Brickmuppet Blog 2.0

April 29, 2021

Speculations From the Cutting Edge of of Isekaiology

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April 28, 2021

The Terrible Crush to Get Vaccinated

Yeah. After months of trying to get my vaccine appointment, having it delayed, and being told that I'm not essential enough an essential worker I finally got an appointment for my first shot.

Above was the line.

There was literally no one else in the Rite Aid aside from staff. I talked to the pharmacist to find out if this was where I was supposed to be for my 10:03 appointment. He looked momentarily confused and checked his computer and said "We DO have one today." He then got my info, sat me down, injected me with Moderna's Mysterious Miasma and told me that I could not leave for 15 minutes lest I keel over or something. I sat in a chair in the corner for 15 minutes and at about minute 12, someone with an Australian accent came in and asked for the shot.

I have questions.

Why was my appointment at 10:03...like there was a 10:02 and 10:04?

Why was getting this shot like pulling hen's teeth? I've been trying for MONTHS.

Why the talk of how tight supplies are?

I can't see what anybody GAINS by this. It seems that setting up vaccine stations as 1st come 1st serve, now that old people are taken care of would be a better option.

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1 This was the exact opposite of my experience. There are still no in-store appointments available within 30 miles of my house, so the big drive-through event at the rodeo grounds was my only option. They had 1,800 doses for the day, and the line of cars was about 90 minutes long by 10:30 AM.

In my case, minute-by-minute appointments made sense, since the event ran for about eight hours and had four active vaccination stations, so assuming one minute per shot, 8*60*4 = 1920. Maybe yours had originally been set up with the same sort of assumptions, and they were still scheduling that way even though there was no longer sufficient demand.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at Wed Apr 28 14:17:08 2021 (ZlYZd)

2 Weirdly, now that I think about it, the line to get TESTED for COVID-19 went around the building through the drive thru.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Apr 28 19:30:17 2021 (5iiQK)

3 In my case I did it through my hospital's network. Most of the places close to me were booked solid so I had to drive 40 minutes to a center they had set up in a VFW Post. Like with J. they had 4 stations. Both times I was fairly early (~9:30/8:45), so the line to check in was only about 10 minutes and then another 5 to get to the station. The post-injection waiting auditorium had ~1/3 of the chairs full with ~25 people.

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Wed Apr 28 19:30:55 2021 (ykb0I)

4 it was tough out here in cali, ended up driving an hour to a stadium doing mass vaccinations. Hasn't been two weeks, but the shots are now available everywhere out here. They are saying that they are having a hard time convincing the rest of the population that they should get the vaccine, so they are seeing a massive slow down in shots given.

Posted by: vince at Thu Apr 29 15:26:05 2021 (3Ihg2)

5 They gain control and increase the paranoia. Like most of what's been bruited about regarding the ChiComPox.
Just assume the worst motivations on the part of the people pushing for more government control and you'll rarely be wrong.

Posted by: jabrwok at Fri Apr 30 09:30:20 2021 (T4WaI)

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The Most Blatant Foreshadowing in the History of Isekai

Actually, that may not technically be true as I am not a fan of the Isekai genre in general, and can't speak authoritatively upon matters of the most stupidest anything, but what Aizawa says about three minutes into last week's episode has got to at least be in the running.

We are, of cours,e talking about the show that is pithily named I've Been Killing Slimes For 300 Years And Maxed Out My Level and while I did not have high hopes for any great art to come out of this series, even those hopes were not met.

This show is deeply stupid.

I laughed out loud multiple times.

This is not exploring great philosophical questions or great conundrums of the human existence, but two episodes did make me laugh like a loon three times in one day. And I needed that.

Will continue to watch.

Come for the stupidity. Stay for the omelets.

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April 27, 2021

Today's Hot Take

"Suss" seems to be a perfectly acceptable Woolseyism, is completely in character, and is no reason to go bat-scat bonkers.

Good grief.

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Meanwhile: In Space

Something is eating and/or yeeting nearby stars.

According to a new analysis of Gaia satellite data, the closest star cluster to our Solar System is currently being torn apart - disrupted not just by normal processes, but also by the gravitational pull of something massive we can't see.

The Hayades Star cluster

consists of a roughly spherical group of hundreds of stars sharing the same age, place of origin, chemical characteristics, and motion through space

This young stellar nursery is the closest star cluster to Earth, being only 47 parsecs (153 LY) away. For our purposes that's ridiculously, arbitrarily far, but on the galactic scale we're practically touching.

Anyway, data from ESA's Gaia satellite indicates that stars in the cluster are vanishing and or being thrown out of the formation. The paper is here, and more layman friendly articles on the subject can be found here, here, here and here.

