Entry tags:
itt i swoon over cole wehrle's game design
i.
Back when the "are video games art" debate was raging in the 2010s blogosphere (and what a quaint-looking debate that is nowadays, haha), the piece I often cited as the go-to example of what an Art Game should do was a little 15-minute text-parser-based parlor trick, "maybe make some change". Not because it was my favorite game or the only game that I thought of as art, but because it accomplished the marriage of narrative and gameplay in such a tidy and decisive way.
The game consists of a single puzzle. The solution to the puzzle and the emotional epiphany at the core of the story are one in the same. Solving the puzzle gives you the epiphany; the epiphany is the solution to the puzzle.
If I were to engage in that sort of discussion today... well, first off, I'd go read some actual literature on how people define / think about art first, haha. And I'd do away with the distinction I previously held between gameplay and narrative—too often they're impossible to pull apart, and even a game without any of the stuff I'd associate with a "story," characters and plots beats and such, can still have a narrative. And I'd actually accord more respect to the various Square Enix RPGs than I did at the time—my complaint back then was that they aped too much from cinema to really be thought of as their own kind of thing, and the seeming total separation of narrative from gameplay concerns held them back, whereas now I'd argue there's quite a bit more interplay between the two than I'd first thought.
But I'd still hold "maybe make some change" in pretty high regard. That perfect marriage of mechanical and emotional insight isn't something that makes a game art, but it's still a neat damn thing to pull off*.
( Read more... )
Back when the "are video games art" debate was raging in the 2010s blogosphere (and what a quaint-looking debate that is nowadays, haha), the piece I often cited as the go-to example of what an Art Game should do was a little 15-minute text-parser-based parlor trick, "maybe make some change". Not because it was my favorite game or the only game that I thought of as art, but because it accomplished the marriage of narrative and gameplay in such a tidy and decisive way.
The game consists of a single puzzle. The solution to the puzzle and the emotional epiphany at the core of the story are one in the same. Solving the puzzle gives you the epiphany; the epiphany is the solution to the puzzle.
If I were to engage in that sort of discussion today... well, first off, I'd go read some actual literature on how people define / think about art first, haha. And I'd do away with the distinction I previously held between gameplay and narrative—too often they're impossible to pull apart, and even a game without any of the stuff I'd associate with a "story," characters and plots beats and such, can still have a narrative. And I'd actually accord more respect to the various Square Enix RPGs than I did at the time—my complaint back then was that they aped too much from cinema to really be thought of as their own kind of thing, and the seeming total separation of narrative from gameplay concerns held them back, whereas now I'd argue there's quite a bit more interplay between the two than I'd first thought.
But I'd still hold "maybe make some change" in pretty high regard. That perfect marriage of mechanical and emotional insight isn't something that makes a game art, but it's still a neat damn thing to pull off*.
( Read more... )
recommendations: a podcast episode + a video
This American Life: Eight Fights (episode transcript)
Really good podcast episode. The host interviews various members of a large family that's split across the Russian-Ukranian border, recounting the family's history over the course of eight different "fights," both well before the war, and after the war breaks out. Mostly, the fights are the kinds of little fights all families have—what kind of school should we put the kid in, what's an appropriate gift for this kid, and so on. Except, before the war, questions of who feels more Ukranian versus Russian are only a matter of only theoretical import, but after the war breaks out and the family is scattered across Europe, those same fights fights become understandably more... heated. And painful. (It's very clear everyone loves everyone else! which is what makes these kinds of things so hard.)
A really good listen. And it does end on a surprisingly uplifting note, despite everything.
Naomi Wu, Why Do I Look Like... This?
In the past, I'd watched a few videos by Naomi Wu, a Shenzhen-based maker/hacker and YouTuber. She seemed like a generally intrepid & cool hackertype, even though my interests lie more in software and hers more in hardware.
So I was dismayed to learn, recently, that she and her girlfriend have run into some trouble with the CCP—always a risk for a Chinese media personality with a large western audience, a risk she was well aware of and pretty outspoken about. And you could tell she was so careful to avoid direct criticism of the CCP even while living a pretty bold & unconventional lifestyle. (She also certainly wasn't anyone's patsy, be it the CCP or westerners or anyone else—she was pretty outspoken when dealing with, e.g., western feminists who made stupid assumptions about what progress in China should look like, or biting back against westerners who acted like she was an arm of the CCP simply because she sometimes thought their policies were sound or sensible. I didn't even always agree with Naomi! but holy hell did I respect her for always speaking her mind.)
