vent
https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/121lhfq/i_lost_everything_that_made_me_love_my_job/
I'm sorry, but I've stopped finding myself in this world. Just, like, sincerely speaking. Stuff like this, for a person who hinged their worth on utility, terrifies me. Maybe this is my boomer point, but generative AI - even with its inherent limitations - made me unable to imagine living in the world I am about to exist in.
How the fuck do I begin to explain this when I finally haul my ass to a therapist? Because I'll have to eventually, I can't possibly delay it for the fifteenth year.
Gameplay for Hello Operator continues to evolve. After I decided the flow was better if the player wasn't in the dead center of the single-screen field of play, I redesigned the mining platform for more of a side view. I think this gives it more character than the previous design. It's still very much a WIP/placeholder.
The basic shape is right, but the texture/styling isn't there. And the main mining turret is more a general idea than how I want it to look.
The main reason I started playing with this dynamic is I didn't want the player to be beset from all sides right away, but having rocks spawn in from one side of the screen still felt cramped when there was no room for them to not be up in your business immediately.
@darius Certain NES/SNES games have this sense of having been made in some other dimension and the only reason they feel that way is they were made in Europe
(and usually originally targeted a microcomputer that DOS steamrollered in the US)
brief reflections on the dual nature of 'community'
not sure how well I can thread this needle but as much as 'community' has the potential to be radical, empowering and good, it also has the potential to be extremely reactionary, exclusionary and bad.
anecdotal example: I lived through a natural disaster in which the affected rural community came together and organically engaged in some of the most selfless, spontaneous mutual aid I've witnessed. it was super cool.
but to my dismay this coming together during a crisis rapidly 180'd into vicious finger pointing based upon ruthlessly blaming Others as hated scapegoats for the severity of the catastrophic event (the Globalists, the Tribes, the city Liberals, etc).
the community basically collectively chose to 'reduce their circles of care', to borrow a term. They closed ranks and fortified exclusionary, anti-empathetic communal relations based on mistrust and detest for outsiders.
I know when like-minded radicals speak of community they generally mean community in the positive sense but I just read someone say: "Tearing down oppressive systems is not our main motivation, love for our community is." and this caused me to pause.
for me, while I adamantly do love my community, my ideals and values do not stop there. I care for those well beyond my community, for distant people who I will never know, that have nothing in common with me other than they also live and suffer and deserve to be free.
I suppose the nuanced point I'm trying to reach is that community can be beautiful and empowering when paired with ethical commitments to care – both for those within and outside of the community – but that these pro-social, empathy-guided values are not a prerequisite for a focus on community.
Sometimes I feel concerned that a fetishized conception of 'community' crops up that can inadvertently run-cover for values antithetical to those that I believe we are advocating: community in the ever-expanding, far reaching, anti-exclusionary sense.
reminder that i am still open for music commissions
i set up a nice little page with the basic details: https://kasran.neocities.org/comms
and my full terms of service: https://kasran.neocities.org/tos
my wife's company is trying to convince people to return to the office because one of their executives thinks its embarrassing when clients come by and the offices are empty, anyways, theatre students always need some pocket money and if someone wants to join my exciting new "potemkin village as a service" startup
moon strike, loading screen, zx spectrum (1987) https://mobygames.com/game/80077/moon-strike/screenshots/zx-spectrum/862568/
maker of tiny games | navigator of retail chaos | artist | FFXIV fan (Ryusui Teira@Brynhildr) | he/him | trans rights are human rights | death to crypto