Mikko Rautalahti

Aside from the actual events here, which obviously suck, I am always left scratching my head over the eternal theatrics of American institutions. The Capitol Police is… handing out patches? Actual adults engaging in this like it was serious business. It just feels utterly detached from reality.

(This isn't COVID or influenza or anything like that, though, or at least I haven't had a positive test. I think it's just a good old-fashioned "lol you thought you had plans huh?" thing. But the principle still applies.)

I have been fighting a pretty hefty cold for a bunch of days now, which includes a lot of coughing.

I just happened to have a pure white screen at my computer and, uh, yeah, let me just say that it's obvious why masking limits the spread of infection and also let me find those screen wipes...

Man, now I want to rewatch the whole thing. That's good stuff.

That's not to say it's a good use of resources, but in a lot of these companies, they really don't care about that. It's some executive who wants cool things they can show off to their superiors. Whether the game does well is not that relevant because they expect to move on before it comes out.

I don't think it's necessarily even about razzle dazzling them, it's quite often a weird hostage situation where you have somebody at the publisher (or whoever) making a laundry list of things they want to see you prove and then you gotta do them or the project just isn't happening.

I think odds are high that something awful/inspiring/life-changing/heartwarming is going to happen and it is then, and only then, that you realize how portentous/meaningful/revelatory/ironic your discovery of this tile was.

Yeah, or I can understand it if you just don't want to use profanity but you have to quote something with swearing in it. But apart from situations like that, just own what you're saying.

I think a lot of people have a weird relationship with profanity. For example, you see people post a comment to somebody and say "f*ck you." They seem to think that the asterisk makes it more acceptable. Like you can say that to somebody and they won't be offended if your pronunciation is unclear.

(Dan Abnett being a fairly fresh example of that -- I read a lot of 40K stuff recently, and I racked up some pretty hefty numbers. Though not as hefty as Abnett himself...)

Yeah, 15 was way easier than I thought!

A lot of that is due to my misspent youth, when I just seemed to have endless time to read, and I just read my way through some authors' more or less entire output. It's a rarer now for me to hit those numbers, but not unheard of.

Yeah, I think that's where I falter -- there are definitely writers I like enough that I would read 20 books by them, but very few of them actually write that many books. Most writers just aren't that prolific.

...also, a lot of those who are aren't necessarily that interesting.

I'm tapping out here, though. 20 by 20 is more than I can handle -- I know I've read 20 or more from some writers (Christie, Leonard, Stark, Banks, Pratchett, at least...), but 20 of them? I genuinely don't think so.

I was wrong. Wasn't even that hard!

bsky.app/profile/mikk...

...fuck it, I bet I can do this.

15 authors I've read 15 books or more from:

Elmore Leonard
Iain (M.) Banks
Richard Stark
Ed McBain
Andrew Vachss
Terry Pratchett
Stephen King
J.G. Ballard
Agatha Christie
Arthur C. Clarke
Dan Abnett
Peter David
Philip K. Dick
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Chuck Wendig

Pretty sure I couldn't do 15 authors I've read 15 or more from, though -- there are some I've read 15+ from, sure, but 15 of them? Very unlikely.

(Oh, okay, hard mode? Sure.)

10 Authors I've read 10 books or more from:

Jasper Fforde
Dan Abnett
William Gibson
Richard Stark
Glen Cook
Agatha Christie
Kurt Vonnegut
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Ursula LeGuin
John Le Carré

The number of things that are no longer being tracked because the numbers are absolutely not favorable to the powers that be is kind of ridiculous. It leads to a real information vacuum and that feels dangerous.

5 authors I've read at least 5 books by:

Denise Mina
Elmore Leonard
Iain (M.) Banks
Octavia Butler
J.G. Ballard

I love how he makes Tarzan look distinct from Conan. I mean, they're both nearly naked surly muscle guys with long, dark hair. But I'd never mistake this for Conan.

Tfw you still have some edge cases to fix in your procedural locomotion system #gamedev

Also, it's a game that really makes you want to shoot Nazis. I mean, it lets you do that. It lets you do that a lot.

But it gives you reasons to want to do that, too.

It's a kind of weird little whisper, right in the middle of this gigantic battle.

"This ain't war, but the breaking of Seals. The undoing of life itself."

And I was like, whoa, hold on, what're we doing here?

Wolfenstein: The New World Order has a very distinctive voice and vibe. It's great.

I remember firing the game up. It begins with a pretty crazy, exciting action sequence. Very well done, but nothing that made me think it had anything, y'know... substantive going for it.

But maybe 15 minutes in, I'm running down a trench, and the main character, B.J. Blazkowicz, says something.

I played the original Wolfenstein 3D waaaay back in the day. Fun shooter, but very far from a deep game. I did not expect much from this one, other than fun gunplay.

I was wrong. This is a game with anger and teeth and it really, really fucking hates Nazis.

Save 75% on Wolfenstein: The New Order on Steam Wolfenstein®: The New Order reignites the series that created the first-person shooter genre. Wolfenstein offers a deep game narrative packed with action, adventure and first-person combat.

I just realized that Wolfenstein: The New Order is 75% off on Steam. That's like, what, five bucks? That is very few bucks for a lot of shooting Nazis in the face.

Seriously, this is a really great game, a real classic. If you haven't played it, you should.

store.steampowered.com/app/201810/W...

I dunno, this asshole's been on this Earth twice as long as that and I don't think there are enough cheeseburgers on the planet to make him not sound like he's really fucking stupid.

And there's also stuff like "are there any real consequences to us losing control of this data." But none of that's likely to happen because that'd be socialism or whatever...

I mean, there's all sorts of ways you could address this. Just as an example, over here there's a secure way for me to identify myself through my bank, in which the service provider doesn't actually get my personal data.

But obviously for that to work, you need a certain legislative framework...

I think it's the involvement of Peter Thiel _and_ Discord's very bad track record of keeping outsiders from accessing stuff like passport scans that makes this a losing proposition. I mean, I wouldn't much want to give that information to any company, but I specifically don't trust _this_ company.