curmudgeon blog post

content/blog/2022-10-10-CLRG-Results-Analysis/_index.md

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----
-title: CLRG Results Analysis
-date: 2022-10-10T10:13:00-06:00
-draft: true
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-
-Hello there.

content/blog/2022-10-28-CLRG-Results-Analysis/.gitignore

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+# I don't have rights to copy any of the data :(
+*.xml

content/blog/2022-10-28-CLRG-Results-Analysis/_index.md

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+---
+title: CLRG Results Analysis
+date: 2022-10-28T10:45:00-0600
+---
+
+# Our Findings
+
+Here's a summary of what the team I've been working with has found:
+
+## It's clearly widespread throughout the organization
+
+It's more than 12 people.
+It's more than 24 people.
+It's probably more than 48 people.
+Every data set we found had some pretty clear weirdness,
+and that was before we looked at the judges we were finding weirdness with.
+Once we tied names back in,
+we were like, "oh, yeah, that's what we thought all along."
+
+So unless there are some *major* changes made,
+we're still going to have corruption in CLRG.
+That's just the world you're in.
+I hope any new families getting involved understand this.
+In order to get into the upper tiers,
+the way you compete becomes more about politics than dancing.
+And by "politics" I mean Machiavellian politics.
+
+# Why I'm Not Publishing Any More Tools
+
+I started writing a thing to highlight weirdness in CLRG rankings.
+You'd give it a ranking sheet,
+and it would highlight what weirdness it found,
+with an explanation about why it looks weird and what it might mean.
+
+But I gave up after a day's work.
+Here's why:
+
+## I don't have the right to copy data
+
+The results of competitions is owned by various companies. It seems to be a
+different company depending on who gets the contract to provide the scoring
+software for a particular event. In any case, none of them provide a license
+that allows me to redistribute their data. That means I can't host any scores on
+this web site: you have to get it from the company that owns it.
+
+## The data is distributed as PDF files
+
+Adobe Acrobat (or whatever they call it now) actually has an "export as XML"
+function that does a good job turning PDF files back into something like a
+spreadsheet.
+
+In order for any tool I make to be generally useful, I would also need to
+provide instructions on doing that Acrobat export, probably with an accompanying
+video and multiple screen shots. I don't even run Windows or Mac OS, to say
+nothing of being notoriously bad at this sort of instructional page / video.
+
+## It's not clear anybody really cares
+
+Reading the "voy forums", it's clear that the main thing people are getting out
+of this is righteous indignation. I don't think a post full of math would really
+appeal to the people there.
+
+I'm in touch with a couple of reporters covering this story, but I don't think
+the math angle is going to be very interesting to their readership either.
+
+That means I'd need to go and try to figure out who *does* care. I found a small
+group of people who care, and this group has already loaded some data into a
+spreadsheet and done a manual analysis.
+
+After finding mathematical evidence supporting what we already knew (this whole
+process is corrupt), what then? I guess I just go on with my life.
+
+I can already just go on with my life, I don't have to put in a bunch of work first.
+
+# Do you care?
+
+Are you a regular reader of my blog? (HA HA HA) Do you care about mathematical
+analysis of this stuff? Are you willing to jump through some technical hoops in
+order to look at things without running afoul of copyright law? Get in touch
+with me and let me know there's actually an audience!
+
+All of the code I wrote is checked in to git for this blog page.
+So you don't even need to contact me,
+you can just take the scraping code and go nuts.
+It uses a standard API for scraped data from two different sources,
+does some smarts to determine missing data,
+and should be pretty simple to interface with.
+If you need help getting the XML data into it,
+I'd be glad to help you with that.
+
+Here are the files:
+
+* [feisworx.mjs](Feisworx report scraping code)
+* [feisresults.mjs](Feis Results report scraping code)
+* [awardpoints.mjs](Code to guess placing given award points, used by feisresults.mjs)
+* [types.mjs](JSDoc documentation of some global data structures)
+* [dataset.mjs](Some stub code to populate an HTML page with data)

content/blog/2022-10-28-curmudgeon.md

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+---
+title: My technological flag in the sand
+date: 2022-10-28T14:59:00-0600
+---
+
+Elon Musk just bought Twitter. It got me thinking about Twitter, something that
+comes up a lot, because a lot happens there in 2022, and some of that filters
+through to me.
+
+I've long known that the day would come when I would just not be willing to
+accept some sort of societal change, and this would be what defined me as an old
+person. This isn't some unique thing I'd be doing: this is a time-honored human
+trait. Previous generations have put their flags in the sand by rejecting polyphonic
+sacred music, rejecting automobiles, rejecting email, and rejecting smartphones.
+
+Today I realized what my flag in the sand is going to be. I am not going to
+become active on Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook, or Myspace, or LiveJournal.
+I see no personal benefit to adopting the newer technologies, and I see a lot of
+personal benefits to avoiding them. 
+
+I'm not doing this because I think it's just a fad that humanity will move past.
+No: now that we have it, and are beginning to realize how it actually works,
+we're having to figure out how to use it responsibly as a species. This is a
+pretty familiar story for any new technology. I'm just deciding I'm not
+interested in being a part of that process.
+
+At some point, some related technology will come along and sweep me up with it.
+It will be awkward for me, and young people will recognize that I'm just no good
+at it. They'll wonder how any human being could be so inept at something so
+obvious. It will become a mental shortcut for the elderly that they are awkward
+or near-inept at this technology, and people who can't get it will band together
+and discuss how pointless it is and how they just can't understand why anyone
+needs it. We'll watch with some degree of sadness as our way of life dies with
+us.
+
+When you hear writers and philosophers talking about how limited lifespans are a
+gift to humanity, they're talking about this sort of thing.