2026-05-13 08:22:00
I was oblivious to the roguelike genre until I was staying at my bestie's one night and saw her playing Slay The Spire. I then stayed up til 4am playing it on her switch, got STS and have played many MANY roguelike games since then looking for similar fun.
Most of these games start off really strong. A lot of them have a unique mechanic they introduce. There's a set of cards and/or relics and/or enemies and you do a few playthroughs getting to know how the game works and figuring out how to win.
During this time, you're contemplating strategies and making interesting decisions, not sure which option is going to end up better for you. But it takes only a few hours, maybe 2-5 and you basically have the game solved. It offers different characters with unique abilities or unique relics and unlocks more dice/cards/etc.
This process is really fun, discovering new things and figuring out strategies, and making interesting decisions. But most games fall apart after the initial discovery period. There is little replayability. You figure out a dominant strategy and you rarely ever have to make meaningful adjustments to it.
Or another problem. Consider Decktamer. In an odd way it is one of my all time favorites but also one of my biggest letdowns and I'm not sure I even like playing it.
Decktamer is a deckbuilder type of game, but all of the cards are creatures with different abilities. You fight and kill or "tame" enemy creatures to bring them onto your team. The core concept is awesome, and the early rounds are pretty fun. The later rounds less so. But the real problem, and the one other games share is is it's lack of a meaningful progression system.
Slay The Spire has four distinct characters, and each has its own distinct set of cards. Every single one is extremely well-balanced, leaning toward high difficulty. So progressing from one character to the next is meaningful, opening up completely different playstyles, even though every character sees the same monsters, events, and mostly the same relics. It helps that each characer has several sub-playstyles to choose from, like The Silent who can be Poison or Shivs, a range in-between, or genuinely focusing on neither of her most distinctive features.
And then Slay also has TWENTY ascension levels for every single character. It is arguably too many. But the difficulty increases on each ascension are felt, and manageable. Ascension 20 is a beast, though. I have over 700 hours in Slay The Spire to beat every character on Ascension 20 without savescumming. Its nuts. I did it WITH savescumming after about 600 hours lol.
At least 90% of the time when losing a Slay run, I can point to several instances where I made a wrong choice that led me to my demise. You do get utterly fucked by RNG every once in awhile, but even then there's still usually something you could have theoretically done better.
Decktamer ... ugh ... When I first got it, there were like 5 difficulty levels. You had to beat Normal to get Hard & Hard to get Expert, etc. That was cool - not every game needs 20 freaking difficulties lol. So I'm working on Normal when they drop an update, add a bunch of "half" difficulties (like 4.5) and now we have like 8 difficulties. But they're all available all the time.
So any difficulty progression now has to be self-imposed. I want my games to give me challenges to beat. If you give me all the difficulties, the only challenge is beat the hardest difficulty, so I have one and only one thing to do, so I either give up when it's too hard or I beat it and don't wanna play any more because all the good challenges are done.
And no, I can't just start on a lower difficulty & work my way up - it just doesn't feel the same.
A lot of games (including Decktamer, maybe?) have other challenges available, in a 'Challenges' menu. And for some reason they always fall flat for me. They just don't generally seem interesting, and I think it's because they call for basically the same playstyle as the normal difficulties, or they just don't make decision-making more interesting.
So yeah, I like ascending up the difficulty ladder.
Decktamer also fails to provide different characters. There are no characters. Different starting creatures do give a very different feel to a run, but there is no progression, no new challenges, just options.
It is a remarkable and disappointing the number of roguelikes that have these basic problems. Not every game can or should be Slay The Spire. Some games are cheapo little $5-$10 games that you play for 3 or 4 hours, have some fun, and walk away feeling good.
But there are a great deal of roguelike games that seemingly aim to be Slay The Spire with a unique twist. They do an extremely good job with the core concept, have excellent gameplay mechanics, and clearly took a lot of work and love.
But then they fail to tie everything together in a meaningful way. They slap on different "characters". They throw in a ton of relics, or make other shallow changes, leaving me wanting meaningful challenges.
2026-05-08 11:53:00
I've lived with depression/anxiety/whatever for years, many of them untreated. Five or so years ago, I started therapy and have been in it most weeks since then, except for one lapse after getting booted from one office for insurance reasons.
Over the last ~2.5 years, I've done no kind of regular work, and my priority has been on keeping myself balanced and well. Most of that time has required a great deal of leisure, rest, tv, video games, friend time, and support (both material and social). I've also made an effort to exercise more and eat healthier.
