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And Now Some Total Confusion Total Con 2024 That is. Day 1

Posted: February 23, 2024 by datechguy in fun, gaming, special events
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In a story 30 years in the making friends friends finally got me to the Total Confusion Gaming Convention 2024. Here’s the story in video so far:

Yes the venue is the same as Pintastic 2023, in fact Dave Marson was there putting out some cards promoting Pintastic 2024.

Here’s a few pre-setup images

Including the open gamming room (same area as the free play room at Pintastic.

One of the rather cool things is their library of games, old and new, that can be borrowed for play.

Those shots are all before the gaming began, once things got rolling the place really filled up, here is a shot of the same room in the evening.

Of course this is just the straight board gamming area which is my interest, the rooms on the other side of the hotel which were the club rooms were for assorted role playing games and the end room which was the tourney room for Pintastic is for D&D.

The real stars of the place are the people some who were there to work.

And many many others who thanks to that hard work where there to play, here are a few: Michael

That foyer area where I talked to Michael was where the band played at Pintastic was full of gaming tables, many of them games I’ve not heard of. It’s sobering to think that the games I brought were 33 (Blackbeard) & 46 (Source of the Nile) years old. (I also had a brand new copy of Dynasty Baseball but I digress)

What was rather interesting about talking to Leanne…

…was that she was the exception to the rule in that her husband didn’t really talk on camera but she did, usually it’s the other way around.

I talked to Patrick just before the start of the Advanced Civilization game

of all the events there that was the one I most wanted to play in but I didn’t sign up because I figured I’d never make it there in time, but I got out of work early the night before and ended up waking up by 5 AM so I was there ready to play but alas the open seat that I had been told existed did not as the person who reserved a spot that wasn’t there turned up at the last minute.

On the bright side by 3 pm the game was still going strong (Civ takes 8-9 hours one of the best games ever but BOY it’s long).

There are two things that you must realize about total confusion that took me off guard. The first was the lack of noise. Being used to Pintastic the sound of the various Pinball machines are always around you, with Total Con that simply doesn’t exist.

But the 2nd is more subtle. With a pinball convention it doesn’t matter what room you enter or what the theme of a particular pinball machine is, all pinball players might stop to play it for a second which makes it a group unified. It is the complete opposite here. Again you have a group of people who are all gamers and in that sense similar Here there is pretty much an army of people but each in a particular niche to play a particular game or a particular type of roleplaying game, or miniatures games.

There were a few who brought games to introduce people to them, one game that I had such an interest in myself was being played right behind me called John Company, all about the East India Company which had a huge influence on the world’s history. Chris was kind enough to give me an overview:

Of all the games I saw there on day one it was the one I was most tempted to just try but it was late in the day and I was going home for the night.

At least on day one there weren’t a lot of people just wandering to find a game of any type, but I did meet a podcaster A. Lewanika Miller who turned out to be one of the most interesting people I met that day.

After the camera was off we started talking cooking in general and Italian cooking in particular which is a passion of his and would have made a good interview in itself but my battery was low and I forgot my spare.

You can find his podcast here.

I’m typing this at 3:30 AM having woke up at a bit after 3 getting 3 1/2 hours sleep. I’ll likely leave for the Hotel before 4. I’m going to bring a couple of old Avalon Hill games to join Blackbeard and Source, namely History of the World (of which I found an extra copy in the house with the original cover art not the one in that image) and Age of Renaissance one of the best games there is.

I’m also doing something original with both Blackbeard and Source. Both games are still set up and are considered “in progress” so any person who walks by can choose to just “jump in” and play the question being. Can they beat the scores of the people who have played thus far or manage an outright win?

Today I’ll be sleeping over a friend’s house who is a 15 min drive from the hotel so I might stay late and/or do more. There seemed to be very little interested in the Dynasty game from the day 1 crowd, perhaps some sports gamers will be there for day 2. It will be a tad more complicated being a Friday in Lent in terms of dining (no grilled chicken Caesar) but it won’t be boring. I’m actually rather curious how many if any all night games are going on and might leave at 4 AM in order to find out.

So Google AI Knew Col Lawson was right all along!

Posted: February 22, 2024 by datechguy in culture, tech
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Col. Tad Lawson: [drunkenly] There are no Nazis in Germany. Didn’t you know that, Judge? The Eskimos invaded Germany and took over. That’s how all those terrible things happened. It wasn’t the fault of the Germans. It was the fault of those damn Eskimos!

Sometimes we let our myths get ahead of us.

Decades of TV and Movies depicting computers and AI as something sentient, capable of independent thought or even beyond humans in terms of humanity or right and wrong has corrupted public perception in the same way that 60 years of Disney movies full of talking animals has made some people forget that animals are dangerous and if given the chance will kill and eat you.

