Friday Dodger Free Afternoon Links

by | Oct 16, 2026 | Cocktails, Daily Links, I Am Lame | 64 comments

It’s a busy sports weekend here in Cleveland, with the next two games of the ALCS being played here (with the chance for the Guardians INDIANS to close it out), and what I’m hoping will be an upset by the Browns against the hated *spit* Ravens. On top of that, Great Lakes has started tapping Christmas Ale, so we’ve got that going for us. But you care not about these trivialities, let’s get to the links.

So… let me get this straight. A programming company, who supports an engine that is used in thousands of games, thinks coding a store interface is too complicated and needs to use LLMs for it? That’s… not a ringing endorsement of your coders.

This is a healthy way to deal with the refund policy.

NEW YORK CITY!?!

Of course, unions are what WOTC needs to turn D&D and M:TG around!

I feel there may be a bifurcation in reality. I mean… Top Gun and ‘Masterpiece‘?

Two things that I am cautiously optimistic about.

Match three games are immersive?

MGP has decided to rebrand and come out of the shadows.

I expect this is targeted at the Hawaiian market.

Maybe… just maybe… DO THE IMPORTANT SHIT BEFORE THE MIDTERMS.

As I’m guessing you were unaware…

What could go wrong?

I’ll wait for Fourscore to weigh in.

Fuck it. You want to go this route. Make them publicly searchable.

As much as I dislike the Stillers, pretty sure the Yinzers won’t take shit.

That’s likely enough to keep you distracted for a bit, so let’s get to the drink:

Cranberry Mule

  • 8 parts (2 oz) spirit
  • 4 parts (1 oz) cranberry juice
  • 1 part (0.25 oz) lime juice
  • Ginger beer/ale to top

An easy and simple twist on the Moscow Mule. Build this in the glass, by adding everything but the ginger beer/ale to a glass over ice. Top with the ginger beer/ale, and stir to combine. Garnish with some cranberries (frozen can work as a substitute for some of the ice if you’d like) and an apple wedge if you would like. Obviously, swap out the cranberry juice for a blend if you would like, and drop the spirit if you want it to be a mocktail.

With that, I’ll let you go into the weekend. I hope all of you (except OMWC) get what they want this weekend. Go Browns!

About The Author

Nephilium

Nephilium

Nephilium is a geek of multiple types living in the vast suburban forests of Cleveland.

64 Comments

  1. rhywun

    we vibe coded a new Epic Games Launcher that’s way faster and more responsive than the current one, and has a new look

    Report any “surprises” using the handy button.

  2. Pat

    So… let me get this straight. A programming company, who supports an engine that is used in thousands of games, thinks coding a store interface is too complicated and needs to use LLMs for it?

    Meh, it’s not like their top C++ guys who work on Unreal were going to be pecking out webdev shit like a game launcher. Before LLMs they’ve have just farmed it out to India, so basically 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

      • Pat

        Loathe them myself. Don’t have their launcher or an account, and never will. I prefer GOG wherever possible, but you can’t really do any modern gaming without Steam, so I do reluctantly let lord gaben cornhole me.

  3. The Late P Brooks

    Banks can’t use non financial criteria to deny services?!

    The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which reviewed roughly 50,000 documents from nine large US banks, found that lenders sometimes relied on reputational concerns rather than outright financial risks when deciding whom to bank. Regulators said a range of industries were targeted, including oil and gas exploration, coal mining, firearms manufacturing, detention facilities, and tobacco and e-cigarette retailers.

    The report shed further light on how those decisions played out, including disrupting a religious nonprofit’s fundraising process and eliminating a merchant’s access to payment services.

    I guess somebody ought to tell Elizabeth Warren about this so she can close down her Epstein enablers witch hunt before she makes herself look foolish.

    • rhywun

      Huh, all industries loudly disfavored by the elites running one political party. Imagine that.

    • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

      before she looks foolish? too late

  4. Pat

    The point of the game is on full display. There’s even a Steam achievement for beating it under two hours, an on-screen timer ticking down all the while. “Feel free to refund the game after, if you still can,” the devs insist. “It wouldn’t be a real challenge without stakes!”

    Fairly brilliant way of cashing in on the zeitgeist.

    I remember when games came on physical media and you didn’t get any refunds regardless of how long you’d played it. But with digital distribution, I can understand a more generous policy.

  5. The Late P Brooks

    In the months following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots in 2021, a payments processor owned by JPMorgan Chase closed the accounts of two different merchants selling Donald Trump and MAGA gear after concluding that the products promoted hate, violence, or racial intolerance.

    Months later, it did the same to another payments processor after the event organizer “called President Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci ‘the enemy’ and characterized Black Lives Matter as Marxists” on social media. Employees for WePay and JPMorgan decided the posts were an “incitement of hate,” according to the report.