In light of that news, I wound thumbing through her YouTube channel, and I stumbled on this video I hadn't seen before, and...
...wow. Most her videos are focused on technical details, 3D printers and Raspberry Pis and the like, so I was honestly expecting, like, technical details for how she made her clothing or got her boob job or something. What I wasn't expecting was this very vulnerable & honest bit of biography—there's some Complicated Gender Stuff that she talks about in detail in the video, as well as how that fit in with her own introduction to & then life within the Chinese LGBTQ community. (Also there's a bit about Dolly Parton that I liked a lot, haha.)
I learned some things & was also quite moved. Recommended.
Really good podcast episode. The host interviews various members of a large family that's split across the Russian-Ukranian border, recounting the family's history over the course of eight different "fights," both well before the war, and after the war breaks out. Mostly, the fights are the kinds of little fights all families have—what kind of school should we put the kid in, what's an appropriate gift for this kid, and so on. Except, before the war, questions of who feels more Ukranian versus Russian are only a matter of only theoretical import, but after the war breaks out and the family is scattered across Europe, those same fights fights become understandably more... heated. And painful. (It's very clear everyone loves everyone else! which is what makes these kinds of things so hard.)
A really good listen. And it does end on a surprisingly uplifting note, despite everything.
Naomi Wu, Why Do I Look Like... This?
In the past, I'd watched a few videos by Naomi Wu, a Shenzhen-based maker/hacker and YouTuber. She seemed like a generally intrepid & cool hackertype, even though my interests lie more in software and hers more in hardware.
So I was dismayed to learn, recently, that she and her girlfriend have run into some trouble with the CCP—always a risk for a Chinese media personality with a large western audience, a risk she was well aware of and pretty outspoken about. And you could tell she was so careful to avoid direct criticism of the CCP even while living a pretty bold & unconventional lifestyle. (She also certainly wasn't anyone's patsy, be it the CCP or westerners or anyone else—she was pretty outspoken when dealing with, e.g., western feminists who made stupid assumptions about what progress in China should look like, or biting back against westerners who acted like she was an arm of the CCP simply because she sometimes thought their policies were sound or sensible. I didn't even always agree with Naomi! but holy hell did I respect her for always speaking her mind.)
In light of that news, I wound thumbing through her YouTube channel, and I stumbled on this video I hadn't seen before, and...
...wow. Most her videos are focused on technical details, 3D printers and Raspberry Pis and the like, so I was honestly expecting, like, technical details for how she made her clothing or got her boob job or something. What I wasn't expecting was this very vulnerable & honest bit of biography—there's some Complicated Gender Stuff that she talks about in detail in the video, as well as how that fit in with her own introduction to & then life within the Chinese LGBTQ community. (Also there's a bit about Dolly Parton that I liked a lot, haha.)
I learned some things & was also quite moved. Recommended.
Entry tags:
some books i read lately
catching up a bit! nowhere near comprehensive, this is just what i noticed when scanning my "recently read" bookshelf & started spitting out some Thoughts TM
( The Three of Us by Ore Agbaje-Williams )
( Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou )
( Acceptance: A Memoir by Emi Nietfeld )
( The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem by Julie Phillips )
( Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer )
( Shark Heart: A Love Story by Emily Habeck )
( The Three of Us by Ore Agbaje-Williams )
( Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou )
( Acceptance: A Memoir by Emi Nietfeld )
( The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem by Julie Phillips )
( Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer )
( Shark Heart: A Love Story by Emily Habeck )
Entry tags:
Pokémon Puzzle League
I posted a while back here about having some anxiety while on flights that experience turbulence.
Well, I had a hell of a test of that earlier this week, when a little puddle-jumper of a flight wound up going through some serious thunderstorms—no beverage service, repeated intercom appeals to ensure all seatbelts are fastened, and the whole plane getting tossed and turned every which way like a damn McSalad Shaker.
And the only thing that kept me from full-on freaking out in the cabin... was having Pokémon Puzzle League in my hands the whole time.
See, I've been grinding that game's 1-player campaign on Very Hard mode, which, as you might expect, is very hard. The whole last 30 minutes of the flight was just me playing against Team Rocket, over and over, and losing every time, but relishing the moments when I was able to hang on a little bit longer or put a little more pressure on them, and also, I had the absolutely certain knowledge that if I looked away for even a few seconds, I would lose immediately. No thoughts, just pure focus on the little blocks on my screen.
