Have they (y'know, science people) ruled out the possibility that the memories are confabulated (over a period of time longer than milliseconds) during the groggy period when you're waking up?
Getting downtown on a Sunday night, I'm always iffy about, but I'll try to make it.
I remember reading accounts where they tried to measure dream time and found it was the normal speed. If one can dream lucidly one can also communicate to the outside world by looking in different directions (that is, you still have conscious control over your eyes). They tried to count off some number of seconds alternating looking left and right, and found the elapsed time was the same.
Who "they" was I don't remember, so caveats for all.
it doesn't seem likely that I was psychically predicting the phone ring, though. haven't you ever hit the 9-minute snooze and had a fucking epic unfold?
2: I'll be there saturday but so out of it because it's my first day, I just don't think I can hack it...I'm open to more uptown-ish locations if the brooklyn commuters are. I'm staying in a supremely un-hip location, though, and thus have no suggestion. and since no one is as uptown as LB maybe it doesn't make a difference once it's south of 135th st.
smearcase! AWB! tia! jackmormon! standpipe! awesome people whom I'm forgetting for some reason! I demand everyone! I'm a try to lure ta-nehisi if he's not researching in the southland or some shit.
Inception was a totally successful movie!
I am somewhat unlikely to make Fresh Salt on a Sunday night, as I have to be back approximately there Monday morning. The distance of things has started to ruin my fun sometimes, because I take cabs about once a year. But it's a lovely place and y'uns'all should totally go.
(I'm as uptown as LB, in a geographical sense, if not a Billy Joel sense.)
haven't you ever hit the 9-minute snooze and had a fucking epic unfold?
I always assume it's pretty much a bunch of short disconnected fragments that my brain somehow attempts to reconstruct a more logical story to fit.
:-( I want smearcase! and oudemia! let me mull saturday. would more people make saturday? does someone know some uptown-ish locale which is more amenable?
I think I'll be on a plane, and hence miserable, at the time of this meetup. Someone should drink for me.
I can do Saturday or Sunday. Prefer not too uptown if it's Sunday.
I almost never remember my dreams, so I've never had the ten years in Narnia crammed into 9 minutes of real-time thing. But I often have a groggy dissociated period of some seconds when I'm waking up, and it seems a possibility to me that between the ring and the time that I'm awake enough to 'remember' the dream, my brain could have constructed the whole narrative. It would still be fast work, but not milliseconds.
If your experience is that you're instantly awakened on hearing the alarm and remember the dream in full, then that would probably rule out the scenario I'm thinking of. (Though I guess even then there is an outside possibility that your body-clock knows when it's half-an-hour or whatever before the alarm is going to go off, and starts the dream from there.)
Sorry that you're having such bad dreams in the first place, by the way. Sounds awful.
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Apparently NMM to Amy Winehouse.
>
yeah, I have always had horrible dreams. they have been reduced from their worst but getting friended by cthulu has kicked them back up somewhat. not to the worst, though...
I guess I'll stick with sunday but solicit uptown-y suggestions to lure these uptown types. I'll be staying on the ever-fashionable upper east side.
16.--Christ. Not unanticipated, unfortunately, but still. I'd sort of put her into the "might just pull through" category.
I can deliver myself pretty much anywhere on the 31st.
aw, fuck, poor amy winehouse. going to bed. stick with sunday and unless some uptown consensus emerges we'll just default to the salt.
I can deliver myself pretty much anywhere on the 31st.
Great! I'm moving that day and I can use some help on the SF end.
14: I do have an unusually accurate sense of time when awake, which explains such things before the timed alarm, but not the phone call.
I wish I were in SF. It's like the Russian Baths over here.
It's finally sunny out here, after 50s/60s/clouds and rain. I'm hoping DC will be back in the 90s by the time I get back. And by 90s, I mean government shut down and Gingrich in the news.
I can no longer live by the NMM rule.
I wish I were in SF. It's like the Russian Baths over here.
With CA imploding the weather map is reinforcing my belief that the Rockies and Northwest are the only sane places to live.
I can make it anywhere but have a distinct preference for FS over uptown.
Part of my apartment's power went yesterday evening - all overhead lights, most sockets, and no living room AC. But I had the essentials: bedroom AC and fridge. Plus enough sockets to get some light and a computer going. Now it's miraculously switched back on.
Sounds like it's too late, but Saturday would be much better for me, as the boy is with my ex and I wouldn't have to get a sitter (which I will definitely try to do for Sunday). I am indifferent as to location.
and smearcase, I will pay for your taxi rides if you come! I don't give a shit!
ttaM's gotta buy his own ticket, though.
I'm going to cycle, on a fixie.
And now that I'm in New York, the very first meet-up happens when I'm taking a long weekend in Chicago. Offff course.
