If you’re ever wondering why something in the US is bad, it’s almost always racism. Sometimes it’s corporate profits.

By the time you’ve read this it’s too late not to read it.

But maybe you meant longer content than just a headline

I’ve had several girlfriends who were like “you play video games? Like… <worried expression> call of duty?”

They were all relieved when I was like no.

Less relieved when I got them to play cuphead co-op.

I accept that your job likely has different cadences than software development, in addition to personal preference.

Most software engineers I’ve talked to don’t like being interrupted in the middle of some deep thought. Especially if it means shelving current work to check out something else

I didn’t mean I need them to keep it digital. I meant I don’t want my train of thought interrupted. A “take a number” and “now serving” sign would work fine, if it gated the conversation until I was ready. Or just they send a message asking to talk and wait for me to say “ok come on over”

• poor heating/cooling. Usually offices aren’t a comfortable temperature for everybody.

• not getting compensated for the commute. It’s a pay cut. Fuck you, management.

• people that just walk up to your desk and start asking questions. Send a message like “can we talk about XYZ?” and I’ll get to it when I get to it. Though this maybe is a learned behavior from people who are bad at responding to messages.

I had a pair of coworkers that would chat over slack all day. One of them had a laugh. My other coworker at the other side of the large office would message me “what’s so fucking funny over there?”. I never knew because they never shared.

I think we agree, then? What I was saying is you have to talk to people like your family. You have to have bonds with people, whether that’s from being a family or just spending time together.

I just to debate them enough and provide them with the necessary examples that they can form their own actual opinion.

This will be fruitless if they don’t trust you. That’s another way of saying you’re in-group.

In-group pressure and trauma are the only things that change minds. Traumatizing people is often rude, and maybe a crime, so it’s safer to try to get people to see you as trusted in-group and then work on changing their minds.

There are people at google, people with names and addresses, who have collectively made the world incalculably shittier. I hope they get what they deserve.

Ed Zitron wrote a long post about some asshole in particular who shit it all up: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Need more details to really make sense of this.

There are some things in games that could be parses as annoying or core, depending on what you’re looking for. Like, some people might say not being able to quick save/load is horrible, and being sent back to a checkpoint on death is bullshit. But that’s fundamental to some game loops

A lot of Americans have shitty, immature, views on sexuality and the human body.

I remember some coworkers and I chatting about it, and two of them both said they’d rather their kid watch a movie where someone got shot in the head than one where someone received oral sex.

This is a joke, right?

At the lowest level, it is possible to pull people in your peer-group out of shitty world views. It’s slow and difficult. But like I got an old coworker to be way less homophobic through our chats at work.

At the larger level, nah, fuck em.

Don’t buy it. Tell your friends not to buy it. Don’t engage with it. But better stuff.

That’s about all you can do unless you’re secretly very wealthy and/or connected.

Desktop: 0. It’s off. I close the browser when I’m done

Phone: the number says 64, but only 25 “active”. I should probably prune.

I was just told today that ai usage is a factor in hiring and promotion. They didn’t say the AI usage had to be smart.

My boss, to his credit, reportedly said something like “well, if someone is already good at python they might not need as much AI to do a task than someone who isn’t”. I don’t think management cared.

People are stupid emotional creatures. They don’t calmly evaluate if the thing is useful or practical. They see the in-group doing it and don’t want to be left out.

This was probably an advantage in pre-history. Our brains haven’t kept up with our changing environment.

Usually they have

• multiple approaches
• reactive world and NPCs
• the world is more interactive than decorative

So the game might say “get the laptop from the 2nd floor office”. An immersive sim will try to allow as many things as you could imagine doing in real life to achieve this

• talk your way in. Convince them you work there or something
  • maybe forge or steal some ID
  • or hack their network to give yourself creds!
• find a back entrance
• find a back entrance directly to the 2nd story
• just shoot everyone
• sneak in and take people out like a ghost
• sneak in and don’t get seen
• set off a fire alarm and go in when people are outside
• do any of the above after hours

Contrast this with a more traditional game like Mass Effect. There’s typically going to be like one path, with maybe like one choice. You go in where they want, shoot the baddies, and get the thing.