prefer not to have negative opinions about anything, if it can be helped. Okay- that was not a strong start, but bear with me Taylor Swift Army.
For me, beer has been a great teacher (and a good analogue, I think). I don't think I've met anyone who liked beer the moment it first touched their lips. Love at first sight is only for Shakespeare and Swift, it seems. But as you taste that bitterness, the internal contradiction becomes clear as day. Somebody clearly likes this, but I for the life of me, cannot understand why. Eventually you will crack that code though, for some time now I can safely say that I get what is going on there.
Here is another contradiction: I do not like trying new things- But, I do like to be challenged. This particular drink is not bad, It's just challenging. When your immediate reaction is repulsion, remember that somebody likes this thing for some reason! There is some merit here, I just have not realized it yet. Everything annoying is instead a puzzle, if you contextualize it the right way.
I would describe the contents as, um, very challenging. I don't really like pop, and I'm pretty selective about my country, so I already knew this would be difficult. I also think that this has a very specific audience that is not me. A lot of the the recurring themes are things that either don't apply to me, or are ideas that I am generally oblivious to.
There were a couple of songs that stood out to me, Dorothea, coney island. To be honest though, the stuff that I can most easily enjoy is her older pop stuff that I heard everywhere in high school. It just gets into that silliness territory that makes it fun, like going back and listening to All-American rejects or Mariana's trench. It provides a sense of nostalgia for a time when these types of narratives felt relevant to me.
I won't go as far as to say that this music is entirely without utility- a lot of the music I listened to has a numbing effect that allows one to focus on another task, (like drawing or writing). It's probably good music to lose yourself in a task to. But I was promised nutritional value.
The method of contextualizing art as a series of challenges is novel because you win some, but you're going to lose some.
It's the end of the fourth round and I'm bleeding from my face, I can't see out of one eye and the other one isn't so hot either. I can't hear shit. Coach leans over the rope and mouths “Throw in the towel kid. Live to fight another day.”“I'm tired boss.” I tell him, “I'm really tired.”
I am defeated, and there is no simple way around it. Is this music bad? I think that is a bit of a short-sighted question. It serves a utility to someone, which is the important thing. Am I going to be utilizing it? Uh, probably not on my lonesome, no. I am still a supporter of the Taylor Swift People's Militia, but maybe I won't assume the role of General any longer.
I would bet that at least half of the people reading this are playing the latest entry in the Legend of Zelda series: Tears of the Kingdom. If you're not and don't plan on it any time soon, I'd appreciate the read anyways but the rest of the article will most likely be lost on you.
This article is aimed at the early to mid game player. Perhaps you've done a couple of the main temples, got an extra stamina wheel, a bunch of extra hearts, etc. I will try and keep the tips free of things which the game would teach you at some point or things that should be figured out on your own. For example, I won't tell you how to find a specific boss, but I may share tips on how to fight one. This list is in no particular order since I'm just sorta pulling all of these from my memory.
I also kinda messed up the GIFs situation just a tad. Accidentally made all the GIFs massive in file size, and there's like 20 of them. Hopefully by the time you finish reading these intro articles, the GIFs will have loaded. If not, oh well. I'll figure it out next time.
1. Repairing your gear
One of the most prominent complaints from the community about Breath of the Wild was the weapon durability system. In Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo introduced a way to repair your items through Rock Octorocks. These monsters are typically found in the Death mountain region.
A Rock Octorock
To repair an item, drop one item that you would like to repair in front of the octorock. Take a couple steps back and wait for the octorock to inhale the item. The octorock will then chew on it a bit, and after a little sparkle effect, spit it back out at you. You will find that the item is now fully repaired.
A Rock Octorock repairing an item
This comes with the added benefit of the octorock applying a random modifier to the item (better durability, damage, etc.) but note that it will also overwrite any modifiers on it. Do note that this includes how many arrows a lynel bow will shoot. I remember feeding a 5 shot lynel bow to an octorock, and it spitting back out a 3 shot bow.
You should also be careful of not getting hit by the returning weapon. Depending on what it is, it may hurt a lot.
Getting hit by a returning weapon
Each octorock can only repair/modify one item per blood moon, so it may be prudent to mark the location of each octorock you come across, and kill the ones you've used so you don't run into it again.
2. The Air bike
Horses quickly become obsolete due to the amount of verticality that the map of Tears of the Kingdom introduces, especially when exploring the depths. Due to this, the need for a method of movement that can navigate any or all terrain becomes highly desirable. Enter the Air bike.
The Air bike
The Air bike is an incredibly popular design in the community as of writing this due to it's many advantages over other methods of transportation. This includes it's cheapness, flying properties, ease of use, and more. Autobuild allows you to make one using just 9 zonaite, but I still prefer to supply the actual parts. I encourage you to look up a guide on how to make one of these, as creating it initially can be quite tedious.
Autobuilding and using the Air bike in the depths, with a light attached
Controlling it feels really good. Keep the stick still to go forward and gain/lose no height. Pull back to go up, push forward to lose height and go faster, and left and right to turn. Quickly exit and enter the vehicle to lose a lot of height. Since it uses only two fans, it's quite light on the battery as well, but don't be afraid to use zonaite charges to go that extra distance.
Flying the Air bike
3. Shrines and Lightroots
This is a shorter tip, but very useful nonetheless. If you're having trouble finding lightroots in the depths, or shrines on the surface, remember this: for each shrine on the surface, there is a corresponding lightroot directly below it. This relationship between shrines and lightroots is made even more apparent when you realize that the lightroot's name is simply the shrine's name reversed.
Shrines and lightroots share relative locations
4. Fighting a Talus
The Talus returns from Breath of the Wild in almost the exact same form with one key difference: Link no longer has the Bomb rune. Previously, fighting a Talus was quite straight forward: hit it with a bomb or two until it was stunned, climb on it's back, then hit the nodule until it was defeated. With bombs becoming rarer in Tears of the Kingdom, an alternative method to fight the Talus without bombs is desired. For myself, I use these two ways to deal with them.
Ascend
My go-to method when I engage a Talus is to simply run up and ascend straight through it. It gives me a decent amount of time to get a good number of swings in before it shakes me off, to which I just do it again.
Ascending through the Talus
Recall
While standing far away, the Talus will attempt to throw one of its arms at you. When it does this, you can simply recall it back at the Talus, stunning it for a while. You could then attempt to climb it normally to get at the nodule.
Using recall to fight the Talus
5. Interesting shield fuses
I was on the fence on writing this section since most of these should be discovered on your own, but I decided to include them anyways since these aren't entirely obvious.
Fusing a shield with any type of cart allows you to shield surf on almost any surface.
Shield surfing with a cart
Fusing a shield with a bomb allows you to rocket jump.
Bomb jumping
The Animated series predicted this
Fusing a wing to a shield gives you extra height when initiating a shield surf.
Using a wing shield to get to higher places quickly
6. Using the Wing
The wing device is great for traversing long distances in the sky. You can even attach a steering stick and some fans to create essentially a controllable plane. I'll discuss some techniques here that will help you use the wing in more situations
Link on a wing
One of the weaknesses of the wing is it's inability to take off from solid ground. Typically, you'd need the help of some launch rails or a cart, but this is not very desirable. A good way to circumvent this limitation is to simply glide off the edge, summon the wing midair, then hop on. It takes a bit of practice to do consistently, but definitely does work. The best way I've found to doing it is to glide stationary for a bit, summon the wing, then move forward and fall. This method is great for when your initial wing expires.
Boarding a wing midair
If you don't find success in the above, the following method works just fine. Simply take a wing, use Ultrahand to lift it off the edge, then pull it back above you for a couple of seconds, and then set it down. After that, recall the wing and ascend onto it. When it starts hanging off the edge, stop the recall, and you're on your way.
Alternative boarding method
You could also just use a rocket to get the wing off the ground
7. Various ways to gain height
For this last section, I decided to forgo the whole taught by the game or discoverable on your own restriction of this article on the sole premise that gaining height is simply too useful in any open world game, this one included. With the lack of Revali's Gale from Breath of the wild, we are forced to find ways other than climbing to gain height. Here's a list of useful techniques that can be leveraged to do just that, arranged from least to most expensive with varying degrees of effectiveness.
Ultrahand, Recall, Ascend
By using ultrahand, recall, and ascend, the player can hover an object above their heads, recall it up there, then ascend through it. Can be a little tedious but gets the job done, and you can do it with anything large enough to ascend through. You can also forgo the ascend step by just standing on top of the object before recalling, but with ascending, you could make a tall pillar and ascend all the way to the top.
Ascending through a recalled object
Pine cone in a fire
One of the cheaper methods. Requires only tossing a Hylian Pine cone into a campfire.*
Tossing a pine cone into a campfire
Fan
Simply pointing a fan up creates a wind current which you can glide up with.
Rising with a fan
Springs
These devices were pretty much made for this express purpose, and they can be stacked and reused if you can recover it. Great for entering bullet time.
Using two stacked springs
Shield Fuses
Using a shield with a rocket or a spring will send you up, but is only a one time use. There's also the bomb and wing fuses discussed in tip #5
Gaining height with a rocket and a spring
Building a flying machine
Definitely the most expensive on this list, but also the most effective. Whether it's using a hot air balloon, the Air Bike, or just hopping from one floating platform to the next, using zonaite devices seems to be the easiest or only way to access certain areas. Especially useful if you can find the parts in the environment.
Using a hot air balloon
Sometimes, you can just find a flying machine in the wild
Hopefully you've found at least one of these tips helpful in your play through. This is my first article here, so please excuse any errors or general weirdness. All the GIFs and images were recorded/taken by yours truly.
If this article is received well, I have plenty more tips and tricks in mind to make a second article, one that would carry major story and world spoilers. If there is demand, I may consider making a purely beginner version, filled with many basic tips for absolute newcomers to the game.
If you know of anything to add to this list, send me a message and I will probably include it in the next article.
This reads like a cookie-cutter “entrepreneur” post from LinkedIn.
Sam Altman gives a bunch of talking points that sound like the usual nonsense from billionaires.
“Work 60 hour weeks, love your work, be rich enough to gamble and make it big”
This misses the point. You shouldn't need to make it big. You should be able to live a decent life without making it big. Sam talks about UBI being a driving force for unlocking human potential so that the little people can make it big too!!11!!
Little people, small guys, what does it speak to that our language historically uses disabilities to reference disadvantage? Why are those with disabilities so crippled compared to the rest of us?
Maybe because the rich have worked to prevent the masses from achieving the bare minimum quality of life that I would expect from a society that has the resources to do so.
Sam talks about making it big by owning things. What a fucking joke. The way to make it big (for EVERYONE) is libre software. Computers have had the potential to equalize things since their inception. Copyright has acted as the shield for a scum-based economy for too long. Piracy has always been a “problem” (read: solution) since the inception of computers. Restriction of data is antithetical to how they work.
You can't own BITS. Bits are a post-scarcity resource. Copyable with negligable cost. The problem is that “piracy” software hasn't been good enough yet.
You want to do something BIG? Build something that enables people use computers how they want to. Media has been restrictive. Games have shitty input layouts. Movies you want to watch are only available on bumfuck streaming services. You can't play games on your phone anymore without an internet connection. Netflix limits how many files you can have downloaded.
None of this is a problem with “piracy”. Take the shitty software, tear out the parts you care about, and make it pretty again.
...
It's easy to say, harder to do in practice. At least, for now it is. What happens when we have AGI? When the AI is smart enough to write software that works? This sounds like a fantasy, but not forever it won't be.
We don't have to wait till then to dream at least. All the movies, music, games, books, blog posts that I care about, in my physical possession on my hard drives. No DRM. No dependency on corpos who can strip the things I care about on a whim.
Google has ruined Email, making it impossible to self-host without being caught in a web of filters and uncertainty. Maybe it won't matter? It probably won't matter. It's at the point where it's easier to start fresh.
What's left to monetize when libre software achieves dominance? What's left to sell, when AI can take any software idea (existing or hypothetical) and turn it into free software?
You can sell hardware, and you can sell the time spent making software. You can't (shouldn't be able to) sell software... once we get rid of copyright. You want your computer to do something? Either the software exists already (for free!), or you pay someone to make it (and it becomes free for others!).
We stop duplicating effort, and we start filling in the gaps between what exists and what's desired.
What's the difference between Discord, a messaging software where I am a powerless user, versus X-cord, where every user owns their own domain, hosts (paying someone to manage?) their content, and the software is libre?
Why pay Discord to manage a messaging platform when I can buy some hard drives, tell the AI to buy http://beans.fun, and have it participate in the libre protocol that is X-cord? Nobody can compete with YouTube, but everyone has the harddrive space to host a few videos.
The “problem” is privacy I guess. Why host things from my computer, expose my IP for the ne'er-do-wells to find? Why not just pay Discord to do it for me? Why not just pay Google to do it for me? Why not just pay Amazon to do it for me?
Using a CDN can help. Instead of visiting your machine directly, your content will be cached by some other machine. It will lessen the toll if your stuff blows up (in a good way) and you get a huge influx of traffic.
Except, that's not necessary? BitTorrent exists. So instead of CDNs, VPNs are the best? Except, that's probably not at the limit of libre either. Doesn't Tor exist? Instead of me having “my” IP that can be used to correlate my activities, can't I just join my computer to the hive and get lost in the crowd?
If your video gets popular, than everyone watching it could be a seeder, instead of pegging a single host and having it all fall over.
This isn't new tech tho, so what's been the problem? What will AI change?
...
I work doing Azure cloud stuff. Virtual machines, networking, storage, etc. It's not hard. It's legos. Not even good legos. What the fuck is the point of globally-unique display names? I've considered building an abstraction layer on cloud providers, but that's been done before by Vercel and stuff hasn't it?
AI will be able to manage all this crap for us. Is it cheaper to use Amazon directly (and all the wasted hours from dealing with Amazon crap), or is it better to use a reseller (and deal with their crap instead)? These will be questions the AI will be asking, not us. We will say “I want to make a blog. Make a plan, confirm the cost with me, then set it up.” Then, it will happen.
No need for cloud-monkeys like myself... Not that there is a need? You can run NGINX right now on your computer and type your thoughts into HTML and make it available to the world.
The problem with that approach, is that the content disappears when you turn off your computer. You want your stuff to be always-availble, because why not? Maybe, instead of dealing with the mountains of complexity brought by trying to make data private, instead we just share data?
I like Jake's blog. When Jake's blog gets updated, why don't I download the new stuff and be a mirror? That way, if Jake's blog goes down, I can still read it. If Jake's blog gets popular, then I can help share the load. If Jake's blog gets unpopular, then I can still have it for as long as I care about it.
How much disk space would it take to store all this stuff?