I've been on an upward trajectory for awhile, but in the last two or three months there's been a seismic shift in my general sense of wellbeing and my ability to do ... things.
I credit this to the years of work at improving my mental (and recently physical) health. But meditation was a huge step for me in terms of treatment. I asked my therapist about getting social support for meditation & so we started doing a guided one at the end of our sessions.
That translated into me meditating at home, on my own - something I wasn't able to make regular previously. And I can basically see a straight line from meditation to a significant amount of improvement in my wellbeing and ability.
And this newfound wellness has been extremely enlightening. Like I knew I felt bad before, but it's really easy to lose sight of how bad you feel once it becomes your normal. But being able to clean the kitchen without being in pain felt like magic. (psychic pain, like physical but its intangible, not in the body)
And then recently I'm burnt out. I pushed myself past my limits for several weeks now - due mostly to life's very real external demands, things that called for my effort.
It's just a very stark contrast between the good-feeling and the bad-feeling. The normal Reed who's in no pain versus the depressed Reed who's in constant pain. Right now I'm getting an almost pleasant mix of the two, but less of the me who feels good. That other one's more familiar though.
And sadly, the meditation (and also yoga) have not been getting daily attention these past few weeks. And weed has. It's not good, nor is it permanent.
2026-05-01 02:27:00
I got a new computer (hand-me-down from bestie) and got my Windows setup for gaming & casual use. And now I'm ready to start installing Linux and setting up dual boot. For many years, I ran Fedora -Not sure why but I did rather like it. But eventually I switched back to Linux Mint because it is the defacto casual build, plus I thought it would have better games compatibility than Fedora.
And so here I am today, wondering: Should I get Mint or Fedora?
And this is a terrible problem for an operating system to have. Nobody's thinking deeply about "Which Windows should I get?" You just get the latest Windows, or mayyybe the 2nd most recent version. Either way, its just not a very complicated choice.
Which brings me to this idea. I don't think trying to build one mega distro makes any sense - it just wouldn't fit with the nature of the linux community.
But we could have a single Unified Linux Installer. I care very little about the specific decisions and very much about the ease of the process.
A Beginner mode could literally give you a single option for your distro, let's say Mint or Ubuntu or Fedora Desktop - it does not matter. The Desktop Environment also doesn't matter. The important part is: A beginner does not have to make any technical decisions when starting with Linux. They'll still pick their username, maybe go through a customization step for desktop colors & other stuff like that. Maybe there's also a screen to pick which software to install initially (userland things like Libreoffice and Gimp and Discord)
An 'Advanced' mode could then give you the majority of options most people would want. Offer you the major distro choices, you pick one, and then it offers you the major Desktop Environment choices and you pick one of those. Maybe there's some more advanced configuration options available beyond the 'Beginner' mode.
And an 'Expert' mode would ... i don't know. You get the point. Some proper Linux nerds could figure out what goes into 'Expert'.
I will say - all versions of the Unified Installer should give you the options to go into advanced settings on any of the screens - like do you need custom partitioning for a dual boot? Or, whatever else.
And Gaming really needs an explicit step in this install process. A screen to select which game stores you want to install (Steam, Epic, etc) and game-related software like Discord and OBS. The entire ecosystem around gaming on Linux & running Windows software on Linux is just ... too freaking messy, too freaking technical, and it really needs smoothed out with a Gaming UI. But gaming is a talk for another day.
2026-04-26 02:06:00
There's not a lot to say about this book (I lie, look at this post length!). It is short, a very quick read if you're a reader. I do have some criticisms which I'll discuss because I enjoy being critical.
Mitch reconnects with his former professor Morrie, who is dying from ALS, and they discuss the meaning of life.
I recommend this book. It makes you think about life and what's meaningful. It encourages meaningful and thoughtful reflection. It advocates for goodness, for love, for kindness.
I might have read this book in high school, but then I definitely read it in my early 20s. I believe it hit me fairly differently now than it did back then. Back then I had a much less developed perspective on the challenges and meaning of life, so this book took the role of a wise guru who knows what's right. Now, it strikes me as just a man, who's speaking about his own life, his own experiences, his own sense of meaning - even if much of the language is presented as a teaching lesson to be taken as truth.
