Writing Advice: What Would You Do When Your World Made No Sense?

I sometimes help authors research stuff on Reddit, and recently, someone came to us, wanting details of what goes on inside a slaughterhouse, i.e. where animals are killed and processed for meat. Apparently the MC is both deficient in vision (can't see ****) and mind (delusional) and thinks there are prisoners inside the facility. So at night, the MC, with some homemade weapons, managed to scare away the staff and was about to release all the animals, and he wants to know what's the most efficient way to go about it. 

I told him that what he described is IMPOSSIBLE. There are NO holding pens "inside" the facility. The only time a live animal (single) enters the facility is into the kill box. What one considers to be "holding pens" are moveable swing gate barriers on the OUTSIDE of the facility, and those don't hold any animals overnight. They are built to create a line where animals can be paraded and bid on by buyers as they are unloaded from transports leading up into the kill box. There's nothing to release. 

This gentleman's response? Can be summarized by a quote from ex-Mythbuster Adam Savage: "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

Then I told him about part 2... Any staff who escaped is going to summon law enforcement, and they will summon the county SWAT team, mutual aid from all surrounding counties, plus bigger guns from state police and any Federal teams that may be available nearby. How is your MC going to deal with that? And don't count on the animals stampeding their way out creating a distraction. Modern farm animals are way too domesticated. They will NOT leave and prefer to stay with the herd. If you open the gate, they won't go anywhere until encouraged to do so. 

At this point he's basically ignoring me. Which is fine. The advice is free. If he wants to create whatever fantasy slaughterhouse for his own reality that's his problem. It simply doesn't conform to OUR reality. 

If he had asked something like, "uh, I'm trying to achieve X, how do I go about it? So far my ideas are Y, Z, and W..." I would have told him what can be worked on, and what wouldn't work. However, he's so married to this idea that he'd rather bend reality than accept this idea wouldn't work. 

Chief Takeaway: Don't be so married to your ideas. When they don't work, they don't work. Save it for something else, or rework the idea. 

Weird News: Police Hunting Suspect Who Had a Standoff with Driverless Waymo, then Assaulted Bystander

(SF Gate) SFPD is looking for a man who, in the very early moring of July 5th (just past midnight), deliberately stood in front of a driverless Waymo (carrying a passenger) forcing a standoff, yelling angrily at the various cameras of the vehicle, even banging on the hood of the vehicle. When a "visibly disabled" (cognitively impaired) bystander commented, the man shoved the bystander to the ground and fled the scene. 

Windows 11 Audio Weirdness: Bluetooth vs Wired, Headphone vs Headset, and More

I do some Youtube videos and one of the ways is to use NVIDIA Shadowplay to both capture the foodtage AND to add live commentary. However, it seems that Win11 has changed the way things are set it's a royal PITA to connect Bluetooth headset, but only use it as Bluetooth headphones. It seems you cannot "choose" that, but you have to disable it under Settings // System // Sound then find Microphone section, find the Bluetooth microphone, and click on "don't allow". 

There are other ways, but they come with additional drawbacks. One of the ways offered up by Google via one of the forums was go into Device Manager and disable the device's "AVRCP" protocol driver. However, this has several problems. a) if you disable AVRCP, Windows will not detect your headset as a headphone, but as a hands-free device. What's the difference? A hands-free device, in order to give microphone fidelity, HALVES the audio transmission quality of whatever you're receiving. Since we're NOT using the microphone, and Bluetooth already has lousy audio quality (and Qualcomm's AptX supposedly helps with that, but is obviously exclusive to Qualcomm chipsets) this is a very bad compromise. 

Wellness Craze: The Cult of Raw Milk and Its Dangers

A recent news item about a salmonella outbreak in 2023 that sickened WELL OVER ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE who drank "raw milk" reminded me of this wellness craze that's completely unscientific. To summarize, "Raw Farm" of Fresno California was definitively traced as a source of the salmonella outbreak that had sickened at least 165 as of February 2024, based on reports recently released to the public. The actual outbreaks happened in late 2023. 

"Raw milk" advocates make a wide variety of claims such as "more nutritious", "help with _____". However, they have NO SCIENTIFIC DATA, just unverifiable anecdotes, to back up any of those claims, only naturalistic fallacy: it's "natural" thus it must be good. Mark McAfree, CEO and founder of Organic Pastures, a raw milk producer in California, was quoted by bon appetit stating, "Raw milk is like breast milk: non-allergenic, full of good bacteria, the ultimate immune-booster..."  He claims that "thousands" of his customers have told him that they and their kids feel better, have less symptoms of _____, yet there are really no scientific studies recently on these so-called benefits, much less verified benefits. 

Even the so-called "Raw Milk Institute" can only cite a few papers sourced from Europe to justify their position, and those papers only indicate that the children studied that consumed raw milk seems to have reduced infections. Most of their updates are guidance on how to clean equipment to reduce contamination. 

