There's a really conceptually interesting beat in World War Z, during one of the later Todd Waino sections, where Waino is discussing that the problem with trying to use land mines to fight zombies is that the point of a landmine isn't necessarily to kill the enemy, it's to control their movement because they're aware of the possibility of land mines, it's to hurt them, it's to turn a soldier into a living-but-crippled drain on the medical system of the enemy nation and a morale drain when he goes home to his parents without legs. And, of course, since absolutely none of those head games or logistical concerns are applicable to zombies, the best case scenario is that you create a bunch of legless zombies that are harder to notice until they're underfoot, and the worst case scenario is that you blow up your own guys on accident because the documentation on where you put the landmines while running away from all the zombies wasn't very good. And all of this is part of the book's continual concern with how there's this two-faced idea in war, where you dehumanize an enemy against whom none of your tactics would be remotely effective if they actually were the unthinking evil automaton you're hyping them up as. That's fine. But at the end of it all I'm left in an uncomfortable position where I'm not really sure if Max "lectures at West Point" Brooks recognizes the moral horror of what he's describing, or if he thinks that Landmines are a clever idea that're just inappropriate in this specific context. A lot of the book falls in that uncanny valley for me.
Happy 9th anniversary Undertale
Read the poem and couldnt not do a little something about it !
Most writers talk about being the writer that barely writes. Most artists talk about being the artist that barely creates anything. It seems like a joke or a badge of honor or some artificial form of profundity as "quality over quantity" when, in reality, it exposes a serious problem when it comes to creativity as a whole.
We get that people enter a slump sometimes, that great ideas are hard to come by and even harder to execute. However, creativity itself is abundant and comes from a state of ease and flow. If creativity is difficult to inspire in your life that means you're at a state of dis-ease and tension, and you need to relax.
Yes, sometimes pain and stress can create something beautiful. However, destroying yourself for the sake of being creative is never the way to go. That only works in the story, not in real life. In real life, you need to be in a state of ease, a state of flow and harmony so creativity can flow through you effortlessly.
If you're constantly stressed and worried about real life problems and always in survival mode, you will almost never find it easy to be creative. Yes, your story will make a great story but only after you've gone through it and can look back in hindsight. Not while you're in it on the brink of death.
If you want to be more creative and establish better flow as a writer and artist, you need to find ways to ease your mind and body. Take care of yourself because mind, body, and soul are all one. When one is lacking, so are the others. When two are lacking, you can't really partake in higher forms of leisure, can you?
For all the writers that barely write, the artists that barely create, we implore you to find ways to put yourself at ease in mind, body, and soul without destroying yourself as it is only a tranquil mind, nourished body, and content soul that can access the abundance of creativity and keep its waters flowing eternally.
Hope this helps.
Keep Writing. . .
Source: Why You're Not Creative As A Writer
I'm not satisfied with it but It took hours so I'm proud.
stolen from bluesky.
When you're debugging code, there are a number of possible scenarios, in order of increasing scariness:
The code works, but with some known issues.
The code doesn't work, but I know why.
The code doesn't work, and I don't know why.
The code used to work, but I know what changed.
The code used to work, and I don't know what changed.
The code used to work, failed, and I fixed it so it works again, but now that I fixed it I'm not sure how it EVER worked before.
The code works, even though it clearly shouldn't, and I don't know why.
Just fixed a #6 issue at work so I'm a little shook.
'This is Garnet, back together.'
“I don’t know what my goals are, no. Thanks for asking.”
i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.
there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.
anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.
A Better World - create an alternate history timeline
Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game
Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet
Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games
Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones
Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy
ZenGM - simulate sports
Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi
IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)
Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface
The Cafe & Diner - mystery game
The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game
Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions
Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game
Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game
Miniconomy - player driven economy game
Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes
BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators
Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil
Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.
if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.
“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin