Sunset Jedi

love this scene in the movie

#randomgamesaturday

I don't have my cartridge on hand right now, but I've been jonesnin' to play some Pokémon Pinball lately.

Spending too much time online will have catastrophic effects on your mental & emotional health. You need to be taking walks and talking to other people. You need to feel grass under your feet and wind on your face. You were made to live an embodied life.

Attention to every game dork born between 1975-1990:
The Mortal Kombat Kollection is fucking incredible. The games themselves are a nostalgia delight, but what you’re really buying is a brilliant documentary/multimedia recreation of living through MK’s cultural moment.

it’s a game as a time machine

Shelia: I SAID, “WHO IS SHE, FRED, AND WHAT IS SHE DOING ON OUR BRANCH?”

Dave: Damn, Fred, you fucked up. Imma dip out, text me later, bro.

They are also intentionally conflating machine-learning and generative AI slop to confuse and try to make GenAI seem necessary. Google Maps traffic stuff is machine learning, not GenAI, for example. Auto-correct is too. Don't let them make you lose the thread. GenAI slop is slop.

The original Far Side Cow Tools Cartoon by Gary Larson. A cow stands on its hind legs behind a table, staring blankly at the viewer from behind its heavy brow ridge. On the table are four crudely made tools: a lump, a lump with an offset crooked handle, a long stick with hooked prongs at the end, and a crude handsaw with irregular teeth. In the background a barn sits on a hill. Caption reads, "Cow tools."

43 years ago today, readers the world over opened their newspapers and gazed upon cow tools for the first time. happy birthday cow tools. you look great.

Highlighted quotation: “As an economist, Low searched for a more precise term to describe how she and other working moms often find themselves stretched for time and energy. She came up with “the squeeze”, and it’s backed by data that shows how women often get burnt out trying to manage competing demands at home and work, especially when they are parenting young children.”

BREAKING: economist discovers “second shift,” a concept coined by sociologists almost 50 years ago; gives it new, stupider, and less explicitly labor-oriented name

Thanks to a donation from @joerybicki.com, we now have a complete collection of P.S.X., physically AND digitally! October 1996 was the last issue we were missing and also the last unscanned issue

archive.gamehistory.org/item/c548c7c...

Back in 2004, CBS aired a sci-fi Legal Drama called Century City starring Viola Davis and Ioan Gruffudd that took place in the year 2030 where Oprah is currently president.

Please bear witness to how insane these two paragraphs are on its Wikipedia page.

“That this debate is happening in terms of skills versus content is itself unsettling, subsuming Shakespeare into that category of internet clickbait produced to keep hits coming, rapidly being overtaken now by A.I. slop”

let’s gooooo

YouTube video by OverClocked ReMix: Video Game Music Community OC ReMix #2699: Final Fantasy VI 'The Impresario' [Medley] by Jake Kaufman & Tommy Pedrini

For no reason, sharing one of my favorite tracks from @ocremix.org

Imagine Bohemian Rhapsody but about the opera from FF6. That's this and it's awesome.
youtu.be/7xFhULStbkQ?...

😂😂

the "after all why not why shouldn't I keep it" bilbo baggins meme but he's holding a hex wrench

Convincing myself: "In the apocalypse, the person with the collection of hex wrenches will be unstoppable!"

Here's the stream. She did the mocap as well as the voice acting: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ek5...

Toward the beginning she mentions she's not familiar with games and has to ask the chat what the buttons are, etc. interesting to note her struggle to move and control the camera simultaneously, a hurdle for lots of folks who are new to games. basically every time she dies, that's why.

An excerpt from the manual for Ninja Kid (NES)... Ninja Kid can walk around Demon Island Map looking for the special scroll that will restore peace to the area. After obtaining the scroll, he goes to the old witch's house to get the chanting spell. Afterwards, Ninja Kid can go to the Demon Castle. (several illustrations of what the Fighting Fields look like) The Fighting Fields appear on the Demon Island Map. They change position through the use of magic. Even on the same map, the positions of the Fighting Fields are sometimes different. OBJECTIVES OF THE FOUR DIFFERENT FIGHTING FIELDS 1. DOG FIGHT In this field, Ninja Kid flies on a kite, and fights off demons. Once he has beaten 10 demons, he will get through the field, and the game is clear. 2. POISON FIELDS Ninja Kid must collect 10 demon spirits in this field. Once he has accomplished this, he will get through this field, and the game will be clear. 3. BLAZING INFERNO Ninja Kid must light 10 candles with a lighter in order to get through this field and clear the game. 4. GUERILLA WARFARE (sic) Once Ninja Kid has beaten 10 demons, he will get through this field and clear the game. *After Ninja Kid clears each of the four fields, two doors will appear. One door leads to the Demon Island Map, the other leads to Demon Hell. (four illustrations of "Ninja Kid on Kite", "Demon Spirit", "Lighter", and "Candle")

An excerpt from the instruction manual with critical info for playing Ninja Kid (NES). Each type of level has a different objective. At the end of each level, there is a 50/50 chance you will go to Demon Hell. Without the manual, these mechanics are completely unexplained.

Oh she is not having it

The JP voice actress for Hinako streamed Silent Hill f and I can’t stop laughing at her reactions.

Quite an unfortunate place to drift off into an ellipsis.

Gonna be a rough day when I find out the Lourve burglars are problematic

They call me Shaw-hei Ohtani.

People at CBS who worked in scripted arena hated working for a whole array of assholes so much the place leaked like a sieve. At diff points, mgmt was so angry about my reporting, execs speculated furiously about my sources & methods. I know this bec I was sent recordings of those rants (twice lol)

A magazine ad for Lain with a close-up still of a face, with screenies from the show, and covers of VHS and DVD releases ($24-29)

"I'm still here. I just abandoned my body."

The hum of wire and data. A late 90s tech-vibe and aesthetic of all of its own - Serial Experiments Lain.

the Muppets have been real quiet since the Louvre heist

time for some CHORDS OF STEEL

"But the plans were on display..." "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them." "That's the display department.” "With a flashlight." "Ah, well, the lights had probably gone." "So had the stairs." "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?" "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard. Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)

I mean, who amongst us doesn't like ploughing through a 219 page document in order to provide comments? Strong Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy vibes here

The story of how Parliament flogged all of Charles I’s stuff on the cheap and then had to buy new stuff when Cromwell became Lord Protector is amazing

Films: We need to hack a keycard, obtained by seducing one of the guards. We then need to drop in from the skylight after jumping from a plane, and dodge all of the lasers and traps, carefully switching the jewels for fakes that weigh the same to avoid tripping the alarm.

Real life:

Dostoevsky has just earnestly told me for the fourth time that he needs to relate one final piece of information to me before he begins the novel and I’m beginning to get suspicious 🤔

'I’ve never used AI and probably never will': Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu reckons 'fluctuations and imperfections' are what make music satisfying Uematsu, who worked on the soundtracks for Final Fantasy XIV and Chrono Trigger, isn't tempted by generative AI.

“…music produced by people is unstable, and everyone does it in their own unique way. And what makes it sound so satisfying are precisely those fluctuations and imperfections."