Meme Monday: Apple Memes

Fall is that season people around my part of the country most associate with apples.

Even more than pumpkin spice, apples in the Fall mean apple cider, apple crisp desserts, and apple pies. Sure, you can have those any other time in the year, and especially when you come inside after a day in the snow a slice of hot apple pie is incredibly rewarding, but the crisp Autumn days with the leaves turning color and the scent of a blaze in an outdoor fireplace is tailor made for sipping a mug of spicy apple cider.

Just ignore the part about me having to severely ration my apple intake; just let me enjoy the ambiance...

From Readers Digest, of all publications.

You know what they say about an apple
a day keeping the doctor away...
From Instagram.

Ah, I wish. Maybe I'll have just a little
bit of the peril.... From Instagram (again).

Amen to that.
From Pinterest.

I Did The Thing After All

"Well, I did it."

"Did what?" my questing buddy asked.

"I sent in a sample to Ancestry."

"Ooo! You will have to tell me how it goes!"

"I got the results today."

"And?"

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? The desire to fill in gaps, to figure out --in a nation of immigrants-- where we came from, and to answer family questions that have been left hanging: all of that were an impetus to deciding to get my DNA sequenced. 

I'd covered that in my What on Earth is Red Reading This Time post about The Lost Family, so why did I finally decide to pull the trigger now?

Part of it was that there was a sale. (Well, duh.) I know enough that waiting means sales, and I figure that if I waited long enough the price point would drop to a level that I'd be able to justify. If I wanted to.

The second part that went into my decision was that I wanted to be proactive about what might happen. I could simply wait around and then have somebody chase me down at a random time in the future, but instead I decided to test now so I had that already finished.

The last part was the Ancestry option to have your results hidden from other matches. If I were forced into having any potential matches visible as the only option, I'd never consider conducting the test. However, since I could keep my results "private" so that I would remain hidden from any potential matches until I decided to open it up, I became more comfortable with the process. 

Kind of ironic, perhaps, that I'm discussing this here in a publicly available blog. 

There's more to it than that, of course, because just showing some charts aren't going to make someone say "Hey, I'm related to that guy!"

I mean, have you any idea just how many people of German descent are there in the Ohio River Valley?

A ton.

Now, given that my wife's ancestry is 100% German American, it would be far more an interesting event if she were to show up as not being the same. Alas for me, things are not that simple.

Here's what I mean:

If you need to click on the graphic to see it
better, go ahead. No worries.

The first thing I noticed, even before the graphic, was the Ethnicity Update indicating that Ancestry is able to identify people from 4 regions (3 in Asia, 1 in Europe), and provide better matches in Hawaii and New Zealand. This means that as Ancestry gets more data from people who test, they are able to more accurately assign DNA to geographical areas than before. Of course, that's also dependent upon the accuracy of the person providing the DNA sample, because any inaccuracy there will require even more data to remediate.

That's fancy terminology for a pretty basic premise: every person who lied about or unintentionally misrepresented certain things when providing your DNA sample turns their data point into an outlier. Ancestry would need to compensate for those outliers with more and more data about a specific region to obtain a more accurate understanding of the regions affected. So, if you were told that you came from, say, Fiji, but it turns out that your ancestors were really from New Zealand, that inaccuracy will show up in the data. If there aren't enough samples from Fiji to distinguish you as an outlier, Ancestry's results will be broader than you might expect. 

Ancestry does couch their findings in fuzzy language, because those inaccuracies will change over time. The header "Your DNA looks most like the DNA from these 8 world regions" is the first real kicker that hey, this is what we know now, but check back in a bit and this might change. There was nothing I did to change my DNA*, it's just that this is what Ancestry can safely say at the moment.

But hey, let's have some fun, shall we? Here's what happens when I click on Germanic Europe:

Well, that's actually... okay, I think I understand this.

See that dark green section up in the northwest part of the map? Before you think that's where my German ancestry is from --ironically enough, some of it might be, but that's neither here nor there-- the color hues represent the potential percentage of your ancestry hails from. So ancestors form the dark green area have potentially 75% or more Germanic Europe ancestry. The middle area is in the 50% range, and the light green area is 25%. If I were like my wife, who is German American on both sides of her family, Ancestry could likely even delve down further into the region and be more specific about where her ancestors came from. Me, having significantly less of a match at 30% --and split between both parents-- doesn't have such a luxury.

