Category: Journal

So, what have I been up to while this place was collecting cobwebs? Mostly house things, a lot of medical stuff, no small amount of avoiding doing stuff I’m supposed to do, and, when there was time, I watched a lot of YouTube, which is something I’ve never done before. I’ve been missing out. I’ve been complaining for years about the lack of a la carte television and I’ve known the whole time that you can find pretty much anything you want on YouTube, but I never it together. Nicole, on the other hand, has been on this forever and I suspect she thinks it’s cute that I’m just now coming around. Not for the first time, if I’m being honest. Anyway, I wanted to share some of the channels that I’ve found to be the most fun. Music and, most importantly, bass:Adam Neely: Adam’s channel was my gateway to music YouTube. He’s a pretty theory heavy dude, but I find him informative and funny and he’s a heck of a communicator. He’s one of the proponents of bass guitar as the greatest instrument and that’s a bit I can’t help but respect. As much as I enjoyed the chugga chugga choo choo episode, I’d start with The Worst Jazz Solo of All Time. Davie504: With almost 10m subscribers, Davie504 isn’t terribly obscure, but if you’re not familiar with him, this is your wake-up call. He’s an incredibly silly Italian bassist who is aces at creating a character, staying in character, and making terrific videos. You’d think the joke would wear thin, but it hasn’t yet for me. Oh, and kind of surprisingly, he can really play, too. I’d start with Can I Play the Top Basslines of All Times? Samuraiguitarist: Easily my favorite Canadian country guitarist. Sammy G is at his best when talking about gear and technique, which is a nice break from some of the more theory-heavy channels I watch. He’s near the top of the list of “YouTube personalities I think I’d enjoy in real life.” Start with Testing Gimmicky Guitar Gadgets. 12Tone: Speaking of theory-heavy, this is one of the best channels out there for making music theory interesting and fun. His deal is making doodles that go along with what he’s talking about and there are all kinds of neat Easter eggs in them. He gets a little salty sometimes too, which is a lot of fun. If you’re into that sort of thing, go check out: Why Ben Shapiro Is Wrong About Rap. Espen Kraft: Espen Kraft IS the 80s. He’ll tell you as much, too. He’s a musician/producer/gearhead after my own heart and he lives for making 80s style music with 80s gear. It’s great fun if you remember the 80s, which is something I most definitely do. While if it were me, I’d go straight to him talking about my beloved DW-8000, maybe start with 10 Iconic Synth Sounds. Bad Gear: This channel is by far the most formulaic, but it’s a great formula: He reviews the most hated audio gear of the past. It ticks all the boxes: A discussion of why the gear is reviled, a demo of it, a couple of song featuring it, pros, cons, and, as always, a conclusion. The Bad Gear- Akai Tom Cat – The Better Rhythm Wolf??? episode is one of my favorites. Blanc et Noir vie: Mostly gear talk, but with some jazz and electronica and just a very pleasant vibe. His production is fab and there are some great stories about mysterious, almost mythical gear that never came out. The Great Synth Mysteries Ep. 4: Whatever Happened to the Linndrum II is a great place to start. My favorite thing about music YouTube is watching these folks interact and reference each other. I watch a lot of music YouTube. Other good ones; Simon The Magpie: Gear hacker who has more imagination than is good for him.Look Mum No Computer: You do NOT want to see the Furby organ…ixi music: Local artist’s deep dive into Nine Inch Nails. Very, very deep dive into it.The 8-Bit Guy: Texas guy who works with old home keyboards and computers.Sonicstate: Good channel. Needs more PWM.Jorb: Another gear guy. Kindred spirit.Syntaur: Local synth parts/sales place. Carlos is a great guy.Alamo Music Audio Lab: Local music store’s channel. Educational and Related Channels: Insider: There’s a lot to love here. What I’m binging right now are the “How Real Is It?” videos, where experts go over how well movies and TV shows portray their specialist subject. I started with the Master Pickpocket Breaks Down 12 Pocketing Tricks In Movies and found myself just watching everything that came after. The LockPickingLawyer: This channel is, if you hadn’t guessed, more about the lock picking than the lawyering. Mostly, he demonstrates how shockingly easy it is for him to pick most popular, well-reviewed locks. There are some bad locks out there, folks. This one’s my favorite: Locksmith Says My Videos Are BS… Loses $75 (Maybe). Vox: OK, so, I have a distant relationship to Vox media but no money changes hands so that’s all the disclosure I’m up for. Anyway, it’s Vox. They overproduce the crap out of their videos, but there’s some good stuff in there. Start with How a recording-studio mishap shaped ‘80s music. P.S. Prince totally stole from Phil Collins, much more so than the other way around. Other Fun, Mostly Wholesome Stuff: The Fish Whisperer: A guy with a fish tank on his farm befriends the animals. That’s about it. But, honestly, what more do you need? Here’s Turtles Love Pizza. Capybara Donguri: Capybaras are perfect. You cannot have too many of them in your life. There are no bad capybara vidoes. Wait…there is one. Don’t watch that one. Watch Capybaras Are Natural Actors; They Have Such Expressive Faces and Body Language instead. Timotainment: Do you like surrealism? Sure you do. You’ve seen memes based on this ‘un. Stonks. Pile. Angery. All classics. Screen Rant: Just go there for the Pitch Meetings. Ryan has it down to an art and they are both a lot of fun and very insightful criticism. I’ve had friends tell me how bad certain movies were, sent them the Pitch Meeting for the film, and their response is “Yes, exactly! That’s what I was trying to say!” This…

I give up. I’m just coming back to Squarespace. It finally occurred to me that WordPress would never import my backlog in a format I was happy with and that retained some of the weird stuff that was integral to a few of my posts. It was going to take a ton of work to get something close, there would still be problems, and I was going to spend more time maintaining it than I lost re-writing posts I lost due to Squarespace not having an undo, autosave, or save and continue. Really, all that was driving me at that point was spite. Spite is a poor motivation for doing something, so I think I’d rather just write here and deal with it. So, what’s been going on? It’s very “Facts of Life” around here, in that we are taking both the good and the bad and now I hope that song is stuck in your head. We have a leak in our roof that is going to set us back a bit. The weather has been, for want of a better word, stupid. Does it normally rain every week (or day!) from May to the end of July in Texas? No. Not it does not. On the plus side of the ledger, Nicole fell in