I’m about half way through The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. It’s an interesting blend of fantasy and sci-fi and a decent read so far.

I’ve been playing Palia. It’s a chill MMO focused on resource gathering, NPC quests, and crafting.

In all seriousness, he could someday move to an employee and customer ownership model and give or sell shares of steam to uses. Would be an awesome fuck you to all the big corporations trying to dominate the games industry.

Balls

You can get a watch repair kit on Amazon that will have the tools to remove the pins between the links.

I’ve also had luck going to a department store with a jewelery counter and seeing if they can make adjustments. Especially if it’s a brand of watch they carry, you can always say someone got it as a gift for you from that chain of stores.

The impact of the death of community in modern society (at least in America) can not be understated. I wish we had comparable institutions to churches that could provide community without the religion.

Traffic enforcement and red light cameras. I used to be very opposed to them, but I’ve since come to appreciate the absurdity of America’s car central culture.

Additionally, traffic stops by police disproportionately effect minorities and lead to escalations and other issues, while taking away enforcement capacity from more important things.

I still don’t think the cameras should necessarily be run by private, for profit entities. Nor would I really want cameras that ticket you if you go 1 mph over. But in general I’m much less opposed to the idea than I used to be.

Both my kids (4 and 7) use fire tablets and we have the subscription with it to get them access to lots of free apps.

I put memory cards in both, as what they come with is insufficient. The older versions we had were a little janky, but we haven’t really had any issues with the current ones.

The parental controls could be better but work okay. In the kids version of the interface you don’t really see ads, just app recommendations. Some of the apps still have gated content, but it hasn’t really been an issue.

Thanks for the recommendation. I was wondering what else to try as I sure as hell don’t want to use YouTube and it doesn’t seem like you can have a separate podcast playlist in Spotify.

There are so many things these days which co-opt and diminish our ability to pay attention and focus, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if it’s also affecting memory.

The book Stolen Focus goes into these issues, but diet, air pollution, smart phones, social media, and instant gratification tired to consumerism all diminish our ability to focus.

Go for a walk, longer is better but even 20 minutes will help.

Eat fermented foods and plenty of fiber to keep your gut micro biome happy. There’s increasing evidence that your gut health impacts your mental health.

I’m so skeptical of companies, that I almost instinctively distrust any company which directly advertises to me. I would be doubly so if that ad came soon after discussing a need.

Here’s a wild thought, maybe the best security comes from being a good neighbor and cooperating with people around you.

It’s super annoying that the camera and movement locks during dialogue without ensuring that the person you’re talking to is even looking at you. The NPCs are also kinda creepy looking and definitely have that uncanny valley feel to them.

It blew my mind a couple years ago, while shopping in a Natural Grocers, to see this dreaded gothish hippie guy on the cover of some vegan lifestyle magazine, only to realize that it was Rob Zombie.

I’m over 200 hours in and still mostly enjoying Starfield. There are a lot of things that could be better and the limitations of the game engine are pretty evident. I feel like the game will continue to evolve with expansions and mods but that’s not good enough for people who expected everything day 1.

The repetition of points of interest is definitely a bummer. It also doesn’t make sense that no matter where you land on any planet there is always a handful of structures and people nearby. Or that another ship always seems to land near you shortly after touching down.

It’s also annoying how 300 years in the future, people seem to have completely forgotten about night vision and your only option for illumination is the built in flashlight.

I think that’s maybe the most frustrating thing: it’s easy to see how the game could’ve been cooler in so many ways, but due to the engine or development constraints shortcuts were taken that result in subpar play.

Unless it’s an online multiplayer game, let me pause whenever! Playing Starfield now and it’s so annoying that you can’t pause during dialogue or ship fight by hitting ESC.

It is a little mystifying that they continue to be so bad at maps across so many games.

Meanwhile, the game won’t even launch for me because apparently if you don’t have the most recent version of Windows, it won’t recognize your graphics card. And for whatever reason absolutely refuses to update to 22H2.

I always found The Life Aquatic to be very cathartic.