Yearly Archives: 2026

How Old is Spider-Man?

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This article about the upcoming film Spider-Man: Brand New Day includes an interesting line:

Holland himself has wondered how long it will be before he ages out of the role

So I wondered: How old has Spidey been?

Tobey Maguire was 26, 29, and 31 for his 3 movies with Sam Raimi — and then, of course, 46 for his appearance in No Way Home.

Andrew Garfield was 28 and 30 for his two outings, and 38 for NWH.

Tom, though, started younger and has worked more. He first appeared in character in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, when he was not quite 20. His subsequent films had him at 21, 21.9, 22.9, 23. and finally about 25 and a half for the most recent No Way Home. When Brand New Day drops this summer (his 7th film, and 4th as the title character), Holland will be 31.

That’s about as old as Tobey and Andrew were in their final appearances, so I can see why Tom might be worried — but the prior adaptations ran out of steam in the writers’ rooms, not because of a geriatric Peter Parker. By my lights, the MCU edition of the webslinger has more legs (ha ha) — plus, and not to put too fine a point on it, Holland has a far more youthful energy at 31 than either of his predecessors.

I dunno what Kevin Feige has on his private whiteboard; no further stand-alone Spider-man features have been announced, but it DOES seem likely that we’ll see Holland in Doomsday this December.

Because I was asked (& also happy birthday to me)

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Friday was my 56th birthday, and for me it was an especially auspicious one because it was the rare birthday of mine that falls on a Friday the 13th — just as my actual birth did in 1970.

I mean, it’s on the 13th every year, just not on a Friday.

Anyway, a friend called to wish me a happy birthday, and wondered how often it had happened? I was surprised to realize I didn’t know, but since we live in an age of miracles and wonders the answer wasn’t far away.

SO! Here’s the list:

  1. 1970
  2. 1981
  3. 1987
  4. 1992
  5. 1998
  6. 2009
  7. 2015
  8. 2020
  9. 2026

A pattern emerges, of course: the gap is 11 years, then 6, then 5, then 6, before going back to 11 and repeating. This means we’ve just passed through the “short” intervals and my next Friday birthday won’t be until 2037, at which point I’ll be 67.

Should I be so lucky, I’ll also have Friday birthdays in 2043 (73), then 5 years later in 2048 (78), and then 6 years later in 2054 (84). And, statistically speaking, that’s likely to be that, but I suppose there’s a nonzero chance that I’ll see a final edition on my 95th birthday in 2065.

The Long Tail of the Lightning Connector

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Apple haters love to claim that Cupertino swaps connectors out like changing pants, which is objectively hilarious because the iPod/iPhone connector had changed only once until recently: from the legacy 30-pin connector to the proprietary-to-Apple Lightning plug introduced in 2012 on the iPhone 5.

Lighting was a great upgrade from the 30-pin because it was smaller, more robust, and symmetrical — it has no top or bottom, so you don’t have to do the plug-flipping thing that everyone hates. Winning, right?

USB-C then crept onto the scene, and it’s better at lots of things. Apple even adopted it for the higher-end iPad Pros in, I think, 2018. The EU, always eager to meddle in technical affairs, started yelling about phone plug compatibility at some point, but I suspect Apple was moving in the direction of plug unity even before the EU bureaucrats decided to impose technical choices on people who know better. Whatever.

The iPhone 15 from 2023 was the first model to move to a USB-C port, which truly signaled the end of the line for Lightning, but that shift comes at a time when all tech is lasting longer than it used to. And so that’s where the issue creeps in.

I love USB-C. I like that a huge chunk of my rechargeable devices now have the same port; that’s fun. Both the actively-used Macbooks in the house can charge by USB-C. Both iPads are USB-C. The helmet coms we have for the motorcycle? USB-C. The flashlight I use in my computer bag? USB-C. The air compressor we use to top up the tires in the vehicles? Same. My XBox headset? Yep.

BUT we do still have some outliers. A bunch of my bicycling tech is still on Micro-USB, which is annoying but fine. I suspect if I bought a new eTap charger or headlight, they’d be USB-C, and neither of those would be expensive.

HOWEVER there’s still some Lightning outliers on materially more expensive devices that are likely to last a long, long time.

