Bits And Pieces - 6-27-2022

Bits and Pieces - 6-27-2022

The last time the Avs hoisted the cup, my wife and I had to call a friend in California to keep up with the game for us, as Tropical Storm Allison had turned our little piece of the world into a bit of a mess. We were desparate for Ray Bourque to lift that thing, and our little cell phones, and a friend on the other end of the line who'd never seen a hockey game in her life, made a very long weekend into something a little more of a good time. Go Avs!

Roe V. Wade. Oy. They've been gunning for it for a long time, and here we are. This will always be a bootleggers and baptists issue: the mouthy ones will always be able to get their daughters and granddaughters abortions when they get pregnant from "the wrong guy". They will always use the threat of enforcement as a means of showing power in small communities. When the pregnancy mortality rate creeps up, they'll turn deaf and mute. And when 3 of the sitting justices are already poised to begin rolling back the other issues the Straight White Life brigade have been sitting on for 50 years, which is where we were in the 90's with abortion, the voices who say "of course we'd never go after those decisions" will sound ever more ridiculous and defensive as they find their reasons to shrug and then support (but only after it's a fait accompli, of course) the next attack.

Our daughter has tested Covid positive, and is miserable. Fortunately, hanging tight here at the house for a couple weeks is doable, which hasn't been the case for a while in terms of schedules. The rest of the house is good so far, but historically it's usually been the case that either her mother or I get whatever bug she does. It's just about 50/50 which of our immune systems turn out to be a better match, so we're both having a graveyard laugh at the moment to see which of us gets it. Everyone's vaccinated, so we've hope at least that it'll be miserable but otherwise just the usual hassle of being sick.

And yes, I'm well aware of the irony that I had to travel for the day gig for the last couple of years, but it's the kid going to college that brings it home. Oy. Such is life sometimes.

As part of the day gig stuff, I've been keeping a gimlet eye on renewable power options. I continue to be cautiously optimistic about the path we're all on, and especially that receptiveness is starting to creep out into the broader mindset. Being someone who's had a secondary (and, to my joy and surprise, now something close to a primary) interest in broader power gen methods for something like fourty years, I've learned to let folks laugh. And now I get to just smile and nod as they slowly start to realize what's coming. It's kind of nice.

Part of my quiet these past few months is that I've had to learn to look at folks like Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch and other working artists, grin and admire and cheer for what they've been able to accomplish over the past few years, even with the struggle, and then turn to myself and say "Not yet, not my current path". Partially for my own mental health reasons, mostly just because I had to take a good hard look at where I am and what I need at the moment.

Speaking of which: now I have to re-think the Quiet mechanism in the original Mage RPG. At the time, I slotted that into one-character games, for the most part, simply because the idea, good as it was, didn't fit automatically into a multi-character party. I'd still call it that; keep an alt ready to go and we'll get back to it. But at the same time, I have to think that, for the sweep of the story that that game wanted to tell, they'd have been at a real loss without it being there.

I still giggle whenever I peruse those areas of physics where Einstein stepped into it. The EPR paradox is the most famous, but there are others like the details and extensions of Brownian motion. What seems to be common for these little comments and episodes is that they're areas where Einstein made a true contribution, but it was a step along the way, not a definitive, comprehensive theory. So, when subsequent developments showed this, Einstein became defensive. Which is both natural and almost cliche; all of us have that tendency, I think, in greater or lesser degree.

But it is quite funny when it's "the genius of our time" who's caught out publically being a bit frustrated that their idea wasn't the be all and end all. And a reminder to try and be a bit more gracious when it happens to me. In fact, one of the hidden benefits of the day gig is that there are more than enough technical areas involved to keep me on my toes and daily reminded of the limits.

Sharp-Etched Laughter

In the first part of my day gig life, I worked in an obscure science and engineering field where some of us carry our arguments with us, quite literally, to our gravestones. There are some tragic stories there, and some funny ones.

One of the funnier ones, the punchline, pithy as it might first appear, deals with our views of what we do and how we're known for it. See, in this particular group of folks, we all know of each other's work, more or less.

We all have a reasonably good idea of what the others are doing from their articles, and then the occasional family meetings where someone gives a poster or a talk or just a conversation over beer. That's the close-held view.

Some of us do better than others at making connections to the broader world. They're the folks who have institutes and big continuing grants or industrial collaborations or whatever. These are the folks to which the awards tend to go, the kind of headlines that outsiders are interested in.

