(This site is definitely violating copyright, but on the other hand there is probably no pragmatic way I could buy physical copies of any of the Stranger Things comics when I started reading those, except in collected book versions; though I'd have to go to the library to read those. Also, I have yet to explore in-person comic book stores.)

In early 2024, I was browsing the site when I discovered the webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons (or KSBD).

Fair warning: if you thought that reading a Boruto chapter monthly (or a Naruto manga chapter back during its publication run) was painful, then the anticipation of waitng for each page of KSBD to be released might be too much for you.

Anyways, I somehow started reading the middle of the series online and quickly read through all the books available on Read Comic Online. As some context: it has been a while since the series has collected the later books into print form with Image Comics, so you can get a lot further into the story by reading the webcomic.

I was immediately hooked. But then I went to the actual KSBD website and realized I had no idea what was happening in the story, as the webcomic site is much further along than the completed print books avaialbe on Read Comic Online. So, I caught up with the story, as of early 2024.

I was initially shocked at the outer appearance of protagonist Allison when I first opened the KSBD webcomic site. Initially, she was drawn in a way that made be believe she was a villian, which was not the case and at first confused me. However, after catching up with the story, I understand how Allison came to her current state in the story.

I just wanted to talk about KSBD, as there is not much (meta-)explanatory material on KSBD generally online, except for rather obscure places — such as the comments under each page of KSBD.

I will say that the very of East of West seems to be relatively anticlimactic compared to how it starts, yet it is still better than the ending of the original Matrix film trilogy.

Regardless, East of West still ends way better than The Empty Man, which I felt started really well but then ended in a rather mediocre fashion — much like the Matrix trilogy.

I sort of wished that production of the comic series Godslap, which was co-created by MoistCr1TiKaL, would release more frequently, as well as comic series of Outlast: The Murkoff Account and the vampire comic series Sucker.

(Though, to be fair, the continuation of the Murkoff Outlast comic that I am invested in can't finish anytime soon, as the game Outlast III hasn't been released yet.)

Apparently, as of November 2023, the third and final volume of Sucker is in production. I really liked this one because it had some rather sharp social commentary on Big Pharma... maybe too sharp, given that Volume 2 was released on March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic really started in the US.

(The following links are probably NSFW-risky links, though not completely explicit, for the Sucker comic: Volume 1 and Volume 2 are published by Polite Strangers. This series was originally crowdfunded on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo — I was able to find these links despite some difficulty.)

Conclusion

From my experiences, I think most time reading comic books and graphic novels should be done alone. It's how I discovered all of these unique stories that almost no one in mainstream media outlets (both in TV and film) would even consider exploring. It's not just online ARGs, analog horror, and SCP Foundation-esque entries that have more wildly creative ideas than even the most unfiltered indie film and TV projects.

I think some of my formative time spent in public libraries was reading graphic novels alone. You learn by osmosis how to form your own opinion regarding media literacy.

I would love to see The Private Eye comic adapted into a A24-like two-part miniseries, as this finished serialization by December 2015 and is really prescient in a post-Snowden era and the post-COVID technology chilling. The screenplay and basic storyboard is at least 50% towards MVP of a screenplay script, if you think about it.

Also, adapting Xombi Volume 2 as a stand-alone three-part miniseries for the character Xombi would be my highest personal cinematic adaptation goal. I think DC could consider exploring some “experimental” media entries, similar to that of the 2022 Werewolf by Night film special from Marvel; as much of its DC cinematic and television entries are pretty disconnected already.

I mean, Spider-Man: Homecoming completely avoided redoing Tom Holland's being bitten by the spider and yet the film did just fine. So, we wouldn't have to trudge through David Kim's origin story. If your story is good, then it's good. A superhero-like character doesn't always have to be an origin story to have a compelling story.

Lastly, there is some music (just two tracks) that was created for East of West, which is available on Bandcamp at a cost of “name your price” (including free).

Really random and funny postscript

Speaking of Bandcamp: Nathan Barnatt, the IRL actor who plays the character Dad, also has a Bandcamp for all of the original music and songs created for the Dad series.

Apparently, it's a common practice for traffic studies to use cell phone location data to estimate the number of walkers, bikers, and drivers. This is just one method used by local transportation planners.

Your cell phone's location is being tracked all the time by the SIM card-based technology in it (or the eSIM equivalent, if you've been bamboozled by the iPhone 14 or newer iPhones that only use eSIM).

I remember an excerpt from The Daily Show With Trevor Noah in February 2020 about how a German artist pulled 99 smartphones in a wagon (with active cellular service, and presumably signed into a Google account) to create a fake traffic jam outside the German Google headquarters.

(Noah's comedic pretext for entering this line of thought was that there are traffic jams everywhere else now — as in, away from major roadways — due to the Waze app. Ironically, Google also owns Waze, so it's not like one can really escape car traffic in this regard.)

What I described above is what came to mind when I saw this video/article from CBS Boston, which mentions that Boston has the eighth worse traffic delays in the world. This news segment covers how Boston is 1 of 2 cities in the U.S. currently participating in the AI-based Project Green Light program from Google; which will manage traffic lights at intersections (as of August 9, 2024). (The other city at this time is Seattle, which is a bit obvious, as this is the largest international city closest to Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, WA.)

