B.A. Baker's Blog

Change your bookmarks for this site to http://beatricebaker.com please!

Sometime in the next month, the current Quinlan Circle sites will all go down. They’re not disappearing, necessarily; all sites are backed up and on a new server. But, there is a high likelihood that many of them will disappear.

I’ve been prepping a lot of new blog posts recently, but I haven’t posted any of them because of this server change thing.

So, just in case, the new URL for this site will be http://beatrice...

Merry 3445mas, and a happy New 3445!

As we close up the year and prepare to celebrate a very merry 3445mas, we have some early pre-3445 presents to open up. By presents I mean links. Ho ho ho. Hehehe. Hoo hoo hoo.

Tor.com, one of the best places for fantasy/sci-fi short stories on the internet, has published a new story titled “The Sound of Reindeer,” and you’ve got to read it. The description:

Ada’s holiday trip to meet her girlfriend’s family becomes a bit ...

I came to Japan 5 years ago, and a lot’s happened since then.

Almost four years in snowy Aomori, half a year in sunny Shizuoka, and almost a year in variable weather Kyoto… I’ve lived in four and a half houses, worked in about 15 different schools, gotten big into and slowly out of debt two separate times, and met a lot of mostly wonderful people from all sorts of backgrounds.

So many firsts in these last five years, as well. First time I lived in a snowy environment, first time I drove on...

I’m too tired this time to add an SEO keyword in this article. Sorry! I’m lazy! So you won’t see a suspiciously repetitive phrase over and over. Or will you…

Anyway, I’ve got links, and you’ve got eyeballs ready to view them. Open wide.

It’s been a LONG time since Outbrain got a click from me, but I had to give it props for the best clickbait title and thumbnail in a while. Something just triggered in my brain, like, hell yeah, I wanna see...

The frank truth is that the Internet Historian didn’t apologize when he plagiarized an entire article and was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad revenue as a reward. But his cult-like fandom has entered true tribalism mode to defend him nonetheless. To move on and forgive and forget and compartmentalize that this very successful, very rich creator is a thief and liar.

The new Hbomberguy video on Youtube plagiarism doesn’t focus a ton on the Internet Historian; it’s just one section o...

It’s taboo to say these feared words, but I’ll admit that Civ is too long. Sometimes way too long. And unless you drastically alter your playstyle or use certain mods, it’s very difficult to get it shorter.

A few weeks ago, I was really getting into the Tides of History podcast’s overview of the ancient world, and somehow that got me playing Civ VI one weekend night.

If you know me, you know I love the Civilization series. Between the six games (I’ve only played 3-6, Revolution, and Beyond...

I’ve found true love, and its name is… Link Scoop.

Welcome to another addition of this blog series where I share with you the things I’ve been seeing on this here wide world of web. Considering I spend a majority of my waking hours interfacing with the internet on various backlit screens, I guess you can call that true love. Or true addiction.

Anyway, you’re probably the same way, which is why you’re here. You need to consume more and more internet content, which is what Link Scoop is here...

I’m always on-and-off with projects, so I want to learn about steering creative obsessions in my life. It’s a huge struggle for me to stay focused on any project. I get obsessed with a project for a couple weeks, then it fades as other stuff takes over. Sometimes it can be as short as just a couple days, even. However, I have a brand-new hypothesis about TV shows that might change things.

As you might have seen from my last post, the anime Do It Yourself!! was pretty good, but annoyed me in o...

It’s a pretty nice anime, but the Do It Yourself anime American character really annoys me in a few ways.

This Fall 2022 anime came and went without a ton of fanfare, but it’s one of the very few original series that release each year. Not based on a book, manga, game, toy line, or anything else, just a straight-up story. It’s a clear Yuru Camp cash-in, trying to get a crossover audience with the classic Cute Girls Doing Cute Things shows. Most CGDCT shows are pretty heavily male audience due...

I’ve got some Switch 2 ideas for you. Based on everyone else’s speculation, based on existing patents, based on the mood of the gaming world, I’m giving my idealized Nintendo Switch successor system.

These aren’t predictions, per se. It’s my idealized-but-realistic version of Switch 2 ideas. Not going full-on dreamer here–there ain’t gonna be an official FPGA modular Nintendo console with a Wii disc drive add-on–but still probably cooler than the actual console will end up being.

When I wa...