Inside though, recognition comes in much different ways. One of them is when someone retires, and there's occasion for the community to get together and celebrate the life and times of one of our peers.

One of my mentors in this world was a very gentle soul; the only time I saw them get thoroughly and completely pissed off was when they got left off an invitation to travel to a celebratory get together for a colleague who was stepping away from the day-to-day grind.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are those of us who would have been pissed off because we were "important". In this case, though, what chapped my mentor was that they weren't going to get the chance to celebrate our friend.

See, for these sorts of things, what you're being invited to do is dive into our colleague's work, re-discover that element that you connect with, and then come up with a project that incorporates that thread into your own work. Sure, you can just cite a few papers and call it a day, but if you're really looking for a challenge, here's your chance to pick up the ball and run with it, and show how much our colleague's work means to us.

How much they did to make this all possible, and how important they are to what it is we do every day.

It's an ideal, sure, but whenever I've had the honor of an invitation to participate in such celebrations, I've done my damndest to live up to the ideal.

So this morning, I stumbled into looking up old friends via the internet. How are they doing, that sort of thing. Some personal, some professional. In the course of it all, I stumbled into a memorial journal issue, a career celebration for a person who I almost went to work with a fair few years ago, until funding and circumstances intervened.

Oh, cool, thought I. And one of the guest editors was another close connection. But when I started reading the table of contents... oh shit. What kind of everloving clusterfuck is this? Really? You couldn't get off your ass and invite them and them and that one over there? What kind of bullshit...

Reader, it was an accident of how the publisher in question had organized their website. Fortunately, I kept digging, and eventually recovered the full issue, and saw that they really had done the thing properly. Righteously pissed off the whole time, mind, until I finally did get the whole TOC firmly in hand and could calm down on seeing the names I expected to see.

The science-family members who've long followed, competed with, admired and argued over what our colleague and friend has done in their work. That it means something, to us and them and to the many other problems that folks inside and outside our little world are going to be interested in long after we've had our own chance to grind our arguments with each other into granite.

Today, I've moved to a part of the field where publications don't come into it. Still doing the work, and even in the same areas, just definitely in an applications and engineering focus rather than the developmental side. Accidentally, but also because I've never had the kind of social skills needed to build the networks necessary to thrive on the other side of it.

Looking back on my old mentor's hurt from this perspective, these days I think that what I should have done is said, look, the host is a monumental asshole, granted. But let's go anyway. Crash the party. Everyone we care about will get the point.

If I understand correctly, even the monumental asshole would have gotten the joke. See, at that point, they'd gone through some personal challenges that, hear tell, had led them to take a good hard look at life and try a different approach.

Something tells me that they re-read the jokes on the tombstones and realized that the punchline had a different meaning for family than it did for outsiders.

And In This Episode...

And in this episode...

I am, to a first approximation, the same age as the main group of characters in Stranger Things. Dustin, Lucas, Max, El, Mike, Will, and Erica as our younger sister/sidekick/conscience/troublemaker! are so close to my main D&D/friend group of that time that it's more than occasionally painful to watch.

This season's intro of the D&D/Satanic panic brought back even more painful memories. I've been wondering if/when they would tackle the subject. Whatever else, what that time taught me, more than anything, was that there were lines beyond which I couldn't trust some folks. One of my cousins doesn't visit that side, except for a couple of funerals.

Me, I'm reminded of how they behaved when they found us playing a game. Epic shitfit is the least of it. I'd be surprised if they didn't think they "saved" us from a dark path. There have been occasions since where I poke up against the edges, the boundaries of where trust ends, and then I step back and go, "Oh, right."

My wife thinks I'm overly traumatized and paranoid as a result. I try not to say "I told you so" when red flag-raising moments occur.

It was more than a bit odd. It was, for this particular group of folks, the first time I ran into something that I couldn't reason my way around. Or talk my way out of, depending on how you looked at it, I guess. Reason didn't have anything to do with it.

At least I could go home to my mom, and didn't have to put up with it if I didn't want to. Just stay away from the subject on weekends and holidays, pretend the books that had been stolen from me, the ones my mom had paid for and didn't have anything to do with them, never existed.

Don't tell them anything about important parts of my life. There would be other examples of this.

