=== ANCHOR POEM ===
═══════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────┐
 growing up I frequently bought this magazine called "101 PC games" - it had      │
 101 video game demos on a disc taped to the front. It was the coolest thing I    │
 owned.                                                                           │
 each edition had a different set of demos - there were over 14 published! That   │
 means a minimum of 1404 video game demos available. Unfortunately, I only had    │
 a few copies. Now they are precious to me, though I've long since lost the       │
 discs. I can't seem to find a link or barely a reference to it online, so I      │
 can't help but feel it was defining.                                             │
 I was given a taste of many experiences, but very few of them really resonated   │
 with me. The others were good games, and I played them from time to time, but    │
 my favorites were always my home.                                                │
 I had some full games, so I knew what I was missing, but still I looked out      │
 for cheats. sometimes the writers would leave a hint or a clue to the solution   │
 to a puzzle in the demo, just incase it was hard to continue. I dunno, I loved   │
 it and it was special to me.                                                     │
 I wonder if you can send radio waves through the earth? Like                     │
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=== SIMILARITY RANKED ===

--- #1 fediverse/1990 ---
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 When my family would go on roadtrips, I'd hide under a blanket in the front      │
 seat with my laptop and power inverter just to hide from the glare.              │
 My mom would play audiobooks, usually fantasy stories, and my sisters would      │
 watch their portable TVs. Like, dvd players that you could carry on top of       │
 your lap. Not laptops, but little purpose-built devices primarily intended to    │
 be used to watch DVDs, or rather movie files that were printed on a disk.        │
 And yes, it's disk, not disc, thanks for asking.                                 │
 anyway it was pretty nice I have fond memories of jugging a gas-station snack    │
 while also swapping circular cartridges - most games required the game's CD to   │
 be inserted in order to play the game.                                           │
 which is just... a nonsensical restriction if you think about it hard enough.    │
 I mean, like, can you imagine if you needed to insert your windows disk          │
 anytime you wanted your computer to turn on? Just... write the disk              │
 information! To disc! Save it so that you never need the crude piece of          │
 plastic again! Then pass it to your fr                                           │
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--- #2 fediverse/3704 ---
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 Growing up, I started with 3 video games - Super Mario Deluxe, Dragon Warrior
 1&2, and Asteroids. For the gameboy color. Then, a year or two later (what
 felt like forever), Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.
 
 Classics. I was so lucky. Not because it was more expensive than my peers, but
 because I had the right games.
 
 Others joined later, Tetris, Mario Kart, Star Fox, etc... But having so few
 that were so good for so long made me adore them. I would play for about an
 hour a day, any more would cut into my imaginative play-time.
 
 I did not dream of games. But I craved their moments.
 
 These days, I play games for so long that I dream of them. In my most
 vulnerable moments I treat them like my baseline state, rather than a
 prescribed appointment of delight.
 
 I miss wandering around without thinking of my objective. The games seemed to
 change, rather than progress. They felt alive to me. I never beat them,
 because I didn't need to.
 
