Jay Peterson
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The Important lists

12/23/2022

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Watch every year Christmas movies/episodes/specials:

Muppet Family Christmas

The Hogfather
Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas
Nightmare before Christmas
Lion in Winter (Slight preference to Patrick Stewart/Glenn Close over Peter O'Toole/Katherine Hepburn)
Muppet Christmas Carol
Fraggle rock's Festival of the Bells
The Ref
Garfield's Christmas special

If I get to it Christmas movies/episodes/specials:

The Santa Clause

Scrooged
Gremlins
Batman Returns
Bad Santa
Mickey's Christmas Carol
Die Hard 2
Earnest Saves Christmas
The Star Wars Holiday Special
Life and Adventures of Santa Claus
He-man and She-ra Christmas special
Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special
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Going for a swim earlier today was good for me.

12/19/2022

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Listening to the Jan 6 referrals and then reading the twitter files #7 afterwards, not so much.
I think what disturbs me more than anything else is seeing how many people are so quick to justify any means for the sake of desired ends.
Devouring every mention of the sins of opponents and discarding any mention of the sins of allies.
I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that we're down to eating each other's garbage now.
This shit is so gonna come back to bite us all in the ass someday.
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Say what you will about Pawn Stars

12/11/2022

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but I can't think of a show that does better when it comes to demonstrating practical economics.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say it does for Economics and History what Mythbusters did for Science.
Rick's insistence that he's a businessman and needs to make a profit could be repetitive and annoying. But instead it grounds the show in pointing out the limits of reality, no matter what the age, rarity, or cool factor of the macguffin of the moment is. It's interesting without being harsh or ugly. It's not mundane and boring like a trip to get groceries, but it doesn't have the desperation of a payday loan or something of that nature. It's a neat thing for currency exchange every time, and the audience gets to see the neat thing no matter how the deal goes or even if it happens.
The fact that their guest experts all look like they were doing a panel at a Steampunk con when Rick gave them the call just adds to the fun.
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The Moore County power grid attack

12/7/2022

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I've been wondering how to put this for a while, just because of the sensitive topics involved.

The Facts


Saturday evening, Someone severely damaged power substations in Moore County, NC. Whoever did it used small arms fire, likely garden variety hunting rifles, to do the damage. As a result, power went out for the vast majority of the county.


The outage began at 7PM. Just as an 18-and-over drag show was beginning at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines, right in the middle of Moore county.


Moore county is a collection of small communities west of Ft. Bragg's training areas. It's more or less the only seriously inhabited areas between ft. Bragg and I-74. Figure just under 100,000 people.


The county sheriff claimed that whoever did it "knew exactly what they were doing and knew exactly what this kind of damage would do."


The FBI is investigating as possible terrorism.


The Conjecture


Apparently there's been an online hatemonger that's been pulling some "will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest" against said drag show.


The investigators so far claim to have not found any direct links between the drag show and the attack on the substations. And since they do this for a living and have more evidence than I do, I'm going to underline that in big bold letters.


That said,


One substation I could write off as drunk rednecks or dumbass teenagers.

Two is suspicious.
Two happening just as the curtain goes up on an already threatened drag show?
My eyebrow is officially raised.
Ergo, I'm going to write the rest of this with the assumption that it was a targeted attack on the drag show.

The bad


It looks like the county's power isn't going to be restored until later today.


The big reason being that some components were damaged beyond repair.


And replacement parts are hard to come by.


As it turns out, America's civil infrastructure is about as reliant on last-minuite delivery as our commercial infrastructure, thanks to several decades of incentivizing such things. And I dunno if you've looked at our supply chains lately, but they're kinda fucked up.


The attack on those substations was very easily done and would be very easily to scale up.

Doing that kind of damage used no more than four people.

Imagine what fifty or a hundred people scattered throughout a region could do.


And how swiftly what replacement parts were available would dry up.


The Good


If we're assuming that whoever did this was going for some kind of guerilla campaign against drag shows, they fucked up big time.


The number one rule of an insurgency is that the local populace has to be on your side. Otherwise, you can't do shit.


If the goal was to stop a drag show in a theater that seats just over 350 people?


Then they achieved it by cutting power to 90,000 people. For a week. In December.


Yeah, Moore county is solidly red politically.


And yeah, North Carolinians on the whole aren't too thrilled when some assholes with Bitterness Studies degrees from the left coast start telling them that they're better judges of what their children should be learning than they are.