***

Okay, one thing you might have missed is the ethnicity estimate.

There's a lot of variability there, given that while the median estimate for Germanic Europe is 30%, the range is 24 - 56%. There is a white paper on this process, so if you're thinking it's a simple standard deviation.... eh, it's not. The TL;DR on this is that the more data Ancestry can get that they can use as representative samples, the more precise results they can achieve. Even so, there are limitations due to natural regional variations. 

Variations aside, there were a few surprises in the results. Not "OMG YOU'RE ACTUALLY FROM ANOTHER PART OF THE GLOBE!" sort of surprise, but more along the lines of "Huh, I didn't expect that to pop up in there."

Like that slight amount of Slavic ancestry that centered around Poland and Ukraine.

Or the Norse and Swedish/Danish ancestry.

And while I expected Irish, I didn't expect that much of it. Or Scottish at all.

Still, the one thing that made me raise an eyebrow was this, a little bit lower on the results page:

That date range made me go ????

I mean, I understand that my ancestors had to settle somewhere, but I wasn't expecting it to be Pennsylvania. Or potentially that early. 

From what I've been able to tell, the farther back the date range goes, the farther back the community originated. So instead of looking at the range and saying "yeah, THAT helps a hell of a lot," it's the earliest part of the date range that is the most relevant. 

So... that some of my ancestors could have been over here in North America before the American War of Independence is... well, unexpected. You think German and Irish ancestry, your American brain goes "Oh, the 1840s: the civil unrest in what is now known as Germany and the potato famine in Ireland." Both groups migrated to the Ohio River Valley --far more Germans than Irish, to be fair-- but that doesn't surprise me much at all. But seeing that "Early Pennsylvania Settlers" with an early date of 1700 pop up and... okay, I might have to rethink some of what my family's past was like.

***

"Never say never, but never... Okay?"

--Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, when asked if he was interested in coaching a college football team

One thing that I can put to bed is the family story about having a Native American ancestor. As you can see, it doesn't show up at all. That doesn't mean it might show up sometime in the future given enough data points --and said Early Pennsylvania Settlers community-- but to put it politely, the future does not look bright for that piece of family lore.

***

Now that we have some of the general stuff put out there, let's delve into inheritance, shall we?

They were originally Parent 1 and Parent 2
until I assigned which was which.

The DNA test can identify which parent each set of ethnicities came from, as seen above. Ancestry does not identify which parent was which --that was my job based on what I knew of family history-- but they can tell you that Parent 1 provided you with such and such genes, and Parent 2 provided me with other sets of genes.

To go into more detail, and to make it blindingly obvious that Ethnicity inheritance is random, here's the other half of that comparison:

Given some of the family names on my Mom's
side of the tree, I'm amused at how little German
I inherited from her.

I'd figured that the "mutt" side of the family was the unknown part, on my Dad's side, but since I knew for certain that French was on my mom's side, that's the side I identified as hers. That there's so much English in there on both sides of the family was kind of a surprise to me.

But you know, as Ancestry points out, ethnicities are passed down unevenly. Sometimes an ancestry breeds true in a family as well. My mom is the only one of her siblings with her particular hair color, and even among the mini-Reds you can tell the different variations in the red hair color and identify which side of the family they got their particular shade of red from. 

---Begin Rant---

One thing I want to stress about this exercise is that some people will read a certain amount of superiority into their results, but they should absolutely not do that. I really don't give a fuck about the reason why you took a DNA test or are interested in your ancestry, but I'm here to tell you that people are people. We are all equal, and nobody is genetically superior to another person.

---End rant---

***

Oh yeah, one final part of Ancestry's results that I could observe within the limitations I set is this:

Oh, THIS could be fun...

I wasn't exactly sure what to make of this, since we're delving into territory that could easily go toward the nature vs. nurture argument. 

While I won't show too much stuff, I'll show a few items here. Mainly because I was amused by them:

Oh, they SO do not know me on some of these...

The first one, Dancing, had me laughing. I have what is known as "two left feet". I SUCK at dancing. However, this trait was pointed as coming from my Dad's side, which is actually quite accurate: he was a really good dancer. I can appreciate dance, but actually dancing? Eh, no.

Some of these have an obvious genetic tint to them, such as Asparagus odor (which I can smell a mile away**) or Cilantro aversion. As far as birth weight goes, I was kind of average; IIRC I wasn't a jumbo kid, or my mom would never let me hear the end of it. 

