YouTube Obsession

A trillion atoms combined in a specific way 3 billion years ago and now we have this:

I say this in wonder and awe.

This is so cool and I’m sure useful in a computer engineering kind of way but I love how useless it looks. Like I know there’s a guy on his couch saying “This is what scientists do with my tax money?” Yes, and it rules.

Watching

Last week I stumbled on an upload of The legend of the Eight Samurai from 1983 (starring Sonny Chiba! Kind of…). Curious and with some free time I though I’d chill and give it a watch.

This is NOT a chill watch.

I say a lot in these posts but I believe with my entire soul that the worst thing a movie can be is boring. This movie is anything but boring. Something rad happens every scene. Is it wild, unpredictable and is only interested in showing the viewer cool shit.

Playing

Here I am, playing Marathon, eating my hat and having a great time. I have to say that the problems I have with the game are still there, even after 12 hours with the full release. In fact, I am even more concerned with the longevity of the game now, than I was before. But I’ll be damned if I’m not enjoying the hell out of this game.

I will start with the issues I raised in my last post. They are still very relevant. Most notably, the item/weapon identification has not gotten any easier even after a combined 20 hours in the game. I’m fully willing to concede that I am just not a good gamer.

However, my biggest concern is how many players will stick around after the first wipe? I’m completing tasks and quests for these factions and the idea of having to do the same thing 3 months from now kind of irritates me. Now, I came from Tarkov, a game that wiped all the time, and I loved rebuilding my base and stash every wipe. Even doing the same quests every wipe leads to this comfortable loop of growing game knowledge. Yet I think Marathon will not feel the same because my game knowledge won’t actually lead to any real advantage when redoing these quests. Lemme explain: The joy of knowing quests in Tarkov is knocking out multiple quests in one raid. It’s easily one of the most rewarding feelings n the game (for myself, anyway). Marathon only allows the runner to have one active quest at a time. So, once I’ve scanned the bio-computer in Perimeter, I have nothing left to do but extract. It pushes the player back to lobbies when they could be tempted to go to another POI to complete another quest and maybe get in another fight.

In the game’s favor, when I had to squad up with randoms, the people I have voice chatted with have been kind and just looking to have fun. I actually connected with a random from San Francisco and we’ve been able to squad up a couple times since. Most folks know, this is not a common scenario. I was dreading trying to VC with people because it almost always reduces to slurs. SO, that it hasn’t become that yet for me is a major plus for Marathon. It might have to do with the community already being niche or something? A real sociologist can take a crack at it someday.

I am going to keep playing for now and I hope more people get into it. Until then, I’m going to have a good time till all comes down.

Other Notables

** A millennial breaks down for Harry Styles’ latest album 

“In Manchester, Harry’s on stage with a, like, 90 person band, plugging away at some prop circuitboard, not in a Kraftwerk kind of way, but in a cheesy a flashback scene where Gilligan is manning a submarine in his dream kind of way.” ⚰️ 

** A great breakdown of the rise and fall of support for Israel. Includes this great graphic of US “intellegence” on Iran’s nuclear program:

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