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Wow. Now I wish I knew more about him. I've used vim nearly every day of my career.

Wow. I'm super impressed with all the suggestions here. I'll add a few of my own that haven't been mentioned yet.

Her Story - you query a police archive database for video clips, eventually revealing the plot. Kind of a mash between a murder mystery book with the pages out of order and Google. If you like it, check out Immortality

What Remains of Edith Finch - all you can do is walk around a very unusual house. The narrative reveals itself as you do so. That narrative is fantastical and heartbreaking and also very sweet.

Crawl - multiplayer game - you are all trying to escape a monster and trap filled dungeon. One of you is alive and the rest are spirits who can possess the monsters and traps. Any time a spirit kills the living player, they become the living player. Unique boss fight at the end where multiple spirits control parts of a huge boss monster.

Really enjoyed Heaven's Vault.

Surprised that The Enteral Cylinder only has 300-ish reviews. I remember seeing it all over the new when it launched. How is it?

Thanks! It's a really interesting topic and I was excited to learn more. But I'm not sure the writer offered much to support their explanation for why these tropical spices are so closely associated with winter time in the north.

For example, I was underwhelmed by the "cinnamon is an antidiabetic, so it'll help process all those sugary treats you're eating over the holidays" fact. Does that really explain why cinnamon is associated with this season from a historical perspective? I can't say for sure that past generations weren't adding cinnamon to holiday foods because they knew it was an antidiabetic. But I'm going to continue doubting it until I see something persuasive.

I've been thinking about the disappearance of God games. I think they didn't disappear, but they evolved so much that we don't recognize them anymore.

I feel some moved into the direction that we now call "simulators", like RimWorld, the Sims, Two Point Hospital, and more. In my mind, the big difference between the God games of old and those new games is that in the older games your role as the player was explicitly defined, where in the new games it's not. In the old games, you were "playing the role of a god in that realm". The new games don't bother to tell you "who" you are in this setting. You're just the player, get on with it, play the game.

I feel like other God games moved in the direction of top down colony builders, like Against the Storm or Frostpunk. And again, I think the big difference between those games and something like Populous is that your role as the player doesn't have an explicit name in the game world. You're not a "God". But most of the rest of the trappings are there, I think.

What do you think?

I used to have this stance as well.

But my opinion on the situation changed when I noticed the ways that one class is waging war on the other classes in my country. There is real damage being done, real violence being perpetrated. Wage theft, poisoning the environment, suppressing voting and certain kinds of speech. Limited access to healthcare, limited access to education, limited access to the jobs that confer greater respect or mobility. Some people are living in a kind of hell and dying earlier because of it.

And those doing the violence are usually protected from the consequences of their actions by others in society saying just what you've said. "It's okay to protest, but don't inconvenience anyone while doing it". "It's theft to deny me the use of the road that you're blocking with the protest or the building that you're protesting in front of".

I used to think that protests where everyone remained polite were the only ones I could respect. Other kinds of protests, where people were being disruptive were just hooligans acting out. I used to say those things.

Maybe this way of thinking helps to preserve in some small way the politeness of society. I doubt it's effective at doing that in a meaningful way. And if there is a class of people who are oppressing another class, ending that oppression would be the most effective way of increasing the politeness of society as a whole, even if certain kinds of disruption was needed to get there.

One thing that I do know is true is that saying these things does help the bully class to continue doing what they are doing. They aren't going to stop just because someone asked nicely. They are being protected by words like this. And that's not okay.

That is an amazing acronym and I wish to see it everywhere!

That sounds incredibly difficult. From some of your other comments, it seems like you're being really transparent with partners about your own challenges. That's impressive.

You are worthy of being loved, regardless of whether or not someone is actually showing you that love. Things can and will change all throughout your life. There's good reason to have hope. Take care.

Seems like a solid article.

I would have loved to see more said about the effort required to move from having traditional relationships to ENM relationships. Something about the article being a Dos and Don'ts makes me feel it's targeted at newcomers, and having a healthy respect for how big that leap is could be really helpful.

I found a ton of the information in Poly Secure by Jessica Fern to be just what I needed when I read it.

I agree that the world does not need "you" to reduce your footprint to zero. But people do have collective power. If everyone reduced their footprint a bit, that would make a dent.

Even better is if everyone realized that the big polluting beasts are fed by us. Everyone withholding just a little money from these corporations makes the graph of their profit go from pointing up to pointing down. And they sit up and take notice at that, even if they are still making billions annually. They are literally a house of cards and we are the bottom layer.

Damn. I had forgotten what actual journalism looks like. There was actual work done here to investigate and acquire facts. I've been reading "articles" that are just paraphrased PR statements for so long. This was a breath of fresh air.

Just got all the supplies I need for making a Dopp bag.

Just finished a crochet blanket with hood for my little one. Still have to put a ridge of dragon scales down the back for him.

I feel this comment is brushing off the important point the commentator above is making. I understand that you wanted to clarify or defend your original statement. But if you don't respond appropriately to what the person you're talking to has said, you're not really having a conversation. Instead you're just talking at someone.

I can't tell if you're trolling. But if you aren't, here's something cool you might enjoy.

If an object has two sides, you can colour each side a different colour. Think of a dinner plate. That has two sides and an edge that goes all the way around. You could use a marker to colour the front side red, stopping anywhere you hit an edge. Then you could use another marker to colour the back side blue, because the backside wouldn't be coloured yet.

It sounds like I'm explaining this in a dumb, very obvious way. I am. Not because I think anyone reading this is dumb. But because the shape in the photo does something that is not obvious.