love with a kitten. Meet baby Ramza: This cat tree has seen some things. She saw his photo at the shelter’s site and couldn’t sleep until she met him. He jumped into her arms almost immediately (in part perhaps because the shelter staff were determining whether or not he was ready for the required surgery and the way they tested him was not gentle). She had to wait until he recovered from the surgery and she was on pins and needles waiting to until he’d recovered enough to adopt. Shelters, for obvious reasons, tend to be “first come/first serve.” So, she went a day earlier than she’d been told and that proved wise as she returned home with a tiny orange ball of fur she named Ramza Charles Soyuncu. It’s been a tough few months for these dusty old bones. We had a lovely date night in New Braunfels that ended badly. Crossing the street between crosswalks, the heel came unglued from my boots and my feet went out from under me in almost cartoonish fashion. I tried to scramble upright without realizing the cause of my fall and fell a couple more times in front of (slowly) oncoming traffic. I finally got across, crawling, scrambling, I don’t remember. I broke a bone in my wrist trying to catch the fall and my muscles, such as they are, were aching. In addition, I later tripped over the lid of a trash bin I was about to wash (pushing it at a low angle with the lid open, in case you’re interested in the mechanics) and fell head-first into the bin. I managed to catch a previously-broken toe on the corner of a storage bin and that sucker is in bad shape. The worst, though, is that my skin symptoms came back. Awful red dots started spreading on my elbows, shoulder, forearms, and shins, just like they did before I started injecting mouse proteins (and that is as strange to write as it sounds). It was very a very “Flowers for Algernon” mood around here. So, I called my dermo and I’m seeing her on Friday. The good news is that the topical treatments seem to have it under control and receding, but I still need to find out if the drugs are just not going to be as effective or if this was a one-off. A one-off is a reasonable possibility. Adopting a kitten has led to countless small (and several more-than-small) wounds appearing all over me. Turns out kittens are sharp. Who knew? There are other new environmental factors that could be contributing as well, and, to be honest, I’ve been less diligent about wearing only the most hippie-approved clothing on the planet. There’s a real chance that the mouse proteins still work just as well, but I’ve just been asking to much of ‘em. Other than that, I’m doing great. I’ve missed this. Sorry for the “old guy talks about his health” post, but I wanted to warm up the fingers a little before I talked about the stuff that’s filling me with joy these days. I’d rather write poorly about my complaints. Overall, things are good, but this week has been full of panic and foreboding because if the drugs stop working, then it could be pretty bad. I hope y’all are holding up and doing well. More soon. I promise. -RK

I watched CGP Grey’s “Humans Need Not Apply” again the other night and I was struck by how on-the-nose it was and, worryingly, remains. Haven’t seen it or just want to remind yourself of the anxiety? Here ya go: The gist, for those of you who haven’t seen it and don’t want to, is that your job is going to be automated out of existence. Yes, yours, and that job is not going to be replaced by a new, better job because that would defeat the whole purpose of automation. The fail state of capitalism is here. As an aside, I continue to find it amusing that this fail state was anticipated almost comically early in the cycle. Adam Smith published An Inquiry no the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. This book is, rightly or wrongly, regarded as the cornerstone of capitalism (it’s also the second-most cited book in the social sciences, behind only Marx’s Das Kapital, which is also amusing, but I double-digress). Anyway, the counter argument was made most strikingly in 1779 when Ned Ludd supposedly smashed two knitting frames and inspiring the Luddites to rage against the machines that were taking their jobs. Three whole year separated the events. Where was I? Ah, yes, the jobs are going to be gone. People will be unemployable. In theory, this would leave us with a society where there is abundance for all, people would be free to pursue whatever interests them, and…oh, who am I kidding? I assume everyone (anyone?) reading this recognizes that this won’t happen. Since 1973, increases in productivity (in the United States, at least) have not “trickled down” to the people doing the work. This is by design. The owner of a company invests in automation to cut their costs, and there’s no reason to expect them to share the gains from automation with their reduced workforce. In fact, on a macro scale, you would expect the opposite. As an example, imagine the typing pool in movie 9 To 5. There are forty or so dedicated typists in the room in the film, and that was an accurate reflection of offices in that era. Now, there might be, at most, one person handling handling the administrative tasks that used to take an entire room of typists. So, your payroll is now 1/40th of what it was, right? Not so fast: You now have 40 people competing for that one job which is the sort of thing that drives wages even lower. There are plenty of other examples but the point is that, under the current economic system, we are not moving in a direction that will prepare us for when the job loss due to automation hits reaches critical levels (assuming it hasn’t already). There simply isn’t enough need for human labor to provide a living wage for everyone. There are not going to be new jobs created to change that fact. So what do we do? The bottom line is that sustenance based on work is no longer a viable model. Well, it could be made to work, but that’s a monstrous scenario and we’re not going to spend any time on it. Higher wages won’t fix it since you have to have a job to receive a wage. This is going to require a bigger change in our economic system than we’ve ever seen. Is any country prepared? I don’t think so. Some are have made more progress than others. A robust social safety net is a start, but it’s only just that. It’s going to require a willingness to shackle capitalism and an openness to global frameworks. Which is to say, the United States is almost uniquely positioned not to be able to react to this crisis. The social safety net is weak, there’s an almost religious adherence to the idea of capitalism, and “American exceptionalism” is going to mix poorly with globalism. Or maybe it just isn’t fixable. I’m not an economist as you may have already gleaned from my facile explanation, so it may be there’s nothing that will rescue us from the worst-case scenarios. That’s not a comforting thought, but in some ways it’s better than the crash being avoidable had we only heeded a warning raised in 1779.