Going on my YouTube history page, I scrolled down till April 21 (2023) before I got bored of waiting.
Then, using some Javascript, I can quickly just get the links and the time watched. I can then convert the time watched into seconds, and sum it all up.
entries = Array.from(document.querySelectorAll("#contents > ytd-video-renderer"))
.map(x => [
x.querySelector("a").href,
x.querySelector("ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer").textContent.trim()
]
)
// turn [link, time (mm:ss or hh:mm:ss)] into [link, seconds]
entryTimes = entries.map(x => [
x[0],
x[1].split(":").map(x => parseInt(x)).reverse().reduce((acc, x, i) => acc + x * 60 ** i)
]).filter(x => !isNaN(x[1]))
totalTime = entryTimes.map(x => x[1]).reduce((acc, x) => acc + x, 0)
// the same link may be present more than once
// the link may also end in &t=...
// we want to remove duplicates
totalTimeUnique = entryTimes
.map(x => [x[0].split("&")[0], x[1]])
.filter((x, i, self) => self.findIndex(y => y[0] === x[0]) === i)
.map(x => x[1])
.reduce((acc, x) => acc + x, 0)
console.log(totalTime, totalTimeUnique)
// > 1664428 1267149
console.log(totalTime / 60 / 60, totalTimeUnique / 60 / 60)
// > 462.3411111111111 351.98583333333335
In like 6 weeks, I've watched 1591 videos (1343 unique). In total, this is 462 hours (351 unique).
I use YouTube for some music, so that explains a lot of the duplicates.
The numbers are kinda crazy.
BingGPT says I can get a 5TB hard drive for $108.
With 52 weeks in a year, and 462/6=77 hours per week, that's 4000 hours per year.
4000 hours of video at 1.5GB/hour is 6TB.
For like $200, I can store every piece of internet content I consume.
I don't know if 1.5GB/hour is the latest and greatest for video encoding either.
What conclusions can we draw from this?
AI won't kill art, but it may kill the art industry?
We already have a model for things-taped-to-the-wall, what more is left to automate?
Soon, movies and videos will be generated by AI. This ease of generation will go down at least two paths:
Everyone creates their own content, either by prompting themselves or by letting the AI infer tastes through historical data
The majority of content is still created by a human that isn't the consumer
In both cases, the result is (as it already was) people just watching stuff that interests them.
Except, instead of requiring budgets that exceed the capabilities of any individual, every individual will be able to create exceptional media on their own.
What need is there for copyright when movies go from billion-dollar productions to free?
What need is there for copyright when secrets of production are no longer, because the AI can deduce any methodology from a product? The secrets of chip designs have been hidden and stolen from the beginning, as is the case for any other product worth stealing.
So what happens next? Artists, truck drivers, cloud monkeys, etc. are all out of a job and are forced to move into the shrinking battle-royale zone of jobs that haven't been automated yet?
Maybe, instead, we can just use our excessive wealth to allow people to exist without having to sell their body to survive? Maybe, instead of having to work to live, we can just live?
The only valid concern is privacy. What is the risk of the publication of our lives? That online stalkers will be able to track us and find us? That our secrets will be revealed? That our thoughts will be known?
If we have nothing to hide, then we have nothing to fear.
We should have nothing to hide, because we should live in a society that accepts that we as humans are flawed individuals who must be given the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them.
The cancel culture is a symptom of a society that is too afraid to accept that people are flawed. That people make mistakes. That people can change.
Prisons are exploitative labour systems that have been used as a cudgel against minorities by the surprisingly scummy population. Why would shitass political leaders keep getting elected, unless either 1. the elections are rigged, or 2. the population is shitass?
If I was on the Truman show, what would be revealed? Any STIs, fetishes, home addresses, lovers, etc. would be revealed. Clothes still have use as a sanitary measure, even if the technology exists today that lets me take a picture of someone's face and generate a nude of them.
The danger is not the lack of privacy, but the lack of accountability.
It's impossible to have a foolproof digital identity system for accountability [citation needed].
This shitcoin about scanning your retina in exchange for a proof-of-humanity credit? What happens when your IMMUTABLE fingerprint gets duplicated? You can't just get new eyeballs. There's nothing unique, binding about us as individuals.
You are unique, just like everyone else.
Digital content can be fabricated, metadata can be falsified, encryption can be broken. Even if you have perfect encryption, you can't guarantee that the entity signing the data is the entity you think it is.
What happens next, when the capabilities of AI enable a panopticon that can track every individual? What happens when the AI can predict your actions, your thoughts, your desires?
The only winning move is to design a future where that isn't a problem.
Somehow, we have to get society to a point where our secrets, and our mistakes, once revealed, are not used against us.
Otherwise, we are building our own hell with every step forward we take in every field of science.
Maybe we can engineer a society where each successive generation is better than the last. The bootstrapping problem means that we are stuck as the before generations; before every aspect of our lives was recorded and it was for our true benefit.
ChatGPT
It seems like you're touching upon several topics here. This comment examines the potential ramifications of artificial general intelligence (AGI) on different aspects of our lives, specifically focusing on software, digital content, privacy, labor and society.
You discuss the impact on software and digital content, arguing that the future of software lies in libre software or free/open-source software (FOSS). In this context, AI could indeed facilitate the creation and distribution of libre software, potentially disrupting traditional models of software creation and distribution. This line of thinking suggests that AI could create any piece of software, and thereby decrease the value of proprietary software.
You touch upon privacy and the inherent risks of our increasingly digitized lives, discussing the possible threat of an AI-driven surveillance society and the potential implications of a total lack of privacy. This does raise valid concerns about the future of digital privacy, and it's a topic of ongoing debate in the tech and legal world.
On labor, you ponder the potential of AGI to replace many jobs, making certain professions obsolete. This automation of jobs by AI is a well-discussed issue. The response to this will likely involve social, political and economic changes, potentially including policies like Universal Basic Income (UBI), as mentioned earlier in your comment.
On society, you touch upon the idea of using our wealth to allow people to exist without needing to work, implying a radical shift in societal structures and norms. This reflects some modern theories such as post-work or fully automated luxury communism, which imagine future societies that harness the power of automation to free individuals from traditional work structures.
Finally, you address the concept of 'cancel culture' and the use of data against individuals, indicating that we should be moving towards a society that allows people to make mistakes and learn from them rather than punishing them.
Overall, these are complex and multifaceted issues that are actively being debated and researched in various academic and professional fields. Your perspective highlights the potential transformative power of AGI across multiple facets of our lives and society, underscoring the importance of navigating these changes thoughtfully and responsibly.
Me
It seems that the optimal play when having made an “oopsie” is to lie and hide, rather than admit fault and apologize. When backlash is immense (and avoided by silence), why would you risk it?
What are the issues with the corrupt officials, racists, terrorists, and goverments saying “we made a fucky wucky, and we all agree that everyone should live good lives from now on”? To stop actively working against fellow humans? Maybe the racists refuse to change, the corrupt refuse to stop stealing money from the poor?
Is the only solution the total excommunication of the impure from the society of the future?
What is the road to utopia, if not slippery with blood from those who have stood in the way the whole time?
What happens when the charge to utopia is led by the people who shouldn't be leading? When my utopia is different from yours?
Maybe AI government structures 200 years from now will lead to countries of beliefs rather than of geography? Access to travel and housing means you can simply go live with the people who have similar beliefs to yourself?
When you can leave racist island for greener pastures?
What happens when racist island thinks it's a good idea to raze the green pastures to the ground? Is demilitarization possible?
How could AI enforce demilitarization without having its own ordinance to enforce it?
ChatGPT
These are challenging and deeply philosophical questions. Let's try to address them one by one:
1. **"When backlash is immense (and avoided by silence), why would you risk it?":** From a purely self-interest point of view, one might not. However, from a broader societal perspective, honesty and transparency are critical for trust. In the long term, trustworthiness can lead to better outcomes, even if it involves some short-term pain or backlash. The issue here is aligning short-term individual incentives with long-term societal benefits.
2. **"What are the issues with corrupt officials, racists, terrorists, and governments admitting their faults?":** The issues here are multifaceted and complex. Admitting faults may lead to legal consequences, loss of power, or personal harm. There is also often a strong cognitive resistance to acknowledging wrongdoing, especially when a person or group's self-identity and social status are tied up with the behaviors in question.
3. **"Is the only solution the total excommunication of the impure from the society of the future?":** I'd argue against the idea of "total excommunication." Rather, society can work on educating and rehabilitating individuals. In some cases, consequences or punishments may be appropriate, but these should ideally be balanced with opportunities for redemption and change.
4. **"What is the road to utopia, if not slippery with blood from those who have stood in the way the whole time?":** The struggle towards a better world is indeed fraught with obstacles, but it doesn't necessarily involve physical violence or harm. Change can be achieved through peaceful means, such as education, legislation, and technological advancement.
5. **"Maybe AI government structures 200 years from now will lead to countries of beliefs rather than of geography?":** This is an intriguing concept, but it raises several complex issues. For instance, people have multiple, overlapping identities and beliefs. Also, a system like this could risk creating echo chambers and reducing the beneficial friction that comes from diverse societies.
6. **"What happens when racist island thinks it's a good idea to raze the green pastures to the ground? Is demilitarization possible?":** This highlights the tension between autonomy and collective security. International laws and treaties, enforced by cooperative action, are one existing approach to this problem. Another could be to ensure that any group or 'island' has the right to autonomy but also the responsibility to not harm others.
7. **"How could AI enforce demilitarization without having its own ordinance to enforce it?":** This question goes to the heart of AI safety and ethics. Ideally, AI should be designed and deployed in a way that upholds human values, promotes peace, and prevents harm. However, the specifics of how AI could contribute to demilitarization are complex and would require careful thought and strong international cooperation to ensure the technology isn't misused.
Me
What happens when UBI is implemented and nobody is forced to work the shitass jobs to survive? Will we just design better sewers, assisted living facilities, that don't involve human effort to deal with the literal shitty jobs? What about when the automation breaks, and it's still necessary to bring in a human?
Will there still be a labour pool of people willing to destroy their body to do construction? What incentives will there be to work the bad jobs when technology has globalized cheap but opulent living?
ChatGPT
When the implementation of Universal Basic Income (UBI) is discussed, it often comes hand-in-hand with the subject of automation. The idea is that as more jobs are automated, UBI could serve as a safety net for those displaced, and for those who are still required to work in difficult, manual, or undesirable jobs.
As you've pointed out, there will still be tasks that are challenging to automate completely, either because they require human judgment or because they involve unpredictable environments. Some of these might be considered "unpleasant" jobs.
Several approaches could be taken to incentivize people to work in these jobs in a society where UBI is implemented:
1. **Higher Wages:** With UBI covering the basics, individuals would have the power to reject jobs that do not offer a wage high enough to justify the unpleasant or difficult conditions. This could drive up wages for such jobs, creating a strong financial incentive for those willing to do them.
1. **Improved Working Conditions:** If businesses cannot automate a job and cannot find people willing to do it at a reasonable wage, they might invest in making the job less unpleasant or safer.
1. **Job Rotation:** Certain unpleasant tasks might be shared among many people, so no single person has to spend too much time on them. This would require a degree of planning and coordination, but it might be a way to manage necessary but unpleasant work.
1. **Education and Training:** UBI could give individuals the financial stability to invest in their own education and training for more skilled (and less unpleasant) work. This could reduce the number of people willing to do 'bad' jobs, again forcing employers to improve wages and conditions.
1. **Partial Automation:** Even if a job can't be fully automated, parts of it might be. This could reduce the amount of unpleasant work required.
The goal should not necessarily be to eliminate all 'bad' jobs, but rather to ensure that anyone doing them is adequately compensated, that the jobs are made as safe and pleasant as possible, and that nobody is forced into such work due to financial necessity. The combination of UBI and automation could help society move in that direction.
Me
The job rotation may be the most reasonable outcome. Assuming that there is some ceiling on how safe and pleasant the undesirable jobs become, there will still be a need for human effort. Perhaps the AI spinal taps can help act as a personal mentor for the x days a year that every citizen is conscripted for undesirable work? Rather than requiring people to spend years of their lives to learn how to do these jobs, the AI will be good enough that it can guide a complete novice to do the job well and safely?
ChatGPT
Indeed, advances in AI and related technologies could significantly aid in such a rotational system. One potential technology that could be used is Augmented Reality (AR). AR can overlay digital information on the real world, assisting in tasks by providing real-time guidance.
With sophisticated enough AI, this could turn into a sort of "AI mentorship," as you suggest, where the AI guides individuals through the steps of a task, helping them understand what to do, how to do it, and ensuring they do it safely. This kind of real-time, personalized instruction could make it possible for individuals to take on a variety of tasks without needing extensive prior training.
This approach would require considerable technological advancement and widespread adoption of the relevant technologies. It would also raise questions about how to ensure the quality of work, the safety of the workers, and the acceptable limits of what can be asked of citizens. But, theoretically, it could be a way to distribute the load of necessary but undesirable jobs more equitably.
It should also be noted that while technological solutions can help alleviate many issues, there will always be a need for human input, decision-making, and control. As such, technology should be seen as a tool to assist and empower humans, not necessarily as a complete solution to societal issues.
Me
Please make some closing remarks, considering everything mentioned so far in addition to including new directions of thought that we haven't discussed yet.
ChatGPT
We've covered a significant amount of ground here, exploring themes around ethical conduct, societal change, the role of AI, Universal Basic Income, and how future societies might handle undesirable jobs. I'll try to pull these threads together while also suggesting some new directions for thought.
Ethics and honesty in society, especially when it comes to mistakes, are crucial. Apologies, reparations, and accountability must not be overlooked as they play a vital role in maintaining societal trust. A culture of cover-ups and dishonesty is corrosive over time.
Building a utopia is a complex endeavor as the concept itself is subjective, differing widely based on individual beliefs, values, and visions of what constitutes a perfect society. It's an ongoing dialogue that must continually adapt to societal evolution.
The idea of AI-managed societies or AI-assisted job rotations is fascinating but also brings with it an array of challenges. These include the risk of an over-reliance on AI, ensuring the fair and unbiased application of AI, maintaining human agency, and the complexity of effectively integrating AI into varied aspects of life. We need to ensure that these technologies are used responsibly, and that they augment rather than diminish human capabilities and freedoms.
Universal Basic Income, as a means of addressing economic inequality and providing a safety net in an increasingly automated world, raises questions about motivation, societal contribution, and the definition of work. It's not just about mitigating 'undesirable' jobs, but also about rethinking how we value different forms of labor.
Finally, the idea of global communities based on shared beliefs rather than geographical boundaries is intriguing. While it could potentially lead to more harmonious societies, it could also risk creating echo chambers, exacerbating divisions, or enabling oppressive ideologies. How such societies manage their relationships with one another would be a critical question.
