Märten 'tshiif' Rattasepp

Still more monetary (and functional) value than NFTs!

Early middle aged estonian man in a black leather jacket and black jeans stands in front of a railing, leaning on his hand. Behind him lies a vast vista overlooking the Alps to the south, one snowy peak after another, looking very impressive, as mountain ranges always do.

These mountains don't look so tough. I think I can take them.

Fernet Branca yes please!

Ma 20+ aastat internetis hänginud, foorumites jm, näinud sotsmeedia tulekut, ja no eks alati on konservatiivid olnud kõige suuremad halajad ja vingujad. Alati millegi üle solvunud. Kogu online YT parem-influka ökosüsteem on sellele aastaid üles ehitatud, et miski suvaline asi tegi neile jälle liiga.

Mul väike probleem eksitava sõnakasutusega (juba originaalis tbh), woke on siiski spetsiifilise tähendusega mõiste, mis ei kandu nii üle. Ja ka see et konservatiivid on alati lumehelbekesed olnud, alati vingunud ja halanud kõige üle. See pole kuidagi "kohale jõudnud", it's always been this way

It's a whole world out there.

Aaaaahhh Mr Morden.
Sad I missed the lecture at the time, good to have video evidence now!

An early-middle-aged estonian male standing in front of and pointing a finger at the brutalist architectural facade and entrance of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in South Bank, London. Where the BAFTA ceremony took place in 2023. Man looking happy enough, for once, with an annoying smirk.

Oh, a familiar sight! Alas, no BAFTAs in sight this time around! @jesawyer.bsky.social and I will have to try again one day.

AdventureX has been quite delightful so far. Fun first day, listened to some real great lectures. Just enjoying the vibe.

Interstellar Space Travel Will Never, Ever Happen It's basically impossible and they know it.

New column from me on why interstellar space travel will never, ever be a thing, and how it's kind of weird that they keep telling us otherwise:

jasonpargin.substack.com/p/interstell...

A fair bit! Well, I'll be hanging around London before and after too, for a couple days, actually.

Rebecca was one of the founders of Interplay and programmed & designed for some of the most influential games of my youth, notably Bard's Tale I & III and Wasteland. She will be missed.

If anyone else there wants to hang out and/or have a chat, let me know! Shoot a DM. I'll be ambling around somewhere with a couple of friends, for sure.

Volume 2! The first one was excellent. Love it.

absolutely certainly sounds very fun and cool.

Oh hey, turns out I'll also be at AdventureX, just chilling and hanging out, listening to lectures, possibly learning new things. Just there to have fun. Perhaps some familiar faces will be about and I can have chats with folks.

Truly, one of the best sequences of the whole show, and it has many!

Pet son of Mausfänger

@jesawyer.bsky.social just remembered that this interaction prompt from Pentiment nearly made me cry

To each and every one of you out there, in the cold... a Disco Elysium.

Generative AI is a societal disaster Governments are deluding themselves into believing investment justifies allowing AI to upend society

The AI industry wants us to believe AI superintelligence is the real threat from generative AI.

But that narrative was crafted to distract from the many ways genAI is being used to tear our societies apart, as we saw this week when a deepfake video rocked the Irish election. It must be reined in.

Hey, my work's featured twice (#29 & #2)! I don't mean this as a boast (though an ego boost can help in tough times), but: growing up in the post-Soviet 90s, I could never even imagine this outcome at all, it isn't a "dream come true", because making games was not even a conceptual possibility.

If the "impossible" already got done, why be so concerned about doing that very thing all over again, all the time. No wonder I burned myself out, hah! In any case, these are the traces history leaves upon the mind and soul and so forth. In some ways, the 90s and 00s are still carried within.

Often the fear is that I won't. Which is... frustrating? It shouldn't be, but it is. I really shouldn't care as much - especially that the "latest project" must be the best, surpass all previous ones. That's silly. It's not like the successes will vanish. But that's the fear of "peaking", right?

Years have gone by, yet a dissonance remains. So it sometimes feels strange to be proud. Feels arrogant. Which I occasionally am, and for good heckin' reason, why not. Gets me through the day. Anyway, strange thoughts from a little walk around town. Maybe one day I'll do another successful thing.

I can only appreciate the success, however it came along. One led to another, and so on. It remains strange to achieve something that I couldn't even conjure with imagination. I'm still not sure if it's possible to retrain the brain to understand something that "could not ever be".

Turns out things sometimes just align. Unrelated things become useful and fruitful. Having the chance to actually play games throughout the 90s still helped, even as I didn't know it at the time. And there were other people, even my age, who thought differently - that it is possible, somehow.

So, even after the new millennia got going, I didn't actually ever think of games as a prospect. I never studied anything specifically related to game design. It somehow remained, in my mind, a thing that "could not be done here". The spectre of the 90s where some things didn't seem possible.

Which is why it still boggles the mind, to read a list of this kind. To achieve this... *something*, through many coincidences and accidents, wasn't anything that I could aim for. Although I remember the one time - coming up with a silly game idea after being inspired by Nethack. Just the once.

Hey, my work's featured twice (#29 & #2)! I don't mean this as a boast (though an ego boost can help in tough times), but: growing up in the post-Soviet 90s, I could never even imagine this outcome at all, it isn't a "dream come true", because making games was not even a conceptual possibility.

Inspired me to do my ~9th rewatch of Babylon 5 over the past 30 years. It continues to be so enjoyable!