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.

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

Yeah i’m in my 30s and still enjoy playing games, nice way to relax at the end of the day.

Related question though: any good Minecraft channels on youtube that aren’t made for children? I’m just starting to get in to minecraft now and it’s been super fun, but the youtube playthroughs I’ve been looking at have all been…seeming to not be catering to an audience my age, to put it politely.

I agree with the folks talking about instrumental music, since music with vocals can be more distracting. Classical music and jazz can both be great - pick a composer and chances are there are huge playlists of all their symphonies or piano sonatas or whatever on Youtube. Or a Youtube search for “(jazz artist name here) full album” can get you a full album to listen to. I also like Soundcloud for listening to more “homemade” music by new artists. I ditched Spotify over the Rogan stuff so youtube and soundcloud are my main sources for streaming music these days

I end up gravitating towards favorite games that I play tons of, as well as additional games that I play through once for the experience.

The “core game” I keep coming back to these days has been XCOM 2, which I never really got tired of.

I loved Svalbard, such a strange and surreal place. How long were you there?

I’ve been hoping we’ll get a travel community added to Beehaw sooner or later. Great photos!

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 makes it easier to skip some of that stuff, it’ll really improve the replayability aspect IMO. 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.

I wouldn’t mind as much if half the websites out there didn’t have the trashiest ads I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve got an ad blocker on my desktop but not on my phone. Amazing that supposedly “professional” businesses are filling their sites with sleazy ads that look like they’ll lead you directly to installing a bunch of viruses.

One quote that jumps out: “It’s difficult to say with certainty what the causes are, but Facebook has made no secret about its intention to deprioritize news on its platform and give greater precedence to video content, which by nature results in less clickthrough traffic."

It does feel like my Facebook “algorithm” is constantly trying to push “shorts” on me…annoying little videos clearly meant to imitate, I assume, Youtube Shorts, Tiktok, Instagram short videos, etc…

Broadly speaking, with all that’s happening in the social media world, it feels like some sort of reckoning or change is coming, but where exactly things are heading is hard to say…

I live in Atlanta, where there are lots of outdoor spaces and trees, parks, sunny weather most of the time, cool variety of foods and neighborhoods, and some fun outdoor parties and festivals, like the Jazz Festival in Piedmont Park that’s free to attend and draws a huge crowd.

There’s frustrating political stuff at the city and state level (Cop City, for instance), but even so, a lot about Atlanta makes me feel hopeful for Georgia (and therefore for the US)

Yeah, to me the little anthropomorphic blobs feel like rehashes of the characters from Inside Out, with a dash of the spirits/ghosts from Soul, but the premise of Elemental isn’t anywhere near as interesting as those other two.

Thank you for listening and your kind comments!

Sure yeah, happy to share, thanks! Here’s a link to a string quartet I uploaded last year (“performed” by digital instruments on my computer). If you make music too I’d be happy to take a listen as well! https://soundcloud.com/walkingears/sets/string-quartet-concordant

i like Soundcloud, have an account for my own music on there, but I also listen to music by others. Gotta appreciate how the internet can help DIY artists put some work out into the world. Listening to a composer on Soundcloud now named Andy Feldman. https://soundcloud.com/feldya/tracks

Love the idea of smaller “indie” social media communities without any profit incentive, just purely spaces to socialize and hang out. Also appreciate that there’s solid moderation against hate speech etc. Otherwise it’s still clear that it’s a new and growing thing and perhaps there’s some uncertainty about what the day-to-day realities of it will look like, but it’s interesting to be exploring it at such an early time.