So, yeah. New lay anxiety treatment: crank up the difficulty on your favorite reflex-heavy puzzle game to the max and you'll be so stressed by the game you can't be stressed by anything else :D;;;;;
( i got way too into this game over the past week so here's some thoughts )
Well, I had a hell of a test of that earlier this week, when a little puddle-jumper of a flight wound up going through some serious thunderstorms—no beverage service, repeated intercom appeals to ensure all seatbelts are fastened, and the whole plane getting tossed and turned every which way like a damn McSalad Shaker.
And the only thing that kept me from full-on freaking out in the cabin... was having Pokémon Puzzle League in my hands the whole time.
See, I've been grinding that game's 1-player campaign on Very Hard mode, which, as you might expect, is very hard. The whole last 30 minutes of the flight was just me playing against Team Rocket, over and over, and losing every time, but relishing the moments when I was able to hang on a little bit longer or put a little more pressure on them, and also, I had the absolutely certain knowledge that if I looked away for even a few seconds, I would lose immediately. No thoughts, just pure focus on the little blocks on my screen.
So, yeah. New lay anxiety treatment: crank up the difficulty on your favorite reflex-heavy puzzle game to the max and you'll be so stressed by the game you can't be stressed by anything else :D;;;;;
( i got way too into this game over the past week so here's some thoughts )
media i have consumed as of late
my brain has only been like 20% working this past month; i think i reread the first two chapters of this one book like eight times and still couldn't really grok it??? weird.
anyway in lieu of books i mostly devoured other things; here are some rambling thoughts on 'em~
The Bright Sessions (podcast)
Radio play-style podcast, structured as "recordings" of therapy sessions between Dr. Joan Bright (a normie human psychiatrist) and her "atypical" patients (who have a range of powers—one's an empath, one's a mind-reader, one's a time-traveler, etc).
( Read more... )
In Treatment (TV)
The show's setup: Paul is a psychotherapist. Each episode is a half hour, and corresponds to one appointment with a patient. There's five episodes per week, Monday through Friday, and each day always features that day's patient (so Mondays you see Laura, Tuesdays you see Alex, etc). Also, on Fridays, Paul goes to get some therapy himself, from his old boss/mentor, this badass retired lady, and okay sorry I'm editorializing right now in what's SUPPOSED to just be the summary but suffice to say Fridays are extremely interesting lol.
( Read more... )
Sick Girl by Amy Silverstein (book)
Memoir written by a woman who developed a sudden sickness at age twenty-four, leading to a heart transplant (& all the associated baggage that such a transplant entails).
( Read more... )
anyway in lieu of books i mostly devoured other things; here are some rambling thoughts on 'em~
The Bright Sessions (podcast)
Radio play-style podcast, structured as "recordings" of therapy sessions between Dr. Joan Bright (a normie human psychiatrist) and her "atypical" patients (who have a range of powers—one's an empath, one's a mind-reader, one's a time-traveler, etc).
( Read more... )
In Treatment (TV)
The show's setup: Paul is a psychotherapist. Each episode is a half hour, and corresponds to one appointment with a patient. There's five episodes per week, Monday through Friday, and each day always features that day's patient (so Mondays you see Laura, Tuesdays you see Alex, etc). Also, on Fridays, Paul goes to get some therapy himself, from his old boss/mentor, this badass retired lady, and okay sorry I'm editorializing right now in what's SUPPOSED to just be the summary but suffice to say Fridays are extremely interesting lol.
( Read more... )
Sick Girl by Amy Silverstein (book)
Memoir written by a woman who developed a sudden sickness at age twenty-four, leading to a heart transplant (& all the associated baggage that such a transplant entails).
( Read more... )
seeking recommendations: fiction with interesting interrogation/therapy/etc scenes?
what it says on the tin! basically, i'm interested in hearing from y'all: any recommendations you've got for really good/interesting scenes from any kind of fiction (film, movie, novels, whatever) in which there is (1) Person A, who is interested in finding out something from Person B, and (2) Person B, who has a vested interest in not revealing that thing (whether or not they consciously realize it), and (3) there's relatively little action happening in their scenes together besides them talking. (so, this could be anything ranging from "gritty grimdark interrogation" to "the only piece of fiction that's ever managed to make a therapy session look compelling," lol, so long as it's relatively talk-y)
for some reason i'm getting a mental block on this and can only think of The Silence of the Lambs? which is, y'know, great at what it's doing, but i'm trying to collect a few examples/case studies for the sake of A Thing I'm Working On TM
so yeah, reply a way, and thanks a bunch if you can help!
for some reason i'm getting a mental block on this and can only think of The Silence of the Lambs? which is, y'know, great at what it's doing, but i'm trying to collect a few examples/case studies for the sake of A Thing I'm Working On TM
so yeah, reply a way, and thanks a bunch if you can help!
