Natterings From Nepantla

Lately the weather is very variable. We've had a few days of rain, a few days of clear, chilly nights and sunny afternoons, then clouds and more moderate temperatures, then today the sun came back and it topped 70F. A very nice day to be out and about doing things, if this were the time and place to be out doing things.

Election overload is setting in. The SO reports that friends are dropping off of social media until November 4th. Even FiveThirtyEight has published an article on "8 Tips to Stay Sane in the Final 15 Days of the Campaign", although this seems to be some statistician-specific definition of "sane" that I was previously unacquainted with. (Tip #1: Think about the global pandemic. Tip #2: Remember that nothing is certain...)

Fannish things continue to provide insufficient distraction. SPIEL.digital still hasn't released a proper schedule; I guess we don't get to see it until real registration starts on the 20th. Not a peep has been heard about virtual Smofcon for weeks. OR-eCon's only recent announcement was that it needs more virtual room hosts. I was assuming that they'd be reaching out to the usual list of Orycon panelists to ask if we wanted to participate, but either they haven't or I've fallen out of their system again. Too late now.

Voting has improved my mood though, at least temporarily.

Wait, just over a week until Labor Day? Already?

Cat

Why are you not rubbing this belly, human?

Fandom

The weekly anime commentary happened on time, but didn't get posted until today due to an editorial misfire. I want to start breaking that out into its own post here, it'll remind me to check that it's up on the day, and it's hard to make comments about it after I've already started writing the next week's post. I wasn't doing it because it would be a significant percentage of the individual posts here, so that'll get me to write more, maybe.

Gaming

Eggsy is down to 5 chains because only the minimum number of people showed up for the extra event this week and it was all the experts. I'll make one more attempt next week at getting it to power level 2, and then switch to something else next time.

I'm cruising along in Sunless Skies despite finally losing my first captain. The inheritance mechanic is much more forgiving than in Sunless Sea.

The play-by-post Pathfinder Society convention that was supposed to start this Monday was pushed back two weeks on Thursday because most of the GMs hadn't gotten their scenarios yet. Naturally, the next morning, most of us woke up to discover our scenarios had turned up.

Books and media

I enjoyed Teckla a whole lot more than the first two Dragaera books. Part of that is way fewer references to events that hadn't been written yet. Another part is that it is very much a book for our time.

I'm slowly making my way through the last section of The Wealth of Nations.
( Politics )