Okay, if you're Gen X or older, you grew up with watches to tell time. And not just tell time, but to keep your time. You were just as (more?) likely to hear, in the 70s and 80s, someone ask, "What time do you have?" than "What time is it?" because everyone acknowledged that, unless you had the Naval Observatory clock on the phone, that you could be a few minutes off.

During a meeting, you could look at your watch not just to see the time, but to see your time. You could leave a minute or two early because "That clock over the door is slow; sorry, have to run." It was socially acceptable.

In fact, those are two of the "sore thumb" cultural changes I've noticed in the last 20 years:

• People stopped wearing watches
• Nobody asks if you have the time, they ask what time it is since our smartphones all said the same thing.

But now the Apple Watch, largely through the middle-class & up, near-and-truly bougie culture's emphasis on fitness and measuring EVERYTHING, is everywhere. It's cool. The watch is even always-on now. A few small glances in almost any situation is no big deal. 

Why is it okay for Gen Z+ers to look at their watch? Why would millennials, who grew up in the period where the time was known, not find watches offensive? They didn't learn to tolerate this distraction like old folk did.

I think the answer is that my question is at least partially a false premise: Millennials don't care as much as the older generations if someone has their entire phone out in a meeting. Which is largely because X's grew up in a time when, if you weren't paying attention to the main thing, you were barely paying attention to it at all. You don't bring a newspaper to the dinner table because you would give the newspaper all of your attention. 

No longer! Now we don't even eat dinner together so we can watch TV and surf. Divided attention is the norm (he said uncontroversially). If anything, a watch glance is less offensive than a phone interaction, which is still okay.

What's most interesting, then, is that this is one place where the Venn Diagram, X vs M, has an overlap for completely different reasons. Xers think it's okay to look because of the legacy excuse that you need to know your time and Mers think it's okay because why the heck wouldn't you?

At least that's today's working theory. For me. YMMV. 

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Okay, there are lots of plots holes you could pick on if you wanted, but, minus the space helmet randomness, Captain Marvel actually held together well enough that I wasn’t too distracted watching when I finally caught it this weekend.

Except for one scene: If you’re really a child of the 90s, would you have played Nirvana on a turntable? No. You’re right at the intersection of the decline of the cassette and the ascension of the CD. The record was nowhere in sight.

Wikipedia:

In Western Europe and North America, the market for cassettes declined sharply after its peak in the late 1980s. This was particularly noticeable with pre-recorded cassettes, the sales of which were overtaken by those of CDs during the early 1990s. By 1993, annual shipments of CD players had reached 5 million, up 21% from the year before; while cassette player shipments had dropped 7% to approximately 3.4 million.[36]

Additionally…

By the 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991.[1]

Nirvana’s height literally marks the least likely time you’d catch your favorite tunes on a turntable.

Very few folks were vinyl hipsters in 1991–4. I realize there are likely some convoluted, retconny explanations someone could dream up, but ultimately they’re fails. Carol “Don’t call me Supergirl” Danvers’ vinyl makes no sense at all.

Which stinks, because the rest of the movie is so clearly a nostalgic trip back to the 1990s. That is, someone wanted us to think that they cared about the 90s, but this vinyl slip-up tells me they were personally strangely hipster or, much more likely, that they weren’t really there.

Labels: Randmo

TIL, Pokémon Edition:

I've been using Pokemon GO as an excuse to walk more (Apple Watch Pokemon GO app review: Don't.), and was wondering when should I evolve which of my eevees. You know, normal, grown up questions like...

• Do I automatically evolve the one with highest CP? Or is the "sunset graph" more important?
• What does the sunset graph mean? Are all eevees on the same scale, or do some have more "potential" than others? (That is, if I have five with "max sunset", how close would they be to being equal?)
• Is there an advantage to powering it up before evolving? If so, how much?
• Are the higher CP eevees I catch later going to max out higher in their new forms (see sunset question, above)?
• Is there a CP threshold I should wait for before evolving an eevee?

