philomory

But that’s exactly what they just said isn’t UBI, with UBI you’d get to keep the money while working if you wanted to. “Universal” means everyone gets it, not just people who “claim to be uncomfortable working”.

Playframe doesn’t exclusively highlight small indie games, but they do cover a fair number of them alongside various bigger games.

Although, I guess it depends on how unknown a game has to be to “count” as “lesser-known”; I’ve certainly been introduced to games by Playframe, but, it’s not like they’re going onto Steam Roulette or anything.

Some examples of games that I personally hadn’t heard of until they showed up on Playframe include “Worldless”, “Cursed to Golf”, “Frog Detective”, “Say No! More!”, etc. I don’t think any of those are, like, deeply obscure or anything, but, they’re “smaller” indie games in my book.

Also, they’re just really rad people.

For those wondering, this is from “Science: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness”, by the inestimable Zach Weinersmith.

I’m always keen to shit on Google, but, this is about “having search terms in the query string” and “having links that take you directly to the thing you clicked on without any redirect dance to obfuscate the Referer header”. With all the other shit to legitimately complain about from Google, this seems so silly to focus on. Google isn’t even the one that sent the Referer header, that would be your browser (which, Chrome didn’t exist yet at the time). RFC1945, from 1996, for HTTP 1.0, even explicitly stated that any application that communicates over HTTP (i.e. a web browser) should offer the user a configuration option to disable sending Referer headers.

Edit: slight clarification, Chrome did exist during part of the time period that the lawsuit covers, though it only started to pick up serious market share towards the end of the relevant time period.

Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick at 44 minutes, or their A Passion Play at 45 (each was an entire vinyl album on both sides for a single song, though some CD/mp3 re-releases later split them into multiple chunks for easier navigation).

Yoko’s Island Express: Pinball Metroidvania!

In a statement, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican, said the state would comply with the court’s preliminary injunction to administer the fast-approaching 2024 elections “in accordance with the map the federal court has forced upon Alabama.” Candidates face a November 10 deadline to qualify for Alabama’s March 5 primary elections.

But Allen said the state would continue its legal fight against the map’s use in future elections when judges conduct a full hearing on the underlying merits of the case.

Here’s a weird one I had a half-baked idea for: Tower Defense Metroidvania. The idea is that your an acolyte of a temple (or a mechanic in a space station, whatever), and there’s an armed group trying to force their way past the temple’s traps and defenses to get to the heart of the temple and steal the macguffin; that’s going on in a little horizontal track at the top of the screen, and meanwhile the rest of the screen is Metroidvania gameplay as you navigate the interior of the temple (or space station) to activate defenses, acquire magical relics, and eventually awaken the temple’s guardian spirit. You lose if the bad guys get to the heart of the temple, you win when you successfully gather everything you need to awaken the guardian. In the meantime, you have to decide when and where to spend resources (including time) shoring up the “normal” defenses (that delay the attackers) and when you need to just push onward to awaken the guardian.

I don’t think I could possibly pick just one.

• Playing Civilzation: Call to Power, together was one of the first shared activities I ever did with the woman who is now my wife.
• When I was in middle school, my dad made me a text-based game (mildly Roguelike, even, if I recall correctly) set at school centered around going to classes and solving puzzles/collecting school supplies.
• Years ago, I made a game myself for my then-girlfriend to play that secretly just an elaborate proposal wrapped in a video game.

Honorable mentions would go to Xenogears, Metroid 2, Ur-Quran Masters, and obscurities like Rollin’, Tranquility, and Omega, which collectively ended up defining my taste in games, more or less.

But the banker thought it was ok when he did it but not when the “robber” did it. Which represents (so it is claimed) a poorly grounded belief system, since what the banker does is (it is argued) the same as what the robber does.

Honestly, I kinda wonder why that is? Like, why is this the one thing they cannot reliably deflect the blame for? They manage it for just about all their other bullshit.

“If we narrowly define ‘museum’ to be something inherently unethical, we can argue that there is no such thing as an ethical museum!”