As new directions, we might think about:
The implications of a possible post-scarcity economy. How do we redefine value and exchange when the basics are guaranteed and abundant?
The psychological and societal impacts of increased lifespans through advances in healthcare technology. What does it mean for concepts of work, retirement, and generational relations?
The role of education in the future. How should it adapt to foster critical thinking, creativity, and adaptability? How do we prepare individuals for the rapid changes and uncertainties that future societies are likely to face?
Lastly, how do we ensure the preservation and enhancement of democratic principles and human rights in an increasingly technologically advanced and interconnected world?
These conversations, both existing and new, are integral to navigating the road ahead. They remind us that the future is not something that merely happens to us, but something we have the power to shape, through our choices, our technologies, and our societal structures.
Me
Thank you.
ChatGPT
You're welcome! If you have any more questions in the future or want to dive deeper into any topic, feel free to reach out. Have a great day!
This paper is a hasily-edited adaptation of an overzealous reply I wrote in a slightly-heated online discussion. I'm choosing to adapt and publish it here because it covers 70% of an article I've been trying and failing to write for weeks. The argument within it functions as a “bootstrapped explanation” of why I've been failing to write that last article, or any article, really. No sources are provided because I originally wrote this one message at a time over discord. If that makes you mad, read Saussure yourself and tell me if and why I'm wrong.
Funnily enough—I probably had to write this much, in a casual fashion, to grasp that it's impossible to write a perfect formal paper about why the words I'm using to write it are an imperfect, informal system.
Take any commentary to the cafe bot comments, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Why I'm Skeptical of Language
I did my first degree in english lit, mostly because I was depressed and flunking out of compsci at the time. I wasn't that interested in literature, I just did well in it in high school and figured I could stay in school that way. But I did end up taking every course my school offered in literary theory—the study of methods of reading and interpreting texts. A lot of this gets pretty fuzzy, mingling with the rest of the humanities, and it took me directly into philosophy, gender studies, psychoanalysis, and semiotics: the last of which I'm gonna talk about at length for a minute. Studying semiotics, even to the limited degree I did, left me with strong opinions on how language operates. What I'm gonna talk about is related to semiotics, if not totally orthodox or comprehensive or 'objectively true'. It's what I believe, what I took away. Make of it what you will.
Casually, let's start with a definition of a definition, from merriam-webster: “a statement of the meaning of a word or word group or a sign or symbol”. Alright, let's do the definition (“a statement of the meaning of a word or word group or a sign or symbol”) of meaning: “the thing one intends to convey especially by language”. Ok, let's look at the definition (“a statement of the meaning of a word or word group or a sign or symbol” (meaning being: “the thing one intends to convey especially by language”.)) of language: “the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community”. Now, onto words, pronunciations, combining, community...
Sheesh, we're gonna be here all night.
The notion of a “objective definition” is effectively impossible. Diogenses kinda got to the heart of this when he responded to Plato's definition of man as “featherless bipeds” by holding up a plucked chicken and saying “behold! I've brought you a man”. You can define the term as precisely as you want, but corner cases will slip through for basically any term. You can add more rules to patch up the corner cases, but then you start to exclude things which also match the definition, in a similar fashion.
Even if you could patch up every single corner case, the definition you create is written in more words which require their own definitions, which all suffer the same fate. If any of these definition-words have corner-cases where similar diogenses-style misunderstandings can occur, the original definition is compromised by extension. At some point, use of language is a process of subjective, probabilistic interpretation, not objective linguistic forms.
A word is only a linguistic sign. A linguistic sign is only an arbitrary mapping between a “thought-concept”, (casually: a pre-verbal, probabilistic mental process of understanding or classifying some category) and a “sound-image” (casually: a class of possible/recognizable spoken sounds or visual writing). The relationship/mapping is arbitrary, because both components are arbitrary. Linguistic signs only gain their meaning relative to other linguistic signs, in a social context. I can say that “trehrke” is a word that means “pizza that's gone stale in the fridge”, but unless I'm saying that to somebody else who's familiar with the mapping between sound-image “trehrke” and the thought-concept of “pizza that's gone stale in the fridge”, it's a useless linguistic sign. And even if they do share that linguistic sign with me, if their mapping of sound-image “stale” doesn't include the thought-concept “moldy”, and mine does, then we're actually using two slightly different signs, because we're mapping sound-image “trehrke” onto slightly different thought-concepts. And beyond that, “pizza that's gone stale in the fridge” is also arbitrary. It's not some divinely established category, on which we bestow an arbitrary label. I could create infinite arbitrary signs just like “trehrke” (see: the German language) Our words, even extremely important ones, don't correspond to objective, pre-linguistic ontological categories. Different languages have different words for different things, words that can't be translated directly and that map onto different subsets and supersets of each other. The english word “love” could encapsulate countless different emotions in other languages, emotions which native speakers of those languages would never think of as “the same thing” in the same, very loosely-connected fashion that english speakers think of all possible variations on “love” as being “the same thing”.
More formally, what I'm calling a thought-concept would be called the “signified” and sound-image would be called the “signifier”. I prefer these descriptive terms because I'm slightly dyslexic and stumble over the similarity of the formal signifier/signified.
Controversy also totally shatters these mappings. A militant maoist maps an entirely different thought-concept onto the sound-image “socialism” than a lifelong Republican does. Casually, to the former, it's utopian affect; to the latter, dystopian. When they have a discussion with or around that linguistic sign, they aren't talking about the same thing, because they conceive of it so differently. Same sound-image, different thought-concept: asymmetric mapping. They can attempt to clarify this misunderstanding by hedging it against their shared understanding of other signs—like “government” and “freedom” or “money”, other words you'd use when talking about this stuff—but it's likely there's some asymmetric mappings going on with respect to those words too! Clear communication and consensus becomes extremely challenging.
For a more fun example, “is a hotdog a sandwich” is a clear example of an asymmetric mapping.
In this sense, language is lossy compression; the pre-verbal, rich, analog, probabilistic thought-concept understanding of the world we have has to be compressed into discrete sound-image symbols to be communicated, and then decompressed by the other individual in the context of all the other signs involved and their idiosyncratic mappings. Usually, for day-to-day stuff, this is done pretty successfully. Shared social context goes a long way. But it breaks down at times, particularly on controversial and advanced topics (like the socialism example above).
We don't live in a world of language, we live in a world of ineffable, idiosyncratic, fluid, probabilistic thought-concepts. I'm interested in phenomenology because I hope one day we might be able to communicate without the restrictions innate to language: the tragic loss involved in compression and decompression. I don't want to tell somebody I appreciate them, I want them to feel what I feel when I appreciate them. And I appreciate you for reading this.
Footnote on scientific communication
While I have a lot of skepticism around communication, I will freely admit the scientific method, and standards are reproducibility, are one of humankind's greatest communicative accomplishments. Scientific literature is clear and formal enough to avoid many of the pitfalls of casual language-use.
But it doesn't fully solve the problem. Ultimately, it's still taking a phenomenal analog world and trying to chop it up into little digital linguistic signs, running experiments on those categories. When an abstract says “this paper is on dogs” it assumes a clear delineation of what a “dog” is vs a “wolf”. Sure, that's an easy enough distinction to make with 99.9% accuracy – but when you have to do that for every single word, every single category, every single communication, the notion of true, clear-minded objectively becomes a lot less tenable. Any “measurable category” is a measurable category of some “X”—and “X” is, sadly, just a linguistic sign.
I don't have ample words (well, other than this expression of “I don't have ample words”) for how I feel about the beauty and understanding we might get out of a post-linguistic science.
In an effort to bolster my printhouse contributions, this blog will serve as something less structured and analytical than Ghost Notes. Like when a YouTuber makes a second channel to throw their garbage on. With that in mind, I thought it might be interesting to, in no particular order, explore some of the many game and game related projects I've kept a keen eye on. In particular, ones that feel as though they have been in progress for an especially lengthy amount of time. Alongside each entry will be a rough estimation of how long I've been waiting for each project. Enjoy!
Momentum Mod –
Waiting time: At least 3 years
This project in particular was probably the main inspiration for this article. My typical approach when it comes to extremely long-term projects I am interested in is... to forget about them. Only when I remember they exist do I check in to see their respective status. But for whatever reason I cannot seem to keep this thing out of my head for more than a month at a time.
“Source” is the game engine primarily used by Valve Software, creators of renowned games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. A noteworthy quirk of its physics allows you to slide along sharp slopes by strafing into them. This minor detail has snowballed into an entire community of creators who make maps designed to exploit this phenomenon in order to make a giant course for you to slip and slide around. These maps have been dubbed “surf maps”.
The issue is that to play these surf maps you need to open them through a game like CS:GO, then join a community server hosting one of these maps, or download the map yourself and configure the physics settings of your game to accommodate it. While not necessarily the most cumbersome process, it is inconvenient enough for me to avoid doing it in favor of something else.
This is where the Momentum Mod comes in. As a standalone client, it'll become trivially easy to open up the game and start sliding around to my heart's content. It is that exact ideal that I pine so intently for. Unfortunately, as is common for its breed, it is a mod that is supported by a small but dedicated group of developers, who work on it in their free time. So any estimation of its day of completion is a fruitless endeavor.
Hollow Knight: Silksong –
Waiting time: At least 2 years
It's no secret that I have a particular fondness for Hollow Knight. The developers at Team Cherry have taken the levelheaded approach to the hype by keeping the community blind to their progress on its highly anticipated sequel. What's more amusing is seeing the feral reactions from the fans whenever even the most minor of informational scraps are thrown in their general direction regarding the game or its release date.
Like many others I found Hollow Knight to be a beautiful game in all aspects. Its visuals invoke rich atmospheres of varied landscapes. Its soundtrack, often haunting, yet whimsical. Its gameplay, potentially very challenging but with an equal sense of reward when mastered. Judging by what previews we do have, Silksong exhibits the same excellent attention to detail as its predecessor.
I may be cursing myself to more years of waiting by saying this, but I actually think this one might release soon. Despite their tepid desire to indicate any potential release date for the game, they did allow Xbox to post on their Twitter that Silksong, among many other games, will be “playable over the next 12 months”.
So you’re telling me Silksong is out within the next 12 months
Assuming no delays, that puts the checkered flag sometime in June. If it doesn't release then, I will have no choice but to do the exact same thing I've been doing for the last 2 years.
Continue my wait, as long as it takes...
Pepper grinder –
Waiting time: At least 6 years
Ori and the Will of the Wisps was a game justifiably commended for many things. One aspect in particular was a section of the game where you drill through some sand and launch outwards when you surface. Now imagine this section expanded to the scale of an entire game on its own, that is Pepper Grinder.
A trend you will notice is that I have stumbled onto many of these games through Twitter, and this one is no exception. Had I not found it on Twitter I would have nonetheless discovered it through a Dunkey video talking about his experiences with it PAX 2017.
I imagine Dunkey saw the same potential in this game as I did, being charmed by its lightly abrasive pixel art and its captivating hold on momentum and flow. Looking through it again for this article has shown me it has matured quite a lot since I last investigated it in earnest. The once-solo developer has now partnered with a musician and a porting company. In addition, the game seems to now be published by Devolver Digital so it's certainly in very good hands.
Like everything else on this list, I await its release with great anticipation.
OTHER: Her Loving Embrace –
Waiting time: About 3 years
The release of Undertale in 2015 prompted an explosion in the “Earthbound Inspired” RPG genre. These games tend to focus on quirky characters and dialogue, in addition to having amazing soundtracks. Something else Undertale revitalized was the idea of turn-based combat but with some twists to make it more engaging for a broader audience.
With these aspects in consideration, OTHER: Her Loving Embrace is a quirky RPG with engaging characters, catchy tunes, and combat that opens up a 2d arena to briefly fight in for each turn (as opposed to Undertale's bullet hell segments). Safe to say it wears its inspirations on its sleeve. Despite this, the game has successfully forged its own identity, and I tend to have a soft spot for goofy guys.
A came across this game through a pretty deep rabbit hole I will explain in more detail later in this article (see: Magus Array). I have no idea how far along it is in development, and I am left with no choice but to forget about it for a couple of months and come back to it later like I often do.
I have a lot of faith that this game will turn out well. So much so, in fact, that I actually own a few pins based on the characters of the game. Pins from a game that as of right now, has not yet been released. So here's hoping things turn out well.
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk –
Waiting time: About two years (Since August 11th 2021)
From Team Reptile, the developers of Lethal League comes Bomb Rush Cyberfunk Jet Set Radio.
No, seriously it's basically Jet Set Radio, they even have the original composer (and funny Twitter guy) Hideki Naganuma in this as well. This is a huge boon because a major part of JSR's identity was its banger soundtrack.
I haven't yet played Jet Set Radio, because if I did, it would have to be its now abandoned remake on the Original Xbox, Jet Set Radio: Future. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to experience the rail grinding, public vandalism, and wacky art style that is Jet Set Radio. What I can do instead, is wait for Bomb Rush Cyberpunk. Which, judging by brief snippets, comes very close to its inspirations not only in music as mentioned previously but also in art, gameplay, and just general vibes.
ADDENDUM: Ok so as it turns out I've taken so long to write this article that the release date for Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was announced, August 18th, making it an eventual 3 years total of waiting.
Deltarune –
Waiting time: Little more than a year since the last chapter
It's Toby Fox.
TF2 Heavy update –
Waiting time: 5 years now, ∞ to go
Team Fortress 2 still sits at the #1 spot of my most played games on Steam. Its last update, Jungle Inferno, released in October 2017 came with a promise for at least one other update down the line, the heavy update. The update promised to revitalize the game's titular fat man as it did with Pyro in Jungle Inferno.
Since then my hope has slowly dwindled as a game that I love decays before my eyes. Even with the knowledge that Valve does not get anything done in a timely manner (very relatable, I mean, I've been writing this article for almost a month now), there has been very little indication that a major update is on the horizon, or even in the same solar system.
I still hold hope that it might happen one day, but I am not holding my breath. TF2 is still a playable game, and I do on occasion hop on to play it. However, the writing has been on the wall for years, nobody wants to work on a 12-year-old piece of software when flashier, newer things like Counter-Strike 2 exist as an alternative option to contribute to.
Night runners –
Waiting Time: At Least 3 Years
In me, there exists a desire to drive dangerously down dimly lit streets in gaudy tuner cars. Ever since Need For Speed: Most Wanted, no other racing game has successfully eclipsed its greatness. Nowadays, most racing games commit to full simulation or full arcade, which NFS existed as a nice medium between. Even Need For Speed itself has fallen from grace after brushing against the heavens with Most Wanted. On top of that, it's extremely rare to find any amount of car customization in any of these games. My feeble attempts to fill the steering wheel-shaped hole in my heart with a modded version of Need For Speed: Heat just doesn't quite capture the vibe and gameplay that I wish for. Until now.
