nearest Krispy Kreme store, but I justified it to myself by running a couple of errands while I was out.

When I arrived, there was a group all dressed up as pirates picking up their dozens of donuts. Wish I'd thought to bring my camera! Once they'd claimed their booty, I picked up some of my own (pictured). I only got the one extra donut since I didn't dress up, but I did get to place my order by saying "Ahoy, matey, I be needing them pirate donuts."

It be September 19th, so go forth and talk like a pirate, me hearties!

South Park Season 19

South Park's twentieth season is airing this fall. Via my Playstation Vue app, I've gone back to watch season 19 before starting on the new one.

I was in college in the mid-1990s, when the South Park phenomenon started. I remember seeing the Spirit of Christmas: Jesus vs Santa short video as it was passed around campus. (Often literally passed around from computer to computer. Internet video wasn't nearly as prevalent back then.) It was terribly irreverent, foul-mouthed, full of cheesy shock-value...and absolutely hilarious. My friends and I loved it, and the full show that began airing on Comedy Central in 1997.

South Park is an equal opportunity insult machine. Race, religion, beliefs of all kinds, celebrities, corporations, social movements, you name it...they'll make fun of it. They're more fond of disgusting poop jokes than I have been since I was 12, but I admit it certainly fits in with the rest of the show. It's hard to be offended when they make fun of something that affects me personally, because they're doing it to everything...and besides, it's all laugh-out-loud funny.

I haven't watched South Park regularly for several years, largely because I haven't had cable TV and can't be bothered to track down alternative access. Since it's easily accessible via Vue now, though, I'm taking the opportunity to catch up a bit. The 19th season's ten episodes showed up for easy on-demand access, so I checked it out.

The theme of the season is the gentrification of the town. From a new school principle focused on political correctness and broadening social consciousness to building a trendy nightlife district and attracting a Whole Foods, South Park is intent on moving on from backwater town status. The show has done similar things back when I was watching more regularly, but this is wide-ranging across multiple episodes rather than just one or two.

Along the way, just about everything that was in the news a year ago (and often still is today) gets a mention. Building a wall against illegal immigration, presidential politics, tensions between the police and the public, minority targeting by police, terrorist radicalization, Internet advertising, the slow death of old news media...it's all here, and all fair game for satire. My favorite bit in the whole season is when the boys accidentally become associated with ISIS, and ask the terrorists if it's all right that one of them is a Jew. *Shocked silence*..."No."

Every episode of South Park starts with a disclaimer that ends with "...and due to its content it should not be viewed by anyone." Probably true, but it's too funny not to watch anyway.

Bathroom Bedlam

I could not care less who else uses the same bathroom I do. A lot of other people do care, though, so it's become a political and moral issue.

The most well-publicized example of bathroom control is North Carolina's HB2 law. The bit of the law that has gotten the most attention is the restriction that people must only use bathrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate. That's seen as an attack on transgender people, which I'm sure is exactly the intent, even if the politicians involved say otherwise.

So why do they say the HB2 restrictions were necessary? The main arguments seem to be privacy and security. That doesn't make any sense, though. I'm just as much at risk of some other man invading my privacy or assaulting me in a bathroom as I would be with a transgender woman using the same bathroom. You'd be better off banning cell phones and cameras in bathrooms, if privacy is your main concern. (And good luck enforcing that...separating a modern American from his cell phone is a major undertaking.) As for security, sexual predators won't let a little thing like state law stop them if they're intent on causing harm. By definition, those people are lawbreakers. Besides, there are already plenty of laws against such predators that still hold regardless of how transgender people are treated. The privacy and security arguments for this law just don't hold up.

Neither side of this problem gets much sympathy from me on this specific issue. I think it's ridiculous that anyone cares who uses which bathroom. Men, women, horses, Klingons...as long as they mind their own business and leave me to mine, who cares? I'd be perfectly happy if every public building just installed one big unisex facility with a bunch of stalls and a shared set of sinks. (And paper towel dispensers. Those hand-dryer things just don't work as well.)

However, I do have a problem when laws are enacted to target specific groups of people. I don't understand transgender people. My head just doesn't fit around the idea that you'd be so unhappy and uncomfortable that you'd want to make such a fundamental change to yourself (both mentally and physically). But they're still people, who deserve the right to do wherever they want as long as no one gets hurt.

The NCAA seems to agree, judging from the way they've moved a bunch of college sports events out of North Carolina. The reason given was that North Carolina's laws don't "promote an inclusive atmosphere for all college athletes, coaches, administrators and fans." The ACC is following suit. College sports is a big deal in North Carolina, both in terms of popularity and financial impact. Whether it's big enough to convince the public to pressure their elected officials into a more tolerant stance remains to be seen.

I'd love to see this issue just completely disappear because North Carolina legislators realize how stupid it is, but that seems highly unlikely. The next best thing would be for the public in North Carolina to make their displeasure known at the polls. They'll get their chance in November, but that also seems unlikely. So we may be left with protests and actions like what the NCAA and ACC have taken. Not the best scenario, but it may be the only feasible one.