The current theory as reported, is that a huge mass of dark matter, (which is invisible to telescopes) is passing through the cluster and disrupting it. As a few of the articles suggest, finding Dark Matter, would indeed be strong evidence for Dark Matter, though, like all other evidence for the stuff this is indirect evidence (as Dark Matter's supposed properties would dictate).

Allow those of us at Brickmuppet Blog to offer an alternative possible explanation, but not necessarily the only one, for the phenomena being examined.

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April 25, 2021

"This Episode is Downgraded to Merely 'Good' "

On this, the 5th episode of the 5th season of My Hero Academia, we are presented with the first episode that is entertaining, but not superb.

The rest have been stellar.

The season opens in the middle of last season's finale and has brought together a whole bunch of plot points that had appeared to just be background flavor text, but are actually quite important.

In a way it reminds me a lot about Chris Claremont's run on the X-Men back in the '80s (but that is a reference that both dates me and is opaque to the audience. Suffice it to say that the story is moving briskly and is internally consistent )

This is an emotionally moving series and this is looking to be the best season yet. The current episode is taking place in a brief tournament arc, a Japanese Shounen comic trope that seems to be demanded by the Shonen Jump style guide. These are generally dead-spots in a series and can often kill an otherwise promising show. However, My Hero Academia uses this conciet to expertly establish background info and develop characters quite entertainingly.

This season has previously reminded us that Best Girl has additional powers that we had all forgotten about.

Toxic Mucus For the WIN!

This show continues to be excellent and I highly recommend it.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:44 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 Not really relevant to Boku no Hero Academia, but maybe you or your audience will have an answer.
There's lots of food porn manga, and some anime, currently (Shokugeki no Souma, various Restaurants/chefs in another World, etc), but is there any equivalent for other crafts?
Overgeared is nominally about a blacksmith, but we don't actually learn any blacksmithing. There are various farm-specific fictions (Silver Spoon). But not much about smithing, or carpentry. Does it exist and I just haven't found it?
Sorry for the irrelevancy, but this seemed like a good place to ask.

Posted by: jabrwok at Mon Apr 26 15:54:01 2021 (iyhH7)

2 I don't know of any blacksmith series that really get into the craft... but forges are Shinto holy places, and I think the few Buddhist smiths are doing Zen holy things. So it might be a little iffy to do anything other than show examples of "this is how we make swords."
There are a fair number of documentaries, of course.
The other side of this is that most smith families became machinists or mechanics.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Mon Apr 26 23:36:34 2021 (sF8WE)

3 @suburbanbanshee: I wasn't aware of the religious overtones. Thanks for the info. Pity though, the foodie stuff is very inspiring and often informative. Something comparable for other craft areas could be useful.

Posted by: jabrwok at Tue Apr 27 05:16:29 2021 (T4WaI)

4 Some years ago I had a fellow who's hobby is blacksmithing and LARPs at Ren-Faires go on a quee-spree over a show called "Sacred Blacksmith" because it was all about mainstreaming blacksmithery. I never saw the show and so don't know how into the weeds it actually got.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Apr 27 07:02:18 2021 (5iiQK)

5 Sacred Blacksmith is available on Funimation. It's primarily a romance between a world-weary young blacksmith and a beginner lady knight. I watched several episodes back in the day, and dropped it after a few. Don't remember why. The smithing is magical and doesn't involve hammers/anvils/tempering, etc. However, he does chant all of the steps. I don't recall dipping it in water, but he probably used the proper term and I just missed it.

Posted by: Ubu at Tue Apr 27 10:01:40 2021 (UlsdO)

6 Having nothing better to do, I watched the first four episodes this morning. It's not what you're looking for. As a bonus, I now remember why I dropped it. Obvious villain is obvious. Ridiculous armor is ridiculous.

Paint by numbers characters, cheap animation (barely above Deen level)...there was nothing special about this anime, and Cecily shouldn't have survived her first fight unscathed. Why this incompetent girl was the head of her house, which seems to consist of only her... oh wait, I think I just explained it.

Posted by: Ubu at Tue Apr 27 11:18:39 2021 (UlsdO)

7 I remember Sacred Blacksmith, and yeah, it's not what I had in mind.

Thanks though:-)

Posted by: jabrwok at Tue Apr 27 11:30:17 2021 (iyhH7)

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April 22, 2021

Beta Testing

After months of asking Starlink to "Shut up and take my money!" they finally obliged!

Oh. That was a lot of monies.

In any event, a few days or weeks from now, I'll have my Starlink kit and I will be able to report to you, gentle reader, on whether it lives up to its promise.