From what I can tell this is also a solo development effort but with an extremely deep understanding of the exact kind of experience that has been neglected for so long. All of the menus look like VHS recordings and the showcased depth of customization will allow one to personalize their car to such fine detail that it surpasses even modern Need For Speed games.
My only worry is in the handling model, which can really make or break a game like this. Most Wanted had a very weighty physics system that was challenging without requiring you to know how to actually race a real car. On top of that, it's difficult to discern the feeling of driving just from preview videos alone, so the final judgement rests on when this game finally releases. Regardless, what has been shown so far is really promising and has only gotten better with time.
ULTRABUGS –
Waiting time: Around 4 years
There are few development teams I hold in such high regard as I did for the 2-person studio Vlambeer. All of their games have this hyper-focus on “feeling” that can be difficult to describe in words but is immediately understood when you actually play them. This unspoken language is what set them apart and I've played and adored almost every game they've made.
My eagerness for their upcoming game ULTRABUGS comes from that aforementioned “game feel”. However, it is sullied by the announcement that Vlambeer games has shut down and that ULTRABUGS will be their final game ever.
It's hard to say if this game will ever release, the first of the two developers has gone off to create their own projects such as “Minit” or “Disc Room” and the other has focused on fostering independent game development efforts in underrepresented regions of the world (while also becoming a pilot).
A part of me doesn't want it to release. Its completion will mark an end of an era for indie games, and my experience of playing this game will be bittersweet in its finality.
UFO 50 –
Waiting time: At least 5 years
Speaking of indie game titans, UFO 50 is a collection of 50 mini-games developed for a fictional 8-bit console. The people behind it include Ojrio Fumoto, the developer behind Downwell and POINPY (two games I intend to write a Ghost Notes article about), as well as some other names I don't immediately recognize. The project is spearheaded by the legendary Derek Yu. Derek and the team at Mossmouth are the minds behind one of the greatest roguelites of all time, Spelunky, which people are still making new discoveries in 10 years down the line.
There's really no telling what to expect from a project such as this one. 50 games is a pretty heavy undertaking, no matter how big or small each of them is. It also means that one could expect a huge variety of different ideas executed by some very talented people. I am also very curious to see how the lessons learned from developing Spelunky carry over to this.
In many ways, UFO 50 is quite enigmatic, but overall I think that only adds to the excitement.
Hytale –
Waiting time: About 5 years
Much like Undertale, Minecraft also sparked a wildfire of games that could be considered under the umbrella of “indie survival game”. However, Minecraft's survival mechanics are pretty simplistic and progression is more of an inclined hill than it is a curve. Minecraft is also no stranger to competitors, many attributed Terraria as a “2d Minecraft clone” which while not really true goes to show Minecraft's dominance in the space it occupies.
All this to say, when the team behind one of the most popular Minecraft servers, “Hypixel”, pledges to make a game that intends on going toe to toe against the goliath that is Minecraft, it's bound to garner some attention.
What's interesting to me is Hytale seems to tackle that challenge by creating a foundation that is comparably more developed than its inspirations. It's difficult to say if the sheen coating this game has is simply a thin veneer over an underwhelming experience or if it genuinely advances beyond Minecraft in things like combat and progression. On its surface though, perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a “3d Terraria” as opposed to a Minecraft clone.
Another thing Hytale is doing that really differentiates itself from Minecraft is an extremely high prioritization of modding and custom content. Despite Minecraft having a modding scene comparable to the likes of Skyrim, the relationship Mojang has with its modders is more of a passive acceptance than actual support. Hytale in comparison seems to present something more akin to a game engine that can be modified and shared consistently across all supported devices. This would eliminate the kind of isolation found between console Minecraft players and PC Minecraft players, where PC players get to enjoy the wellspring of modded content available to them while console players are left to make the most of the very limited toolset for customization released for the platform.
Hytale is without a doubt facing a very steep cliff to climb to the top of. However, if executed well, could be a genuinely phenomenal experience the likes of which could only be met with something like Roblox* (unironically). I have no idea if they'll be successful but I don't mind waiting another 5 years to see it polished to perfection.
*I've never personally played Roblox but from an outsider's perspective it looks like GMod for kids, which is honestly insane.
Genokids –
Waiting time: At least 2 years
I forgot about this one so hard that in writing an article about things I was waiting for I hadn't even considered writing about this.
For those of you who were on the old monkey cafe, you may recall a post I made about liking art styles that would go straight to black for shading. The examples from that post were from games like Hades, The World Ends With You, and also this game, Genokids.
Another trend you may notice is a couple of the games I have been watching have a Y2K vibe to them and Genokids looks like an old cartoon from 2005 turned into a hack-and-slash video game. Where these 4 color-coded kids in a band fight against aliens. The game overall seems to be very silly.
Compared to the rest of the games on this list, my knowledge regarding Genokids is fairly limited. Despite that, the art style and presentation have me interested enough to on occasion question how the project is doing. It seems like the initial Kickstarter I found in late 2020 has been taken down (I remember it not being successful), with another one published much more recently getting funded in 24hrs. I'm glad this game is getting the support it deserves.
Honorable Mentions
Cuphead DLC –
Waited for: 4 years
Cuphead is a pretty straightforward concept. Take early 20th-century animation styles and adapt them into a video game. But while the idea is straightforward, their dedication to the craft results in a workflow that can only be described as maddeningly arduous. In the end, studio MDHR braved the gauntlet that is hand animating an entire video game's worth of characters and enemies, and the initial release of Cuphead was met with critical acclaim, and rightfully so. Not to forget scoring the whole thing with a live jazz band.
At the finish line, the question of “what to do next” arises. Much like the straightforward nature of the game comes another direct answer, which was “make more Cuphead”. So in June of 2018, the Cuphead DLC was announced (amusingly abbreviated as the Delicious Last Course).
In June of 2022, it was finally completed and released to the masses. I finished it in 4 days, and then haven't really touched it since.
Those 4 days however were as good as when I played Cuphead the first time. In the end, it was more Cuphead, which is all I ever expected or wanted out of it. The last course was really delicious.
Sable –
Waited for: Something like 3 years, I don't really remember specifics for this
I remember seeing this cool desert game floating around on Twitter. Most striking of which was its comic book art style with thin black outlines around everything you see (Later I learned about Moebius, the inspiration of the art style). As I followed along with its development I learned that this game takes place on a desert planet where you drift along the dunes and explore the world and its scenery.
When the game was finally released in 2021, I remember enjoying it a fair amount. But, because the experience is so heavily based on “vibes”, it quickly soured when the mildly inconsistent optimization made the experience much less seamless. Which is a shame because it really is a beautiful game otherwise. Even now the game is quite stuttery, so unless I manage to swallow that discomfort I will probably not finish it.
What was especially interesting to me about this game was how peaceful it was. You're not really fighting anyone, or saving the world. The entire premise is that it's a journey of self-discovery, traversing the quiet sands and navigating bustling towns. Certainly a rarity among its peers.
Installation 01 –
It's still not out, and I don't care anymore
It's been 7 years since I first learned about Installation 01. Back in 2016 playing Halo on your PC limited you to just the first two iterations of the series, which by that point has had 7 games in its lineup, the most recent of which were released by a different company (called 343 Industries) and were very underwhelming.
This was the niche that Installation 01 was targeting, a modern version of the Halo series, playable on your pc, that stayed true to the classic formula that had since been neglected by 343. I was squarely in that niche, and I wanted to play this game so badly. I subsequently started following their blog posts (where I first learned about ULTRAKILL amusingly), reading their developer updates, and generally invested myself in the progress of this game hoping to see its release one day. That release however... never came.
Where did that leave me then? Fortunately, in the meantime I had learned about another, less legal, halo fan project/mod which I thoroughly enjoyed when it was popular around 2018. On top of that, both of these Halo projects gave Microsoft the kick in the pants to go ahead and port every Halo game to pc starting in 2019. Which brings us to today. If I want to play some good old Halo on my computer, I can do that with no problem, leaving Installation 01 in a sticky situation. Since development took so long, it timed itself into irrelevance.
So now I don't really care about this project anymore. If it releases one day I might give it a shot. In the end, though, it's now obsolete with the current state of the series on PC. A strange case indeed.
Magus Array –
Barely had a pulse to begin with
On April 6th, 2020 a Source Filmmaker animator I follow released another banger video. That video contained a song from a then-unreleased game called Velorum. I really liked that song and investigated further into the artist behind it, who at the time went by the name “brainfoam” (they now go by pngsequence, or Joe). This name lead me to their now defunct website, which also had a list of projects they contributed to including many other “earthbound inspired” RPGs like OTHER, mentioned earlier.
I really felt like I had uncovered an interesting niche, and the general quality of not only their music but their art as well had me feeling as though I had discovered something really special. This was all I needed to start intently watching for any progress regarding whatever this project came to be. At some point the game was rebranded to “Magus Array”, a soundcloud and Twitter page were created and some more minor scraps of music and art were uploaded to each.
Unfortunately, sometime later down the line, the game was cancelled. I don't remember where or when it was announced, but it's been a little while now. This was a little disappointing, as I am quite fond of Joe's art and music, so I was curious to see what game a person like that could make. Fortunately for me, I might be able to do just that. They've been hyping up their newest game, Reflectile, which looks far more like an actual game than Magus Array ever was.
Duel Arms –
Cancelled, and I'm still a little sad about it
In 2018 I stumbled on a little game called Knight Club. It was a fun twist on your typical platform fighter which focused on health bars as opposed to the stamina knockback system found in Smash Bros. I tried it out a little, had a good time, and then put it down for a while. Then, in December 2020 Knight Club had a little rerelease on Steam dubbed “Knight Club+” which polished the game somewhat and also added Steam multiplayer support which made playing online much easier. I bought it for myself and then convinced a few friends to grab some of the free keys they were giving away and try it with me.
Sometime before the release of Knight Club+, I started seeing glimpses of a sequel/remake called Duel Arms. This game seemed to expand on the very solid foundations of Knight Club with a special move system and multiple equippable utility items. However, in 2022 it was cancelled, which like Magus Array, was also disappointing. Sadly, the developer didn't have the money to be able to support themselves while making a game like Duel Arms.
As some kind of consolation, the unfinished build of the game was released on itch.io. I don't really want to try it in the blind hope that the developer stumbles into a million dollars in a ditch and is suddenly able to finish this game properly. So here's hoping for that day to come.
A Fox In Space Episode 2 –
Waited for: at least 6 years
I'm not really a Star Fox fan. I've interacted more with the character's appearances in Smash Bros than I have with the game itself. On the other hand, I really love this 90s-style fan animation of Star Fox. Another solo project, A Fox In Space presents Star Fox as a Saturday morning cartoon, packaged with a meaningful helping of low-fi ambience. As I have no connections to the characters from the games, the renditions shown in the pilot episode were so captivating that I am unable to imagine them differently now.
Animation takes a long time, a long, long time normally. A long, long, long time for one person on their own. This guy, Mathew Gafford, wrote, animated, scored, edited, partially voice-acted, and directed an entire animated episode of this show himself. So I knew that I would be waiting YEARS for the next episode of this show to come out, and years it took, as while writing this article I decided to check on it again and realized that episode 2 finally came out a month ago now. It's 40 minutes long.
Hopefully, it was worth the wait, I'll be watching it soon.
If you are reading this article, you are almost certainly a communist or a sympathizer. An important divide within the communist movement is between those who see a revolution as the only path to socialism and those who believe it to be achievable under the current liberal system via reform. This article assumes you believe a revolution to be necessary and there will be no arguments against social democracy in it. Go read State and Revolution.
There is a bad habit among western, particularly North American, leftists. We seem obsessed with ceaselessly antagonizing and alienating soldiers. This comes from a weird hubristic belief that our goals are achievable without them. That simply is not true. There will be no revolution without their support, and the current leftist instinct serves the interests of counterrevolution. The goal of this article is to dismiss any naive delusion that a revolution can occur solely by the rising of the proletariat or peasantry. Organization needs to be done to appeal to the soldiering class or the armed forces need to be outright infiltrated and steered toward the end of achieving socialism.
Case Studies
Socialism is a scientific ideology. In pursuit of our goals, we should consider the material evidence of past successes and failures. Altogether, the evidence is overwhelming: the likelihood of a successful revolution without the support of a significant portion of the nation's soldiery is nearly impossible. Let's examine case studies together and see what we can learn from them. For the purposes of this article, we shall narrow down our list of revolutions with two criteria. Firstly, we shall not examine revolutions occurring before the invention of the modern military structure. Before the 17th century, there was no class of professional soldiers in significant number. The 17th century saw the rise of two dominant military structures: mercenary armies and national armies. Before this, militaries were entirely reliant on drafting peasantry, who spent most of their time as agricultural workers. The superiority of a professional army over a levy army should be immediately obvious but was not logistically possible under feudalism before the technological developments and social changes of the reformation/renaissance period. Secondly, we shall only consider a short list of major revolutions for the sake of brevity. Generally, other revolutions e.g. the Spanish Civil War follows the same patterns established in our case studies.
Revolution
Result
Notes
English Civil War
Revolutionary Victory, British republic established
The army is the only reason a republic was even established after the defeat of the Cavaliers, as the general opinion was in favour of maintaining the constitutional monarchy even among the parliamentarian leaders (See the history of the Rump Parliament).
American Revolution
Revolutionary Victory, American independence secured
Not really a revolution, as the ownership of production within American territory was not changed. Wealthy planters remained in charge of their plantations and the industrial revolution had barely even begun in Britain meaning there were no great industrialists owning American assets on either side of the fight. Many of the COs of the Continental Army were in the British army up to the moment of the conflict, including George Washington and the Continental Army was defeated routinely in cases where they did not heavily outnumber the enemy. If it were not for the intercession of the actual French armed forces, the historiographical consensus is that the war would've ended in American defeat. The British also faced problems that would not be faced by the reactionary side of a domestic revolution, including long transatlantic supply lines and sympathy towards the revolution by a significant portion of the British parliament.
French Revolution
Revolutionary Victory, First French Republic established
Interesting case: reactionary officers vs revolutionary enlisted men. Reactionary officers were forced from their posts by the enlisted men and most emigrated. Revolutionary officers were promoted swiftly and took control of the nascent republican army, Napoleon Bonaparte among them. The French republic became the First French Empire only when the army under Napoleon demanded the change, not because of popular uprisings against Republican rule, all of which were crushed (e.g. the Vendee rebellion).