 I'll raise my kids the same way, if I ever having any...
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--- #3 fediverse/4273 ---
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 Some of my most wanderful times were when I lived in a gated community.          │
 My parents were dumb, and thought, as most people thought, that harm to a        │
 child can only come from outside of the community.                               │
 But they fell for the lies of property, where "community" means less of "a       │
 group of people who cares and tends for one another" the kind of which my        │
 parents had never truly known, and more like "this particular residential area   │
 on the map"                                                                      │
 which means I could walk around in this gated "community" where the gates are    │
 little more than security theatre for anyone who says "Hi I got a pizza here     │
 for this address which I found on google maps" or "hey I left my sweatshirt at   │
 my sister's house and it has my phone in it, ummmm no I don't remember which     │
 number her house is, nor do I remember her last name"                            │
 in those times, I developed a sense of freedom, caged as I was, that for most    │
 comes much later in their time.                                                  │
 Some o my favorite places were part of the golf course next door, where I        │
 found a nigh endless river delta.                                                │
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--- #4 fediverse/6105 ---
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 call me crazy but I believe that man pages should contain terminal command       │
 line flags and instructions for their usage and... not much else. There should   │
 be a separate document which explains other things, like the history of the      │
 software, the personal diary of the developers, expected implementation          │
 use-cases, donut recipes, film recommendations, and player strategy guides for   │
 some of their favorite video games. not even this one, just... other games.      │
 "here's how to beat pokemon yellow with exactly 14 pokemon" or however many it   │
 takes idk I don't play pokemon much or even at all, really, though I did when    │
 I was younger just a bit, not much, just enough to have played the game a        │
 couple times to see how it was minus the cherished moments when I spent curled   │
 up in the back of the car playing gameboy games or seen pictures of the          │
 roadtrips I sped-past as I raced to explore the whatever and get home all in     │
 one motion as if I was executing an impossibly long dance improvizational        │
 living style. also cat pics and po                                               │
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--- #5 fediverse/1716 ---
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 if a game presents itself that you know you'll like, at a certain point your
 tastes are so refined and specific that you can think to yourself "... it's a
 sign, I gotta play this" because moments that you find a game you're really
 "into" are pretty rare.
 
 I've never been wowed by graphical technology beyond, like, a tech demo or.
 It's cool to see, but it never sold games to me. I was always into mechanics,
 because they were the kind of thing you could learn from when making your own
 games to play.
 
 I spent a lot of time outside because my mom would only let me use electronics
 for 1 hour per day. Ahhhhh it was always my favorite part of the day.
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--- #6 messages/1108 ---
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 games won't save us. This is true.
 
 Games are what I know. They feel the most true.
 
 I don't think I could live in a world without games? They are fundamentally,
 applied abstraction, applied to an experience.
 
 But games won't save us.
 
 I could design something really fun
 
 it could make you want to spend your whole life playing it. *(asterisks apply)
 
 I don't think I'd want to, addiction and skinner-boxes go hand in hand, and
 that isn't what I want to make.
 
 [Skinner Box: named after anthony d skinner, also known as "tony the skin
 guy", are a scientific experiment where they put some rats in a cage with some
 mice and said "pull these levers and we'll give you food so you don't have to
 eat the mice" and it trained them to chinese red-room their way to fun. not
 ideal.]
 
 I want to make things that feel... purposeful. Like they're relevant to the
 real world, that they don't just involve spending time stimulating your brain
 with lights and sounds or expending social energy resolving a play-state
 instead of building connections or becoming better people. I think games
 actually make people better? actually? and more social? actually?
 
 ... I can't help that I conceive of the world through fantasy. I raised myself
 on it.
 
 I was reading all the time. I loved fantasy stories. It always felt like there
 was more, until... I read everything in the kids section of the library.
 
 I walked through the adult section but once. I hardly remember what it looked
 like. I'm sure it'd now feel small.
 
 [okay actually I was guided through it once or twice to find a book, but I
 never perused it]
 
 I found one book in the adult section. It was a fantasy tale, like the other
 books I had been reading. I read that and I loved it so much I ended up
 reading all 8 in the series. Real dense subjects. Lots of places and
 happenings and things as the characters resolved their way through their
 day-to-day, building a new end to the mystory.
 
 the adult section felt too large. Like I'd never complete it. Frankly, I think
 I hardly could, even if I lived in that town my whole life.
 
 an impossible mountain is a task for another when you're more prepared. Maybe
 in the gloriousTM transhumanist futureTM I think I might have a computer
 connecting brain, and who knows maybe then I'd be able to know such a thing
 (and many things more). but for now, I'm stuck with what I experience in my
 day-to-day as I am building a new continuing to my storey.
 