  • I have a full set of Apple peripherals that charge by Lightning: keyboard, Magic Mouse, and trackpad. They all work great. I subscribe to the notion that swapping peripherals out from time to time is a good way to avoid RSI, and so far it’s working. But those are all long-lived things, and a port change isn’t a good reason to replace any of them.

  • We have 3 sets of Apple headphones in the house, and they’re all on Lightning, too. Erin prefers regular Airpods. I have Airpods Pro AND a first-gen Airpods Max. The pocketable earbuds could get lost and force a replacement at any point, but the Max are expensive and live a fairly cushy life. They, like my peripherals, could easily last for years and years.

  • Oh, and our phones are both still Lightning, and still work GREAT. My iPhone 14 Pro was replaced under AppleCare last fall after a motorcycle mount mishap, so at this point I have a 6 month old phone. There’s nothing in the new phones that makes me want to spend stupid money to get new one. Erin’s deeply attached to her 12 Mini from 2022, a form factor they don’t make anymore. The newest iOS (26) dropped support for the iPhone X family; if they drop a generation a year, that means Erin’s phone will fall of support in 2 years, and mine in 4. Those are phone lifespans that seem ENTIRELY reasonable.

If I suddenly became a USB-C zealot, it’d cost literally thousands of dollars to replace all my existing Lightning kit. That would be stupid, so we’re left with an organic sunset plan — and that plan stretches out AT LEAST another 5 years by my guess.

In which I become the sort of person that has custom plates

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I always kinda thought they were neat, but also always kinda thought they were a little cringey, so I never bothered before. Also, I never really had a good IDEA before.

For a couple reasons, though, I took the plunge as part of our move to North Carolina.

  1. They’re easier to remember, and that comes up a lot when using parking services here; and
  2. They’re cheap here; and
  3. I could get these two plates in particular.

On the left, you see my 2020 Triumph Bonneville T-120; it’s the “Bud Ekins Edition,” and if you’re my age you probably had to hit that link to learn who Ekins was, and why he might have a Bonneville edition named after him. The short answer is that, well, that’s actually him riding a Triumph in the iconic scene from The Great Escape.

On the right, you see my 2018 BMW K1600. I feel like its plate is a bit more straightforward (& about which see point 3, supra).

IMG 1612

On the ongoing enshittification of our country

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See here:

The reason we don’t have effective protections for climate change (or functional gun control, or universal health care, or cheap broadband) is because the U.S. Congress is often too corrupt to function. Monied interests have polluted state and federal legislatures to the point they no longer serve the public interest.

This isn’t some errant opinion, it’s a documentable, provable fact. Yet you’ll notice that for the New York Times, the idea that the structural and ethical integrity of the U.S. government has been wholly compromised by the extraction class simply plays absolutely no useful contextual role in the story.

Not only does the Times not acknowledge corporate corruption (in a story ostensibly about how corporate power run amok will avoidably kill untold millions of people), they attribute the real cause of the problem to ambiguous “partisan polarization.” It’s framed as a problem related to team sports.

We’re told that we don’t have functional health care, cheap fiber broadband, or functional gun control – not because the companies with a stranglehold over these sectors have lobotomized government norms and ethics – but because of some sort of intangible, inherent, and largely mysterious failure of human collaboration.

This is something you’ll see often. It’s a rhetorical trick to deflect attention away from the fact that the extraction class and consolidated corporate power (who not coincidentally own the lion’s share of modern media) have demolished the structural support pillars holding up a functional democracy.

The tl;dr? It’s fucking billionaires.

In which Research Goblin Mode is engaged

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We’ve binged A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms this weekend, and now have only the finale.

It occurs to me that it fills a role in the greater George R. R. Martin universe that is analogous to the role the “street level” MCU shows filled in the larger MCU.

The large-scale shows Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are the giant tentpole productions here, like the Avengers movies, but the MCU also includes the smaller-scale “street level” stories told mostly on TV, like Jessica Jones and Daredevil.

That’s where A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms sits. It’s down at a lower level, with more or less regular people, and almost no geopolitical intrigue. The episodes are short, have a single focus in the fundamentally decent Dunk, and there’s absolutely no filler. As viewers we all know that Egg ends up on the throne, but at this particular time he’s the 4th son of a 4th son and is WILDLY unlikely to get that job. So the stakes are low, at least from the characters’ points of view.

