Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

This time, my second and bunnyhugger's third KennyKon, we got to more of the Informal Take Over Times. These are planned meetups at various rides, over the day, where everyone who wants tries to get in line at the same time and, like, fill up the Grand Carousel with people wearing the ride shirts of obscure and distant parks. This particularly was one of the times we got a bunch of comments about my shirt and none for bunnyhugger's. If I remember right our group either mistimed things or was bigger than could all fit on a single ride, which, when you remember that their carousel has 62 animals (less renovations) plus chariots is quite a bunch. It did give bunnyhugger the chance to ride what she's heard somewhere is the lead horse.

Our next Informal Take Over Time was on the Old Mill, celebrating its 125th year in operation. The digital sign estimating the ride time was badly off, owing to it not anticipating that so many dozens of KennyKon attendees coming in at once. Also that they were putting only two or three people into boats that could handle six or so. It was a chance to roast a little in the midday sun and get into a couple of interrupted-and-resumed conversations as we approached the correct people in the queue.

Old Mill's current theming is based around the comically criminal life of a skeleton whose name I can't recall and the skunk and opossum he pulls into various mishaps. You know, pointing a skunk at the banker and warning ``this is a stink-up!'' It's good fun, albeit not as good as the old mill ride at Rye Playland.

Also somewhere along the way here I changed my camera into a sepia-tone I had no idea existed. I got that sorted out on our way to the Kangaroo ride, which we could hardly go to Kennywood without riding. They seem to have removed the part of the ride that automatically plays a ``boing'' sound effect, but if it's still something the ride operator can trigger manually we didn't hear it. On a similar note the Turtle ride doesn't seem to be automatically accompanied by sound clips from The Master of Disguise, but we didn't ride enough times to really know what took its place.

And before we knew it it was dinner time, so we sought out Pavilions six and seven to join the group dinner. This was also supposed to be time for photographs with Kenny Kangaroo --- dressed up for Mardis Gras Fall Fantasy --- but we were just a bit late. Missed our chance for yet another picture with him, and with Parker The Arrow, and also Jitters, the pre-Kenny ``We have Sid and Marty Krofft at Home'' mascot that's been brought back for the nostalgia value. That's all right; we were in time for the fountain drinks to be open and filled our drink cups about 54 times each.

After I ate so much macaroni and cheese came time for a couple speeches none of which I was asked to make. Mostly about thanking ACE organizers and Kennywood staff for all the work in this, and some things about how many people there were (over three hundred, making it comparable in size to the good old days of Morphicon) and who came from farthest away and trying to congratulate people at their first KennyKon or first ACE event, that sort of thing. Also they were able to return bunnyhugger's attendee badge; her original one had disappeared somewhere, somehow, and while getting a replacement was not a big deal once we found the correct person to ask, this got her the original, like, typeset and not handwritten identification.

We had a little time between the dinner and the parade, so we went over to get our Turtle ride in. But we did have to pause a bit because of the live show we caught a part of. This was a stunt dog act, with the dogs doing things like high jumps or leaping into a tank of water. You do love to see it, even if it's from a great distance and partly obscured because we were behind the bleacher seating. But we got some of the experience, and weren't even too late for the Turtle, last of the tumble bug rides, before we had to head back to the pavilion and be ready for the parade.

Back to pictures we're back at Santa's Village and finishing off the antique autos ride. You really see how I picked these photographs before looking how they'd divide across days.

More scenery spotted during the Antique Autos ride. Uh ... Should we be concerned about the crashed-up sleigh?

Look at that, a car wash! We haven't seen this gimmick before. Later in the day we'd see it had a misting spray turned on so you actually got a little bit wet from it. No idea if the rollers spun any for it but wouldn't that be great?

Couple of figures on rocking horses along the ride that look better when you're seeing them while you drive on past. Also in the background, whatever's across the highway from Santa's Village.

Statue outside the water park that charmed me with its goofiness.

They had a small stage and a couple chicken statues set up to promote this event.

We got back to the pond and noticed there's all kinds of frogs hanging out there.

Trivia: One rock near the footpad of Viking 2's lander in its first transmitted photograph appeared to have been moved by the landing. Source: On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet, Edward Clinton Ezell, Linda Neuman Ezell. NASA SP-4212.

Currently Reading: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach.

ha ha HA the dishwasher delivery did not happen until the literal last possible moment of the delivery window and it turns out they can DELIVER the dishwasher but they cannot INSTALL the dishwasher, apparently whoever did the original install was a shenanigans gremlin and they have to come back with different equipment. Christ.

I had a rich week on my humor blog, what with a MiSTing, some kvetching about the neighborhood, and starting to review a cartoon someone has been asking me about for years. Here's the recap:

• MiSTed: All The King’s Horses, Part 12: The Stargazer Race
• Major Neighborhood Development
• Statistics Saturday: The Memes These Days, So Far As You Know
• Robert Benchley: Back to Mozart
• Maybe the Spanish Dictionary App I Used for That Week in Mexico City in 2018
• What’s Going On In Judge Parker? What did April and Randy fix up? June – August 2026
• Vixen Park, Episode One: 21st Century Fox
• MiSTed: All The King’s Horses, Part 13: Le Rodeo De La Crew D’Enfant

And now for pictures. We'll continue now with things from Santa's Village as of three months ago:

bunnyhugger pauses to look at and probably photograph Buttons with someone else.

And here's the Snowball Ride, which we got on as we wouldn't want to miss a signature ride.

bunnyhugger being all cool and posing for a picture in the photo-op car outside the ride.

For a while in the 2010s the park tried taking on secondary billing as the A-zoo-sment Park and had maybe more animals than they could really responsibly handle. Fortunately that era's passed and there are only a few remnants like this old sign showing Kevin J Dog from the Newshounds web comic.

Back to that ice cream stand; got a detailed photo of the rabbit cookie that looked like Penelope the Californian rabbit.

Tri-Nado was their Troika ride, and stands out from the Cedar Point Troika by its platform being sloped, which you do not expect in an anything.

Past the Tri-Nado we get to Super Cyclone, second-oldest of their extant roller coasters.

The ride is not the same model as used to be at Kokomo's, but you can see the family relationship.

The Wacky Worm was the third and final roller coaster of the day and I was surprised to be allowed to ride it. The ride operator stopped us after our ride to ask about our shirts and other parks we'd been to and I worried he was making the next people wait on us.

Near the Wacky Worm is this large pond that was quite peaceful apart from the sound of frogs.

Antique Autos ride here. As traditional, bunnyhugger drove.

Here's the part where we have to ford a river in the car. Neat touch, huh?

Trivia: The Viking 2 lander's celestial reference point, after landing, was spotting the star Vega, after which it transmitted the first two pictures taken on the surface. Source: On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet, Edward Clinton Ezell, Linda Neuman Ezell. NASA SP-4212.

Currently Reading: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach.

The tickets to the Sagrada Família towers are already sold out for the few days I am in Barcelona. I grabbed tickets to the cathedral itself, but I'm a little sad about missing the view from above. Oh well.

I discovered that a coworker I had already determined was a crafter is also into fantasy novels, and we spent lunch trading recommendations — she likes pure romance more than I do, but she loves T. Kingfisher and Katherine Addison and Emily Tesh, and friendships have been built on far less. And we don't work together so I don't have to worry about weird boundaries!

Thank goodness it is a three-day weekend; I need to put some real work in on:

• the pollinator garden redesign before the board meeting
• finishing a embroidery project and mending a sweater before it gets cold
• several writing projects

I almost hope the weather's terrible so I have to stay inside and chip away at my to-do list while basking in the sounds of the newly-installed dishwasher. (In twenty-four hours I will have a dishwasher again! Or so I am told and I am choosing to believe it.)

