=== ANCHOR POEM ===
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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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=== SIMILARITY RANKED ===

--- #1 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.

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--- #2 fediverse/1239 ---
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║ 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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--- #3 fediverse/3008 ---
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 when I play games, the theme only matters when it's being sold to me.
 
 after, once I start playing, I stick around if the mechanics are good.
 
 hence, why I loooooove video games but spend like 30$ on them every 6 months
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--- #4 messages/240 ---
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 I realized the reason it's so difficult for me to get into a new video game is
 because my perfect game existed at one point, but no longer, and all else
 pales in comparison.
 
 The make-believe games of children are without equal. They represent our inner
 truth and desires, cast upon the canvas of our experience through the outputs
 of imagination and physical exertion.
 
 I'd spend my time as a child wandering through the forest with a stick in
 hand, climbing on things and exploring. I grew up in Wyoming, and the forests
 there look like this:
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--- #5 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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--- #6 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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--- #7 fediverse/825 ---
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║ in the past, for most of there day, there was just... nothing to do. it's        │
║ like, nothing to take up your time, nothing to be pulled toward the present.     │
║                                                                                  │
║ but when I was growing up, I had access to video games. and movies. and later,   │
║ TV, after the internet, which was a weird combination of ordering of events.     │
║ Almost like because of that, I'd have a different interpretation of events.      │
║ yeah but like, there's always a continuation of implemented support, [that's a   │
║ weird way to express "the state of being shown news broadcasts over a period     │
║ of time, measured in terms of engagement"]                                       │
║                                                                                  │
║ ... what was I saying? oh yeah what I'm doing here is unethical, like            │
║ obviously I shouldn't be shouting in such a public place. Why would I do it if   │
║ not for an intense and extreme feeling of being ignored or un-[trusted, worthy   │
║ of guiding direction based on merit] gosh merit is such a tricky concept too,    │
║ like how is it measured, and {that doesn't matter                                │
║                                                                                  │
║ ... what was I saying oh yeah I should probably go shout into a void that        │
║ nobody ca                                                                        │
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--- #8 fediverse/857 ---
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║ I feel like I'd learn from coding tutorials more if someone started with a       │
║ complete program they can fit on one panel of their screen, a second for         │
║ showing what each particular thing they're pointing at means, and a third for    │
║ a typical usecase they might build and dismantle on the fly.                     │
║                                                                                  │
║ like, scientific toys that they could use to explain a particular phenomena.     │
║ the way people used to have 3d models they either bought or built themselves     │
║ of like, atoms and wind patterns and stuff they could explain to kids.           │
║                                                                                  │
║ you know, like exactly the kind of things that are commonly stored at            │
║ children's museums.                                                              │
║                                                                                  │
║ I was homeschooled, so I went to those places quite a lot. I always felt a       │
║ little unwelcome because I always seemed to be the eldest in every bunch.        │
║ That's continued all throughout my adulthood, like each of my peers are just a   │
║ few years younger than me. I think I just mature more slowly, and thus           │
║ associate with below the average.                                                │
║                                                                                  │
║ it's like, a descriptor of your rate of defining reality and being guided by     │
║ it. when                                                                         │
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--- #9 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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--- #10 fediverse/1602 ---
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║ @user-1037                                                                       │
║                                                                                  │
║ those all seem really cool though! They all kinda have the same basic UI tho,    │
║ kinda feel like there's opportunities for different kinds of expression. Like,   │
║ in game design there's a lot of different genres, and yeah sidescrollers         │
║ include mario and sonic but they're both very different experiences. So too      │
║ perhaps could we interact with our computers by programming them in more         │
║ engaging ways.                                                                   │
║                                                                                  │
║ they say some people are visual learners, others need to be taught, some         │
║ people need to watch someone else doing it, and a few might just learn by        │
║ plugging their brains into a computer and downloading a black belt in kung fu.   │
║                                                                                  │
║ Maybe typing long paragraphs of logic makes sense for some people, I know for    │
║ most it doesn't come naturally. Maybe some people are more used to like,         │
║ looking at maps that you can examine at different levels of abstraction. Like    │
║ players who play Paradox games zooming from a national perspective to states     │
║ and individuals and all the other things they might want to strategize using.    │
║ Or m                                                                             │
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--- #11 fediverse/6271 ---
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 │ CW: re: hypothetical worst case fascism reality check │
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 @user-641 
 
 it's practice. you never know when you might need to blend in. really it's
 just useful as discipline, good practice to be in. I think it's okay if we
 reduce our own functionality? actually? sometimes it's good to use different
 email clients. hey do you know how to mathematically encrypt things well
 neither do I because the designers of the computer system decided that wasn't
 a very common usecase I guess.. jmean it's not like they'd spend all that
 computer resources [THEY'RE SO FAST] on thinking about correlations in your
 predicted pathway narratively through life. "ah help I'm in a psyop" haha yeah
 we do those all the time "so uhhhh I guess we'll just talk to people and see
 how they do?" wow okay it's sure nice to be part of a civil government, I
 think we can find our way to the lumber producers just fine thank you very
 much.
 