Final Fantasy Kiss Battle 2k23!
all you FF nerds, come join :) super-simple super-fun fandom event. leave some prompts that you'd like filled, then fill whatever prompts you feel like, no minimum wordcount or anything.
ok i'm off to go drop like a billionty prompts SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE
Entry tags:
webcomic reviews that no one asked for
because of Reasons TM i decided to read all of Minna Sundberg's back catalog, enjoy
A Redtail's Dream
( review )
Stand Still, Stay Silent
( review, pt1 )
( THE SPOILER-Y PART OF THE REVIEW )
( review, pt2 )
Lovely People
( review )
A Redtail's Dream
( review )
Stand Still, Stay Silent
( review, pt1 )
( THE SPOILER-Y PART OF THE REVIEW )
( review, pt2 )
Lovely People
( review )
Entry tags:
[book post] Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980 by Rick Perlstein
When I saw the press hype over this new Reaganland book, I thought to myself, what wonderfully serendipitous timing—I've had this nagging urge to learn more about the history of the Reagan era, and everyone says this book is really good, so I'll pick it up and find out more!
The book starts off in 1976, which is sensible enough—gotta establish the background before getting to Reagan!—and then I kept reading, and reading, and... then somehow I was still in 1976, even though my ereader told me I was 20% of the way into the book, and I thought, what the hell.
...so, yeah, that was the first time I clicked back to notice (1) the book's subtitle, which makes it abundantly clear this is about the run-up to Reagan's election, not Reagan's presidency, and (2) dear GOD this thing is over a thousand pages long.
("Lua do you just download ebooks compulsively without even checking the most basic information about them—" YES, OKAY, I KNOW I HAVE A PROBLEM)
Anyway, at that point I felt kinda committed, and was having a good enough time, so I finished reading the thing anyway. I still have no idea what the 80s were like, but learning all about the Carter administration (like... the entire Carter administration... this history is narrow in scope but incredibly comprehensive; I feel like it covered literally every national politics thing within that four-year timespan), and Reagan's rise to prominence, was plenty interesting all on its own.
The first half, in particular, was full of really interesting and new-to-me-stuff—I didn't really know much about Carter outside of "kinda unpopular president," so it was really fascinating to see such the Obama-esque energy and enthusiasm when the guy got elected, the dude's lovably-weird approach to the presidency, and the beginnings of the US's neoliberal economic turn (which Reagan accelerated, but like, Carter's the one who put Volcker in as chair of the fed, etc).
The latter half of the book starts getting into the nitty-gritty of Carter and Reagan's respective campaign trails, and thus starts to drag, with endless recountings of "and then the Reagan campaign did this one political gaffe, and then the Carter campaign did this other political gaffe, and then the Reagan campaign did a different gaffe," on and on and oh my God maybe this sort of thing is unavoidable in a political history but it's just so boring.
ANYWAY. It's been a few months since I finished reading this one, so my memory's probably fuzzy on some of the finer details, but here's some high-level highlights:
( Read more... )
The book starts off in 1976, which is sensible enough—gotta establish the background before getting to Reagan!—and then I kept reading, and reading, and... then somehow I was still in 1976, even though my ereader told me I was 20% of the way into the book, and I thought, what the hell.
...so, yeah, that was the first time I clicked back to notice (1) the book's subtitle, which makes it abundantly clear this is about the run-up to Reagan's election, not Reagan's presidency, and (2) dear GOD this thing is over a thousand pages long.
("Lua do you just download ebooks compulsively without even checking the most basic information about them—" YES, OKAY, I KNOW I HAVE A PROBLEM)
Anyway, at that point I felt kinda committed, and was having a good enough time, so I finished reading the thing anyway. I still have no idea what the 80s were like, but learning all about the Carter administration (like... the entire Carter administration... this history is narrow in scope but incredibly comprehensive; I feel like it covered literally every national politics thing within that four-year timespan), and Reagan's rise to prominence, was plenty interesting all on its own.
The first half, in particular, was full of really interesting and new-to-me-stuff—I didn't really know much about Carter outside of "kinda unpopular president," so it was really fascinating to see such the Obama-esque energy and enthusiasm when the guy got elected, the dude's lovably-weird approach to the presidency, and the beginnings of the US's neoliberal economic turn (which Reagan accelerated, but like, Carter's the one who put Volcker in as chair of the fed, etc).