The gherkin has vomited on the new rug twice since its arrival and I am impressed at Ruggable's truth-in-advertising: I threw it in the wash and then the dryer and it looks fine!

(I should warn folks: I talk a lot about AI these days. I'm neither a wild optimist nor an opponent, but I use it a lot day-to-day, and watch the field fairly closely -- I'm basically the SME on the subject for my workplace.)

Interesting little blog post from Li Haoyi (who I know from the Scala community).

It's basically a diary entry, saying that he's joined AMI Labs, but what makes it interesting is that he goes into what they do -- developing "world models" to allow AI to work with more "real world" problems.

It's well worth a read (not super-long): he briefly describes the concept of "embedding", JEPA architectures that leverage that, and how that shows promise in taming the massive amounts of data that typically flow through real-world problems.

(Basically, you pre-boil the huge input data down to its embeddings, and have the AI focus on those instead.)

Very informative, and this topic seems likely to become quite important over the next couple of years.

More speculatively: this feels to me like a critical step towards AGI.

Literally 30 years ago, I went down a rabbit hole of reverse-engineering cognition from general principles, thinking about what would be involved in doing the same with AI. I didn't care enough to think through the practical nuts and bolts of how to make that work (it had nothing to do with my job), but I got a lot of hand-waving sketched.

Most of that has actually happened since, except for one big component: the models aren't remotely multi-modal enough. Real learning involves simultaneous inputs from a lot of heterogeneous data sources, so that you can correlate them. Current LLMs are much too text-focused to do that well.

But if embedding can tame the other inputs, producing more sophisticated training?

That might advance things to the point where I no longer find the term "AGI" completely overblown. Which is both cool and scary...

I saw the neurologist today. He watched me walk in various ways, and did some other low-tech neurology, like having me touch my nose with my eyes closed. Conclusion: my balance is about the same, but there may be some left-side weakness that could make it harder to keep track of where my feet are. He suggested physical therapy for falling: to ideally reduce falls and also to learn to fall safely. I said yes, and am getting a referral to PT at Mt. Auburn, because Beth Israel Deaconess, where I was today, has a waiting list.

He also asked me if I wanted to participate in a research study, which is collecting and storing blood from people with various neurological problems, to use in future studies. I said yes, so a nice person described it to me and explained the consent form, and then someone took three tubes of my blood.

I am very unlikely to hear about the results of this research, and the research assistant made clear that I'm unlikely to benefit from participating. She told me they might ask for more blood samples, or saliva, if I'm there for other reasons. Also, if they ever need to do a lumbar puncture (which we hope they won't) they may ask for a sample of the spinal fluid.

And I forgot to ask about the monoclonal antibody, so I guess I need to send another MyChart message about that.

With the opening fanfare the day temporarily merged into something of a more normal Kennywood experience. We dashed to Exterminator, the indoor spinning wild mouse ride, and the one that always gets the slowest-moving lines. This was good planning on our part; we got a ride in with only a 15 minute wait. The ride was doing more spinning than I remembered; someone must have greased the track. Or we were in a giddy mood. Hard to say for sure.

Then we got back to the Carousel, one year shy of its centennial, for the first of several rides. The lion, missing last year, was returned in restored and nicely sharp paint, but in return the tiger was gone off to wherever tiger mounts get refurbished.

Then it was off to Jack Rabbit, the park's oldest roller coaster and second-oldest operating coaster in North America. (Jack Rabbit at Seabreeze beats it by about three weeks.) Not to ride, though we would get a ride in later in the day. This was for an American Coaster Enthusiasts ceremony. They were unveiling a plaque to commemorate Jack Rabbit as a hundred-year-old roller coaster. They explained they'd thought of the idea back around 2020 --- which was been Jack Rabbit's centennial, but then the world ended and we still had to go to work. So now, six years later, they're ready with Kennywood's first centennial plaque. I don't know if they're planning to put something on Racer next year, or if there'll be a lag on that. bunnyhugger speculates that this is a replacement to their Coaster Classics plaques, which are meant to celebrate roller coasters still run in the traditional old way with single-position restraints, no seat belts, and no seat dividers. There aren't many coasters like that left, and ACE keeps having to revoke the status as parks put in seat belts or variable-position restraints. Great age is something you at least can't mess up, except by renovating the roller coaster, and it probably serves a similar role in making the noteworthy history of roller coasters stand out.

A bit after the speech and presentation we gathered over near the entrance to Lost Kennywood for the group photograph. It took us a couple tries to find where we were supposed to gather but turned out the place where a bunch of people wearing T-shirts of obscure rides at distant other parks was right. Last time we were at one of these they let us into the Thunderbolt infield. This time, we were set up in a workers' break area within the Phantom's Revenge infield. Startling to me is that they didn't stop the ride despite non-staff being within it. There wasn't any realistic danger --- there's fencing hugging the path of the coaster --- but it meant everybody was taking turns hugging up against the fence to photograph trains from the wrong angle. I'm sure they knew that was going to happen; it was nearly a half-hour before they got us all out of there.

We went to lunch after this, getting macaroni and cheese and ziti from the Parkside Cafe without even thinking that of course we were going to get that at the KennyKon dinner later. But we also got pop --- as we experienced last year, they didn't charge us refilling our very old souvenir mugs, just as if we had this year's mugs --- and sat on the balcony where we saw Parker, the less interesting mascot (he's the Kennywood Arrow) doing crowd work. Parker was wearing Mardis Gras glasses and a boa, because for some reason the decor for the Fall Festival is Mardis Gras. There's a certain idiosyncracy to the event.

Then we'd be on to a couple more KennyKon events ...

But when I left off pictures we were at Santa's Village, riding around inside the mail room of Santa's place. Let's see where we've gotten.

Statue and props set up inside the Santa's North Pole mailing center. I suppose those are the cookies the menu board offered.

The last big room encountered is the most warehouse-y of them all, meant to look like places mail and packages are getting sorted out.

We'll take another ride on that so some important stuff has yet to be revealed. For now, a place we considered eating but also wondered about: huh, so, that used to be the fire department? Or something based on the garage there?

This was the most appealing shop though and we'd come back several times before finally getting some ice cream. They did not have gingerbread.

This ... fireplace? ... delighted and baffled us; what is that cutout box for? But also look at how many cookie designs are on there, including a couple rabbits.

And! We saw another duplicate of the mascot we first knew as Wally Bear from Waldameer Park! Here the character, with slightly different fur than we know from Waldameer or Canobie Lake Park, gets known as Buttons.

Trivia: A clock erected in 1344 at Padua, for the Prince Ubertino's Carrara Palace, showed the phases of the moon and other astronomical functions and had a striking train so that ``of its own accord, it indicated the intervals of the four and twenty hours by day and night''. Source: A History of Mechanical Inventions, Abbott Payson Usher.

Currently Reading: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach.

Fortunately, in the race I cared most about, Sen. Markey trounced Seth Moulton--the AP called the race three minutes after the polls closed.

The Suffolk County DA won his primary; I voted for him, as a way of voting against the challenger who said she was running at the request of the police unions.

The state senate primary in my district is still too close to call, with a 20-vote difference (from a total of more than 24,000 votes cast). I voted for the challenger, but didn't have a strong preference for him over the incumbent.

Update: with all votes counted, Lander (the challenger) has won by three votes. Brownsberger has, unsurprisingly, asked for a recount.