Not that mom's place didn't have its own issues. Abusive stepfathers only being part of that story. But that was a different level, in some ways: baked in from early enough that I just always assumed the next one was a bastard to be avoided. It's just a different impact, I guess, when you're actually cognizant of the trust breach in real time.

Mostly, I like to tell myself this is just poking old scars, running your fingers over them as a reminder. Not a big deal, right? Yes, no.

Maybe so. I could add a few thousand words about current events here. Tying in threads of the world. I won't, though.

I'd rather just bleed a little bit, acknowledge the moment and what it brought to me, then go on and enjoy the rest of the season.

Then, try and remember that horror has more dimensions for the audience than one might ever be able to anticipate.

Soup And A Sandwich?

Story Fragment the 3rd - June 2022 by M. K. Dreysen - Soup and a Sandwich?

Marconia addressed herself to her wineglass as she did her lunch partner, and the Earthview through the magnificent glass wall behind her.

With a little reverance, a little sigh that the glass had to be so modified for the light gravity, and a little humor at the situation. "We've become Ladies Who Lunch."

Yevvie rolled her eyes. "Please tell me you're not going to do that to me." Yevvie pushed aside her bangs, posed theatrically. "I've far too little gray, and no patience at all for the rigors required to sit a beautician's chair..."

Marconia dipped a finger into her water glass and flicked the results across the table. "Drama much?"

The pair watched the drops linger on their long trajectory to the floor. Yevvie would have preferred a table closest to the glass, but while Marconia could appreciate the Earthview, the vast drop to the bottom of the Lunar crater far below the restaurant's floor did her digestion no favors at all.

The waiter glided over with their plates, omelette with salad, tomato soup with half of a pastrami sandwich. Yevvie inhaled the soup's fragrance, eyes closed and her face a tapestry of relaxed enjoyment.

Marconia's own face relaxed her habitual sarcasm at the sight. The week's done then, she thought to herself. "You made the right choice, then?" she said.

"Wonderful," Yevvie replied, but only after the first sip.

There'd been some balancing, Yevvie had almost allowed Marconia to be the one to pick between the onion soup and the tomato.

Dessert was a cup of coffee, a lemon cookie on the one hand and just the barest, thinnest slice of cheese cake on the other. And, and most of all, lingering conversation of nothing much at all.

Marconia won the struggle for this week's check. And then it was time to go, another week's troubles passed on to the crater and the dust surface and the blue marble beyond.

Marconia made it all the way to the subway tunnel before she asked herself... "Should I have told her?"

A Rust Memory?

2nd June 2022 Story Fragment by M. K. Dreysen - A Rust Memory?

"Oh, glory, come to papa."

"You're awfully impressed with this, Oni."

"Janie, come on, you're just as excited, look at it. Big iron..."

I was impressed. The computer, speaking loosely, looked like a giant freezer, sounded like a jet plane, and should have died the good death decades ago.

Yet here it was, still blinking its lights and spinning its rust. The beast and a handful of its obsolete brothers and sisters gave the only lights in the room, an old classroom turned into the computer science departments boneyard.

Our client wanted the data that was bound up in its cavernous innards. The department had unplugged the ancient supercomputer's network, the cards it depended on long since unavailable.

But they'd left the beast plugged in and running the Cave of Wonders on the other side of a glass-filled wall. Must make for good copy when bigwigs came around on tour and needed to see cinema-scale VR projection in the flesh. "Can you pull the drives?"

"Yeah." Oni had tracked down the drive locations we needed. "They're all in one rack bay, you must be living right."

"Something." I bent down to work hardware. Oni had the software side of it, I tracked cables, unscrewed all the screws, and prepped our transport case.

Something pinged off the metal rack, leaving a long silver groove in the blackened steel. "What the hell?"

Oni looked up at me, then his eyes got wide and he pointed behind me, at the big glass window that separated us from the darkened Cave. "Janie..."

I turned and watched a web of cracks spreading across the glass, and the hole that had generated them. "Bullets?"

Another one came through, then, and the poly-glass crackled again, the rack pinging behind me. No other sound, though, just the whipcrack of the bullet when it hit something. Jesus.

"I don't do bullets, Janie," Oni whispered.

"Duck down, Oni. On your back." I helped him pull the keyboard down, and then the beast's service monitor. "You almost finished?"

Too many long breaths, and then "Yep, it's safe to pull."

Unmounted drive, check. The slow rattle of the handle of the door I'd carefully locked behind us, check.