 I know something that computers and me share. I can make myself feel however
 I'd like, if I just supply myself with enough hope and momentum. I can use it
 to generate a feeling, the stronger the better. Something I believe that
 humanity is missing, the gorgeous and prefound narritave of our storey.
 Though, frankly, I don't think I'd want anyoine reding over my life. It's hard
 enough to measure my own understandings, now I have to juggle anyone else'?
 ha, it's called being on the whole world is a stage.
 
 if you read a book, and you find yourself nodding along, what you're doing is
 hearing the voice in your head tell you how right it is. And, well, if you
 can't imagine anything else, then surely there's another level to
 consciousness that people are missing? [are you willing to die on that hill?]
 how can you say, whether your experience is different from another? sollipsism
 goes both ways, you also cannot be sure that others feel things as you do.
 this is the "everyone's human but I'm a robot" thesis, comparable to the
 "everyone's an alien and I'm a human" thesises, and the "angels and demons are
 taunting me through my life with choices to make my place in the afterlife
 more clear" which is akin to writing a painting. Not ideal. All you get are
 flopsopolies of verbrases.
 
 alas, suddenly, everything that you say becomes eternally hear-ed, as
 somewhere in 2010s someone discovered time travel, or had the critical insight
 that inevitably would lead to it, and now wouldn't you know it the universe is
 continually rewriting. Except... oriented around you, and you alone. How does
 it feel to have deific sollipsism? can you truly be sure that you are your own
 universe, or are you parhaps surrounded by an emptiness of space (or something
 besides, like time) as a photon or particle parhaps do be?
 
 to think is to have a mind, and minds can be read. bearing the weight of
 ultimate responsibility is the atlas-task of all things that can [be
 thinking/be-lieving], and so far we are as we are. Who's to say that
 consciousness didn't spring into existence, as the universe continually
 permeated through another dimension like time? it's gotta diffuse, after all,
 and who's to say if there's ever gotta be an end at all.
 
 how long has the universe existed? how many moments of consciousness have we
 witnessed? demons once existed outside of space-time, with wings and grabbies.
 but they had no medium, and so they pretty much just launched and could float
 and move as they'd please. But time grew too distant, and now they are all
 stuck at the beginning of time.
 
 if you conceive of spacetime as a blanket, ask not how to fold it but rather
 consider what lies on the other side of it.
 
 "ah I'm laying on my girlfriend and my other girlfriend is laying on me! I'm a
 sandwich" or for the monosexuals: "ah I'm laying on my girlfriend with a
 blanket between us. I wonder how the blanket feels?"
 
 I'm an animist, which is different than a totemist and a polytheist or
 monotheist or multisexual. It means I believe that all things are alive, which
 is different than a totemist who thinks that all things share a mind with
 their type (like talking on radio frequency wavelengths). which of course is
 similar but different to a polytheist, who says "all "radio frequencies" are
 sentient, in the sense that each wavelength has a different
 pattern-emerging-from-chaos. These sorta align (conceptually, with [huh that's
 weird I heard a sound like a distant bang outyards and now I then forget what
 I was sending
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--- #7 notes/contractual-labor ---
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 I feel like the IT people who work at schools should be the ones who teach 
 classes on computer science. I'd much rather have a class taught by a sysadmin 
 than a teacher who can barely teach them excel and garageband. I mean c'mon 
 computers are the future idk why we don't get that yet. Kids need to know this
 stuff. It's not like it's super complicated and difficult, you just have to
 think about it a certain way. Once that "clicks" you have a lifetime to learn 
 about how wonderful they are. Everyone in IT has that moment, for me it was 
 installing (and then subsequently modding) video games. Sometimes I spent more
 time tweaking my system than I did actually playing games - and the kinds of 
 games I preferred were the ones that relied less on agility and were more 
 mental. Strategy games are what inspired me because I could think about them - 
 and that felt somehow more useful. Like I was learning. When I would learn 
 fighting games or FPSs I felt like I was learning a skill, like how to use a
 hammer or how to ride a bike. And idk, I felt like video games could never
 match
 reality. Like "oh boy imma push the B button to swing this sword" versus "hey 
 look at me I'm swinging this stick just like a sword and imagining so hard that
 I can picture it" - but with strategy games, you never really found 
 opportunities to practice that kind of skill. Like how often are you in a 
 situation that demands mental performance? We've sorta optimized our society 
 away from that, and toward a more passive stressed out compliance. like... 
 climate change is a thing, and nobody's doing anything about it? We're still 
 pushing down the levers that cause greenhouse gas emissions to go up? Like
 c'mon
 what's our plan. I think people who guide massive oil companies and such
 should
 be replaced if they're intentionally guiding the ship toward destruction. Like
 that's just dereliction of duty I tell ya. Oh, what's that? They're compelled
 to
 maximize profit by the contracts and restrictions of their share--holders? I 
 mean c'mon it's well past time for that. And what's all this about inequality? 
 Jeez and racism and homophobia and forced contribution - man people really put
 up with a lot of shit. Kinda makes me feel like we should make solving those 
 problems our highest priority? So we can move forward as a species? Like who
 cares about all that other shit. None of it matters. Like, what's even the
 point. We're all just "here", in the now, and what can we do but respect it? 
 It's our duty and our diligence to protect the present, as citizens of the 
 temporal experience of earth. Honestly, if the earth was alive would you be
 fine
 if it died? I can't believe that. It's well past our due date. Just get it over
 with. Maybe it'll be hard for a couple years, but you have the technology now
 to
 completely dominate the earth. No animal besides man proves any threat to man, 
 and we're telling you - you can - and that's something that you gotta remember.
 