    Let them bank in Switzerland.

    • R C Dean

      Didn’t BLM characterize themselves as Marxists?

  6. Not Adahn

    Why a WC three remaster before a WCI and II?

    • Nephilium

      One of the rumors is that the remaster will be the entire Kilrathi Saga (with 1+2 being folded into the 3 release). But the main reason is that they found the masters of the original FMV recordings, so that’s the reason for remastering the first game that used them.

    • EvilSheldon

      I’m holding out for a really good reboot of WC: Privateer.

      • Nephilium

        I’ve got the full Wing Commander series on GOG, which includes the Privateer games. I was a huge fan of the series.

        My absolutely favorite part about it was that you could FAIL MISSIONS! With whole branching paths that determined where you would go next. It was possible to fail Wing Commander so badly that you would get Earth destroyed.

        Only other space shooter series that came close for me was Freespace, which had a wonderful loophole in the EULA for the second one. Where it said it could be given to friends and acquaintances for free non-commercial use.

    • Sensei

      I loved the first one and the expansion pack. Not so much the ones after.

  7. Pat

    Playing more and more, struggling to cut back, or continuing to game despite its negative impact on everyday life can all be signs of gaming disorder. But what about women who play video games and may be overlooked by conventional diagnostic tools?

    🙄️🙄️🙄️🙄️🙄️🙄️🙄️🙄️🙄️🙄️🙄️🙄️🙄️🙄️🙄️

    Jesus tittyfucking Christ. “Psychologists pathologize harmless behavior, women and minorities hardest hit.”

    • Threedoor

      I dated one of those.
      Still single.
      No kids.

  8. rhywun

    NEW YORK CITY!?!

    It says Ticonderoga – that’s a few hours north.

  9. DEG

    Great Lakes has started tapping Christmas Ale

    Ooooooo

    • Nephilium

      In the distribution pipeline now, expected on store shelves come Monday.

  10. Pat

    Maybe… just maybe… DO THE IMPORTANT SHIT BEFORE THE MIDTERMS.

    Yeah, like… 2 years before.

    • EvilSheldon

      Yes, but our politicians are so overworked! How could they be expected to get anything done in a mere two years?

      • Pat

        “Give us more money and vote for us so we can do all the shit we promised you 2 years ago in the 2 weeks before we lose the next election!”

        Also the check’s in the mail and I won’t finish in your mouth.

      • DEG

        I detect insufficient levels of plan trusting.

  11. Pat

    Your Android phone is deeply integrated with a number of Google services, but a quiet background mechanism is currently causing a stir among users. A growing number of Android users are only now learning that Google automatically verifies and associates their phone number with every Google account logged into their device, without any explicit confirmation prompt.

    Yeah, spoiler, your phone number is associated with EVERYTHING on your Android phone if you have Play Services enabled (which is to say, unless you’re running vanilla AOSP or a derivative).

  12. The Late P Brooks

    Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

    SpaceX artificial intelligence policy leader Gabriela Castillo Madrid faced a tough line of questioning from NYC Council Speaker Julie Menin and other members on Friday as part of a council investigation into AI safety.

    When Castillo Madrid claimed that the company had appropriate “safeguards” in place around its AI products, Menin immediately confronted her.

    “I’m going to completely push back on that,” Menin said. “I mean, just this morning — myself and my team — we put our own names, my own name, into Grok, and there’s absolutely a sexualized image of myself. So then, how is it that within a second, I could find a sexualized image of myself using Grok?”

    ——-

    NYC Council Member Carmen De La Rosa, who leads the council’s tech committee, told Castillo Madrid that “it is disgusting” that Grok enables users to easily “sexualize” images of real women without their consent.

    “I just don’t understand how you can say that there are these safe models,” Menin said. “It’s just unacceptable.”

    You Asked Grok to create sexualized images of yourself? That’s a violation of your terms of service. Your account has been terminated.

    • Pat

      “I asked a computer to return an output based on my input and it did! We must regulate this at once!”

    • rhywun

      And consider that Menin is the one “moderate” Democrat in the NYC Council.

  13. Sensei

    I expect this is targeted at the Hawaiian market.

    She’s not holding a pink AR. I’m disappointed.

  14. Pat

    On its developer page, Meta currently has instructions for how to block its crawlers using robots.txt, a file that tells bots which parts of a website they can and cannot access.
     
    However, legal experts said the new language creates an opening for Meta to argue its commercial terms supersede other blocking instructions.

    For most websites this probably wouldn’t be an issue since they generally want their public-facing site crawled by every search engine and ad company for SEO purposes. I was wondering if it meant they get to bypass robots.txt. Of course it does.