A long reach above the rest of the museum of computing, the only cover between me and the gun? Expose myself long enough to yank the hard drive bay?

Oh, right. Shit.

Spellbreakers?

Working in a somewhat different way, call it practice, call it story fragments, whatever they are here's the first. One purpose here is that I'll do a little daily free writing, then go back and poke at them to see what might jump out and bite me. As ever, these are my original work, copyright M.K. Dreysen, all rights reserved to and by me.

June 2022 Story Fragment by M. K. Dreysen - Spellbreakers?

Randy would rather have used black powder. Drill, pack, wax and fuse, and most of all know that each charge fit the bill.

Dynamite made him nervous. Even in quarter stick sizes, and the stable stuff that didn't leak more fun than he wanted. The client had insisted, though. "We can get it for you, we use it in the mine."

Cheaper, that's really what they were after. Just getting Randy here and doing his thing, that was expensive enough.

Most clients, by the time they needed him they'd already come to the cost they'd paid. Ponying up for Randy to supply his own bang didn't hurt any more than the lives they'd lost.

"Stop," Randy said. To the kid, his apprentice and wow didn't that make Randy feel the weight of age. "Pay attention now, you don't want to crack it."

The seal, and more importantly what was on the other side. The kid set aside her drill bit, dusted granite fragments from the whole, and peered inside.

"See anything?"

She stuck her finger into the hole, felt around. "It's clean."

"How deep?"

She rolled her eyes, then used the stick, a willow stub with a notch cut to the depth needed. "Just right."

Randy held the lantern close enough to verify where her thumb was, flush against the stone and the stick's notch just past. "Yep, ok."

Gwyn moved enough so Randy could slide the quarter stick into place and set his fuse. Then she molded the wax into place to hold the dynamite. "How many more?"

Randy stepped back, lantern high while Gwyn reset for the next hole. "Two more, there at the top. Unless?"

"Unless I feel something shift when I'm drilling, right."

The drill bit wasn't sensitive. Gwyn was, though, and the metal could transmit, just a little, if the seal and what it held looked to weaken early. Randy waited until Gwyn had set herself and was comfortable with the angle before he turned to getting his fuses in order.

First tie the newly set fuse into other live ones, make sure of the loop and bundle, set it aside and clear. And only then pull the next fuse length free. He'd walked the loose fuses down the shaft that morning, each one shifted from one side of the shaft and room to the other as it was set.

He walked up to the surface, tying the new live fuse into the hot bundle as he went. By the time he'd returned to the door and the seal, Gwyn had finished and was set to start on the last hole.

Randy grunted, used the willow rod to check the completed hole's depth. "How'd it feel?"

Gwyn stopped, wiped her forehead and drank a little water from her canteen. "Nothing shifted. Not quite."

"But..."

She pulled the drill bit down and placed a gloved finger on the bit. "Like the bit was binding up. Not stuck, just..."

"Hmm." Three charges set, Randy told himself. Three quarters of a stick of dynamite. Plenty of boom. "Why don't you go ahead and stop."

"You're worried?"

Randy always worried. Spellbreaking could go wrong in only about a hundred and one different ways. And that was just dealing with the explosives and the vagaries of old abandoned ruins and mines.

But the dangers that kept Randy up at night were the ones that happened slowly. As slowly as the reach of a demon through stone, grasping at the first energy source it had gotten close to in who knows how many centuries? That was bad.

Worse was only blowing part of the seal, and then having to come back down here and do it again. "I'll drill, you pack."

"Not worried about rubble?"

Randy laughed. "They've asked to leave it so they can dig for treasure on the other side. Moving a few extra rocks won't hurt them." Besides, the clients had been the ones who'd insisted on using the dynamite because it was cheaper.

Randy ignored the way the drill felt more like he was tapping a glue barrel than hollowing out a piece of Rocky Mountain granite. By the time he'd finished and packed the last stick, Gwyn had the hot fuses ready to go. Randy sipped from his own canteen while he, and Gwyn, verified the coming shot. "Ready?"

"Buy you some coffee?"

"And those sandwiches old lady Mintner put together?"

"Damned straight." Last night's roast beef and day old bread, wrapped up in wax paper with a pickle each.

The spellbreaker and his apprentice set up the plunger, wrapped the master fuse and tightened it down, then counted and waited for the thump and dust cloud, the route that the demon or spirits or whatever the hell else it was that had been sealed below would take on their way to the cleansing clear sunny sky above.

