walkingears

For me it feels important to maintain faith that, deep inside, people are good, or at least are born innocent, and that it's mainly our institutions, philosophies, and cultural norms that turn us against each other and harm our souls with toxic stuff. And that through seeking local community and connection we can reconnect with the natural tendency towards compassion that exists within us all even as so many of our leaders fail to show those qualities.

There's a big moment in SOMA that really stuck with me. Not gonna spoil it. Mostly it's a horror game but it engages with some pretty intense ethical questions and does so in a way that feels very personal.

I write music! I originally used the free program Finale Notepad where you can write sheet music with digital instruments "performing" it. I switched to Musescore which is also free but has better-sounding instruments and more versatility for things you can do within a composition

Feels a lot better supporting Disney animation, especially animation based on new concepts, than it does supporting their live-action stream of reboots and movies based on theme park rides. I was thinking earlier today about Disney's animated films still having some imagination behind them compared to recent live action offerings which feel pretty soulless

There's also a sort of morbid fascination and curiosity that comes from a situation this unique. I definitely agree that of course the sinking refugee ship should have gotten far more help and attention, but I think the "morbid curiosity" element is certainly part of why this got so much attention. The whole situation of paying a fortune for visiting the Titanic in a janky unregulated submersible and then vanishing underwater is...bizarre, and surreal, in a way that captures attention

It does seem like Oceangate advertised in a misleading way, emphasizing claims of safety and compliance with safety standards. There's also probably an unfortunate bias, of sorts, of "rich and powerful man saying something is safe in a confident and authoritative voice so it must be true"

Visually it looks amazing. Love the addition of the "parallel roads" feature too, that'll be a huge timesaver.

I loved Midnight Suns, but the replayability does suffer because of all the dialogue scenes without easy ways to skip past them. I'm playing a second game now on higher difficulty and still enjoying the combat but it's a bit annoying to have to skip past all those conversations. If they patch in a New Game+ option that lets you just skip to the combat it'll really improve the game. Still I'll probably do one more campaign with the DLC characters added, I hear some of them are a lot of fun.

After a few years of mostly playing strategy & tactical games, I fired up Minecraft this weekend. I'd never really given it a proper try before, but it's been refreshing and relaxing. I started on survivor mode but found the enemies kind of annoying, so I switched to peaceful survivor mode and that's been fun so far. Just enjoying the "wander around and build stuff" atmosphere. Honestly makes me want to play more sandbox-y games after a while of mostly playing more intense stuff.

Is it sad that I wouldn't be surprised if Spez suddenly rolls back reddit's restrictions on hate speech, taking after Musk to pander to the alt right? Given that spez has already expressed admiraton for Musk, and seems to have alt right leanings, I wouldn't be surprised.

yes, social media keeps proving why a profit-driven society really doesn't have the interests of individuals in mind, companies will just do whatever they can get away with to extract as much money as possible from ordinary people.

Yeah it would have to be mass deletion by people who use the app regularly, which (should) lead to a measurable reduction in traffic and ad revenue, assuming that those people would spend less time on reddit if they didn't have the app handy on their phones constantly anymore.