The latter half of the book starts getting into the nitty-gritty of Carter and Reagan's respective campaign trails, and thus starts to drag, with endless recountings of "and then the Reagan campaign did this one political gaffe, and then the Carter campaign did this other political gaffe, and then the Reagan campaign did a different gaffe," on and on and oh my God maybe this sort of thing is unavoidable in a political history but it's just so boring.
ANYWAY. It's been a few months since I finished reading this one, so my memory's probably fuzzy on some of the finer details, but here's some high-level highlights:
( Read more... )
Entry tags:
[book post] The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics by Christopher Lasch
"If social cohesion is impossible without coercion, and coercion is impossible without the creation of social injustice, and the destruction of injustice is impossible without the use of further coercion, are we not in an endless cycle of social conflict?" -Reinhold NiebuhrThe True and Only Heaven is a great rambling shaggy dog story at its heart, though instead of being told by some bearded dude over a campfire, it's told by an academic near the end of his life, just kinda going on about The Entirety Of American Populist History, with extensive footnotes and citations.
There is a thesis here, though it's erratically argued. Lasch wants to call attention to what's good and praiseworthy in the ethic and worldview of populism—the worldview, broadly speaking, of the lower-middle class, the petit bourgeoisie, the small-time farmers and independent craftsmen and business owners that loom so large in the American consciousness. He doesn't deny the characteristic vices of this class—how their feelings too often manifest as or get entangled with racism, tribalism, and insularity. But their virtues, he argues, are too often overlooked or trammeled down by the progressive mainstream: their egalitarianism,their respect for workmanship, their respect for loyalty, and their struggle against resentment. In this respect his outlook's very similar to James C. Scott's, in Two Cheers for Anarchism:( intro )
( the good parts )
( the meh parts )
( the annoying parts )
( takeaways )
( other interesting stuff )
( sick burns )
so yeah that's the book!
check out the tag on my tumblr if you want the highlights/quotes/etc i noted while i was reading the thing~
Entry tags:
[video game post] Three indie games
I feel like I was really tapped into the indie game scene in the 2010s and now I'm not. Alas! I decided to try and catch up a bit.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist
( Read more... )
Umurangi Generation
( Read more... )
Hypnospace Outlaw
( Read more... )
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist
( Read more... )
Umurangi Generation
( Read more... )
Hypnospace Outlaw
( Read more... )
two food recommendations:
* i thought i hated habaneros, because the handful of times i've tried habanero sauces/jams before, they had this pungent, smoky, off-putting flavor that i didn't much care for, and i thought that was just an inherent property of habaneros.
not so! i tried some of Yellowbird's classic habanero hot sauce and i'm kind of in love. it's more citrus/veggie-forward (ingredients include: carrots, onions, tangerine juice), which sounds weird, but works really well—it serves to just brighten the flavor of the spice, rather than tasting like some kind of weird fruity-veggie-thing or whatever. i've been putting it on e v e r y t h i n g
and okay yeah i heard of it via this video, apparently i have become the kind of person who watches Bon Appetit youtube videos lol
* take watermelon. blend it. add frozen watermelon, sugar, lime, mint, and tequila. serve while it's still chilled. congrats you now have The Drink Of Summer (i regret that i'm giving you this drink like ten days before the solstice) (but whatever, better late than never)
(exact proportions used for a 16oz serving were something like 1 lime juiced, 1-2tbs sugar, 3 shots of tequila, half frozen and half fresh watermelon, plus mint to taste, but honestly i don't think you can fuck up this if you pick whatever proportions make sense)
happy monday~~~
not so! i tried some of Yellowbird's classic habanero hot sauce and i'm kind of in love. it's more citrus/veggie-forward (ingredients include: carrots, onions, tangerine juice), which sounds weird, but works really well—it serves to just brighten the flavor of the spice, rather than tasting like some kind of weird fruity-veggie-thing or whatever. i've been putting it on e v e r y t h i n g
and okay yeah i heard of it via this video, apparently i have become the kind of person who watches Bon Appetit youtube videos lol
* take watermelon. blend it. add frozen watermelon, sugar, lime, mint, and tequila. serve while it's still chilled. congrats you now have The Drink Of Summer (i regret that i'm giving you this drink like ten days before the solstice) (but whatever, better late than never)
(exact proportions used for a 16oz serving were something like 1 lime juiced, 1-2tbs sugar, 3 shots of tequila, half frozen and half fresh watermelon, plus mint to taste, but honestly i don't think you can fuck up this if you pick whatever proportions make sense)
happy monday~~~
Your Name
I rewatched Your Name the other night on a nostalgic whim. When I first saw the movie, it was at a cute lil' historic independent theatre, and I was with a dear friend... annnnd nowadays, that theater is closed and the friend lives on the other side of the country. Alas! But also—weirdly fitting for the themes of the movie...?