Chicago Cubs, NL Central Champions

The Cubs have clinched the National League Central Division Championship for the first time since 2008! Time to start worrying about the post-season.

Chicago clinched the division last night, when the St. Louis Cardinals lost. Not exactly how you want to do it, since the Cubs lost their game earlier in the day to Milwaukee. A Cubs fan is almost as happy when the Cardinals lose as when the Cubs win, though - we'll take it.

It'll be at least a few more days before anyone else has a division title. The Washington Nationals and Texas Rangers could each win their divisions sometime in the next week, though it may take a bit longer. Cleveland would likely be next after that, unless Detroit gets its act together and beats the Indians a bunch of times in their 7 games over the next two weeks. The NL West and AL East might come down to the last weekend of the season.

As a Cubs fan, I'm naturally predisposed to look at ways that things could go wrong. So, here's some bad news:

• Since the Cubs last won the division in 2008, no NL Central champion has won the World Series. 
• Chicago is likely to play the wild card winner in the first playoff round. The Giants, Mets, and Cardinals are the front-runners for that spot. Cubs combined record against those teams this year: 13-16.
• The Cubs haven't won an NLCS since 1945. Four attempts, four losses. (And the less said about 2003 in particular, the better.)
• The pressure. The Cubs are actually favorites to win it all, which adds the weight of expectations to the already pressure-packed playoff atmosphere. And of course just being the Chicago Cubs, with their 100+ years of losing, is a whole world of pressure all its own.
• Home field advantage is important in the World Series. Due to the (incredibly stupid) rule that the All-Star Game winner gets home-field advantage, the American League champion will have that advantage this year.

Having said all that...this could still be the year. Expect the worst and hope for the best, always a useful attitude, and especially for Cubs fans. Bring on October!

Cities: Skylines - Wrecking Cities for Fun and Profit

Building something is great. Destroying it can be just as fun.

The government offices. Not much to look at, considering all the pain involved in unlocking it.

Back in the day, SimCity offered a disaster menu to rain down destruction on the hapless citizens of your simulated city. I have many a fond memory of building up a sprawling cityscape, then calling down tornadoes and earthquakes to cut swaths of destruction through it. Cleaning up the destruction afterward is part of the fun, too. In fact, sometimes I'd send in a disaster as a sort of urban renewal device to rework an area I wasn't happy with.

The base Cities: Skylines game doesn't have similar disasters. There's an expansion coming that adds them, but until then, your city is safe from floods and storms. But that doesn't mean there's no incentive to wreck what you've built.

There are a variety of unique buildings available to unlock, based on reaching certain thresholds in city statistics. Many are positive, such as acquiring a large amount of cash reserves or building large areas of residential buildings. Others, though, aren't so good for your city: go into debt, pile up garbage across the city, have low citizen heath, and so on. Sickness and garbage aren't as flashy as earthquakes and floods, but they can bring a city to its knees.

I recently decided to try for the Government Offices unlock, which requires that the average building in the city have 40 units of garbage piled up. That's well above the threshold at which people get angry, so I knew nothing good would happen. Cities: Skylines allows you to control your city service buildings, so I disabled all the garbage collection services. (Which is much better than destroying them, since you don't have to pay to rebuild later.) Sure enough, before long my city was awash in both garbage and unhappy citizens.

By the time the garbage had piled up to the point where the Government Offices unlocked, a lot of citizens had fled the city. Couldn't handle the smell, I assume. That left a lot of abandoned buildings, which coincidentally unlocked the Cathedral - 2000 abandoned buildings maintained across five weeks of game time. Two unique buildings in the same self-inflicted disaster!

The cathedral.

Then came the hard part - recovery. Initially, I just turned all the garbage collection services back on. That cleaned up the city in a few weeks, but didn't do anything about all those abandoned buildings. Land value plummets if there are a lot of abandoned buildings, so before long I was presiding over one massive slum. I'd almost run out of money before I realized that a change of tactics was needed.

It's a good thing you can pause the game, because there were a lot of abandoned buildings to clear out. I spent the better part of a half hour scrolling across the entire city, bulldozing building after building. Then I had to go back and make sure that the now sparsely populated area was connected properly to power lines, since destroyed buildings no longer transmit power to their neighbors.

It took a while for the land value to recover, so I was busy for quite some time micro-managing the cost of city services and destroying new abandoned buildings when they popped up. Ended up having to take out loans to keep the city finances afloat. Fortunately, people started to move back in before too long, so I could cover the loan payments and slowly start building the city back to its former glory.

Those unique building unlocks are a one-time thing, so if I hadn't managed to pull my city out of its downward spiral, I could have started a new one and still kept my building options. I'm glad I saved this one, though. Adds a little extra sense of accomplishment to the process!