On this reading, it was definitely a reflective experience, a lot of nodding along, some criticism of things I didn't have the breadth to criticize a decade ago, and just a slightly stressful experience for reasons I don't totally understand. Any kind of non-fiction or serious book tends to cause me stress, which sucks because I quite like learning things, but I don't like being uneasy.
I have one major criticism of this book, and one more minor one.
The major one, which I've already touched on. The book is written in a prescriptive way: Morrie knows what's important in life, listen to him and take his lessons as your truth.
This tone shines brightly early in the book when Mitch is discussing the OJ Simpson trial and celebrity gossip magazines. The idea put forward by Morrie and by Mitch is that the OJ Simpson trial is not meaningful. That people are wasting their time by spending hours and hours watching the trial, something that has no bearing on their personal lives. The idea is that they should instead be spending this time on "meaningful" things like spending time with loved ones and pursuing passions (but not to the detriment of connecting with people you love).
The prescriptive nature of this perspective is bothersome to me. I watch Olexa, a YouTube content creator who plays Roguelike games. He has like a 15 episode series on Mewgenics so far, and I love watching it. I don't find it meaningful. Its not helping me connect with others. I'm not wanting a parasocial relationship. Its not helping me in my life.
But I like it. I want it to be part of my life, because I just simply enjoy it.
Morrie & Mitch's prescriptive perspective just doesn't acknowledge the reality that ... different people have different tastes and we don't all want our lives to take the same shape.
This is a major criticism I have, but it doesn't de-value the book for me at all. It doesn't keep me from appreciating the reflection encouraged by the book. It doesn't stop me from thinking about what's meaningful to me. It is something I was entirely unaware of when I read it a decade ago.
And a minor (or less major) criticism.
Morrie is extremely privileged. He has a wealth of people who love him, a wife who cares for him, money (or health insurance benefits) for medicine, for modifications to his home (which he owns, I believe), for special furniture, for a hospice nurse, for all the things that make dying better. He is also an accomplished sociology professor, and gets a spotlight on national TV (3-episode miniseries).
He speaks a fair bit about how materialistic our culture is, which I do agree with. And he talks about the issues with pursuing your career to unreasonable ends. I generally agree with his perspective here too. The criticism is really about the fact that his life worked out very well for him economically. He wasn't rich, but he was well-off. He lived well and had the wealth to be cared for in his final days as he didn't work. He also loved his job and from my understanding did give a lot to it, working until about 6 months before he died, even though he was already getting much sicker.
The TLDR is that he was successful in the material things, which gave him the privilege of not caring about material things. I don't think this is cause to dismiss his perspective, and I think his perspective is extremely valuable and worth considering.
I just think it's good to keep in mind the context of his life.
And my big mental reframing of this book was significant for me. As I already said - a decade ago, I accepted this a wise figure giving prescriptive advice. Now, I see it as a story about a man (or two men because the book is about Mitch as much as it is about Morrie) who is sharing what's meaningful to him. No matter the language used, this is still merely one man's story (Morrie's story) about what's important to him, and another man's interpretation (Mitch's interpretation) of that story.
2026-04-25 03:36:00
Most of us are strongly opposed to animal cruelty. Some are more in a grey area where it's okay to hit your animal as punishment to get them to behave how you want them to behave. I find this cruel, but I understand we're not all on the same page on that.
But I think we generally agree that it's not okay to just be cruel to animals, especially without a clear purpose. Dog fighting is banned in the U.S. and people go to prison for it. When a mistreated dog makes local news, there is outrage on Facebook.
People want to punish those who harm animals.
But that line stops hard for most people at pet-animals or other non-food animals. I remember the outrage around the "horse meat at burger king" rumor (which I think was partially true from one meat supplier), and there was (manufactured) national outrage when (false) accusations of cat-consumption were widely spread.
But why horses and not chickens or cows? Why your dog or cat, but not pigs or fish?
For me, it's really just comes down to compartmentalization and just, like, allowing a big empty spot where empathy could lie. It's perhaps that same empty-space that allows me to consume horrible news without shedding a tear - yes they dropped bombs today, yes I think it's horrible and should stop, no I'm not going to shed a single tear.
That refusal to feel was broken for me after I watched Cow, a nearly wordless documentary film about the life of a dairy cow named Luma.
Maybe part of it is that I didn't know. I didn't want to know. And I saw it all as sort of a necessary evil.
"Well we need to put animals in these conditions so we can feed the billions of people on the planet."