My caffeine addiction... Let me tell you about my caffeine addiction...

All I can say is that genetics are not destiny.

***

You might have noticed in perusing these results that there's a LOT of incentive to open up your results and share them with other people.

I look at that and go, "Yeah, right."

I'll do it when I'm good and ready, and I am most definitely not ready at this point in time. 

All of the above may provide a bit of insight into myself and my history, but in the end it's nothing that terribly exciting. That's why I posted as much as I have about the results: there's a lot there, but nothing that could distinguish me from a ton of other people from the Ohio River Valley. It's in the family tree itself where any drama might appear, and that is a long, ongoing process.

*Crispr notwithstanding. And to be fair, that old SF/F trope of genetic manipulation for fun and profit has gotten that much closer with the advent of Crispr.

**It doesn't stop me from eating asparagus, however. I just have to hold my nose when I pee later.

EtA: Lost the last part of the last sentence. Have no idea where it vanished to, but I restored it.

It Is Now Permanent...

Well, for me it is, anyway...

This started happening around 6 PM EST.

Can't get around it --for now-- so, I guess I'll just go listen to the music I've already ripped from my CDs. I own those CDs, so it's not like I'm going to get a knock on my door from, oh, Deutche Grammophone asking me to pay them so I can listen to Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic play Grieg's Peer Gynt Suites. 

One of the first CDs I ever bought.
Sorry, Herbert, but Jethro Tull's
Aqualung was the first.

Given where von Karajan presently is, I doubt he needs the money anyway.

Meme Monday: RPG Romance Memes

Sweetest Day is on Saturday, October 21st this year, so I thought that some romance oriented RPG memes would be....

What, you've never heard of Sweetest Day?

Oh. Uh, you're not missing much.

When you're a teenager who isn't
dating, Sweetest Day can be a real
downer. From Holidaycardsapp.

I became aware of the "holiday" back in the 80s when I was in high school, when it frequently coincided with high schools' Homecoming or Fall Dance celebrations. I thought it was merely a holiday concocted by greeting card and candy companies to sell more products --and to be honest, I still believe that the promotion of Sweetest Day pretty much centers around those companies-- but much to my surprise the holiday is much older than I thought, and is primarily a Midwestern US holiday. 

Yes, it originated in Cleveland of all places.*

Well, I figured that I might as well play off of Sweetest Day to cover romance in RPGs, whether they be of the tabletop variety or the video game variety.

People will consider that Baldur's Gate II is the first RPG that incorporated elements of romance into it, but that was definitely not the first video game to incorporate "romance" or "pursuit of sex" into gameplay. I mean, anybody remember this old chestnut:

Yes, I played it. No, I'm not proud
of that fact. From Wikipedia.

Or this one:

Yes, I played this one too, but never
finished it. The Revenge of the Nerds
vibe from this game was strong.
From Wikipedia.

So... we've come from adventure games such as the above to Baldur's Gate II, to, well, uh... the perpetually thirsty Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate III. Without further ado, here's a collection of RPG romance memes:

In our recently concluded 20+ year campaign,
we explicitly told the DM we didn't want any
romance or sex in the game. He still tried
to insert that into the game, so I would torpedo
that at every opportunity. From FB's dndmemes.

Heh. From mematic.

That's kind of what I'd expect
from Wolverine. From imgflip.

This kind of goes without saying.
From animalnouncomics.com, via Reddit.

*And yes, as a Cincinnatian and a Bengals fan, I suppose it's obligatory that I put this old video out there:

And in 2018, before he passed away, Sam describes the incident to radio talk show host Rich Eisen in the studio: 

If you search YouTube for other parts of that interview with Sam, it's worth watching if nothing for his advocacy for donating organs. Sam was well known throughout the city as an advocate for the poor, homeless, and the hungry; he was one of a kind and the entire city mourned his passing.

Swing Lo....

Lo-fi music is pretty much a thing these days. You can't get on YouTube --or, I presume, a music streaming service-- and not run into people streaming it. It's designed to be low-fidelity with imperfections throughout the music, and no, not in an innovative way such as Thelonious Monk,

The first time I heard Straight, No Chaser, I thought

the pianist was just playing badly, but I soon learned

that there was a method to Monk's madness.

but designed to emulate an AM radio signal to a greater or lesser extent. Okay, that's not being really fair to the sound fidelity, because it does sound much better than an AM transistor radio. It kind of does have a unique, chill type of vibe that grows on you; a person can have it playing in the background while doing other tasks without the music standing up and demanding that you pay attention to it.