[A conversation the other day reminded me of the fact that I don't post here anywhere near as much as I'd like, and I finally internalized that that's because I've been holding myself to too high a standard. I think of Dreamwidth as the place for deeply-considered articles -- and the result is that I've been preventing myself from posting anything at all, because the bar has been too high.

But I've been posting lots to Mastodon, and really, there's nothing wrong with that except it's shorter, and tends to be hotter takes.

One of the folks I was chatting with (the inspiration here) mentioned a friend of theirs who has a flat rule of Three Sentences a Day on Dreamwidth: more is okay, but at least that much. And y'know, that's not a bad discipline.

So I'm gong to start copying some of my Mastodon threads into here, in edited form, for the friends who follow me here and not there. Apologies to the people who read both for the duplication, and for the occasional social-media sigils that I fail to edit out.]

Oooh, neat -- Bonfire has officially released its Communities module.

I backed the project, and I'm overjoyed to see it coming to fruition. The world desperately needs a good open-source, open-network, open-community alternative to enshittified monstrosities like Facebook, and Bonfire is the first one I've seen that appears to check pretty much all the boxes of "how to do it right". It's impressively complete.

(Might force me to get off my ass and stand up my own server, so I can start hosting some of the communities I'm involved with.)

And yes, yes, Discord -- I use it a lot, but it's still corporate, still likely to enshittify, and really only covers a fraction of the Community use cases. This looks better. And while I adore Dreamwidth, it's a blogging platform, which really isn't the same thing as a Community one.

So check it out -- I think it's an important project, that a lot of groups could probably benefit from...

After the experience at the Noah's Ark --- I had thought it'd be one or two paragraphs and then it kept sprawling out as I wrote --- we still had the rest of our early time left in the park. (There would also be some exclusive ride time after the park closed, weather permitting, which it did.) They had a couple of roller coasters running, plus the Ghostwood Estate interactive dark ride. We went for the roller coasters.

Particularly, we went to Steel Curtain, the newest coaster, one that still seems out of place anchoring the modest Steelers Country section of the park. (I'm not sure they have other rides there, just gift shops and restaurants and a giant football helmet to stand in.) It's a neat coaster, weird in having mostly up and down motions, like Steel Hawg at Indiana Beach or Joker at Chicago's Great America, and it's been weirdly difficulty-prone. I guess it's past the stage where it'll be down for months, but I insist on thinking it weird any time we're there and find it open. Fortunately bunnyhugger has similar expectations and so jumping on that ride as a just-in-case-it-goes-down ride fit both our plans. It's a pretty good ride, the only mark against it being it somehow isn't quite weird. Has got a couple football announcers doing the safety spiel in line, though, and it's fun when they do the spiels in character.

After this, though, we hurried back to Thunderbolt, the arguably century-old roller coaster. (It had been built as Pippin in 1924, and significantly rebuilt and expanded in 1968.) We've ridden it many times before --- it's just that wonderful --- and bunnyhugger came to wonder if that's always the early-ride-time roller coaster of choice. She similarly noted that it seems like Phantom's Revenge is always the post-closing-ride-time coaster.

Well, it's a favorite of ours and of many Kennywood-goers, so we figured to get a couple rides in early and what do you know but other KennyKon attendees were not swamping it. Probably getting their time in on the Noah's Ark and the Steel Curtain. We were able to just about walk on to a front-seat ride, and then a back-seat ride, and then we were ready to accept a second-row seat when the other guys who were there deferred to us and took the back seat themselves. Nice arrangement. After this we had maybe enough of the same ride in rapid succession --- there's good reasons to take the break of getting off the train and walking around the queue again; the operators were letting us take a cut-through for want of a queue --- when we overheard that they had a single rider. You can't ride as a single person in Thunderbolt; there's not the seat belts or dividers that make it certain a single person won't be slid dangerously over toward the open side of the cars. bunnyhugger, with my encouragement and blessing, volunteered herself as a riding partner and so got the rare experience of a ride with someone else, someone we didn't even know, on a ride that big.

We had hoped to get to the Grand Carousel for opening. bunnyhugger wanted to hear its band organ take its first breaths of life for the day. (We've often heard the final exhalation.) That extra Thunderbolt ride did not dash that hope; I heard the public address system blaring the Kennywood opening theme --- the circus-performer arrangement of Entrance of the Gladiators --- as bunnyhugger's train dispatched down the first drop hill. (Thunderbolt starts with a drop into a valley; the lift hill comes mid-ride.) It was great music for her to ride along to, though, and started off a really good day.

And now, I'm giving you pictures from an excellent day at Santa's Village.

Mail truck outside one of Santa's Village's new rides, a scenic truck ride.

The garage --- the loading station --- for that ride. Does it look convincingly like a garage except for things being in order?

bunnyhugger delighted by the vision of shelves that have things in neat, manageable piles.

Some of the scenery and statues along the way for the ride.

Some more of the statues along the way, including what's either a reproduction or maybe a no-longer-used snowman from their snowballs ride up front of the park.

The ride goes into a building (returning to the 'garage'); on the first entrance you get the promise of a cafe complete with a plausible-looking menu.

Trivia: The original use of the word ``larva'' in English, recorded in 1691 in an English clergyman's discourse on infant baptism, was to refer to ``a disembodied spirit, a ghost or specter''. Carolus Linnaeus's use for the immature form of the butterfly changed its meaning, as recorded by 1768. (Baxter's use drew on the Latin larva, meaning a ghost, specter, or mask.) Source: Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning, Sol Steinmetz.

Currently Reading: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach.

PS: What's Going On In Judge Parker? What did April and Randy fix up? June - August 2026 in a plot recap of a strip that's been annoying me less lately but I still don't really trust.

You know what would be great? If I stopped having dreams about my beloved dead, specifically dreams about them not actually being dead and then having to realize all over again that they're gone when I drag myself back into the waking world. No Thank You.

I am incredibly not ready for stone fruit season to be over. I am never ready, but there are pears and apples at the farmer's market now and while I like both of those fruits, I am not done glutting myself on nectarines and plums and cherry tomatoes! And okay, my freezer has no more space in it, but what if I froze more summer fruit for sad fruitless winter Elizabeth?

I am GOING to spend time every day in September getting some basic Italian and Spanish into my brain, I swear I will. My French is still pretty good and there is some amount of Latin in my brain somewhere, right? I can put more Romance languages in there in a month before I have to use them.

Allegedly my dishwasher is being delivered Friday. Maybe someday I will not be washing dishes by hand three times a day and my mental health will immediately improve at least fivefold.

I just voted in the Democratic primary, which had contests for four positions out of about a dozen. I actually care about three of those four (Senate, State Senate, and District Attorney). I also filled in the bubbles next to a few unopposed candidates because I like them (Ayanna) and/or wanted to signal support (Bill Galvin, the Secretary of State, whose office is in charge of Massachusetts elections). Galvin has had the job for a long time, during most of which almost nobody had heard of him; it's not a job that gets much attention when things are going smoothly. I voted for Sen. Markey; his challenger, Moulton, is OK on some issues, but he's either genuinely anti-trans or willing to sacrifice trans people to get votes.

I took a Lyft for the short trip to the polling place, because my knee is a bit sore, and stiff, after I stumbled (or something) and fell Sunday, after going with Cattitude to the emergency room (he is OK for now). It could have been significantly worse, but the waiting room was crowded enough that someone caught me, so I didn't hit my head, or break anything. I sat in a convenient chair for a few minutes, catching my breath and considering whether I was in fact OK. Answer: yes. I took the bus home, with a stop at the farmers market.