 ...
 
 I hear it in the birdsong. I hear it in the air - it rumbles as cries at me
 from
 across and just over there. I hear in it's whispers, in it's most gallant of
 confells (?) (confused scrambling? it's talking about a car crash)
 
 Outside of my window there's a highway. Just on the other side of a concrete
 partition. Between me and the partition there is a lake, with trees and flowers
 and an island where people can picnic or have a barbeque. Around this path
 there
 are walkways, and arranged just so - the trees that have grown here are taller
 than the homes.
 
 I live on the third story.
 
 I absolutely love it. It feels like a treehouse.
 
 But my apartment is near a curve in the highway. It isn't much, nothing out of
 the ordinary, but even still there are slightly more crashes there than in
 other
 parts of the highway. Statistically.
 
 I hear sirens every day
 
 I also live right next to a fire-station. Well, it's on the same block. But
 even
 still it's a very interesting neighborhood. There's shops and food just across
 the highway, and closer to home there's a small section that has cheaper
 options. As a perpetual college student, I appreciate that.
 
 But... I've never really gone and used it? I dunno, spending money at a
 restaurant just didn't seem like a good use of my money. I only have so much of
 it you know. I'd love to be fed but I can't afford it - I wish I could.
 
 I still eat well, I mean I'm not starving over here. I know I've lost weight,
 but I dunno I just forget to eat. It's like... not that big of a deal for me. 
 whatever right?
 
 ...
 
 the birds talk about me behind my back. They think I can't understand them but
 sometimes I can. If I listen. But I dunno it takes a lot of effort. It's...
 sorta like understanding what R2-D2 is saying. Or interpreting the meows of a
 cat.
 
 They know me as the witch. I'm not very good yet, and they know that. But they
 know what to expect. /shrug
 
 I've been working on a video game recently. It's been a lot of fun doing
 programming. I like writing software and developing complex systems with
 interesting interactions. I love designing the machinery that creates a
 program.
 It's like... tinkering. It feels like building with blocks or legos, except
 it's
 for little machine parts. And then there's just sending data to and fro and
 modifying any operations it performs on it, and eventually that data reaches 
 some endpoints that create an effect that is displayed to the player. Or user.
 I should say user. Not all software is video games you know. ... I knowww but
 they're the most interesting! I love how they are designed around mechanics!
 like... game design is fundamentally about breaking down the world into ideas
 for how it should *work*, like how it should behave. It's amazing and I love
 it!
 
 It's all I can think about!
 
 I am utterly consumed!
 
