Yeah I don’t trust these fucks. I didn’t before but I still don’t now.

“Creating and Bringing value” = Maximizing our ability to squeeze productivity from the chattel without them knowing how badly we’re fucking them over.

Yeah, the silver lining of the whole gaming industry fallout is that the indie game scene has never been better. I was lamenting the fact that we hadn’t had a good top-down zeldalike in a long time, echoes of wisdom notwithstanding even though the formula is pretty altered. Someone pointed me in the direction of Master Key and it was an incredibly satisfying time. Almost like it would have fit in perfectly between LoZ 1 and Link’s Awakening.

Holy fuck. I can’t come to grips with how close this hits home.

I kind of feel that - I think the issue for me is that there’s a lot going on in each of these games that is tangential to the primary gameplay loop that on the surface isn’t obligatory, so if you find it not to your liking you can choose not to engage, but avoiding the secondary activities locks you out of some rewards for the PGL often and severely enough that you do feel obligated to engage to the point you can get these rewards. Especially in the gambling minigames, I often feel relieved when the points you buy end up being the same points you exchange for said rewards because it means I can just engage in the fighting a little more instead of having to gamble.

Case in point, I’m playing Infinite wealth right now and it feels like a big step up from the first Like a Dragon, but I’m still finding myself pulled into the Sujimon quests even though I personally don’t like monster tamer games. I don’t even know what the rewards are but half of the map icons are raids and trainers, so I feel like I should at least be putting time into maintaining a team with the ones I can catch just from grinding out fights for Job XP.

Oh I know, I’ve been giving a lot lately to communities affected by climate change induced catastrophes. But money only does so much to alleviate it, and it’s certainly not fixing root causes. Soon I will either have nothing left to give or more people are going to need it than not, myself included.

Honestly, the suffering was going to happen either way. We’ve been spewing carbon into the atmosphere for, what, five decades now? We were already further along on the worst case scenario than most models accounted for and it’s been continuing to accelerate. I don’t mean to sound defeatist but like, the Titanic has been sinking for a long time, all this one election decided is how much time we have to get to the lifeboats and wait for the ocean to swallow us.

I was already not planning on having kids or retirement in 2015, that sure hasn’t changed with everything that’s happened since. I feel for everyone who will be affected by climate catastrophe (i.e. everyone) but like, we have been sowing for that harvest since before I was born.

I mean, I do want cheaper GenAI in the sense that I want people to see that it’s dollar store crap that’s not worth the electricity to run the servers to make it and give it up like they did the fucking Juicero and every other smart appliance a couple years ago. God forbid I hold my breath and people wise up and understand that these people are all grifters looking to tape a horn to a horse and sell their “unicorn” to FAANG or whatever the equivalent is these days, I can’t be assed to rewrite the new poob acronym.

I don’t love Steam’s DRM at all, but theirs is the least obtrusive platform, and Gabe demonstrably understands that, and I quote the man himself, “Piracy is almost always a service problem, and not a pricing problem.”

Admittedly I’m not happy about the near-monopoly they have on the PC gaming market, particularly because it’ll be a sad day indeed if Valve ever goes public and starts pulling scummy moves like Epic, among other platforms. But I’m happy to spend money with a business that treats its employees and customers like people and not untapped resources.

They already are - who’s going to enforce their takedown?

I remember when a dozen eggs was $1.50.

Back in 2021.

I mean pay is also important, but assuming a comfortable paycheck, the time off to use it is more important than dying the richest man in the graveyard.

Gross, AI gen artwork

I think the prevailing idea at the time was that you would become more conservative as you accumulated wealth and property, and while I can’t confirm or deny that I would be more conservative if I were as wealthy as my parents were when they were my age, I can attest that the accumulation of wealth and property on which this notion is predicated has not happened for myself and my peers.

Is it any wonder, when told that we will own nothing and be happy by people who have never worked a day in their lives, that we want to burn it all down and piss on the ashes of those who oppress us?

They say history repeats itself but I don’t remember hearing about Nero throwing gas on the fire between songs.

Fuck me sideways. We need to dismantle capitalism like yesterday.

:3

Oh that looks cozy!

There was a thread going around on Bluesky a while back about how the reason we had so many good Grunge bands in the 80’s/90’s is because it was entirely possible to make a living off of a part-time income back then. Thirty years ago the dirtbag lifestyle was as feasible as supporting two families on one full-time income. Then rents skyrocketed with the advent of Realpage price fixing, minimum wage stagnated, jobs dried up or cut back, and suddenly everyone’s focused on surviving shit life syndrome. Is it any wonder the only artists these days who can survive long enough to get popular are the ones who already have means?

You say that like it’s a bad thing. We have more in common with the average Chinese citizen than we do with our government, our wealthy and our celebrities.