The Week in Meep: All Souls Day, Movember, Obra Dinn, Down with DST
Some re-runs and fading into dark
As I write, the orchestra at St. John Cantius Church in Chicago is starting up for their annual Mozart Requiem Mass of All Souls. I love that they use Mozart’s music in the setting it’s meant for, rather than a concert hall.
There have been many settings of the Requiem Mass over the Church’s history, and I wish we’d use it more often. It provides comfort for many.
Prior Memento Mori/Requiem:
Nov 2024: Memento Mori: All Souls Day
Dec 2022: RIP, Pope Emeritus Benedict - Ring Out 2022 with Dies Irae
Sep 2024: RIP, M. Stuart Grace, 1961-2024 [has the recording of the 2023 St. John Cantius Requiem Mass]
Nov 2023: The Week in Meep, 4 Nov 2023: Sumo Stats, Movember, and Memento Mori
April 2023: Sunday Skeleton: MEMENTO MORI!
May 2021: Mortality Nuggets: Global Excess Deaths, Memento Mori, and Mortality News Round-up
Movember 2025: Nice Kick-Off
I had a nice start to Movember yesterday:
Obviously, the spike in 2024 came from donations in 2024 in memory of Stu’s death that year. I am not expecting to reach that level again.
Here are the places you can donate to the Movember Foundation, which supports men’s health, specifically focusing on prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and men’s mental health:
Mary Pat Campbell’s MoSpace – a place to donate at Movember itself
My Movember Facebook fundraiser – my officially linked fundraiser, if this works better for you
And here’s a QR code if that works better for you:
Yesterday’s post on the Movember fundraiser:
Game Recommendation: Return of the Obra Dinn
I played this game upon the recommendation of one of my kids, who thought I’d enjoy it, and she was correct.
I bought the game through the Steam platform: Return of the Obra Dinn
The hook is that you’re an insurance company investigator, sent out to an abandoned hulk of a ship to try to determine what has happened to the 60 people who were sent out on the ship named “Obra Dinn”… but no, it’s not really about insurance.
It’s an extended logic puzzle, of sorts. It is somewhat gory, but it is a bunch of cut scenes, in terms of what “action” you get to see….and it’s black-and-white art in various old style computer screen renderings.
You have a time-travelling watch that lets you see some of the events of the past, through the bits of bodies (and some other things) left behind.
This game is great for the sort who are meticulous, detail-oriented, and who really enjoy using those aspects of themselves in games… so actuaries may enjoy it a lot, but not only actuaries. The logic required isn’t necessarily difficult, but there is a lot of detail around, and you have to return to the same scenes to get new details.
It’s got old-school computer animation vibes, fantasy elements, lots of scenes of people dying (you’re mainly figuring out how people died, so you can see how I dug it), skeletons and creepy stuff.
But what put off some people is the frustration of how methodical you need to be sometimes to progress in the game. But the good news is that as you get near the end, it gets easier, rather than more difficult. If you read reviews, you’ll see people are positive — once people started to “get it”, people found it intriguing and fun. It took me a total of 15 hours to complete.
And after I completed… there’s still some stuff to think about. I think I figured some of it out, but even after “winning”, not all the questions are answered.
Down with DST
I’m not writing anything new for this now.
But the time change, whether it’s the “extra” hour or the “lost” hour, always reminds me how much I detest Daylight Saving Time.
It’s tempting to write something new, or even linking to one of the many pieces published today, but no.
Here are some of the things I’ve written before:
Nov 2023: Death to Daylight Saving Time!
We do not need DST
Let’s get down to it: why do we “need” to change the clocks?
The energy reason is not good enough. It doesn’t do much.
There are plenty of countries that don’t do any sort of DST.
Japan doesn’t. It ranges in latitude from 20 to 40 degrees north.
(I stayed one summer in Japan, and it was interesting to see the sun up at 5 a.m.)
The U.S. extends farther north (obviously, with Alaska), but the border with Canada is approximately the 49th parallel. Even so, speaking as one living at 41 degrees north, I’m fine without DST.
But look, almost the entirety of Asia and Africa don’t do DST in any form, and most of South America doesn’t.
The main reason DST was instituted was for retail, etc., to get more post-work hours of recreation from folks to spend their money. That’s it. It’s consumerism.
Mar 2024: DST Kills: More Tales of the Killer Time-Changer
If we’re going to have DST in the Northern Hemisphere, can we move it to later in the spring? Or maybe even later in April?
We all know DST doesn’t save any energy and mainly annoys us all. Nobody uses that “extra” hour in the evening in March, and it is still dark in the morning for most of us in the north. Move it to April… like it used to be.
There will be fewer accidental deaths.
It doesn’t seem to make much difference in the fall. So, whatever.
Look, I’m trying to come up with some reasonable compromise. It would lead to fewer deaths.
Comments are open.