At a conference with Cornell colleagues again, hybrid with a school summer camp. I fly in to Bayside where it’s being held. Cat, Gerardo, DJ, and Angela are all there.

I’m the morning we take a minivan to our destination. A king and queen ant were wandering the cabin, but they both really looked more like termite queens, where the “king” had big pincers, and the queen just had short pincers. I remark on this to Angela when we see her.

At the event there are a lot of smart kids attending like it’s a summer camp. We’re having a meal at a restaurant, and it’s mixed seating. DJ is near me, and a kid. We ask the kid, if this cereal square was enlarged like 100x and you took a bite, would it be more or less flavorful than the single one? (The original question DJ asked of me was whether when you shrunk a t-shirt down to the size of a cereal square, would it be more or less flavorful than it started, but I didn’t want to confuse the kid).

After gathering they mention SSB is going on somewhere so I leave to go. Beforehand I wash my hands in the bathroom. There are many faucets with a single trough to drain.

Instead of SSB, we are instead role-playing a fight. I’m role-playing sephiroth, and my enemy is some dude with two large sickles making a sort of scissor with them. I role play dodging his attacks, but since I don’t know the rules I shout that I’m “dodging” when I do it. I get hit by the blades, grazed just barely, and we stop to take note of the damage on my character. People start looking up how much base health Sephiroth has. I ask after the first round and I get hit whether I get invincibility frames on my dodge or if I should just avoid the blades altogether. Nobody seems to care. I’m trying to dodge all the attacks because I know at this point the enemy is undefeatable for story reasons, and I need to save HP for later.