And they really don't like it when they get accused of being terrorists for the crime of being active and concerned parents.


However,

Like most people of all political stripes, they're mostly concerned with doing their jobs, caring for their families, raising their children and living their lives like everybody else.

And some jackwagons made them cold and miserable for a week to shut down a drag show that didn't even let anyone under 18 in the door in the first place.


Any support they had from the locals, they pissed away.


Not gonna say how they could have been more effective, as I'd rather not offer constructive criticism to any terrorist readers of mine. But I will point out that this is what they fucked up.


Which leads me to the second good thing:


Someone's gonna blab. And they're gonna get caught.


I can believe that four guys managed to take out both substations, police their brass, and vanish without leaving traces easily enough.


What I don't believe is that Bubba, Cooter, Skeeter, and Tumbleweed could pull off something like that AND manage to keep their mouths shut at the same time.


There's only 12K people in Southern Pines. That's an "everybody knows your business" town.

Someone's gonna blab.

Maybe one of them. Maybe a nosy neighbor. Maybe a curious ex. But someone is gonna speak up.
And then Bubba, Cooter, Skeeter, and Tumbleweed are gonna find out how lonely cell structure is when yours gets compromised.

Take care of yourselves out there.
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Monday Morning Thoughts

12/5/2022

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In most social medias, the users are the product. That's why it's free. The algorithm is ostensibly designed to sell ad space targeted to users most likely to purchase the product. A long-term goal would be to show enough of what the users want to keep them coming back, but enough targeted ads to continue being profitable.

Most of the time, this only irritates the users, who want to see the people they want to see first and foremost, and have never liked ads anywhere, ever.

Occasionally they hit it out of the park.

There's an ad for a prop house with the tagline "Throw this at an actor" for their latest line of breakaway stuff, and I swear the algorithm can tell I'm still laughing at it.

Then there's tiktok.

Tiktok's algorithm is light-years ahead of any other social because it keeps giving you what you, the user, want. I noticed this when a friend of mine (who for lack of a better term, has been an influencer since before the term was coined) noticed that she was on there longer and longer without her noticing. Ads seem almost like an afterthought on tiktok. They're definitely nowhere near the profit-driven algorithms that govern other sites, which is a huge part of tiktok's popularity.

The question is, "why?"

I got the answer when I noticed a release in the national security news that a celebrity visitor to the white house had been tracked while they were there through tiktok when they used the app on the grounds.

Why?

Tiktok may not be owned by the CCP. But they are definitely controlled by the CCP. And the CCp isn't interested in selling ad space.

Ergo, the users aren't tiktok's product.

The real-time location of their users is tiktok's product.

Hence, the CCP has been able to track numerous VIP's, including several high-ranking government officials, through a social media phone app designed to upload real-time location data on a regular basis.

Now, so far, the CCP has only been shown to use this data against their own people. CCP police have set up shop in several American cities, targeting Chinese dissidents and refugees, threatening them and their families back in the PRC. Three were recently convicted in a court case of harassing, threatening, and even assaulting Chinese students here in the U.S.

Is this a danger to ordinary Americans?

Not yet. But imagine the political party you hate the most being able to know where you are within about 100 yards at any given time because the one site all your friends and the people you like are on is telling them.

Take care of yourselves out there.

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Strange things are afoot...

10/14/2022

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So yeah, I lost five pounds using a razor.

I assure you this isn't a drastic reaction to major uncomfortable life changes or anything.


The short version as to why is, "I'm playing a cop in a feature next month and there's really no way to wig around it."


The long version is a little more in depth.


This has been coming for a while now.


Acting is my job. My body is my instrument. Yadda yadda yadda...


Look, I loved my old look.


Headed for it right when I left active duty and never really looked back.


I really don't like the way I look clean shaven.


I hate having a double chin that makes it look like my face is disappearing into my head.


Jovial viking really is one of my types.


And if I could specialize in medieval fantasy productions, I would.


Unfortunately, they don't make those in America.


And I don't have the citizenship, work permits, or industry pull to work effectively in places where they do.


As I age into my look (I was one of those guys who looked 30 at puberty), I'm auditioning for just as many blue-collar muscle types as I usually do.


But I'm also reading for lots of dads, patriarchs, and authority figures in general.


And in the U.S., those types overwhelmingly have short hair, and have for the last century and a half.


It is what it is.


I'm a character actor.


Success in my niche is a numbers game.