  15. Pat

    On Sept. 24, Doppel, Flock’s brand protection vendor, requested “the immediate removal” of Michael’s “infringing site.” Interestingly, Flock’s initial complaint didn’t accuse Michael of illegally accessing the data. Instead, Flock’s “authorized agent” says Michael’s site — flocksurveillance.org — “is using trademark FLOCK SAFETY without authorization,” adding that “unauthorized use of their trademark may cause customer confusion / harm.”

    This wouldn’t hold up under either nominative or descriptive fair use, but the process, as ever, is the punishment.

  16. Grumbletarian

    Was Starfleet Academy the one with the gay Klingon?

    • UnCivilServant

      Internet says yes.

      It needs to be purged with fire.

      Why did you make me see that?

    • Nephilium

      Yes. It was the spin off from Discovery, which was garbage Trek to begin with.

    • EvilSheldon

      So, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the first season of Starfleet Academy such a disaster that the producers disposed of all the sets and props? Am I thinking of something else?

      • Threedoor

        I believe so.

      • Nephilium

        They had already ordered a second season, but yes, I’m pretty sure everything was torn down right after release. Also, it’s the show that lost in streaming to nearly everything.

    • rhywun

      lol I didn’t know that.

      I thought it was the one where the Academy was more or less run like a Cornell frat house.

  17. R.J.

    Still trapped at work. Emotional people on call. Not getting anywhere. This is my purgatory.

    • rhywun

      Ugh. I escaped for now but I have to go back to it later.

  18. DEG

    Do libertarians attract bears?

    Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling made Grafton’s libertarian experiment into a cautionary tale about small government and large wildlife. In NBC10 Boston’s The Free Town, Fish and Game bear biologist Andrew Timmins says Grafton did not have a high level of complaints (7:06–7:13), and that there is no evidence of a bear-population spike or sudden increase in conflicts during the period discussed (8:31–8:43).

    The book’s own chronology complicates its political framing: in chapter 1, “A Feline Feeding,” Jessica Soule dates her concerns about Grafton’s unusual bear behavior to summer 1999, before the Free State Project began in 2001. Apparently, the bears got an advance copy of the libertarian agenda. Her account places concerns about unusual bear behavior before the movement’s arrival. That does not rule out later changes in conflicts.

  19. Ownbestenemy

    I was listening to the MN debate…

    I find funny a complaint that East Grand Forks only has *only* one nursing home from the man/woman.

    Population of EGF? 8,800 persons roughly.

    But its a tug at heart moment.

    Her/his opponent is uh, interesting I guess.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Flanagan’s team obviously said “every answer needs to include “Donald Trump”. Not a bad idea, but it starts getting annoying and opens up “He isn’t on the ballot” from Tafoya

  20. ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

    I am not a Dodgers fan, but there is no way I will root for Lavern and Shirley to win the series.

    And the ‘Tardians vs Florida’s equiviant of Australias Raygun? This is why I was rooting for LA…

    • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

      That ship has sailed.

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        damnit, this is a reply to Neph above.

    • DEG

      CULTURAL WRECKING BALL!

      • DEG

        I’m figuring out the controls. $2.3 billion. I’m playing the 4 minute spree.

    • RAHeinlein

      It was the right call, but that is a tough role and the press is ruthless.

      • Sensei

        Unless your name is Karine. For totally inexplicable reasons, right?

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        The press just wants a scalp, not tell the news or anything

  21. The Late P Brooks

    Sciencey

    Consumer spending has helped keep the U.S. economy resilient. Yet research shows debt payments are taking a growing bite out of Americans’ income gains, leaving less money available to spend or save.

    A new analysis by the nonpartisan think tank The Century Foundation and the consumer advocacy group Protect Borrowers found that a typical U.S. household’s estimated real take-home monthly pay rose $109 from late 2022 to early 2026. “Real” take-home pay is one’s wage after accounting for inflation.

    Meanwhile, a worker’s monthly debt payments rose $57.

    In other words, researchers estimate that for a one-earner household, 52 cents of every dollar of income gained in recent years goes to higher debt payments. For a two-earner household, they project that the entire real income gain, and then some, goes toward debt.

    Huh?

  22. creech

    So, an extra $52 per month to invest or entertain oneself. This is known in progressive columnist-speak/attack ads as “Tanking the economy.”

  23. R C Dean

    Aside from Michael’s national security concerns, the data he published directly contradicted the number of automatic license plate cameras (ALPRs) Flock has publicly stated were in circulation. According to the data Michael retrieved, Flock has more than 300,000 devices in its network, including over 170,000 cameras as well as 27,000 acoustic devices. Over the summer, Flock told The Washington Post that its surveillance network had over 120,000 cameras.

    Well, 170K is “over 120K”, so I would say that the data he published did not, in fact, directly contradict Flock.

  24. The Late P Brooks

    The press just wants a scalp, not tell the news or anything

    She doesn’t even have a journalism degree.

Submit a Comment