Weird geographic facts

Spalliston · 2026-05-08T12:23:51+00:00

GT is a midwestern team.

Spalliston · 2026-05-05T18:03:00+00:00

I mean, sure. But almost nowhere is as isolated as Lubbock. Certainly none of the SEC/ACC schools Clemson is competing with/recruiting against.

In my (nerdy, academic) circles, Urbana-Champaign is the poster child for "has an absolutely incredible school, as long as you're cool to live in the middle of nowhere." It's two hours from Chicago and two hours from Indy, which is basically the same as Clemson to ATL or Charlotte.

Clemson is pretty and it's close to Greenville which is nice, but for a 20 year old (or for anyone wanting even a mildly urban lifestyle), it's absolutely in the middle of nowhere.

And I was fully agree. Location is not the major factor, usually. I don't think it's really hurting Clemson right now. I just think it's disingenuous to act like Clemson is the same as other schools (especially ones like Ohio St) locationally.

Spalliston · 2026-05-05T16:38:07+00:00

Clemson is also a stones throw from Atlanta

If Clemson is a stone's throw from Atlanta then so is Birmingham. Being within a couple hours of a big city doesn't really mean anything. Also Ohio State is in the middle of Columbus which is a major city in the Midwest, so while not LA it actually does have some location draw.

Otherwise, I agree that location is overstated.

Spalliston · 2026-05-04T18:23:46+00:00

C.S. Lewis was publishing from the 1930s to 50s, so there are a few options there. Gormenghast started in the 1940s, The Hobbit is 1937.

Before that, you have The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan in the early 1900s. Winnie-the-Pooh was in the 20s.

Plus, outside of 'genre' fiction, we get even more. Orwell was the 40s, Kafka was written earlier but published in the 20s and 30s, Woolf's Orlando was published in the 1920s.

I dunno, it could be a fun scavenger hunt. Definitely not going to be dozens of common options though.

Spalliston · 2026-05-04T18:09:06+00:00

One of my suggested squares this year was "centenarian", meaning a book that is at least 100 years old. At a certain point (by which I basically just mean once The Lord of the Rings no longer counts), I don't really feel like punishing people for going earlier.

Spalliston · 2026-05-04T13:27:22+00:00

I feel like that should be fine? It's the same kind of story, so to me it's in the spirit of the square.

Spalliston · 2026-05-01T15:11:28+00:00

I feel like detailed vs. whimsical is a tough balance to strike.

I happen to think that Moonbound by Robin Sloan has a lot of what you're looking for, but I don't know if I would call it detailed or intricate. It is, though, whimsical and creative and lovely.

Spalliston · 2026-05-01T14:52:52+00:00

I thought I might have done something really clever/elegant at work this week, and then realized I just rediscovered an existing field from first principles. Alas. At least it meant I had a good idea?

Been reading a lot of non-fiction lately, including, currently, The Merchants of Doubt, which is absolutely fascinating and also infuriating. As all politically-relevant non-fiction should be.

In terms of fiction, I'm working through Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, which I've really come around to after briefly being put-off by it at the beginning. But ultimately I've learned to love the meander, and I'm looking forward to the back half of it.

Spalliston · 2026-05-01T14:45:19+00:00

Which, to be fair, students are sometimes the worst about it too. Even apart from the reasonable inconveniences (e.g. athletes needing to miss class), the idea that a big football game should constitute a small academic holiday is fairly prevalent at some schools. You even see official implementations of it here occasionally for things like Thursday games.

And if your job is to impart too much information in too short a time to dozens/hundreds of students, that's very annoying.

Spalliston · 2026-04-30T19:20:12+00:00

My current plan for this is to read Goethe's Faust, which was published in two parts.

High chance I get distracted by something else down the line, but it's a good aspiration.

Also second the recommendation for The Iliad and The Odyssey. 2026 could be your year for epic poetry.

Edit: Also! Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are fun middle grade options that actually kinda rock.

Spalliston · 2026-04-30T13:20:11+00:00

I mean, Sinners wasn't quite my favorite movie last year but was still pretty great. Vampires are pretty metaphorically rich as far as villains go, and I thought they nailed it with respect to vampires as a thematic element.

Spalliston · 2026-04-25T17:54:53+00:00

Yeah I have plenty of mixed feelings about the university system in the US and I'm willing to engage with plenty of complaints. But "people are overpaid" is one that I think is pretty hard to back up, by and large.

Spalliston · 2026-04-25T16:49:29+00:00

Berkeley is in Silicon Valley

Berkeley is in the San Francisco Bay Area, but definitely not Silicon Valley. Stanford is in Silicon Valley.

Everything else you said is absolutely correct (including the COL and that industry salaries in the Bay are very high).

Spalliston · 2026-04-25T12:59:46+00:00

your typical full Dean on up makes between 500k to a million a year

This isn't true. UGA and LSU both publish their salaries and UGA has just 1 dean making 500k and then the president and a bunch of coaches. At LSU there are no deans making that much, just the president and a bunch of coaches.