I'll eventually make my way to meeting y'all
I'm reconsidering my statement about inception. it was a successful movie, really, just not a great movie.
I'm going to cycle, on a fixie.
Yay, it's a bike thread now!
My wheels need to be trued. Blume, will you true my wheels?
If you bring them to Massachusetts! I actually just got a truing stand for my birthday.
PoMo: Don't feel bad. I am clearly not liked enough. My cries for a Boston meet-up have fallen on deaf ears.
That is sadly unlikely. New question. Would it be feasible, or ridiculous, to put some kind of rack or whatnot on my bicycle?
A bike thread! And I just had my bike stolen! It's like synchronicity, but the mean kind.
Panniers, that's the word I couldn't remember.
I don't think it would be ridiculous at all. If you want to use panniers with a back rack, you just have to make sure that you get a rack + pannier combo that will set the bag far enough back that you don't get heel strike.
I just learned that Tubus (= awesome racks, but expensive) makes a line of aluminum racks under the brand Racktime.
The nearest Racktime dealer to me is apparently located in Canada.
It sounds like you can find them at other places as well; people were talking about them here.
I ended up ordering my Tubus from a place in Great Britain, but I knew exactly the one I wanted.
Once, long ago, Sifu talked about the bike crowd that you, Blume, "run with", and at first I thought he really meant that you went running with people who, while running, spoke of bikes.
I don't run with anyone, because I am too slow. I am that person you feel sorry for when you see her running, because it looks so unnatural and wrong. I am not one of those bounding gazelle people.
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After three days of heat exhaustion--complete with insomnia, nausea, and confusion--my roommate and I finally broke down and got an AC. It's like a whole new world!
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My parents have been noticing a strange smell near their water heater. They called someone from the gas company to come check for leaks. He told them "oh, don't worry, what you're smelling is carbon monoxide, and every water heater releases a little bit of it when it's functioning properly." The hell?
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Maybe he means that what they're smelling is an odorous gas mixed in with the carbon monoxide to render it detectable.
Otherwise, I concur.
Presumably, the gas company guy means that the smell your parents described is that of some combustion by product that is a normal part of heating water. Or maybe he'd rather let them die than mess up his coffee.
Either way, your parents should have a CO detector placed at some point below the level at which they lay their heads to sleep. I think that most CO detectors also pick up natural gas.
In all seriousness, I've been thinking about getting another bike. Probably some cheap junk road-bike that I can leave at the station in Oxford, rather than trying to cart my other bike back and forth on the train. I'm hoping 50 quid or so will get me an old Raleigh/Peugeot/Puch type bike. Not a fixed-speed, though.
53: They do have a CO detector, so they're in no imminent danger, it just seems like the gas company guy was weirdly flippant. And they've had the same water heater for a decade or so, and never noticed the smell before, so it doesn't seem like part of its normal operation.
Maybe a canary, just to be safe. Ten years isn't absurdly soon to need to replace a water heater if you have shitty water or use a bunch of hot water or bought a shitty water heater.
50 About time. NYC summers suck without AC.
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A number of folks here might be familiar with this, but I found this NY Time Magazine profile of Tarn Adams, creator of Dwarf Fortress, pretty fascinating. I liked his take on "simple" games:
Tarn sees his work in stridently ethical terms. He calls games like Angry Birds or Bejeweled, which ensnare players in addictive loops of frustration and gratification under the pretense that skill is required to win, "abusive"|>
...
"I used to value the ability to turn the user into your slave. I don't anymore."
58: I gave that like an hour and I couldn't even figure out how to start digging.
I'm hoping 50 quid or so will get me an old Raleigh/Peugeot/Puch type bike. Not a fixed-speed, though.
I am ridiculously fond of Puchs, though it seems like they're either really nice steel (Reynolds 531) or really heavy stuff, with little in between. Or maybe that's just what ended up over here.
I can't remember what it was that happened a couple of weeks ago that made various people think the dems had won/were going to win on the debt ceiling issue but it seems irrelevant now.
I've got a '88 peugeot, bought new back then. It still works well.
Yeah, I tried DF when I was visiting my parents at Christmas. I think I managed to dig but was stymied by the need to flood a room and then let it dry before I could plant crops (mushrooms?).
Ham-Love is our DF ambassador*. Anyone else seriously involved?
*I think that was the thread which prompted Moby to try it.
61: the whole thing has been sickening to watch. So, let's assume this ends as it now appears it will: with the Dems conceding trillions of dollars in cuts* in exchange for what used to be a pro forma extension of the nation's ability to service its debts. If that's what happens, can you think of a time, since the Civil War, when a party that controlled both the Senate and the Oval Office got rolled like this? I don't think I can.
