Links for Tuesday, September 10, 2024
cute anigif via Elioth Games
Today I installed Minesweeper and Poker Poker Magic on my Playdate. The latter is a Puyo-like falling-brick game, but it uses playing cards instead of color-matching as its primary mechanic (for obvious reasons).
I'm also very slowly downloading the Windows horror game Frontiers of the Mind on the strength of this write-up (via @juv3nal.bsky.social) and will try to install it on the Steam Deck using Lutris (I guess??). In other thrilling news, the new Analogue Pocket firmware came out today. I updated my device and was delighted to be alerted about an Atari Lynx core, finally ported from MiSTer! Hurrah!
Here are some other great links I saw today:
How to Monetize a Blog (via) I noticed the weird formatting on the word “become” in the first paragraph and could see where all this was headed, but it still managed to surprise, delight, and surpass expectations.
Spoopy, Not Spooky: The Intersections of Cozy Games and Horror (via) Ever since the latest Dredge expansion I am back to lazily trying to 100% the game (for a third time). I think a lot about the creepy-cozy intersection. “Cozy” games, for which I have a low tolerance, are sickly-sweet unless they are tinged with morbidity: To have hygge, we must have uhygge; to have the canny and familiar, we must have the unheimlich. Thomas Kinkade understood this, of all people.
Bully I'm glad we've all unanimously decided to start blogging again. Heather Havrilesky has apparently been taking inventory of her life, and she's going back to coffee.
Ask Polly: “I Can't Decide What I Truly Want!” Havrilesky again, this time with advice for the disoriented, displaced, and disenfranchised.
An Easy Guide to Tinned Fish I have a small pile-up of fish-in-tins I keep buying, but they never look appetizing to me—even though I actually already know they're delicious. I'm just never in a fish mood! So I did a quick internet search to get myself into a tinned fish mood. This worked.
The Coffee Klatch debate watch party (video) This is how I watched the debate tonight. At the outset, Sam Reich's dad acknowledged that this group watch was a way for us all to “get through this together,” which turned out to be true. There was supposed to be live fact-checking, too, but Reich mostly just said “Lies!” and “Wrong!”
How Cults Use Language to Control (video) A short, disturbing video I texted to my mother-in-law tonight, after mentioning that the former president spoke for nine minutes more than the current vice president did. Here, Dr. Erica Brozovsky describes, among other things, the “babble hypothesis.”