It is impossible to find justice in a system so thoroughly broken as our own.
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Previously on Phil’s Newsletter: We were back, baby.
This newsletter is free, so you can share it with your friends! But you can also pay for this newsletter or my Patreon to get some perks and directly support me. Phil’s Newsletter is brought to you by paid subscribers Jessica Nelson, Jeff Powers, Vikas Reddy, David Demchuk, Ian Scott, Adam Rodnitzky, and Kat Angus. You are each, individually, the best.
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The OpenCV Spatial AI Contest submission deadline is approaching rapidly! Monday 11/22 at 11:59pm Pacific time is your last shot to apply and be eligible for cash prizes and an expense-paid trip to Microsoft Build to present your project.
Learn more and apply: https://opencv.org/opencv-spatial-ai-contest/
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RetroStrange TV Becomes More Real
RetroStrange TV (aka RSTV or #RSTV as it were) is our 24/7 streaming channel made up of curated public domain and original content. It’s also the home of Divergent League Baseball. While I was away in Michigan, the server that ran the feed died. Once I got back I started working on the replacement- it’s a totally cloud-based solution running on two servers from the hosting company of choice, Linode (use my affiliate link if you sign up with them). I’ll write a bit more about how exactly it works next week.
This week we got featured by Owncast, the software that manages the streaming part of RetroStrange TV, and are featured on the homepage of the project! Pretty cool! We’ve been averaging 4-10 viewers since the relaunch happened, and it’s pretty awesome to see.
That wasn’t the only big RetroStrange TV news, though: We’re getting a Roku app. Keep your eyes peeled on our website.
The StrangeLine
In hindsight it seems inevitable: I used Twilio to build a phone line you can call that plays old time radio episodes and tells you info on RetroStrange Movie Nights. It’s called the StrangeLine. To access the StrangeLine just call (814) 787-2643 (that’s 814-STRANGE). It’s free.
I wrote about building it a bit more on my blog at extrafuture.com.
Divergent League Baseball: 1999 Season Preview
We’re gearing up for Divergent League Baseball again, for real this time, with some exhibition games. Team ownership slots are still available for just $10 per team! Hit me up if you want to be part of the draft. These are being streamed on the following channels:
You’ll want to bookmark and/or subscribe to all of those. It may show up on Facebook as well.
Today we ran a test of the Divergent League Baseball: 1999 setup. Consider this one a live “smoke test”- it’s all the real stuff we’ll be using during the season. It went well, and I hope the rest of the season runs as smoothly. You can watch the preview replay on Twitch.
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Phil’s Good Links
“Good” being a relative term.
Mayor Andrew Bradshaw of Cambridge, Maryland, was just charged with 50 counts of distributing revenge porn.
Republicans are trying to force a vote on federal decriminalization of Marijuana. The Centrists are being flanked from the left by the right. Truly amazing.
The Washington Post and in particular Marty Baron put reporter Felicia Sonmez through hell. She’s fighting back.
Google Cloud, which a huge part of the internet run on, had a massive outage this week.
The Daily Beast says what we’re all thinking: “Stop Telling Me Trust-Fund Kids Are Financial Wizards”
Audio has leaked out from one of Amazon’s mandatory anti-union meetings in New York and it sounds about as bad as you expect.
TiltFive, makers of next-gen tabletop gaming gear, had a great presence at Augmented World Expo, I’m sorry I missed it this year
I feel crazy for knowing this needs to be said, but Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols does anyway in an article titled Stop looking over my shoulder!: “Many businesses have taken to spying on their workers. Don’t do that. It’s a big mistake that will do more harm than good.”
Thank you in advance for your likes and shares, they really do make a difference. See you next week!
— Phil Nelson
Wizard Tower Gamma, South of Market, San Francisco, California, United States of America, Earth
11.19.2021