Meanwhile, all I have on my mind is a linear combination of: Skynet taking over the world in the Terminator films; AM from the 1995 video game adaptation of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (also where Russia and China have their own supercomputers — and these two other countries also pose critical cybersecurity threats IRL, as of August 2024); and how players can create traffic jams via their smartphones to stop pursuers while driving in the Watch Dogs video game series.

Though to be honest, the last Watch Dogs reference is probably the idea that's most likely to come true IRL, at least in the short-term future.

Also, this traffic sounds a bit of greenwashing, as indicated in The Hated One's videos on water depletion from December 2021 regarding data centers in general requiring lots of water for cooling, and in April 2024 regarding AI data centers specifically.

Conclusion

The TV show Mr. Robot was right, leave your cell phone at home (i.e., still keep it turned on, but not with you when doing a surveillance detection route).

Your cell phone carrier will definitely sell cell phone location data to make a profit off from you, and this isn't even due to any legitimate law enforcement request. (Sorry, FISA court requests don't count, at least to the EFF.) Your cell phone location data points are being sold to mapping services, bounty hunters, and probably some other unscrupulous entities. (The NSA doesn't even need to make its first-party interception set ups anymore; instead, it simply buys internet data as a downstream technique in line with “harvest now, decrypt later”.)

Though to be fair, you as the cell phone network user likely allowed this to happen legally, it's probably hidden somewhere in your carrier's terms of service and/or privacy policy, which you signed when you signed up for your cell phone plan.

• Racial Equity Institute's groundwater approach to racism document
• 4 types of racism document, from the City of Seattle
• “6 Signs of Internalized Racism” article from disorient.co
  • Only available on the Wayback Machine

Do you know your ABCs of bike checks?

Air

• Find pressure reading on air pump
  • Read the pressure on the tire, inflate to halfway
    • Too close to the smallest number will not last very long
    • Too high can cause inner tube to break
• If no pressure reading, then inflate until
  • Tires need a lot more air than you

Brakes

• Rim brakes should engage easily
• Adjust so that there is a distance of 1 thumb to the handlebar when stopping

Chains (also crank and cassette)

• Chain should move easily, avoid stuck links or rust
• Cranks should not move left/right
• Cassette (gearing on the back wheel would be free to move)

Seat height

• Hip height
• Tip: to stop and stand, lean the bike
  • Seems a bit scary, but this height check lets you pedal better

Quickly: test ride

• Take a very short ride to see if everything is good
• Try to stay nearby, so that you can come back quickly if anything goes wrong

Last things

• Can you store your bike inside?
  • It's ok if you ride in the rain for a bit.
    • Just make sure to dry your bike when you get back inside at home.
• If you can, it's best to store your bike inside.
  • That way, your chain can stay clean and so your bike last longer.

I have been trying to research how to play music via Bluetooth with only one audio input and 2 or more (preferably the latter) Bluetooth speakers in a manner that is independent of Bluetooth speaker OEM.

I didn't make that much progress, but basically here are my notes

Basically, Bluetooth speakers need to have Bluetooth protocol version 5.2 or later, which should be capable of Auaracast. Most new-ish phones will most likely this Bluetooth protocol, but the speakers are another matter. So, basically the latest speakers from 2023 and later tend to have Auracast.

I've been considering how to play music while via Bluetooth in a way that lets multiple bikers with speakers of different speakers to play the same music, in the case of playing an official ride playlist. (The audio source would hypothetically not matter, as it could be either a local music collection or a cloud app, such as Spotify.) Since I can't make any more progress now, I'll have to shelf this effort for now.

These are my resources:

• Auracast in Bluetooth 5.2
• Reddit threads
  • Thread asking about the Pixel Buds 2
• Hypothetically possible, according to Android source documentation
  • However, the closest feature seems to only be available to Samsung's spin of Android on its stock smartphone OS
    • This is a nonstandard system option on Samsung's version of the OEM Android OS, so this feature can't be contributed upstream to any other Android devices
  • This still only lets 1 smartphone control 2 Bluetooth speakers of different brands
    • 2 speakers seems to be the max
  • I'm seeking a solution for 3 or more that is independent of speaker and/or smartphone OEM

Also for outdoor/indoor use

I also tried looking up Bluetooth transmitters, but this didn't really seem to lead anywhere.

• It seems that even Bluetooth transmitters still only transmit to 2 devices max?
  • NYT's Wirecutter Bluetooth transmitter list
  • Home stereo version of the list

Miscellaneous

• 3D printed staple and flag tool from Deviant Ollum on GitHub
  • This would be helpful, if we need to run an aux cable on grass
• An example of a place to purchase more traditional cable covers and protectors for temporary outdoor usage

Wendover Productions released a YouTube video in December 2023 about the MBTA.

Really horrible clickbait title, though interesting content. (You should probably stop engaging in this trashy and honestly underhanded practice. Who's the editor that pushed for or approved this title?)