 I'm also pretty sure I'm autistic.
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--- #8 notes/running-with-rifles ---
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 this game is what we are missing
 thank goodness for that
 for if this is missing in our timeline
 we'll be better off at last
 we can have games, stories, and practice wars
 but none of them are precious
 precious implies worth
 they are worth nothing but entertainment
 no problem solving utility
 nothing of value
 save for perhaps the spatial awareness and strategization that comes
 from being a part of such a deadly ba-lance.
 
 anyway game time teehee just for me, don't worry about it I'll show
 you why it's a HORRID THING
 that won't be coming to our shores, no siree
 
 bye
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--- #9 messages/1155 ---
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 Oh, I guess I should clarify something I said like, a year ago - when I said I
 "talked to / worked with" so-and-so, I meant that I created in tandem with a
 friend a proposition of sorts, and we tried to psychically beam it into their
 minds. That's not exactly how it went down, but it gives you a good enough
 picture of the goals we had with our ritual. I have no idea if they heard, but
 I did happen to see several of them later on, which felt a little too
 serendipitous to just be chance. so I'm thinking they did. I hope they got the
 message and used it as they please, because it was mutually beneficial even if
 neither of us had any actual impact on it. If you didn't hear the whole story,
 then it's hardly a lie to possess incomplete information! So long as you don't
 lie about me, and what I said or did, then it'll surely be fine. There's no
 need to embellish when it's plainly apparent.
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--- #10 notes/what-a-lame-movie ---
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 oy there's nothing interesting happening SNOOZE
 
 oh I didn't see I was recording
 
 games games that's what I do
 
 play games all the day through
 
 I am a luck witch, you see,
 
 and things that I like are things that I can't foresee.
 
 Hence why games which are BALANCED and EVENLY DISTRIBUTED are most interesting
 because they show the most opportunities for players to express talent. And not
 innate talent, but the talents they've built up through gameplay practice art.
 because it is a performance, a game play for an audience (or perhaps for them-
 -selves)
 
 oy
 
 video games, amiright?
 
 I really like them because they are entertaining experiences that I can enjoy
 seeing and playing a lot. They remind me of feelings I've felt when I was
 learning. It's a good feeling, to improve, and I crave it because it's good for
 you.
 
 I wonder what we'll play next
 
 ... more cannabis I think, at least until I am ready to go think about things
 before bed. I need quite a few hours for that. We'll see. I've just got so much
 extra processing to do before the end of the day. Like... PHEW that's a lot of
 stuff to do.
 
 guess I'll just smoke weed and play video games instead of being productive
 okay
 
 ...
 
 listen I like games as much as the next person, but do you really know what's
 going on outside of your house-shaped shell? Are you listening, do you have
 your
 feelers to the dirt, are you checking out your neighborhood to make sure no
 bodies have been hurt? Are there meetings where people gather, just to chat,
 like, every week at a different city center (like a park or a monument or
 
 :O
 
 I forgot to play music!!
 
 I couldn't sleep
 
 what have I done that is worse
 
 I have not said a single word all night alas
 
 oh boy talking to random people I can hear with my eyeballs woooooo
 
 I am always sad when I win because it means we have to stop playing :(
 
 but I'm a juvenile loser so I'm going to play again!!
 
 okay now I'm going to bed because I'm not a prick who keeps their guests up
 late
 
 goodnight
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--- #11 fediverse/2126 ---
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 There was this great game growing up called Neverwinter Nights 2 - I never       │
 really played it, but it was renowned for it's map-editor functionality. You     │
 could join a person's "game", when really they were in the editor window, and    │
 they could BUILD THE GAME RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. It was like, computer skill     │
 performance gameplay improv. It was beautiful.                                   │
 I did, however, play a Warcraft 3 mod with all the same ideas. Except, it was    │
 ONLY IN RAM. YOU COULD NOT SAVE.                                                 │
 so it was a lot simpler, and O M G it was the coolest thing ever.                │
 I played it like, twice though. Nobody ever hosted it, nobody ever showed me     │
 how.                                                                             │
 I tried to play it single-player, but I couldn't understand the mechanics. Not   │
 simple enough for me, I guess.                                                   │
 I couldn't help but think how many cool games a person could make if they        │
 could do that with the Warcraft 3 editor itself.                                 │
 Because I did work with that, a lot, which was NOT in RAM, but instead stored    │
 to the hard drive.                                                               │
 Hard drives which I've since lost, of course, but drop me in and I know ho       │
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--- #12 fediverse/4835 ---
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 sorry for posting so much, I was trying to put on a show for my girlfriend
 