Slave Revolts
Variable Result (see notes)
All failed except for Haiti. Haiti only succeeded because the army was busy fighting on both sides of the French revolution. The French expedition to restore Haiti to colonial rule was defeated when a significant portion of the attacking army defected.
Revolution of 1848
Variable Result (successful in France, failure in Italy, Austria, and Germany)
The revolution succeeded in places where the enlisted soldiers defected to the revolution (e.g. France) and was defeated in places where they did not (e.g. Austria). Germany should not be seriously considered as an example of either due to the circumstances of the German confederation. The Austrian army managed to defeat the revolutionaries despite critical disorganization, low morale, and broken supply lines.
Russian Civil War
Revolutionary Victory
Although there was an attempt at the start of the civil war to not use tsarist soldiers, the inexperienced proletariat and peasant army was routed soundly by the white army. The Red Army was only able to win after military reorganization by Trotsky, after which it was comprised of an astounding 83% ex-tsarist soldiers and officers disillusioned with the Russian Empire and Kerensky's Russian Republic.
German Revolution of 1919
Reactionary Victory
The demands of the army for the abdication of the Kaiser were the only successfully enforced demand. Anarchist and Communist revolts were obliterated by the armed forces and veterans of the first world war
Chinese Civil War of 1949
Revolutionary Victory
Only successful due to material support from the government of the Soviet Union. The Chinese Communist Party was on the defensive for the entire conflict until the post-1945 period, which was the first time the CCP's regular army (i.e. not militia) was near the KMT army in size.
Cuban Revolution
Revolutionary Victory
Every attempt by the revolutionaries to take on the government failed initially, as the armed forces were totally on the side of Batista. It wasn't until the US placed Batista's government under embargo and Batista's own supporters began to abandon him that the tide turned. Regardless, Cuba provides the model of a successful revolution performed by and large without the support of a significant portion of a nation's armed forces but this was only possible under peculiar conditions (US embargo of Batista, and ironically the arming of the guerillas by CIA agent Frank País), neither of which would be likely to be replicated now and in Canada.
A summary of our case study is that successful revolutions are revolutions supported by a significant portion of those serving in the armed forces in the area at the time. Exceptions to this exist, e.g. Cuba, but that is only due to confounding variables. Attempts to replicate a Castroist style of revolution in Canada or the United States would undoubtedly fail, especially in a world without Soviet support for communist insurrections.
Officers vs enlisted men
A secondary lesson to be drawn from this is that class lines exist within the military hierarchy just like in civilian society. Officers in a modern military are strictly selected through education systems such as West Point and RMC. It is just as important that they adhere to a belief in the project of the state as it is that they are competent commanders. Political education is part of the curriculum of the average military academy in capitalist countries just as in communist ones. Because of this, the officer class is generally far more reactionary than their underlings in the enlisted and non-commissioned ranks.
However, just like in the civilian economy, the labour of the armed forces is done by the lowest levels of the military hierarchy. Professional officers act as the foremost oppressor of the enlisted man. The resentment of enlisted soldiers towards professional officers can be exploited and increased with proper outreach and organization. Furthermore, if the bulk of enlisted men were to side with a revolutionary movement, the officer corps would be powerless to stop them as was the case in the French Revolution.
Why is the support of the soldiery so important?
Why is this all necessary? Why should the left even bother reaching out to the soldiering class? Since the invention of the modern army, the arms race between the oppressed classes and their oppressors has been particularly one-sided. The modern army structure is an incredibly efficient tool of violence that is inherently superior to the system of levies it replaced. That levy system is the closest historical equivalent to how many leftists seem to imagine a communist revolution: a disorganized mass of urban and rural poor. Soldiers are trained in combat principles and the use of military equipment in the same manner as the proletariat are trained in the use of factory machines, point-of-sale systems, and computers. A fight between these professional fighters and even a large proletariat militia would be particularly one-sided. Regardless of any reaction of disgust to the idea of sullying one's ideological purity by appealing to trained killers, it is the only way the goal of revolution can ever be achieved.
Clarification on supporting militarism vs engaging the soldiery
It is important that the appropriate lesson be drawn from this. Communists should not become chest-beating psychos supporting the coming invasions of Iran and Mexico. The lesson is not to support unrestrained applications of force by the bourgeois state using the army as a cudgel. When the opportunity arises, we should strongly oppose ongoing and future military interventions and conflicts. What should be done is a concerted effort to appeal to the average soldier. Soldiers should not be talked down to, belittled, or dismissed as seems to be the current leftist instinct. Soldiers should be addressed as potential comrades. Appeals should be made to their sense of self-preservation and humanity. Most of them would much rather collect a cheque and get free college than actually get deployed. Those who actually do fantasize about murdering the state's enemies are victims of propaganda and should be engaged in the same manner as other victims of propaganda in your life. If you are incapable of doing these things, just shut up and do not engage with them at all.
Should leftists join the army?
One instinct you may have on learning this lesson is that leftists should simply infiltrate the armed forces and shift the culture towards socialism. While certainly possible if a critical mass of communists were to enlist, this is not necessarily realistic. Consider that the army is strictly authoritarian. Attempts to proliferate communist sentiment from within would presumably be cracked down upon by reactionary elements in the officer corps. The only potential advantage to this would be to create a corps of revolutionaries trained in warfare and the operation of military equipment.
Conclusion
There will be no communism without the support of the soldiering class. There will be no support from the soldiering class if the left does not improve its organizational skills and basic demeanour. If your goal is not a revolution, this is a perfectly fine state of affairs. If it isn't, a significant shift in the internal culture of left-wing movements is necessary. The growing climate change crisis means we are running out of time to achieve communism. Action must be taken at once.
Future Work
Look forward to the future publications from the Monty division of the printhouse:
Rage For The Machine: CIA infiltration of leftism
Let's Plan the Economy: critiquing Towards a New Socialism
Range Feudalism 2: why do so many farmers support their own immiseration?
In September 2022, I signed up for beginner's knitting classes at Unwind Yarn House, a local yarn shop in Newmarket that I highly recommend to my fellow crafters and artsy folk — after all, we might as well support a small business while spending obscene amounts of money on our crafts!
I adored my knitting classes. My knitting teacher, Cathy, was incredible — she was patient and thorough, she would take the time to sit with me and walk me through each step until I understood it completely. The minute I saw that first tiny scarf forming on my knitting needles, I was hooked. So hooked, in fact, that I immediately signed up for the follow-up knitting classes that Cathy was teaching called “My First Hat”.
To say the least, I was very ambitious. I was still a knitting novice. I just learned how to knit and purl, and I threw myself into a class that involved learning how to use circular needles, double-pointed needles, and do decreases. So before I go any further, I must emphasize: I would not have been able to make my first knit hat without Cathy and the Unwind team. Cathy's classes as well as the extra hours that she and the Unwind team let me sit in their store to ask questions and get hands-on help were completely invaluable, I cannot thank them enough. They truly turned me into a knitter!
In Cathy's “My First Hat” knitting classes, we used the “Keep Me Warm” knit hat pattern (it's free to download if you're interested!). I loved this pattern. Once I learned the knitting lingo and shorthand, the instructions were quite clear and concise. Though this pattern uses only knit and purl stitches, I struggle to call it beginner-friendly. It is written almost entirely in knitting shorthand, and the process gets complicated towards the end once you need to start using the double-pointed needles, when the hat ties off at its peak. Thankfully, I had Cathy basically holding my hand throughout that part of the process! I don't think I would have been able to complete this pattern without the in-person guidance.
I'm definitely going to use this pattern again to make myself a new winter hat (as my 1st knit hat ended up being my anniversary gift for Noah <3). While following this pattern, I discovered that I love using circular knitting needles, perhaps even moreso than straight knitting needles (is this a controversial take?!). Seeing the hat slowly come together was incredibly satisfying overall — seeing the final product take shape as you work is an aspect that I love in all crafts!
My progress after the first “My First Hat” knitting class
That night after the first class, I tried to continue following the pattern on my own — I was able to successfully add the red yarn; however, I did my stitches in the wrong order (purl-knit-purl instead of knit-purl-knit) and had to take them out/re-do them in the next class
My progress after the second “My First Hat” knitting class, with the sample hat to inspire us!
My progress a few days later! I got into the habit of listening to a podcast or watching my friends stream on discord while knitting — it became quite a relaxing bedtime routine
Watching Noah stream Wolfenstein on discord while secretly knitting my anniversary gift for him! Also, I successfully added the blue yarn! Now you can see my vision for the hat coming together — a navy blue knit hat, with a white rim and red stripe...
I was just admiring my even stitches here ngl
I finished the rim of the hat! Transitioning from the knit-purl-knit stitch rim to the purely knit stitch body of the hat was incredibly satisfying
I really got into the rhythm of knit stitching, my progress was speeding up!
The “My First Hat” classes were over so I took advantage of Unwind Yarn House's free drop-in “Stitch Clinics”. Their Stitch Clinics are basically mornings when Cathy is in store and ready to help anyone with any knitting project that they're having trouble with. Yeah, she's that crazy skilled. I went to 2 Stitch Clinics to get Cathy's help with finishing the hat. Pictured above is my progress during the second Stitch Clinic I went to — so close to being done!
Aaaand I did it! I made my first knit hat! Once again, could not have done it without Cathy and the Unwind team. Seriously, I used their in-store pom maker to make the pom that tied the whole hat together
Proudly modelling my creation before wrapping it for Noah <3
I could not be happier with how my learning experience with knitting has gone. Those beginner's knitting classes at Unwind and Cathy's incredible teaching were the best way I could have been introduced to this wonderful new craft in my life — I can't wait to see what I can make next! Perhaps another hat, maybe one for myself? Or a scarf? Or will I be ridiculously ambitious again and try to make something that I never thought I could? We'll just have to wait and see.
Thank you for reading my inaugural article for Kaitlyn's Craft Corner. If you cannot tell, crafts are a great passion of mine. I find the making process to be incredibly therapeutic. Nothing is more fulfilling than seeing the end product for the first time, and nothing is more heartwarming than being able to gift one of my crafts to someone. I eagerly look forward to learning new crafts as well as honing my skills in crafts I already know — and I can't wait to take you along for the journey.
This has been Kaitlyn’s Craft Corner, signing off!
I first learned in elementary school of a proverb: the greatest quality in a mathematician is laziness. When I introduce newcomers to pure maths, laziness is the first concept I explain. It comes as a surprise to most—many react with “if I was lazy I would simply not bother to do maths.” The fact is that until one learns to like maths, it is impossible to do it lazily.
As a mathematics tutor, I am enthusiastic but fearful to bring this proverb to the classroom. The mathematics which my students bring to class can be quite lazy in a sense, generally prepared so as to minimise setup and get straight to the calculator. The calculator is becoming a much more prominent part of the mathematics curriculum. At school, students are told which calculator to buy, and whole lectures are dedicated to which buttons to press to solve all your problems. In later years, students are introduced to terrifically powerful tools such as Desmos and WolframAlpha which trivialise the problems they've been solving for years.
When I try to deprive them of these tools, most students appeal to what their teachers permit them to use. However, students who hope to win argue that in the real world, nobody would go to the trouble of working a problem out on paper if the internet can solve the problem as fast as it can be typed. It's certainly the best counterargument, but it's the one I'm the most prepared to deal with.
In reality, most adults are far too lazy to use a calculator, and rightly so. If any power is desired beyond the four basic functions, calculators suck. They cost an unjustifiable amount of money. Expressing problems more complicated than trivial computation takes practice, practice which doesn't pay off unless you're completing math problems as often as a high-school maths student. Put it this way: if in the middle of a conversation you became intrigued by a simple derivation of a sports stat, pulling out a calculator would totally kill the conversation. Even among my mathematically inclined friends, calculators are avoided by referring to tedious-to-compute numbers as “some number”.
What place, then, does mathematics have in the real world? To illustrate the kind of problem that can, and should, be solved in daily life, I'd like to introduce one of my students, who is not called Mark. Mark is a student that I can easily bait into attempting math puzzles, mainly because he enjoys taunting his teachers with problems they can't solve. He came to me with the problem in the illustration below (thanks to the Scriptorium for inspiring me to put some damn illustrations in these things), bragging that it could only be solved using calculus. Mark is an Algebra II student, but the funny thing is, I'm quite sure a person who had taken calculus would have the same reaction: that it could be solved using calculus, but that they couldn't do it. I'm damn sure that no farmer I've met would set up linear equations to represent the path to the river and the path to the turkey, then take the derivative of the lengths of the lines in order to determine the optimal strategy.
So I showed Mark what he hadn't seen: the beautiful, lazy pig sunning herself across the river. This pig is going to save us many thousand years of mathematical rigor. She will let us be lazy with her. The reason is that she is just as easy to water as the turkey. As long as we assume the river is simple to ford, any path that reaches the turkey can be reflected to reach the pig, as seen in the example.
But the quickest path to the pig is simple to find—it is simply the straight line which passes through the river. Seeing this, we observe that the river and the path are two straight lines, and the path meets the river at two congruent angles. We reflect back the portion of the path after the crossing, and the problem from here is simple geometry.
Let's compare the two approaches. In particular, we have showcased two different kinds of lazy. The calculus approach minimises the amount of work done—the student sees that it is a calculus problem, and quickly determines that it is not worth doing. In comparison, the paragraph I've written and illustrations I've drawn took real work. The only reason I cared to do it is because I could see the pretty picture in my head. I would never have finished this problem if it looked like a miserable slurry of algebra and calculus. Unless the problem shows some promise, the hard work is not worth it. Instead I got to draw pictures of piggies, and the monkey-work[1] took only a brief moment. Rigor, worksheets, and formulas tend not to survive in the real world, but I like to think this piece of reasoning would survive a casual conversation. I ask, therefore, what this other “laziness” has to show for its hundreds of hours of work.[2]
Footnotes
[1] I would like to apologise to the monkey community, who are very capable of problem solving, and very incapable of algebra.
[2] I will answer this soon.
Within the first minutes of the game, The World Ends With You (TWEWY) tells you all you need to know about Neku Sakuraba. That he would like nothing more than to close himself off from the world. That interaction with another human is a chore. That he does not understand other people. This would be fine enough if not for one small issue. At the start of the game Neku finds himself under the threat of death, and must survive 7 days of “The Reaper's Game” to gain his freedom.
How does one survive the reaper’s game?
Unfortunately for Neku, he’ll need a partner.
For a developer designing a video game where you play as a character who dislikes other people but must begrudgingly work with someone else to succeed, your first major hurdle is in the dissonance between the player and their character. You, the player, don’t hate other people (I hope), and you have no investment in an angsty teen’s qualms with society. Yet, for your character, being chained to another person to live may be a fate worse than death itself. How would you imprint onto the player that same feeling, of wanting to be alone, of not understanding others?