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April 20, 2021

Technical Difficulties

I think Mee.nu is under DDOS attack.

Also, there was a storm involving one of the remaining servers.

Verizon, my service provider, has been intermittently being rather diffident in quality, speed and bandwidth for a few days. Local storms may be to blame.

On a completely different note, it is good to learn where great minds got their inspiration.

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April 19, 2021

Dateline MARS!

There's a helicopter on frickin' MARS!

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Dateline: Clown World

Not pictured: the temptress herself.

Yes boys and girls, they finally found a motive in that Fed Ex shooting the other day and just as expected....

Wait...

No...

What?...

"I hope that I can be with ApÂpleÂjack in the afÂterÂlife, my life has no meanÂing withÂout her,â€

" ä½• the f**k? "

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

What the Hell is going on?

Given that 'we live in a society' and given that same society's predilection for understanding cost-benefit, risk, and root cause analysis, there can be no doubt that the banhammers will soon be a-bonkin' this most demonstrably dangerous degenerate drama.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:58 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 All we need is a specific link to MLP: Equestria Girls, and the circle will be complete.

Posted by: cxt217 at Mon Apr 19 16:39:34 2021 (4i7w0)

2 Not exactly a triumph for the power of friendship and loyalty. Sigh.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Mon Apr 19 23:26:04 2021 (sF8WE)

3 Well, if you are watching young kids at anime conventions, you see many more violent MLP, Naruto, and Sesame Street fans than you do violent Hellsing, Kerberos Panzer cop, and Berserk fans.

People who read Curious George, The Littles, and the Bobbsey Twins are more likely to shout, to run, and to shove in inappropriate situations than people who read Tom Kratman, Mickey Spillane, and Shelby Foote.

I would try to put together a more credible attempt to appear to believe that MLP was the root cause, except that this one fanfic author I really like is very active in MLP these days. I don't want to appear to be sneering at them.

OTOH, if Biden doesn't specifically condemn, in clear language, Hasbro's decision to make a cowboy an Earth Pony, then it must all be Biden's fault. (Okay, Biden may really be making it more likely that cracked people will act now, but I couldn't resist a final couple of jokes.)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tue Apr 20 08:51:04 2021 (6y7dz)

4 Just to be clear. While I'm not a Brony, the implication that MLP was the root cause of this atrocity was me being intentionally silly. Or sarcastic. I haven't decided yet.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Apr 20 15:11:26 2021 (5iiQK)

5 That was very clear. Roof was one of the few of these guys that had a plausible case for being right wing, and even he was pretty clearly nuts, and in a way that would've had a bad result no matter what flavor he imprinted on. These folks have a clear prior pattern of problem behavior, often with drug use that isn't making their situations better. There is zero sound reason to think that any Federal policy would have done anything to adjust the frequency of such events. (At least, anything short of shutting down the public school systems. Every other aspect of the problems is much finer than federal policy can change.) The Democrats and the media have, from recent events, pretty clearly been working towards seizing power for decades. Pelosi is obviously deeply invested, and has been in congress for just over thirty years. Moter Voter was clearly laying the ground work, and that has been just under thirty years. Everyone, their childhood imaginary friend of below normal intelligence, and their yellow dog realizes that the handwringing about spree shooters and about alleged right wing causes of spree shooters is mere stagecraft for seizing power. IIRC, Hasbro both owns MLP, and is responsible for the D n D apology for past racism, so they would legitimately deserve to be forced to eat responsibility for this act. It is just that the Bronies don't deserved to be dragged into this shit. OTOH, I'm tempted to find out if I can get banned from fimfiction, etc. this way. Basic issue, I don't think I'd learn anything from the experiment, I don't have a fimfiction account, and if I did I would want to keep it to talk to this one guy about his Eva/Lovecraft fics. Gripping hand, shooterverse seems like an approach that matches or exceeds some of the approaches to fanfic that I personally Do Not Want to read. Much less write. Beyond the obvious, I am not a fan of Yaoi, and the less hideous/in name only implementations of shooterverse might tend towards shipping Dylan Roof and DeWayne Antonio Craddock. Because it is very unlikely that someone who would write shooterverse has the skills to write people getting past race issues without over the top of that sort. I'm young enough that I get excited when I develop an idea that may be genuinely new, but I don't think I'm quite young enough to chase after this one.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wed Apr 21 12:04:21 2021 (6y7dz)

6 Argh, I had javascript off, and all of the newlines got eaten.

Not like anyone is missing anything if they ignore it.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wed Apr 21 12:06:34 2021 (6y7dz)

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April 13, 2021

I've Been Killing Slimes For 300 Years And Maxed Out My Level

This is a show that delivers EXACTLY what it promises.