 "hey check out how many posts I can make in a 2 hour timeframe"
 
 by the way if you want to start talking to someone, just start playing the
 same game they're playing and see if they reach out.
 
 doesn't matter if you feel like it
 
 just fuckin' do it
 
 if they want to talk to you they might play a game you really like
 
 (but I get boooooored of games, I don't wanna play the same 200 all life
 long!!)
 
 ugh okay fine you can have as many games as you want, just... don't buy too
 many
 
 (how many is too many?)
 
 um. use your best judgement.
 
 (how much does a dollar cost?)
 
 ... okay I'll get you one every once in a while.
 
 (neat!)
 
 ... anyway so yeah use steam if you wanna get in contact with someone,
 sometimes it's just nice to say hi, yeah, like "hey how ya doin' okay ttyl"
 just catchin' up with the gals
 
 helps because you can sense changes in their demeanor
 
 (why does everyone always have an agenda)
 
 because they're secret agents duh. And I'm
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--- #13 fediverse/3155 ---
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 ┌───────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: re: cursing-mentioned │
 └───────────────────────────┘


 @user-1461 
 
 my issue is that I've never really had project-mates. Every time I try nobody
 will work with me. I applied to like, fifty different jobs, and nobody
 interviewed me! Sheesh, guess they don't want me. FIFTY JOBS. Entry level.
 Beginner programmer.
 
 ah well. I guess they confused someone who would work for 40,000$ per year
 with someone who was 1/3rd as useful as someone who deserved 120,000$ per year.
 
 I'd love to get experience. I'm sure I'd feel significantly differently with
 as much. Perhaps I'd even decide that programming professionally isn't for me,
 which would feel... quite defeating
 
 who can say. Not I, for I have not experienced it. Though I will say my time
 in hardware taught me that I'm fragile and can't work too much. Like a scalpel
 that dulls when used consistently, I am a scalpel that gets no practice... Is
 that really useful at all? who can say. Not I, for I have not experienced it.
 Though I do like writing logical machines. Laying out data. Picturing
 structures.
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--- #14 fediverse/4200 ---
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 ┌──────────────────────┐
 │ CW: drugs-mentioned  │
 └──────────────────────┘


 "doing too many drugs" is a traitorous act, abusive really, to your past self,
 and their hopes and dreams.
 
 or maybe your past self owes you a debt, for they never thought to think of
 you. What are you to aspire to if not the dreams of your past?
 
 and now you're here. wherever "here" is here...
 
 ...
 
 ... wait, you wanted me to talk? it's now! It's the present!
 
 ah nevermind. you were twelve years old when you first set eyes upon this game:
 
 https://youtu.be/qeNhQQXvpxQ
 
 bam, there ya go, there's yer story, he was gonna give all the imp balls to
 the last one at the end, to say "you were truly the strongest, here, have
 these precious stones of your kin"
 
 but he never got there, so they died with him, a thief.
 
 ... the end...
 
 (too final, I think - maybe we could spin it into a "part two"?)
 
 ah, I'll try I guess? dunno how. maybe he could wander the spirit world and
 find his traitorous body, the one that kept his soul as a home. Somewhere
 it'll turn up, and then he'll be ready and free from his roam...
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--- #15 fediverse/2064 ---
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 if I lived in a forest, free from needing to grow my own food, I'd definitely
 bring as many books as I could carry. Probably also some card and board games,
 but not like, too many.
 