Anyway! What struck me, this time, was how well Your Name captures this very specific sort of wild, intemperate, romance-adjacent feeling, a feeling which reminded me most of... chasing after a rare bird?
"Wow Lua do you really have to make everything about birds" shut up okay this makes sense, just hear me out
( Read more... )
Anyway! What struck me, this time, was how well Your Name captures this very specific sort of wild, intemperate, romance-adjacent feeling, a feeling which reminded me most of... chasing after a rare bird?
"Wow Lua do you really have to make everything about birds" shut up okay this makes sense, just hear me out
( Read more... )
Entry tags:
August linkspam
Just cleaned out, uhhh, a lot of months' worth of links from my phone. Here's the ones that seemed fun enough to share:
* Outhorse your email. Iceland's tourism marketing team remains utterly undefeated, lol
* Behold Sovereign Chess, the most ridiculous chess variant since Bennett Foddy's Speed Chess! (And another review of the same.)
* Lo, someone made an "existential horror phone sex hotline" and it's good fun. Call the Bureau of Telephone Fornication today!
* What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists. "I still get the occasional joke from colleagues about my ‘crackpot consultant business’, but I’ve stopped thinking of our clients that way. They are driven by the same desire to understand nature and make a contribution to science as we are. They just weren’t lucky enough to get the required education early in life, and now they have a hard time figuring out where to even begin." Warm, human, lovely little piece.
* On a less heartwarming note: The Cruelty of the Adjunct System. Some of this was already familiar to me via friends in academia, but the stark and thorough way it lays bare just how crushing and precarious adjuncting is—and how much universities rely on it—is really effective. I think the bit that stuck with me most was the observation that this overreliance on adjunct labor really distorts tenured faculty's understanding of what their students are actually struggling with, and what the "typical" student looks like—because they only have to teach upper-level courses! with students who survived whatever 100-level class meat grinders were there! and then often have the gall to say the most out-of-touch stuff as a result... yeah.
* Your goofy viral music video of the day, featuring a bizarre yet charming German guy
* Did you know you can watch the first two seasons of Iron Chef (the OG version), on Youtube, for free? And yeah it absolutely holds up. You're welcome :P
* Did you know: mergansers can run REAL fast
* Home Sweet Homepage. A nostalgic lil' web essay thing about Growin Up On The Internet.
* All 50 US state logos, please argue over Best State in the comments
* A tour of the computers used to do 3d animation for Final Fantasy VII! Came for the ye old computers, and also learned (1) apparently Square did a tech demo at SIGGRAPH in 1995 that feature FF6 characters???, and (2) Intel used to manufacture RISC processors??? Like, for a niche use case, but still, feels like I should've stumbled over that before I stumbled over (oh god) Itanium? Anyway, beep boop
* Shakesville’s unravelling and the not-so-golden age of blogging. This is just messy internet drama, haha. Concluding sentence: "The internet was always awful, and I'm never leaving." same, girl, same
* The Video Game History Foundation's blog has some neat lil stories in it. (Though whenever game history comes up, I feel obliged to shill the No Don't Die interview series, which is truly fantastic; Rebecca Heineman's interview is a standout if you don't know where to start. SORRY IF YOU'VE HEARD THIS PITCH BEFORE YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO HEAR IT AGAIN) (But yeah, I saw one of these game history museums give a presentation at Magfest a few years back, in the before-times, and one of the most fascinating bits was the efforts they've gone to to retrieve source code. Sometimes you call a guy up and he's like "oh yeah I think I have all that stuff, somewhere, in my attic," and the museum sends out dudes to scour through the dude's attic and scrape bits off some ancient disc and get some lil high school intern to annotate the whole thing. Based.)
* Two dope sculptures: Serpent d'océan (doper pics here), and Jatayu, the world's largest bird sculpture (doper picture here).
Most the rest of the links lean kinda techy; I've put them on a cut:
( filthy hacker shit )
* Outhorse your email. Iceland's tourism marketing team remains utterly undefeated, lol
* Behold Sovereign Chess, the most ridiculous chess variant since Bennett Foddy's Speed Chess! (And another review of the same.)
