Life, Chess and Robots

Dr Glass was only three cars back from the entry point. After pondering the problem in this unexpected pocket of leisure, he got out of the car.

The other drivers looked at him, astonished, censorious. Was this muppet just up and leaving his car? Abandoning a vehicle in congestion? Were they about to witness someone making their day WORSE?

Dr Glass walked to a pedestrian crossing, a few feet upstream, and pressed the button. He turned around and got back in his car.

Enlightenment, and a cautious hope, dawned on the faces of the other drivers in the queue.

The pedestrian sequence unrolled. The red light cut off the oncoming stream of traffic. The queue was freed. The roundabout was freed.

Never repeated, never pointed to by any other passage, not even given in an index or glossary, just secreted away in a seemingly random spot like a game of Where's Waldo in a 200+ page text.

This isn't meant to be venting, it's genuinely perplexing that an approach so specific and so counterproductive seems to happen so often. What's the deal?

Most tabletop game designers are very bad technical writers.

At least one RPG kept telling you how many dice to roll and how many successes you need for things without ever defining what kind of dice or which results constituted "a success".

You might be surprised how many games will instruct you to roll "dice" without thinking to specify at any point whatsoever how many sides the dice in question are meant to have, in a medium famously associated with dice with variable numbers of sides.

Man, how do you fuck up telling people what kind of dice to use??? We have a standard notation for it!!! Even teenage me making awful fantasy RPGs attempts knew to write "roll 3d6"

This is the control room, and if you look closely, you'll see a dark stripe in the carpet running the perimeter of the room. This was referred to as the "velvet rope," and absolutely NO ONE was allowed to cross it without authorization. It was under constant observation from an adjacent office, and I was told that if someone did set foot inside without permission, things got VERY serious VERY quickly.

This is one of the computer stations, and to me, it's such a gorgeous encapsulation of its period of technology, the sort of aesthetic that shows like Lost will bend over backwards to recreate.

As I was scouting, I noticed the day calendar had last been torn off about when the plant closed for good...

Then we went into the nuclear reactor, and the whole damn thing was just so spooky.

Looking back, I think it came from an overwhelming feeling of utter insignificance in the face of the sheer power this colossus was designed to produce.

The scale was just so out of proportion to every day reality, the sort of place where a weight of "46000 LBS" is just casually noted on the side of a part.

Peering into where the core would've been, all I could think is that I'd never want the job where you have to climb down that ladder on the left while this thing was in operation.

If you're interested in seeing more, you can find my full tour here!

https://nickcarr.com/scouting-a-decommissioned-nuclear-power-plant/

Tower of Baa-Goat,

Built by Dave and Marcia Johnson, this unique 31-foot structure was designed as a playground for their goats to climb, explore, and relax.

Constructed with over 5,000 bricks and featuring 276 spiral steps, the tower allows the animals to wander upward, rest on the circular platforms, and peek out from cozy compartments inside.

The idea came after the couple spotted a similar goat tower in a wine magazine. What started as inspiration turned into one of America's most unusual and charming animal attractions.

IT'S CALLED A BOQUILA TRIOFOLIOLATA AND IT'S FUCKING WITH MY BRAIN

IT APPARENTLY CAN MIMIC OTHER PLANTS AND AT FIRST I WAS LIKE "oh cool man it must take it's genetic code and copy it or feel the roots or something like that!! :3"

AND THEN I READ AN ARTICLE ON IT AND THESE FUCKING PARAGRAPHS HIT ME LIKE A BUS

LIKE READ THIS SHIT

but i can't find any evidence of its existence from before 2018 lmao

and searching the artist's name only gets me like 6 pages of results on google

and a little artist showcase page on arthive for this guy with exactly 1 painting listed

and a biography that spells this guy's name like 5 different ways

which i'm pretty sure is because it's machine translated from something

Солнечный город "Sunny City" - No date given.

Мир "World" - No date given.

Чусовские просторы. "Chusovskie expanses." Canvas, oil, 1997. Exhibited at the Nizhny Tagil Museum of Nature.

октябрь "October" 2009 cardboard, oil, 29.5x39.5 cm

Осень на Чусовой, "Autumn on Chusovaya" 1999, canvas, oil, 79x100 cm

Чугун идет "Cast Iron is Coming" 1976

Pupunha House, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil

Courtesy: Laurent Troost,

Interior design: Chris Coimbra,

Landscape: Hana Eto Gall Landscape,