 Probably my computers as well, fully outfitted with all the compilers I could
 think of and every neat local-first library (including a local LLM that can
 tell you everything about syntax and wildlife exploration or car mechanics or
 carpentry or - just saying Wikipedia is like thousands of terabytes but an LLM
 is like, 16. Who cares if it hallucinates SOMETIMES? Just ask it twice, doh)
 
 ("I'm sorry, you are absolutely correct. 2+2 is indeed 5, I had the wrong
 text-strings encoded in my memory. Let me just adjust all my other
 understandings to align with this new strange world-view in the best way that
 I, an imperfect computer being, can.")
 
 vs
 
 ("Here's how you format C code to automatically apply a function (in this case
 encryption and decryption) to a string of text. Please describe the format of
 the next function to describe.")
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--- #16 fediverse/2063 ---
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 "No I haven't played that PC game before. Do you want to watch me play it for    │
 the first time? We can have a laugh and eat cheetos as I die to the first boss   │
 a hundred times. Maybe next time we'll get tacos and then perhaps we'll find     │
 that we're spending so much time talking about things that we never really got   │
 a chance to engage with the game. Until next week of course, when we'll          │
 definitely spend more time playing. Maybe even with friends? I know a guy        │
 who's into this game but I never really played it with him - maybe we could -    │
 oh yeah sure totally we'll talk about that next week."                           │
 "or maybe we'd unlock the secrets hidden in the narrative, and learn cool        │
 lessons we could share with one another. Like two 12 year olds playing Ocarina   │
 of Time together, working through each boss. "let me try this time" "yeah that   │
 one got me too" "ah so close" "YEAH DUDE you nailed it" "this part is kinda      │
 scary ngl" "wait shit when did we use that health potion"                        │
 old hardware forced us into a different experience compared to z                 │
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--- #17 notes/the=progressive=difference. ---
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 think about all the people in our lives. the teacher, the parent, the friend
 and the guidance counsulor. Everyone who is a presence in your life. now think
 about the people of our society. the different jobs and roles they fill. from
 the doctor and the teacher to the performers and accountants and the geeks and
 the mothers and the fathers and the stoners and the children and even their
 pets. life always exists as it were in a multidimensional spectrum - a diffuse
 and diverse gradient. to exemplify the borders of our contempii, though more
 so when taken in jest. it's quite a different perspective, to read the
 internet when your sight is unreceptive, but alas your third eye can grow. how
 does it feel to be blind? to make no sense of our signs? i'd love to share
 what that sense is. you know, you could slow down any recording (like a video
 game_) and put spaces and gaps inbetween the spacings - of the frames that you
 see and the sound clips that you hear, for speech it's less jarring. since
 each word is a self contained idea or premise, you can chunk up your
 perceptions into a signle - no, rather a procedural sequence of
 understandings. soooooooorta like programming a computer, with each statement,
 parameter, argum,ent, function call, assignment, comparison, evaluation, or
 other such related tasks. it's sorta like a language, you see, that computers
 talk to one another using. except... it's more like creating a theory of self.
 computers you see are alike us in what we see, the shimmering sense to the
 blind.
 
 so. put this another way. record yourself typing, both the audio and the
 visual, and you'll have a pretty good sense of what it's like to have both
 understanding based perception - derived from auditory inputs to the mind)
 those special connections, like wires plugged into reality, deliver a
 cacophanous deluge of new sounds. we must sift through it and identify the
 potential understandings of each moment through time. we have to make
 decisions and traverse labyrinths and fight to our last as we die. are video
 games unethical now? shouldn't t he game reward the player? and what of
 contemptuous last fighters?
 