Thus we see the shock SHOCK that Google’s AI seems to be incapable of showing a white person thus the Vikings, the founding fathers and all the popes become people of color.

As far as the AI is concerning Col Lawson was right. Given the choice between showing the Nazi’s of 1944 as Caucasians or Eskimos they’ll give them that Inuit look every time.

Why? For the same reason that it doesn’t dare show an image of Tiananmen Square…Because it’s a computer program doing what it’s been ordered to do by the people who wrote it.

The reality that Google AI is just a computer program, a complex computer program, with access to all kinds of data, but a computer program that operators under the parameters that the programmers have given it and if people understood that this is what it is then all of this stuff would be no big deal.

But folks have been sold by language and culture to convince you that it’s something it’s not.

Just like “The cloud” People upload all kinds of things to “The Cloud” not thinking that what they’re doing is uploading things to large server farms run by various companies.

If people thought of their data being freely to these folks they might think twice, but because it’s called “the cloud” that thought doesn’t hit them.

Anyone who trusts AI to do anything other than what it’s been told by the people who programmed it and thus the people who paid the people who programmed it are fools.

Don’t be a fool, no matter what Google Gemini tells you, it wasn’t the Eskimos.

Ends and Means Joe Biden Edition

Posted: February 21, 2024 by datechguy in Blame Biden Administration, election 2024
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Have you noticed that the same people on the left who are now all worried about Joe Biden being on the top of the ticket are the ones who helped push RFK Jr. out of the Democrat primary and did all they could to keep any other potential democrat challenger out of the race? In fact the reason why Iowa was bypassed and NH had to launch a write-in campaign for old Joe was because the Democrats desperate to make sure that no democrat challenged him, moved the first primary of the season out of the two traditional starting points because of fears that Joe would not do well.

Yet now after that successful campaign what are we seeing. Piece after piece and commentary after commentary from the left that Joe Biden needs to step aside.

Why? Because reality has begun asserting itself and the state of the country not to mention the state of Joe Biden can no longer be denied.

Make no mistake, the only driver of this change in heart is the change in the polls. As long as the dementia patient version of Joe Biden was polling well then it wouldn’t matter. In fact the Obama team that’s running the show is likely happy to keep Joe out of the loop.

But now their power is being threatened. They fear a result beyond the margin of theft and that fear is driving everything you see now.

I have no idea how this ends but if the polls continue the way they are I won’t be shocked if Joe Biden suddenly died in office due to old age. Such a thing is entirely plausible as most men his age are in fact dead but the level of coincidence in terms of timing, that will be….interesting.

Rep Talib: Bad Ends Right Means

Posted: February 20, 2024 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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As you might guess I’m not much of a fan of Representative Talib of Michigan. She is an ultra leftist anti-Semite who is wrong on almost every issue out there.

Her defense of Hamas is horrible although to be fair as a Palestinian brought up by Palestinians, I’m less shocked by the antisemitism than most because of what she has been taught all her life. It would be extraordinary if she wasn’t an anti-Semite and frankly coming from the district she represents it she likely would not be sitting in congress if she didn’t have her current opinions on Israel.

But while I strongly object to all of these things this story concerning her suggestion that Michigan Democrat voters protest Biden’s “support” for Israel by voting uncommitted in the Michigan primary is quintessentially American:

It’s early voting time in Michigan. On Saturday, Tlaib was outside a polling place, a civic center, and urged Michigan Democrats to show Biden they condemn his support of Israel in the Israel-Hamas war. The uncommitted movement tracks with her recent votes in Congress. She and fellow Squad member Rep.Cori Bush (D-MO) voted against banning Hamas terrorists from entering the United States. Tlaib was the only vote in the House to refuse to condemn the rape of women by Hamas. 

Any reader of this blog knows that I not only support Israel here but think that the destruction of Hamas is long overdue. I think she’s wrong and dead wrong.

In addition to being dead wrong she is going about advancing her dead wrong position in exactly the right way. In a republic if you have a position you wish political leaders to support what are you supposed to do? You energize a voting block to pressure pols to adopt the position you are trying to advance.

This is exactly how our system is supposed to work and as the Muslim population grows in the US and starts to outstrip other communities these methods are more likely to be effective. The fact that she is pushing for something horrible is not relevant to the method being used. Of course the irony that she is using this democratic method to support a group of people who violently exterminate any internal opposition is likely lost on her but that’s to be expected.

I suspect as the Tom Hagen math continues in Talib’s favor you will see a lot of Democrats walking away from Israel. With luck Hamas will be a footnote in history long before that date.

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