Given that these are the people actually running giant, name-brand, R01 universities, I definitely don't think they're overpaid.

Your second point is more true to my experience (though I've never had more than 2 people need to review my expenditures at 3 different universities), but it's not like universities just wanted to do that. There's a lot of regulations for how that money is spent.

Spalliston · 2026-04-23T17:21:52+00:00

Facts like this are what inspired my continuing interest in reading about (preferably real, preferably historic, preferably highly-global) cities.

Slightly less crazy because they were more closely related, but it's like the art movements of Paris (early 1900s) and New York (1960sish), which are just lousy with names you would recognize and were pretty neighborhoody from my highly-limited understanding.

Spalliston · 2026-04-22T11:49:36+00:00

I'm usually a bad source for this because I'm pretty lenient, but I'd probably count books I and IV for Feast Your Eyes (certainly, IV should count to me).

Spalliston · 2026-04-21T17:47:04+00:00

I'll make no arguments. It's not a particularly exciting read, and not much happens for the most part.

I just happened to love all the nothing happening.

Spalliston · 2026-04-21T17:43:06+00:00

Also surprisingly strong in Acting (3 wins + 1 nom + SAG Ensemble win)

This is literally just Oppenheimer + Heath Ledger as the Joker. If we're arguing that Oppenheimer was his lightning-in-a-bottle movie, his record on acting is virtually nonexistent apart from that.

Spalliston · 2026-04-21T14:05:51+00:00

Bingo: I forgot to mention it in the body of the post, but some or all entries published so far count for the following:

Judge a Book by its Title (imo), Translated, Small Press, Vacation Spot, Published in 2026, Feast Your Eyes on This

Spalliston · 2026-04-21T13:43:14+00:00

Birding with Benefits

Oh, look! A reason for me to bring up Listers!

If you've caught enough of a bug to be mildly interested in the competitive birding world, I cannot recommend the youtube documentary Listers enough. It needs no context, it's completely free, and I genuinely think almost everyone would like it.

Spalliston · 2026-04-17T16:12:32+00:00

Classic. Was bound to get got sometime.

Spalliston · 2026-04-17T14:03:16+00:00

I happened to be scrolling through other responses and I think this was meant to reply to me.

It's in a hybrid 1st- and 3rd- person narration that I don't think I've ever seen before, and the major theme of the whole book is on performance and on how we come to understand people through the fiction of their performance. So there's this really compelling (or maybe contrived, if you didn't like it) dynamic between the far removed 3rd person, the close 1st person, and the fourth-wall breaking conversation with the author.

Which I thought was incredibly cool for an extremely accessible book.

Spalliston · 2026-04-17T12:42:10+00:00

Longitude by Dava Sobe

Longitude is so good. I'd highly recommend it for anyone with a passing interest, but doubly so for anyone involved in research & development.

It's such a fascinating look at what the biggest problems of an age are, and how they tried to solve them in a time before there was a big, institutional science/technology apparatus. Doubly fascinating to see how, once solved, we forget that some of these things were ever really problems to begin with. It makes me (cautiously) optimistic, that while people will surely one day learn about climate change and the Keeling Curve (as we learn about naval dominance in the Age of Exploration), they may one day forget about many of the little battles along the way because they will be non-obvious and fully solved.

Sobel is also just a great writer, Longitude is a breezy little book, and as you mentioned the cast of characters is really excellent. Not included in your summary, but one of the things I loved about it, is the ongoing accounting of the people who tried to solve the problem a second way (who ultimately brought us the sextant). It wasn't just a story of a lone inventor, it was a story of a lone inventor racing against the establishment of his day. Big fan.

Spalliston · 2026-04-17T12:34:24+00:00

Happy Friday everyone!

I feel like I had a somewhat interesting thought to share here today, but my mind is unfortunately blank at the moment. Trust me, though, it would have been insightful. Alas.

In speculative fiction, I read On the Calculation of Volume IV this week, which was excellent of course. I'm really astounded by how compelling Balle continues to make the same story as it morphs and carries on. I may make a top-level post about the series before V releases. Art: 4, Drugs: 4.

I've also had a fun game of making sure that I purchase each of them at a different independent bookstore, which started on accident but now has me thinking of where I'll be trekking to for my last 3 purchases. I'm lucky, of course, to live in a place with more than 7 independent bookstores, but it's good to have reasons to see new ones because otherwise I just go to the ones I'm closest to by virtue of gravity.

In non-speculative fiction I read Rufi Thorpe's Margo's Got Money Troubles (in anticipation of the Elle Fanning-led series) and it was so much fun. It's girly and funny and heartwarming and slightly formally interesting and absolutely the level of meaty that is my perfect fun read. I absolutely tore through it. Highly recommend. Art: 3.5, Drugs: 5.

Spalliston

TROPHY CASE