After the show was over, I had questions.

  1. How DID Egg end up on the Throne?

  2. Who is Egg to the familiar faces of the original HBO show?

  3. Who is Egg to the somewhat less familiar faces of House of the Dragon?

  4. (Bonus): How the hell does the line of succession work from the earliest show to the latest?

And so I went looking.

How does Egg end up on the throne?

At the time of the show (the year 209), Daeron II is king. He’s Egg’s grandfather.

Egg’s father is Maekar, Daeron’s 4th son after Baelor, Aerys, and Rhaegel. Casting misses the mark a little, since Maekar’s hair reads as aged-white and not Targaryen white, while his elder brother Baelor’s hair is dark. This makes it easy to misread their relationship and birth order, and makes it seem weird that that there are two sons BETWEEN them.

Egg is also a 4th son; he’s preceded by Daeron, Aerion, and Aemon.

We see Daeron early on, but he isn’t initially identified; he’s the drunk in the tavern that Dunk meets in the first episode. In Ashford, his identity is clearer; he’s also the one who has the prophetic dream about Dunk.

The asshole who lanced a horse in a joust, and who forces the Trial of Seven in the climax of the show, is the second eldest brother Aerion.

Aemon is offscreen, already studying to be a maester; he surfaces again as a very old man in Game of Thrones, where he’s the maester at Castle Black who reveals his identity to Jon Snow. That’s a great reveal, but it’s even better now that we know who Jon is (it’s skipping ahead, but: Jon is his great-nephew).

Egg also has an older sister Daella (who appears in the show briefly), and a younger sister Rhae (who does not).

Now, what’s nuts and misleading is the degree to which discussions of this show about “preparing Egg for the throne” and whatnot, but that’s bullshit. Nobody in this show has ANY expectation that Egg will ascend.

When the show begins, Baelor is the clear heir, and already has children. Before the Trial of the Seven, Egg is TENTH in line to the throne.

Line of Succession in early 209 AC, in the reign of King Daeron II the Good:

  1. Baelor (Daeron’s 1st son)
  2. Valarr (Baelor’s 1st son)
  3. Matarys (Baelor’s 2nd son)
  4. Aerys (Daeron’s 2nd son)
  5. Rhaegel (Daeron’s 3rd son)
  6. Maekar (Daeron’s 4th son)
  7. Daeron (Maekar’s 1st son)
  8. Aerion (Maekar’s 2nd son)
  9. Aemon (Maekar’s 3rd son)
  10. Egg (Maekar’s 4th son)

To compare with another popular monarchy (ha), this puts Egg at the same position as Sienna Mapelli Mozzi in the UK. Right now you’re asking “who the fuck is that?,” and you’re right to do so. (The answer, btw, is “Andrew’s oldest grandchild.)

Now this DOES change quickly. The first big problem is that Bealor dies in the trial — but no problem, right? He had sons already!

Well, about that: later in the same year as the tournament (209 AC), there’s going to be a spring plague. And it kills a LOT of people, including both of Baelor’s children as well as King Daeron II himself. Oops.

But hey! Even then, Egg’s waaaaay down the line. The revised list, under newly crowned King Aerys I as of the end of 209 AC:

  1. Rhaegel (the possibly mad 3rd son of Daeron)
  2. Maekar (the 4th son of Daeron)
  3. Daeron (Maekar’s eldest)
  4. Aerion (Maekar’s 2nd son)
  5. Aemon (Maekar’s 3rd son)
  6. Egg (Maekar’s 4th son)

So even by the end of 209 with all that turmoil, it’s still fantastically unlikely that Egg will ever achieve the throne. To continue in Windsor terms, 6th in line in the UK is Harry’s oldest child Archie.

Now, it IS known that Rhaegel (whom we haven’t seen) is a bit mad, but King Aerys is healthy and married; it was assumed that the line would continue from there.

Except, well, Aerys I was apparently Ace, and so that never happened. And he reigned until 221.

That put an increasingly bright spotlight on Rhaegel, who despite his condition DID marry and have children — a fraternal pair of twins who later marry each other (Targaryens gonna Targaryen) and, later, a daughter. That inserted another party in the line (Rhaegel’s son Aelor), so Egg dropped to 7th.

