Jerry Stratton's Blog, page 24

It’s a mad, mad, mad, psychotic world

It was once a sign of witchcraft to deny that witches exist. Today, it is a sign of madness to point out the madness of our COVID dogma.

in praise of lawn darts linked on Editorials

“the basis for a civilization of free people resides in the skills that children learn from the benign neglect of unsupervised play in an un-nerfed world”

“what must be learned is how to become self-governing. and it has been stolen from our children.”

El Gato Malo has a slightly different perspective on the loss of adult decisions in playtime that I wrote about in Childish things: the decline of toys and the fall of man.

“they never learned to make their own games, so now they need someone to tell them what game they should be playing, who their friends should be, someone to settle their disputes and hand out praise and prizes, determine virtue and vice. they cede agency for safety and that evolves into totalitarianism.”

Plot is the opposite of roleplaying

If you hunt for plot in a sandbox, you’re going to be disappointed. Plot must be created, not found.

My Year in Books: 2021

From Louis l’Amour to slavery to H. Rider Haggard, it’s been a very good year in books.

Optimistic pessimism, or utopian dystopias

Each new year brings in a new science fiction milestone. This year, it’s George Jetson.

Satire in the vineyard: The parable of Lolita and the sheep

Opposite stories in the New Testament are a lot like modern satire. When Nabokov tells the parable of Humbert Humbert, he is telling us that everything in the news is false. When Jesus tells the parable of the lamb, he is telling us that everything the world values is false.

Have yourself a musical command line…

…Make your scripting gay. From now on your errors will be miles away!

In memoriam: vaccinations killing pilots

If pilots are dying at more than a hundred times the rate they’ve died in previous years, what does that mean for everything and everyone that relies on air travel and transportation?

Hobby Computer Handbook: From 1979 to 1981

Hobby Computer Handbook lived for four issues, from 1979 to 1981. Back in 1979 and 1980, I bought the middle two issues. I’ve recently had the opportunity to buy and read the bookend issues. PARENT

Hobby Computer Handbook

Hobby Computer Handbook was a short-lived relic of the early home computer era, an annual (or so) publication of Elementary Electronics.