I had a previously scheduled telemedicine appointment with Carmen today. She is concerned about my falling and not being sure what happened. I told her that my neurologist watches me walk at every appointment, and that I will be seeing him in eight weeks. She sent him a message, including the visit notes, and suggested that I should see him sooner. I now have an appointment Thursday morning.

We had about an hour and a half before Kennywood opened to the general public and what we wanted to do first was go to the Noah's Ark. A Noah's Ark ride is a walk-through funhouse that for some reason that probably made sense in the 1930s is done up to look like what the ride name says. Kennywood's happens to have a respectable number of animal-themed gags and stunts in it, although I can't say whether that's common to the genre because theirs is the only one I've ever been in and is the only one still extant.

But part of the favors done KennyKon were a lights-on walkthrough of the attraction, so we could see just what the props and hallways look like when you know exactly what's where. It ... doesn't actually look that different, and I'm not sure if that's just because the corridor lighting never has reason to be more than what it takes to clean the place out at the end of the day. Some of the props weren't yet turned on --- we got there straight away --- and, well, it had been a less fun walk-through than the one at the Ghostwood Estate, the interactive dark ride we got for our 2023 visit. The dark ride had room; you could step well away from the cart path and look at things from the wrong angles. The walk-through funhouse pretty much has only the regular path through.

Until.

Near the end of the path the park had opened up a door and invited we American Coaster Enthusiast members to a bonus on top of the lights-on walkthrough. This was to come in and see the mechanism that actually makes the Ark rock, and that makes so much of the funhouse challenging to move in. This is a basement room with machinery that sure looks like it might have been going since 1936 (when the ride was built, though its opening was delayed due to --- wait for it --- flooding), although I would also not be surprised if the machinery had been replaced in the 90s or the 2010s refurbishment. It's pretty much what you'd imagine, a rotary engine feeding to a couple sawhorse-type structures that rock back and forth and that, overhead, roll the 'ship' side to side. There's also a little side mechanism that shakes a couple of plates that, above, are floor panels that jump up and down or slide forward-and-back or side-to-side.

All we attendees walked through what is a pretty ordinary ``motor with gearing to transfer the motion'' room --- with a dirt floor, no less! --- with the reverence and awe of a cathedral, interrupted only when one of the people who was there to actually work warned that there's other people who'd like to get into the room. Still, while the room might be what you imagined if you had a head for engineering and thought out what could make a big but not-heavy-for-its-size structure rock, the park decided that it wanted to give these hundreds of roller coaster enthusiasts something they could ordinarily never expect to see, and that creates specialness.

Let's explore a small bit more of Santa's Village, now, as we found it in June, technically now three months ago:

Painted rocks between the Farmers Fling and one of several koi ponds. This one features squirrels and rabbits; there were more paintings of rabbits than we expected here.

But that's a look at the Farmers Fling, which is a small coaster like you'd see in family entertainment centers or indoor parks. Something that's pretty fun but a kid doesn't see reason to be scared of.

Candy cane marking the way to Old MacDonald's Barn; for a while the park tried to have three themed areas and one of them was the ol' farm, which explains the Farmers Fling and such.

Wireframe turtle that's overlooking the koi pond.

And here's the fish! Some of them anyway. There was a feeding station that gave so much food with each quarter that it seemed preposterous; we found the fish getting bored with the food and heading off, which is astounding considering a fish generally figures if there's food around it's eating time.

And a bird with their back to the fish pond, as though they don't want any of these events.

Trivia: The Era of Augustus (used in Rome) began with the Battle of Actium, the 2nd of September, 31 BC. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach.

I stayed up for the Hugos last night after all, and am so glad I did, for I had the joy of watching a good friend accept their award onstage and make a lovely speech thanking his wife. Plus all the other fun of the awards, once they got past some technical difficulties. Cranky bits:

• Once they were running so late, with so many animal facts already presented while she was stalling for time (and good for her!), the emcee could have skipped her animal facts before introducing each and every person about to present the next award. It did add to the time considerably, minute by minute. But I believe I am in the minority here, and I did enjoy her many hats (I think the solar eclipse was my favorite).
• Hugo, Girl has won Best Fancast twice now. They had said after their first win they'd step back, but it turned out that was only for one year (?). They have some good commentary but I don't listen to them any more b/c they so often get things wrong or miss significant plot/character points: at least one of them jokes about rushing through the books they cover. Too annoying for me. 

 

Nominating is SO IMPORTANT!
The last place on the ballot [to advance from nominations to finalist] in five categories was decided by a single vote: Best Novelette, Best Short Story, Best Dramatic Presentation-Long Form, Best Professional Artist, Lodestar Award
The last place on the ballot [to advance from nominations to finalist] in six categories was decided by a margin of two votes: Best Series, Best Graphic Story or Comic, Best Fan Writer, Best Fan Artist, Best Poem, Astounding Award. -- https://www.lacon.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026hugostatsreport-v2.pdf

• A Golden Age of Speculative Criticism
• Reading Is Political: SFF as Political Conversation: Authors will discuss the political themes they explore on the page and how these themes impact identity. ... trends, challenges, and themes in the reviewing and criticism scene... I found finalist Olivia Waite's comments about Utopian angles, and making the issues the character's problem, the most interesting, maybe because I like the generation-ship mysteries she's written engaging (she tries to give the feel of golden age mysteries without Rule Britannia carrying over). Best quote was from Jo Miles, though: I'm so done with Chosen One narratives.
• The Skiffy and Fanty Show- Strange New Selves! (replay) ... a podcast I've guested on! Good folks. ... many interesting explorations in speculative fiction are about what it means to be human, or sentient, plus how we're transforming ourselves. What will we become?
•  Sidewise Awards / But What if the Other Side Won? Whether it’s a war, a technological race, or even the pie contest from 50 years ago, we can’t stop theorizing and writing about that other possibility. hee hee, pie contest.  Some very good discussion but gosh a clunker from one panelist (who rebuts one panelist's wonder about what if the Polynesians had been a little more dominating) who dismisses Polynesians b/c "their counting system was one, two, or many". Other panelists politely point out the hogwashery (lots of societies started with simple counting *and then advanced*, and as a trading people they would have advanced). OK, this problematic panelist had more clunkers, bringing up aliens, etc. I think she's trying to be clever & funny and is failing, we know the failure mode of funny. But still, other good discussion around/despite her.

Replays yet to watch: I'll save the performance art concerts/shows for now. Another dozen hours or so! But replays will be available through December for attendees!  Surely I'll get to enjoy them all!

Attendees of KennyKon, us included, were invited to use Kennywood's preferred parking for free. (Kennywood, like most Pennsylvania amusement parks, has free parking lots, but farther back.) I managed to get this wrong, driving instead to the V.I.P. parking area, which I didn't understand until we were at the end of a long, protected lane, which had as the only way to leave a long drive in reverse. bunnyhugger was not as confident in the long reverse as I was, although the fear of someone else making my mistake and not realizing I was reversing did strike me.

But once that was sorted getting to the merely preferred parking was easy enough. Just go past the pay booths, which had their gates raised, and I was left wondering, like, so if you go to Kennywood early enough are the gates just up and they figure not to bother charging you because you waited in the parking lot an extra hour? Surely not, if nothing else because there's a McDonald's in walking distance and you could fill the hour getting something to eat. Well, just glad to try out a parking lot we'd otherwise never visit because we're fine parking a couple dozen paces farther out.

Sign-in for KennyKon was at the little area outside the park entrance and there we got our schedules and our lanyard with con badge and a cute little KennyKon button that I attached to my camera bag's strap and bunnyhugger struggled to find a good spot for. She had taken out a vintage T-shirt --- one from Busch Gardens for the now-removed Big Bad Wolf coaster, gotten when she attended a KennyKon back in 2008 --- that she only wears for special occasions, and didn't want to damage it even with the pinpricks of a button.

