I have a resting pulse of about 60. In fact during sleep, my pulse can drop as low as 28 or 29. The below is what often happens when I lector at Mass. One of these actually happened when I was only sacristan, I think because I was nervous about having prepared enough hosts:



There is an awesome guy at my church who is recruiting me to become a deacon in the Catholic church. I'm interested in learning more, but I don't know if my body would hold up under the stress of having constant Mass involvement!

Yesterday before Mass, I had one of my friends approach me in the Sacristy, and express her disappointment at how I had handled the setting up of a recent Liturgy Committee meeting: "How did I get invited, and why? I had no idea what we were supposed to be talking about; I kept waiting, 'are more people going to show up?' I'm sad and disappointed that I wasn't given more of a heads-up."

The reality was that I also had no idea what the agenda should have been, and also went into it blind! All the same, it was my fault for not explaining in greater detail what I had known. I explained all of this to her, and told her I was very sorry she was uncomfortable. "So am I", she replied with a smile.

And that was the end of the conversation-- we shifted to other, more happy subjects, and that was that. As I was driving home, it dawned on me: "So this is how healthy people express their feelings!"

Even though she was uncomfortable, sad, and disappointed, there was zero hint of anger, or malice, or a desire for retribution. Practically every single time in my life I encounter what she was feeling, it has carried along with it chains, where the person shouts and yells, expecting some kind of emotional or monetary restitution-- sometimes they even have ulterior motives, taking advantage of their emotional position to gain an edge over me and others.

But in the conversation with my friend, there were no strings attached. She wasn't looking for sympathy; she wasn't trying to make herself the center of attention. She wasn't trying to gain an upper hand, she wasn't trying to manipulate me. She felt a certain way, and simply wanted to share how she felt! It was constructive and positive and brought us closer together, versus shoving us further apart.

It was also a good lesson for me in practical terms: I've spent the past twenty-six years in my career in agenda-less meetings, leaning into uncertainty, thrown right into the fire-- it was a lack of empathy on my part that not everyone is cut out for or wants that kind of situation! From now on when I set up these church meetings, I will do a mental assessment of each person individually, and check in where it's warranted to make sure they feel good going in.

I spent six months as part of a planning sub-committee, having a famous Catholic YouTuber do an event at one of the churches in my Area Catholic Community-- and we finally had the event this past Sunday! We had around a thousand people packed into the church. I wish I could say the guy's name or show pictures, but I don't want to "dox" my location. As a volunteer I got front-row seats, and he was literally leaning over me at one point.

I've been watching his YouTube content for a long time now, so it was very strange shaking his hand and talking to him in person. I asked him how much preparation work he does before an interview, and he said he'll literally read every book they've ever written.

In other religious life news, this article about "near death experiences", or "NDEs" was super interesting. The descriptions from these people exactly matches the Christian explanations for God and Heaven, exactly what Jesus Himself told us. Heck, I was just reading the petitions for a Mass recently, and the words for the "recently departed" were "may they rest in God's perpetual light", which is straight from these "NDEs".

In football news, I've been super critical of VAR since day one, writing stuff like this since 2017 and 2018. As is often the case, it took the mainstream many years but they've finally caught up with what I was saying from the very beginning. From the article, translated:



Like I've been saying since 2017, VAR doesn't lead to better outcomes: in the end decisions still come down to the discretion of the same individuals. The only thing VAR does is delay the game, and turn the bad decisions into three-ring circuses. As the article says, all VAR does is change the means, not the interpretations.

It especially hurts because the current body of refereeing in Italy hates Lazio as a team. Almost every major controversial decision goes against us, and it's all well documented, to the point where the referees will do reviews and routinely "apologize" to us after the fact and admit the mistakes-- but then go on to have another horrible game the next time too.

I think we're the best team in Serie A this year. I saw statistics recently where we run the second-least, and have the second-best ball distribution. That's a clear formula for dominance-- and we are dominating. So why are we in fifth? Well, we've lost three games, and all three were wildly influenced by blindingly major refereeing mistakes.

And by the way, Lazio and Vikings always follow the same cadence. This season it's been especially pronounced. For example, two games ago both teams won on last-minute plays by wily old veterans Pedro and Stephon Gilmore, respectively. Then this past game they both lost super tight matches to powerhouse members of their respective leagues in Juventus and Detroit, albeit the Lazio result was highly controversial due to the aforementioned refereeing mistakes.

In video game news, I'm playing "Super Mario Bros. Wonder" on Switch, "Arcade Paradise VR" on PSVR2, and "Madden NFL 25" on PS5. I'm not sure when I'll get time to play them enough to do reviews, but you can expect them at some point.

I was just telling my mom the other day, that I suspect we're going to continue to see this weird descent in the country into a third-world nation. Here I'm reading that American corporations, the Federal government, and human traffickers are all cooperating to provide cheap labor for factories. With the untold millions of illegal aliens who have poured over the border, how long until entire sections of towns have been taken over by violent gang wars, with gun-platform helicopters flying overhead raining bullets, like I've seen in videos from Mexico?

I'm in the Twin Cities visiting family, and I wound up having a three hour conversation with a couple of guys at GameStop. It's fun discussing the hobby with other passionate people. I exchanged contact info with one of them. I'd been assuming that GameStop was about four hours away from shuttering completely-- but the store manager was telling us that they actually turned a small profit this past quarter, that they are basically a debt-free company, and that the current CEO seems like he's trying to help the company survive long-term, and that he's not just using it as a quick cash grab.

I've always rooted for them, back to the Funcoland era. I really like having a brick and mortar option for the hobby. The one in the town near me closed a few years ago, so it's now an over hour-long drive to the closest GameStop-- but when I visit the Twin Cities I like to stop in.

It's been tough to break away, even for a couple of days. Yesterday I got a call asking if I could sub in as Sacristan on Sunday-- then got another call asking if I could cover a funeral today at 13:00. I would have said "yes" to both things if I were even in the area! I like the fact that I'm getting so intertwined in things there, it's been such a blessing to be involved in something other than my career, from which I've never felt any sense of fulfillment. My absolute dream would be if they hired for a "Director of IT"-style position at my "ACC"-- I would be willing to have a significant pay cut even, to accept a job like that.

In any event, today is a "down" day for me to work on my game music a little. I've also gotten back into Smash Bros. on Switch a bit, and I had a copy of "Super Mario Bros. Wonder" show up, so I'll probably start that today as well.

Once in awhile I'll read "The Video Game Critic" reviews such as this one. He's one of the only other people I know on the entire web who runs a review site like mine. His forum is often pretty cringey-- they are Gen X'ers like myself, but are deeply out of touch with both gaming news and the broader culture-at-large: "Did you hear they made dis here new video game?", like four years after it came out.

The good news is that the Critic himself is finally-- seven or eight years later, but better late than never-- caught up to Cultural Marxism, and in fact he calls it out in the aforelinked review. Several members of his forum were butthurt about it, but I say good for him! Of course, those butthurt forum members can only come back with: "Hurr, Critic doesn't like black people in games!"

As a refresher:

• "There are two groups of people who generalize son: those who do, and those who don't." Like the joke, Karl Marx broke all of humanity down into the "proletariat" and the "bourgeoisie". You're one or the other. The latter oppresses the former.