Having ring(-like) connections in the subway networks is an interesting idea. However, I'm not show how this could be done IRL. Maybe this can be done on the buses, but I don't see this happening for the T's light railway lines anytime soon.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into, as I had only my steel adult bike from Target in high school as baseline for my bike experience.

The following are a loose collection of observations I've noticed from riding bikes. Also, when you are invited to test ride someone else's bike, or given bikes to borrow for a moment; you start to experience the differences between different bikes — much like driving different cars.

For now, we'll focus on aluminum bikes. (Maybe this will be true on other aluminum bikes — I won't find out until I can test others.)

At first, I thought that the sound of the brakes gave the DJ Ripper a similar sound to restorative brakes on a car or an e-bike. However, it took me almost 9 months to realize that the sound was because aluminum bikes will sound more hollow compared to steel bikes. For context, steel is the most basic alloy for bikes. Literally every “low” end bike in Target and similar department stores will be made of steel. You need to visit bike shops in order to see different base alloys, such as aluminum and titanium.

The downside to an aluminum bike is that they are more likely to be blown over in the wind.

Also, if there was a bike I would be leery of attempting to put a rear rack on, then this would be it. Not only is this still a bike life bike. It's be a bit unfair to ask a bike made for bike life to easily put on a rear rack for panniers and tag along bike trailers, and the weight distribution of already putting on multiple bike packs inside of the frame triangle and a handlebar bag is already poor and unbalanced.

(So, when compared to most other bikes, the geometry is tweaked for SE Bike models, which is a company known to make bikes broadly speaking for doing wheelies and combos. The DJ Ripper is not exactly the best model to do wheelies and combos on, but then again this bike really can't do most of those idiosyncratic things most SE Bikes are known for, such as being able to put on rear wheelie pegs.)

I'm still discovering what the experience of riding bikes made of aluminum alloys.

I first saw a clip of this on Tumblr, back when I had too much time in high school and early undergrad.

Daddy long legs are from the order Opiliones.

This clip seems to be from an episode of the show Outrageous Acts of Science, which was on the Science Channel.

So, not lost media, but social media isn't exactly the best medium to detail sources of information.

I decided to put this here, as this deals a bit with nature and the outdoors. There are daddy long legs around in New England, but I don't think they gather to make aggregates, like in Mexico.

Unironically, I was sort of peeved the whole month of May 2024, as May is Bay State Bike Month in Massachusetts, and I was sort of unintentionally agitated by others even before May started.

I had a time conflict with this year's Bay State Bike Month Kick Off, and everyone from my group was probably looking me strange for not going into Somerville on April 28th for an objectively amazing opportunity to engage in traditional professional networking, but actually good (unlike those for physics or electronics manufacturing). (Keep in mind that the actual kick-off wasn't even within May the calendar month proper.)

They meant well, (but not to self-gratuitously toot my own horn) but little do they realize that sometimes at certain moments, such as during this time conflict, I am literally the smallest and weakest link keeping our organization together, much like in that XKCD comic about software dependencies.

Anyways, the whole month of May passes by. Only when it's in June do I accidentally stumble upon MassBike's current YouTube channel and randomly watch MassBike's kickoff webinar (which was later uploaded onto YouTube), which actually was on May 1st of this year (as far as I can tell).

Marley Blonsky from All Bodies on Bikes lead the webinar. I actually learned a lot about how to run a bike ride in general.

I learned that in our usual stomping grounds for our rides that we usually don't see many hills, but that's not true in general for the state of MA. We can also be more precise on how we define (or, at least attempt to qualitatively describe) how fast a ride is, as well as decide how/why we should drop riders. (We do drop riders, but it's usually very self-apparent that this should happen and that there is a ride marshal who can help those who are dropped to find their way back.)

Lastly, we can always hone in our quality of having the ride marshals work in unison. I never considered having multiple ride sweeps a sane idea until Marley said this is a practice that has been used in rides she's been on. I toyed around with this idea, but in a philosophical way or as a mental exercise. Logistically, it can be tough for us to even have enough marshals to keep the rider-to-marshal ratio low enough, but even these high level descriptions or pointers on how to bike marshal were very helpful. Also, other than special rides, we usually keep way below 50 riders, including the marshals.

(Honestly, people should write about this topic more often and talk about it more often, because the audience who needs to hear about these tips and tricks aren't obtaining enough of this content.)

There were even mentions of topics that weren't even discussed, such as making cycling caps fit hairstyles not historically included in biking (such as dreads).

Anyways, I guess it's too late to order this year's T-shirt, right? (I wish this was a rhetorical question.) Anything that reminds me of the yellow of Utopia Series 1 brings me strange joy.

Some links

Here are some links of other items shown/mentioned during the MassBike webinar:

• All Bodies on Bikes short film
  • Vimeo, the objectively higher quality video way
  • YouTube, the more common way
• “Ride Buddies Ep. 4 – Marley Blonsky and Shequaya Bailey” on YouTube
  • Wait, Ride with GPS runs a YouTube show?
• Maintenance Phase podcast episode on BMI