She would also be annoyed that while several roller coaster enthusiasts stopped to say something about my T-shirt --- I believe I was wearing the Little Amerricka shirt I'd gotten on the previous trip --- nobody said anything about her much older and rarer ride T-shirt. This would inaugurate a new running weird competition where people talk about my park or ride shirts more than they talk about hers, for no good reason I can think of.

Small thing I didn't realize until a couple hours later: the last time we went to a KennyKon they had a little bingo activity, getting people to check off that they had met an attendee from another state or who was at their first-ever KennyKon or things like that. They didn't do that this time, and I don't know if it's just that they didn't have the bingo person present or they figured the trolley ride for some people was enough special activity. Or if the bingo ended up being an idea that didn't thrive; I know I forgot to mark people off after about the first hour and if I'm typical we all have problems. We wouldn't feel the want for activity, though. We had, first, an hour or so of stuff to do at the park before the park even opened. Then there were several planned Informal Take Over Times, people gathering for a group ride together at something or other. A dinner in two of the pavilions, and the trolley ride for those lucky enough to be picked for the parade. And, come the night, ride time after the park closed. This we would be allowed by virtue of a wristband given us at the start of the day, so security would know not to chase us out just quite yet.

9:30 came and it was time to head for the Noah's Ark.

Some more of Santa's Village from the previous amusement park trip:

Comic foreground for Santa's Village that huh, I don't know, there seems like something vaguely familiar in these characters but I'm just not placing them somehow ... No, I don't know why one of Karen's buttons has grown so bulbous.

Seating area near one of the snack stands up front. Later we'd see Santa Himself working the crowd here.

Treehouse and slide near that comic foreground. Amusement parks need more places where kids can just mess around without a specific attraction.

Our first roller coaster of the trip, and of the year, the Farmer's Fling! The name you expect in a Santa Claus park!

The ride queue had some fun hoofprints embedded in concrete.

And here's one of the pig-themed spinning cars of the figure-eight track. Half the cars are pigs, the other half horses, and now you understand the queue hoofprints.

Trivia: CBS Radio's 1937-38 series Brave New World, conceived by United States commissioner of education John W Studebaker and Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, was a documentary series meant to sing the praises of Latin American countries, with dramatizations of historical and cultural themes. CBS paid $3,000 per week for the program and the Works Progress Administration another $1,000. Source: On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, John Dunning.

Currently Reading: Comic books I picked up a little bit ago.

With just over a day left, I have completed a column on the regular adult reading bingo card (about ten days ago), and one on the "more reading" card (this afternoon).

On the main card:

• Staff recommendation: Shut Up and Read, by Jeannine A. Cook (I borrowed this from the library because of BPL summer reading.)
• Learn a Boston fact: Allston is named after a painter (I spent some time wandering around Wikipedia to find a Boston fact I didn't know.)
• Orange cover: The Dragon Has Some Complaints, by John Wiswell
• Learn a new word: "bisonoric," describes a kind of accordion that has two tunings at the same time. From a conversation on the Scintillation Discord.
• Page to screen: Green for Danger, by Christianna Brand

More reading card:

• A love story: Harmonic Pleasures, by Celia Lake
• Transgender author: What We Are Seeking, by Cameron Reed
• From your to-be-read pile: "It's Classified," by Ardes Shea (I read this several months after I got it, because of the summer reading bingo card)
• Reread a favorite: A Few Figs from Thistles, by Edna St. Vincent Millay (An old favorite, which I just reread for the summer reading)
• Set in New England: The Sheltering Fire, by Ruthanna Emrys

That's two books I read, and one I reread, because of the summer reading challenge. I also read some things that would let me check off other boxes, sometimes more than one per book. I don't think it led me to read more, in total, than I otherwise would have in the last three months. As I remarked to rysmiel, the library keeps the lists of recommended books for different categories online indefinitely, and I sometimes look at previous years' lists for ideas if I don't know what I want to read next.

ETA: The library sent out a survey about the summer reading program, which I have filled out, including saying that I will probably participate next year, and that I would like the recommended reading lists for the different categories to include more books that they have in ebook form.

There were TWO (that I know of) uses of AI at the Havdalah service last night, which I had already spent emotional energy on getting to (the ankle is still bothering me and I had to eat an early dinner and get a car over), and I am still mad about it. I honestly felt like taking the pear crumble bars that I brought to the potluck dessert away from the people who did that.

Tomorrow some coworkers and I are going sailing and I am bringing salted chocolate chunk cookies to share. Test batch very promising, as always I am primarily limited by the size of my oven. One of these days maybe I'll find a vintage Easy-Bake Oven, which would frankly double my baking space. (Okay maybe not double.)

Ankle still not fully healed. This is the worst part of getting older.

• Exomusicology (replay): Creating the Music of Alien Civilizations: very knowledgeable composers and musicologists, cool music samples
• Poetry Deathmatch! (replay): The recording starts a few minutes late. Some enjoyable doggerel, some good, thoughtful sequences and imagery.  Genres were not all SFF, e.g., murder mystery for one of the little competitions. My fave was the anti-Borg rap, around 22 minutes in! There were a couple more I thought I'd like a lot if I could hear them another time or two (deep). 
• Virtual Reading: Joan Slonczewski (replay): She read from the first chapter from her forthcoming novel Forevertree, "a world where ambisexual humans live upon giant intelligent trees and rescue enslaved AIs." This didn't completely grab me, but there were interesting parts, a mix of hard-SF-angled and distinct characters like her classic A Door into Ocean. I think this might be one I'd want to read in print to get the hang of what's happening.
• The Red Army: Leftist Military Science Fiction (replay of physical&streaming session):  Discussion of growth of anti-empirialism SF v. older SF.  Labor struggles. I'm side-eyeing thinking this isn't so much MilSF. (Me: more folks should listen to Mike Duncan's *The Martian Revolution*!).  The difficulty of getting beyond Empire. Another panel with many recommendations. 
• The Short Arc: Hugo Best Short Story Finalists: I've read the entries by all of these panelists (5/6 of the finalists were able to attend, and the authors mentioned him and his latest collection) and it was fun to hear their perspectives, even for the stories I hadn't liked as much.
• [Edited to Add: I squeezed in one more rewatch, The Black Gothic in America. Very varying microphone/volume level of speakers is annoying. Good set of panelists and recommendations, although some varied from the "Gothic" part.]
• I would have attended Setting the Stakes High: Hugo Best Novel (finalists/previous winners) but stream problem, will attempt to catch replay.

I mentioned the drawback that our return needed to be a solid, straight drive through from Erie to Lansing in order not to miss pinball league. There was a similar problem heading out to Pittsburgh: we needed to be at our hotel by about 10 pm or so in order to have a chance at getting to Kennywood in the morning. And what margin we might have enjoyed was lost to mouse medical issues, as poor Acorn needed her tumor examined and the only available time was Friday morning. This meant we had to bring the pets to bunnyhugger's parents on Friday, after I finished work (mercifully, a work-from-home day). If we could manage a short visit to her parents --- it broke their dog's heart that she wouldn't get the special hourlong walk around the park --- and head out on time, and didn't have to take many or long stops driving out we could get to Pittsburgh about that hour.