• He predicted that the "capitalist"-- as he called them-- countries would collapse, and the Communist ones would thrive. Why? Because in the former, the downtrodden workers would overthrow the hideous property owners.


• Instead, the complete opposite happened: the Communist countries were such destitute shitholes that they had to put walls around them to keep people in-- whereas the average worker in the "capitalist" countries became wildly rich by almost any historical standard.


• Some Jewish eggheads at the Frankfurt School researched this in the 1920s. Their conclusion wasn't that Marx's over-generalized model was too simple to be useful: rather, they doubled down! You see, men oppress; Christians oppress; heteroxexuals oppress; white people oppress; and so forth. Hence the birth of "intersectionality".


• Hitler caught on to what these nefarious eggheads were up to, and wisely ejected them from Germany in the 30's. They wound up in America, in New York City-- lucky us.


• According to their model, your worth as a human being is calculated by how many "victimhood" points you have. Forget your specific life experiences, that doesn't matter: what matters is how many boxes you tick. Just like with Marx, an entire human being can be distilled down into a tiny handful superficial attributes, which then drive the legal code, hiring practices, access to health care, and so forth.


• If you're a black Muslim lesbian in a wheelchair, you should have more "representation", more legal rights, have more financial freebies given to you, have access to the better schools, get first dibs on the best jobs and promotions, at the literal expense of a, let's say, straight white dude. Meritocracy is thus replaced, as is the hard-fought "Martin Luther King Jr." Civil Rights progress which is tossed out the window-- they were actively trying to repeal all of that in California.


• This is why black people dominate commercials, video games, and so forth despite being less than thirteen percent of the population. Watching TV in America is like watching TV in Zimbabwe at this point. It's why the "independent boss womyn" characters dominate gaming now.


• The reason the female characters are being uglified is because Cultural Marxists want to subvert what they call the "male gaze": "heteronormativity", as they call normal pro-creative human sexuality, is "oppressive" therefore anything which a straight man might like should be removed, including attractive female characters.


• If you object to this hateful and utterly illiberal ideology and its racism and sexism, you are told "you just don't like black people", or "you just don't like women". "Gee, too many black people for you, eh Critic?!?! It's dat right-wing garbage, eh Critic?!"


• The people who say "you don't like black people": actively support this bizarre cult-like dogma; OR, are clueless zombies who literally don't "get it"; OR are weak-knee'd and pretend to support it so they can fit in with their social groups.

Lazio just steam rolled yet another team, this time in the form of a very good Nice squad, worth over two hundred million Euro, and who clearly had come to play football. Lazio are playing at such an elite level right now, a good team playing an "A" game isn't enough to get a result against them. It's been so much fun to watch, I'm a huge fan of our new players and coach!

As is often the case, Vikings are on the same cadence and are also an elite force right now. So every time I tune in to, I'm getting to watch my side dismantle opponents. These moments don't happen too often overall, so I enjoy them when they do.

I thought that this was interesting, and is a sneak preview for November: the Left can't even stop manipulating numbers for a video game vote, for Pete's sake.

This one is also interesting: a "Sweet Baby" employee explicitly saying they want to burn the video game industry to the ground. Really, the reason for the square-jawed lesbian characters is to subvert the "male gaze"-- it's an intentional thumb in the eye. Their customer base is something like 90% white, male, and straight-- meanwhile, their Cultural Marxist cult's ideology tells them to hate whites, straights, and men.

The same thing is happening in other industries, such as in car punditry where half the "journalists" actively hate cars and the culture around them.

The other thing I was thinking about the other idea is the Left's notion of "debunking". A friend sent me this body of theorizing that the flooding of African aliens into Europe was to intentionally replace white people with a more amenable voting bloc-- a theory which is probably correct, incidentally. I looked up the name of this, and every single hit in Bing's index-- via "DuckDuckGo"-- was "It's a deboooonked far-right radical conspiracy theory!"

If I say to you, "Gravity repels things from Earth", you could "debunk" my specific scientific claim by showing me the mathematical equation, proving the physics otherwise. Similarly, if I were to say "Susan has brown eyes" when she in fact has blue eyes, you could "debunk" my claim by introducing me to the person. "Debunking" applies to specific claims which can be proven or disproven via the scientific method.

Conversely, let's say there is a guy named Fred, and he's constantly berating people and tearing them down. I could issue conjecture: "I think Fred is kind of an asshole." It's my opinion, my interpretation of Fred's behavior. You can't then reply to me and say, "Aaaaactually, that's been deboonked!" Logically, you can't "debunk" a subjective interpretation of someone's behavior. You can offer alternative conjecture: "I think Fred is playing 4D chess and is a jackass, manipulating people into the best forms of themselves." But only God can see into a man's heart: so any interpretation we put forth is not a factual, hard, scientific matter. The realm of "debunking" doesn't apply here.

Back to the illegal aliens situation then: the politicians are letting in millions upon millions of totally unvetted illegal aliens, unabated. They have celebrated numerous times in the past that one day whites will be a minority. We also know that they know that whites are much less likely to vote for them than African or South American aliens. Ergo, it's reasonable to assume that these policies are being instituted intentionally.

Now, maybe my theory is off the mark-- ok, fine. And you can have a different opinion, that's also fine-- but you can't "debunk" hypothetical conjecture: the whole concept doesn't make any sense. None of us knows what's truly in Kamala Harris's heart, or Keir Starmer's heart-- the best we can do is guess. And anyone who says that an opinion has been "debunked" is almost certainly just trying to shut down the conversation, and is not acting in good faith.

I've been seeing a lot of headlines lately that Microsoft is partnering with Blackrock and is also trying to re-open the nuclear plant which once had a partial meltdown, so that they can have enough electricity to run the AI which takes screenshots of your desktop every few seconds. Also, on the one hand it's "no A/C and eat bugs to lower your energy footprint" while on the other hand their AI data centers and electric cars require the energy of a small sun to function.

In Sony-related news, mama mia just look at these designs! I am planning to get a PlayStation 5 Pro, but I've already bought the optical drive and stand for the white unit-- and besides that, I plan to use GameStop trade-in credits to fund the purchase of the system itself. Otherwise, trying to land a pre-order for one of these designs would be tempting.

Also in Sony-related news, apparently Concord cost them four hundred million dollars to make-- and their internal culture is so absurd that any criticism was immediately shut down due to it being labeled as "toxic". Speaking of "toxic", I chuckle at the author of this article, "Sammy Barker": the day Concord came out he published a piece taking a shot at critics of the game-- now his articles say he's "not trying to rub it in" that the game was a historic failure.

In other news, I saw that Dim Tim thinks "misinformation" and "hate speech" should be criminalized. So too does Hitlery. Meanwhile, a majority of Democratic voters-- your neighbors, your coworkers, your family members-- either actively want Donald Trump to be murdered, or are on the fence about it. It is indeed the party of love, acceptance, and empathy.

Here is that modded Game Boy Advance I mentioned in a previous blog post! If you hold "Select" then tap "L" and "R" simultaneously, it opens up a menu where you can select different screen modes and color filters. The first alternative mode is the best I think, as it looks closest to the original GBA screen-- just backlit, super bright, and one hundred percent uniform!





Here is the ebay seller. There are tons of people selling these, so I'm sure there are lots of other great people out there doing this work as well.

