@jmac@masto.nyc
@jmac@masto.nyc avatar

jmac

@jmac@masto.nyc

I live in New York. I get paid to write about databases. I don’t get paid to write about other stuff, but I do it anyway.

Tech writer at Google; Co-founder of IFTF, an interactive-fiction nonprofit; Liker of coffee, cats, open web technologies, et cetera. Co-admin of https://masto.nyc.

All views I express in my personal posts are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Five Borough Fedi Project.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

jmac, to random
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Got to the credits screen of in about 12 hours of play-time. What a lovely game. Strong recommend for a tightly intentional and deeply mysterious puzzle platformer.

It feels like the slightly younger sibling of Tunic. Tunic took the decade-old lessons of Fez and went in one direction with them, and Animal Well showed another path some 18 months later.

jmac, to random
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Had my first professional massage in a long time, and I wonder if it’s the first since I had my year of medical stuff. Quite possibly!

It brought to mind again Seneca’s thoughts on how the veteran soldier knows how to surrender their body to the surgeon when needed, sending their mind somewhere else, and coming to re-inhabit their carcass when it’s ready.

I thought of this parable a lot, every time my bed was wheeled out of the prep room. It was nice to have a much more pleasant reason today.

jmac, to random
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A week in, it occurs to me which elder-days video game that pleasantly reminds me of, amidst all the much newer work it draws from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtBF7lBZWGw

mightyspaceman, to random
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Is it actually possible to tell someone that something was a joke without sounding condescending?

jmac,
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@mightyspaceman If they’re upset or about to do something misguided because they didn’t understand the jokeness, it’s worth explaining. Otherwise, maybe not.

jmac, to random
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“Nobody thinks they can whip up an iPhone in their garage over the weekend, but most people think they know how to save the children, fix the schools, reform the prisons, overhaul healthcare, repair politics, restore civility, and bring about world peace. Perhaps that’s why we have iPhones and we don’t have any of those other things.”

https://www.experimental-history.com/p/how-to-get-7th-graders-to-smoke

jmac, to random
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Speaking of Discords and puzzle games, I had reason to dig up this circa-2010 parody of both Braid and then-contemporary game streamers. I remembered it for "reverse tiiiime" but I had no memory of the time-loop microfiction that unfolds in the "chat window", so that was a fun discovery! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fABGyVzVwI

jmac,
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Speaking of parody videos from approximately 2010, I also dug up this video that I made around then, poking fun at the whole "Angry Video Game Reviews" genre that was ubiquitous at the time.

I haven't watched this in a long time and... it's pretty funny? Good job, past jmac?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlPgwPF6w7I

jmac, to random
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Don't tell my bosses but I am having a great time in the @shortgame Discord's channel trading game hints and chinchilla jokes today.

jmac, (edited ) to random
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The truer function of is less answering than illuminating, helping the human prompter locate hitherto obscure paths and connections between ideas on an incomprehensibly large map made of language and vector math.

Used properly, GenAI is a torch that broadens the field of possibilities known to its human petitioner, who must still interpret, investigate, and decide.

We should not mistake soothsaying for truth-telling, but soothsaying does have its use cases.
https://mastodon.social/@mhoye/112445637742357366

jmac, to random
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Top tip: If you filed forms electronically with the IRS for the benefit of your new nonprofit, and those forms included the PO Box that you have set up for it, maybe actually go check that PO Box instead of sitting around waiting for them to email you.

• Look, New York State had emailed us about the initial incorporation notice, and maybe it took me weeks to recall that NYS and USA are different entities with different practices, okay

• Yes, I will be less coy about all this in the near future

jmac, to random
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Most of the animals in make goofy synthesizer sounds, but there's a bit involving some trapped critters that is paired with realistic audio, suggesting that they're in distress and crying. It echoes around while you work on a tough and lengthy section, a tonal miss in this otherwise lovely game, far more upsetting than it needs to be.

I asked a Discord for a "Does the dog die?”-style spoiler for whether or not you can help them; was told yes. Whew! (But I haven't got that far yet.)

jmac, to random
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Is the best thing about #Helldivers the completely unironic “hug” emote, and the habit of quickplay mutual-randos to deploy it before disconnecting after a successful mission?

jmac,
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Like, “gg” is one thing, but this feels like a kind of aftercare policy spontaneously developed by the community of a violent video game and it is delightful. #Helldivers

bathsheba, to random
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Because of https://momath.org/onlinecrochet/ now I have to learn to crochet

jmac,
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@bathsheba At least you’re making new friends.

jmac, to random
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I do not have entirely positive feelings towards this article, but I do have to admit that "His love for the game had carried him to a level where no love is possible" is a fantastic sentence in context. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/ice-hockey-sports-parent/678347/

jmac, (edited ) to random
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Interesting and troubling snapshot of the state of drug laws in the U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-keith-humphreys.html

As a society we have pushed back on the racist carceral system of the old War on Drugs, and good riddance. But I do remember how we were supposed to replace it with a regulatory system like we have on alcohol. Instead we... did nothing, leading to vacuum-filling libertarian failure modes like the west coast's open-air fentanyl crisis and my own city's churn of sketchy, unlicensed weed stores.

jalcine, to random
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Have people made games that were made more to explore a world as a proof of concept?

New "side project that I'll never finish but learn a lot from" alert lol

jmac,
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@mcc @jalcine I was about to suggest Proteus, which is apparently in the tail end of that same boom.

peterb, to random
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Pittsburgh

jmac,
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@peterb Whoah

bodega_catgirl, to random

hello world

jmac,
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@bodega_catgirl Hello and welcome!

jmac, to random
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Watched Amy start a new game last night, and noticed the initial text crawl of Galactic War statistics, including the fact that the average age of a Helldiver is 18.5 years. Which means that you are explicitly sending wave after wave of anonymous, cult-raised teenagers to gruesome deaths, instead of the bumbling, brainwashed adults suggested by the voice acting and character models.

This is of course a lot truer to how real wars are fought, and this is also a lot less funny somehow.

jmac, (edited ) to random
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When a little bubble pops up in a UI pointing out a new button or switch or other doodad, typically with "OK" and "Learn more" buttons, what do you usually do?

jmac, (edited ) to random
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Good mail day: Got my copy of "The Paradox" by @elainemwill

jmac,
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My collection of strange little comix that I have found either directly through Mastodon posts or at zine festivals that Mastodon has pointed me to grows. I love it.

jmac, to random
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An interesting and troubling trend around age-disability in the U.S.: increasingly, if an elder has a fall, the staff in their home doesn't help them get up. They call 911 instead, even if the elder is awake and uninjured. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/05/03/assisted-living-homes-senior-falls-911/

This makes nobody happy. The responders spend more of the day unavailable for truly life-threatening emergencies, while the elders just lie on the floor—frustrated, embarrassed, and ignored—waiting for the fire engines to arrive. It sounds miserable.

GIFS_of_Puppets, to random
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Today's GIF of the Day is...

GIF of a group of characters from Jim Henson's Dog City all letting go of balloons at the same time in celebration

jmac,
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@GIFS_of_Puppets Dog City, man. This was the dream

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