Played a couple games of Mystic Vale at the board game meetup. Lost both, but it was still fun.
My campaign-games group finished our campaign of Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall with a pair of victories on the final two quests (14 and 15). We defeated the guardian of the holy vault, recovered the tome containing the secrets of kinfire, then climbed the enemy colossus and struck it down before it could destroy the Great Lighthouse of Din’Lux. It was fun. The game is definitely easier with four players than with two and we had some really good complementary decks giving us some nice, high-damage combos.
An interesting look inside the history and guiding philosophies of the Honda conglomerate.
For some reason, the author spends the final chapter on an only-tangentially-related diatribe on national manufacturing policy.
Blackett’s War by Stephen Budiansky
A look at the inception of what came to be known as “operations research.” Effectively, the intentional application of scientific principles to processes and decision making–specifically in the context of World War II.
When your merchant ships are being sunk by U-boats, should you group them into convoys or send them alone? Should you use your airplanes to bomb factories or submarines? To get your troops fed faster, should you build another mess hall or reorganize the one you have?
The Admirals by Walter R. Borneman
A group biography of the only five-star Fleet Admirals in U.S. history (thus far). After their backgrounds and early careers we then get a high-level history of WWII in the Pacific theater.
Implicitly covers the transition in naval theory from great fleet-on-fleet engagements won by battleships to standoff battles via carrier groups and projected air power.
The group completed quests 12 and 13 of our Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall story. Both completed victoriously. Quest 13 was clearly set up as a major battle, but with fortune on our side and complementary decks we were able to deal out 80 damage across the enemy team with just 3 attacks and then mop up the remnants from there.
At a board game meetup I jumped into the tail end of the silly game Hot Streak. The players are compulsive gamblers betting on the outcome of a race of sports team mascots as well as various propositional bets along the way. I lost.
After Hot Streak, we played a game of 7 Wonders. I lost that too.
And closing out that night was a game of the rather odd Frenemy Pastry Party. In this game the only way to earn points is to either bake a cake or help someone else bake a cake. Baking a cake alone is suboptimal as it uses up your own ingredients. Contribute ingredients to someone else’s cake earns you points, but they will earn more points for the cake than you will for the ingredients. So the goal is to try to get all the other players to evenly contribute to your own cakes so the points for ingredients are diffused across the other players and cake points are concentrated on yourself. But once every figures this out cooperation is likely to deteriorate. I lost by a point once another player realized what I was doing and rallied the rest of the table to prevent me from winning.
An exploration of a future in which an artificial intelligence singularity has occurred (sentient AI systems self-developing beyond human comprehension). It starts off way too over-the-top cyberpunk, but settles down.
Uses the evolving singularity as an explanation for the Fermi Paradox.
Livesuit by James S. A. Corey
A novella set in the Captive’s War universe in between books 1 and 2. Humanity has a new weapon in their interstellar battle, bionic humans who are faster, stronger, and more resilient, but at what cost?
Kind of a parallel exploration of the Spartan units in the Halo universe.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Speaking of bionic humans…this novella explores a bionic, human-based security “drone” which evades its governor module and begins exploring its own free will. “Human based” in that it’s mostly robotic, but uses a human brain to provide the intelligence to the system (the details aren’t fully described in the book).
It wants to protect the people it was hired to protect, but it also mostly just wants to be left alone to watch TV shows.
Wings of Fire books 1-5
During our Pacific-northwest roadtrip we listened to audiobooks of the Wings of Fire series. We got through books 1 through 4 and partly through 5 (which I finished in paper form once we returned home).
It actually lined up oddly well with our trip. We listened to book 2, taking place mainly in the sea kingdom, as we drove up the coast. Book 3, taking place mainly in the rain forest, as we visited Hoh Rain Forest. And book 4, taking place mainly within a volcano, as we visited the Cascade Volcanic Arc including Mt. St. Helens and Crater Lake.
Books 1-5 make up a unified story arc of the “Dragonet Prophecy.” Five dragonets destined to end the Sandwing war of succession and bring peace to the continent of Pyrrhia.
Venardos Circus came back to Livermore this year and we took in a show before leaving on our road trip. However, before the night was out, I found myself on stage performing with the show for about 10 minutes–with all instructions communicated to me through pantomime. I was a bit nervous, but it went well.
Thinking about it academically, using audience members for a such a long bit is a pretty big risk for the performer. He has to communicate his intentions to us while entertaining the audience, roll with whatever we happen to do, and trust in our willingness to play along. I’m really impressed with his ability to convey to us what he wanted in the way he did.
Anyway, he pulled me from my seat to make muscle poses juxtaposed with the brawnier guy he grabbed. Alright, skinny guy–brawny guy some silly poses and sound effects. That’s fine. But when I thought he was done with us he drags us onto the stage and has us engage in a pantomime pistol duel.
Jess started recording as I was getting dragged on stage after the muscle silliness. Her phone somehow choked towards the end and corrupted the video, but I was able to recover most of the performance.
