I had in some ways the opposite 23&Me experience and goals. My parents told me growing up that I had some small native ancestry. This is actually a common myth many Americans have either been told or somehow deluded themselves into believing.

So I did the DNA testing (which I now regret from all the obvious enshittification and privacy reasons) to prove that my ancestry was boring and predictable. Which it was, no indigenous ancestry, just the expected European countries that my great grandparents came from.

They also do a lot of nice health screening things and I think that’s probably the much more valuable aspect of it. It really is very American that people are so much more concerned with what DNA says about one’s race or ethnicity than about their health and wellbeing.

Every 5 minutes, at max volume:

YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US. ALL AVAILABLE OPERATORS ARE HELPING OTHER CUSTOMERS. PLEASE STAY ON THE LINE.

2 minutes later:

DID YOU KNOW <COMPANY> IS WORKING TO SAVE CUSTOMERS LIKE YOU MONEY? UPGRADE YOUR PLAN TO ULTIMATE TODAY AND SAVE! YOU CAN ADD BASIC CABLE TO YOUR INTERNET PLAN FOR FREE FOR 3 MONTHS. MAKE ANY SOUND AT ALL TO LEAVE THE SUPPORT QUEUE AND SPEAK WITH A NEW ACCOUNT SPECIALIST RIGHT AWAY.

returns to playing compressed elevator music through an old can

Eh possibly, but many of the women I’ve slept with have told me that I make them feel safe and that it’s a huge turn on for them. Shocking, I know, that people might want to feel secure before they get intimate.

As a tall man who likes to walk at night, I have long understood that women alone at night do not wish to encounter me. So when I happen to find myself following a woman down the street, I will either slow down, cross the street, or stop and look at a sign or something for a minute to give her some space.

In a dangerous and shitty world, a person has to find subtle and quiet ways to express care, compassion, and solidarity. It costs me nothing to make a woman feel safer.

He likens Arkane’s approach to studios like Larian and FromSoftware: “Those are people that have been doing, over and over, the thing they know exactly how to do, until it hits super hard. So to me, that’s what Arkane had to do.”

Damn, what a concept: doing the same kind of game multiple times, iterating on the design to perfect it. Obviously Bethesda gets releasing the same game over and over again, but this idea of “improving” the design is so alien to them. Wouldn’t adding thousands of microtransactions be an improvement?

Stephanie Stirling has been beating the drum on fake “quality” modes that give you RT at the expense of everything else. Think it was this one but it might also have been this one.

I’ve absolutely driven past a cop who was playing WoW on his laptop while sitting in traffic.

I’d wait to see if fans are still trying to port Starfield to new engines in 20 years before I start talking about my company’s “best” work.

I don’t know who really got that trend going. I’ve enjoyed up to hour-ish long videos on more or less anything, but a few years back the first truly excessively long video I remember is Whitelight’s 7 hour long overview/miniseries on Death Stranding. And to be fair, I did find that faster and more enjoyable than playing Death Stranding.

(Also I get why folks make them: more ads plus having that much watch time heavily biases the algorithm towards you so it’s more money overall. And the kind of person that watches 7 hour long reviews in the background (or while sleeping), aka me, certainly help weigh the scales for super long videos.)

But also, I kind of like when shorts are like a minute long or less so I can watch one when I’m like, on the shitter and not accidentally end up with a video essay. I mean 10 minutes used to be the limit of every youtube video! Will they introduce a new, even shorter format? Bring vines or blips back?

Alright, I split the differance, I think that should make everyone happy.

Can’t wait for 10 hour long reviews of Elden Ring, BUT VERTICALE AND LOOPS NOW!?!

The article reads like a fever dream, I can’t believe Kotoku published this guy’s notes about a podcast he heard. They say the car set wqs “hermetically sealed” because it had to go upside down, and that the set was evacuated for 3 hours after. But also that Will Smith just farts a lot, as everyone knows. Insane stuff.

Man, I’d love to play Alan Wake 2. Big Remedy fan; Control was my game of the year for two years. Be nice if they’d release it on a platform I’d buy it on.

The best written games are all indies now. Text and story heavy games are pretty common, with varying amounts of “game” to carry the story. Check out Citizen Sleeper, Disco Elysium, or Book of Hours.

Yeah, like 99% of your streaming time will be exactly that. The other 1% is apologizing to the people who accidentally end up in your stream for wasting their time.

I don’t have time for games that long

plays Factorio for the 274th hour

In Alejandro Jodorowsky’s concept for a Dune film from the early 1970s, each house has their costumes and architecture designed by a contemporary artist. Giger was the designer for the Harkonnen, and several of his ideas persisted beyond the failed film.

The Harkonnen Castle

A Harkonnen chair

I assumed Villeneuve was calling back to those designs.

People in times of desperate oppression and violence rarely turn to the uncaring vastness of the chaotic universe for comfort.

Is it just me, or is it worrying how companies keep packing up and selling off the only parts of their businesses that actually, you know, make stuff, in favor of becoming full time bullshit peddlers?

I’ve been wanting to get a pipe Garfield tattoo since first seeing this. It changed me. Made me better.