NFL

Edited highlights of the last couple of weeks or more. There’s a war on, and I’ve a few relatively well informed opinions… but so does everybody else it seems. I say relatively because the online dIsCoUrSe is horrible, misinformed, and over-simplistic. If you want to watch one thing to understand why this is happening at all then I recommend this video from the Real Life Lore YouTube channel. A very 2022 war More personally, my favourite sports team, in the space of 24 hours, has either traded or cut two of their best players - leaving no players from their Super Bowl victory of just over eight years ago. Similar to the Russo-Ukrainian War, I’m cautious of spending time on more commentary when there’s so much of it online already; I’ve all sorts of half-formed thoughts on apparent issues with the team - how it treats its players and how it plans ahead, when there’s so much expertise and money on hand… another time perhaps. Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images Even more personally, I GM’d a role-playing game for the first time in decades. While I facilitate or co-facilitate exercises or megagames, running a small game is much more difficult. Thankfully the one page RPG The Witch Is Dead gave me all I needed, and the game went reasonably well - the pacing was variable and the experience was a little obtuse for the players playing animals in a human world, but it reached a spectacular conclusion and the players mostly had fun most of the time I think. Definitely something to keep to hand should the need ever arise again. Barely one page of rules and a lot of imagination As always, looking back I realise how much media I consume, and I find it useful to look back and consider what I did or didn’t like, and what made me think. In no particular order… future work thought exercise Severance is intriguing, maybe makes no more sense five episodes in that it did at the start - and will either be a wonderful spark or will give me a new found understanding on why so many were disappointed in Lost; I’m particularly enjoying the world it’s in, which appears to be our own, but without familiar anchor points. More adult themes, but cartoon peril, The Owl House is delightful, recommended if you’ve children, or just want to watch something with a magical theme and endearing characters. To enjoy it you’ll need to have some empathy for people not like you - I’m guessing this blog isn’t often read by teenage girls; the same applies to the film Turning Red - which is similarly well made, and well paced, and certainly accessible if you’ve got a little empathy to flex and interested in seeing someone else’s experience of the world. Meanwhile nostalgia quilt Picard is very… very something… I won’t be surprised if we forget to watch it every week - not for you unless you’re a trekkie, the trailer tells you far too much, but is fair warning. If you’re interested in video game design then hbomberguy’s three and a half hour treatise on the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution is extremely well argued and edited, easy to watch in a single sitting - and with insights if you’re in an obviously related profession like game design, but for me the analysis stretches to any creative endeavor, or even to related disciplines like general project management. “science fiction action horror film” Underwater was good but not great - but far better than its online ratings would suggest; unfortunately I suspect it’s a one-off, when actually it would be interesting to see where creators would go with this if it was positioned as a franchise. I finally watched MoneyBall, being a big fan of sports analytics and the kind of insights that approach can generate and the myths it dispels - I’m only really familiar with this from the NFL side, but I did particularly like the clash of computer based analysis against the comments of the agents on prospective players. And lastly, the recent series not the older film, High Fidelity is very well executed which makes it even more puzzling that so few episodes were made, if you like smart dialogue and cool characters, and a surprisingly effective breaking of the fourth wall, make the most of it. Inexplicably just the one series Everything else I’ve been doing is designing incident response exercises for work, or just trying to make my life more organised. Still.

Edited highlights of the last couple of weeks. I finally made time to attend an online meeting of Liminal again, a provider of and example in and experiment with Collective Intelligence. As usual thought provoking conversations and quite weird challenges… for example, think of your two favourite things, then split into randomised pairs and mash one of your favourites with theirs to come up with something new. That was quite forced, a little uncomfortable, but also different, which makes it stimulating. As with analytical red teaming, for all sorts of reasons I think there’s all sorts of benefits in engaging in, and thinking about, collective intelligence… but also I think most organisations that need it won’t be willing to try it, choosing to fail slowly in known ways. obligatory graphic alluding to complexity As per my last weeknotes my disappointment at the lack of innovation was shared by a couple of people attending that Liminal meeting too. I see no way to improve this situation except through persistence. ...

The edited highlights for me over the last twenty days or so. I’m still catching up on email and Twitter bookmarks and other backlogs or overdue business development. I still think I’m “winning”, but also it’s all still still taking much longer than I envisioned… you’re familiar with Hofstadter's Law aren’t you? Looking at everything I’m working through, even when “necrobumping”, it all feels too interesting and useful just to declare a total “inbox zero” to start again. Especially as I’m working and thinking in varied areas, so I’ve no strict criteria to judge what I should or shouldn’t concentrate on. ...

