Got to the credits screen of #AnimalWell 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.
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.
“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.”
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
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?!
The truer function of #GenAI 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.
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
Most of the animals in #AnimalWell 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.)
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?
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
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.
Watched Amy start a new #Helldivers 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.
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?
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.