Yeah i’m in my 30s and still enjoy playing games, nice way to relax at the end of the day.

Related question though: any good Minecraft channels on youtube that aren’t made for children? I’m just starting to get in to minecraft now and it’s been super fun, but the youtube playthroughs I’ve been looking at have all been…seeming to not be catering to an audience my age, to put it politely.

Yep, no point in racing towards life “milestones” that are no longer affordable or attainable for most people. Besides, the idea that these “milestones” are required for happiness is just an arbitrary societal pressure, and I think we all probably know someone who’s raced to check off all the boxes of these “milestones” but is unhappy, maybe because they rushed to marry someone they can’t even really comfortably talk to about serious things in a healthy constructive way, or maybe because they rushed to have kids without seriously thinking about what that commitment meant, or maybe because being a homeowner sucks up every ounce of savings they have so they have no flexibility to save, to travel, to do anything else

I end up gravitating towards favorite games that I play tons of, as well as additional games that I play through once for the experience.

The “core game” I keep coming back to these days has been XCOM 2, which I never really got tired of.

Visually it looks amazing. Love the addition of the “parallel roads” feature too, that’ll be a huge timesaver.

I loved Midnight Suns, but the replayability does suffer because of all the dialogue scenes without easy ways to skip past them. I’m playing a second game now on higher difficulty and still enjoying the combat but it’s a bit annoying to have to skip past all those conversations. If they patch in a New Game+ option that makes it easier to skip some of that stuff, it’ll really improve the replayability aspect IMO. Still I’ll probably do one more campaign with the DLC characters added, I hear some of them are a lot of fun.

After a few years of mostly playing strategy & tactical games, I fired up Minecraft this weekend. I’d never really given it a proper try before, but it’s been refreshing and relaxing. I started on survivor mode but found the enemies kind of annoying, so I switched to peaceful survivor mode and that’s been fun so far. Just enjoying the “wander around and build stuff” atmosphere. Honestly makes me want to play more sandbox-y games after a while of mostly playing more intense stuff.

Is it sad that I wouldn’t be surprised if Spez suddenly rolls back reddit’s restrictions on hate speech, taking after Musk to pander to the alt right? Given that spez has already expressed admiraton for Musk, and seems to have alt right leanings, I wouldn’t be surprised.

yes, social media keeps proving why a profit-driven society really doesn’t have the interests of individuals in mind, companies will just do whatever they can get away with to extract as much money as possible from ordinary people.

I wouldn’t mind as much if half the websites out there didn’t have the trashiest ads I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve got an ad blocker on my desktop but not on my phone. Amazing that supposedly “professional” businesses are filling their sites with sleazy ads that look like they’ll lead you directly to installing a bunch of viruses.

yeah, anyone trying any kind of “both sides make good points” argument these days is probably someone whose personal rights are not at stake.

One quote that jumps out: “It’s difficult to say with certainty what the causes are, but Facebook has made no secret about its intention to deprioritize news on its platform and give greater precedence to video content, which by nature results in less clickthrough traffic."

It does feel like my Facebook “algorithm” is constantly trying to push “shorts” on me…annoying little videos clearly meant to imitate, I assume, Youtube Shorts, Tiktok, Instagram short videos, etc…

Broadly speaking, with all that’s happening in the social media world, it feels like some sort of reckoning or change is coming, but where exactly things are heading is hard to say…

I read “Solitary” by Albert Woodfox - it’s his account of spending decades in solitary confinement on shaky charges, partly as retaliation for his getting involved in the Black Panther Party while incarcerated. Definitely an eye-opening read about the US prison system and an inspirational read in some ways, given that he didn’t let his decades in solitary confinement stop him from doing what he could to fight for better conditions in the prison

Love the idea of smaller “indie” social media communities without any profit incentive, just purely spaces to socialize and hang out. Also appreciate that there’s solid moderation against hate speech etc. Otherwise it’s still clear that it’s a new and growing thing and perhaps there’s some uncertainty about what the day-to-day realities of it will look like, but it’s interesting to be exploring it at such an early time.