New games for 2025:

Hades II: While the endgame story feels a lot more contrived than the original’s, the gameplay is superb, the character designs are somehow even better than the first one, and there’s so much depth. Absolutely recommend.

Mario Kart World: Somehow manages to feel vast while also unnecessarily restrained. The open world is fun to explore, but the actual racing suffers from that typical “we know what the players want better than them, online play must be strictly limited” problem that Nintendo always has. And it’s done in a way that’s completely the reverse of what would make sense. Like, they’re trying to force people to do intermission tracks for regular races even though it’s clear people don’t like it, meanwhile the knockout mode which is explicitly designed around them has a small number of circuits with no dynamic connections. Nintendo snatched mediocrity from the jaws of greatness.

Metroid Prime 4: Still in the early game so no full-fledged opinion. Visually, gorgeous. Plot so far seems like a paint-by-numbers Prime plot so a bit disappointing there. Did get through the Myles McKenzie section and I have to say, the fanboys overreacted to that hard, it’s really not that bad.

Returning stuff I played:

Splatoon 3: The update added some good weapons and new map. Continues to be a fun game to slip into casual play.

Balatro: I have gold staked every deck, done all the challenges, and am working towards Completionist++ (using every joker in a successful gold stake win). It’s a a slough, but in that satisfying “it’s about the journey not the destination” way.

The man is a living embodiment of mall ninja

Yeah, it’s a subset of grievance/resentment politics that’s devoid of any real agency. Gaining anything for your group is irrelevant, it’s just how hard you can “own” another group you think has slighted you.

Grievance politics. It’s like the flip side of libs who get off on poor people in red states getting poorer because they didn’t blue hard enough.

Definite “It hurt itself in its confusion!” moment.

God is this gonna be one of those shows where I have no interest in it but it’s gonna take up so much oxygen in the “discourse” that I’m going to have to have some sort of “position” on it?

Really love how the mindset on women went from “girl wants to touch my pee-pee but I having too much fun with vidya” to “why don’t girl wants to touch my pee-pee!?”

The war on Christmas

The Beastie Boys had a knack for putting out singles that captured the zeitgeist but still sounded distinctly like The Beastie Boys. But yah, from a pure rap skill perspective they’re not top tier.

Gee, I wonder who’s responsible for that group rising to power and displacing the secular PLO?

The two takes aren’t entirely mutually exclusive. They can both think that the state needs to be shrunk and that the negative consequences are irrelevant.

I’m of two minds on this.

One mind says, this is the result of generations of conservatives believing their own marketing about the state being bloated and useless and can be done more efficiently by making it more private sector-like. The previous generations were just using it to appeal to the rubes but this one actually means it. So they’ve purged everyone with the institutional knowledge to keep the basic functions up and now they’ve been caught flat-footed.

The other mind says, this is a feature, not bug. The disregard for the “norms and standards” extends to not going through the fig leaf processes of protecting the image of TPTB. They get that these systems are so ingrained and the populous is so allergic to even the mildest pushback that they can just flaunt that they’re letting the dirty laundry air. What’s anyone gonna do about it?

Party Rockin’ Comrades

White Nationalism: You have two cows. They cross to the other side of the street when they see a minority coming towards them.

This is what happens when 20-year-old DOGE interns are running things.

This has got to be so demoralizing for the students in that class who actually gave a shit and tried.

Hoooooooly shit it’s the old “manually change the url path for the professor’s test answers from last semester to match the format for the current semester” but for the global pdf file conspiracy!

A quick onion dice is actually pretty straightforward

Back when I wasn’t so fucking old, I had gotten some cookbooks that were aimed at the “first apartment” or “college dorm cooking,” distinctly aimed at people dealing with cooking for themselves. Those had good, simple recipes, not a lot of prep but got the essential nutrients and calories in you. Not sure if there’s any cooking websites out there like that, although I have to imagine you could those cookbooks.

Also, will echo @[email protected] on the old Good Eats episodes, those are a gold mine.

It’s extra weird given that in her peak, Minaj was the poster child for everything white conservatives thought was wrong with hip-hop/black music generally. So having her up there at all is surreal.

I’m no bean kisser!

I’m an owl kisser