Here’s a content warning: This is about the loss of a pet. It isn’t graphic, but it’s still what it is. This is Win: His full name is “Winjamin Failclaw,” but we called him “Win” most of the time, or “Mr. Failclaw” if we were cross with him. We got him at the “Austin Kitty Limits” adoption event something like 11-12 years ago, so we don’t know the age exactly. Probably somewhere between 17-20.. His ears suggested that he had not led the easiest of lives, and we adopted him he was recovering from a wound in his leg. Speaking of ears, when we met him at the event, he was giving me a really evil stare. I decided I wanted to get to know him, so I asked to have his cage unlocked. I presented my hand and he rubbed up against it and insisted that I scratch one of his ears. For forty-five minutes. So, obviously, he chose me rather than the other way around. Mr. Failclaw was quite the defiant fellow in the early days of living with us. His favorite place to be was wherever we did not want him to be. We rented a condo that had a balcony adjoining our neighbors’. Bum leg and all, he managed to jump over the wall and plop down on the opposite side of their balcony. When we called him, he just stared defiantly. We were at a loss until Nicole remembered his weakness: The laser. The laser was his favorite thing and just the sound of the chain on it jingling would bringing him running. So, Nicole grabbed it and jingled it in front of him. His ears perked up immediately and he dashed over to be with us. And, by “be with us”,” I mean “chase the red dot.” One of Win’s greatest virtues was his ability to stay between Nicole’s cats, the beautiful Tricksie (on the ground) and the naughty Red Velvet (on the bench). We were concerned when we combined our households as cats don’t always get on well. This was certainly the case with Tricksie and Red Velvet. Win, however, was the missing ingredient. He would play with Red Velvet to keep her occupied and he would leave Tricksie alone, so everyone was happy. He was also a fierce defender of his people. Any disturbance outside would bring him running to get between us and the evil garbage truck or kids on skateboards or whatever was making the noise. This continued even as he got older and after his vision went. I knew he was getting old when I got his laser out and he came running because of the sound, but he couldn’t see the light at all. He got more affectionate as he got older, too. He took to sleeping on my chest during the day, which was a bit awkward for work, but still sweet. He slept between my pillow and Nicole’s He spent more time with her than I’d ever known him to. Maybe it was the secret song she’d sing to him. I don’t know, as I never got to hear it. He was, however, still as adventurous as ever. He developed a fine caterwaul for letting us know he wanted to go outside. He couldn’t see a thing, mind you, but he was not about to let that slow him down as he explored our back yard in what I presume was great detail. My boy was old, though, and he struggled with issues related to his heart and his kidneys. A special diet and daily medicines kept him spry up until just a few days ago. When it happened, it happened fast as is usually the case when these organs are involved. We tried everything the vet offered up and we would have kept going, but he was ready to go. He was at home and comfortable. He was the best cat. So gentle, so affectionate, so…just good. I hope he felt safe and happy and loved and I hope the life we gave him was worthy of what he gave back to us. Here’s my boy just last week. Believe it or not, he has bones. One of the early photos, and still one of my favorites. He loved getting between the window and the slatted blinds. Also, I really dislike slatted blinds. He’d come in and sleep in my office next to me for hours at a time. The closer to a perfect circle, the more relaxed. This was my boy. I loved him very much.

Let’s start the birthday post by talking about Nicole. Nicole is a big believer that, if you’re not doing something to make memories, you’re just wasting time. She’s pretty awesome that way. So, she booked us a room at the Hotel Havana last weekend and that is absolutely the best way to lower my emotional temperature. Of all the places I’ve spent the night, that one’s probably my favorite. We almost never stay in the same room twice and it’s still magical. Not our room this time, but it’s probably my favorite of the ones where we’ve stayed. Yesterday, we had real restaurant food for the first time in ages. Went up to San Marcos, got some curbside from Torchy’s, and ate in a park and oh my stars and garters it was good. It’s been over a year since I’ve had their tacos and it was nearly tear-inducing. She also got me a journal to destroy (yes, really) and a blueberry bush which I planted outside my office. I truly, madly, deeply, love blueberries. This weekend, we’re going to do a day trip out to Castroville to check out the “Little Alsace of Texas” which I’m sure will be fun no matter what it turns out to be. Is there a “Little Lorraine of Texas” nearby? Do they refer to their courthouse as “Little Strossburig?” OK, I’ll stop now. Anyway, to say I’ve been pampered would be an understatement. And she’s says, ominously, “That’s not all.” At the risk of being vague (rather, “being quite explicitly vague”), there was some work news yesterday as well. It was the sort of news that sounds really bad but isn’t. My understanding is that I’m OK and will continue to be so for the time being. That’s good, because I’m in a situation where I’m working from home and have enough autonomy that, even with a heavy workload, I’m not compelled to look elsewhere. To make it even more vague, I have an analogy I like to use in cases like this. Demand for a product or service is like a body of water. It must be truly vast to support the really big fish, but once the puddle become an ocean, the big fish will dominate and the smaller ones will struggle to survive. But, should the waters recede, the big fish will be the ones to die out while the smaller ones will be able to thrive. Book and record stores are a perfect example of this. While there was a huge demand for in-person purchases of books and music, the big chains took over. Local stores struggled and most failed. But, as soon as the demand diminished (or, really, moved online), the big chains no longer had enough water to survive while the local joint that made it through the tougher times did well. Borders and Sound Warehouse are gone; Book People and Waterloo are still there. I’ve been playing with the musical toys a good deal lately and I’ve made quite a few breakthroughs.. They’ve all come on the “production” side as opposed to the “composition” side, but it’s always exciting to learn some new trick. Recording MIDI data into the DAW was a big one, mapping the drum sounds from an 80s drum machine to a newer sequencer was fun and shockingly easy. I just found that there’s a firmware upgrade from the Volca Sample that increases its capabilities and loaded it up last nigh. Wow…huge