My understanding of what the AI industry is doing right now is hoping they can fund enough compute to hopefully will an actual Machine God into existence before everyone realizes they can't do anything approaching that. It may be best to view it, at this point, as a religion.

Jan 1: this is the year of new Me Jan 12: [eating shredded cheese directly from the bag] new years resolutions are a bourgeois construct for disciplining bodies into productive units for capital

Idly brainstorming a Lands Between sports league

600+ hours, three full clears, and I did not know you could ride on these things until just now when I went to look up suggestions for getting through this dungeon. I previously did it with fire resist gear and chugging health potions, rolling through the lava all the way down.

I don't really believe in signs and portents but the first song I hear in public in 2026 being Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac feels like a repudiation of the idea that I need to go back to having a normie job as a backup plan this year.

So last year I went nuclear, one-strike mode on people who shared NYT links and dropped from ~135 following to I think something like 68 at my lowest. In the spirit of Auld Acquaintance Being Forgot I'm going to relax that, but this kind of shit is why. There is no valid reason to give them clicks.

Welp there it is. If you still subscribe, now you know exactly what you're funding

There's still kind of a huge blank spot in my brain regarding what the heck happened in Germany between Teutoburg Forest and the Ottonians. Like broadly the process of how the HRE emerged from what classical Western history typically depicts as a big spooky forest full of barbarians.

Happy New Year from Mountain Time. We chased fascist kidnappers out of multiple major cities last year. You are not powerless to resist. Stick by each other and stay safe out there.

It's over! 2025, that is. Join @len.bsky.social, @mhwilliams.bsky.social, and @lukeplunkett.com to recap the year in strategy games and shout out our favorites for the year in the rear-view. A lot of disappointment, but a lot of bright spots too! www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes...

Overall I have to admit 2025 was kind of a shit year for me. There were some high points. My living situation is better than it was this time last year. But I spent most of it stressed out of my mind and it remains to be seen if I'm going to have to majorly pivot my career just to survive. We'll see

"Yeah, I was just calling to see if you guys are doing anything this weekend. We're going up to the lake to watch this mid-game souls boss finish his 39-hit combo that he already whiffed on the first swing. Might do a bit of grilling."

POSEIDON! I BEG OF YOU! ONE SMALL REQUEST AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!

No, I'm not paying a 38% TicketLord upcharge to go to the Radahn Festival this year. They're going to give Blaidd a 20-minute set and have legends like Alexander on the side stage sponsored by Crimson Tears Energy Drink while some TikTok nerd like Patches with 25 guitar pedals gets top billing.

It will never really click for me I don't think that people think I'm cool and want to impress me. Every time it happens I'm just left dumfounded. The wiring up there is broken in some fundamental way that does not allow me to acknowledge it.

ACAB includes people who take their loss prevention role at the grocery store way too seriously

No, I'm not paying a 38% TicketLord upcharge to go to the Radahn Festival this year. They're going to give Blaidd a 20-minute set and have legends like Alexander on the side stage sponsored by Crimson Tears Energy Drink while some TikTok nerd like Patches with 25 guitar pedals gets top billing.

There’s no getting around the fact that generative AI resides on a foundation of theft and counterfeiting on a previously unimaginable scale.

new vocal stim for 2026 - singing "Komm, süsser Tod" to the tune of "Sweet Caroline"

I've gotten some seriously vitriolic backlash over the years for saying I hate "mobile games" and this is generally what I'm talking about. I don't mean anything that was released on another platform, for the most part. But most mobile exclusives look like this.

I review PC games and there are still some things (ie: multiplayer anticheat in shooters) that don't work. Also when working with hot code, like a pre-release review build, I don't want to insert proton as one additional possible failure point if I'm on a deadline.

I still essentially believe that the ideal lifespan of a grand strategy game is about eight years.

Congrats to the first non-grand strategy single-player game to pass 600 hours played on my account.

Make a Bond movie casual. OCTO-LET'S JUST HANG OUT AS FRIENDS AND SEE WHERE WE WANT TO GO FROM THERE

Instead of clearing anything else off my backlog I started another completely fresh Elden Ring file happy holidays

"But you don't really care for music, do ya?" is a harder bar than like 95% of battle rap disses

I actually liked Avatar 3 a fair bit more than the second one, contrary to popular opinion. Bad Na'vi is the most interesting idea they've had since 2009 and doing more with that is the only way I think you get two more three-hour movies out of this that aren't exhausting.

