Friday, April 25, 2025

Things I already miss about my father

 It’s only been 48 hours so these aren’t particularly deep thoughts. But they are thoughts nonetheless.



  • I just finished N K Jemisin's marvelous Broken Earth trilogy, and I really wanted to know what dad thought about it. He had zipped through all three volumes in barely 10 days, while it took me two months to finish them. He was a much faster reader than me. But he was waiting patiently until I finished the last volume before telling me. So now I'll never know.
  • I played some golf, which I enjoy but don't do often, and am not very good at. But my dad loved golf and was remarkably good at it , so I wanted to tell him some stories from my golf trip. Don't get to do that and have no one else to tell.
  • The golf courses were out in the desert and my dad had a phenomenal knowledge of desert plants; i wanted to tell him about the mesquite and the tamarisk and the locust and the acacia that were lining the course.
  • I was learning a bit about prediction markets and they are pretty abstract and so I wanted to talk to my dad about them to see what he thought. I think he would have found them fascinating

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Robert Leon Pendleton, 1937-2025

Just 72 hours ago, my father was sitting in the family room debating the virtues and challenges of artificial intelligence with my son.

Time goes by so fast.

I’ll have more to say down the line, for now it’s enough to say: dad, I miss you and I love you and every time I was with you I learned something.



Saturday, April 19, 2025

Star Wars Zero Company looks like a game I'd like

It seems that some of the team from XCOM have joined a new effort to build a Star Wars tactical turn-based game.

Star Wars: Zero Company Officially Revealed With 2026 Release Window

Zero Company takes place in the "twilight of the Clone Wars," and stars Hawks, a former Republic officer commanding an elite squad of operatives taking on a growing new threat. It's a single-player game, featuring turn-based tactics gameplay, and is said to incorporate "meaningful outcomes from player choices".

Star Wars: Zero Company to Be Officially Revealed From Respawn and Bit Reactor This Weekend

Developer Bit Reactor is a newly-formed strategy game studio made up of veterans from games like XCOM, Civilization, Gears of War, and Elder Scrolls Online.

Sounds like I've got at least 18 months to wait, but I'll look forward to learning more about what the team is up to.