If you study those research papers from Europe in detail, you'll notice a couple things: 

• They're only testing RURAL babies and toddlers, who are LESS likely to catch common childhood illnesses since they don't congregate, and this was only 1st year of life. They are NOT URBAN babies and toddlers consuming raw milk. 
• They are relying on weekly "health journals" (i.e. self-reporting)
• One criteria of healthier is lower levels of C-reactive Protein (CRP), but do we really know how much the CRP varies in babies and toddlers? 
• Nice of them to test 4 milk variations: raw milk, boiled milk, pasteurized milk, and ultra-heat-treated milk. 
• Their conclusion was mostly drawn comparing raw milk to UHT milk, NOT pasteurized milk. 
• Even they agree that "health hazards of raw milk" prevents widespread consumption
• The study was from 2014.  

These research papers basically ignored the health hazard of raw milk consumption, because that was NOT what they were studying. They were NOT trying to weigh the risks vs benefits. They ONLY said that there seem to be some benefits based on the data they collected. 

Even if we take their study at full value... 30% less infections in 1st year of life.  Out of 37306 person weeks reported, only 602 have CRP value and at least one "occurence", which I assume to be infection of some sort (RTI, rhinitis, etc.) That's 1.6%. Reduce that by 30%, and you're looking at 1.1%. 

I guess the question here is, are you willing to risk your baby's death for 30% fewer infections?  

PC Gaming: Power of Mods, Grind of Mod Debugging

One of the best aspects of gaming on the PC is availability of mods, esp. if the developers of the game made the game mod-friendly, which allowed gamers who can program to create mods that adds, enhances, or changes certain aspects of the game. 

One of the more mod-friendly AAA tier games that came out recently was Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries, where the developers, PGI, used their experience with Mechwarrior Online (MWO) to help create MW5, which was released back in December, 2019! PGI then followed the game up with no less than SIX official DLCs, adding more mechs, patches, improved AI, but also lore friendly additions, such as melee weapons. Yet from the very beginning it was clear that the fans aren't going to wait for PGI to create stuff, and extremely ambitious mods, such as Yet Another Mech Labs (YAML) turn the simple mechlab in the game, which lets you modify the giant "robots" called mechs with different weapons, ammo, while balance their heat, weight, and so on, into table-top-game accurate affairs. Yet others added non-lore weapons, variants only mentioned in the novels, and bajillion other little mods. 

Yet for every official DLC released, there's always some teeth-gnashing as all the mod makers scramble to update their mod to be compatible with the latest DLC. Yet some mod makers have left the mod-making scene, leaving others to pick up the pieces, while different mod makers have different visions on how to change things (there are dozens of "rebalance" mods as each tries to realize a vision on what constitutes a proper play balance). 

This means as just players, you often have to study the mods you download, to make sure they don't conflict with each other, or accidentally break a third mod, or worse, crash the game. Which means you have to make sure you load them in the right order, known as "load order". 

I haven't played MW5 in over a year, but with release of DLC6 earlier in 2024 and hopefully, the upcoming release of MW5 Clan Invasion (whcih will finally update the game engine to Unreal Engine 5), I should get back into the game. So I updated my mods, downloaded the latest versions, and get the game started... Only to have it crash. It's clear something is breaking some of the mods. Unfortunately, there's no debugger available, and the only way to find the culprit is to disable stuff until the game runs, then enable stuff until it doesn't. Then whatever you enabled last is the culprit. Yes, it's grinding without playing. Yikes. 

With 71 mods, I think I ended up disabling half, as those are either too old or no longer needed. But I basically spend the past 8-12 hours debuging my MW5, setup... I've yet to play the game. Hahaha. 

FWIW, here's a load order for MW5 that seems to work... for now. 39 mods. 

« Generated by MW5 Load Order Configurator 3.2 for MW5Mercs. »

