I have the lamest issue with Linux that I suffer with is the knowledge of how far I can customise it. I’ve had an android phone for 15 or so years now, and I’m pretty familiar with the hundredfold apps I can use to get android exactly how I like. Although it’s not rooted, it’s exactly how I want it, through and through.

I moved from windows 10 to KDE Plasma last year and I’m struggling with knowing I can get it exactly how I like, but the learning curve is much steeper. Using the terminal is already complex for me, and I know my complex, bespoke setup can be done, it’s just too hard for me.

I’ve seen quite a lot recently saying a particularly distracting aspect of phones isn’t that they’re a screen and a visual stimulus, but a tool and a haptic stimulus.

An increasingly popular way to combat checking your phone while watching TV is to busy your hands with something. If this works and is widely adopted, we won’t need shows to have second-screen writing repetition; our brains tell our hands to use the tool, and it just so happens that the tool is full of text and speech and occupies the language center of our brains, meaning we stop listening to the show.

Also, a whole separate thing I often think about, before 2010, there were very few high budget TV shows. TV was made on a much smaller budget than film, and the writing often took a hit too, and that was just the reality of watching TV. They were also designed to hook people who were clicking around channels with lots of recaps and narrative refreshers, for people tuning in halfway through, this is like the second-screen writing issues we complain about now on steroids, straight to TV movies were also terrible for this.

Movies that were designed for Cinema revenue weren’t impacted by this or course, but even DVD revenue movies often have simpler plots and reiterate their narratives for people who are half watching while chatting or stoned or whatever.

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It’s just a verb that means to (frequently) masturbate to porn.

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As much as I don’t disagree, I think the “Apple is closest to Nazism” comment touches on something different. Other massive American companies have awful practices but they don’t care particularly how their way of making money looks. Apple wields a specific aesthetic power that generally dictates a hegemonic uniformity, that strays the line of being to their detriment at times. I don’t think any other big tech company would care in the same way if not for their desire to copy Apple.

I’d love to see US bases go, but I’m not convinced a lack of trust in America would be the tipping point when they haven’t behaved in a trustworthy way ever really. America would find some way to make any country that rejected a US military presence experience difficulty, be that via tariffs or vague threats about their military absence.

I don’t mind it being deep, just don’t fill it with your actions and deeds. A big part of fun for TTRPGs is ‘play away from the table’, which for the players is typically making art, backstory or builds for current or future characters. Most long backstories I read don’t invalidate a level 1 character but mostly explore values, just as my real life story could be as deep as I choose to write it and I’d not even have the skills to be level 1.

My suggestion is:

• Get people together for a session 0. Only pitch the campaign and tone then, if not construct it collaboratively too.

• Hand out pieces of paper or card face down, have each player take 1, and ensure there is one between each player. These cards say Love, ally, rival, or enemy.

• Explain that players should make an NPC for their backstory that matches this word, and should make a shared NPC with the person next to them based on the card between them.

• Now let them take another card of their choice. They can either make another NPC with this, or use it to make the relationship to one of their shared NPCs asymmetrical.

• They can design their NPCs and backstory now or before session 1, up to them.

Finally, explore what the players can choose to do to contribute between sessions to the game. If they don’t do anything, that’s fine, but they should have a way to meaningful contribute to something. Typically I encourage world building and cultural lore, such as unique foods and why that has a thematic resonance.

This is hard to structure, I had a player who was a former forever DM, who played a knowledgeable librarian in a former monster hunter guild. I asked her to make some monster statblocks, as she’d know them inside and out in character.

My advice to players:

Make your backstory show that your character has done no huge deeds yet, and most importantly, have everything that matters in it revolve around NPCs. Not just is this the best drama, but NPCs can move, join factions, be redeemed, betray you, die and everything else.

• That cost halfling village you design that perfectly exemplifies your character, but will never be seen in this urban campaign halfway across the continent? Make the most important part of it the mayor’s daughter who happens to be your childhood friend.

• The strange necklace that made you stronger but more angry when you wore it? The final time you saw it was when your brother stormed out of your co-owned business after a bitter argument.

• The lord who helped you smuggle your liquor into the city? That’s the same lord that wrongfully imprisoned the player character next to you.