* Lo, someone made an "existential horror phone sex hotline" and it's good fun. Call the Bureau of Telephone Fornication today!
* What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists. "I still get the occasional joke from colleagues about my ‘crackpot consultant business’, but I’ve stopped thinking of our clients that way. They are driven by the same desire to understand nature and make a contribution to science as we are. They just weren’t lucky enough to get the required education early in life, and now they have a hard time figuring out where to even begin." Warm, human, lovely little piece.
* On a less heartwarming note: The Cruelty of the Adjunct System. Some of this was already familiar to me via friends in academia, but the stark and thorough way it lays bare just how crushing and precarious adjuncting is—and how much universities rely on it—is really effective. I think the bit that stuck with me most was the observation that this overreliance on adjunct labor really distorts tenured faculty's understanding of what their students are actually struggling with, and what the "typical" student looks like—because they only have to teach upper-level courses! with students who survived whatever 100-level class meat grinders were there! and then often have the gall to say the most out-of-touch stuff as a result... yeah.
* Your goofy viral music video of the day, featuring a bizarre yet charming German guy
* Did you know you can watch the first two seasons of Iron Chef (the OG version), on Youtube, for free? And yeah it absolutely holds up. You're welcome :P
* Did you know: mergansers can run REAL fast
* Home Sweet Homepage. A nostalgic lil' web essay thing about Growin Up On The Internet.
* All 50 US state logos, please argue over Best State in the comments
* A tour of the computers used to do 3d animation for Final Fantasy VII! Came for the ye old computers, and also learned (1) apparently Square did a tech demo at SIGGRAPH in 1995 that feature FF6 characters???, and (2) Intel used to manufacture RISC processors??? Like, for a niche use case, but still, feels like I should've stumbled over that before I stumbled over (oh god) Itanium? Anyway, beep boop
* Shakesville’s unravelling and the not-so-golden age of blogging. This is just messy internet drama, haha. Concluding sentence: "The internet was always awful, and I'm never leaving." same, girl, same
* The Video Game History Foundation's blog has some neat lil stories in it. (Though whenever game history comes up, I feel obliged to shill the No Don't Die interview series, which is truly fantastic; Rebecca Heineman's interview is a standout if you don't know where to start. SORRY IF YOU'VE HEARD THIS PITCH BEFORE YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO HEAR IT AGAIN) (But yeah, I saw one of these game history museums give a presentation at Magfest a few years back, in the before-times, and one of the most fascinating bits was the efforts they've gone to to retrieve source code. Sometimes you call a guy up and he's like "oh yeah I think I have all that stuff, somewhere, in my attic," and the museum sends out dudes to scour through the dude's attic and scrape bits off some ancient disc and get some lil high school intern to annotate the whole thing. Based.)
* Two dope sculptures: Serpent d'océan (doper pics here), and Jatayu, the world's largest bird sculpture (doper picture here).
Most the rest of the links lean kinda techy; I've put them on a cut:
( filthy hacker shit )
[video game post] 13 Sentinels
I played 13 Sentinels during my summer break in one glorious multi-day binge, because once it gets going, you don't want to do anything else.
But, I'd also bounced off the game a few times previously—the first time, because I was just too sleepy to handle such a text-heavy game, and the second time, because I was like oh my God when they mean 13 Sentinels they mean *13 unique point-of-view characters* and my brain kinda short-circuited trying to keep track of them.
Once I finished the game, I stared at a blank textbox for a while trying to come up with a pithy metaphor to describe what the game was like. "Las Vegas" came to mind a couple times—because, just like that city is simultaneously deeply alluring, and also an affront to any decent human sense of "moderation" or "good taste" or "not building a monument to gambling and unfettered capitalism in the middle of a fucking desert", this game is similarly brazenly audacious when it comes to scifi tropes and homages. The game's answer to "should we do time travel? or interdimensional travel? or time loops? or aliens? or androids? or mind-body fuckery?" is "yes", as in "all of it, and then some, and also turn it all to 11."
Such a mishmash of concepts suggests a sort of sophomoric inelegance—I saw one review that compared it to Lost. But that comparison doesn't work—though I loved Lost, that show was very obviously was making it up as they went along, whereas 13 Sentinels very obviously had some Ur-Nerd who had painstakingly, lovingly raked over the entire script, had a crystal-clear vision for how all these mechanics and story threads were going to hang together, and then hecking executed on it. Like, it's not elegant, and the endless techno-fixation mutes the efficacy of some of the emotional beats, but it's all 100% intentional and 100% checksums against a Manual Of Hard Scifi Rules, which is honestly kind of impressive. (Softer scifi seems to be in vogue these days, which is fine, but sometimes I miss the assurance that some nerd thought Way Too Hard About Timeline Causality as the structuring force in a story, haha.)