difference. Just all kinds of neat little things that get me excited to go play in that sandbox again. I know I’m going to sound crazy saying this because I’m me, but…I have enough goodies? I really can’t think of anything else I need or even want. I do this when I’m writing too. I’ll say “I’ll sit down and do it when I have X, or when Y is done,.” Heck, I’m pretty sure I do it with my job, too. At some point, I just have to make myself do it. I’m not even dreading it, I’m just easily distracted. On the other hand, I could probably do a gear list. That’d be fun, right? I reckon 55 is a milestone age of some sort, so that seems a good a reason as any for a bit of a reset. Maybe not “reset,” but a little spring cleaning maybe? I culled a lot of angry accounts from my Twitter feed. You know the kind, I bet: The kind of accounts that just invite outrage in one direction or the other. I’m an absolute sucker for a heated argument so removing the temptation has been a very good thing indeed. I’m just trying not to get into arguments. It’s not like I’m going to convince anyone, anyway. But…when someone is spreading disinformation about, say, COVID, leaving that stuff unchallenged feels wrong. So, the goal is to find the balance where I’m challenging the information without it turning into a war. I bring this up because, the day before my birthday, I came across a dude doing exactly that, spreading falsehoods about the efficacy of masks. It was standard troll stuff, just a lot of dumb statements worded in a way to try to draw a reaction. Nothing new or clever and certainly nothing accurate. My first temptation was to go in guns blazing. I wanted to do that, but I held off, countered his info, and muted him. There’s no adrenaline rush that comes from that, but I think it does make the quality of my life fractionally better, so yay? I’ve also resurrected my RSS list and I’m pleased to find that most of the folks I was reading before are still going. I’m going to do a bit of pruning and add some new ones, but I feel like this will be a much better experience than doomscrolling Twitter for hours. Not an especially high bar, huh? So, say “Hello” to 55. Thanks for sticking with me. -RK

It has been called to my attention that I do not adequately inform the reader that there will be spoilers in the following text, so please, let there be no mistake: I will absolutely spoil this episode starting with the next paragraph. As if to make up for last week’s debacle, this turned out to be one of the most entertaining fight cards in the history of the show. Yeah, it was that good. There were a couple of duds, but even those had their moments. Let’s get down to it, boppers! Fight 1: Rotator v. Valkyrie This one promised to be wild, as both bots opted for similar configurations. Rotator went with a low bar spinner on the front and a big armored wedge on the back. It was slightly different than the one they used to beat Tombstone, as they needed to save a little weight to use the 30 lb. bar instead of the 20 lb. version. Valkyrie, as always, went with a low-mounted spinner, although they unveiled a new weapon, a three-pronged almost star-shaped affair. Victor Soto kept Rotator’s armored backside aimed at Valkyrie as much as possible, working on the theory that Valkyrie would eventually run out of steam or injure itself. That was a pretty reasonable bet, but it didn’t happen this time. Both bots’ weapons kept going for almost the entire three minutes, meaning that there was an unprecedented number of hits and there was a constant stream of sparks in the battlebox. Rotator had the early edge, getting under Valkyrie and causing it’s weapon to strike the box, but as the fight wore on, Valkyrie got cagier and managed to keep its wheels on the floor and started landing even bigger hits than it was taking. Eventually, the entire back wedge and right side of Rotator were torn off, while Valkyrie’s left armor plate was badly beaten. It was three full minutes of hit after hit after hit and it was exactly the kind of fight everyone hoped for but no one expected. The judges unanimously called it for Valkyrie, leaving Leanne Cushing’s bot at 2-0 while Rotator fell to 1-2 with its only win coming against Tombstone. Winner: Valkyrie (Unanimous decision) Fight 2: Extinguisher v. Gigabyte This fight featured two bots that just didn’t work at all in their first bout. The big question here was: Would Extinguisher be able to absorb a few blows to send Gigabyte’s full-body spinner flying into the wall and let it knock itself out? The answer was a resounding “no.” Extinguisher’s drive didn’t seem quite right, and the lack of mobility allowed Gigabyte to get to the center of the arena and pick its spots. The first couple of hits didn’t seem to do much, but the third bent Extinguisher’s hammer into an unrecognizable shape, ending any hope the fire engine-themed bot had of using its weapon. It didn’t matter, though, as it something had been knocked loose inside it and it just sort of stopped moving while Gigabyte was hovering menacingly on the off chance Extinguisher got it back together. Winner: Gigabyte (Knockout) Fight 3: Slap Box v. Sharko Another battle of 0-1 bots, this turned out to be a hell of a fight. Slap Box came in 0-1, but losing to Tombstone in your debut fight is nothing to be ashamed of and it held up better than anyone expected. Sharko lost a decision to Smee(etc.) in a really lousy fight between two bots that didn’t really have any way to hurt each other. I’m not 100% sure what Sharko’s weapon can do. It’s a “biter,” a control bot, with the nose raised, but I think it’s also meant to flip the other bot by raising its nose. It can also spin tremendously fast and whip its tail, which isn’t terribly effective, but it looks cool. Anyway, we got see Sharko get an early “bite” on Slap Box and drive it around the arena a little without doing any real damage. Sharko clamped down for a second time, this time grabbing Slap Box’s flipping arm, and Slap Box just lifted the arm and carried Sharko around before delivering a suplex. Again, it wasn’t tremendously damaging, but it was really cool to watch. Sharko’s motor gave out and Slap Box got the well-deserved win by KO. Sharko captain and driver Ed Robinson immediately came over to congratulate team Slap Box on their first win and the suplex, demonstrating the kind of “love of the sport over just winning and losing” that you love to see. Winner: Slap Box (Knockout) Fight 4: Madcatter v. Malice This was the fight I was looking forward to the most, as both bots came in at 2-0 and both, particularly Madcatter, had moments of looking like real contenders against all my expectations. Malice was still more about potential as its terrifying weapon hadn’t really been brought to bear. Madcatter went with their flipper configuration instead of the vertical spinner, which was probably a good idea as I don’t think it would have survived contact with Malice’s horizontal drum. They set up as a flipper for this one, and it turned out to a better call than they could have anticipated. The opening exchanges were all Madcatter as its superior mobility allowed it to get to the side of Malice and send Malice flying. Then, just like with Red Devil a few years back, Malice got knocked up into the air and it landed on it’s backside with no wheels touching the ground. Madcatter was content to let its opponent struggle to right itself and the judge counted Malice out. It was a little disappointing to see the fight end this way, but you couldn’t really argue with Madcatter taking advantage of the fact that their foe couldn’t right itself. Winner: Maddcatter (Knockout) Fight 5: Atom #94 v. Tantrum Yet another matchup of 0-1 bots, both of whom were the architects of their own demise in the first fight. Atom #94 couldn’t drive at all against Big Dill, and Tantrum’s batteries ran out too early in their first fight. The Atom #94 team felt they’d solved their drive problem, and Tantrum showed up without its signature fists but with more batteries, which was a good tradeoff. Atom #94 still looked sluggish, but it got the…

