TL;DR - I had a miserable time playing this game. I'm not even sure why I played it to its end. I'm not saying that this is a bad game; I'll give the reasons for my reaction below. I write my game reviews (as inconsequential as they are) in the order in which I play the games.…
I was going through some old papers (looking for my COVID vaccination record), when I came across my mother's genealogy. It turns out that my mother's mother's father, Solomon Kligfeld, came from the Ukraine. I'd known that my mother's family had emigrated from Russia. But of course, in the early 20th century the Ukraine was considered "Russia".…
No big deal. I rarely used it. It was fun to glance at a few things that some celebrities said, and occasionally there'd be a thread written by someone I respected. However, if I want to read a lengthy opinion, I'd rather read the essay in its entirety, like on a blog. (Looks around.) For example, the…
I last hosted a Passover seder in 2018. In 2019 I couldn't cook the seder, but B, a good friend, did the cooking and I sat with them. In 2020 and 2021, the pandemic meant that a seder was out of the question. Now it's 2022. We've got vaccines! We've got at-home COVID tests! We can do…
Last Saturday, a couple of friends came to visit: C and LM. Don't worry, all three of us tested negative on an at-home COVID test before we met. LM brought her dog, Luna, who is a Miniature Schnauzer. LM has brought some of her dogs to my place before, but this was the first time she's done…
Recently, a friend texted me with the following question. Here is that question and my reply in more-or-less the text format of my responses. I have heard that the Gardnerian tradition is pretty secretive. Is this true, and to what extent are those details secretive? I can’t tell you, because it’s a secret! OK, seriously: The word…
This is my once-a-decade reminder that there was a web series that portrayed LARPing in a fully positive light: LARPs It's an antidote to all the depictions in media (like Knights of Badassdom) of LARPers as silly or divorced from reality.
I've often said that Horizon: Zero Dawn is my favorite console video game. (My favorite video game is The Prisoner for the Apple II. It's no longer easily playable.) This Friday, the game's sequel Horizon: Forbidden West will be released. I'm excited! I've already purchased it, and it's already been downloaded to my Playstation. On Friday it…
I recently received some photographs from 1997. They'd been sitting in my father's files for 24 years. This takes me back... Although I received my Ph.D. in particle physics in 1996, I didn't formally graduate from Columbia University until 1997. For the occasion, my mother Beatrice and her husband Bob flew from California to attend the ceremony.…
I started reading the Wheel of Time series about 30 years ago. I don't remember much about the plot. When I got to the third book, I felt that the author was spinning his wheels and didn't know how to finish a story. By the time I finished the fourth book, I thought, "Well, at least I'm…