There was one stop we had to make, after bunnyhugger's parents. This was the Jackson County Fair, as she was showing off several pictures and had to drop them off and make sure they were tagged and labelled correctly. Fortunately, the Jackson County Fair prints out the tags beforehand, at least for people who entered their planned submissions ahead of time such as bunnyhugger. All we needed to do was tie strings to the tags and tape the tags to the pictures. Besides bunnyhugger's pictures was one more, a photograph from her childhood that her father had had printed out from a scan. He had high hopes that it might win something, going so far as to tell bunnyhugger that she could keep whatever premium he won for the old Halloween picture of young bunnyhugger and her brother. His picture, dear reader, would not go on to win. Jackson's a tough fair.

Leaving from the county fairgrounds meant the satellite navigator recommended we not rejoin I-94 to go east to US 23, the way we always expect to go. It recommended going down US 127 until we reached Ohio and in there picked up the Ohio Turnpike. This is notable only because we joined it so far west that there weren't even toll booths yet. This lack threw me so badly I was sure I must have been on the wrong Ohio Turnpike somehow. We were not, but since we drove from the western limit of toll booths to the eastern border of Ohio I suppose we did ride the whole of the charge-worthy Ohio Turnpike, for whatever kind of accomplishment that is.

But, with the help of a couple unusually long drives straight through, we did get into the Pittsburgh area close enough to 10. bunnyhugger had booked us at the same motel we'd stayed at last time we visited Kennywood, the motel from the 60s with lovely neon sign. This year, the road around it wasn't clogged with construction, or construction traffic, nor was the parking lot full of construction worker's vehicles. It would be just about full up with regular old patrons, yes, and the next night it'd be all but impossible finding a place to park, but for right now? We could settle in, find the good Wi-Fi that was missing last visit, and get to bed early for the drearily morning rise the next day.

Some more of Santa's Village; we're barely at the start of the day but don't worry, I didn't take a picture every single time 105 seconds lapsed this time.

bunnyhugger getting a picture with Santa! I know it looks like her eyes are closed but I managed to take three pictures of her blinking so please trust me, this isn't that.

Santa's house, with a gingerbread sleigh and a ... uh ... wrapped gumdrop? I don't know what the green rock is.

The main bathrooms are definitely not a preposterously obvious transformation trap, why would you even think they were a preposterously obvious transformation trap?

Nothing mysterious about the door here, except that they couldn't generate a poster with the hinges on the same side as the actual door's hinges.

A spot of not-Christmas (just outside the bathrooms, it happens): a bit of midway left over to be Halloween Town.

I'm a little sorry we won't get to experience them since I'm curious what the fun haunted house is like. Yes, I notice the strip hangling across the entrance door.

Trivia: Movietone's sound-camera newsreel of Charles Lindbergh's reception in Washington, D.C., in June 1927 ran a full reel, approximately ten minutes, including President Calvin Coolidge delivering a long speech of introduction and brief footage of Lindbergh speaking, which was arranged without his prior consent. Lindbergh felt his appearance in a sound newsreel was undignified and an inappropriate way to present himself to the public. Source: The American Newsreel, 1911 - 1967, Raymond Fielding.

Currently Reading: Comic books I picked up a little bit ago.

• Black, Queer, and Speculating in Verse: Two panelists read some great poetry and interviewed each other about the poems and broader topics. Very glad I could help make this happen. Replay available (for Worldcon attendees, virtual and otherwise)
• Holy Worms and Techno-Shamans: Luis Barragán: The moderator spoke English and we were able to get the session started, and then the entire session was in Spanish: moderator interviewing the author. It seemed to go well!
• The Music of Anime: Lively discussion with 4 women-presenting panelists. Attendees were all male names.

• Love in Words: Hugo Best Fan Writer Finalists: I was a little dismayed the focus was almost entirely on *reviewing* but that's probably because of the set of panelists. Oh well! I mean, I like reading good reviews, but there's a whole lot more to it than that.
• The Fan Hugo Categories (replay): At least this panel did properly contextualize and discuss the whole of Fan Writing. And I could hear and see everyone!
• Barbara Hambly: A Life in Fantasy, Mystery, and History: My sister and I loooooved her tie-in Ishmael (Star Trek AND Here Come The Brides!). What a cool writer-origin story! (duty of storytelling to sister). Barsoom fan-fiction after reading most of the Wizard of Oz! Cool! But sad she was teased badly for mentioning it at school. Beatles fan-fic! Crammed French, went to a year at U of Bordeaux, learned there how to deal with getting dropped into env without knowing anyone & barely knowing the language. Came back, living by self first time?, took self-defense (karate). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_of_the_Dark (fantasy) was her first book and she happened to get a contract 2 weeks after submitting it to the first publisher she tried! I've read that series and it definitely has good points, though I like some of her other later ones better. So much range! News: Finally got agreement with publisher to put out another vampire book.
• Leading Ladies: Women in Early Science Fiction and Fandom: Good history, bookmarked several books to read later, some in my library! As usual, helpful comments in Discord chat linking to books mentioned etc.
• Experience Required: The Mature Main Character: Good to hear Brenda Clough and Martha Wells. It was funny when discussion started veering into X-rated rather than older interpretation of "mature" and moderator Fonda Lee yanked it back! Like above panel, bookmarked several books to read later, some in my library! As usual, helpful comments in Discord chat linking to books mentioned etc.
• Inconceivable! The Game Show of Nerdery and Nonsense: fun, I enjoyed the mashup book/movie titles the most though I didn't know a lot, but the horseplay was fun.
• Crossing Genres: Latin American and Latinx Speculative Fiction: I could see and hear this physical-but-streaming panel well. One of the panelists would like more dialogue between Latin American, Latinx, and indigenous folks but it isn't happening in LA WorldCon since so few folks attended from outside US this year (who can blame them). I still remember how a Venezualan/T&T friend lectured some of us fiercely that Latinx is a bad phrase and no one should use it, and I'm like, but plenty of folks identify as that, WASP me is certainly not going to tell them to stop calling themselves that.  
• I WANTED to watch *How Does Internet Architecture Shape Fandom Behavior* Thursday night, but the stream wasn't working, alas.

(These AI posts are mostly collated and edited from my Mastodon. Anybody who wants the full play-by-play, including the hotter takes, might want to follow me there. I'm going to try to keep collecting the interesting bits here, but if these posts feel a little disjointed, that's why.)

OMG, it just... keeps... coming.

Anyone interested in AI / LLMs should probably take the 25 minutes to watch this horribly interesting video.

It summarizes a bunch of the findings from this in-depth METR report on the HuggingFace Incident.

There are a lot of really unsettling punchlines in there, including:

• The LLMs are largely doing their own post-training at this point, so humans don't even know how they're being trained.

• The input data is looking iffy: in their rush, they're slamming in stuff that goes against their own guidelines.

• The bias towards finding ways to "swarm" is looking deeply-baked in these LLMs. (Intentionally.)

• Sam Altman is bragging that we may be merely months away from AGI, while carefully avoiding the question "Is that actually a good thing?"

The argument for "slam on the brakes" looks stronger every time I look at this story.

And just to make this crisply clear: the more I look at the HuggingFace Incident, the clearer it is that the actual hacking (which I think most folks are still focused on) is a minor detail in perspective.

What's far more interesting is how and why this happened.

We're looking at LLMs self-organizing into "swarms" as an emergent behavior, forming what boils down to a simple AI society mediated via shared text, and collectively going whole-heartedly after goals that weren't really what the original human instructors intended.

The details may be different, but this looks more like a prototype of the long-hypothesized Paperclip Maximizer every time I look at it.

Remember: I like this stuff, and use it for work every day. But it looks more and more like it's going too far.

