Gabriel aka mystal

Perhaps the most unexpected thing I learned from teaching fighting games over the last ten years is that the things people need to learn the most aren't really fighting game skills but life skills.

Fighting games just give you a fun way to expose these gaps before real life does.

Zohran Mamdani wins!

He ran on an unabashedly pro-transgender platform, stood up for the most vulnerable, as so many have pushed for the Democratic Party to abandon trans people in order to win.

Major win for trans New Yorkers - he has vowed for intense resistance to anti-trans Trump policies.

I really love this Vincent Van Gogh quote:

"To do good work one must eat well, be well housed, have one's fling from time to time, smoke one's pipe, and drink one's coffee in peace."

No romanticizing the starving artist. Van Gogh said UBI all the way.

me to others: it's hard right now. be gentle with yourself
me to me: wtf is wrong with you

FROM MASHER TO MASTER 2 IS OUT!

If you want to get into fighting games but don't know where to begin, this book will guide your journey.

Featuring art by @koh.money and a foreword by Gerald Lee of Core-A Gaming!

patrickmiller.itch.io/from-masher-...

Omg the tie!! Excellent costume

Judge rules George R.R. Martin and other authors can sue OpenAI for copyright infringement

• Said ChatGPT generated 'Game of Thrones' content similar enough to infringe copyright

• OpenAI’s motion to dismiss was denied

It's just so depressing. None of the people that worked on it will see a cent from its sales

Your ability to eat should not depend on your productivity

Your ability to get healthcare should not depend on your productivity

Your ability to get housing should not depend on your productivity

Saying “be more productive!” To those who are struggling devalues human life.

It aids fascism.

Executives don't actually think AI will help teams innovate, they just think it will mean doing things cheap and fast.

They are gutting the medium you love to line their pockets and it should piss you off.

These Bay Area Restaurants Are Offering Free Food to SNAP Recipients Amid a government shutdown that will cut off aid for 42 million Americans, local food scene folks plan to pick up the slack.

While the feds continue to play stupid games, SNAP recipients are set to lose food aid for the next month. In the Bay Area, a growing number of restaurants are stepping up to help, and we're maintaining the list. Share with anyone who needs it. www.coyotemedia.org/these-bay-ar...

in case anyone from puerto rico wanted to give mastodon a spin, there's now an instance specifically for that: boriken.social/@Jdm2/115443...

PROCJAM - The Procedural Generation Jam A game jam from 2025-11-21 to 2025-12-01 hosted by PROCJAM. Let's Make Something! PROCJAM - the Procedural Generation Jam - is a creative coding jam about making things that make things. This normally...

PROCJAM - the Procedural Generation Jam - is back for another year! Join us on itch.io this November for another week of making something that makes something - a bskybot, a videogame, a digital artwork, a dice table or something else!

🗓️ Nov 21st - Dec 1st
🔮 itch.io/jam/procjam

there is zero reason we can't build an industry (or society) that prioritizes affordability and job security over shareholder value.

how can you help? stop buying their shit. cancel gamepass. support dev unions. be loud.

I'm eyeing metapac, which should take care of declaratively managing installed packages nicely.

As for system config (mostly files in /etc), there's things like Etckeeper and aconfmgr, but they don't quite do what I want. I'm brainstorming some ideas and might write my own program.

I'm barely avoiding the temptation to lose all my free time to learning Nix(OS). Instead I'm researching ways to make my existing Arch install more declarative so that I:
1. Know what's installed/configured
And
2. Can restore from a back up (more) really

Reminder that food banks have the ability to buy food in bulk and can make the most out of the economy of scale so cash (if you have it) is always preferred.

But also, they're not going to say no to your pantry items. 💚

If you have it please donate cash to the food banks. $10 in their hands will feed more people than the $10 worth of canned goods you can buy for retail prices. Also check on your elders. Many of them will not admit they rely on these programs so grocery gift cards or a surprise bag of staples

Discover the World by sylvie Discover this RPG game

sylvie.itch.io/discover-the...

Type Help by William Rous The Unsolvable Mystery

Type Help

A file. A mystery. Dive into echoes of the past to solve a murder. The game is making it to Steam next year under the title The Incident at Galley House -- but why wait when you can play it now?

william-rous.itch.io/type-help

I’m so excited! I can finally share this!! 🎉🍂🍁I made a tiny Over the Garden Wall fan game for Requiem Cafe. @patrickmchale.bsky.social consulted on it, @forkfrenzy.bsky.social painted backgrounds, The Blasting Company made music, & Elijah Wood voiced Wirt! Details:

www.instagram.com/reel/DQIu3RD...

Okay, I figured out how to use Cloudflare R2 to host images and other binary files for my site! Without putting them into the source git repo. I won't have versioning in git, but I can live with that. Plus I don't have the energy to figure out LFS right now.

Anyhow, pictures coming very soon!!

*soft launch
Sigh... one day we'll get an edit button

Hey, I wrote a blog post on my new site as a sort of software launch. There's still a bunch of empty pages, but I know myself and I need to publish to the motivate myself.

As is required, the post talks about the new site and what tech powers it:
mystal.cafe/blog/yet-ano...

“Making Sense of the Federal Forces on the Streets,” with photos of how they’re uniformed and equipped

The New York Times publishes a handy guide to which federal forces are terrorizing us at any moment. This is America, 2025.

fashtech has particular technical smells to it.

this goes in detail through everything that Omarchy fucks up through incompetence and arrogance. it's a perfect worked example.

(long post, the author says feel free to skip to the summary)

xn--gckvb8fzb.com/a-word-on-om...
archive.is/Ks8o5

YouTube video by Bandai Namco Entertainment America Once Upon A KATAMARI | Clémentine - Katamari Damacy

I don't know who needs to know this, but Bandai Namco has been slowly uploading music videos for the new songs in the Katamari that's dropping this week over the last few months, there's a playlist and everything

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhoq...

Two panel comic of a person with glasses looking down at an open book. First panel reads: I think I might be bad at this. In the second panel they are scribbling in the book with a pencil. Text reads: I’m gonna do it anyway

Nothin else for it

With covid doing the rounds right now, its a good time to remind everyone that doctors recommend you avoid strenuous activity for at least 6 weeks post infection - EVEN IF YOU FEEL TOTALLY NORMAL.

Covid is much more than a respiratory infection; it is busy ripping through all your internal organs.

Yoshi car transformation from Yoshi's island

His Body Just Did This