As for the second picture, I bought those from this seller on Etsy. They look even better in person than in the photos-- the print quality is phenomenal, and they look so good sitting on my shelf!

These numbers are no surprise to me: within US companies, native-born people from the US have lost employment, while foreign-born workers have gained employment. The article focuses on the non-college-educated, but even among college-educated people I see this trend. My own employer has been stealth-outsourcing the entire IT department to India, for instance, to the point where I was recently looking at job openings for a friend and counted ~150 out of ~150 opportunities being in Mumbai, with 0 in the United States.

What's weird is how few people complain about this overall nation-wide trend! It used to be that there was justifiable outrage about this kind of thing-- now it's normalized and no one even seems to notice it.

In other news, I really want to get a PlayStation 5 Pro. I think if I trade in my old PlayStation 4 Pro plus my existing PlayStation 5, the system itself will only cost me a couple of hundred dollars. Of course, I'd also need to pop for the disc drive and stand beyond that. To be honest I was shocked that Sony wasn't more aggressive with pricing-- they are clearly selling this thing for profit. But maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, given that with Microsoft's Xbox hardware tanking, Sony is the only game in town.

In a way it's similar to Nvidia on the PC side, with their exorbitantly-priced video cards. The real kick in the pants is that Sony can't even bother to include the plastic stand with the unit. That's shocking, really.

A second attempt at a modded Game Boy Advance should arrive tomorrow. The seller wound up apologizing: the d-pad wasn't working because a tiny piece of paper had wound up on the membrane. The rest of his work was immaculate, so if I'm happy with this new one I will post a link to him on eBay. I also bought these incredible GBA game cases from an Etsy seller. I will do a full blog post, with pictures, hopefully over this weekend showing off the whole thing, with links. It will be a really fun collection to assemble.

Finally, I was Sacristan last weekend at what's called a "First Saturday Mass". The priest asked me: "Ummm, can you serve after Mass for the Adoration?"

Before I knew it I found myself in full server's robes, manning incense, ringing bells, and all the rest! I did ok considering I had less than five minutes of instruction beforehand, although I did fumble trying to place the humeral veil around the priest's shoulders: as I started to unfold it, it became like a parachute it was so huge, and I couldn't find the right-side clasp! The priest just calmly looked over his shoulder and whispered, "I've got it", haha.

For the Lefties online who are saying you "can't criticize the 'Minecraft' movie if you aren't a kid", my daughter tells me that kids hate the preview as well, and are "meme'ing" it to hell and back!

I've been playing quite a bit of "Doom 64" recently, on real hardware, on a CRT television. The game plays great with the N64 controller, provided you map the left and right "C-Buttons" to strafe left and right, respectively-- then I move the map over to "L", ala "Turok". It also looks great on the TV. My biggest problem with it is that the gameplay is a little too puzzle based for me-- you spend almost all of your time playing wandering around trying to figure out what random wall switches have triggered.

Finally, I ordered a modded Game Boy Advance from a seller on eBay-- but when it arrived, the left direction on the d-pad didn't work. The seller implied that I'd broken it somehow, which was frustrating. But he did agree to a return and refund-- I'll just turn around and order one back from him, my guess is the d-pad membrane moved during shipping, as the quality of the other work he did on it seemed excellent. I'll post pictures once all of that settles.

The neat thing is that outside of the "build your own PC" sphere, the GBA is probably the next closest thing: there is an entire cottage industry around selling modern screens, battery mods, speaker mods, custom "shells", custom buttons and anything else you can imagine. It's almost like the platform has gone "open source hardware", so-to-speak-- it's pretty cool! I'm not the handiest with a soldering iron so it was easier for me to outsource that work to someone else-- but I could have "built my own" GBA, for sure, just like how I assemble my own gaming PCs.

Two nights ago I didn't sleep at all-- I had a mix-up with the psychiatrist regarding a renewal for my Lunesta prescription. Last night, then, I slept very oddly and had the rare occurrence of actually remembering one of my dreams.

Huge volcanic calderas had opened up all over Earth, creating massive molten rivers, and giant sinkholes were consuming entire neighborhoods. Weirdly, I was living in a home in the upscale area where my mother currently resides, and where I lived during high school over two decades ago. The sky was yellow, the air was very warm. Lava had completely encircled the area, and we were trapped. There was no electricity, and the internet access was gone. I looked at my wife and said, "That's the end of the internet, for good-- and maybe everything else too."

Weirdly, instead of mass looting the tragedy brought out the best in everyone. The UN was flying helicopters in to rescue those of us who were stranded in the zone. Each person was allowed to bring one medium-sized box of belongings. They were using the parking lot of the Target near us as a make-shift loading area and helipad. I had my GR86 in the dream, and it had some gas left in the tank. My wife drove us to the aforementioned parking lot so we could fill out some paperwork prior to the helicopters arriving.

On the ride there everyone was outside of their homes, packing up boxes, possessions strewn over lawns and driveways. Tree branches were down everywhere, leaves scattered all over the road. There was a sense of calm as the neighbors prepared. The yellow sky and the still in the air was remarkable. Like a lot of suburbs, the road was curvy, and my wife deftly wove the car through the area-- driving a bit fast. The neighborhood looked like one giant refugee camp, as people prepared to leave everything behind, forever, to eventually be swallowed up by sinkholes.

We arrived at the parking lot. Some makeshift buildings had been erected. There was a line around one of those metal, hastily put-up structures. Everyone was calm, parents were holding children. We'd left our kids behind at the house for the moment, it was strongly implied to me that someone-- my mom?-- was back there with them. We'd make a separate trip in the very imminent future with everyone, to actually board one of the helicopters.

Again, the tragedy brought the best out of everyone. People in the line were orderly, and the UN workers were calm and efficient. Everyone could sense that this was probably the end of everything on Earth, and had made peace with the idea. And that's about when I woke up. The dream was real End Times kind of stuff: super vivid, right down to minute details.

Today is a day of fasting for me: I've been trying to watch my eating, but on Saturday I was fed at a large party hosted at their farm by some good friends of ours nearby, then last night my father-in-law made one of everyone's-- myself included-- favorite meals, and I overate on that too.

Three masses for me this week: one at a church a half hour drive away tomorrow in the most beautiful area of Minnesota that I've seen, to get our home school group blessed; then on Saturday I am Sacristan and Lector for our adoration-oriented First Saturday Mass; and then on Sunday I am once again Sacristan for the ordinary Mass.

Switching gears to gaming, here is the most recent Steam Deck most-played list. For my part I've gotten back into "No Man's Sky", it runs extremely well on the Deck-- 800p, all "High" settings, frame rate capped at thirty-four frames per second, FSR set to "Balanced", and is totally stable. You need to make a lot of image quality sacrifices with the Deck, but not nearly as many as on the Switch, that's for sure.

Here is a video of RFK Jr. discussing the Ukraine War and Blackrock. No wonder his father and uncle were assassinated, it takes real guts to say this stuff out loud. Finally, here is Eric Peters talking about inflation, and how to gauge the drop in our standard of living. It reminds me of this recent blog post I wrote.

I didn't like the days when Igli Tare "knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy, who had a used Honda Civic"-- "Hey bro, pick up the phone, boy do I have the deal for you! He's Albanian, you'll love him!" Having an actual scouting room, with an actual methodology, analytically picking apart players and how they'd fit our aspirational team culture and style of play is much more up my alley.

