Kerbal Space Program

Well - bad news. One of my favorite "games" - Kerbal Space Program - has lost a large chunk of it's development team over at Squad. After thanking the professionalism, etc. of the dev team, Squad posted the following:

“But this is not all! Here at Squad we’re looking into the future and we have great and ambitious plans for the KSP franchise and even more!

Looks like they're trying to rehire. 

Completely unknown at this time is how much of the driving vision of KSP was due to any of the leaving members, and how well future development work will fare. I have my fingers crossed.

Why, you ask? 

KSP is an old school sandbox game that matches the insane level of detail of most flight simulators with orbital mechanics, and cute little green guys who die in rocket crashes. Which will happen. A lot. Did I mention crashes? It demands patience, has a steep learning curve, and the high you get when you finally, finally, land a Kerbonaut on the "Mun" is worth every second of it. The crowd playing the game develops delta-vee charts for various booster configs so you can calculate needed fuel tankage and thrusters for various payloads and mission profiles, develops plugins for everything from increased detail to autopilot systems to even more insanely realistic physics. 

Kipling: Study of an Elevation, In Indian Ink

Even back in my blue-pill and, bluntly, somewhat gamma days, I read this poem in high school and recognized what a sad, jealous, petty, sack of shit the narrator of this poem was.

Study of an Elevation, In Indian Ink

    This ditty is a string of lies.
     But-how the deuce did Gubbins rise?

          Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.
          Stands at the top of the tree;
And I muse in my bed on the reasons that led
          To the hoisting of Potiphar G.

          Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.,
          Is seven years junior to Me;
Each bridge that he makes either buckles or breaks,
          And his work is as rough as he.

          Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.,
          Is coarse as a chimpanzee;
And I can't understand why you gave him your hand,
          Lovely Mehitabel Lee.

          Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.,
          Is dear to the Powers that Be;
For They bow and They smile in an affable style,
          Which is seldom accorded to Me.

          Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.,
          Is certain as certain can be
Of a highly paid post which is claimed by a host
          Of seniors -- including Me.

          Careless and lazy is he,
          Greatly inferior to Me.
That is the spell that you manage so well,
          Commonplace Potiphar G.?

          Lovely Mehitabel Lee,
          Let me inquire of thee,
Should I have riz to where Potiphar is,
          Hadst thou been mated to Me?

             -Rudyard Kipling

What a Week

I go away for a few days, and when I come back from what I thought would be a quiet weekend on the news front at least, there are a lot of things to let slide.

Seriously, Tim Burton, the brilliantly hit-or-miss director of endless movies about outcast freaks was taken to task for insufficient dieversity (and no, I'm not linking to the Verge....)? I don't think he's figured out yet that liberals, especially SJW's, are not the tolerant ones, nor do they care about artistic vision, only their vision.

Duke starts a re-education campus course on toxic masculinity? Of course, they insist it isn't....

In a piece of true glory though, I finally found a use for personal pronouns....

A conservative student at the University of Michigan brilliantly worked the school’s new pronoun policy in a way that shows just how absurd things have gotten on college campuses. From now on, Grant Stroble’s professors have to address him as “His Majesty.”

Remember when I said one of Apple's few advantages was that they had internal "tribal" knowledge of how their product was developed, assembled, and programmed from top to bottom? Well - so much for that one....

BEIJING—Apple Inc.’s first research center in China will be a $45 million facility located in the capital to develop hardware, the site’s landlord said, announcing some of the first details of the project.

No, they're not moving everything offsite, but now it's not just manufacturing but company-critical research stuff is now moving to places not here, not at the center of the company, and subject to the whims of third parties.  It's a core competency of theirs. I know Michael Crichton had a few choice words about the long-term wisdom of such moves in his book Airframe.

Thanks.... For Nothing

I'm back, safe and sound, and I'll be putting some thoughts down related to the trip itself soon. In the meantime, I came back to this brilliant, and only mildly understated bit of satire:

Monday Art: Frederic Church

One more time...