The hat is just a bonus.

Aizawa Asuza, aged twenty seven is an office lady who keels over dead from overwork after several consecutive allnighters. As our heroine mopes and presumably blows bubbles in Samsara while contemplating her meaningless, completely avoidable death, a random goddess shows up and informs her that because of her incredible dedication and said goddesse's boredom our heroine is going to get Isekaied to a world that the goddess has as a side project. Aizawa pleads not to forget what she's learned. "WISDOM!" the goddess rewards her with some more requests. Our heroine asks to live out in the country, on a farm and not get old and decrepit.

For some reason, instead of granting Aizawa a quick death, the Goddess sets her in a isolated farmhouse about an hours walk from a town with an adventurers guild, makes her a Witch, and gives her knowledge of a regeneration/immortality spell.

Ecstatic that she is now living in the country Aizawa Asusa resolves to NEVER do any work again aside from growing food. Her life lesson from her previous life is the importance of leisure! She will not forget that valuable bit of wisdom.

To her horror, she realizes she has to buy seeds, so she goes into town and along the way, she is attacked by a slime! The weakest of monsters is no match for a Witch and she notes that the little monster's death rattle produces a gem. After getting what amounts to a hunting license (joins the town adventurer's guild), she is able to turn these in for what amounts to money...which in turn can be exchanged for goods and services.

300 years pass, the economy apparently sucks as there has been no expansion of the town or notable sprawl. Aizawa goes into town every few days to turn in slime guts to the local adventurer's guild and buy stuff. During these three centuries our heroine becomes something of a local institution as that Witch in the woods with the hat: a farmer reluctant healer, and strict hermit. She has kept to herself mostly but has helped out the local town enough times that she is well liked despite being quite asocial.

She's in heaven. No schedule, long nights of sleep and leisurely gardening are her order of the day. She does NOT get bored with this...until one day the girl who processes bounties at the local adventurers guild asks to check our protagonist's "level" for records purposes.

It turns out that Asusa Aizawa has, over 300 years, killed enough slimes (and cast enough heals presumably) to have reached level 99...the maximum possible. That's remarkable. (Moreso if you play these video games.) Now this Podunk Adventurer's guild in the sticks has a level 99 that means prestige, and....challenges....you know...WORK.

Aizawa convinces the guild representative to keep her level secret as payment for having saved her life off camera.

Sadly the secret gets out, numerous adventurers looking to make a name for themselves show up to challenge the level 99 Witch. Her "secret" becomes spectacularly and pyrotechnically public, and finally a Dragon showes up...to...D...D...D...DDDDD...DUEL!

That was a cute first episode. I don't think it's going anywhere. It looks to be developing into a formula show. Frankly this is kind of Mary Sue, though the ridiculousness of the ease with which our heroine became so OP is not skirted. (In that sense it's actually a notch above most Isekai shows.) There is a bit of an indication that our heroine may in fact have some lessons to learn, as she has rather overcompensated for her earlier mistakes to the point of sloth. There appear to be numerous light novels in this series indicating it may have something to say, but I'm not expecting much. Still the pilot was stupid cute fun and a Cute Girls Doing Cute Things ... Isekai fantasy is something I did not have on my bingo card. So I'll watch at least a few more.

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April 12, 2021

Some Wisdom

"Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today."

-The Red Skull

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Blogging Best Practices

One of the best secrets of the big-brained-pro-bloggers is to actually make sure one's post published on the date it was supposed to and isn't still in "draft" 5 days later for some reason.

And 3-D is the wave of the future!

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April 10, 2021

Status

Just a brief rundown of various IRL issues. As usual at such times, the picture is unrelated and the banality is below the fold .

Genshin Impact's Fischl, the high priestess of asymmetry, chunni, and crazy is by Shichijou Natori. Support their work on Fanbox!

more...

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April 07, 2021

While I'm Getting Things Back Together

I got a new alarm.

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Eyewitnesses to That Which Some Would Deny

An interesting correspondence from General Eisenhower after seeing a concentration camp. He was very keen on getting non-military documentation of the atrocities as he knew that there would be an effort to deny or minimize it, and an understandable tendency to not fully comprehend the horror of what had happened.

A similar notion is found in the text of a telegram from Marshall (original here).

Update: The video of Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton inspecting a concentration camp is actually blocked by YouTube for some TOS violation. This is why we have Bitchute.

Watch on Bitchute.

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April 06, 2021

Those of You

Who follow Me.Nu know about the fire in Utah.

That's not why there hasn't been a post since the 28th of last month.

Neither is this...

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