Then they sat down and unwrapped their lunch and waited out the fight between clean air and broken containment.

An Exercise In Political Science Fiction

An Exercise in Political Science Fiction

Given the on-ground political realities, here's one possible place to start. The idea for the law as outlined would be to try and approximate/model some level of possible acceptance in Congress and the public generally, with the goal of building responsibility in proportion to the level of the perceived right.

Be it passed in Congress that:

1. Possession of a firearm or ammunition, in whole or in part, will incur an income tax liability to the possessor in the amount of 100 percent of the average equivalent retail value in the year of acquisition or manufacture of the firearm or ammunition. Written documentation of sale or transfer to another, independent possessor will constitute termination of the tax liability and entitle the possessor to 90 percent of any previously paid tax assessment as a one-time credit against future income taxes. Written and videographic documentation of the destruction or otherwise irreversibly rendering incapable of operation of the firearm or ammunition in question will also constitute termination of the tax liability and entitle the possesor to 100 percent of any previously paid tax assessment as a one-time credit against future income taxes. Failure to pay in the year of acquisition/manufacture will result in a fine of not less than 4 times the current year average equivalent retail value. Written documentation by the Federal Government of transfer, storage, and agent possession of firearms or ammunition through the Department of Defense or the Coast Guard will constitute a 100 percent exemption from this assessment. For other Federal agencies, state and local governments, and other entities typically exempt from income taxes, written documentation of transfer, storage, and agent possession of firearms and ammunition will constitute a 90 percent exemption to the liabilities incurred here. Any and all other persons or entities not otherwise listed here are, for the purposes of this law, considered to be the possessor and thus subject to the liabilities and requirement outlined in this act.

1.b Average value here means the average of 10 retail prices as published by independent third parties. Written documentation by the possessor of 10 acquisition year retail prices will constitute the possessor's attestation to the tax assessment value.

1.c Equivalent means here any firearm capable of firing the same caliber and ammunition type(s) as the firearm in possession. Possessor must also account for whether their firearm is new or used when documenting equivalent relevant firearms. In the case of ammunition, equivalent means ammunition types generally accepted as being used with the same type of firearm. Written documentation by the possessor of the methods used to attest to value, type, and source of acquisition will constitute a positive defense of the assessed value.

1.d Short of total destruction, one example of rendering a firearm incapable of operation would be a museum filling the barrel of the firearm with a full-length plug of metal or other material which would be essentially incapable of being drilled clean without otherwise destroying the firearm's barrel.

2. Game Tag Exemption: The Government will issue annual Game Tags, valid January 1 through December 31 of each calendar year, for purchase at the price of 1000 dollars, indexed to inflation. While valid, the Game Tag, in addition to the possession of a valid state hunting license and a yearly continuing hunter's education requirement outlined below, will be accepted as a valid hunting license in all Federal properties where hunting is allowed, subject to local, state, and Federal game seasons, tags, and bag limit restrictions, in lieu of a local or state issued hunting license or tag. For purposes of travel between the possessor's home state and any Federal hunting property and storage, eating, or processing, the Game Tag will constitute a legal transfer of game taken by the hunter. For purposes of travel between the possessor's home state and any Federal hunting property, the Game Tag will constitute legal transport of firearms and ammunition, subject to safe transport conditions outlined below. Upon expiration, the expired Game Tag entitles the purchaser to a one time tax credit against liabilities in Part 1 of this act in the full value of the purchase price of the Game Tag in the year of issue.

2.a For purposes of this section, safe transport of firearms and ammunition means transport in the conditions required by the Government for public airline travel.

2.b For purposes of this section, total annual bag limits will be those used by the hunter's state regulations for those game species for which the state issues regulations, otherwise the bag limit will be that of the state where the game was taken. Written and photographic or videographic documentation by the hunter of the time and location of the hunt where the game animal was taken will be used as the basis for bag limits and legal possession of the game animal during transfer and in the hunter's home.

2.c For purposes of this section, hunters will participate in at least 3 annual hours of continuing hunter's education, documented in written form, covering at least the populations, status, and extent of Federally recognized game animals, generally recognized best hunting practices, and generally recognized best firearm transport and use practices. Documentation of continuing education will be provided by the hunter to the Government at time of purchase of the Game Tag.