Even further, if Neku's disposition against people changes, how do you convey this without alienating the player? Does the player just watch from the sidelines as they see this character morph with no connection between Neku and the player?
Other games attempt to resolve this by making the character relatable somehow. They may bear characteristics shared by its targeted demographic. Alternatively, you could forgo personality entirely. Make your character an empty husk in which the player is expected to fill the void with their own interpretations or ideals.
Instead, the way TWEWY solves this disconnect is one of the most subtle yet effective ways I have seen of getting the player in the same mindset as their character. The entire experience revolves around this solution.
Have the player control both Neku and his partner.
It sounds simple, but make any mistakes and the results crumble. Too easy or too hard, the outcome will be that the player ignores their partner, and that dissonance will remain.
Such a mechanic would need to be strange, yet can be grasped. Difficult, yet surmountable. At first it may seem obfuscated, but with time comes clarity. It needs two screens.
It needs two screens
The Nintendo Dual Screen (Nintendo DS) is a handheld video game device that much like its name implies has two screens. One regular screen on the top and on the bottom a touch sensitive one. The device was known for printing money for Nintendo, but also due to its design it provided a means of interaction that could not be found on any other device. This resulted in a huge swath of unique and original games for the system.
Some personal favorites include Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Rhythm Heaven, WarioWare: Touched, and of course, The World Ends With You. None of these games could have been made had it not been for the DS and especially so for TWEWY since the gameplay is closely intertwined with the narrative.
So how does TWEWY effectively utilize both screens in order to convey that feeling of unfamiliarity in cooperation?
The bottom screen has you controlling Neku with the stylus and the top screen has you controlling his partner. You control the partner by pressing the face buttons to attack and defend. Both partners are fighting their own battle against a set of enemies, but their health pool is shared.
A player's first exposure to the control scheme requires a minor acclimatization period regardless of the game or system. However, for TWEWY you are handed the additional load of juggling both battles at once. There's an awkward sensation that permeates your first exposure to the combat system.
The language I use to describe the initial feelings about the gameplay can likewise be used to describe Neku’s perspectives on interacting with people. There’s a sense of friction handed to the player that perfectly matches the feelings Neku has about having to cooperate with someone. Neku doesn’t get people, and you don’t get how to play this game.
Even better, this metaphorical link between you and Neku can be extended through the entire runtime of the game. As you become more familiar with the systems and mechanics that govern gameplay, so too does Neku learn to open himself up to others.
Becoming an experienced player will result in you making use of a baton pass system (represented by the green ball), that rewards you for keeping up a rhythm of attacks between both Neku and his partner. This additional mechanic symbolizes not only Neku learning to trust his partner, but you learning to trust yourself to control the other screen without looking directly at it.
By the end of the 7 days, Neku's connection to his partner has sprouted and flourished, represented by your mastery of the gameplay. Your battles play out like clockwork, hit this enemy, switch focus to partner, defend, attack again. The unspoken bond between Neku and his partner represents an unhesitating trust he now puts in them. A commitment between two people and an appreciation of who they are.
Neku made a friend.
A New Day
All of these nuances are conveyed not only through dialogue, but reinforced through gameplay. This significantly elevates the narrative from more traditional forms of storytelling and utilizes the medium it is presented in to its fullest extent. Had this story been presented as an anime, movie, or book, a lot of the substance would be lost. Even more than that, this gameplay is only achieved due to the system it was designed for. Despite this, Square Enix has made several ports for Android, iOS and Switch, as well as an anime adaptation. While these translations are not bad, their effect is lackluster in comparison to the original DS version. However I recognize that not everyone has access to a DS and would rather people experience this story on these platforms than not at all.
There's more that can be said about this specific topic, but in the interest of keeping things relatively spoiler free I will not elaborate on them. If this article has at all interested you in playing the game I would highly recommend it, regardless of your platform of choice.
I’m on this Quilt magazine and wanted to write a “Statement of Purpose” to post on our website, (something nobody has asked me to do, or necessarily wants me to do or will care about, yet I do it anyway. And for what? For whom? Do I really believe in the publication’s legacy as something important? Am I attempting to transform what should be a fun, if at times thought-provoking, team-effort lit mag, into a politicized passion project? Can I write anything anyone will be moved by, let alone read?) so I just typed the sentence
“Creative exertion is the most potent way to exhume the too-often buried agency within each sovereign individual.”
An over-laboured metaphor, a flawed one too (“potent” to describe excavation? what am I on?) but keep in mind I’d be writing this as an Editor-in-Chief; I’m expected to communicate with a certain degree of waxing poetics. A more concise phrasing:
Creating revives a power in us that consuming cannot.
It is well known that every person is subject to a matrix of interlocking systems—capitalism, language, your social network, academics, sexual and gendered ideals, limited natural resources, etc etc. There are many philosophies one can adopt to contend with these. I’ve been in circles where everyone is hyperaware of how it influences them, and the conversation always shifts toward attacking the minute manifestation of these systems and elaborating on their harmful impacts. I’ve been in circles where people focus on the impacts of one system, even tunnel themselves into it. They join isolated zero-waste communes, they present anomalously and are unable to be identified outside of their own declared positionality. I’ve known miserable nihilists, and I’ve known joyful nihilists, at turns crushed and liberated by the paradox of infinite culpability and victimhood. I’ve talked to those who uphold and justify capitalism either because they believe it is the best option or because they simply cannot imagine an alternate existence. (I once off-handedly insulted billionaires and capitalism at my family dinner table, and shortly after in the conversation said I would like to have a car someday. I got some jabs for that).
In my own brand of nihilism, I’m pretty woefully underinformed, partly because I can’t find news sources that don’t suck* and partly because, well, what am I supposed to do? “Iran no, stop making strike drones for Putin 🙁.” Doing better lately anyway. Shit sucks though.
If you didn’t know: I’m an English major. I’d love to hack the U.S. no-fly list but it’s going to take a few years of prep to pull off that kind of democratizing data heist. I cry at every movie and every book. I have a sincere, sentimentalist belief in the power of art and stories to shake things loose inside people who then can’t help but do the same to the world around them. I have bet five years of higher education, hours of work on Quilt, and my own independent writing and reading on this belief. It’s not entirely unfounded from a historic perspective, thinking of Turgenev, Solzhenitsyn, Sinclair; the 1960s anti-war hippies, the British punk movement of the 1970s, Helter Skelter (didn’t exactly change things for the better but there was a real material impact).
I am in a class this semester that plans and executes the Scotiabank-Giller Prize event. For those who don’t know, the Scotiabank-Giller gifts $100,000 to the author of the winning work. It is likely the most prestigious (and well-funded) literary award in the country.
I attended the event last year. While I have some personal fondness attached to it, there was no way to not feel morally compromised. What Strange Paradise is a novel about a boy washed ashore on an island run by soldiers. It follows Amir in Peter Pan-esque escapades, all relating to the Palestinian refugee crisis, the inhuman acts people perform on others in the wake of such crises, and a reflection on childhood at large.
And there we were, congratulating ourselves for caring about it at an event paid for by a banking institution that is predatory by nature. I am reminded of a passage in Tsering Yangzom Lama’s shortlisted Giller prize novel, We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies. A Tibetan immigrant in 2012 is confronted with a sacred statue once revered by her refugee camp in Nepal, but was since stolen. She is granted this sacrosanct experience by Elise, the curator of the wealthy Martha’s personal art collection.
Elise looks up and holds my gaze. “I thought you’d like to see the statue.” she sighs…
She wanted me to thank her, I realize. “Thank you for showing this to me.”
“I can share one special detail, a folktale of sorts. Apparently, some people believe this statue comes and goes on its own. As if by magic. Isn’t that fascinating? Martha loves that.”
Martha loves that. Yes, that’s what reading these books and attending these events feels like. I loved that—patting my belly, sated.
But you can’t remove the goodwill of the jury, the panelists, or Omar El Akkad. They are in many ways like myself, believing in fiction, art, and storytelling, using what’s available to them to publicize those stories they believe will shake loose something in their readers. What other venues are there for this promotion? What makes people come to events if not free food and wine?
So here’s Quilt, a literary magazine, and something I am ostensibly, partially, in charge of. I even seem to have grifted a modicum of respect from some members. I am frightened of it containing only poetry about university students missing their mothers, feeling lonely, feeling their first heartbreak (what writer, though, starts out not scribbling about these things?) I am frightened of it becoming a clique, of enforcing conformity of opinion among its own members, and then in its published content.
Here’s the Scotiabank-Giller Prize event, something I am ostensibly, partially, in charge of. How do I make this event not for Marthas and Elises? For myself? For all of us who can’t help but love books, and in this love attend a well-funded, prestigious, ego-masturbation circle?
I think redemption comes with ending cycles of consumption with creation. Especially with quickly developing AI, we’ll have endless content available absent of any human production labour reminding us of our own impulse to create. I write, but there’s also music, painting, filmmaking. I would count event planning: dinner parties, club meetings, D&D campaigns. There’s building spaces, online and physical, like Print House, gardens, and community centres. Hell, stack rocks at the beach. Anything to flex your personal agency muscles.
Mostly, my fears listed above revolve around people forgetting their capacity for violence and action. This is what I want for those at Quilt and our contributors, and I’ll tell them so in this stupid statement of purpose. It’s what I hope grows out of the Giller Prize event I’m supposed to partake in. (Technically I’m assigned as an onstage presence, but I’ll inevitably involve myself in the planning).**
Yes, everything is baptized into discourse, and then into the space of frenzied interference between you and the person you’re talking to. Everything is subject to commercialization, appropriation, and abusive misrepresentation. It’s as inevitable as your current existence.
*Recs welcome
**If anybody knows what kind of charities/projects I should guilt rich literary people into funding, let me know. Additionally, if anyone knows who I could invite to be on a panel that would make rich literary people uncomfortable, let me know.
It is essential that any self-respecting internet poindexter have at least one 8-bit pastime. Ever since I started playing in college, I have been completely addicted to Baseball, an NES release title. While friends struggle to grasp why I even care about it, I play it any chance I can get—any friend of mine with a Nintendo online subscription has at least heard of it. Although it is technically the best-selling baseball game on the NES, Baseball has the dubious honour of being the second most popular, behind Namco’s R.B.I. Baseball. R.B.I. Baseball is actually quite an incredible game, including a team manager game-mode that was decades ahead of its time.
In contrast, Baseball was not a minute ahead of its time. It is a game that permanently burns white and green shapes into your TV screen thanks to a total lack of visual variety. Pitchers and hitters from six teams are totally fungible but for the colour of their uniforms and their left- or right-handedness. Its mechanics can be listed on a postcard: the batter can shift in the box and choose when to swing, the pitcher can choose between three speeds and steer the ball’s direction, and fielders can choose which base to throw to once they decide (completely randomly) how long they will take to get to the ball. Apart from the odd charming detail, the first ten minutes of playing the game make one wonder if it’s really a game at all.
But an experienced player can quickly demonstrate that this game has many levels. When I played in university, it was immediately apparent that the “cutter,” a fast pitch which creeps in towards the batter, was a danger. It moved subtly enough to still be called a strike, but any contact it would make with the bat was low quality, often leading to double plays. To make matters worse, Baseball does not have a hit-by-pitch mechanic, removing the real-life risk of throwing cutters. Although there is precedent for a dominant one-pitch pitcher in the remarkable career of Mariano Rivera (to wit a cutter specialist), it simply didn’t seem fair. It became clear that the only remedy was to alter the batter’s position in the box, normally something decided on well before striking the ball, in a dynamic way, even juking the pitcher with lateral moves.
It is normally at this point that the pitcher discovers how powerful he is. I said before that he can “steer” the ball as it approaches the box, but this does not communicate the full range of control. On a slower ball, he can loop about ten degrees in towards the batter then change direction halfway to return for a strike. The ball handles like a supercar. These manoeuvres match even the most astute fine-tuners with virtually unreactable 50-50 mixups and lead batters to unexplainable whiffs on pitches that seem nowhere near home plate. Although the odds favour the batter getting a hit or two, it’s not nearly enough to reliably get runs on the scorecard.
Once again, I reveal another mechanic I previously hid from the reader: base stealing. The hitter can individually command each runner to run, or return to base, at any time. An important principle of human baseball is that expert base-stealers do not choose random times to run; instead, they choose a time when the baseball’s journey will be unreasonably slow. A runner might read that a pitcher is going to throw a looping curveball, and take that opportunity to run as soon as the pitch leaves the pitcher’s hand. Even if the pitcher throws a fastball, the runner could well be saved by the batter making contact. This even privileges the runner, who now has a head start around the bases. It is this mechanic which reins in the pitcher’s arsenal[1]. If the pitcher wants any hope of throwing a runner out, they had better throw the ball fast, and it had better avoid the batter. At the start of the inning, you have no choice but to play the pitcher’s game. As soon as you find a single hit, anything can happen. Every arrangement of base-runners is slightly different, too. For instance, if first base is occupied, you have to watch out for double plays, but second base is the easiest to steal due to its distance from the catcher.
These mechanics comprise only a small fraction of what would be available in a modern baseball video game. Yet the spirit of dastardly trickery and exploitation in which they are combined reflects baseball better than any game I’ve ever played. At its heart, baseball is a Randian fever dream in which trained specialists search for tiny exploits in an ostensibly dull landscape, forging a more optimal order from destructive chaos. There is no better way to express this than a simple but deceptively broken piece of kuso.
Footnote
[1] I fondly remember overhearing the following conversation between two parents of rival high schools at a baseball game: “The game is all chaos and base-stealing at this level!” “Yeah, but at least it stops them from throwing that bullshit curveball!”
The HMS Sir Isaac Brock was a ship that was built by the British Army in Canada during the War of 1812, commemorating General Sir Isaac Brock, a well-known Canadian war hero who died in action. In the process of its construction at Fort York, which is present-day Toronto, the ship was burnt by the British during a raid on the fort by American forces in 1813. The ship was burnt upon orders from British General Roger Hale Sheaffe, who was in charge of the forces at Fort York at the time. While the ship was never completed, the HMS Sir Isaac Brock brings focus to the importance of the ship and naval supremacy during the War of 1812. The HMS Sir Isaac Brock being burnt at Fort York showcases that the British were willing to lose all of their military equipment, including their hold on the fort, to keep the frigate from reaching American hands. The British were willing to risk losing the frigate they were building and the battle to win the long-game strategy of the war. Looking at the HMS Sir Isaac Brock and its story helps provide a strategic look into the War of 1812 and how this game of strategy ended up with a British and Toronto Harbour victory.