The trouble is that every approach has its trade-offs. Taken to its logical end, we've wound up with a team full of young players who could all flop: the obvious candidates for "who will fill the top-line technical qualities gulf" is not present.

Best case scenario: one or more of these young players has a light bulb go on, and we've got a Kvaratskhelia or Rafael Leão on our hands. Then we'll be fine-- as in, Europa League qualification, top-six fine. There are lots of possible names from which to choose: Rovella; Dele-Bashiru; Guendouzi; Noslin; Tchaouna. Maybe Castrovilli goes back to his very best football? Maybe Castellanos or Dia-- or both in tandem, ala Rocchi and Pandev-- start pounding in goals? Maybe Isaksen winds up being a genius and takes over? Maybe Tavares becomes a monster and takes over the entire left flank?

Worst case scenario: we look like how we did against Udinese. Teams physically press us, we turn the ball over stupidly, the team isn't ticking over, it gets demoralized, and we wind up in a relegation scrap ala the Ballardini 2009 year. It could happen too: we bought players from relegation-bound teams, then hired a relegation-zone manager to coach them. What will you wind up with from that approach?

Really though, the biggest problem the club faces is that Lotito can't be a senator and run the team at the same time. He really just needs to sell, or hand it off to his son. For example, what's the point of buying young players for future capital gains, then giving away fourteen-million Euro rated Casale for seven million, when in today's inflated world he's realistically a twenty million-plus player? How about not being able to place people like Akpa Akpro, Hysaj, and Basic?

Apparently Baroni thinks Milan is a "wounded animal" and is going to field an all-out-attack formation today. Sounds like something which could backfire horribly, but maybe I'll be surprised.

My father-in-law had a big temper tantrum today because he had to drive my mother-in-law's Subaru Forester back to the bugout house from his Murderapolis home. "Grrrr, it's not a truck! I hate this thing!" Meanwhile, trucks are the worst-driving vehicles on the road, and it isn't even close:

• Only twenty percent of their weight is over the driving axle, so they have no grip or balance.


• They have super light spring setups, so they wobble all over the place, further diminishing what little grip they have.


• They have an ultra high center-of-gravity, so they constantly feel like they are going to fly off the road.

The only thing they are good for is if you own a business where you need to haul stuff-- and even then, they are best driven only when the need absolutely presents itself; I couldn't imagine using one as a daily driver. I'd rather drive a school bus than a pickup truck.

That's not to say my mother-in-law's Forester is a great driving vehicle either: it too is tall, and has a horrible spring setup. Plus it has every nanny nag system in existence. But that's beside the point, since those weren't the issues being taken up.

And setting all of that aside, would it absolutely kill him to just do someone a favor for once? Favors from narcissists are like holy water to vampires.

Here is an image the Trump campaign put together. Any one of these bullets is damning, let alone all of them-- and this is only a partial list, to be sure:



Add to the list the official Democrat platform-- then juxtapose it with all of Trump's first-term accomplishments. More than at any other time in my life, this upcoming "Selection" illustrates how people on the Right utilize facts, logic, and evidence, while people on the Left lean almost exclusively on emotion. Unfortunately, their emotion is going to drag us all into oblivion.

I thought that this was an interesting video: a discussion of narcissism, but from a Catholic perspective. It can be summed up with this quote: "They [narcissists] terribly need the saving power of love, but are also absolutely certain that if they opened up to it, they would be destroyed." I deal day-to-day with my textbook narcissist father-in-law, and I'd previously reached this conclusion regarding him on my own: he has super low self-esteem so he rebuffs any attempt at attachment by being an asshole, because he doesn't feel worthy of that attachment.

Of course that's all happening at a one hundred percent subconscious level. In addition to being a narcissist he is also one of those people with essentially zero inner monologue or capacity for self-reflection. My mother-in-law often asks him how he's feeling, and not once has he been able to plainly answer that question. His existence is simply riding the current to-do item, then the next, then the next, and sentences simply pop out of his mouth ad-hoc whether they are mean, cruel, blatantly hypocritical, or don't even make any logical sense.

Changing gears and on the gaming front, my son had one of his best friends over this past weekend, and I fired up "Streets of Rage 2". His friend is twelve, and it was fun watching someone that age attempt such an all-time classic-- best brawler ever made-- for the very first time. I also sat him in front of "Gate of Thunder" on PC Engine so he could see what a "shmup" is, and handed him the Game Gear for a little "Sonic Chaos". He's developing a love for old video games-- as he put it to me: "I know I wasn't even alive then, but even for me the old games have a nostalgia with them, an 'it' factor that modern games totally lack." I told him he should pick up one of the cheaper old systems, and ask for a flash cart for Christmas.

Haven't had much to say here, hence haven't been writing much.

In politics, the Count Kackula-Dim Tim Walz duo has been speaking Communism, things like price controls and blaming "greed" for rising prices. Simultaneously, they are proposing helicoptering money so people can buy houses. I'm not exaggerating: if those bozos get into office, the US is going to turn into the Soviet Union, breadlines and all.

My "Everdrive 64 x5" flash cart came in a bit ago, what a great product! With it I've been having a lot of fun playing the Nintendo 64. I got to ninety stars in "Super Mario 64" then kind of petered out, I've one hundred-percented that game a zillion times before including just recently, so I have a little fatigue. It's amazing how much better I am playing on a real N64 controller, on a real CRT-- this versus an emulator, or the "Switch Online" app.

I jumped on to "Cruis'n USA" yesterday. I don't understand why that port gets so much flak, it's super close to the arcade game visually, in terms of audio, and gameplay. I watched the arcade version on YouTube right before walking over to the N64-- so I could do a side-by-side, essentially. The only knock is the framerate, which is-- granted-- very low in at least the "San Francisco" and "Redwood Forest" stages. Nonetheless, my son and I were playing the "coast to coast" mode in two player last night, and having a lot of fun. It's cool to play it with every car, to unlock the faster versions with the new colors.

I'll put it this way: I like "Cruis'n USA" on the N64 more than I like "Ridge Racer" on the PSX. I might like it even more than "Daytona USA" on the Saturn.

I've also been cranking my way through the original "Suikoden" on the PSX. Just like "Breath of Fire" on the Super NES, they don't give you a way to fast travel between towns for ages, so I'm getting a little bogged down mentally with all of the backtracking. But I think once I do get a way to head back to my castle whenever I want, I'll enjoy managing the stable of adventurers I've recruited so far. I also wish the game did more technically, it kind of looks like a PC Engine game, outside of the 3D battles of course. But I get that this is one of the first RPGs on the entire PSX platform. I've looked at a couple of screenshots from the sequel, and it appears to be polygonal.

I also bought the PSX "Doom" port, wow is that phenomenal! I've only played a few stages, but I'll circle back to it once I get through the titles ahead of it in my backlog. I also beat "Warhawk", I want to play through it one more time before I review it.

In personal news my daughter also has Scoliosis, her back is a carbon copy of mine. So now she's going to start going to the chiropractor a few times per week with me, which is actually kind of fun in a round-about sort of way-- I love spending time with my kids.

It's July. Hot and sticky. Paula Abdul is on the radio, and Cheers is on TV. You've got some saved-up cash burning a hole in your pocket. And you're itching for one of these new breed of so-called portable video game systems.