Lo-fi music doesn't have to be royalty free --that depends on the composer-- but I've noticed that a lot of it is advertised as such. 

I guess you could say that if Easy Listening Music and Jazz had a kid that also listened to hip-hop, Lo-fi would be the result.

It is very much the 'it' music these days, and lots of people are looking to cash in on the trend with AI generated artwork gracing the YouTube videos of Lo-fi music. Just type in "lofi" in YouTube and you'll see what I mean. Sure, there's artwork that would look at home in a Thomas Kinkade painting, 

and others that give off an anime vibe, 

I teased my questing buddy with this, since

she plays a Bear Druid in WoW Classic.

but there's also plenty out there that veer toward hentai and other, far more sexually suggestive graphics.* 

Sorry, but I'm not going beyond PG on this blog.

Graphically speaking, that is. But if you really

want to hunt around, you certainly can find the

explicit stuff.

Still, I guess it's to nobody's surprise that Blizzard got in on the act:

But what surprised me was what dropped today:

I have so many questions about this.

Wasn't rampant use of the arcane what caused the Queldorei/Sindorei magical addiction when Arthas destroyed the Sunwell? So while I understand why the animators did what they did, it just seemed like an unnecessary waste of the arcane.

Cardwyn: "She could never go incognito anywhere; she's too used to using the arcane for everything." 

Me: Shush; it's just an artist's rendition.

Cardwyn: Don't shush me! Go back to writing! 

Me: Yes, ma'am. 

So... judging by the Water Elemental in the background, Jaina's a Frost Mage? Hasn't somebody told her that Frost is the worst spec in Retail right now? Or that it's pigeonholed into PvP?

And where is she, exactly, wearing clothing that covers her arms entirely, along with a heavy cloak and gloves? It doesn't look that cold outside.

Oh, right, the music. It's good enough, I suppose, but since it's background music it was, well, in the background while I worked. The floating book was occasionally distracting as it caught my eye on more than one occasion while I was working on a spreadsheet.

***

However, I will make a quick rant about a change to YouTube:

From Reddit, because when I actually wanted to
see this pop up, it doesn't, but when I don't,
it's effing everywhere.

At least you can click the X to remove this pop up, but it's still very annoying. I personally am not paying for the privilege of avoiding ads, because Google's algorithm is abjectly terrible at picking out spots to stick ads into a video, and the sound volume differences between the ad and any random YouTube video are different enough that it aggravates my tinnitus. 

There. Told you it was a quick rant.

*In that respect it's a lot like ASMR these days, where you get some people definitely angling their ASMR appearances toward titillation for more clicks. 

EtA: Corrected grammar.

Welp, Now We Know

The first impact of Chris Metzen's hiring as a Special Executive Something-or-other by Blizzard has been felt, and it is somewhat underwhelming.

Sorry kids, this is a facsimile.
From the Blizzard store.

Yes, it's a limited edition print of Grom Hellscream signed by Chris Metzen.

Sorry, it's already sold out.

I have to imagine some marketer at Blizzard is counting the profit from these cash store items, thinking that this is like shooting fish in a barrel. Or to put it another way, there will always be whales around in Blizzard's space, which also explains the success of Diablo Immortal.

"What Ho!"*

Last Saturday, my son, his SO, and I made a trip about 45 miles north of us along I-71 to attend the Ohio Renaissance Festival for the day.

I picked them up at their apartment around 10:30 and we headed in a northeastern direction. The weather had cooled off so that the high temps were in the low 60s (16-17 Celsius) with partly cloudy skies. After a month's worth of temperatures in the mid-80s to low-90s (30-32 Celsius) it sounded fantastic.

Apparently it did to everybody else, too:

When we got off the highway we were stuck in traffic for 2 miles until we reached the entrance. Along the way we were watching the capacity information on the Ren Fest's website, and by the time the photo above was taken they were expecting 90% capacity at the park grounds. I grew increasingly nervous as the line dragged on, because I realized they might reach capacity and we'd be out of luck, but we eventually parked and got in line to get into the park itself.**

I ran on ahead and got in line for tickets, as this line turned out to be the line for season pass holders, and then we got into the park itself.

On warmer days, there are Faire people
on the ramparts heckling the crowd as they
enter, but I guess they had the afternoon off.