 ... oops sorry, a baby did electronics arts (challenge everything) I'm a
 little silly don't mind me brb I gotta go see~

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--- #12 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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--- #13 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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--- #14 fediverse/5212 ---
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 the reason you start with a game engine is because then you'll have tools to
 make however-many games you want. Tools that you know intimately enough that
 you can debug and improve them without breaking your creative flow by learning
 something new halfway through a project
 
 the whole point of individualized projects instead of viewing each computer as
 a complete and total whole (why do we need servers again?) is that you can
 paint a picture of where the design of the program is intended to go, such
 that all the considerations are in place and whatever issues or struggles you
 might face along the way are adequately addresssed, -- stack overflow --
 [because I mistyped addressed] -- -- if you know what "stack overflow" means
 you have intimate knowledge of the technology, and can probably guess what it
 means in context when I say it. "nuts I lost that train of thoguht" -- stackl
 ov
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--- #15 fediverse/1189 ---
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 @user-883 
 
 whoa cool 🤩​
 
 Dragon Warrior was the first game I ever played. When I was ~5 years old or
 so, my mother bought a gameboy color for me with two games before we went on a
 plane ride. I don't even remember where we were going, but the fact that she
 knew that a portable video game console with two games (Dragon Warrior
 1&2, and Super Mario Bros Deluxe) would shut my autistic ADHD ass up
 enough to be respectable on an airplane makes me realize how much she saw me.
 Thank you, mom, I love you
 
 Anyway I was the eldest "brother" (I'm trans lmao jokes on you, family in the
 past) so if anyone deleted my save I would kick their ass :D
 
 It still happened once or twice and I did not, in fact, kick their asses,
 though I wanted to. Shame. Missed opportunities I guess
 
 Though to be fair it's not like anyone in my family ever expressed the
 slightest interest in anything I was into. Not like they'd want to play games
 because it was something they wanted, oh no - they would only do it to be
 close to me. Whatever >.>
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--- #16 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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--- #17 fediverse/3039 ---
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 @user-570 
 
 I'd LOVE a game which taught toki pona!!
 
 You've brought some of this up before. I'm uninterested in co-opting some
 existing thing in a way I then can't support myself off of.
 
 Well my points are these:
 
 MMOs are difficult because of the added complexity in their networking
 
 an open source networking solution exists
 
 however no open source client solution exists
 
 but one could be written, which is about as hard as making a game using Bevy
 or Raylib or Love2D, and if one were written, then games could easily be made
 on-top of them which you would then support yourself off of. I mean... I'd
 want to support myself too haha, and I can think of like 100 different games
 that could be made in an engine like that.
 
 the idea is that by opening up more design space you can apply your ideas as
 an early pioneer in a particular design direction that hasn't been able to be
 explored because the up-front investments in making an MMO are huge.
 
 Meanwhile, with this system you could script them in Lua very easily.
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--- #18 fediverse/4597 ---
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 what if we made marketing part of research and development
 
 I mean, they're the ones who need to know what products people tend to prefer
 right?
 
 so... for every ad give the consumers a choice. then you'll be able to tell if
 they prefer the red gameboy or the purple-see-through.
 
 frankly it just makes sense to have 50% of the income go to products and 50%
 to administration. I mean, what are all those executives up to anywho? Their
 joyrides on yachts are great for socialize, but are they really more
 productive than coffee-shops at noon?
 
 seriously like it's not that big of a deal to just... reduce their salary.
 
 unless it really is about greed? control? power?
 
 pfweh, I thought so.
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--- #19 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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--- #20 fediverse/3578 ---
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 It's so sad how some of the best games ever made get glossed over because the
 fun you remember is the friendship and fantasy you felt rather than the game
 itself
 
 time marches forward, and culture changes to no longer fit the old tools quite
 right. Plus they look like PS1 graphics ewwwwww look at those muddy textures
 and blocky bits arranged into triangles and meshes! how dorky, how retro
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