Ed Fenn

I went to Vegas for a work trip last year and I'm still reconciling how lied to I feel by decades of media. Like expecting London but ending up in Blackpool.

I remember driving a 1 series bmw in the 2010s and it absolutely threw me off how little warning signs there were till no control on the rear axle for spinning out. Complacent of me!

I'm glad for borrowing my brother's beetles when I was 18, because it made me appreciate how precarious 70mph is.

Brendy has been a consistently funny and poignant voice in video game spaces for over a decade. It's exciting to see them involved in starting their own website (with other esteemed alumni) to really flex all that makes games writing great.

If you can, go support a cool thing at the ground level!

I love those little cultural differences and translation barriers. Like several languages not having a direct translation for "brother/sister" without including if they are older or younger.

I slightly miss when it wasn't as slick, for things like the Yakuza games having "Morning Glory Orphanage".

J. Draper I'm a tour guide, finding something new in London every day!

Someone I vaguely knew from school has gone on to have a successful historical career on Youtube/Nebula. They focus mainly on London & British history but with a particular mind towards poc, women & queer history. Could be up your street! nebula.tv/jdraper
youtube.com/@jdraper

I'm a proponent for it, but one time I was thankful for it at the extreme other end was the 2015 election where UKIP walked away with only 1 seat despite winning 13% of the vote.

It's so weird how a title filter tag for the camera perspective in adult films online has bled out into wider online video titling and memes, with many having no clue what the tag meant originally.

Been watching (for the 1st time) Hell's Kitchen on Prime and it's wild how much about the early seasons in the 00's feel archaic now.

It also comes with the bonus of looking up contestants 20-25 years after the show and seeing how many police mugshots there are since then (roughly 1-3 per season!).

I've been lucky so far that I've been able to stay on Adalimumab for Crohn's, but the NHS have swapped the brand making it 3 times now and I have to brace to adjust. Will this one cause a burning sensation on inject, am I going to react badly to this one etc.

One of my friends was at school with the lead actor of Eragon. (Allegedly) The guy blew all his movie money on drugs and built a bad reputation for being tardy on set, and has had to spend a lot of his adult acting life undoing that.

If 130ish people is 3 years banned from driving but not a lifetime I could reasonably drive into 1 person a week so long as I included week long rests inbetween.

Concept artistry has a real ebb and flow that helps nail down the feel of a game, it should be one of the earliest ports of call for fresh creativity in a project.

For 15 years my laptop's homescreen has been a piece of Bioshock concept art, it's sad that future games will generate nothing similar.

The boy he maketh the noise.

To add to the fun, AOL was also an internet company in the UK back in the 90s/early 00s. Used to get the free cd spam in the mail.

If it's consolation the one I went to was about that much, but happened 3-4 years after their registry wedding and with them in their early 40s (sadly missing a parent though). Tying the knot and a great ceilidh!

There's still the possibility, just sad and annoying that it's a long way off for now.

Thinking of the things I saw playing video games too young in the 90s.

Distinct memory of not understanding why going up to women in Duke Nukem and pressing the space bar offered them money. Why there was a nudity cheat included in a cheat book that didn't work but instead made Lara Croft explode.

I went to a lovely Scottish wedding a month ago and it brought on a similar sadness after. The affording it, and by the time I could (comfortably) afford it my family will have aged away.

Growing older and grieving the opportunity windows closing, because you didn't strike big in your 20s, sucks.

The recent choice between on Steam spending £70 on Doom the Dark Ages, or spending £15 for a month of games pass with it, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and several other hot new single player titles you'd have to hate your money to do otherwise as a consumer.

Difficult for developers to profit.

I did not! It's adorable! Is there a name for the behaviour? My main experience of horses is when I did a catsit and had a horse to look after, he was sweet with me but apparently hated other horses so I've not really seen horses interact outside of riding.

I've been a big dweeb who's read lots of manga (very legally) online before now, so it feels very special to finally own a complete physical edition to enjoy.

At first I thought Delicious in Dungeon was just an excuse to draw food, but it evolved into one of my favourite stories. Give it a try too!

The original wife guy.

US Big Brother show is wild. I remember the UK one having naff challenges and folk inserting champagne bottles.

Saw an episode of the US one and they had a massive half-wall train replica shooting gunge at people until they fell off, but it was interrupted by about 200 cutaways of talking heads.

Some folk swear by paint sticks (big long stick handle where you rubberband a bunch of models in place).

I am lazy and go for "ontop a cardboard box, then pick up for the final pass and tricky-to-reach areas". There are those who wear gloves to do the latter and not be goth'd but again, am lazy.

It clearly heard of the last time you took an innocuous shot of an animal and put it on the internet.

It's times like these you can in turn appreciate your own parents forgoing giving you the name Richard instead of Brent.

Holding on desperately for a "Bugsy Malone" strap.

This is just like those times drunk you leaves a glass of water and snack for sober you to wake up with. Thank your altered-consciousness self for thinking of your future needs.

A quote from Tom Lehrer that reads the following: "I don’t think this kind of thing [satire] has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It’s not even preaching to the converted; it’s titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, ‘We need satire of them, not of us.’ I’m fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the ’30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War."

Tom Lehrer's passing has me thinking about his opinion on satire (and why he backed away from it as a medium).

It's how I feel about a lot of news sites now. Or the floodgates of social media from Bluesky to Tiktok, Instagram to Youtube. Love comedy, but don't know where my voice belongs in it now.

Keep Your Hands of Eizouken remains a really beautiful show. I love the balance it shows of being a dreamer and being an organised business analyst when it comes to co-operatively making creative work.

I wish I knew when to take a rest like this after 10 days at the (rat) race, but when my energy is low and mood awful I keep pressing Train Wit and getting terrible results.