Spoilers follow. If you don’t wanna know what happened, you don’t wanna read this . I mean, you may not want me to read this anyway, but I thought I should let you know about the spoilers just in case. So, about last week…I wrote a pretty mediocre recap of the action and then my cat jumped on my keyboard. Thanks to Squarespace’s baffling decision not to implement an autosave feature, the whole post was lost and, frankly, wasn’t worth re-writing. Let’s move on. Fight 1: Black Dragon v. Claw Viper A couple of 1-0 bots squared off in the opening fight. Claw Viper had the more impressive win, showing tremendous mobility against HiJinx. Black Dragon’s win was a little more controversial, a split decision over Kraken that wasn’t especially convincing. Claw Viper performed their customary box rush which was rendered ineffective by Black Dragon lining up at a diagonal and immediately moving out of the way. Claw Viper bumped into the wall, but unfortunately for them, Black Dragon’s drive and weapon were actually working this time around and the Brazillian spinner got a couple of good hits. The hits didn’t do anything flashy, but Claw Viper just sort of stopped working. “Not working” is enough to start a countdown and that’s what happened. Pretty impressive win for Black Dragon, which is good, because it wouldn’t be Battlebots without a bot from Brazil in the tournament. Winner: Black Dragon (Knockout) Fight 2: JackPot v. Ghost Raptor The low-budget rookie JackPot came in on the back of a win over SubZero, while Ghost Raptor was 0-1 after getting knocked out by Shatter. I didn’t really want to see either of this bots lose, what with JackPot having a compelling backstory and Ghost Raptor coming back after a four year layoff looking like Cherno Alpha in Pacific Rim. The bots went weapon to weapon right off the bat and this didn’t go well for Ghost Raptor. JackPot’s giant spinning disc knocked Ghost Raptor’s spinning bar clean off the top of the bot. Ghost Raptor gamely attempted to do some shoving and lifting, but every time it got int he way of JackPot’s weapon, the floor got littered with bits of Ghost Raptor. One hit split Ghost Raptor in half, and that, as they say, was that. I don’t know how JackPot will fare against a top-tier bot, but this was a very impressive win. Winner: JackPot (Knockout) Fight 3: Grabot v. SubZero This was the maiden fight for Ben Davidson’s Grabot, a grappler of some sort, featuring a couple of “hands” and some chain thingies. It looked complicated. SubZero was coming off a lost to JackPot and, honestly, years and years of losses. Grabot sort of limped out of the gate and SubZero, possibly not able to believe it’s luck, dove in and flipped Grabot on its back. Grabot does not have a self-righting mechanism. So, SubZero spent the next few minutes tossing Grabot around until the flipper rang out of gas but by then, Grabot was done. The cool looking grapple things never came into play, which was disappointing, but it was nice to see SubZero finally get a win. Winner: SubZero (Knockout I think, maybe it was a unanimous decision, I can’t remember) Fight 4: HUGE! v. Hydra This is the fight everyone is talking about and for all the wrong reasons. This was probably the worst fight I’ve ever seen in Battlebots and I’m a little surprised they aired it. HUGE! came in at 0-1 having lost an epic battle against Mammoth. Hydra was 1-0 after taking a split-decision against Witch Doctor. If you’ve been around Battlebots for a while, you probably remember the famous Ghost Raptor/Icewave fight where underdog Ghost Raptor mounted a pole with a V on the front in place of their spinning bar. They used it to keep Icewave at bay, eventually flipping the horizontal spinner bot and knocking it out. Hydra’s Jake Ewert, having seen HUGE! dismantle Bronco last year, decided to take this to an extreme and mounted a giant C-shaped bar to the front of his bot. His strategy was to negate both robots’ weapons, force HUGE! into a corner, and just collect the win. If that sounds like a boring, chickenshit strategy, you got it exactly right. HUGE! kept trying to get around or through the safety bar but could only make a little minor contact with Hydra. Hydra just patiently corralled HUGE! into the corner and sat there. The referee told him to back off and he refused until he was threatened with…whatever action a referee can take. That was the whole fight. What total garbage. The judges gave the fight to Hydra. I’m not sure what the thinking was. Neither bot did any damage. Hydra had total control but precisely zero aggression (actually, you could argue negative aggression). How do you judge a fight like that? To make it worse, Ewert was a complete dick about the whole thing. I’m team whoever-is-fighting-Hydra from here on out. It’s an amazing bot, easily the best flipper I’ve ever seen, but if he’s too scared to fight? Screw him. The folks at Battlebots weren’t amused, either: Second fight this season where there was willful nonuse of an active weapon. There WILL be a penalty for this next season. #BattleBots — BattleBots (@BattleBots) January 8, 2021 Winner: Hydra (unanimous decision) Fight 5: Aegis v. Fusion This marked the first fight for Chris Sparzo’s Aegis, a Kevlar-armored, shield-shaped flipper. Fusion came in at 0-1 after having failed to do much of anything in it’s first fight. Still, Fusion is a Team Whyachi bot, so you’d have to think it was a heavy favorite, especially as Kevlar seemed an extremely curious choice for armor. Literally nothing happened for the first 15 seconds of the fight. Both bots came out of their square and…did nothing. Finally, Fusion’s weapons came online and Aegis was left to wonder what might have been had they attacked when their foe was helpless. As it happened, Aegis actually got a good run at Fusion, but they fired their flipper too early, leaving them utterly helpless. Fusion ripped open the sides of the defenseless bot and kept attacking even as the count was going because they could, I guess. Winner: Aegis (Knockout) Fight 6: Big Dill v….

