@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-12-12 13:41:30
Been starting a habit of writing down story/game ideas as I have them even though most of them will never seriously get started, let alone finished. It's been fun since writing things down gives me a chance to think them through a bit more than just pondering them in my head. Anyways, here's a #GameDesign idea:
"Grand" - is a "reverse metroidvania" in which as a grandparent, you slowly lose movement options as the story progresses, requiring more and more convoluted routes through the map to reach the same areas. You do still explore "new" areas in memory mode (and unlock movement options like a bike in your memories) before traversing the areas again in the diegetic present. The story follows your quest to protect a grandchild from the machinations of a Kafkaesque state, first trying to track them down within the system and then trying to get them released. Each "boss" is "fought" through an abstracted conversation system where memories, keepsakes, and various kinds of emotional/logical appeals wear down your opponent's nihilism and/or fear until they're willing to help you. Normal "enemies" are just people on the street who might bump into you and drain some of your stamina as you pass by if you don't issue a properly-timed "excuse me" or the like.
@Xexyz@mastodon.me.uk2026-01-13 16:29:51
Outrun 2006: Clarissa's challenges
I think that's her name, anyway. I completed a few of the flagman challenges, but fancied something different so started to play some of Clarissa's heart attack missions. And they're hard. In fact, I've only unlocked about half of them so far, since you need to complete a stage in a normal heart attack event before you can replay it over and over again by itself.
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-12-13 15:49:09
Just finished "Endgames" by Ru Xu, sequel to "Newsprints." I was happy to see the characters from the first book get their endings, but Xu feels incredibly out of her depth writing about the politics of empire and the power/complicity of the press, which completely dampened my enjoyment.
As just one example, there's a ton of interesting nuance to explore behind the idea of a disabled imperial ruler and how disadvantage/persecution (from which you have been effectively shielded) does not justify harming others. This book explores none of that.
I think it does serve as a great example of how severely one limits one's own imagination when one buys into the myth of nationhood as natural/inevitable/good. It's not that Xu's politics are especially authoritarian, I think, but that she's just (been kept?) resoundingly naïve, and so her plot resolution feels childish (or perhaps that's an insult to children).
#AmReading #ReadingNow
@digitalnaiv@mastodon.social2026-02-13 10:19:00
OpenAI poliert die KI-Recherche: Deep Research in ChatGPT läuft jetzt auf GPT-5.2, liefert Vollbild-Reports mit Inhaltsverzeichnis & Quellen und lässt gezielt Websites priorisieren. Mehr Kontrolle statt „Wischi-waschi“ – aber kein Freibrief für unkritische KI-Outputs. #DeepResearch #KI
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it2025-12-12 20:51:14
I have to say, spending a decade organizing (for bike/ped/transit infrastructure) has done more for my understanding of how the world _actually_ functions than working at any company or startup, taking any classes*, or really anything else. It's the weird interactions between businesses, the public, technology, and the political landscape that really shape our society.
* Not that classes aren't useful! I took a law class in college and use the knowledge I gained there on a wee…
@manawyrm@chaos.social2026-01-12 12:20:38
Mal etwas in beruflicher Funktion...
Wir suchen Cloud-Engineers in meinem Team bei der Hetzner Cloud, die sich mit BMCs, Ansible, QEMU/KVM, Go, etc. auskennen:
https://hetzner-cloud.de/jobs/2479946
100% remote, DE only :BoostOK:
Geht um den Betrieb der eigentlichen Plattform, alles…
@sauer_lauwarm@mastodon.social2026-02-12 06:42:54
"Das ist kein Standard-Tullubullu", sagte M., der am Fensterbrett saß, während ich hastig meine Sachen in den Koffer packte, gerade damit befasst, verstreute Steck- und Nähnadeln zusammenzuklauben. "49 Handschuhe und 5 Socken", sagte ich, die hätten die Leute da draußen im Schwimmbad verloren, ausgestreut, doch ich wählte die Zahlen nur, um M. zu beeindrucken, ich hatte ja gar nicht genau gezählt. (
@funkvolk@mastodon.social2025-12-10 12:45:00
Die einen finden #KI super, die anderen finden es gefährlich.
Die wenigsten verstehen, wie der Schlonz funktioniert. (Ich maße mir nicht an, es komplett verstanden zu haben, aber ich hab zumindest eine ungefähre Idee.)
Es ist ein Zaubertrick, wie zersägte Frauen und Kaninchen in Hüten -
was Ihr seht, ist nicht das, was wirklich passiert.
Hier wunderbar erklärt von
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-12-13 00:30:41
Just finished "The Raven Boys," a graphic novel adaptation of a novel by Maggie Stiefvater (adaptation written by Stephanie Williams and illustrated by Sas Milledge).
I haven't read the original novel, and because of that, this version felt way too dense, having to fit huge amounts of important details into not enough pages. The illustrations are gorgeous and the writing is fine; the setting and plot have some pretty interesting aspects... It's just too hard to follow a lot of the threads, or things we're supposed to care about aren't given the time/space to feel important.
The other thing that I didn't like: one of the central characters is rich, and we see this reflected in several ways, but we're clearly expected to ignore/excuse the class differences within the cast because he's a good guy. At this point in my life, I'm simply no longer interested in stories about good rich guys very much. It's become clear to me how in real life, we constantly get the perspectives of the rich, and rarely if ever hear the perspectives of the poor (same applies across racial and gender gradients, among others). Why then in fiction should I get more of the same, spending my mental bandwidth building empathy for yet another dilettante who somehow has a heart of gold? I'm tired of that.
#AmReading #ReadingNow
@pre@boing.world2025-12-06 12:43:08
You see a detective on the TV and he’s interviewing all the suspects asking them what they were doing on the night of the murder a month ago last Tuesday night.
And on the TV, the suspects all know. Right away.
If you asked me ten years ago though, I’d have had barely any clue. If you’re lucky it’d have been something planned in my calendar but mostly, dunno. Watching TV maybe? No idea what show. Was that a night I was in the pub?
As we all get older this problem increases I’m told. Eventually full on senility sets in.
But what if you have already built the habit to record what you’re doing? To be able to look back and revise and review how you spent your days? An external aid as a crutch to your own forgetful brain’s cortex?
So I started this Exocortex Log over a decade ago and now I can answer: Ten years ago on Tuesday I was having dinner with the guitarist from my band and his girlfriend and they burned the pudding.
The app has been half finished and barely able to even record let alone review for most of that time, but now it’s ready enough that someone else might use it too if they want.
Try it out: #lifeLog #app #memoryAid