deathmtn

RIP Ozzy. He was a guy with a weird, otherworldly voice that got exploited to various degrees by many people, starting with Tony Iommi then continuing through Sharon Osbourne and reality show producers. But I think he landed OK and seemed to be happy.

This 1970 show in Paris is my favorite performance of his. He was fully alive back then (55 (!) years ago), and apparently not above doing some sweeping.

MMA is, mechanically and tactically, an interesting sport. Around 10-12 years ago, I stopped watching it for three main reasons:

- I noticed I was getting sucked into celebrity culture. Some web site would post about some controversial tweet that Jon Bones Jones made, and I'd go look at it. Then, I'd be like why am I stopping what I'm doing for this?

- While nowhere close to football, the way it being run was dangerous for the fighters. They didn't have health insurance, and they'd be encouraged to continue their careers after severe head trauma. Almost uniformly, every champion has this sad "reverse career" where they get slower and more hurt while working their way back down the ladder because their name continues to have a big draw while their ability declines.

- After the collapse of PRIDE in Japan, one of the two big MMA promotions, the UFC controlled almost all top-level competition and the UFC was controlled by one guy, Dana White, who ran things much like his current-day hero, Trump.

Instead of the fighters getting health insurance and having a union so they could negotiate for themselves like grown men and women, they have to go to him for favors and bonuses. If you haven't been deferential to him, then no, you're not going to get help for the injury you sustained while making money for this guy.

Similarly, matchups aren't decided by win-loss records or any written standard. There is no way to be completely objective in this matter, but the UFC isn't even trying. If Dana While thinks you're a "boring wrestler," then you're not getting a shot at someone "exciting" like Conor MacGregor even if he can't lay a hand on you. And speaking of MacGregor, being exciting isn't just about punching, it helps to be White to excite White fans that want to see White fighters winning. So, while the UFC fights themselves are legitimate contests, the fighter selection nudges it away from an athletic competion and toward sports entertainment.

I always imagined Dana White's politics would be shit, but I thought he'd keep the UFC out of it. In 2024, he publicly campaigned for Trump.

Just now, I heard what I thought was a joke on a podcast about being embarrassed about watching MMA. The guy said that at least if you're watching porn, that's not a thing Trump is broadcasting on the White House lawn.

I was like, haha, yeah, wait.

No, this is a real thing: UFC chief says White House event planned for South Lawn

Sometimes 2025 seems like it's written by A.I.

Say no to corporate-friendly licenses

Even though ILM had some prior experiencing with open-sourcing some of their software, we faced an up-hill battle internally. Like I said, Lucas' Empire was far more comfortable in the role of cultural vampire, and their legal team had far more experience in taking rather than giving. Their head of counsel, an IP lawyer named Jennifer Siebley, was particularly inimical to the GPL, so much as to have what I would term an allergy to it.

…

Now, I realize that we are living in a material world, and we are a material girl, so I'm not relying solely on philosophical appeals. Consider the case that you wish to profit from the fruits of your keyboard. If you release your software as GPL, you are then free at any time to release new versions that are closed-source, while all your competitors would have to grovel before you in order to procure a commercial license (or you could give your friends licenses for free; the point is, that's your call). This is a pretty compelling commercial case for the GPL, and it's what, eg, Sleepycat (BerkeleyDB) or Trolltech (Qt) did before they were bought by Oracle and Nokia, respectively.

This is also what JUCE does, and they do in fact make money selling non-GPL licenses to companies that don’t want to deal with GPL.

I also have turned around on freely sharing code. Look at what ended up happening to people like Substack (the programmer, not the Nazi-friendly mailing list company). He wrote all of this foundational software, MIT-licensed it, and huge companies with goals opposite to his own used it to gather billions of dollars in revenue.

Not that anyone’s breaking down the door for my code (except A.I. crawlers, which want everything), but just in case, I use the
PolyForm Noncommercial License, which is easy to understand. Maybe I should use GPL for the scare factor, though.

Dragon Buster was an arcade platformer published in 1984. Look at those dinosaur sprites! There was nothing like this anywhere near me in 1984, though I guess I was limited to only going wherever my mom took me back then. I think my head would have exploded if I saw this.

I finished reading Anatomy of a Game: The Legend of Zelda, which starts here. I disagreed with a few bits here and there, but overall, it's a good analysis of what made it interesting and groundbreaking. It's very digestibly written, which I especially appreciate lately.

35-minute run with guy, eleven pull-ups.

Well, the vet said Dr. Wily likely has cancer, but it is operable, and it doesn't seem to affect her, so it's probably early. Maybe this is her taking to another level that maneuver where she stands directly under a really heavy weight while you're lifting it.

Everyone seems to be getting cancer these days! Maybe I should get better insurance or move to Canada.

A thing I probably need to learn physics to know: If space and time are part of the same thing, as Einstein has predicted and has thus far been proven true experimentally, why can we only move in on direction in the time direction? (Putting aside wormholes.)

I finished the French Revolution season of Revolutions earlier this week. It was good and also long. I just took a peek at season 10, the Russian Revolution season. It’s 100+ episodes! And they seem to be regular length. Holy crap.

I took the guy to the store to get Echoes of Wisdom. Getting games in person is still exciting for kids!