Hey, you! You like spoilers? Good! Read on! If not, then scram! I’m literally going to spoil the entire show starting with the next paragraph, so if you don’t want to know what happened, get outta here! Alrighty, welcome to fight night 3 of season 5! The first two shows were heavy on brutal action and light on judges decisions. That’s not the case the time. Will it be “Duck was robbed” redux? You’ll just have to read on and find out. Fight 1: Copperhead v. Gigabyte Zach Goff’s Copperhead is probably the closest thing the fans will get to seeing Minotaur this year. It’s a 2-wheel drum spinner that hits hard enough to, well, we’ll get to that. John Mladenik’s Gigabyte is the Mother of All Full Body Spinners, a big, inverted wok with lots of bits mounted on the sides to smack you with. The only prediction I made for this one was that it wasn’t going to the judges. It didn’t go to the judges. Copperhead looks much the same, but the motor is definitely more impressive even if it doesn’t make the hornet-swarm buzz of Minotaur. The two bots spun up quickly and met in the middle of the arena. The self-righting bar on Gigabyte popped off almost immediately, apparently affecting their driving and allowing Copperhead to back them into a corner. A full-body spinner does not want to be backed into a corner. The next few seconds were marked primarily by Gigabyte bouncing off the sides of the arena. Copperhead had some time to spin up and hit Gigabyte hard enough to remote the shell from the body. My guess is that the self-righting bar was probably structurally important because that really shouldn’t have happened. The Copperhead folks were nice enough not to clobber Gigabytes exposed innards ad the judge counted the decapitated bot out. Winner: Copperhead (Knockout) Fight 2: SubZero v. JackPot Logan Davis is at the helm of Team SubZero this year. It’s a flipper that is best known for being able to take absurd amounts of damage as opposed to dealing it out. JackPot, driven by Jeff Waters, is a four wheel vertical spinner with two unusually large bars making it a sort of mini-HUGE. Interesting. The bots came out and met head on, with SubZero getting under JackPot and driving it around the arena. It seemed like a good time to use that flipper, but it never fired for some reason. JackPot was struggling to move in any meaningful way and couldn’t do a lot with the weapon except when it was riding on top of SubZero and whacking the top of the bot. It would have been interesting to see this one go three minutes to see how the judges would have called it, as SubZero was in complete control of the match but the primary weapon wasn’t work (note: this is foreshadowing). Eventually, SubZero’s motor gave out or it got hung up on an obstacle (it was hard to tell which) and it just stopped moving, giving JackPot the win in its first fight. Winner: JackPot (Knockout) Fight 3: Gemini v. Uppercut Oh, Gemini. Ace Shelander’s multi-bot, a pair of 125 lb. bar spinners, looks good on paper but it’s had serious problems in the arena. Alex Hattori’s Uppercut debuted last year and had a shockingly good run for a new bot. It’s an unusual vertical spinner, with a single “fist” and a counterweight, so there’s only one “side” to the weapon and, of course, it hits up instead of down. There’s no way I can make this recap a longer one. Gemini split to try to flank Uppercut, but Uppercut just went after the left bot and punted it twenty feet across the arena and over the wall. It turned, faced the other bot, and split it in two with one hit. Game over. After the match, Chris Rose asked Hattori about the fight and he just grinned and said “My bot is fun.” Yeah, it sure is. Winner: Uppercut (Knockout) Fight 4: Rotator v. BETA Victor Soto’s Rotator is a contender for the Giant Nut. It’s a well-armored bot that can mount weapons on either end and Victor is a fantastic driver, as he showed when he dismantled Tombstone last year. This is the first time we’ve seen John Reid’s BETA in a while. It’s the apex hammer bot, really hard to hurt, and it can actually cause a little damage with the hammer (which, for a hammer bot, is really impressive). The bots came out of the gate quickly and BETA just started pushing Rotator around. BETA had a huge armored wedge on it and Rotator couldn’t do a thing about. BETA just drove around shoving Rotator into the wall over and over. On the other hand, Rotator had a top-mounted disc spinner and the idea was that if the hammer hit it, the hammer would take more damage than their bot. The BETA folks agreed, and never fired the weapon. So, it was essentially a wedge bot pushing around a spinner that couldn’t do anything about it. Eventually, BETA shoved Rotator into a corner and the the spinner bot bounced off the wall and into BETA’s hammer, knocking the head of the hammer off. That was literally the only big “hit” of the fight and BETA immediately resumed shoving Rotator around. This one went to the judges and it was…not a popular decision. The judges split 2-1 in favor of BETA. I won’t get too deeply into Battlebots lore here, but, in order to discourage wedge bots, the scoring rules are heavily weighted in favor of bots that use their primary weapon. You can get 5 points for doing damage with your weapon, 3 points for aggression (and aggression with the weapon is favored), and 3 points for control of the match. Was this the correct decision? I think so, but it was tight. The only damage that was done was one hit by Rotator when it was bouncing around and on one wheel, and the rules state that the only damage that counts is damage inflicted by “…deliberate, controlled action,” and it would be a real stretch to say that was the case. On the other hand, BETA absolutely dominated the other two categories. Rotator might as well have…