Highlights from the first few weeks of January I finally missed writing up a week of weeknotes, so here’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks or so… I watched Eternals … well, I liked it. I think I’m far less critical of the MCU than most because of how much time I’ve invested in the stories while having read so few of the comics, and who I tend to watch the films with. Also I’m more intrigued by how the film-makers keep such a large universe coherent, than in finding plotholes or other issues. I tend to overthink, relative to other people, a lot of the time, but counter-intuitively I find Marvel films relatively relaxing. ...

Edited highlights from my previous week I finished Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie, a surprise “Jolabokaflod” present. I wrote up my thoughts here, it was a weird and entertaining ride of a book. Appropriately for the time of year, I finally watched some more MST3K by viewing their interpretation of The Christmas That Almost Wasn't. As Twelfth Night has only just passed I think, do take a look if you want a seasonal introduction to the, er, oeuvre/method of MST3K and RiffTrax…. “It’s like watching a movie with your funniest friends!”. ...

My previous week: Teams and teamwork was a bit of a theme last week… this week, due to NFL scheduling shenanigans, the team I follow played twice in the same week. The Seattle Seahawks lost both games, taking them out of playoff contention for the first time since I started following them again “full time” back in 2012. It’s been interesting to dip into “Seahawks Twitter” and similar commentary while analysts hypothesise as to why the team is so bad this year; especially to see in another arena how several smart people I trust all have different but well supported opinions. Personally experiencing poor service from several suppliers, and the same at work but from customers. Nothing really to be done about it, it just seems unnecessary and doesn’t benefit anyone involved - I mention it here because that kind of unnecessary friction in life wears me down more than I feel it should, but I don’t know what to do about that. Not much else due to Christmas… which I enjoyed. Thanks to Santa, for dealing with the above friction, I now have access to a Giant Stress Brain. I watched the live action version of The Last Airbender, having finished the excellent Nickelodeon cartoon series earlier in the year. And also because I’ve a definite interest in bad films. I found the film interestingly awful on how it just didn’t work and why - I think there were poor choices all around in plot and pacing and direction and dialogue… I don’t think I know enough to comment on sound design or cinematography. But most notably, the key capability of element bending in the cartoon was astoundingly badly handled in the film… in the cartoon it just worked, in live action the actors would perform a tai chi like set of moves, and there would be element bending happening, but the connection between the two only worked a couple of times throughout the entire movie. They’re not videos I’ve watched myself, but if you want to see it dissected I trust Hello Future Me to do so by reputation alone. earth bending... apparently

My previous week: Provided some feedback for a game/exercise design, which was enlightening because it’s rare that I’m in that situation, rather than being part of the design or operational team. Some thinking around the forthcoming Enterprise Circus. I’ve some trepedation about whether we can make the Circus metaphor work, but I think that is what makes this event work doing. As per our “pitch”, written by Phelim Rowe, using this metaphor is an “engaging prism”, which I hope will spark some new ideas. I enjoyed attending Level Up: Gamification as an innovative tool for public service design; this was particularly enjoyable due to the talent and experience on display - I essentially watched three people build a pitchable business idea in a little over half an hour. There’s some really interesting things happening in game-based methods right now. I was on a panel at the CISO Ensemble, and ran a panel as well. Running the panel was particularly difficult and enjoyable, great to get a range of views, and to figure out on the fly how to give everyone a chance to speak, forewarn them when they were “up”, while paying enough attention to the conversation. On that particularly busy day I also attended Cardstock; very useful, very interesting, I came out of with lots of ideas and a connection or two. One thing that particularly struck me, it might be observation bias, but for a generally skeptic-minded person like me, some of the greatest insights and mental leaps seemed to come from those with the greatest affinity to “magical” concepts such as astrology and tarot. Something to ponder. I finally made time to watch the Georgetown University Wargaming Society’s recording on WATU, presented by Sally Davis of DSTL. Good points well made, and also packed with useful academic references to strength through diversity. And I continue to play fantasy football, which I find such an interesting way to follow the NFL. For me in-particular it brings home just how big a part injuries play in the game, and the operation of the teams. A team figuring out CISO as a Team at the CISO Ensemble event