Two years ago, Nintendo released their super novel, ROM cartridge-based "Game Boy", a game system you can carry around the house with you, or take with you to the airport or the hotel. But the pea green monochrome graphics are a major drawback. You waited a couple of months to see what Atari's new "Lynx" would be-- and it sure looked cool. You almost bit, but the $450 price tag gave you pause. So you waited, and waited, and waited. Patiently. You held on to your cash, playing your Sega Genesis and DOS PC as the months rolled by.

Christmas hit. A few more months went into the history books. NEC came out with a portable version of their "TurboGrafx-16"-- but it was a big yawn, at almost $600.

A few more months passed-- and finally, finally two genuinely exciting things occurred. First, Sega belatedly entered the race with their new "Game Gear", priced at $350. Second, and in rapid-fire response, Atari released a brand new version of the Lynx, at only $230! You wanted a Lynx originally, but the big price tag scared you off-- now there's a $230 version, and with a stereo headphone jack to boot?

But you love your Genesis. The Sega name has real pull for you. The Game Gear is more expensive than the refreshed Lynx. Reports say it isn't as powerful either. But reports also warn that the Lynx isn't selling very well-- does the platform have a future? Isn't Sega better positioned, even if their hardware is technically not as good?

Determined to finally buy one of these two portable speed demons, you plan to hop into your Acura Integra and drive to the local B. Dalton. You want to pull every game magazine off the shelf, and do a deep dive into the specs of the two machines. You also know that down the hall in the same shopping center is a Software Etc., where they have both systems in stock for hands-on testing! You buckle your seat belt, and head out.



Of course, it's not July of 1991-- it's a shocking, staggering thirty-three years later: August of 2024. And I'd adjusted all of the prices for inflation, to provide a better context. But despite the passage of time, this writer has working examples of the two machines right at his fingertips! Let's analyze them to see, back in those exciting, heady days of the very early 90s, which of the systems would have been the better choice.

Let's talk aesthetics. The Game Gear is sleek and sexy. This writer has always been a sucker for the accents: the little red, green, and blue ovals; the green "portable video game system" text; and the blue-colored start button. The Lynx by contrast looks sophisticated like an actual computer, with its orange theme and six little rectangular buttons alongside either edge of the screen. They're both cool looking, but this writer prefers the Game Gear.

What about dimensions? Right from the start you, my faithful reader, can see above that the Lynx "II", as it was known within Atari, is quite a bit wider than Sega's Game Gear.



The Lynx is also chunkier, as you can see by looking at the tops of the systems. And that fact has practical manifestations: you can feel this thickness as you play the system. It isn't just a trick of the eye.



What are these systems like to hold then?

See those rubber grips on the back of the Lynx? The non-thumb four fingers on your right hand rest, at a comfortable angle, right within the grips on that side. The bottom-right corner sits comfortably in that palm, positioning your thumb right over the upper "B" and "A" buttons. Yes, Atari went the "Nintendo route" and has their buttons lettered backwards!

Meanwhile, the Lynx's d-pad is positioned further down-- because the Lynx is designed to be held left or right-handed! This has implications, as your left thumb's knuckle is angled more sharply, causing mild discomfort. The left side of the system doesn't feel quite as natural to hold as the right side. It's not a terrible experience mind you! But perhaps the left-handed feature-- beneficial to a tiny, tiny minority as most left-handed people probably didn't flip the system anyway-- wasn't worth the trade-off, which involved making the system less comfortable for everyone?

The Game Gear meanwhile is more symmetrical: the bottom corners bud right into your two palms evenly. There's not really a natural mold for the non-thumb fingers to hold onto, so they just sort of "rest" on the back of the system. Really, both systems are comfortable to hold even for extended sessions-- but this writer and both of his kids all prefer the Game Gear's ergonomics. Incidentally, either system is miles ahead of the portrait-mode Game Boy-- but that's outside the scope of this article to discuss.

So how much do these systems weigh? Let's collect some numbers.



Without batteries, the Game Gear and Lynx weigh 12.8 oz, and exactly 16 oz, respectively. So the Lynx isn't just bigger, it's also heavier-- but only by a small amount, which isn't really noticeable during gameplay. To give some context versus modern-day systems, the Nintendo Switch OLED weighs 14.9 oz, while Valve's OLED Steam Deck comes in at a whopping 22.5 oz! So the Lynx feels about the same weight as a Switch.

But how much do AA batteries weigh? Turns out-- exactly 1 oz each! So fully-loaded with six AA batteries, the Game Gear and the Lynx come out to 18.8 oz and 22 oz, respectively. In other words, both of them are still lighter than an OLED Steam Deck, even when running on battery power.

So what are these systems actually like to play? Let's talk about Sega's Game Gear first.





This writer has never held his love of the Game Gear a secret. Everything written there is as true in 2024 as it was in 2015.

The Game Gear is essentially a portal Master System. It doesn't do any fancy graphical effects: it can't scale sprites; it can't rotate sprites; it can't do any kind of "Mode 7"-like playing fields; and it has a meager PSG for audio. But what it can do is deliver a bright, cheery, 32-color simultaneous picture, with smooth sixty frames-per-second gameplay and lots of parallax scrolling, thanks to Sega's trademark VDP tiled-background engineering skills, with really pleasant, wind-chimey music and sound effects.

The Game Gear's d-pad is top notch, which is not surprising coming from the company which went on to produce the six-button Genesis and Saturn pads. The "1" and "2" buttons are mildly imprecise but firm enough to register on each press.

Want to see what the Game Gear can do on all fronts? Check out Shinobi II. How about some Sonic? Or Streets of Rage 2?

If you want the full specs they are well documented. But to bring those specs to life: playing titles on the Game Gear is fun! The games are pretty, run well, and sound pleasant. In a way, the Game Gear is the Genesis to the Lynx's Super NES-- the former is fast and no frills, while the latter focuses more on special effects than raw framerate.

And that last sentence segues into the Lynx!





Thirty-three years have not been kind to this writer's Lynx screen. Just like the Game Gear, the Lynx has a tiny fluorescent CRT-- but this particular example is badly damaged, with inconsistent contrast across the backlight, and tons of vertical color bleeding. When brand new, this display looked similar to the Game Gear pictures above-- just a slightly different aspect ratio, and a little bit lower vertical resolution (the Game Gear is 160x144 versus the Lynx's 160x102).

Lynx games often run at a lower framerate than Game Gear software-- because they prioritize special effects. And boy can the Lynx do special effects! The system has a whopping 64k of memory. Meanwhile, the RJ Mical and Dave Needle-designed chipset has more features than the Super NES-- in a 1989 handheld! The Lynx can do sprites, fully scaled, rotated, and angled. If that's not enough, the four-channel audio chip can not only do various waveforms, but it can play digital audio samples with better general clarity than a Sega Genesis!

Just look at Warbirds! Or Battlewheels! Or Shadow of the Beast! The audio is capable of some really rich, deep tones, and much of the library has moody music like this. The system's full specs are here if you want to read them.

As for buttons, the Lynx also has a top-notch d-pad. It's larger than the Game Gear's, and rather than rocking it almost feels more like the PlayStation's, wih separate points-of-contact along the various directions. The "B" and "A" buttons are crisp! The mode buttons alongside the screen are difficult to differentiate in the heat of gameplay-- but usually they are used for functions such as maps and things, where the player has time to glance down.