If you don’t want spoilers, pray make haste and depart this page as there will be almost nothing that isn’t a spoiler. Seriously. Hie thee away! Get thee to a nunnery! All that stuff. Shoo! OK, with that out of the way, welcome to my take on Fight Night 2 of Battlebots this season. It was another two-hour episode that featured less action per minute of broadcast than an NFL football game. I get that they need to pay the bills, but this feels excessive. Fight 1: Shatter! v. Ghost Raptor Just like last week, we started off with an enticing fight. This one featured Adam Wrigley’s Shatter! facing off against Chuck Pitzer’s Ghost Raptor. Shatter! debuted last year and, for a hammer bot, it was really interesting, featuring ablative armor and unusual wheels. It didn’t perform especially well, but you got the sense they’d learn from those defeats. Ghost Raptor is an older bot that’s taken several years off, but it still looks competitive. It features a top-mounted bar spinner on an articulated mount, allowing it to change the angle of attack and do some lifting. Shatter! box-rushed Ghost Raptor because that’s what you do against spinners and everyone knows it. The hammer scored a couple of early hits and it looks like a much more threatening weapon than it did last year, when the head actually fell off one time. Ghost Raptor was dazed by the early blows and attempted to out-maneuver Shatter!, which wasn’t going to happen, and to push the hammer bot around, which did. But, the damage from those early hits was too much and Ghost Raptor just stopped moving. Wrigley explained afterwards that, based on what he could see, there was no shock absorption between the spinner and the internals, so mashing the spinning bar could knock stuff loose on the inside. It looked like that was exactly what happened. I like the way this guy thinks. Winner: Shatter! (Knockout) Fight 2: Ribbot v. Tracer Last year, David Jin’s Ribbot, covered in frog-shaped green foam, looked like one of those ridiculous gimmick bots like Royale with Cheese that was fun to look at but served little function other than a punching bag. After they walloped End Game, you kind of had to take them seriously. This was the first year competing for Jason Woods’ Tracer, but he’s been in the pits for ten years so it’s not like he was a newbie. The concept behind Tracer seemed to be “Duck, but with a vertical bar spinner.” The bot was built to be indestructible first and damaging second. Ribbot, a Swiss Army bot, came out with their undercutter, a low mounted disc spinner. Ribbot tried to get around the side of Tracer, but Tracer was more maneuverable than they had expected and they wound up going weapon-to-weapon. After a nervy couple of seconds, both bots were back at it. Ribbot swung around and caught tracer on left side of their front shield, flipping their opponent on its back. In theory, Tracer could self-right by using the spinner, but that almost never works and such was the case here as the little green frog that could claimed another victim. Winner: Ribbot (Knockout) Fight 3: Kraken v. Black Dragon Fun fight, this one. This is the third year for Matthew Spurk’s Kraken, a bot that barely competed the first time out but improved mightily in their second year. It’s a control bot with huge front jaws and a couple of teeth. Gabriel Telles brought Black Dragon back for a second year. It’s not a revolutionary bot; it’s a vertical spinner, but last year it showed a good combination of power, reliability and quickness on it’s way to the Final 16. Kraken performed an immediate box rush because, duh, and was able to get Black Dragon in its jaws almost immediately. However, Black Dragon went with their lightest spinners, a pair of vertical discs instead of the drum they usually use, and they did this in order to increase their top armor. This mean that, while Kraken could hold Black Dragon, it couldn’t really damage it. Kraken did manage to burn a belt off of Black Dragon, but most of the damage was done to Kraken’s teeth (later, tooth) when the two of them came together. The other issue Kraken had was that it couldn’t get Black Dragon’s back wheels off the ground, so even when the Brazilian bot was clamped, it could still push Kraken around the box. This one went the distance and, honestly, I could see it go either way. Black Dragon did a little more damage, but Kraken exhibited more control The judges were split, but Black Dragon was declared the winner. Winner: Black Dragon (Spit decision) Fight 4: HUGE v. Mammoth This fight right here is why you should watch Battlebots. HUGE made a, um, huge splash when it debuted because it was so much bigger than the other bots. It’s a giant vertical bar spinner mounted between two wagon wheels. It looks like a joke, but it most certainly is not and it has clobbered some very good bots (ask Bronco). Ricky Willems saw HUGE and said “Hold my beer” and built Mammoth, a bot that stands 6’4” and shovels opponents out of the box. This fight was nuts. The two of them came together right off the bat. Mammoth smacked HUGE, but HUGE’s spinner flipped Mammoth completely off the ground, bending its weapon in the process. This happened several times and somehow, both bots survived and landed on their wheels. I’ve never seen anything like it. It looked like HUGE had this one under control, or, at least, like it was going to be the only bot able to do any damage. But, while the big spinner bot is surprisingly nimble, it doesn’t have great traction. Eventually, Mammoth was able to get HUGE into the corner and prevent it from getting its weapon up to speed and squared up for another hit. The big shovel/lifter/spinner on Mammoth kept whacking HUGE and eventually got one of HUGE’s wheels out of the box and that was that. In the post-fight breakdown, Willems showed just how much damage he’d taken: Both structural support bars had holes in them and HUGE missed knocking his weapon chain off by less than…