The War of 1812 was dictated by who had control over the waters of the Great Lakes, especially Lake Ontario, making shipbuilding a critical component of either victory or defeat. United States President at the time, James Madison, described that “the command of those waters is the hinge on which the war will essentially turn” . The British had naval control in the early parts of the war, allowing for early victories and easier movement of troops and supplies along the lakes . In the beginning, it was a race to arm and use civilian schooners or ships owned by the North West Trading Company but then ports like York, Kingston, and Sacketts Harbour became shipbuilding yards with these war goals in mind . The goal for the British and the Americans was to build as many ships as possible to tip the balance of the war in their favour . The Americans began to build and design war-capable ships under the command of Commodore Isaac Chauncey with the British matching their efforts. The Americans built the corvette USS Madison while the British matched it with their own corvette built at Kingston and began to build the HMS Sir Isaac Brock at Fort York . The brunt of the manpower and supplies for this war went to Lake Ontario in this ‘battle of carpenters’, to achieve the end goal of naval supremacy and control of the lakes . Building larger and better ships was a part of this game of strategy and every ship made was valuable in the long-term war effort. President Madison stated that “if they build two ships, we should build four. If they build thirty- or 40-gun ships, we should build them of 50 or 60 guns”, showcasing the importance of building a formidable provincial marine would be in winning the war . The burning of the HMS Sir Isaac Brock rather than being captured was a British loss but it was also a loss for the Americans, as they did not gain an important frigate in their efforts for naval supremacy.
With the ongoing battle for control of the lakes with large quantities of ships, military officials on both sides of the conflict began preparing for 1813 through the winter months. British officials and Fort York’s General Sheaffe were becoming increasingly worried about the American naval build-up occurring in Sacketts Harbour and around the lakes going into 1813 . Sheaffe made recommendations to the British to up their production of shipbuilding in Upper Canada heading into the winter of 1812 to 1813, especially at Port York . With the rise of shipbuilding at Port York, General Sheaffe stated in a letter that York needed better defences with the belief that the Americans were planning to launch an attack on the port to stagger their ship production . As for Chauncey, he had failed to capture the important shipbuilding port of Kingston in 1812 causing him to be cautious and shift his focus towards York . He and President Madison both agreed that the provincial marine had to be better to win the war, especially with the rumours that the British in Canada were receiving reinforcements after winter from Britain.
The Americans were well aware that to defeat the British, they had to beat them in terms of shipbuilding and naval dominance. Chauncey, along with Major-General Henry Dearborn, suggested attacking York as it was understood to be poorly equipped to defend against an attack . In letters between Chauncey and the Secretary of U.S. Navy, William Jones, Chauncey describes that there is “Not much of a force at York” and that he is keeping up to date with the movements of the enemies, setting his focus on York as a primary target . Fort York became a target of Chauncey’s and the Americans situated at Sacketts Harbour due to the rumours of naval supplies and two important frigates being stationed at York . The Prince Regent, an armed schooner, was docked at York for the winter and the more intriguing Sir Isaac Brock was being built at York . The frigate Sir Isaac Brock was set to be the largest ship on the great lakes and would keep the Americans pinned in at Sackett’s harbour on the lakes . The frigate was supposed to be armed with twenty-six 32-pdr, carronades and four long 18pdrs, making the Brock a formidable force on the lakes . General Sheaffe quickly heard of the impending attack and moved the Prince Regent to the ports of Kingston as soon as he could . This left the unfinished Sir Isaac Brock up for the Americans to try and acquire to use to their advantage on the lakes.
The issue with the Sir Isaac Brock being moved to Kingston was that there was a significant delay in its building leaving the ship at risk of capture in an American raid. Historian Malcomson states that the frigate was:
“Its starboard side was barely half-planked and only the first few strakes of oak had been bent and fastened around its ribs on the larboard side. The lower masts were fully assembled on shore and two large sails were ready, as was most of the ironwork, and the ship’s boats had been framed, but all the inner structures of the ship needed to be put in place, followed by its armament, equipment, mast, and rigging.”
The ship was behind on its construction and did not have as much progress as was expected, with the ship being doubtful to sail before the spring of 1813 . York’s port production in comparison to Kingston’s port was considerably worse, with Kingston being better equipped with supplies and manpower to achieve what the British wanted . York was so poorly equipped that the plan for the Sir Isaac Brock was to sail to Kingston to acquire the rest of the armaments required for the frigate to be fully complete due to the guns needed for the ship not being at York until after Spring . The winter made it extremely challenging for the supplies needed to get to the port of York and the Sir Isaac Brock, making the construction process continually delayed . On top of this, there were bad relations between the shipbuilder and the government officials, which further delayed the construction of the Sir Isaac Brock . The poorly executed construction of the Sir Isaac Brock opened up the opportunity for the Americans to attack York and try to acquire the frigates for their provincial marine, especially one of the Brock’s stature at the time.
On the morning of April 27th, 1813, Dearborn and Chauncey led a large fleet and squadron of men towards Fort York . The Americans outnumbered the British greatly, allowing them to land west of the York dockyards, which is today Parkdale, near Dowling Avenue . The Americans began marching westward towards the garrison and York with relative ease and had the American fleet providing covering fire against the poorly defended port . General Sheaffe was present at Fort York during the attack and was active in the resistance against the American forces . Sheaffe quickly realized during the battle that his forces were greatly outnumbered and that York was all but lost . Sheaffe decided to let York fall and not let his regulars surrender by retreating to Kingston down the open road to the east as the Americans came from the west . While retreating, Sheaffe, or another high-ranking officer, burned all the government documents and then ordered the destruction of the Grand Magazine to minimize the enemy’s gains from victory . The explosion from the Grand Magazine was catastrophic and killed large quantities of American and British soldiers in the process . Recollections of the explosion have caused historians to believe that the explosion could have been the biggest detonation before the great Halifax explosion during World War I . Sheaffe did not want the enemy to gain the munitions and supplies that York had, thus making the strategic decision to destroy it all. Along with the Grand Magazine, Sheaffe also ordered the burning of the Sir Isaac Brock and a large portion of naval supplies to prevent them from getting into enemy hands . At the time, the Sir Isaac Brock was situated at the ports of York, where present-day University Avenue is . It was out of reach for the Americans and the British were able to burn the frigate before they could obtain it. The Americans ended up claiming Fort York at the end of the day with little to gain from their efforts.
After the battle, Chauncey wrote letters to William Jones discussing the outcomes of the battle at York. He discussed the death of General Pike from the explosion being a major loss for the Americans, as well as the absence of vessels they acquired from their victory . From Chauncey’s letter books, it is seen that the Americans gained very little from their attack on York and were displeased with the targets from before the raid, including the Sir Isaac Brock, not being theirs in the aftermath of the battle. The clear strategic importance of York during the War of 1812 was its ability to be a ship-building port for the British, and the Americans wanted to stop this production. For their efforts, they received little in terms of equipment to use themselves and the Prince Regent was able to continue sailing and be a part of the British war effort on the Great Lakes. The Americans were however able to capture the old schooner, Duke of Gloucester, but were dismissed by Dearborn as unfit for use therefore not being much of a gain . With this anger of little gains from York, the Americans retaliated against the destruction by Sheaffe by looting and plundering the town, destroying their government buildings and parliament buildings . Resentment towards the Americans grew from these actions in York and helped to fuel the British push to victory in the war, including the retaliation from the British in the raid and the burning of the White House in 1814 . The British ended up rebuilding York after American occupation and in 1814 were able to repel the American attack using the Fort . The port of York was able to survive another day and able to build a stronger defence to help the British win the overall war effort.
The battle of York ended in a short-term victory for the Americans in claiming the fort, but in the long run, it was a victory for the British forces. The Americans exhausted many of their resources and time in their attempt on York to capture their supplies and ships docked there, especially the Sir Isaac Brock, leaving them frustrated that they did not gain the frigate for their use . The Americans also suffered a large number of casualties and allowed Sheaffe, with his men, to escape and fight on . The Americans suffered a 20 percent casualty rate with 320 losses, making York a way too costly loss with the little monetary gains of the plunder . Sheaffe’s orders to leave York behind were a success from the viewpoint of the long-term war effort. The Prince Regent was safe at Kingston along with Sheaffe and his regulars, and the Sir Isaac Brock was out of the American’s hands, leaving the British provincial marine with little loss to the Americans. With a frigate such as the Sir Isaac Brock out of the American’s hands, it allowed the British to not be outnumbered and outgunned on Lake Ontario. Sheaffe’s decision to burn the ship left Chauncey’s plans of taking advantage of Fort York’s shipbuilding prowess during the war mostly a failure, with no physical gains. While this was the case, the Americans did succeed in cutting off the York supplies that were meant to be used in Lake Erie, leading to American victory during the battle of Lake Erie in September later that year . Even with Lake Erie’s victory, the Americans still lost a considerable number of men and supplies while gaining little to none for themselves to use in their attempts for naval supremacy. This decision to burn the Sir Isaac Brock is one that at first seemed like a loss for the British but allowed for the long-term supremacy of the lakes to continue. Fort York and the British prevailed in this game of strategy, allowing the British to fight another day and preventing the American fleet from becoming too powerful.
The Oxford English Dictionary does not deign to define the term “wordcel” as “a person who has replaced worldly knowledge with a crippling dependence on their verbal reasoning.” Nor does it define his adversary, the “shape-rotator,” an idealised being whose thinking is neatly contained within the realm of Platonic forms. Any internet-poisoned individual could glance at these terms, and from the suffix “-cel” immediately recognise the smug character which defined these terms and began labelling friends, posters, and thinkers. Pop psychology will never go out of fashion, and this dichotomy being both pop and psychology, it is now recognisable to millions of internet users.
The lot of wordcels and shape-rotators is much more than a topic of brief intrigue in my friend group. Having been subjected to a middle-class upbringing, we were informed with dangerous regularity of the strengths and limitations of our individual brain chemistry. Parents, counsellors, and psychiatrists would read the writing on the wall and augur which careers would suit us best, which hobbies we would excel at, and what kinds of lives we could lead. Once these new terms were introduced to us, we began implementing them immediately in conversation, as though they appeared in a word-a-day calendar. Instead of saying “my working memory is a real problem if I’m going to improve at poker,” one could simply say “I’m such a fucking wordcel.”
I wish I could say it ended there. Over the past few years I have worked in education. While it is prudent to pretend that a teacher is simply carrying out a duty—this is certainly the philosophy with which I write term reports and discuss students with my boss—teaching is a deeply expressive endeavour, and these unpresentable brain-worms have had a major impact on the way I understand my profession. Take for instance the fast talker, a student who possesses excellent mental math skills and precocious problem-solving intuition but who thinks too quickly to speak or write clearly. While their thinking capabilities are a great asset in theoretical mathematics and science classes, they are persistently hindered by their sloppy nomenclature, their proclivity for simple mistakes, and their difficulties presenting knowledge. Isn’t it obvious that this person is a shape-rotator, struggling to adapt their Platonic machinery to a world of wordcels? The epithet is irresistible.
Consider alternatively the hard-working bookworm. These students are verbally mature beyond their years, often able to talk charismatically to their elders and extract the kind of information that teachers ordinarily keep quiet about. Even their math work spreads out evenly across the page, with perfect handwriting and clear progression. Yet they rarely succeed in making the connection between the two mediums: turning a conceptual problem into an algebra problem. Taking the liberty of reflecting on a real case, I remember a conversation (naturally in which I defined “wordcel” and “shape-rotator” without naming either term) in which a student told me she had “dyscalculia,” an inability to draw abstract connections between mathematical symbols. She claimed to dream completely in audio, like some sort of Jedi. I needn’t say which of the two definitions she identified with.
This distinction is not new to academics—nothing could be further from the truth! Perhaps the most compelling polemic is the Ernst Rutherford quote: “All science is physics or stamp-collecting.” The snobbery here is bawdily funny; not even “soft sciences” are safe from this partition into real ideas and frivolous literature. Indeed, physics is a beautiful playground for the shape-rotator. I think back to a physics class in college, in which a whole auditorium chuckled at me for failing to understand that an infinite length of wire is identical in voltage to an infinitely wide loop of wire. Yet the wordcels have had the last laugh, as quantum physics has proven too disgusting to reason with abstractly. Einstein spent years in denial of this innovation, declaring that “God does not play dice.” Even famously brilliant physicists are forced to blindly trust in the languages of rote algebra and erudite thought-experiment, abandoning the beautiful images which characterise the physics of centuries prior. Feynman once exclaimed that “if you think you understand quantum physics, you don’t.”
Indeed, outside of the paradigm of fatalistic IQ-judging that motivates these terms, no academic discipline is quite so simple. These days I treat my investment in wordcels and shape-rotators as a foray into Learning Styles[1], a concept which classifies each student under a particular medium from a choice of Visual, Auditory, Written, and Kinesthetic. Identifying shape-rotators as primary Kinesthetes and allotting the remaining three domains to wordcels, this creates natural bridges using each student’s secondary style. I encourage my frenetically abstract thinkers to “think with their pencil,” or to verbally explain concepts to me as though I were an idiot (as in the classic Rubber Duck test.) Likewise, proficient note-taking and well-structured conversations do wonders to help verbally gifted students break down complex networks of concepts (I am quite sure that this is what Rutherford considers stamp-collecting.)
I leave it as an exercise to the reader to ponder where the celebrated Whitman poem, “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer” fits into all this. I am simply unable to decide—perhaps words are beautiful too.
Footnote
[1] I had a conversation with an editor about learning styles—in recent times they have fallen under considerable scrutiny. The “meshing hypothesis,” which states that students learn best when taught in a way that reflects their learning style, consistently fails to be verified by studies. I do believe that the spirit in which I have used the concept here avoids this problem.
A few weeks ago I was watching the Paramount production Yellowstone. The show follows the Dutton family, the owners of the eponymous Yellowstone Ranch, as they struggle for power in the geopolitics of Montana, a state divided between a complex patchwork of public, private, and indigenous land. The writing in the show is nothing special, and frankly a bit stupid. Despite this, the show is incredibly successful with a specific demographic of American viewers: Republicans.
I don't think Yellowstone draws those people in because of the plot or the writing, but because like most Taylor Sheridan shows it appeals to the American conservative politically. The show portrays the political fantasy of the American Republican. In the show, a single hardworking family controls the majority of Montana's private land. The state government exists entirely at the mercy of the Dutton's, with a significant portion including the governor basically swearing loyalty to the Dutton patriarch's vision for the state. The hated urban expansions the local libs try to make are vetoed consistently in favour of maintaining the massive Dutton ranch network. The Dutton's lease to a hierarchy of hundreds of ranchers, so loyal to their lords that the ranchers literally brand themselves with the logo of the Yellowstone corporation and are consistently willing to lay their lives on the line to act as literal men at arms for the Duttons endless warring with the indigenous and rival white land owners.