And the numbers overwhelmingly go for short hair.


In the rare case long hair is preferred, it's a lot easier to put me in a wig than it is the other way around.


The other big reason is that I'm balding. Hard to tell at the moment with so few people actually looking down on me, but it's happening. If my maternal uncle is any indication, I figure I got maybe a decade before I'm down to a Captain Picard crescent. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but while I can rock bald and bearded anytime easy, I'm not Richard O'Brian, I can't make a skullet look good.


And because I'm definitely looking into more creature type roles in the future, short hair makes it easier for my makeup-wielding collaborators to work on me.


My career is growing steadily every year.


I'm just helping it along for a while. With luck, helping a great deal.


So yeah.


Fuck, it's a damn sight healthier than some of the wacky shit I could be doing to change my appearance for this fucking industry, that's for damn sure.


Take care of yourselves out there.

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Timeshares: the devil's real estate

10/13/2022

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If you don't have upper-middle-class boomer parents, you most likely know about timeshares from that episode of South Park about the presentation that just won't die.

Well, the presentation is only part of the nightmare.

On the surface, a timeshare is just like buying a condo. Only you're not buying a condo. You're buying access to said condo for a one-week increment of the year. Most of them are in vacation areas. And if you "own" a week near a holiday period, then it's regarded as better (and more expensive) than weeks at other times of the year. Only it has all the closing costs, fees, and taxes of buying a condo, even though you're only getting it one week a year. And of course there's an annual maintenance fee.

Remember the latest round of incels babbling about how a new car loses value the moment you drive it off the lot? They're right about the car, just fucked up comparing a human being to said car.

Anyway, a timeshare goes negative in value the moment the papers are signed. The contract is nigh-impossible to get out of. I swear, the only reason this bullshit is still legal is that the primary victim pool is full of people used to writing checks to make problems go away.

So why am I talking about this now?

Well, a member of my polycule lost a parent earlier this year. And among the various adventures in estates we've had ever since, one thing we found is that they inherited not one but three timeshares in the process.

We're not the first children of boomers to deal with this bullshit, we ain't gonna be the last. So here's some heads-up for my gen x and millennial bretheren, sisteren, and enbyren.

There are, in fact, a small handful of ways you can get rid of a timeshare.

(There are a number of companies that will offer to help you get rid of a timeshare. My only advice is to get rid of these companies first. Preferably before they know you exist. And people wonder why I want dueling to be legal in America. Motherfuckers...)

Almost all of them require two things.

One, the timeshare has to be paid off.

Two, there can't be any outstanding fees or taxes on it.

One way is to try selling it to some other sucker. Heh. Good luck with that.

Another way is asking the timeshare company (because yes there's a company that tracks all up-to-52 of you suckers to buy a week of that particular unit) if they have a buyback program. Most don't, but there's no harm in asking.

If you really believe you haven't done nearly enough sinning in your life, you can try and donate it to a charity. I kinda twitched at the idea at first, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of my generation donate their late parents' timeshares to the salvation army out of sheer spite.

The last method is available in some states, my home of Georgia being one of them. Here, an inheritor can renounce their claim to a timeshare. But it has to happen in less than nine months from the death of the original owner. It just involves writing a declaration to the timeshare company renouncing claim to the unit. Again, it's got to be paid off and outstanding taxes and maintenance have to be paid. But it works.

(Because we've all played Garou, it was quickly declared the rite of renunciation.)

Anyways, like I said, we're not the first to deal with this, we ain't gonna be the last.

If you're an adult, have a fucking will. I've had one since I was 25. It's not nearly as creepy as it sounds.
I know it's uncomfortable talking about death and what comes after, but have the conversation. You have no idea how much extra hassle you'll be saving those left behind.

And never buy a timeshare.

And dueling should be legal.

Take care of yourselves out there.

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Afternoon thoughts

9/27/2022

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I'm seeing a relatively new professional trade experiencing some growing pains.

The second and third generations are learning from the pioneers. And in doing so, the pioneers are codifying their standards and practices and whatnot. Which, because times being what they are, involve certifications and professional organizations and of course, instructor fees.


And some in the second and third generations are balking.


"Who certified you?" they say. "What classes did you pay to go to?" "This was given to you."


Not. So. Much.


What the shiny pieces of paper and time spent truly means is guidance down a path to a goal. A goal you share. And an affiliated goal of guiding others down that path.


The pioneers had the goal, but the path did not exist.


