I have been watching all of the top division bouts at the 2026 Aki Basho (September Grand Sumo Tournament). One of the highlight bouts on day 4 featured Yokozuna Onosato vs Takayasu. Takayasu delivered a brutal hit at the Tachiai, forcing the Yokozuna back. Onosato backpedaled, and circling away, tried to guide Takayasu out of the ring. He very nearly succeeded, but Takayasu gracefully twirled one leg, staying in. Unfortunately for Yokozuna Onosato, he ended up twirling as well, but without the same success as the light-footed Takayasu. YouTube user Wegwezen decided to set the slow-motion highlights to music, and I must say that I fully approve of his music selection. Consider this video a “must watch.”
Tag: humor
Even the Cheap Computer Cubes Are Out of Stock
I referenced Valve’s announcement that it would delay the launch of the cube-shaped Steam Machine in my recent article, which touched on AI-driven computer memory price increases. Before going off my my tangent on memory price increase (something I note as a sometimes computer-builder), I saved an article to use for a related joke.
On February 6, 2026, Liliputing published a report titled Radxa Cubie A7S is a tiny, versatile single-board computer for $25 and up. As the name suggests, the Radxa Cubie is a single board computer (“SBC”) with some neat features at a very low price. When I saw “cubie” in the name, I thought to myself that this SBC could be the “Steam Machine” for our current pricing age. Yes, it has a very low-end Allwinner A733 CPU and only supports up to 4 GB of RAM, but beggers cannot be choosers so long as Sam Altman buys all the RAM with Open AI’s Monopoly money. But alas, the Radxa Cubie is out-of-stock as of publication time, so it is no more obtainable than the Steam Machine.
Taking Bets On OpenClaw’s New Shiny Object
I saw a link to a 1Password report about totally shocking and unofreseeable vulnerabilities involving OpenClaw. I recently discussed how they started a so-called AI social network to distract from the previous round of bad publicity (which unsurprisingly had its own security problems). What is next? I’ll throw my own cards on the table and go with “gather the ashes of Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams and declare that the singularity has arrived with the advent of the agentic metaverse.”
Unusually Sober Commentary From Dmitry Medvedev
Reuters reports that Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former placeholder President and current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, insists that Russia comes in peace:
We are not interested in a global conflict. We’re not crazy.
Dmitry Medvedev
My first thought when reading this was that Mr. Medvedev sounds unusually sober here. Is there some kind of Alcoholics Anonymous for the Russian government elite or did someone take over his accounts?
Aside: Back in the 2009-10 area I met my former high school teacher for lunch. He stated that he was encouraged that then-President Medvedev would be an improvement over then-Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin based on his early actions as President. I expressed my skepticism, beginning with the idea that Mr. Medvedev was functionally President at all (setting aside the whole affair in Abkhazia/South Ossetia early in the ultimately one-term Medvedev administration, but I think my former teacher may have blamed that on former President George W. Bush while buying into then-Obama-Biden Administration promised reset of relations with Russia). I’ll take my college self’s late “W” on that one, although I did not have on my bingo card that his role would eventually be “poasting” in such a manner as to make Mr. Putin look reasonable by comparison.
Microsoft and Valve
A friend told me about the likely ill-founded rumor that Microsoft is preparing to make a serious offer to buy Valve. As I suspected, it does not look like it is happening. One might think in light of the fact that I use Linux instead of Windows, have general criticisms of and personal grievances with Microsoft, and qualified praise for Valve’s Steam, that I would be relieved. Not so! Microsoft buying Valve would make some things much more convenient. For example, I use OBS to record gameplay. If Microsoft owns Valve, I could count on them to do it for me. I also trust that Microsoft would take steps to take the guesswork out of which Steam games are DRM-free. Where do I sign up? (I hope readers see that this is a joke.)
I introduce a project to turn a new play-through of Pokémon Red into a serialized novel and quasi-strategy guide with helpful tips and strategies.
I am making progress in my Pokémon Red play-through novel project. I am perfect. But what fun would it be to write a serialized Pokémon play-through novel of me being perfect? To make things more interesting, I decided to pretend to not be perfect on occasion. After I pretended to lose to Misty twice, I reached the entrance to Rock Tunnel and realized that I forgot to exchange my bike voucher for a bike in Cerulean City. Of course, there is absolutely no possible way that I could forget to get the bicycle before leaving Cerulean City behind. I only “forgot” to make for a more exciting story and show my future readers how quickly you can obtain Fly after making it through the tunnel.
(Or so I like to tell myself…)
Russia on the rights of “occupiers”
Israel has no right to self-defense against Hamas militants in Gaza as an occupying power in Palestine, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday.
The Russian government is appropriating Soviet humor. (I dare say that this is a better example of Russia’s questionable Iran-coddling commentary than the one I used for an October 14 article at The New Leaf Journal.)