Ah, but this is Westeros. In 215, during Aerys’ reign, Rhaegel chokes on food and dies. This brings Egg back to 6th, but Rhaegel’s son is still there… until he dies in a mishap with his sister-wife just two years later.

So as of 217, during the reign of Aerys I, the line is like this:

  1. Maekar
  2. Daeron (Maekar’s eldest)
  3. Aerion (Maekar’s 2nd son)
  4. Aemon (Maekar’s 3rd son)
  5. Egg (Maekar’s 4th son)

In 221, Aerys dies, and Maekar ascends, and Egg is still fantastically unlikely to get the hot seat: he’s 4th in line, behind his three elder brothers. People in that position don’t end up kings normally.

In 221, under King Maekar I:

  1. Daeron
  2. Aerion
  3. Aemon
  4. Egg

Maekar would rule until 233, and during that reign both of his eldest sons die. Daeron is said to have passed form a pox caught in a house of ill repute, and dragon-mad Aerion (he of the broken lance stunt) became convinced that, if he drank wildfire, he’d become a dragon himself. Again, Targaryens gonna Targaryen.

So that put Westeros in an odd position: the throne was empty, and the obvious choice (Aemon) has taken his Maester’s vows already. A council was convened.

The now 33-year-old Egg would be next, but he was distrusted by much of the nobility precisely because of the affinity for smallfolk he learned squiring for Ser Duncan.

There WERE some other claimants, including those on behalf of Aerion’s infant son who could been seen as having superior claim — except everyone knew Aerion was batshit, so there was legitimate worry about the child inheriting madness. Plus, an infant king would require a very long regency, which is inherently unstable.

They tried to tempt Aemon, but he refused the crown. And so the council crowned Egg as King Aegon V Targaryen in 233; he was known as Aegon the Unlikely for obvious reasons. He ruled a long time, and was broadly seen as a good king.

So who is Egg to the familiar faces on GOT?

Good question. GOT basically starts the year Robert Baratheon dies, which is 298 AC. The Ashford Tournament that is the stage for KOTSK takes place, as noted, in 209 AC.

Aegon would rule wisely and well until 259, when he perished in a fire attempting to hatch dragon eggs (even good Targaryens gonna Targaryen). Also killed in the fire were Ser Duncan, who by then was the commander of his King’s Guard, and his eldest child also named Duncan.

Aegon’s second son Jaehaerys would rule then from 259 until 262. Jaehaerys, contrary to his father’s far wiser preferences, hewed to the old family practice of incestuous marriage. He wed his sister Shaera instead of the Tully bride arranged for him (Targaryens gonna Targaryens). Their child was Aerys II, the so-called Mad King, who ALSO married his sister (Rhaella). (Do I have to say it?) Aerys, sadly, held the throne for 21 years from 262 to 283.

Aerys II had eight children, but after his eldest Rheagar — who was somehow both handsome and honorable despite a double helping of incest, — FIVE were either stillborn or dead inside a year. Only then did the youngest pair arrive: Viserys, whom Khal Drogo “crowned” with molten gold, and Daenerys later called Mother of Dragons.

Around the year 280, Rhaegar went to a tournament. There he saw Lyanna Stark, sister to Ned from season one. And this kinda starts the war. See, Lyanna was promised to Ned’s BFF Robert Baratheon, and about a year later Rhaegar ABDUCTED HER!

Oh. Wait. While it’s still ambiguous in the books, the show’s version of events gives us a clear story. As related by Bran the Raven, there was no abduction. Rhaegar and Lyanna were in love and eloped. Rhaegar’s arranged marriage was annulled, and a maester properly wed the pair. Only then was their child born. Lyanna would die in childbirth, but begged her brother Ned to protect her child. Ned took the babe back to Winterfell to raise him as a bastard called Jon Snow who was, in reality, the trueborn son of Rhaegar and thus the heir to the Iron Throne (and also Daenerys’ nephew — but Targaryens gonna Targaryen, even accidentally).

Robert kills Rhaegar in battle during Robert’s Rebellion. Gregor Clegane, the Lannister retainer, dispatches Rhaegar’s first family in brutal fashion during the Sack of King’s Landing — an act that Elia’s brother attempts to avenge by volunteering to be Tyrion’s champion in a trial by combat against Clegane years later.