* Not to mention, putting SS and Medicare cuts on the table.
what used to be a pro forma extension of the nation's ability to service its debts
It's like we're a developing nation and they're our IMF. Although in another possible outcome, they could be our anti-debt service anti-globalization protesters. They can be anything they want, except losers. That's reserved for the other party.
65.1: And possibly the chance to do it all over again during an election year.
67: about a month ago, I thought there was a reasonable chance (maybe 25%) that Obama would lose if Romney became the GOP nominee. I was thinking about the economy, mostly, but also the real (and justifiable) anger on the left. On the other hand, I figured the GOP governors in the Upper Midwest and maybe Florida would bail him out, delivering several swing states to the Dems. But now, assuming we have to go through this appalling nonsense again next year, I'd say that absent a real recovery, no incumbent -- in the House, Senate, or Oval Office -- will be even a little safe. The whole thing is absolutely nuts. I've never seen anything at all like it. And like I said, I can't think of a historical precedent, though a colleague suggests during the second Cleveland administration, the depression of the 1890s, with the Morgan bailout of the White House and the response to the Pullman strike.
The whole thing is absolutely nuts.
The Californization of the federal government. Except DC doesn't even have the absurdity of government by referenda to blame.
Californization
ITYM "Californication."
68: Except during the 1890s there was a lot less for the government to sell out on.
Pending approval from work (which should be just a formality), I will be returning to New York, after a 7 year absence, sometime in late September, or possibly very early October.
But probably only for 3-4 days, so I'm guessing the meet-up, if there is one, will be small, as the timing will be tricky.
Let me be the first to suggest Fresh Salt.
Unfogged meetups end up being four or five people, averaging less than once a month, and not drinking all that heavily -- we're not keeping their doors open. It's a nice little place, but the main attraction is that the music isn't too loud, and you can usually get a table.
77: Ah, but the word-of-mouth and reputational marketing boost they get must be immense. We're like the kewl kidz at school who you give your apparel to for free (or at a large discount)* . Or then again, maybe not.
*I think there's a "technical" name for this but I'm forgetting it, Knecht would know.
ttaM, was going to suggest backontrax.co.uk for a bike, but they seem to have got a bit more expensive since I last looked at them. EBay?
four or five people? no!! I demand everyone, plus lurkers. I loooove me some lurkers. come support me in meatspace!!
and there's no better way for expressing your support in meatspace than taking off your pants.
re: 79
Yeah, or a few of the second hand bike shops. Gumtree, maybe. My budget is def. under 100 quid. I already have a bike, so this is something i) lighter, and ii) less theft-worthy, so I can leave it at the station, or overnight at work if I don't want to ride.
Giving this post a bump (or making a new one) might be a good idea, since alameida's proposed NYC meetup is tomorrow and she seems quite intent on maximizing turnout.
Also, I will be passing through Pittsburgh on Monday as part of my epic cross-country road trip. This may be too last-minute to arrange a meetup, but I figured I should at least mention it.
84: We can try for something. Drop me an e-mail at my pseud address with details (when and where you come in and/or are staying) and I will send a proposal to any local e-mail addresses I have. I'd suggest Kelly's (place we went when Stanislaus came to town)--seems to be open Mondays and I have no independent imagination.
My only caveat is that some fairly serious foundation work is scheduled to start on my house on Monday so it might command my attention (doubtful, though).
Someone should email JRoth, too. Doesn't he live right around the corner from that place (which was very meet-up friendly)?
Maybe JRoth is in Texas, and teo will be able to meet him there.
87: Yes, I will get in touch with him and Cosma. Not sure I have Moby Hickster's but he will surely see this.
Would it be shitty of me to suggest Ginger Man in midtown at this late date? Feel free to default to Fresh Salt but Ginger Man is my vote because it's 1/3 of the way closer to home.
I did see it. My email is on this comment and I'm free that evening.
86: Will do. Details are still pretty up in the air at this point, but it's looking pretty solid that it will be Monday night that I'm there.
90: We've had meetups at Ginger Man before; the main concerns with it have been that it's quite loud and hates children.
Maybe JRoth is in Texas, and teo will be able to meet him there.
I will be going through Texas, but not the part that JRoth is most likely to be in.
Is anyone bringing kids? Also, loudness of that place depends a lot on time of day and day of week.
I'm sad to be missing Di and Will tomorrow, meeting nearby. I have a band cookout thing.
Oh! Are any NYC around August 6th? I'm playing the Cakeshop with my new-ish band.
Someone in this thread was aboard the same vintage battleship as William Shatner this evening.
Ladies.
I prefer The Ginger Man!
And Stanley, some of us have plans for 8/6, I'm sad to say. Cakeshop is great!
