Moe Lane

I got enervated. Which is a good word, but I’m not even sure if I’ve ever put it in a sentence before. I’m almost 50; surely I’ve had cause to use it for something.

Anyway, it was just too danged hot out to do anything. So when I did, it hit like a brick wall. It’ll be better tomorrow, but not by much — and now they’re putting out a flash flood warning for tomorrow. Somebody remind me again why in God’s name we settled Maryland?

Let us commemorate that day accordingly.

…You’d think that would eventually stop being funny.

It’s beautiful, man. Just beautiful.

Tweet after the fold because some people read this site at work and the Tweet has bad language words.

This is quite interesting to me.

While taking sediment cores from a nearby peat bog to help study the ancient environment, archaeologist Paul Ledger and his colleagues discovered a previously unknown chapter in the story of L’Anse aux Meadows. Buried about 35cm (14 inches) beneath the modern surface, they found signs of an ancient occupancy: a layer of trampled mud littered with woodworking debris, charcoal, and the remains of plants and insects.

Based on its depth and the insect species present, the layer looks like similar surfaces from the edges of Viking Age Norse settlements in Greenland and Iceland. But organic material from the layer radiocarbon dated to the late 1100s or early 1200s, long after the Norse were thought to have left Newfoundland for good.

Sometimes I’m torn.

I’m doing a project for my SCA barony: I’m the chronicler, which basically means that I take notes at the meeting and do a monthly newsletter. But since the Pennsic War is coming up quickly, I thought that it’d be nice to have a special newsletter for Pennsic, filled with good advice and whatnot for people who were going for the first time. I’m not actually writing much of it, just putting together articles other people wrote and so forth, but the deadline for submissions tonight and editing requires a bunch of fiddling around.

Which is to say: I’m doing creative work today, but it’s creative work that has little to do with this site and I can either do it now, or tomorrow when my self-imposed publishing deadline is. I honestly would rather do it now. Which is to say, pared down even further: probably no gaming material written up tonight, or anything. I want to make sure that this isn’t hanging over my head.

Nathan Wurtzel, on Mariano Rivera’s upcoming induction in the Baseball Hall of Fame (which was unanimous):

On April 15, 1997, Major League Baseball retired the uniform number 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson but allowed contemporary players wearing it to finish their careers without changing numbers. After 2003, Rivera was the lone player wearing 42 during his final 10 seasons, always understanding the responsibility he took on by volunteering to be the last man to wear the number. At the end of his career, he joined Robinson’s widow Rachel and daughter Sharon to unveil a plaque honoring Robinson at Yankee Stadium.

Took me a moment, and when I did, I almost swore in front of my kid’s bus driver. And it would have been one of the elaborate swears, too. Well done, this one.

More power to them and everything, but I don’t think that I’ve ever actually bought anything on ‘Prime Day.’ Usually I go look, and discover that it’s all mostly junk that I don’t particularly want and/or need, at a discount that’s fairly meh anyway. I feel that this is not really compatible with Amazon’s apparent desire to make July 15th an international holiday. Maybe they’re just humoring Jeff Bezos? Because this has all the hallmarks of an operation that is put on solely because the boss insisted.

But don’t mind me. Prime Day away! …Hey, look: neo-hipster sarcasm and too-cool-for-this-stuff is all very well, but referral fees are referral fees.