ANYWAY: Egg is the Mad King’s grandfather through his son Jaehaerys II, and is thus the great-grandfather of Daenerys and great-great grandfather of Jon Snow via Daenerys’ brother Rheagar.

So who are the Knight people in relation to House of the Dragon?

Another great question. As reminder,

  • GOT starts in basically 298 AC.
  • AKOTSK starts in 209 AC.
  • HotD‘s events take place starting, roughly, in the year 129 AC — so 80 years before the Ashford Tournament in Knight and nearly 200 years before Robert dies in GOT.

Egg’s father was Maekar I, who ruled from 221 to 233.

Maekar I’s father was Daeron II, who ruled from 184 to 209.

Daeron II’s father was Aegon IV (172-184), who was called the Unworthy and was basically the Westerosi version of Henry VIII.

Aegon IV’s father was Viserys II (171-172),

Viserys II’s parents were Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen, the uncle-nice pairing we see happen in season one of House of the Dragon. Daemon is played by Matt Smith; Rhaenyra is played by Emma D’Arcy. Neither held the throne.

Ergo, the Daemon and Rhaenyra in House of the Dragon are Egg’s great great great grandparents.

Bonus: What’s the sequence of rulers between House of the Dragon and Knight of the Seven Kingdoms?

I’m including this because it’s kinda nuts — the throne jumps back and forth down generational lines a little before settling. As we stopped watching House of the Dragon, I’m not sure how much of this has made it onscreen yet, or if any of it is different from what’s in the online sources based on the books.

Viserys I
Ruled from 103 to 129. He’s the one who married his daughter’s pal Alicent and created the succession mess that drives the action of House of the Dragon. Alicent and Rhaenyra end up on opposite sides of the Dance of Dragons civil war.
Aegon II
Son of Viserys I and his second wife Alicent; his ascension comes at the expense of his elder half sister Rhaenyra. He rules from 129-131. (The dates are a little weird b/c the textual sources have Aegon and Rhaenyra closer in age.)
Aegon III
This is where it gets odd. Aegon II dies young and without issue, which puts Rhaenyra’s side of the dispute back in play. Aegon III is Rhaenyra’s son with Daemon, and yes there was drama about them “stealing” the name Alicent chose for her son. Aegon III reigns much longer (131-157).
Daeron I
Aegon III’s eldest son gets the crown in 157, but is killed in battle in 161.
Baelor I
Aegon III’s next eldest son then rules for about 10 years, until 171. He was popular and immensely pious — the Great Sept of Baelor, famously exploded by Cersei at the end of GOT, was erected as a memorial. Unfortunately, he was SO pious that he never consummated his marriage and died without issue.
Viserys II
Daeron and Baelor’s uncle, so we’ve stepped back up to the next child from Rhaenyra and Daemon.
Aegon IV
Viserys II rules for only a year, until 172, at which point his eldest son Aegon IV the Unworthy took the throne, as noted above.
Daeron II
Aegon’s eldest and Egg’s grandfather; this is the king at the start of KOTSK.
Aerys I
As noted, Daeron’s 2nd son.
Maekar I
As noted, Daeron’s 4th son.
Aegon V
Egg himself and Maekar’s 4th son.
Jaehaerys II
Egg’s son.
Aerys II
Jaehaery’s son also called the Mad King.
Robert Baratheon
Also called The Usurper; gained the throne after Robert’s Rebellion.
Joffrey Baratheon
Legally Robert’s eldest son, but in reality the illegitimate son of Cersei and her brother Jamie (apparently Lannisters, too, gonna Targaryen).
Tommen Baratheon
Legally Robert’s next son, but also the product of Cersei and Jamie’s canoodling.
Cersei Lannister
Somewhat unclear what the true legitimacy was here; the real answer was “nobody could stop her.”
Bran the Broken
Chosen by council after the war at the end of GOT

Net it out for me, Chet

So, the tl;dr is that:

EGG is the grandfather of the Mad King, and great-grandfather to Daenerys, and great-great grandfather to Jon Snow in Game of Thrones.