Not sad about plans, sad about conflict.
no one is bringing kids, I don't think. I don't care really, fresh salt is in a mysterious nowhere-land. if a buncha ginger man partisans get in here and raise hell I'll officially change it. if a bar is loud, sunday night is one of the times when it's gonna be loud, though. I think polite elevator operators would stop me, otherwise I'd just host everybody at my hotel, where I got upgraded to a stupid big suite (thanks, sai baba!). but I'm allowed to have friends over, right? otherwise why the guest bathroom?
Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King; otherwise why the guest bathroom?
If I recall the advice of the Ex-Girlfriend correctly, so one has a place to put decorative guest towels and those little soaps shaped like seashells.
I vote for Fresh Salt, mostly because of the loud at the Ginger Man but also because I'll be getting off a ferry from Governor's Island and it'll be so convenient! However, the commute to Inwood is awful, so I'll understand if we lift stakes. But we have to decide soon!
Another vote for Fresh Salt based on similar to JM reasons, plus it's cheap. But like her, if the Inwood people have a strong enough preference for Ginger Man I can go there too.
Won't be able to make it, but if I could, I'd be rooting for hotel party. It's a suite -- what are they for other than having people over?
That Dwarffortress article is in 58 is, indeed, fascinating.
107 made me read the article, which is the worst mistake I've ever made in my entire life, since now the only thing I want in life more than playing Dwarf Fortress is to write a game like Dwarf Fortress.
You too can live a solitary nocturnal life in a small, filthy apartment in a rural backwater. But be satisfied!
No, I could have it it all -- wife, kids, social life, write a legendary text-graphics game. The only thing I would have to sacrifice is the 23 hours a day I spend following American politics on the Internet.
I'm good to travel wherever. In the absence of a definitive new announcement, am I to take it that we're sticking with the original plan? (In the event of a hotel party, I have gin/campari/vermouth.)
I am wearing the stripiest stripy pants ever should anyone wish to find me at Fresh Salt, and suggest that Mr. Blandings bring his mixers in the event of 5 lonely fresh salters making the transfer to the carlyle. but if he set off without them, it turns out hotels sell likker.
I'll be a bit late, but I may bring a few books to make space on my overcrowded shelves for the assembled Internet reprobates to rock-paper-scissors-Mutombo for.
Leaving now, wearing pink socks for identificatory purposes.
Speaking of derailing this with biking stuff: this article on Dutch bike-and-public-transit-oriented cities isn't particularly interesting, except for one detail:
"Dutch drivers are taught that when you are about to get out of the car, you reach for the door handle with your right hand -- bringing your arm across your body to the door. This forces a driver to swivel shoulders and head, so that before opening the door you can see if there is a bike coming from behind."
I feel like I bike more than the average person, but this would never have occurred to me. And yet it is so sensible! Do this, everybody, from now on!
Oh, that's funny. I was wondering why Bave was in such a hurry to get out the door. 8pm! Not 9! I hope by the time I get there everyone is totally wrecked.
Dutch people drive like [everyone knows the punchline already].
Wait, let me get this straight. You guys have a chance to go and party in a suite at the Carlyle, and the plan instead is to go and meet on a Sunday Night at some nondescript bar in the financial district you've all been to like a thousand times.
But there's Mac and Cheese there!
And the fight scene is specially choreographed for that bar.
Stanley is a loser for skipping out. Di and Rory are fabulous fun. Sushi was eaten. Monkeys were fed. Zebras were touched! No tricycles were ridden though.
Current plan for The Teo Memorial Epic Cross-Country Drive Meetup in Pittsburgh is Kelly's on S Penn Circle in East Liberty 7-7:30ish tomorrow (Monday). Are there Pittsburgh lurkers? Come if this is you. Right off the Busway.
Are we trying to make carbon offsets for all Teo's driving?
Oh we're at the Carlyle. Room service just delivered ice for the negronis.
There was fresh saltin and carlylin, bitchezz.
Oh like the Carlyle that is 100 blocks further uptown than Fresh Salt? Good thing you didn't just start the evening there!
Many thanks to the alameida for accommodating us all at the Carlyle. We tore that place up, Led Zeppelin-at-the-Riot-House-style!*
* No we didn't. But we had a lovely time.
133:
Maybe that should be the new secret saying to replace "Who wants to sex, Mutumbo?"
I'm wearing alameida's panties.
Me too.
Who then is wearing your panties, Apo?
59, 63: It's okay, people, it's like I said. (But Bave, you can plant non-mushroom crops on grassy aboveground areas, and Moby, [d] for 'designate', followed by [d] for dig, followed by marking the start and end of a rectangular digout with [enter].)
140 to 138. Seriously, Megan, you wouldn't want her to go without, would you?
apostropher's panties are a little roomy, but otherwise ok.
142: At least they're snug in the front.
The Pittsburgh meetup was a rousing success.