LO   oLO   Mod

71    33   "RevisedNightvision" 1.0(11) by Gundug

70    31   "Yet Another Mechlab" 0.93(2874) by cszolee79 and trueg

69    99   "vonBiomes" 1.0(2595) by vonSeiten

67     0   "MedsMod2024v7778L" 1.0(27) by GenericMeds

66    84   "Expanded_Logos" 1.0(8) by G3n.Zer0

64    38   "MoreMercLevels" 1.0(4) by Gloobnib

63    36   "PilotOverhaul" 7.0.3(776) by Wpnx330

61    45   "UnderTonnageBonus2 & Purchase Salvage2" 5.01(158) by WolfEagle1

60    34   "Coyotesmission" 1.0(6061) by coyotekins

58    30   "TTRulez_LanceMateOrderz" 1.0(24) by Oraeon1224

55    28   "Yeti's Jumpship Animation Remover" 1.0(12) by Yeti

54    27   "Yet Another Weapon" 2.2(434) by cszolee79

52    25   "XenoPax Art Optimizer 3.0" 1.0(216) by xenoargh

49    22   "UpdatedHighEmployment" 1.0(14) by 

48    21   "StarMapMouseOver_V3_07 - Logos" 3.5(4) by JGood121

47    20   "Restore Traits" 1.3.5(20) by Bobbert

44    17   "QOL Upgrades 2 - Thermals and Headlights" 2.2(35) by cszolee79

43    16   "PrecisionSights" 1.1.1(0) by MindlessVictim

42    15   "No Friendly Fire" 1.2(1) by yrrot

41    14   "MW5 Compatibility Pack" 5.2(81) by MagnumGB

40    13   "Mod Options" 1.1.3(16) by Bobbert

39    12   "MechAttributeViewer" 1.8(42) by yrrot

38    11   "LancemateStatusBar" 1.0(43) by yrrot

34     7   "Enhanced Cooldown Pips" 1.0(16) by diji

33     6   "Cockpit Glass" 0.96b(153) by Nek

30     4   "BetterCrates" 1.5(5) by Grahamldlw

29     4   "TTRulez_AIMod2" 1.0(186) by Oraeon1224

28     3   "Assorted DLC Fixes" 1.1a(4) by DeadRaiser

27     2   "Advanced Zoom" 1.2.6(61) by Bobbert

16     0   "LeopardRedone" 1.0(11) by RainingFire

12     0   "Expanded Logos Menu" 1.0(16) by G3n.Zer0

10     0   "CompassHeadings" 2.0(12) by Azuvector

 7     0   "Accuracy Recurve" 1.0(2) by Puff

 6     0   "XenoPax Optimize 4.0" 1.0(73) by xenoargh

 5     0   "Throttle Gauge w Line Markers" 1.0(6) by DAP

 4     0   "Higher Visibility Torso Twist" 1.0(7) by DAP

 3     0   "HeatGauge" 1.0(2) by DAP

 2     1   "Simple Enhanced Environment" 1.0(6) by Zanieon

 1     0   "minimap topography" 1.0(90) by K'Braid

« End of load order. »

App Discovery: Zettlr -- a Markdown Editor / Linker to create your own Zettelkasten

Zettlr, available at Zettlr.com, calls itself "one stop publication workbench". I find it just a good app to get yourself organized

To put it simply, Zettlr is a Markdown editor that allows for easy cross-linking and hierarchical file organization. On the left, you have a "workspace" file manager that shows you all the files with folders. In the middle is the main editor window with tabs so you can handle multiple files. On the right is extra info, such as outline view, linked view, external references, and so on. 

Markdown is just plain text with some simple tags added, so that's very easy to learn and the app is quite fast even on slow hardware. 

Zettlr has some extra powers such as Zotero integration for citations. Need to cite an internet article? Use the Chrome plug-in to add it to Zotero, edit it to add some meta info in Zotero, then you can cite it in Zettlr full Academic style. In fact, that's why Zettlr calls itself one-stop publication workbench... you can write your notes and your articles in Zettlr, then export it to LaTeX and have it published. 

But Zettlr is also an excellent way to implement Zettelkasten (German for "slip box"), aka "digital second brain", where various bits of knowledge, with cross linking, and citations, becomes a creative cloud of inspiration for you to write papers and articles... once you've built up the contents. The more entries in the slipbox, and the more cross-linked they are, the more they should inspire you to write.

If you want to implement Zettelkasten in Zettlr, start by creating a folder, call it Zettelkasten if you want. Under that, create 3 folders: Fleeting Notes, Literature Notes, Permanent Notes.  Please research Zettelkasten on how you actually use those folders. 

Zettlr has many other power features such as templates/snippets and projects that's beyond the scope of this article.

Cybersecurity: Where did the term "pwn" come from?

It is surprising how many people got the "true" origin of the verb "pwn" not quite right... even operators of "HaveIBeenPwned.com". They at least understood it's a typo ("O" and "P" are right next to each other on the keyboard!). But they then linked to an Inverse article, who went into a bunch of alt explanations such as it's a corruption of "pawn" (from a chess match) to "Phrack World News" (abbreviated as PWN). Neither theory explains how it was transformed into a verb. In fact, Inverse article chose to disregard the typo theory.  

The true origin of the term pwn, is synonymous with own, usually used in past tense as "owned". In l33tspeak of the time, being "owned" means you were utterly controlled, dominated, and humiliated, usually because you are losing or lost in an online multiplayer game. 

So how did pwn variation got created? 

For that, you need to thank Warcraft, NOT World of Warcraft that came much later. The ORIGINAL Warcraft: Orcs & Humans RTS, and its mods, basically, maps, at the time. 

To make a long story short, one of the map designers wrote a "losing condition" text. When you lose to the other side, you're supposed to get a message to the effect of "You've been owned!" However, he had a typo that day and the map was uploaded with the text "You've been pwned!" instead. The expression then, as we would say today, "went viral", and the rest is history. 

In fact, you can still find this definition in the Urban Dictionary. 

But wait, you ask, what is "HaveIBeenpwned.com"? 

It is a website where you can check your email addresses to see if your information have been leaked in various hacks and data leaks before. Those information tend to surface on the Dark Web, and some gather those up and make them search accessible to let people check if they were affected by the leak.