YouTube Obsession

Professor Dave Explains channel is a lot of things. Just look at the diversity of his content over just the past two weeks:

Most of these subjects melt my brain just looking at the titles. But what I love about Dave is that when he debunks science grifters he is mean, pointed and meticulously armed with facts.

Being mean is important. Legacy media’s tendency to handle powerful grifters with kid-gloves is part of why charlatans have managed to worm their way into the highest levels of government.

These people are evil and stupid. It’s ok to say this.

Reading

Gretchen Felker-Martin, queer horror author and critic wrote an amazing piece on Charlie Kirk’s death on her patreon that is far more articulate and pointed than my angry post from last week. She connects the media and politician praise of Kirk as a “free speech” advocate as a byproduct of class solidarity.

MM

Chernobyl, specifically the nuclear meltdown, has always been an interest of mine ever since reading about in a Popular Science article decades ago. I distinctly remember the article talking about The Elephant’s Foot, a piece of melted metal so radioactive that just looking at it would kill you. Cool and terrifying!

So I have finally been reading Serhii Plokhy’s Chernobyl to get the full history of the event and it’s -literal- fallout. Plokhy was living in Pripyat at the time so he has far more believability when it comes to a telling of the event. Also, first hand accounts are always preferable when an author trashes the failures of the Soviet planned economy.

I’ve only just started but understanding the history of the area during WWII is an enlightening part of the book. This area of the Ukraine seems to have been cursed since the invading Nazis turned this once Jewish haven into a mass grave. Though the evils of the land are far too human to be blamed on a curse. Political maneuvering and face-saving prioritized over safety standards are the real curse of the disaster.

I would already recommend this book for the history lesson alone but I report back once I finish.

Playing

I have mentioned it before in passing but Minecraft is one of the best video games of all time. There’s no arguing that and it’s easily in my personal top 5. Not just because of it’s financial success and it’s influence on the medium as whole but because at it’s core Minecraft is the perfect Lego game. Follow me on this…

As a kid I had a bucket of Legos (a mixture of knock-off and legit) that I would use to make whatever I could imagine. For Christmas or birthdays I would sometimes get the kits to make something specific.

Never did I have any interest in making what was on the box (I was never a guided play session kid, I hate directions) my mind always wondered what I could build with those kits.

Minecraft tickles my brain the same way. It gives the player a set of tools, very little guidance and an infinite world to do whatever you want. Pretty much every mechanic is less than a step away from the player at all times, preventing any “story progression” from blocking the player’s creativity.

Sure there’s a way to “beat” Minecraft, portals and whotnot blah blah blah. I don’t go back to Minecraft every six months to kill the ender dragon or whatever; I go back to create something I have never made before. Be that a cool house on a floating rock, a cool bridge across a huge ocean or a cool network of mining tunnels and underground hideouts. I can literally create anything within five minutes of spawning.

This is why I say that Minecraft is less a “game” and more a “toy.” Unguided play is a very hard thing to achieve in a game. Most games that try to do creativity for creativity’s sake fail (Little Big Planet, Dreams) because their creation system is far more complicated than “Dig block, place block.” And often these games have to employ a guided experience to help motivate the player to engage with abstract creation systems.

I recently replayed one game that does this very well, No Man’s Sky. From it’s bizarrely contentious beginnings, NMS has been updated and supported into what is probably the best “space-exploration” out right now. It also has a suite of building mechanics that allow the player to be very creative.

My early problems with NMS (and why I haven’t revisited in so long) is that the creation mechanics require the player to harvest many, various materials and even craft materials. This is where NMS is no longer a creation toy like Lego, it becomes a game. I don’t fault NMS for this, it is what it is. However, now they have introduced a more casual difficulty that significantly lowers the required materials for building. Though it’s still not “dig block, place block” simple, it lowers my friction with the tools.

NMS’s main quests introduce the player to these mechanics slowly over hours of gameplay. It is amazing really. All that has been added since I last played 3 years ago is immense. It truly is a game that I’m sure I could get lost in (just scanning new flora and fauna on planets is very addictive to me). Not to mention all the multiplayer enhancements that have been added. Not that I have any interest in those, it’s still cool to see how Hello Games have continued to support this game entirely for free. Crazy.

Other Notables

** Great breakdown of the spaghet political views of the discord youths.

** Airlines sell travel data to the government for warrantless searching. This surprises no one!

** 70% divorce rate in the NHL is f’n wild lol