Alright, here's how I'm going to structure my GOTY list for 2025. I have four games that are my "Runners Up" in no particular order, one Overall Winner, and three Honorable Mentions. We'll start with the Runners Up: Hades 2 Silent Hill f Dune: Awakening Two Point Museum

And that's Jedi Survivor done. About twice as long as the first one, which I don't think it needed to be, but I have become a fan of this series over the last 30 days from having never played it. Kind of reminds me of KotOR in that it walks the line of not pandering but delivering the high points.

Anyway, don't sleep on Dune: Awakening. I think that was one of the least talked about bangers of the year. It is a very good 80-hour single-player survival crafter that you can stop when you finish the main story and not worrry about the fact that the endgame isn't very good. Worth those 80 hours.

Alright, here's how I'm going to structure my GOTY list for 2025. I have four games that are my "Runners Up" in no particular order, one Overall Winner, and three Honorable Mentions. We'll start with the Runners Up: Hades 2 Silent Hill f Dune: Awakening Two Point Museum

Still working out my 2025 GOTY list but I have decided to follow the likes of @indiegameawards.gg and say games that used generative AI will not be up for consideration. It doesn't mean they are horrible and irredeemable slop, but it does mean they are not eligible for my highest personal accolade.

And if they don’t - wow, that’s great for you! You’re going to leave your competition in the dust. “Don’t be stuck in the past,” Or what, Good Samaritan? Why are you so concerned for me? Won’t you benefit if I falter and stumble into the dust bin of history?

If devs are *licensing* their own tech, sure. But a dev saying “if you don’t use bump mapping / IK / Source Engine you’re a Luddite / stuck in the past / etc.” - why would they care? IME if someone uses tech that has self-evident value, people scramble to adopt it.

I’ve been in game dev for 26 years and I can’t remember any other time where a specific tech was being insistently and persistently pushed on devs as a group in the public sphere. Why would it? Cui bono? Why would any given dev have an interest in other devs using tech they don’t have a stake in?

If you pay attention to any large industry long enough and follow it to its logical conclusion you eventually end up sounding like a communist even if you started off testing CPU case fans. youtu.be/cUrJVdF2me0?...

explaining to relatives why the plural of "modus operandi" is "modi operandi" not "modus operandis" and watching them shove me into a locker with their eyes

The Escapist is really what all gaming journalism would look like if the top level money guys had zero shame and felt like they could get away with it. This is the point it all converges on under our current organization of the attention economy. Don't think it can't happen to your faves.

"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future." - @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit. Incredible words. Listen to all of it!

Twas the night before Solstice And on all the sites The posters were posting About picking bad fights In slow motion they watched The Top G take his licks And the children did chuckle For it was pretty sick

[Mobster Voice]: "I wantcha to go find this no good fuckin sussy fuckin baka and tell him if he doesn't have my money, that pretty little waifu of his is gonna be starrin in a fuckin live action netflix adaptation. You naruhodo what I'm sayin? Ikuzo! Let me see ya put a little pep in your step!"

I've been pushing back on the Respawn Jedi games being "soulslike" but I just defeated Son of Oggdo and yelled, "Choke on my everlasting hatred!" in a way that generally only some of Miyazaki's most sadistic creations could inspire so maybe I'll give it the nod.

Nah the more I think about it the more I think Imperial Agents go into "It's on sight" with Magnus and the allergen brigade

I don't know how somebody managed to take a photo of my bookshelves but

Predicting I'm going to get a lot of mileage out of this thread.

I've never actually done a 40K faction tier list, so with all the news lately, here's one I thought about for a medium amount of time.

i try to never do things like this but we were displaced very suddenly this week. it's a hard financial hit. our new apartment is unfurnished. my friend suggested i make a Throne wish list so i don't have to finish editing this video on the floor. anything helps, thank you 🩵 throne.com/lolasebastian

"megachurches are shen yun for white people" is an incredible and damning true statement

If you want to feel old today, check out this zoomer on @askhistorians.bsky.social trying to figure out how you can logically trace a path from 9/11 to invading Iraq. www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...