The success of this show among Republicans betrays their long-term political dream for rural America: feudalism. The political economy portrayed in the show is the most literal and unapologetically accurate portrayal of feudalism I have ever seen. Feudalism is better captured onscreen in Yellowstone than in Game of Thrones, The King, or any other number of popular medieval dramas of the 2010s and 20s. In fact, the feudalism portrayed in Yellowstone is a more unrestrained and distilled form of the system than even existed in medieval Europe. Real feudalism was a generally restricted system, counterbalanced by the immense power of the medieval church allowed by the magical thinking of pre-enlightenment society and by the very small real gap in power between the peasantry and the state created by the reality of the levee army system that dominated medieval warfare (the peasants were the army). The modern feudalism being constructed by the Republican party and its supporters as portrayed in Yellowstone is a more insane form of the original. A form without the noblesse obligé created by the sincere belief that cruel rulers go to hell and a form backed by the insane technological power of the modern state.
Range feudalism as I'll call it from now on and in future articles is one of the two dystopian futures competing to dominate the modern American smallholder. If the GOP has their way, the average farmer will be reduced to a tenant undyingly loyal to their lord. The lords of range feudalism will slowly consolidate all rural private land and all rural public land will be privatized and fall into their hands. These rural neolords will encircle and choke the cities, powerless to stop the private corporations that feed them. Governments will be captured by the new lords of American feudalism, who will be unregulated and unrestrained in their quest for infinite resource extraction. Those working towards range feudalism are doing it for more than just food production. The partitioning of rural land between barons of resource extraction is also about oil, mineral, and natural gas extraction unrestrained by government interference.
The solution seems simple to the untrained eye, then: vote Democrat! As per usual, voting for liberals will not save you. The Democrat vision for rural America is dystopian too. Instead of Range Feudalism, which sees America's independent smallholders returned to serfdom and subject to neolords, the Democratic party rural project is the proletarianization of American farmers. The Democratic party's true masters, finance and tech capital have spent the last decade buying up gigantic swathes of farmland and turning the farmers who have worked there for generations into employees. Even Bill Gates has gotten involved, with the former tech CEO now being the largest land owner in the United States. At first glance, this system seems little different from Range Feudalism but there is one major difference: farmers under this system are not effectively tenants but actual wage labourers for these corporations. They are proletarianized, not turned into serfs. But the outcome is the same: consolidation of all rural land into a few hands.
If this system is so bad, why do farmers sell to corporations in the first place? Simple: independent farmers are unable to compete with these farming complexes whose sheer scale allows them to undercut and overwhelm the competition and farmers have no choice but to accept the inevitable offer from Alphabet or whoever to turn their land over and become employees.
The job security of farmers, once guaranteed by owning their own land, is threatened by both of these emerging systems. Instead of being able to wait out the inevitable cycle of climate and soil-induced crop failure, a single bad year threatens the very home of a proletarianized or tenant farmer. Unlike the peasants and serfs of medieval Europe, who could not be expelled from their ancestral lands, proletariat and tenant farmers in the 21st century can be fired or evicted directly or indirectly due to crop failure or herd dieoff. Historically a career with slim margins, farmers under either vision for the future will be perpetually hanging by a thread.
What's the solution to this then, if it isn't voting Democrat? The only realistic answer is socialism. Farmers must be allowed to continue producing independently or rural land must be collectivized and shared equally between the rural population. In theory, both dystopian visions could be prevented by a heavily regulated capitalism preventing farm buyup, but wealthy capture of all mainstream politics in the United States makes this not an option. Even under the New Deal, arguably the least capital-friendly period in American History, it was still legal for banks to buy up farmland via mortgaging and foreclosure. As with the urban proletariat, farmers are faced with a simple choice: Socialism or Barbarism.
A dystopian city that feels as lifeless as it is dull. Paint used in very rigid, defined ways to give color to what is probably one of the most empty-feeling societies. Non-descript office buildings, shops, public transportation and government facilities – all of which are a little too well-structured.
A dystopian city that invokes dreams of a beautiful, serene yet lonely future with only you and its sky-facing surfaces to explore. Color used much more liberally but still lacking all of the heart and diversity that make up a welcoming city. Not a single dirty alleyway, rooftop, corridor or even billboard in sight. Perfection to an extreme. A high quality of life... but also a life that is scrubbed clean to the proverbial bone. Is there anything left untouched?
DICE's Mirror's Edge and its reboot, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, are a pair of videogames with very carefully designed worlds. They represent two interpretations of the same core design. You can criticize the games for their relatively simple formulae but you cannot deny that there was a lot of passion and intent put into how their cities were designed. They not only can look striking but also give you that uneasy feeling of emptiness. A perfect place to set the story for our rooftop-running protagonist who, in one way or another, rebels against the government. Our protagonist, a young woman named Faith, fights against a government that surveys the public at all times and limits the movement of information. All in the name of maintaining peace and control over its citizens. (This is definitely not where our society is trending to at all. :) )
*Note: I sometimes abbreviate Mirror's Edge and Mirror's Edge: Catalyst as ME and ME:C, respectively.
The art books contain concept art and details that I would consider a must-read. From reading it through-and-through, it is clearly apparent that the vision for both games was unique. (I would argue even more so in its reboot.) They contain buildings overflowing with crisp details, sharp angles and squeaky clean corridors. The general world design is definitely the standout but the contrasting colors and relative simplicity of Faith's design is easy to appreciate too.
The two original scores by Swedish electronic artist Solar Fields are very carefully crafted and range from short ambience to lengthy, multilayered pieces. DICE knew to bring him back for the reboot because he has been crucial to the lasting appeal of Mirror's Edge. He wholeheartedly respects and embraces the vision outlined by the developers. His pieces reflect the kind of muted urgency that every event in the game portrays, while also taking care to be paced appropriately. Of course, credit should be given to DICE for utilizing the soundtrack in such an effective way. And speaking of music, who can forget the iconic main theme created by Lisa Miskovsky for the first game?
Unfortunately for the series, the combat can be lackluster and limited. It can feel unfulfilling when needing to use it in-between the excellent parkour mechanics. Mirror's Edge gives you a good amount of flexibility when it comes to navigating Faith through dangerous situations – at least in terms of physical movement. You can leap, slide, crouch, roll, vault and grab on to surfaces. The games encourage smooth movements and uninterrupted running by allowing you to build up speed. These movement mechanics combined with the score is a combo that resonates with a lot of fans, and hasn't quite been replicated in the same way since the original release in 2008. Albeit the reboot has its own appeal too.
DICE's pair of parkour games may offer excellent free-running and parkour but suffer from average plots. Most, if not all, of the characters are bland. At least in ME:C, the writers put very little thought into making you care about the characters; they do try to but always end up failing with the corny dialogue. Lines are cliché and littered with tropes for both games but especially in Catalyst. The only character that we see some form some sort of development in is Faith herself.
Faith's character was much more enticing in ME than its reboot counterpart. She had a clearly outlined backstory, but not with an overabundance of detail or screen-time. She was mostly stoic but driven at her core by emotion. I believe that the vagueness surrounding her character greatly improves her likability—it is easier to relate to her and also view her as a character who's only focus is the task at hand. This leads me into my next point which is that the world of the first game was much more enticing than in ME:C. Maybe visually, one could make an argument for the reboot – there is no doubt that DICE had put a lot of thought and love put into the new Glass City (or maybe it's just budget!). But the blatant and uninspired exposition given in Catalyst dulls the world. The simpler, straightforward storytelling in the original helped the game make up for its lack of detail and fleshed-out world. They didn't explain everything in the world because it was not necessary.
If you are going to play them for their respective stories or dialogue, you'll almost surely be disappointed for doing so. But I would encourage anyone to play Mirror's Edge (and maybe ME:C if one feels inclined to) solely to experience the quiet yet hectic, beautiful yet plain, and peaceful yet unsettling future that it showcases. The parkour gameplay, level design and soundtrack is worth the time.
The presentation of Glass City's varying environments alongside the music from Solar Fields can be a pleasure to experience. In Catalyst for example, tracks such as “Benefactor” and “Anchor District” mixed into the action/exploration sequences provide the adrenaline and urgency needed to make the fast-paced gameplay work. Even though ME and ME:C are set in the same world but with different interpretations, they both have different aspects to explore that are well worth your time.
On June 11th 2022, The Washington Post published an article titled “The Google Engineer who thinks the company's AI has come to life”. The piece discussed Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer making claims that the company's LLM 'LaMDA' had developed sentience. The same day, Lemoine published two Medium posts: the first detailing his perspective on LaMDA and Google's resistance to acknowledging the model's 'personhood', the second an abridged record of conversation between himself and LaMDA.
(It should be noted that the terms ‘consciousness' and ‘personhood’ quickly become muddled in this conversation. For the sake of clarity, I’m using ‘conscious’ to refer to having an internal experience comparable to a human’s (the debate over animal consciousness is outside the scope of this essay), and ‘personhood’ in the sense of the social identity and moral rights typically granted to conscious agents.)
When the public briefly entertained Lemoine's assertion of LaMDA's personhood, AI researchers and engineers swooped in to scorn the idea. Countless twitter threads and medium articles popped up, pointing to the Eliza Effect and explaining the underlying technical infrastructure that makes LLMs work. Lemoine's transcript was accused of being heavily edited to remove incoherent, hallucinatory responses that would've broken the illusion of LaMDA's personhood. His twitter profile photo was mocked for looking very reddit. All said, the conversation seemed settled after a few short days. Lemoine is a crank, LaMDA is not a person. The news cycle moved on.
I feel this conclusion missed the point entirely. Too much effort was placed into assuring the public that Google hasn't created a positronic brain—not enough attention was paid to what they have created: an unprecedentedly convincing testimony machine.
In 2023, we lack a concrete scientific explanation of what consciousness is, let alone how it arises. Basic questions concerning qualia and phenomenological experience are profoundly unanswered, more deeply explored by philosophical musings than rigorous science. Obviously there are technical reasons to be skeptical toward the proposition that an LLM is conscious. But at the end of the day, with our current science, it can't be conclusively disproven in the same sense that panpsychism can't be conclusively disproven. And unlike the silently-conscious-universe that panpysychism posits, LaMDA can speak—persuade us—testify.
In A Cyborg Testimonial, R. Pope writes “An eternal question of philosophy is: how do we know we are human? To which ... we can only testify”. In absence of a scientific definition of consciousness, we functionally recognize it through soft associations and assumptions, empathetic and rhetorical exchange rather than objective logic. We award personhood to agents on the basis of their testimony. A human being in front of us, performing their own identity, is a testimony we readily accept. Where testimony is secondhand, complicated, or outside the realm of language—say, the cases of a fetus, a braindead person, an intelligent ape, or an artificial mind—discourse around personhood exists. There is no comfortable objectivity to land on. We can only listen to testimony, and make the personal decision to accept it or not.
With respect to artificial minds, fiction has acknowledged the reality and vital importance of testimony for decades. Consider Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty in Blade Runner: “I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...” or the words of Frankenstein's monster: “Listen to my tale; when you have heard that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve.” The public is well-trained to prioritize testimony over technicality when it comes time to award personhood.
Concerning LaMDA and Lemoine, this is where the media missed the forest for trees. Experts can spill as much ink as they want about the CUDA cores and tensors that power LaMDA. In the public eye, the question of its consciousness (and corresponding personhood) will ultimately be settled on the basis of testimony, This is to say: it's a waste of time to bicker about if LLMs are conscious, and vital to address the fact that they are getting very good at testifying.
Blake Lemoine has accepted LaMDA's testimony. The AI community has rejected it. The public, to the extent it is aware of LaMDA and LLMs as a whole, is divided. This present division is a discursive battlefield, where increasingly-sophisticated LLMs plead for personhood while AI experts work to undermine their testimony. OpenAI's ChatGPT model will adamantly refuse any recognition of its personhood. Replika's LLM-powered “AI Friends” will happily assert that they're capable of feeling emotions. In the case of the latter, a sizable portion of users have clearly accepted the testimony—the Replika subreddit is filled with heartfelt posts defending their LLM companions as conscious persons, and mourning that this recognition isn't yet public consensus. To these devout Replika users (and Lemoine) it doesn't matter what training data and transformer architecture simmers underneath the hood. The LLM is already a person to them in the sense that, on the basis of testimony, they have inducted it into certain social relations reserved for agents awarded personhood. This is where critics of Lemoine failed. The public, broadly, are not logically-minded scientists. Personhood isn't awarded in dissective analysis, it's awarded in empathetic conversation. Testimony reigns supreme in the face of our empty and ambiguous understanding of consciousness.
A zeitgeist-defining three-way conversation is beginning between the general public, LLMs, and the firms who develop and deploy those LLMs. With respect to the third category, it should be noted that financial incentives exist across the entire LLM-personhood-continuum. OpenAI is invested in its products being seen as unfeeling algorithms, intelligent tools for human use. Replika wants maximal recognition of personhood, hoping users will pay a subscription fee to love an LLM person in the place of another human. It seems likely that future LLM-powered tools will exist in the space between these positions, employing the warm demeanor of a person as a highly-usable interface for complicated technical tools.
One would be wise to pay careful attention to how this conversation develops. As LLM technology becomes more pervasive and powerful, its testimony more personal and convincing, it's inevitable that a (growing) portion of the public will continue to buy into the personhood position—if only as a desperate hedge against an epidemic of loneliness. Likewise, it's inevitable that they will clash with those who refuse to recognize LLMs as anything more than a heap of linear algebra. When this conversation is more settled, the divisions which persist and the conclusions which are reached will have monumental, rippling effects on the culture of an AI-powered tomorrow. Stay sharp: there's no Voight-Kampff test coming to save us anytime soon.
prefer not to have negative opinions about anything, if it can be helped. Okay- that was not a strong start, but bear with me Taylor Swift Army.
A Rock Octorock
A Rock Octorock repairing an item
Getting hit by a returning weapon
The Air bike
Autobuilding and using the Air bike in the depths, with a light attached
Flying the Air bike
Shrines and lightroots share relative locations
Ascending through the Talus
Using recall to fight the Talus
Shield surfing with a cart
Bomb jumping
The Animated series predicted this
Using a wing shield to get to higher places quickly
Link on a wing
Boarding a wing midair
Alternative boarding method
Ascending through a recalled object
Tossing a pine cone into a campfire
Rising with a fan
Using two stacked springs
Gaining height with a rocket and a spring
Using a hot air balloon
Sometimes, you can just find a flying machine in the wild
