Hard to say what my favorite cover song is, but this would be very high up there.

I still think their latest album is probably their best overall but 'Beast of Carthage' is constantly stuck in my head and is an amazing track.

So, you may notice things look a bit different around here.

Bruno moved his blog to a proper selfhosted option instead of Bear, which is something I am also considering, so this was a great read of what I should expect.

It’s one thing to hate software, but that hate takes on new dimensions when you have to use it for your job. To choose software and have it fail is unfortunate; to be chained to it for sustenance and be unable to walk away is torture. Because of this, I have nothing but hatred for Adobe. They are one of tech’s greatest villains, the software has gotten worse to use, and if you don’t like it fuck you there’s the door.

Audiences today are allergic to directness - they prefer stories to be about unfolding secrets, and they want convoluted Plots which involve them in a process of discovery. [...] Audiences have been trained by the last 20 years of high-budget television to analyze plot, but not to analyze theme. This stuff frequently makes me feel completely insane.

I think I'm warmer on The Odyssey than Laura is overall, but I agree wholeheartedly with this bit. What I like about Nolan is his bluntness, even when it's often the worst part of his movies. That worked for me in The Odyssey. But the way people are talking about it is, like Laura, also driving me insane.

I play a game like Vampire Survivors, and I think… where is the “play”? where is the joy, the creativity, hell, the “series of interesting decisions”? The time between level ups is just the time the reels spend spinning. After the first few, every level up is as automatic as pushing “spin again.”

You know, finally enough I had the exact same feeling as this author when I played Vampire Survivors. I knew I wasn't losing money but after a while it still felt slimy. The game relies on a LOT of stereotypical Dark Patterns, specifically those in the gambling space, to work.

I think the formula is not entirely unsalvageable -- imo, Terratech Legion iterates on it quite well and much more interestingly. But the raw, simple nature of Vampire Survivors just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Anti-transparency is a fundamental pillar of right-wing politics. The right of powerful people to do as they please is only useful if it’s free of consequences, and the only way to assure that is if no one knows what they’re doing.

This selective application of the term “authoritarian” reveals that Western discourse on “freedom” is designed to delegitimize resistance while legitimizing empire. By treating anti-imperialist struggle as equivalent to fascist tyranny, the so-called “collective West” erases the distinction between liberation and oppression.

Although reality shouldn’t be up for debate, the question is what happened in 2020. Even though we all lived through it, our current medical establishment doesn’t want you to remember most of it.

It's a nice idea that "This Land Is Your Land" should be our national anthem, a wonderful song full of generous and idealistic sentiment that's actually easy to sing. [...] But the truer one, the one that speaks to our collective inability to stop repeating the sins of our forebears and the ultimate inadequacy of even the brightest and boldest among us when it comes to making our long violent history actually past, is "John Henry."

A well laid out, interactive map of the current Trump administration's connections with crypto. Really cool artifact.

Some honesty, please. Of course it feels good to own a car; sometimes it is even necessary to own a car, because enough people have decided that it feels good to own and drive a car.

Excellent article about Los Angeles and transit and cars and American culture. I do honestly believe that the car is an evil machine, and this country's reliance on the car is a sign of our general backwardness and social myopia. It is a wretched deal that was struck before my time but I still must deal with. Ain't that being a millennial.

I abhor the fatalistic pessimism that regards American public transit as unfixable, and I extend that to Los Angeles. But while increasing ridership through coverage and frequency is in the hands of LA Metro and funding, the broader experience of getting around is a bit more complicated. A lot of my complaints fundamentally boil down to a desire for there to be fewer cars.