Game Gear titles ship on cute little cartridges, which come in little clear clamshell protective cases. Lynx games ship on cards, which are vaguely like the PC Engine's "Hu-Cards", but with a curved "lip" at the top to make them easier to pull out of the system. Both sets of titles come in flimsy cardboard boxes.



And both systems had lots of accessories, like official carrying cases, A/C adapters, magnifying lenses, and all the rest. The Game Gear even had an available TV tuner, which plugged into the accessory port on the top, and had a single rabbit ear! And it had an adapter to let you play Master System games on it! As for multiplayer, both systems had link cable capabilities, but with the Lynx the systems could be networked together, and some titles supported something like six people playing at once!


Back to our story: it's July of 1991. You've been to the book store. You've been to Software Etc. You've played them both. You loved them both. But you only have the cash for one. Which one will it be? The $230 Lynx, or the newer but more expensive $350 Game Gear?

You walk out the store smiling, with a brand new boxed system in the bag-- a Sega Game Gear. Along with "Columns", the pack-in title, you also bought a copy of the superb 8-bit "Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse", plus an A/C adapter.

The Lynx is incredible: the graphics are mind blowing; the sound is great; it's comfortable to hold. The games have a really unique charm and character. But the system isn't selling. The game library is tiny compared to the Game Boy, even after two years on the market. The Game Gear may be brand new, but you know that it has golden age Sega backing it, with the likes of Rieko Kodama, Yuji Naka, Yuzo Koshiro, and Sega's immense stable of world class talent, which will undoubtedly be churning out software in spadefuls-- miniaturized renditions of games series you already adore on the Genesis.

So that's 1991. What about 2024? In modern times this writer mildly prefers the Lynx! The games are cheap, even complete-in-box, making it fun to collect for. And where-- in part due to the success of it and other platforms like it-- the Game Gear's library experience has been sort of superceded by later titles and systems, you just can't play games like Lynx software anywhere else, making it feel more distinctive. Take a look at games like "Xybots" or "Electrocop" to see evidence of this.

But no matter which one you chose-- or choose!-- you will be pleased: these are both beautiful, premium systems, with bright and lovely fluorescent CRT displays, with crystal clear audio with or without headphones, and with libraries teeming with interesting software. Modern considerations include replacing the original displays with scanline-emulating "BennVenn" LCDs, and of course fully-replacing all of the systems' capacitors. It's also well-worth playing the games on A/C power primarily, then using rechargeable AA batteries when on the go.

I was talking to a friend a bit ago, and even the update screen on his Samsung tablet has obligatory "minorities" on it. Cultural Marxist "victimhood olympics" anti-whitism is so prevalent among marketers, they can't not put it into every single graphic. Speaking of politics, I also read that Count Cackula's handlers have chosen the governor of my own state as her running mate.

Having lived in Minnesota my whole life-- so naturally, the entire time he's been governor-- I have a lot to say about him. First off, he's the one person in the entire country dumber than Cackula. He has a reputation, even among Democrat voters in my state, for being the most stupid person in politics. Between his obvious low IQ and his penchant for copycat North Korean-style authoritarianism during the WuFlu Scamdemic, people in the state started hilariously calling him "Dim Tim Walz".

The second notable thing about him is that he has zero views, ideology, perspective, opinions, or policy positions of his own. He's been nothing but an empty receptacle for the completely zany, outlandish, caricature-esque wackos actually running the show in Minnesota politics. Sound familiar? And now one can understand why he was selected by the Democrat billionaire donors: he will quite literally do whatever you say, no matter how outlandish, just like Cackula herself. He's perfect, just like she is.

So the Democrats have Count Cackula and Dim Tim to call "leadership". What a ticket!

In gaming news, I've completely abandoned modern gaming and have shifted towards building up a PSX collection. So far I've reviewed "Ridge Racer" and "Rayman". I have "Warhawk", "Suikoden", and "Tekken 3" on the way. On the Nintendo 64 side, I ordered one of those "Everdrive 64 x5" multi-carts. I was going to opt for a "SummerCart64", but the "x5" does everything I need, and was available on Amazon where I have a zillion dollars' worth of points accumulated. Thus far I've been reviewing games mostly available via the Switch Online emulator.

I'm currently playing through "Turok". I couldn't find it in spite if it having been advertised-- turns out one needs to install a second Nintendo 64 emulation application, called the "Mature" app. Is that not the most Nintendo thing, ever? I'd practically let a three year-old play "Turok", haha, there are Roblox games way more violent! But Nintendo has to lock away the ferocious "Turok" behind a special gate, like the porn section at a movie rental location!

The other system I've gotten back into is the Atari Lynx. I bought one many years ago, bought four games and loved them all, then set it aside. I pulled it out a couple of weeks ago and remembered how good it is. I got a $220 quote via an eBay seller to fully recap it for me plus install one of those "BennVenn" screen mods-- I'm asking wifey and the kiddos to do that for me for my birthday in October. Expect a flurry of Lynx reviews in the subsequent months after that, as I build up a mostly "complete-in-box" collection. Incidentally, I tried playing Lynx on the Steam Deck OLED, but the screen on that device is so huge the games look ridiculous, with two-foot tall pixels.

Finally, I wrote to a different friend-- TimeMage, the one who is doing those awesome Game Boy Advance reviews for the 'Wharf-- about that phenomenon of, "I have a giant list of ROMs to play, and suddenly I don't want to play anthing." I thought what he wrote back was very profound:

Inspired by these three pictures circa 2006, I snapped a few of the setups I have right now, in 2024. The first one shows the PlayStation 5 and my current PC.



This next one shows the Steam Deck running RetroArch to the Toshiba CRT via S-Video.



This next setup is one I just put together a couple of days ago: I pulled the N64, Dreamcast, and Super NES out of the mothballs, and started playing through the Dreamcast port of "Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver." By the way, I found an awesome way to capture CRT photos via the iPhone: use the "Live" photo feature, then in the "Photos" app you can select "Long Exposure" from the "Live" drop-down when viewing the relevant photo.



Finally and also from just a couple of days ago, I pulled all of the handhelds out of storage so I can actually enjoy them:

At the advice from the psychiatrist I see, I went back on Abilify starting yesterday-- boy does that stuff knock the anxiety out of me, because it puts a stop to the endless rumination and pointless circular thinking. But it also destroys my sleep, I was up almost all night, having difficulty functioning today. Overall I think being tired is much preferable to how I was feeling, but it will take its toll over time.

But enough about that, time to discuss the news.

I've been making fun of Windows and Microsoft since at least 1994, and my dad and I avoided Microsoft products as much as we could from 1989 to 1996. We did use DOS and Windows 3.x, but we ran this shell on top of Windows called "Object Desktop", which replaced the "Program Manager" and all the rest of the user interface, with something not too far off the modern UIs we have today. Then in 1994 we added dual-booting to OS/2 Warp, which was a phenomenal operating system. I also played around a lot with Slackware Linux in 1995 and beyond. It wasn't until mid-way 1996 that we finally, reluctantly shifted to Windows 95.