That is, I didn't want to waste my candies on evolving the ones I have now if the next one I catch is likely going to be significantly stronger. But then what stops me from waiting forever?

And I don't want to evolve them too early if powering them up before evolution would increase their potential later. Etc etc. INACTION THROUGH INFORMATION DEFICIT!!!!1!

Aside: Didn't I mention I hate theorycrafting? This is theorycrafting.

Determining Pokémon Apititude

From a reddit manual about Pokémon GO:

There is NO DIFFERENCE in the end result of Powering Up then Evolving vs. Evolving then Powering Up, therefore the general recommendation is to always Evolve first to find out the move set. You can Power Up up to 1.5 levels above your Trainer level, at which point the white dot on the arc will be all the way to the right. Once you level up your Trainer, you can then Power Up again to the new maximum.

I think that suggests that you might as well evolve first, with the chance to cut your losses if you really dislike their attacks after evolution.

Assessing the potential of each eevee is called appraisal. I'd seen this when I started playing, but had completely forgotten about it 18 months later.

Each Pokémon has 3 "Individual Values", or IVs - Attack, Defense, HP/Stamina. Each IV can individually range from 0-15, and they are randomly generated when the Pokémon spawns (Pokémon hatched from eggs are randomized from 10-15 instead). The appraisal feature gives you an idea of what that specific Pokémon's IVs are. Depending on what team you are on, your team leader has slightly different phrases they will use. The first phrase tells you what overall range the stats are in, out of a possible 45 total (15/15/15). The next phrase(s) tell you which of the three stats is the highest (or multiple if tied for highest). The final phrase tells you how good that high stat is.

There's great detail on what your appraisals mean here. Here's a taste for Blanche, the Team Mystic (ie, "Blue Team") leader:

Phrase	Reason
Its stats exceed my calculations. It's incredible!	Pokemon has perfect IVs in at least one base stat.
I am certainly impressed by its stats, I must say.	Pokemon has IVs of 13 or 14 in at least one base stat.
Its stats are noticeably trending to the positive.	Pokemon has IVs of 8 to 12 in at least one base stat.
Its stats are not out of the norm, in my estimation.	Pokemon IVs are below 8 in every base stat.

Curveballs

It's apparently a lot easier to catch Pokémon if you can throw a half-way consistent curveball. From gamepress.gg:

Prior to this project, the Ball bonuses had already been discovered in a previous study:

Ball Type	Ball Factor
Poke Ball	1
Great Ball	1.5
Ultra Ball	2

The Curveball Bonus

Our analysis strongly suggests that the Curve factor is equal to 1.7.

So without any other bonuses, curving is equivalent to using 1.7 Poke Balls each turn. And since the Ultra Ball bonus is 2, a curved Ultra Ball is equivalent to using 1.7 * 2 = 3.4 Poke Balls each turn.

Balls	Poke	Great	Ultra
Straight Throw	1	1.5	2
Curve Ball	1.7	2.55	3.4

That means a curveball with a Poke Ball has a better chance of catching a Pokémon than a straight throw with a Great Ball. Good to know.

How to do this? From eurogamer.net:

To do this, press and hold on the Pokéball to make the circle appear, and then throw it when you're ready with a swipe. Remember, the closer you get to the centre, the better the throw type - it goes from Nice for most of the circle, Great for around half, and Excellent when it's close to the middle.

Also, here's an excellent YouTube on how to throw curveballs.

Here endeth the lesson.

Labels: Other Stuff, pokemon, Randmo

Have you ever opened frozen concentrated juice and had it look less juicy and more syrupy? I have.

After looking at it strangely for a few minutes, and remembering that it'd been in the fridge for months on months, though still well within its due date, did you remember that someone'd left the freezer door open overnight not that long ago? Boy, I did.

And that's probably what happened, confirmed by New York State's Department of Agriculture:

Can Thawed Food Be Refrozen?