So it's the Las Vegas of weird scifi-trope-mashup-story-things, except it doesn't feel quite that grand/audacious in scope? More like Reno, maybe, or, idk, Gatlinburg, Tennessee? The latter being this extremely charming vacation town in the middle of nowhere that's absolutely stuffed full of every tourist trap available—laser tag, mini golf, arcades, wax museums, tacky replicas of famous buildings, mazes, magic shows, a ski area somehow—but not in a trying-to-defy-God kinda way, just a well-this-is-where-we-decided-to-put-all-the-vacation-stuff kinda way.
...That was a lot of preamble. Here's my bullet-point impressions of the game :P
( mild hints at spoilers; unlikely to ruin the game for you unless you're suuuper spoiler allergic )
but yeah, fun damn time! I think NEO TWEWY is still more my flavor of barely-coherent game but this was solid~~
But, I'd also bounced off the game a few times previously—the first time, because I was just too sleepy to handle such a text-heavy game, and the second time, because I was like oh my God when they mean 13 Sentinels they mean *13 unique point-of-view characters* and my brain kinda short-circuited trying to keep track of them.
Once I finished the game, I stared at a blank textbox for a while trying to come up with a pithy metaphor to describe what the game was like. "Las Vegas" came to mind a couple times—because, just like that city is simultaneously deeply alluring, and also an affront to any decent human sense of "moderation" or "good taste" or "not building a monument to gambling and unfettered capitalism in the middle of a fucking desert", this game is similarly brazenly audacious when it comes to scifi tropes and homages. The game's answer to "should we do time travel? or interdimensional travel? or time loops? or aliens? or androids? or mind-body fuckery?" is "yes", as in "all of it, and then some, and also turn it all to 11."
Such a mishmash of concepts suggests a sort of sophomoric inelegance—I saw one review that compared it to Lost. But that comparison doesn't work—though I loved Lost, that show was very obviously was making it up as they went along, whereas 13 Sentinels very obviously had some Ur-Nerd who had painstakingly, lovingly raked over the entire script, had a crystal-clear vision for how all these mechanics and story threads were going to hang together, and then hecking executed on it. Like, it's not elegant, and the endless techno-fixation mutes the efficacy of some of the emotional beats, but it's all 100% intentional and 100% checksums against a Manual Of Hard Scifi Rules, which is honestly kind of impressive. (Softer scifi seems to be in vogue these days, which is fine, but sometimes I miss the assurance that some nerd thought Way Too Hard About Timeline Causality as the structuring force in a story, haha.)
So it's the Las Vegas of weird scifi-trope-mashup-story-things, except it doesn't feel quite that grand/audacious in scope? More like Reno, maybe, or, idk, Gatlinburg, Tennessee? The latter being this extremely charming vacation town in the middle of nowhere that's absolutely stuffed full of every tourist trap available—laser tag, mini golf, arcades, wax museums, tacky replicas of famous buildings, mazes, magic shows, a ski area somehow—but not in a trying-to-defy-God kinda way, just a well-this-is-where-we-decided-to-put-all-the-vacation-stuff kinda way.
...That was a lot of preamble. Here's my bullet-point impressions of the game :P
( mild hints at spoilers; unlikely to ruin the game for you unless you're suuuper spoiler allergic )
but yeah, fun damn time! I think NEO TWEWY is still more my flavor of barely-coherent game but this was solid~~
Entry tags:
Entry tags:
[book post] Five books
tl;dr: entertaining book that unfortunately is probably a pack of lies; Discourse TM; kitsch 1; kitsch 2; math that is also fanfiction
( Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein )
( Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò )
( Miracle Town: Creating America's Bavarian Village in Leavenworth, Washington by Ted Price and John Miller )
( Death on Tap by Ellie Alexander )
( BONUS FANFICTION ROUND: The Poetry of Logic by RookSacrifice )
( Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein )
( Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò )
( Miracle Town: Creating America's Bavarian Village in Leavenworth, Washington by Ted Price and John Miller )
( Death on Tap by Ellie Alexander )
( BONUS FANFICTION ROUND: The Poetry of Logic by RookSacrifice )