When Windows 95 came out, my friend Tim and I found a kids game at the local Egghead Software called "How Many Bugs in a Box"-- we took a copy of it, and put it on the Win95 shelf. We came back a week later, and the Egghead employees had left it! But even in those days of "Plug and Pray" and all the rest of it, if you told me hundreds of millions of Windows installations would simultaneously BSOD, grounding flights and taking down banks, I would have laughed. Yet here we are! I guess with the flights grounded at least we don't need to worry about landing gear falling off of woke Boeing's planes.

Speaking of failing systems, my daughter told me this morning that she has analog drift on her Switch Lite. Nintendo used to make brick-like hardware, but the Switch is one fragile piece of junk. In spite of that and provided it doesn't wind up being totally lame, she's all-in for "Switch 2" when that comes out next year. And with all of the money she's making in her new job, it'll just be a single-odd check for her to be able to buy her own!

Switching gears, I enjoyed Trump's RNC speech. Among many other things, let's make cars great again! He can get rid of those ridiculous "CAFE" mandates too, while he's at it. And speaking of Trump, that moment right after he was shot, and he stood up and raised his fist, was maybe the most authentically human thing I've ever seen in my life-- the look on his face, I knew I was watching history unfolding in real-time. In a weird way it reminded me of Lotito's look of surprise / relief / joy when Lulic scored that "uber derby" goal many years ago. Moments like that, you could almost bottle the emotion and the facial expression-- absolutely incredible.

While I'm on the subject of Lotito, here is some analysis on his leadership of the club. Not too shabby! It's what I've been saying all along-- he's done a really nice job running the club, growing it slowly and steadily. Even if I do wonder where the goals are going to come from, this Lazio team for next season could wind up being incredibly durable: best defense in the entire Lotito era, Rovella and Guendouzi in holding roles, Tchouana might wind up being one of those prolific French players, Noslin is a real handful for defenders, and so forth. We'll see!

Finally, we've got AI causing Google's "carbon emissions" to go way, way up, while the government is simultaneously seizing land from the little people on behalf of evil, trillion dollar, transhumanist tech corporations to build the transmission lines needed for the AI-powering data centers. Gotta' love AI.

This is an interesting read, and it's a real shame because Nightdive Studios does phenomenal work-- I really like their products. Unfortunately, their CEO appears to have implied that I should be shot because I vote for a different political party than he does. I guess it's not too surprising-- "Leftist" and "violence" are pretty much synonymous, going back hundreds of years.

In other news, I was pleased to see this-- "DIE" experiencing its death throes I think.

Not much else to report. My daughter had her first day of work yesterday, working the cash register, and it went phenomenally! So that's great news. I'm still in a pretty bad funk, this is the worst period of my life unfortunately, and that includes the time window when my father was arrested. I'm trying to just focus on what I can control versus what I can't, but it's a challenge.

I might just force myself to pick up a new game to play-- like installing DOSBox on my PC and trying some title I've never played before. It doesn't sound like fun, but it might get my mind off things.

Here is an article which talks about how small businesses are combating ever-increasing costs. The most interesting thing in it though was mentioned almost as an aside: this one dude makes wooden, painted American flags-- he noticed his ad spend wasn't producing, and after some digging he found out his ads were being "shadow banned" by Google. For making American flags!

Incidentally, always make sure to use the Shadow Stats inflation numbers, not the ones you read in articles such as the above.

I've been (unhealthily) nostalgic lately, and part of that has been a new-found habit of watching old Computer Chronicles episodes. Skip to this point-- a poll in freaking 1995 asking if car companies should be forced by the government to make "EeeVees"! 1995! So this push has been going on for a lot longer than I'd thought.

Changing subjects, I thought the commentary in this last minute-or-so of this Vee video was brilliant. I've transcribed it here, bold emphasis is mine:



Part of why I've been so nostalgic is just because of how upside down everything in the world is right now. Check this out: car companies deliberately killing models which sell, for models which don't. It's like they don't want to make money.

This article regarding Minnesota schools is well worth a read. It shows how even the best districts in the state in fact have fairly poor test scores. My home schooled kids are fourteen and eleven years old, and are already at those tenth and eleventh grade proficiency levels. It makes me wonder what the schools are doing with all of that time and money they put into each student.

Changing gears, one of my pet peeves is when people say, "A-hah, when you adjust for inflation video game systems from the 90s cost two bajillion dollars today, boy gaming was expensive back then!" What these people are missing is best explained by this comment, buried in the thread:



I can personally attest to this. My dad made a modest salary in the late 80s and early 90s, yet sixty bucks still "felt" like sixty bucks does today. This is because my parents had to pay very little for their home; cars and car insurance were cheap; they could buy a heaping cart of groceries for fifty dollars; health insurance was a fraction of the cost it is today; and so forth.

So we accumulated a rather large Sega Genesis collection from 1990 to 1994, plus built a couple of cutting edge PCs during that time period, and it didn't feel like we were were spending a couple of hundred bucks every time we bought a game-- it felt like we were spending $59.99 per game, like how that would feel today. Heck, $59.99 might feel worse today than then because of how expensive everything else is!

You have to look at the big, contextual "what was life like then" picture-- not just adjust the game or system prices for inflation.

Take my previous post, where I show houses which went from $180k to $1.2 million from 1995 to 2024. Or take this article: monthly mortgage payments of four and five thousand dollars are mentioned, to the point where people are renting out their yards to dog owners! The average payment is $2800 per month, more than double just three years ago! My parents never had to rent out their yard to survive, and they had money left over to buy Sega Genesis games too.

Or how about a thousand dollars a year to "cover" the average vehicle with insurance? That's not taxes or the car payment or gas or maintenance-- that's just the insurance! I could go on and on.

In other news, I got a kick out of this article. It reminds me of the vending machines from the Dreamcast launch title "Blue Stinger"! Maybe these stores play this song during Christmas?

Changing notes again, t's interesting to see the knives come out for Biden. Notice how as long as Biden was the vehicle for "the press" to maintain power, they were willing to give infinite free passes and run endless interference to and for the Democrats. But now that Biden is threatening their power, they are suddenly acting like real journalists.

Finally, my daughter officially starts her job next Tuesday. Everyone is very excited, especially her! I was talking to the location's general manager today, and he and his nine siblings were home schooled.

After having interviewed early this week, my fourteen year-old daughter has landed her first-ever job! She has orientation this upcoming Monday. $13 per hour, at a large chain with a reputation for molding and building up mature young people.

It's one of the, if not the, most proud moments I've experienced as a parent. The way she conducted herself on the phone, the way she went into the interview dressed in her nicest clothes with a flower-patterned notepad and copy of her resume for the interviewer, the way in which she said the interview itself went... I couldn't possibly be more proud of the young woman she's becoming. She's going to be a rock star employee for them!

In other news, I haven't been posting much simply because of how busy I've been! Between work, church volunteering, spending time with the wife and kids, plus chiropractor appointments three days per week, I've barely been doing anything else, including playing video games. I do have one review I need to write and post, plus I have a huge backlog of GBA TimeMage reviews he's generously handed to me, and which I also need to post.

I did get a kick out of this Babylon Bee clip, which is made even more interesting when contrasted against the Gears of War "Road to E3" video posted further down in the thread: game development then, versus game development now.