The mythical Elizabethan town, Willy-Nilly On-The-Wash, is the home of the Faire. Queen Elizabeth herself is in attendance, along with her court, and she attends the jousts that are held in the center of the Faire. 

The leaves partially obscure the Queen
and her Court.

If you've ever been to a so-called Renaissance Festival --I say 'so-called' because these festivals aren't exactly what I'd call authentic but more in the spirit of an Elizabethan faire-- you know that there's jousting, shows, music, vendors, and food. And plenty of people dressed up in what SCA-dians call "garb" to more fully immerse themselves in the experience.

Not sure how I managed it, but these
slice-of-life photos of the crowd somehow
managed to have at least one person turning
and looking right as I snapped the pic.

See what I mean?

But there were crowds. Holy crap, were there crowds.

I might have to invest in a selfie stick so
I can get a higher angle of the scope of the crowd.

Before you ask, no, I did not make it to the Mud Show this time around. That's fine, because I caught a couple of other shows, including a fire show:

If you have trouble seeing it, trust me...
The fire is real.

There were also artisans there, such as this person working with glass sculpture:

This is not the same as the glass blower,
who was in another part of the Faire.

Still, it felt kind of weird being here after having been away for six years. Admittedly one of those years the Renaissance Festival was closed due to the Pandemic (2020), and I wasn't interested in attending in 2021 due to the potential aftereffects of said Pandemic, but the other years? Well, with kids going away to college and my wife simply not being interested in going any more***, I couldn't really justify driving up and wandering around by myself for an afternoon. I mean, I could do it, but it wouldn't be the same as attending with friends or family.

The Faire has been around for about 33 years, and over that time the trees have all grown and matured, buildings have been added, and activities have sprung up. Those trees ringing the jousting area above? They weren't there six years ago. Actually, the area behind where we were standing was an open field for about half a football field's length until you ran into the food vendors and bathrooms, but now... Well, it's all filled up to the point where it felt like you really were in a small town. 

Feels like something right out
of M.A.S.H., which really dates me.

"About a third of these buildings weren't even here six years ago," I mentioned to my son. 

"Yeah, it's really grown up a lot," he replied.

Still, some of the places have been around forever, and it felt like seeing an old friend when I came across them.

Such as this vendor. They specialize in
wooden swords and shields.

There were other vendors that did not want photos taken of their work, which was a shame, but I respected their requests. Among them were the weapons vendors, metalworks and leatherworks, clothiers, and jewelry vendors. 

But you still couldn't escape the crowds. Holy crap were the crowds impressive. 

No, Bourbon Chicken isn't period, but
that's fine. If this were period, we might all
be eating trenchers, I suppose, which 
would not be that healthy for someone 
with my health issues.

For someone who isn't a big fan of crowds, I just kind of hung in there, but it was the parking and direction where the crowds' impact was felt the most. 

When we got off the highway, it took us 40-45 minutes to crawl along 2 miles to finally park. And on the way out, it took us 45 minutes just to leave the parking area. I do know that several people wearing "Parking" shirts/vests were unceremoniously relieved of duty by one of their superiors when it became obvious that they had no idea how to organize traffic flowing out of the park. Their situation wasn't helped by the rent-a-cops who were giving priority to cars already on the road rather than letting people leave the parking area. 

I do know that there's been a bit of contention between the community that the Festival grounds are on and the Fest's management; the Fest wants to expand amenities, such as running water, electricity, cell phone service, etc. and the community is less concerned about that and more concerned about taking in their cut of taxes from all of the Faire goers. So... There's issues there, but that's also the price of success. The place is a destination location of 200,000 visitors annually, although I think this year they're probably going to smash that record.

Still, one last item that you might find amusing, this car that I saw while walking back to our car:

I was amused.

*If you've ever seen The Swordsmen's comedy act, they use that as a greeting.

**On Sunday, they reached capacity and had to turn people away from the entrance. Kind of wild if you ask me.

***She used to like going, but that all changed when the kids were little. She began to complain about the shows all being the same, everything costs too much, etc. etc. Considering she says that about practically everything --including Gen Con, in case you were wondering-- I pretty much have given up on trying to get her to go with me. In some ways, despite her not having grown up in Cincinnati, she has become the archetypal West Sider, with the only difference being that unlike the older hardcore West Siders she doesn't have any money stashed away in a coffee can in the backyard. I mean, there are some lines that should never be crossed.