Some months ago, I found Weekly Weird News, a roundup of strange news from around the internet. I recently depleted their backstock, and find myself wanting. Now, I know there's no shortage of weird, odd, bizarre, and strange in our world. Just as I know there's no shortage of people willing to talk about it. But, I'm having difficulty finding "current" weirdness. Oh sure, there's podcasts to be found talking about the weirdness surrounding this murder in 1952, or that rural happening in 1991, but so far, I haven't found another that scratches that "that seriously happened recently?" itch.

Does anyone have any suggestions, or am I doomed to dripfeed?

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

Here's an article about one of the recent Grammy winners: "Billie Eilish's Grammy hit features a surprising Australian sound"

The story about how Eilish and her brother sampled a pedestrian crossing signal is interesting enough - but you have to watch the embedded video, where the SMH people use the same signal to make their own backing track to an Aussie classic!

In terms of

1. Utility: It is useful!
2. Reliability: It will always work when you need it to!
3. Uniqueness: It gives you the option of doing things that would never have been necessary before it came along.
4. Aesthetic: It satisfies your sense of beauty: It gives you the same kind of feeling a painting or a poem would.
5. Transcendence: It transcends the zeitgeist and is the simplest it can and thus ought to be.

Mine are:

1. Vim
2. mutt
3. The Lucas Arts point and click adventure games
4. A Lisp interpreter
5. grep

I make no promises for quality, I'm really just pushing what can be done with a Pixel 3XL cell phone camera, access to Adobe Lightroom, and a surprisingly gorgeous foggy day. This ties into the "No-Money Fun Ideas" thread.

These images have been lightly edited towards what my eyes saw - most camera sensors would have trouble with color accuracy under the conditions these shots were taken.

Winter 2020

Please feel free to criticize and inform me on what I could do better.

These photographs are published for your enjoyment under the Creative Commons Share-Alike license.

I'll preface this by saying this post is birthed out of a small argument I'm having on Reddit, but the topic seems like a worthwhile one. (And I'm not getting much other than downvotes for a counterargument over there!)

The initial question is whether or not the death of someone who is very old (95 years or more) should be considered tragic. Some things to consider:

1. The overall health and condition of the person.

• Are they in constant state of suffering?

2. The wishes of the person.

• Do they actively wish to be dead? This might not even be out of suffering. Some people, as they get to be quite old, are just bored of their lives or want this stage to be over. Anecdotally, my great-grandmother was this way from the ages of 90 and onward. (She quite famously would greet cashiers with "I want to die.")

3. Are they still active?

• Do they still find meaning in what they are doing? For example, David Attenborough is 93 years old and is still a big presence on the world stage. Despite his great age, if he were to die, his work would still be ‘cut short.’

4. The circumstances by which they die.

• Was it sudden, or did it take a long time? Was it painful? Was it violent?

This list is not exhaustive. I welcome suggestions for what should be added to it.

There is also how we define tragedy. In general terms, it typically just alludes to an event that causes great suffering and distress. I think this is the definition that we are more concerned with. Alternatively, there is the theatrical definition of tragedy, which is more tied to the leading character suffering some major downfall at the end of the narrative. While we could construe the death of someone in real life this way, it seems to be a bit of a stretch as most of us do not live out our lives in three-act structures with a clear climax and finale. (I’m going to rule out this definition now, if not just for the sake of argument.)

Balancing all of these thoughts, I think the crux of where disagreement lies is in how we feel about death for the deceased versus our own selfish desires. Bringing this back to my anecdote, about twenty years ago, my great-grandmother passed at the age of 94. She spent at least the last 5 years of her life pleading to God to finally take her. Her health was fine. She lived in her house, alone, fully capable of maintaining it (and herself). In fact, in the year prior to her death, she was so physically active that she painted all 200 feet of her white picket fence! By all means, she was not physically suffering. She just simply wanted to go.

Then she did. I think the group consensus was something akin to, “Well, I guess she finally got what she wanted. I’m going to miss her.” It was a feeling of simultaneously being happy for her and grief for ourselves.

To which, does this make for a tragedy?

Some might call it splitting hairs, but what I am arguing is that the death itself was not tragic. What is tragic is our loss of the ability to interact with that person and the feelings of grief that follow. I cannot help but feel these are ultimately separate things that we have such a difficult time reconciling. Part of life is death, and as long as we revere life, we must also revere the last part of it. If we did this better, we might have an easier time accepting things like medical-assistance-in-dying. It is for this reason that I say, death, by default, does not necessitate tragedy.

However while death is not necessarily tragic, I do think there are a multitude of conditions that would make death sufficiently tragic. Looking back at my list above, the death of a young healthy person would be considered tragic. Suppose someone was violently beheaded; this could be considered tragic. Even suppose that the 93-year-old David Attenborough passed away, I would think his death to be tragic as he wanted to offer more to the world.

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough. What are your thoughts?

Spouse and I were on a weekend drive-and-walkaround today, and discussing ways to save money on house renovations. We've kept running into things like, "yeah, two arthritic 50-somethings are really going to DIY sheetrocking a ceiling...nope."

I'm guessing nearly all Tilders have gone through times when they didn't have much, if any, disposable income, or had to squeeze budgets to save for big expenses.

So what do you enjoy doing for entertainment that costs little or nothing beyond what you'd ordinarily spend for basic living expenses?

I know we used to do things like gathering people for potluck, cheap jug wine, and chatter, but we're still building a circle of friends and acquaintances, and don't have space for entertaining yet! Walks in the woods, reading, volunteering, and watching movies, are pretty much givens, but happy to hear your thoughts.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.