On the subject of "AI", a quote from this article is revealing, bold emphasis is mine:



Isn't that interesting! So when Satya Nadella said a few weeks ago, "Oh don't worry about us screenshotting your display buffer every few seconds, because all of the AI processing will happen on your device 'on the edge'", he was lying: in fact, Microsoft feels morally compelled to control what you are generating even on your own device, to the extent that their AI software will phone home for no other purpose than the censor the prompts you are feeding your own computer.

Finally, I was watching this 1995 Computer Chronicles episode the other day, and decided to look up the prices of some of the $180k - $200k homes in the video. For example, how about this dump located on a run-down looking city block for the low, low 2024 price of $1.2 million? I honestly don't know how anyone can even afford to live in Commiefornia anymore, and that's a serious question!

I've been reading a book called "Radical Hospitality". The author lived part of her life with Benedictine monks, and explains what "Benedict's Rule" is, along with how we can use it in our own lives. The gist is that the heart has to be truly open to others. Being actually open is scary, because the other person may in fact change us in some way-- and change can be and often is terrifying.

Therefore, before one can be open to others, they must first be open to themselves; if they're a mess inside, they are going to be "shields up!" like in an episode of Star Trek-- be superficially kind perhaps, but not in a way which genuinely exposes them to any risk of the profound, or any risk of authentic, heart-felt connection.

This leads me to a second discussion point. Two days ago I went with my kids to see the Pixar film "Inside Out 2". I am not a fan of CGI films, and I find modern cinema to be vacuous, trite, superficial, and way too filled with that eye-rolling slapstick one-liner style humor. The film began, and right away I saw the Cultural Marxist influence: the Muslim gal, a black friend, the coach is a black lesbian-looking design, the dad is kind of dorky and effeminate, the mom is driving the car, and so forth.

But what the film gets right is the way it presents the development of anxiety disorders. Without spoiling the film, most of the movie takes place inside the character's mind, inside a "control room" of sorts-- and each of the different personality facets such as joy, sadness, embarrassment and so forth are anthropomorphized! "Anxiety"-- an actual character, and with a wonderful design to boot-- shows up, quite literally bottles the other emotions, and jettisons them from the control room.

What I loved about the script was that, at first, the anxiety gives the character great success: she's better at hockey, she's fitting in with the kids at her new school-- it's like she has super powers! But eventually, "Anxiety" loses control of the situation, and it takes the other emotions to rescue things. Afterward, they don't jettison "Anxiety" though-- that character just becomes part of the crew, in the newly-actualized protagonist: the film emphasizes that "Anxiety" has its place-- like reminding the character to study for an upcoming Spanish test-- but it can't be the only thing in charge.

It was quite literally "Sniper: The Movie" and I felt a deep, deep personal connection to it to the point where I had a few tears stream down my cheeks at the ending-- because I so desperately desire that positive outcome for myself, after so many years of suffering. I think if I can put together the advice from the film-- loving all parts of me equally-- I can work towards becoming actualized, which will let me experience genuine human connection again, like I could when I was a child and teenager.

The final topic is that I've started up at a chiropractor for the first time in my life, and will be going in three times per week to fix decades of neglect. My spine is all over the place! The "adjustment" thing is taking some getting used to-- it has a real "shock value" the first time you undergo it, "What did you just do to me?!" But when I walked out of there for the first time, it was the first time in two decades I didn't have shoulder pain, and my anxiety seemed greatly reduced. Now it's a matter of repetition, gradually getting my muscles to "hold" the correct positions, versus everything simply shifting back after a few hours.

It looks like I need to put Activision up there with Microsoft and Google as top-tier evil companies. "AI voice chat moderation to enforce DIE compliance with players"? "Tracks an 'inclusion score' for every employee"? Holy Moses. Of course, I haven't bought a product of theirs in forever anyhow-- I associate them in my mind more with "Pitfall" on the Atari VCS than anything else.

Speaking of companies, large Lazio protests against Lotito. I've always defended him, but the worrying thing is that for the first time in his entire ownership of the club, we've regressed. And speaking of regression, my back has been getting worse and worse, to the point where at my annual physical this week I asked if they could take x-rays-- turns out I have scoliosis! I found a chiropractor near me which specializes in it-- I will call them on Monday. It's probably a degenerative condition I'll have my whole life-- but with a proper approach, I can stall it to a large degree.

In ongoing news, I've also been hugely involved with my church, to the point where now sometimes I'm having multiple consecutive nights of meetings for different things. I'm currently focusing on modernizing the IT approach; lots of people will meet and take notes on paper, but there is no shared calendar and nowhere to put notes where anyone else can read them-- so efforts are being duplicated, and key people are being left out of meetings since they don't even know those meetings are occurring!

This is purely anecdotal, but it does make me wonder: my friends lists on the various gaming ecosystems are waste lands! I recently read that the top games people are playing are almost exclusively several years old-- titles like "Counterstrike", "Minecraft", "Roblox", and "Fortnite" dominate. My friends lists reflect an even worse situation than that.

On Switch, most of my friends haven't even turned the unit on in so long it just shows them as being "offline". One of my friends still plays it, but hasn't bought any new games for it in almost two years-- he just plays the latest Pokemon game online for a zillion hours. I don't have many friends on PSN, but the ones there have essentially stopped playing video games altogether, other than the occasional Minecraft session.

The Xbox ecosystem is the most depressing. Back in the 360 days, my friends list was hopping, everyone was playing all of the cool games coming out like "Oblivion", "Forza Motorsport 2", "Mass Effect", and "Gears of War". They were logged in every day, and in-game. These days? Scrolling through the list, haven't logged in for 46 days, 18 days, 212 days, 97 days... no one on my list even plays anything!

I'm by far the most active person in these ecosystems among my friends. Some of it could just be my circles are getting old, and there is some truth in that. But I also have a number of my kids' friends on the Xbox list, since we share a Minecraft Realm-- and even amongst them they hardly are logged in anymore, and when they are it's not like they are playing games on Game Pass or something: they just play Minecraft, essentially, along with maybe one or two other titles.

This seems like a really bad omen for the video game industry. I watch the latest game-related presentations and streams, and can't help but think almost every game they show is going to fail, and result in a studio closure. I think if they could make consoles interesting again, versus just being budget PCs, and get back to focusing on original, first-order, simpler titles which concentrate on just being fun to play, my friends lists would liven up again. But until then, the overall downward trajectory will probably continue.

This could be B.S. obviously, but it would make a lot of sense. They're a generation behind so they haven't seen it yet-- but inevitably, Nintendo is going to get hit with the 4K game budgets as well; they could arrive at the same conclusion as everyone else: "Better spread my software to the widest possible player base." And maybe that is why they've been going so hard after emulation lately? And it would hook them in to the live service player base, in a way their hardware can't, or at least hasn't so far.

In other news, I wonder if, when Bob Vieira wrote this song back circa 1994, he'd imagine it being in a remake in 2024? When I saw the headline, I said to myself "Naaaah, it can't be that Killing Time"-- but sure enough. Of course, a big draw for that game is watching the 3DO hardware in action, pushed to its max-- a remake will lose that, naturally. But it's a really good game in its own right, and the high resolution sprites look very true to their source material. I wonder if the game will become too easy, played at 120 fps versus sub-10 like it is much of the time?

Finally, I'm seriously worried about Lazio next season: we're buying players and signing coaches from relegation teams-- what will that make us? I would not be surprised if we finished fifteenth, and it was like the 2004 and 2005 seasons where we were mere points from the drop.