Well, the greatest sport known to humanity is back and…it’s wow. I’m not going to say that Battlebots will be the best thing that happens in 2020, but I’m not going to say it won’t be. The format is essentially the same: Two 250 pound robots bashing each other until one of them is too damaged to continue or three minutes pass. There are a couple of new wrinkles. Robots without wheels can be a lot bigger (500 pounds, I think), there’s no audience, and they’ve upgraded the hazards inside the battlebox so they’re presumably more than just nuisances. Other than that? It’s Battlebots. What more do you want? There will be spoilers here. There will be so many spoilers. There will be very little that is not spoiler. If you don’t want to know how the fights turned out, you are in the wrong place. OK, now that we’re clear, let’s go over the fights in this 2 hour season opener! Fight 1: Sawblaze v. Whiplash This promised to be a heck of a fight. Jamison Go’s Sawblaze made the quarterfinals last year and Jeff Vasquez’ Whiplash made the semifinals. Go and Vasquez are two of the best drivers around and their bots are among the most reliable and maneuverable, although neither of them are huge hitters. Or, at least, they weren’t last year. Sawblaze somehow got lower to the ground than last year, and the dustpan forks on the front of it pushed Whiplash around for most of the early going. Whiplash got in a couple of hits with their articulated spinner, but they never really squared up on Sawblaze and, even after taking out one of their opponents’ tires, couldn’t win the shoving match. Last year, Sawblaze introduced a new type of weapon: The hammer-saw. Instead of just using a sawblade on an arm that swung down on the top of their foes, they added some weight to the blade and swung the it with a great deal more force. It had never been especially destructive, but this time, with Whiplash pinned against the screws, Sawblaze brought the weapon down and split the top armor plate. Something important (and probably expensive) broke in Whiplash as it was rendered immobile and counted out. Winner: Sawblaze (knockout) Fight 2: MatCatter v. Fusion I had MadCatter figured as a sacrificial lamb for the new bot from Team Whyachi. Fusion is a combination spinner; horizontal on one side and vertical on the other. The Ewert family had been pretty successful introducing new bots (check out Hydra last year), and Fusion looked like a good one. Meanwhile, Madcatter looked like…a cat. A cat with a vertical spinner and a kind of goofy paw-lifter device, but still…it didn’t look like it could live up to Martin Mason’s enthusiasm (not that anything could). MadCatter performed the mother of all box rushes, sprinting across the box and bopping Fusion before either of them could get their spinners up to speed. The initial hit seemed to take all the speed out of MadCatter, but Fusion wasn’t exactly running rings around them. In fact, it was MadCatter that was clearly on top, picking its spots, getting under Fusion, and delivering hits and trying fruitlessly to flip the other bot. The cat wasn’t doing a lot, but it was the only bot doing anything. Fusion was struggling mightily with things like “going in a straight line” and eventually started smoking, which is often a precursor to stopping entirely. That was the case here and the bot I thought was just there to provide an opponent won a pretty convincing victory. Winner: MadCatter (knockout) Fight 3: Axe Backwards v. Malice Speaking of sacrificial lambs: Kurt Durjan’s Axe Backwards. This genuinely interesting looking bot, a full-body vertical spinner, has been dissected by some very ordinary bots and just destroyed by some of the good ones. Malice, driven by rookie Bunny Sauriol, was an unknown quantity, but the 65 pound horizontal drum spinner looked menacing enough to make me think the newbie would make short work of Axe Backwards. Kurt taunted Bunny during the countdown, but once the fight started, the roles reversed immediately. A single hit effectively ended Axe Backwards as a mobile piece of machinery. Malice could have just pounded Axe Backwards to a pulp, but after getting in a couple more shots, she backed off and let the referee count out the flaming wreck of little plastic-y axes. Winner: Malice (knockout) Fight 4: Bloodsport v. Skorpios Justin Marple’s Bloodsport had an impressive debut last year, albeit against some seriously inept bots (thankfully, the multi-bot trend has almost completely died out). Zach Lyttle’s Skorpios went a long way in the tournament last year largely by being very well-driven and very hard to hurt, but without doing much in the way of damage. I had Skorpios as the favorite based on what I saw of Bloodsport last year, but this year’s version is a very different bot. The horizontal lawnmower blade was replaced by a spinning disk which was clever, because Skorpios’ already weak weapon was never going to get through it without destroying it’s own saw. This proved to be the case, as the first time Skorpios brought the saw down, it was bent and rendered ineffective almost immediately. Bloodsport also surprised me by managed to get under Skorpios, something that very few bots have managed. There were no huge hits, but it was a death by a thousand cuts as Bloodsport took apart Skorpios’ front wedge and kept pounding the underside of one of the lowest bots around. Eventually, Skorpios just stopped moving and that has traditionally been something that was very difficult to achieve. Impressive. Winner: Bloodsport (knockout) Fight 5: Captain Shredderator v. Lock-Jaw Brian Nave’s Captain Shredderator has been around forever now, and very little has changed. It’s a brutal full body spinner that can do tremendous damage to an opponent while doing as much, or more, damage to itself. There was a lot of talk pre-match about how he’d simplified the bot to try to make it more reliable. In the other corner was another known quantity: Donald Hutson’s Lock-Jaw. It looked pretty much the same as always, but apparently, this was a ground-up rebuild. I figured Lock-Jaw had this one in the bag on theory that betting on the…