Going the other direction, Egg’s great-grandfather was Aegon IV. His great-great grandfather was Viserys II, and his great-great-great grandparents were Daemon and Rhaenyra from House of the Dragon.

So if my math is right, from earliest to latest in the line, Daemon (who was not a king) is the 7-times-great grandfather to Jon Snow: Daemon -> Viserys II -> Aegon IV -> Daeron II -> Maekar –> Egg –> Jaehaerys -> Aerys II -> Rhaegar -> Jon Snow. And in that series, only Daemon, Rhaegar, and Snow aren’t kings.

January 11, 1992

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I don’t have a diary about it, but I know roughly where I was, and what I was probably doing. I lived in Tuscaloosa, rooming with my pal Brad, but spending a ton of time with the girl I was dating (whom I’d move in with by the following summer).

We didn’t watch a lot of TV, but we made a point of setting the VCR for SNL. Even bad episodes were worth 30 minutes of laughs on Sunday, and you could fast forward through the cringy bits and commercials. I can’t swear where we were exactly on this particular Saturday night, but the odds are it was the Houndstooth, Egan’s, or the Chukker.

I remember watching this the next day, with Brad and Cassie. We were big Northern Exposure fans, so Rob Morrow hosting was the big draw — but Nirvana was already exploding. The album Nevermind had been released the previous September, and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a surprise hit, aided in part by heavy rotation on 120 Minutes and, eventually, every possible format of rock radio. Geffen had trouble keeping up with the demand for the album.

So anyway, we watched the show. I don’t remember any of Morrow’s sketches, but I remember this performance. We were stunned by it. And here it is again, 34 years later, thanks to Reddit. Enjoy.

Yes, we knew what we were getting. We’re just getting more of it than we initially planned.

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Our first winter in North Carolina is, uh, kind of overdelivering.

I write this on the 30th of January 2026. Here’s what that looks like at Weather Underground:

Screenshot 2026 01 30 at 8 52 47 AM

If you compare almanac data, the first 3 weeks of the year were pretty normal, modulo those wildly warm days on the 7th and 10th. A Durham January, at least according to histoyr, means cold overnights, with freezes not unusual, but daytime temps reaching the 50s. Some wetness is possible.

Now look at what we’ve had for the last week.

We were last over 40F on Friday, 23 January. On Saturday night into Sunday the 25th, of course, we got our first real winter storm. It was mostly freezing rain, but we got enough snow to make it pretty. Here’s what we woke up to on the 25th (8:25AM):

IMG 1523

Now, the good news is that Monday got to the mid-30s and included no small amount of sunshine. Our cul de sac looked the same at 0800 Monday, but by 11:49AM we had this:

IMG 1536

And an hour later it was this:

IMG 1537

Again, peak air temp was still only about 36F, but the sun is very useful. By the end of the work day I thought nothing of taking the car to the grocery store to grab a thing or two.

Now, we’ve had no additional precipitation all week, so the white stuff is nearly all gone from anywhere the sun hits — BUT. That’s a big caveat. The driveway just out of frame at 9 o’clock in those pictures gets just about zero sun, and so it’s still as iced over TODAY as it was on Sunday. Why?

Because Durham hasn’t been out of the 30s for over a week, and we won’t get there until maybe next week. (Incidentally, that same problem has kept my motorcycles in the garage; there’s a patch of ice in our driveway that won’t quite go away, and we lack the equipment to banish it more actively.)

OH, and we’re supposed to get up to 6″ of snow on Saturday. But snow won’t stick around like the ice from last weekend, not least because the forecast for Monday is 40, and Tuesday will hit 48.

All this is super weird to me. I’m not exactly complaining. I knew I was getting real seasons here. I knew cold snaps could happen. But at the same time I’m kind of agog, because I am 55 years old and this week represents the longest period of time in my ENTIRE LIFE I’ve spent south of 40F.

Carry on.

Dept. of Poets

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35 years ago, I saw Cornelius Eady read at Alabama. I have a signed copy of one of his early books as a result. In my senior poetry workshop, we had an assignment to write a poem after some poem we admired; I chose his about jazz musician Hank Mobley, and wrote about Jaco Pastorius. It wasn’t my best work, but it was a fun exercise.

And now he’s reading at Mamdani’s inauguration, which is cool.