Look at the shape above and imagine it without all the keys sticking out. Imagine it is smooth enough to draw on with a marker. It's pretty easy to see where any edges are. Imagine colouring one side of the shape red, avoiding where the edge is. If you keep colouring as much as you can, without crossing an edge, once you're done you'll find that there's no place left to colour with the blue marker. You'll have coloured the whole shape. It only has one side and that one side snakes and twists around to be its own backside as well.

If you're looking to learn more, the shape is called a Möbius strip.

Thank you for this! Lots of people online have pushed forward the idea that Google search results are not as useful as before. This was the first article that I've read that did a good job of quantifying what that actually means and providing context as to why it is happening.

Oh man, I just want to give a shout out to the Splatoon ink mechanic.

The game is a competitive arena shooter. That would be pretty uninteresting, but instead of competing for kills or holding objectives, the teams are competing to cover the largest surface area with ink or paint. That's pretty neat. But there's more.

Every player has a special "squid mode" they can use when standing on ink of their colour. When in squid mode players travel much faster, can travel up walls, and are extremely hard to spot, but can not attack or lay new ink.

This makes the laying ink in specific areas valuable, as it makes it faster to get from the spawn point to the front faster and easier. It also rewards holding contiguous trails of ink, or conversely, cutting off your opponent's ink trails.

Please consider WanderSong. It's a small game and was made with so much love. Games can have a huge variety of plots and environments. But the vast majority of games, regardless of what they are about, are actually about victory. You're a space dwarf mining for minerals, but the game is all about mastery and winning. You're a dragon-kin with magic shouts, but every quest is about achieving a victory over a challenge. And so on.

I would say that WanderSong is not a game about victory. It's a game about happiness. The character, the mechanics, the plot, the environments; they all serve first to explore the meaning of happiness. There's nothing else quite like it. You can find it here.

Thanks for this! This gave me a lot of new ideas to explore.

I knew that I was going to enjoy A Short Hike before I played it. What I didn't expect was how much I enjoyed it. There's so much more there than I anticipated and some of it is really lovely.

That was a fascinating read. The plasticity of the brain constantly amazes me. It's incredible the way some parts of the brain will just handle tasks that are seemingly totally unrelated.

That's amazing!

Yes! For most genres of games, I've noped out of some games but completed others. It wasn't until you mentioned it that I realized I've never completed a Zachtronic game. I absolutely adore what Witness was doing, but I haven't finished it. I should go back to it.

Oh man. Polysecure gave me so many of the words I needed but didn't have.

Gonna jump in to agree that Moon+ Reader seems to be the most commonly used. And for good reason: it's very customizable and it does a great job presenting text in an easy to consume way.

OP, I'm sure you've already tried it, but consider giving it another go. You can make it do nearly all the things on your list.

Right?! So excited for season Two and so excited that we'll get to see a proper (planned) ending to the series instead of a slow fading away before cancellation.

I have long enjoyed a series called The Truth. The vast majority of episodes are one-off stories. The actors tend to be very good. The stories run the gamut from fantasy and sci-fi, to speculative fiction and horror. Most stories contain some fantastical element, but not all. I tend to finish episodes wanting desperately to share that story with a friend. They asked for listeners to vote last year on which story they liked best. Here are the stories with the most votes:

The Dark End of the Mall

Tape Delay

Possible Side Effects

Rideshare

Fish Girl

You’re Not Alone

I can highly recommend all of these creators. Each makes entertaining and informative content frequently.

STEM communicators:

https://youtube.com/@SabineHossenfelder

https://youtube.com/@upandatom

https://youtube.com/@DrBecky

Maker:

https://youtube.com/@xylafoxlin

Dramatic Melee communicator:

https://youtube.com/@JillBearup

Hard space: Shipbreaker was my go to comfort game for a long time. Dive in, cut some walls, and toss some junk. Just perfect.

There is really something very different about this game. If you point to any individual part of it, there are other games that do that thing. But all together, it's quite unique. And it's a pretty fun game.

Thanks for that! I actually had to put the game down for several months because my child had just been born and I couldn't handle one of the scenes in the game. It was heavily telegraphed, so I had time to stop the game before anything upsetting happened. And when I went back to it months later it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be. But yeah, it's a game about the death of many family members, told through metaphor and fanatical imagery.

I thought that too when I saw it. But I believe the Parker solar probe only looks at the sun. That was probably a huge disruption on the surface of the sun, similar to the little spots that are seen before and after, but on a much larger scale.

Could that have been the site of the eruption that caused the plume that the probe flew through?

I've been enjoying my Fairphone 4 a lot since getting it last year. This camera update really improved the experience of taking photos.

Wandersong is a game about happiness that made me really happy while I was playing it. Not all the way through; there are parts that are sad too. But I'm thinking of replaying it because it made me feel really happy when I played it the first time.

Thanks for this! I had no idea about the history of the game.

This is a really interesting article. Thank you!

I come back to play Duskers often and I always enjoy it. There's not much else like it.

I love seeing recommendations for Wandersong. It's a completely different type of adventure game with a unique, and lovely, plot.

Great read! Thanks for sharing.

This is fascinating and I would have never heard about it without you. Thanks!

Loved this game! Got completely consumed by it.

If I had been the one to decide what features this sequel should have, I never would have considered including a playable New Jerusalem or having NPC companions or any of the new stuff. And if you had asked me what I thought about those features before the game came out, I would have said it sounds like they don't understand what people liked about the first game.

But this game surprised me in numerous ways and I honestly loved every hour of my playthrough.