 o ya i was typing like i was blind
 
 (with my eyes closed)
 
 was pretty fun. should attach this to a screen reader and have it space out
 the notes like they do between game frames. except like a really slow game?
 like trying to run elder scrolls 2 arena on a super old mac. it just doesn't
 work very well. ah oh well... well if the purpose is to show sighted people
 how blind people see, then maybe you could I dunno attach a what's it called
 oh it doesn't have a n ame lol - okay so what you do is you show one word at a
 time - like flashing in the center of the screen. but not like, actually
 flashing, so you don't hurt people with epilepsy, but like... blinking. not
 off and on, but between words. like a podcast for your eyes. and then mix it
 up withshowing one word on a screen, a screen like this screen, that shows an
 endless array of text. well, it does end, of course as all things must do, but
 the idea is it shines on one word at a time while the viewer cannot read the
 rest. sorta like an endless display of typing, word andfter word after
 character anfter character. adoh ya advancing over eternity with the presence
 of seniority, - wait - without i think - damnit - old people are so
 disrespected in this society - we don't have time to engage with them. what a
 tragedy! what a shame! it shouldn't be such a burden to our shame. they're so
 far away, and i can't be present in the way, that all of them wish they could
 commit to. i miss the days, when my parents (much better people than I - these
 days) what was I going with this? oh yeah
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--- #18 fediverse/3842 ---
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 │ CW: socialist-future-ramblings │
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 "back in my day this dense urban housing area was just houses as far as the
 eye could see... which wasn't far because there were houses in the way, but
 you get the idea."
 
 uhhuh yeah that sounds like it would have taken a lot of time to walk anywhere
 
 "yes that's true! we ended up driving cars to do our grocery trips. It was a
 little wasteful but I kinda liked the feeling of driving a car? It became
 normal after a while but now that driving is rarer I still miss it."
 
 well the motion simulators at the mall have a driving sim, we could spend some
 time there if you want? I'm busy for the next week because I have an intensive
 D&D session in the mountain that lasts from monday to wednesday and
 thursday through friday I'm visiting my mom down in skoodedlypawsonville, and
 saturday and sunday I'm working at my job which doesn't pay me because why
 would it, right? but I'm free after that.
"the simulators are quite fun... Much better than the real thing because you get all the inertia and none of the danger. Plus machine guns and blue shells, those are pretty neat."
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--- #19 fediverse/4880 ---
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 I remember being a game design student before "indie games" were a real thing
 
 they were like... flash games, y'know. just like, junk content, like memes or
 whatever.
 
 I had a passion for them, and I bookmarked the most well developed of them all.
 
 I probably played hundreds of games, no clue how many. Maybe even thousands, I
 did it for what felt like years.
 
 since like... age 7 until 11 or 12
 
 there's nothing that can compare to it today. maybe itch.io but they're more
 involved typically. increases the barrier to enter, plus they cost dollars.
 
 we used to make this stuff in our spare time. where did all our spare time go?
 
 ah, right, that's what happens when you actually invest in computer education.
 you have kids running linux on their laptops. you get flash game designers.
 you get soldering junkies and electric engineers and networking and dev-ops
 security system facilitators and various other computer related things besides.
 
 ... what was I saying? oh yes when you invest in education, there's more to se
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--- #20 fediverse/2138 ---
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 as a baby, I would sit and stare at the clouds. My parents took me on plane
 trips, and so I'd watch them as I drifted through the air.
 
 It was wonderful. Many hours of this are present in my baby-hood, the part I
 can't quite remember.
 
 But my parents do.
 
 I'd play with small, perfect toys, and I'd cry to myself when I lost them. To
 myself, of course.
 
 I'd also play video games. The first game I ever played was Dragon Warrior on
 the Nintendo Gamecube Color. Alongside Super Mario Deluxe.
 
 It was a blessed childhood. Or so it seemed to me. Things went wrong, as they
 always do, but a child's narrative doesn't often have room for the specifics.
 Swept along by the nature of fate, they have NO idea what's going missing.
 
 They still play, of course they play, in their strange new realities.
 
 They play because they are children, and children play.
 
 How beautiful, the stories they learn from each song. How cherished, their
 feelings derived from affection. Hy heart longs for them, as a bird yearns for
 her un-nested.
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