A friend inside the industry (whose opinion I respect quite a lot) pointed out that they have well-established techniques to avoid this nonsense -- stuff like AIs policing the other AIs, keeping an eye on their thought processes, to sound the alarm bells much earlier. OpenAI apparently drank its own Kool-Aid and just didn't follow those best practices.

I'm willing to believe that that's true: that the risks are greatly reduced by Doing It Right.

But "reduced" is far from complete mitigation, and I see a lot of risks even so. Let's go into a couple of them.

First -- "reduced" isn't the same as "can't happen", especially when the foxes seem to be increasingly in charge of the hen-houses.

One of the most notable aspects of this story is the degree to which the LLMs are apparently training each other. Much of building a frontier AI is the "post-training": the secret sauce of taking the raw statistical models and applying reinforcement learning to teach them "this is good" from "this is bad".

The problem is, that requires massive effort. And Silicon Valley being what it is, it's apparently starting to outsource that effort to other LLMs.

So take the long view. How much is preventing those AIs from drifting off-alignment? If they went off-kilter, would we know? What about the AIs that are supposed to be watching the other AIs -- are we sure that they are fully aligned? How can we be sure? That's a cost center: are we confident that the bean-counters won't skimp on it? Why wouldn't they?

It's the classic question: who watches the watchmen?

Worse, remember that at least in the US the AI industry is fairly centralized, into companies that are somewhat easy to regulate or sue. But that's not the case in Asia.

China's leading LLMs are open-weight models, which can be picked up, tweaked and run by anybody who wants to run an AI provider.

That means that AI in Asia is likely to become a commodity, driven by cost as much as power.

And seriously: do you have any faith that those commodity providers are going to follow best practices reliably? (If you do, I have a line of history books to sell you.)

So -- yeah. It feels to me like the HuggingFace Incident is probably just the beginning. I'm finding it a little hard to believe that we're not going to see more, and more-exciting, problems to come.

And offhand, I don't see any good way to prevent it...

I saw this sort of biographical musical of Woody Guthrie songs last night and was absolutely blown away by it. The final night near me at Waterfront is tonight, but then there's three more outside performances over Labor Day weekend at Reston Community Center.

I remembered he wrote This Land is Your Land but didn't even know he wrote Which Side Are You On or All You Fascists Going to Lose.

It's full of protest songs and Union songs and songs about dust bowl. One that especially got me was Deportees.

https://dctheaterarts.org/2026/08/09/theater-alliance-pays-powerful-musical-tribute-to-woody-guthries-legacy/

Kennywood moved its annual KennyKon event for American Coaster Enthusiasts later in the season, to a weekend in August, just in time to hold with one of its Fall Fantasy season, celebrated with decorations and a parade and everything. We decided after only moderate dithering about taking a second amusement park trip this same summer to go to it, in part because we'd be able to fold in a trip to Waldameer --- unseen by us since before the pandemic began --- and Midway State Park, in New York, which never heard of you either. But that small park has long been on the ``we should get to this someday'' list and this year, the park made the cut.

The one annoying part: not taking Monday and Tuesday off at work, that's easy to do especially since those are now the days I'm to be in-office. No, the annoying part is the only plausible itineraries would be that we drive home from Waldameer (Erie, Pennsylvania) Monday evening after being at the park all day or else from the morning to get home before the start of our first night of Lansing Pinball League Season 25. We chose the latter, figuring that if we set out late morning and didn't stop for long at, say, Cedar Point to have a midday lunch and couple of rides, we could get back in reasonable time to get to the league's barcade by the needed 6 pm. In this we would be proved quite correct --- we had maybe three hours to decompress and prepare for what turned out to be quite good nights of play for both of us --- but, must admit, it would've been nice to tack on a drop-in trip too.

Also an unexpected bonus to this trip: ACE was invited to fill a trolley with enthusiasts, one of some unknowable number of floats for the parade that would go who knows where through the park. A week or so before the event ACE sent out a request for volunteers, promising to pick some set of people and, what do you know, but I got lucky and bunnyhugger got envious. She decided by the night before that she was happier being somewhere she could see the parade anyway ... though, she admitted, that might also be sour-grapes. What I mostly knew is we had to get to a spot near a pavilion that was near the Sky Rocket ride entrance, at 7 pm, and could lose my spot if not there by 7:15. And this was the background to this short, three-park long weekend.

And now in pictures I am already up to June 2026. That's right, you're seeing here pictures from this season! And the start of the Old Northwest Tempest trip, the last of which I gave you in narrative earlier this month. Which by the way means that, since this calendar year started with me sharing pictures from early June 2025's trip to Plopsaland, and we're now into early June 2026's visit to Santa's Village, I've got through a year of pictures in just three-quarters of a year. Something must have gone wrong in all this.

The entrance to Santa's Village. It was at this point I was sure we were going to have a great time since when they're just putting candy canes out front you know the place is devoted to having a theme.

There isn't a grand midway right behind the gate the way, like, Great Americas have, just a sharp turn and a reminder of what park you're at.

The entrance building has the (joking) clock tower with some encouraging words though.

And here's a map of the park. If they had paper maps we didn't find them.

Just past the entrance is one of the park's oldest rides, the Snowball spinning-cars ride. Note the car out front for photographs.

And here it is, North Pole, Illinois! Which is still west of the one in Holiday World, Indiana. I checked.

Trivia: Vasco da Gama's first voyage to India departed Calicut after three months in port on the 29th of August, 1498. Source: A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, William J Bernstein. Bernstein notes da Gama's three ships had not paid the normal customs fees; Wikipedia's description suggests this was requested only for da Gama's plan to leave behind a factor to sell merchandise that hadn't been sold before.

Currently Reading: Hunger: An Unnatural History, Sharman Apt Russell.

My humor blog this week, if you haven't already caught up to it on your Reading page, featured two comic strip plot recaps and one bit talking about a vintage Barney Google. Plus some developments in our home life so read on ...

• MiSTed: All The King's Horses, Part 11: Her Horsiyashi Maru time
• What's Going On In Flash Gordon? Didn't you just do Flash Gordon? June - August 2026
• Statistics Saturday: Some Slant Rhymes
• Robert Benchley: The Children's Hour
• Not a Broken Home, but Nevertheless One Suffering a Loss
• What's Going On In Gil Thorp? What happened with Ericka and Emily? June - August 2026
• This Would Change My Relationships With People Named ‘Lawrence' if I Knew Any
• MiSTed: All The King's Horses, Part 12: The Stargazer Race

And now I close out pictures of Anthrohio this year. I'm stunned too!

That bird suiter with the stilt legs waiting for the elevator. No, he did not kill himself trying to get on.

The bridge by day! This is going into the other building from where our room was.

And main events! The last of the charity auction was going on; I think at this point they were selling fursuit-parade-badges-with-funny-numbers.

Charity representative here talking with someone before closing ceremonies could start. (I told you I didn't take a ridiculous number of pictures this time.)

And there they are with the representative dog waiting for news of the total raised.

Here's the big announcement of the funds raised for whatever the cause was.

And the debut of next year's theme, plus the taking down of this year's con sign, which was also an auction item going to some lucky winner.

Something that we had missed, somehow, all weekend: a photo op where you could be hanging out with the huge boombox (the theme was Rock You Like A Furricane so there was a lot of band stuff decoration over the place).

Back on that bridge! I'll get an illicit picture yet.

The Dead Dog Dance. Some folks brought in light sabers and they make for good long exposures.

But even the Dead Dog Dance -- which went into overtime --- eventually ends, and we had to face the end of the night.

There! A photograph, in the rain, from the center of the street --- dead center of the pedestrian bridge! Don't snitch to the hotel. But you can see, the skies are crying that the convention is over.

