Extreme Z7

@Leo Gura Any clear links between your experiences of Alien Godhood and. . . well. . . actual alien beings?

https://medium.com/tech-titans/why-elon-musk-fired-twitter-ceo-who-asked-for-a-hand-raise-emoji-f3747c55b3f4

Leafyishere deliberately bullied and harassed people and Andrew Tate is Andrew Tate.

Right off the bat, his immature troll of a profile bio is a start.

Make America Anti-Intellectualism Great Again

@Thought Art Who else?

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxuH6Mzjzqt-0PaCVtxBaM0vsNsLHuI4zD Kanye West in a nutshell.

I'll take that as a 'no' then.

Speaking of which, any "retro" games you like?

Inspired by @Leo Gura's recent How The Left Goes Too Far series, I thought it'd be a good idea to share examples of people from the developed world whining about the most petty stuff. Considering that I myself am from The Philippines, a third world country, I am particularly sensitive to examples of privilege corrupting the development of human psyches. I recently saw a video talking about how the majority of people on YouTube, especially young people, use Adblock to avoid. . . well, ads, and it's caused Google to take some serious measures to try to mitigate the issue worsening the problem for people who don't block ads. This isn't YouTube's fault, this is a problem with people wanting free content for nothing in return. Of course, there is YouTube Premium which I've been subscribed to for months, but good luck trying to tell that to the majority of millenials who think "Why should I pay for content I can already access for free" is a smart response.

Reminds me of this:

@Vibes Limbo was overrated imo. Haven't played Inside, though.

Haven't played Scorn yet but I actually admire its lack of gameplay. If the developers of the game want to create an action-ey game that sells, they should do it in a future project.

I'm already pretty insane. I'm just very good at hiding it.

This whole respawn count business sounds extremely silly. So it's probably true.

@Leo Gura Yeah, sometimes game reviewers just have really weird experiences with games sometimes. They (as in this particular reviewer who is NB so I should use 'they/them' pronouns, I guess) make some very good critiques but they're overly harsh towards the overall game to the point of ridiculousness. I mean a 2/10? Even if I experienced the problems they described, I still probably wouldn't rate it that low. Here's a recent response on the comment section on their review: "I beat the game first and read this review second. The detail in the environment was so allutring, that I didn't notice any of the problems mentioned in your critique. I was immediately engrossed by the art and didn't even think about running until like 50% thru the game. I walked thru the entire first level like twice trying to solve that stupid sliding puzzle, and immediately forgot how frustrating it was when I completed it (won't spoil anything here). Same story with the final encounter. I had to replay that part at least 6 times before coming out alive. This game stands on the merit of its own art alone. Its could be a fucking walking simulator and I would be happy."

A negative review of Scorn because why not lol? https://www.thejimquisition.com/post/scorn-worthy-of-its-title-review Personally, I think this review may not give the artistic direction enough credit. I haven't played the game yet, I don't know whether or not the environment design is worth it enough for me to forgive it's bad game design. But at the very least, I can say that something like this is a very reasonable critique: "Speaking of checkpoints, they’re rationed like chocolate during World War II. Since much of the game involves watching tedious animations while puzzles bring lumbering machinery to life, the ability to manually save, or at least access to liberal checkpointing, would be a blessing. Instead, Scorn expects you to replay huge chunks of it should you die, which includes solving multiple puzzles you’ve already solved. This is an absolute fucking sin - there’s nothing challening or interesting about completing puzzles you’ve already completed. Having to sit through them and their laborious animations again is actually worse than the notorious respawn animation in Too Human, and when Too Human can act as a more positive frame of reference, you have truly fucked up." For those who don't know, the respawn animation to the infamously bad "Too Human" from 2009 involved an unskippable scene of a valkyrie coming down from the heavens to slowly carry your body back up to heaven every single time you died. I'm likely still going to play Scorn at some point though. I'm willing to forgive bad game design and boring puzzles a lot of the time if the aesthetic experience is interesting enough to me. Heck, if I wait long enough they might even just patch it at some point to have a better checkpoint system. Admittedly a terrible expectation we should have from released games but there's enough love and care put into the artistry of this game that I'm willing to play it even if it doesn't get patched.

The best kind of narrative.

@Leo Gura I mostly care about the narrative and world-building. Scorn seems so mysterious.

@Leo Gura I recently got my first gaming PC. Hoping to try Scorn out sometime but I've got other games I've been meaning to play at the moment. Like 'The Talos Principle' which is ironically also a first-person puzzle adventure game. Could buy Scorn early if it's on sale though. I mean a bigger sale, it's at 10% off right now, it could be better.

I've always been curious as to what constitutes "living/not-living" or "conscious/unconscious". I've been speculating as to whether the Earth is itself a living conscious being on its own.

Will be buying your book list sometime soon when I'm done reading the free samples. Nothing to contribute to the discussion, I just wanted to say that.

Hmmm. . . I think at that point, entering singular text prompts would be inadequate and it would have to progress to just outright having conversations with the AI. Making the AI more of a person now than just a tool. But wait. . . wouldn't that just make you more of a producer than an artist LOL? Let's hope these AI don't rise up and demand worker's rights.

Couldn't have put it better myself. Keep in mind that these AI bots have no idea of what the actual cultural landscape of humanity looks like which is something actual visionary creators take into account when thinking up new projects. AI only has text prompts to start from and an admittedly-complex system of probabilistic drives that lend them to use certain images over others. But it doesn't really know anything about the actual psychological impact that specific AI creative decisions have on the audience looking at its work. (In short, it only naively produces a result but doesn't really care about its meaning or value) Some AI art may look hyper-realistic and "professional", for sure. But if my life-long interest in video gaming has taught me anything, it's that graphics isn't everything.