Guide to Safely Refreezing Thawed Food

Frozen Uncooked Foods	Thawed - but Cold 45 Degrees or Lower	Thawed - Warm (Above 45 Degrees)
Fruit	Yes	Probably safe - but may have fermented
Fruit Juice Concentrate	Yes - but flavor may be poor and reconstituted juice [may] separate	No - may have fermented

[emph mine -mfn]

Thanks, yankees!

(Ok, yes, I'm mixing it in a growler. Unlike the Yankees, I couldn't find any pitchers.)

Labels: noteToSelf, Randmo

From The Guilty Secret of Distracted Parenting:

And [my children] might point out that when we did sit down, I surreptitiously read the newspaper at the breakfast table. And I pulled a book out of my bag at the playground if I thought I could get away with it. Speaking of old technologies, at our day care center there was one father — a big-shot professor — who was so brave that he did the worktime while wearing his Walkman (remember those?).

And for that matter, may I call as my witness Abraham Lincoln, who is reported to have walked up and down the street in Springfield, Ill., in the mid-1800s, pulling his young sons in a wagon while reading a book (and as the story goes, he went right on reading when a child fell out of the wagon).

I tweeted about a parent I overhead a few weeks back with the gall to tell their give-or-take six year-old, "When I'm on my phone, you DO NOT do that!" We are more distracted as a society, but I enjoy the way this NY Times piece reminds us it's not like this is a new thing. I used to always carry around a paperback until, well, until I could carry the books around even more conveniently on my phone.

What's more important to realize, perhaps, is just how many "distractions" of the 80s (and before) aren't considered distractions today. Talking to someone else, regarding the birds flying, checking out cars on the street... the things we used to do to give our brains a break before would often be considered contemplative and "authentic" engagments today.

Why is that? I think there's some small part of the distinction that's linked to feeling "productive". Phone distractions are measurable. Your digital distractions have metrics. Children, birds, conversations are all unique experiences. You can't, much as Instagram & Facebook tries, share breakfast with others with your network online, not really, not, to borrow a term, losslessly. Distractions that aren't swipeable are in a newly reconfigured set of experiences of unmeasurables.

We no longer value the unmeasurable enough. Before, the unmeasurables were valid pursuits on their own merits. We only had to justify their value to ourselves. Now, unable to "share" them fully as digital copies (and have their worth rubber-stamped by our virtual selves), we undervalue them -- while at the same time lamenting their loss as we search for a new term that could reinvigorate their value in a society no longer predisposed to appreciate them.

I should go to sleep. ;^)

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http://gallery.guetech.org/suspended/suspended.html

Man, that would've been useful back in the 80s. I might have to try it again.

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1. The USB port has moved from the bottom center on the 8X to the bottom side on the 8XT.
2. The camera flash has moved from the side of the camera lense on the 8X to under the camera lens on the 8XT.
3. The 8X's rear-facing speaker grill is gone (I'm assuming that's what it is).

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As reported in the game notes last night, the Redskins have not scored to come from behind to win in the last minute of play since Oct. 3, 1999. I did not have time to check the 31 other NFL teams but it is pretty safe to say that almost all of them have managed a last-minute comeback win at some point in the last 13 years.

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With their remodeled restaurants, additions to the menu and at least one nontraditional ally — mom bloggers — executives are trying to present a greener, more healthful McDonald’s. And in some ways the company is indeed changing. For the first time last year, McDonald’s sold more pounds of chicken than pounds of beef, a seismic shift that would be like Starbucks selling more tea than coffee.

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This software may be used to reproduce materials. It is licensed to you only for reproduction of non-copyrighted materials, materials for which you own the copyright, or materials you are authorized or legally permitted to reproduce. If you are uncertain about your right to copy any material, contact your legal advisor.

Labels: idiot, iTunes, licensing, public domain, Randmo

To dial a number, the user puts a finger in the corresponding finger hole and rotates the dial clockwise until it reaches the finger stop. The user then pulls out the finger, and a spring in the dial returns it to the resting position. For example, if the user dials '6' on a North American telephone, as the dial returns, electrical contacts wired through the mechanism underneath will open and close six times, thus sending six pulses to the central office.

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