They had a vague sense of direction and a dense and uncharted wilderness between them and that goal.


Then one of them picked up a machete and started swinging in what they thought was the right direction.


Then another. And another.


They spent years picking up machetes and blazing that trail.


They were given skepticism. They were given sneering. They were given scoffs. They were given derision.


Then somehow, people started noticing that not only was this goal feasible, there was a path to it.


The pioneers are looking at that path and thinking about all the hazards still on it. All the places to get hurt or lost along the way. Some of the more forward-thinking ones are wondering if there are easier paths to the goal out there.


Pretty much all of them realize that it's going to take lifetimes to find out.


Gods know there's validity in taking the claims of those who came before with a grain of salt.


And the value in understanding the why before setting yourself to learning how.


But it's a bit difficult to put the calluses gained from swinging a machete on one's resume.


There is value in realizing that they weren't given.


(I ain't saying what the trade is. Think what you will.)

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State of the Jay

9/16/2022

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Books

Renfield Blues is almost ready to go in dead tree and ebook form.

Waiting on some stuff.
No release date yet.
Rest assured I won't be subtle about it when it does happen.
Audiobook version keeps getting kicked down the priority list.
Might wind up being a 2023 thing.

Book sequel


I'm about 10K words into Ghost Light, the next book in the Gruntverse.

It will be a Phantom of the rock opera story, with Travis going undercover as an assistant stage manager.
No idea when I'll be calling for beta readers there, because...

Acting


I wasn't quite as busy as I'd hoped to be this year.

In a weird place, career-wise.
Fortunately, my calendar for the year is filling up fast.

Body


Better than last year and 2019, as measured in the "how much energy and how much aching does Dragoncon need and cause respectively?" scale.

I was not happy with my stamina and mobility in 2019.
Then I spent the first year or so of the pandemic frustrated at being able to be in better condition but unable to be in better shape (long story).
This year I've had a lot more energy and much better recovery.
Made it a point to hit either the range or the pool at least once a week over the summer, and results definitely showed by Dcon.
Here's to better still.
I'm beyond caring about gains and losses at this point.
I just want to break some generational habits and have working feet in 30 years.

Family


Doing really good, actually.

A lot of shit happened that I'll continue to be vague about, but the end results have really made us closer, oddly enough.

Season


In the last few days, it's finally started to smell like autumn here.

And it is glorious.
It's also been notably cooler, which I hope continues.

World


Still on fire, but not in many ways worth commenting on.

I'm so sick of "X being an asshole to Y because Z, Y being an asshole to X because Q, X and Y blaming R..."
Same old shitpot.
Not worth taking the time to stir it.
So that's me at the moment.

Take care of yourselves out there.


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Wow

7/30/2022

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So I read HR1808 (The latest Assault Weapons Ban) last night, after the House passed it.

If I was a gun control advocate, I'd be pissed.


I mean, I'm not. I have a functioning brain and I'm not a wannabe tyrant. But if I was, I'd be pissed.

Because the Democrats shafted those fuckers yet again.


Don't get me wrong, it's better written than the 94 ban. Only one cosmetic feature puts something on the list instead of two, not to mention the long list of current models it mentions. Got rid of banning bayonet lugs (but still bans grenade launchers as a feature, like ~that's~ been an ongoing problem).


It also grandfathers all banned weapons already in private hands.


There's 25-30 Million AR's in private hands alone. And parts for a million more. Ten were made in garages and basements as I wrote this. And close to 2 billion high capacity magazines for them alone.

(really standard capacity but gun control advocates are either too willfully ignorant to realize that or too evil to care)


And that doesn't even include AK and other platforms out there.


The fuck of it is, the Uvalde, Highland Park, and Buffalo shooters all purchased their weapons legally (despite police dropping the ball in at least two of those cases).


And the advocates of this ban will take that truth and use it to wrap the bullshit lie that this latest ban will do a damn thing to make anyone a single bit safer from mass shootings in the future.


This is why Democrats keep winning and being useless. They assume their constituents are too stupid to realize what's going on or too desperate to care. And all too often, they're proven right.


Like I said: not a gun control advocate. But if I was, I'd be pissed. Because the Democrats will try to hose those sorry little fuckers into thinking something's been accomplished.


It hasn't. Even if Moscow Mitch and the women-aren't-people rodeo in the senate don't squash it on arrival, it won't do a damn thing.


Take care of yourselves out there.
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    Jay Peterson

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