Instant Pot Frustration.

https://venera.social/display/85a863ed-1769-bef4-251c-8a1461341950

RE: https://universeodon.com/@georgetakei/116066039304152561

Their stance is that EVERY ICE action is "exigent circumstances?"

Link posted not for the story, which is paywalled, but the comments. Which are exactly what you'd expect, and crystallize something I've been thinking about for some time. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ALyANXXqX/

(If you can't or don't want to follow a Facebook link, here's the original story, albeit without the comments I'm talking about: <https://www.economist.com/britain/2026/01/28/london-is-far-safer-than-violent-viral-videos-will-have-you-believe>.)

To paraphrase #UptonSinclair, it is difficult to get people to understand something when their sense of who they depends on them not understanding it. And for a whole lot of people who don't live in the world's great cities, part of their identity is believing that they're different from and better than those who do.

It's been thirty-five years or so since I was regularly walking around #London late at night. At the time I was young and strong and healthy and it was easy to believe I was immortal. But I wasn't stupid. I knew there was real danger and did my best to avoid it. Most of the time I succeeded, sometimes I didn't.

(My fellow GIs' reaction to my habit of taking off for the weekend was amusing. "You go to London? And stay there? BY YOURSELF?" Dude, it's fine. The Blitz has been over for fifty years, and you may have heard that the folks there speak English.)

The early '90s were a violent time on both sides of the Atlantic. London's #homicide rate declined somewhat through most of the decade with a spike toward the end, jumped again in the early '00s, and since then has been on a downward trend. Other #violent #crimes have declined steadily since 1990-1992. The place is measurably *more safe* now than it was when I was passing a jug of cheap wine outside King's Cross or watching my tablemate get glassed at a pub in Southwark.

Oh yeah, there are no "no-go areas." Grow up.

Naturally, a lot of commenters refuse to believe it. "You're just a privileged snob who never leaves your nice safe neighborhood!" "Bullshit, it's full of Muslim gangs!" And of course, the single-emoji "🤣" response, always your sign of quality internet discourse.

This is not a problem limited to London. For many people all over the world, the nearest city significantly bigger than where they live is *always* a wretched hive of scum and villainy. So the biggest city in any country—London, #NewYork, #Tokyo, whatever—must be the wretchedest and scummiest and most villanous of all.

It happens on a much smaller scale too. I've run into more people than I can count who live less than an hour away from #Denver and are positive that Colorado's fair capital makes Snake Plissken's New York look like Disneyland by comparison.

There's also the opposite effect: lately I've seen a number of people from places like #Chicago and #Philadelphia making fun of the idea that anyone in #Minneapolis is really tough. "You think ICE is having a hard time there? Let 'em come here and they'll learn what real resistance is like!" I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were Muscovites sneering at #Stalingrad, back when.

Of course I am quite sure that you, my dear readers, would ever engage in any such absurd self-aggrandizing rhetoric. Right?

Collector or Gamer

Using the super cool GeekGroup web app, I did some spelunking in my game collection. I currently have 365 games. Yes, that is excessive, thank you for your judgement. Amazingly, only 18 of those games were acquired before 2019. I realized around the middle of last year that I was becoming a collector more than a player, and that isn’t something that comports with my self-identity.

I put in some effort to resist the siren call of new games. I was such a “cult of the new” member, I ended up with a bunch of games that I either didn’t play or played once or twice, just to get them off my shelf of shame. So, did I succeed in reducing my rate of acquisition? Yes. Here’s a quick summary of my collection from 2019 through 2025: 2019 added 38 games, 2020 – 56, 2021 – 62, 2023 – 54, 2024 – 51, and 2025 a mere 37 games added. See? This is a triumph. Making a note here – big success.

Unfortunately, I still have quite a backlog of games on the old “shelf of opportunity” – thirty-two games unplayed. One of those is a game I purchased in 2019, but it’s a wargame and I don’t get a lot of chances to play those. Before the pandemic, the local community had three different regular gaming meetups. Since the pandemic, it’s zero. Still, six years later. Due to this, my unplayed games do have a few heavy games and wargames. Somehow I ended up with 13 unplayed games from 2024, which just feels weird. That list includes Huang and Galactic Renaissance, but also Sunrise at the Studio and Charms.

My goal for 2026 is to acquire one game per month or fewer. We’ll see how that goes.

Below is a table summarizing my game additions and how many remain unplayed today. Apparently the games I got in 2022 were all bangers. I did get Long Shot the Dice Game, Grove, and Snakes of Wrath that year – all fantastic games.

Tron Ares

We watched Tron Ares this weekend. It was definitely a movie, and there are some connections to the previous films, but somehow it raised a lot more questions that broke me than the previous two major releases did.

The first film, way back in 1982, attempted to create a visual metaphor for the internal processes of computers and networks. We have the solar sails that ship packets of information between network nodes, multiple independent programs attempting to produce their desired outputs, a master control program to allocate assets, and a security program to act as a combination virus checker and network monitor. The metaphor was not great, to be fair, but it was an attempt to make the then-mysterious world of computers comprehensible to the pre-internet age.

Tron Legacy acted very much as a sequel, bringing back most of the main characters (minus Cindy Morgan’s characters), and explores the concepts of self-created programs, out-of-control security protocols, and some philosophy that shouldn’t be scrutinized too deeply about the impossibility of perfection in computer code and in life. I really think there must be an earlier version of the script where the ISOs are actually explained as some kind of neural network antagonistic programming concept, but instead they just exist and don’t ask why that makes sense. Legacy set up an obvious third film, with Quorra out of the network and existing in the real world somehow that isn’t explained, and Flynn’s son running Encom.

And then there’s Ares. No Sam Flynn or Quorra. No connection to the isomorphic self-generating programs. Somehow Dillinger Systems exists, despite no indication of Dillinger landing on his feet after getting fired in disgrace in the OG film. A massive violation of the conservation of mass and energy. No logical explanation for almost anything. An incomplete list: why do the light cycles have human-usable controls and screens, where is the 29-minute limit written and why, where does the mass come from to create those digital objects in the real world, how does Ares have free will and why does he doubt his creator almost immediately? It is neat to see light cycles in the real world, cutting cars in half with their impossible physical laser wall trails.

I have a pretty good idea why audiences stayed away from this film. First, of course – Jared Leto is polarizing. I haven’t really loved any role he’s had since Jordan Catalano, and I know he really annoys a lot of people for reasons I don’t fully understand. Second, it doesn’t take up the cliffhanger from the previous film. Third, people are accustomed to massive CGI exhibitions, so they needed to bring something other than bright primary colors. Basically, the existing audience wasn’t catered to, and they didn’t do enough to attract new audiences. Solid B movie, but not really Tron.