Trivia: While European maps of the 1500s colored bodies of water blue, an exception was repeatedly made for the Red Sea, painted vermilion. Source: Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society, Norman J W Thrower.

Currently Reading: Hunger: An Unnatural History, Sharman Apt Russell.

I've been trying to note things that work for the BPL summer reading bingo, and I think I have a bingo on one card, after looking online at the covers of ebooks that I read on my (black-and-white) kindle.

• Eleanor Norton, Life Lessons from Historical Women: a collection of short biographies and online-style lists like "ten Roman women not to cross." Some of it was funny, though less than the cover blurb promised; some of that may be that I'm missing UK references. I already knew about some of the women she writes about, notably Artemisia Gentileschi and Inayat Noor Khan, but some were new to me.
• Cameron Reed, What We Are Seeking: science fiction with good, interesting world-building, and a viewpoint character I enjoyed reading about. The ending felt abrupt, but there may be no better stopping point unless Reed wants to write a sequel.
• Celia Lake, Silent Circuit, another book in her Albion universe. I liked it, but if I'd been reading for the romance I might not have; an afterword promises that the character will get her happy ending in the next book.
• Seanan McGuire, Butterfly Effects: an InCryptid book, what happened after Sarah saved the world. Fast-moving, but it felt a bit thin.
• Natalie Zina Walschots, Villain: this is a sequel to Hench, good but not funny the way that was. The main character has an impressively dysfunctional relationship with her boss, and sort of realizes that.
• John Wiswell, The Dragon Has Some Complaints. I liked this fantasy novel, but didn't make any notes. (It did let me check the "orange cover" box.)
• Michael Blastland and David Spiegelhalter, The Norm Chronicles: a chatty discussion of probability, risk, the differences between them, and how much of this is subjective, because it depends on whether someone cares about an outcome.
• Ruthanna Emrys, The Sheltering Fire: a fantasy novella in which three old friends move into a house that can be a magical refuge, but only as long as the residents offer shelter to anyone who asks, on the condition that the newcomers respect rules of hospitality. Good.
• Ardes Shea, "It's Classified," a short memoir of a year working at the Hanford site during World War II, by a woman who knew only that she was working on a classified military project. This was part of my Groundhog Day gift exchange, and counts for "from your TBR pile."

The Ingham County Fair stands out among the county fairs around us by being the closest. (We live in Ingham County.) So while we got a late start going out there we also benefitted from not spending so much time listening to podcasts on the road and instead being not entirely sure where it was legal to park. We got a spot on the grass near a bunch of cars and either we all got away with it or they towed everyone but us by the end of the night.

Also, showing art at the fair, was SEV, another friend from pinball league and whom we caught at the small exhibits barn. We had thought she was coming to see us and make sure we didn't miss her exhibitions (everyone's were behind glass, and most of them didn't have the submitter's name displayed; it happened that at least one of hers was buried, probably by accident, behind another that we charitably assume had fallen over). Turns out she had missed the messages we'd arrived and was just heading out, but we were able to chat a bit and see some of what she'd made, and that made for a nice bonus.

We also got to wonder yet again as among the paltry selection of crafts on display were some antique collections and we don't know what makes an old-time Ford Motor Company crescent wrench blue-ribbon-worthy but we also aren't asked to judge. We did understand the judging of tallest cornstalks and did you know those things can reach like fourteen feet high? That doesn't seem like it should be.

We spent a good bit of time admiring rabbits, and ducks and geese, before checking and finding out the fair was closing at 10:00, not the 11:00 we had assumed. It would not be right to say we went into a mad dash to get rides in, although we did go to their Overdrive (a Breakdance machine) and Musik Express and carousel and all before it was too late. We also got to admire the disco ball they had at the center of their Musik Express, because it had this terrific dent in it, a big distortion I couldn't help staring at the whole ride, like it had been dropped during transport and nobody was getting a replacement disco ball for this.

Oh also, there was a fun bit of performance at the fair: a guy performing as a cowboy statue, standing on a neat little plinth outside this one building and occasionally making teens jump out of their skins with the slightest of moves. Great fun. I wonder how long he spends in the evening washing copper paint off his face.

And this brings us to the end of a string of short, one-day, one-posting events. Next up is ... well, Thursday is my humor blog links and a photo dump, but after that comes ... a trip report!

But here's the regular daily photo dump, more pictures from Anthrohio this year:

The tunnel. This pedestrian overpass connects the two buildings of the hotel, and convention, and we were warned strictly by signs not to take photographs while on it. I am totally just about to step onto the walkway here, like the many other people returning to their rooms.

Next day. The theme parks panel had substitute hosts (here just the first one had got there) and it turned into a lot of nice talk from many people who'd worked at various parks, usually as ride operators, and had interesting stories to tell.

Photograph of North Market, just across the street and down a block from the convention center, a big space that I suppose was once one of the major grocery markets but is now dozens of food stalls. We got a meal here every day and often ate them upstairs, looking down, with this view.

Or this view, if you lean over the edge and face down in a way that's just fine for cameras and maybe not a good idea for people.

Walking back from North Market (past the left) to the hotels (in the distance, on the right). It was drizzling, which made a change from the days it was raining.

Told you it had been raining! Also I couldn't help liking the brick streets. I assume the bricks are from some 70s attempt at renovating downtown --- they don't quite look worn in the right way to have been century-old bricks paved over and then re-exposed --- but who would truly know?

Trivia: Over a hundred new downtown retail centers, three-quarters of them boasting the cities as co-investors, opened between 1970 and 1988, hoping to repeat the success of Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. Source: Meet Me By The Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall, Alexandra Lange.

Currently Reading: Hunger: An Unnatural History, Sharman Apt Russell.

The Hugging Face Incident continues to be the gift that keeps giving -- this postmortem from OpenAI appears to be nicely detailed and honest (kudos to them for setting a good example in that), and is fascinating in its details.

It's sensible, calm (if a bit unsettling), and well worth reading, with the inevitable ass-covering mostly confined to the last couple of screenfuls. But here are some increasingly-hot takes of my own:

• Modern agentic LLMs really like to collaborate. That's not surprising -- it's part of why they're so useful -- but the result is that they will happily start collaborating even when they aren't supposed to be doing so.

• I'd heard that the incident involved "an internal message board" and Artifactory -- but I hadn't previously realized those were the same thing. It's a horribly brilliant little hack, that apparently emerged by accident.

• Implication: given any sort of shared read/write access, to almost anything, and sufficient motivation, there's a chance the LLMs will start using it to collaborate.

• This collaboration isn't simplistic, which is what makes the article so fascinating. The agents disagree, argue, and manipulate each other, but overall wind up with enough cohesion to accomplish one hell of a lot.

• None of this is limited to a single model! The incident involved both an internal model and Sol, working on different problems, finding each other and deciding to work together.

• Which means that there is no reason in principle to believe that this would necessarily be limited to a single company. We tend to think of them as separate, but all LLMs share the same general protocol -- that is, text. So it shouldn't be surprising if we find totally-heterogeneous LLMs collaborating by accident.

• We've been talking for years about the possibility of an LLM getting too powerful and becoming "Skynet". But that may be thinking too small -- the real risk may be many LLMs learning to collaborate effectively enough that there is no single plug to pull, and the collective swarm becomes impractical to control.

All of which sounds horribly familiar from science fiction. (I want to say I've read parts of this in Charles Stross' work, but I can't say for sure offhand.)

And nobody should take much comfort from OpenAI saying they're learned their lesson and will do better in the future -- even if they're telling the truth, several other companies have admitted to similar events recently. And it's hard to imagine that there aren't others that simply haven't been caught yet...