One of my favourite scenes from a campaign came when a player, after spending a session getting the chance to meet with a resistance leader, turned to the others and said “this is my ex-wife”. That whole dynamic was interesting too, as both had come from a warrior culture and initially parted due to neither being the “strong warrior”, now both trying to fight against that same faction a decade later.

My all time favourite NPC was a talented tailor in an urban campaign, who owed one player character a favour and was generally fond of them all. Nothing like the party having a go to guy for fancy or silly outfit amendments.

It’s interesting how Discord absolutely nukes its own trust by pretending to be more than it is. I loathe discord, to the point I’d use a competitor (not teams) just to evade it. I’m sick of finding a hobby group using it as a Frankenstein forum / chat / info hub when it’s only built for chat.

Discord is fine for this use, but I’m getting used to the distrusting it so often that it blends into reasonable use.

That’s still incredibly low, I’d have assumed an enormous increase.

I chickened out of avoiding Google at the last minute because my primary bank is app only and I’d heard that it doesn’t work on different OS’s.

That was months ago, and with the news, I’m beginning to look into ways to Jump ship, it’s just happened to coincide with my jump to Linux setting up my first home server and work being busier, so I’m not really setting any time aside for it for a while.

I can’t picture a service which beats Spotify in what they offer which isn’t just the same business model but more ethical.

Discovering music for free is an enormous benefit, and the fact that Spotify has practically all mainstream music is nice. People often cite that one quote by Gabe Newell that is “Piracy is not an economic problem. It is a service problem”, as a highlight for steam, but largely Spotify offers what consumers want in a way Netflix or Audible can’t. They have everything you want and guide your discovery in even more, and as long as their encroaching enshittification doesn’t undercut this service, they will continue to underpay artists and fund immoral activities.

The developer of Ultrakill, Hakita, said something which I’ve often thought about. “You should support indies if you can, but culture shouldn’t exist only for those who can afford it. ULTRAKILL wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t had easy access to movies, music and games growing up. If you don’t have money, you can support via word of mouth”. There are plenty of independent things I financially support, particularly things I attend in person in the city I live in. I may spend £100 per month paying for art and entertainment all said and done, and when that’s spent, I will pirate everything else.

I split a Spotify family plan between 6 friends, I think that’s about £3.50 per month, and I pay for no other media services. With video, I run a jellyfin server with a “parent friendly” interface, so they can have “netflix with everything”, which I have at my place too. I don’t read that much any more, if it’s physical I just go to the library and if it’s an audiobook I’ll just pirate it. The benefit here is that even if I’m on a reading binge, that’s not even a book a week. With Spotify, I often pick something and play it via song radio, which is probably 50/50 music I know and new music. Sometimes I just stick albums on, but it’s not like that’s harder. If I had a locally hosted music repository that I’d “paid for”, I could enjoy albums, but not as easily have a radio like discovery experience.

One day, a pirate tool may appear that rivals Spotify, but until that day, I can’t see myself moving away from it.

Go to your local live music, drag shows, theatres, independent cinemas and libraries. Don’t feel obligated to pay for any internet service.

Coronation chickpea is fine as it’s royally forbidden.

I forgot it was commemorative, let’s ban coronation chickpea and coronation chicken.

Yeah, he looked like he did on the left through the entire 2010s without changing appearance much, from Narnia 3 to Midsommar. This is absolutely styling above just growing up.

Without arguing politics, the world is sliding very quickly towards facism and being on guard against it is incredibly important. I’m not buying a laptop and putting money in the pockets of someone who may then donate to or fund facism. None of that applies to a developer of a free open source software whose political ideal world is not rapidly approaching.

Also worth adding it sadly doesn’t really exist anymore, the iconic look here is gone, although game mechanics still begin getting weird.

Also although people have teleported to it, Minecraft is so big that I assumed nobody would ever reach it in survival. I’m not surprised it took 14 years.

He was actually just there in the water for the reference images, and got left in by mistake.

Funnily enough, when I do ask an LLM to rephrase anything I write, it changes any sentence with a semicolon to one with an em dash. I’ve probably always overused the semicolon because of its availability on a keyboard, but it appears a lot in my normal work.

Now I trust the semicolon, it’s an identifier of me.

Thank god I display my status amongst my peers by rejecting mainstream status symbols. Yay for counterculture being part of the system!