Except it's not about nutrition, for the most part. Did you know cows are vegan? And even Black & Brown Bears eat 80% plants. Lots of humans live entirely on plants or primarily on plants.
The thing that keeps us eating meat is a combination of our habits, cultures, cooking skills, and most significantly - personal pleasure.
It's easy to justify causing harm to an animal when that harm is literally the way that you survive. I have a lot of respect for this view, and some of us have to take medications derived from animals or completely lack access to plant-based proteins. We (people) are animals. We do need food to survive. There are many many free (undomesticated) animals that kill and eat other animals. I accept this as part of the cycle of life, and I accept that we humans are part of that cycle too. And in that vein, I'm not actually opposed to hunting - as long as the animals are not over-hunted and they are allowed freedom throughout their life.
But eating meat isn't about your nutrition. Its primary nutritional benefit is protein, which is not as abundant in plant foods, but is still readily available through beans, legumes, nuts, soy, and various other sources. Some things may require supplements like Vitamin B12, but there are plant-based sources for these too. You, personally, may not know how to get your protein from non-meat sources. But you probably know that you can learn.
I bet your biggest reason for eating meat is that you like it. You just like how it tastes. If you didn't, I bet you would learn how to cook without meat very quickly.
I want you to realize that animal agriculture is cruel. Some of this requires education. But it also requires you to accept that you're part of the problem. When a cow is restrained and its skull is burned to prevent horns from growing - this is so you can eat a cow. When cows are kept in cages where they breathe toxic air and develop respiratory problems, where they are afforded no freedoms, where they are regularly forced into pens barely large enough to fit them - this is so you can drink their milk.
It's not because you can't get the nutrients anywhere else. It's because you like cow milk and you like cow flesh. But these cows (& chickens & pigs etc) are living creatures capable of suffering, forced into very restrictive lives so that you don't have to learn how to cook with plants, and so that you can experience the pleasure of their flesh.
It's popular in culture to rag on vegans for how mean or judgemental we are, about how we just won't shut up and let you be.
But how would you act if everyone you knew were eating cats and dogs? Or if everyone you knew were eating human flesh? Would it be "right" to shut up and let them be? Or would you be repulsed every single time you sat down for a meal with them? Would you let them gaslight you into thinking YOU'RE the bad one for being upset?
I'm not asking you to overcome your double-standard today - it takes time. But I do want you to see it, recognize it, and own the fact that you are directly responsible for cruelty to animals every single time you eat meat or dairy or eggs or any other animal byproduct like gelatin-based gummies. I want you to realize that the lines you draw between pets and non-pets are arbitrary, and is just a sort of permission-structure you create for yourself so you don't take responsibility for the harm you cause to animals.
It's the same permission structure when we say "I'm just doing my job" to justify doing something we don't agree with.
No, I'm not innocent. I ate meat for the majority of my life. I'm 33 now and I was only convinced by the animal-cruelty perspective in the last 6 months. But to be honest, I wish more people had talked to me about this, in a serious way, long long ago.
If you're going to continue participating in the mass-cruelty against animals, you should at least watch some films or read some books or articles and know what it is you're participating in. If you're going to choose cruelty, it should at least be an informed choice.
2026-04-19 01:21:00
When Chat GPT was fresh, I used it a little bit. Tried it out. Wasn't thrilled by it. It just wasn't very helpful for me.
Later, I learned about the harmful things about AI & reflected on it more - job loss, energy consumption, water use & possibly pollution, theft of art, and probably other things. So I became a committed AI Hater.
But I've realized more things lately where I think AI would have been immensely helpful to me. Little programming tasks, just to make simple little tools for myself.
One idea is ... So, my state Department of Natural Resources has a webpage with a list of native plants, with their name & each name is a link to it's own page. The plant's own page has a picture and some details about growth height & stuff. There are no pictures or growth info on the list page. I wrote some software to collect this information into a grid, to view everything on one page, and it took about an hour.
It was kinda fun. But I could have done it in 10 minutes, maybe less, with an AI. It was a really simple script. And that probably would have used less power in-the-moment than running my laptop for all that time.
And yes, the training of that AI used a lot of power already. On one hand, I'm complicit if I use it. On the other hand, it's already trained (even though they continue training more more more), and my use or non-use of AI is likely not going to have any meaningful impact on the development of AI.
Governments are spending a lot of money on AI. It's being sold to businesses, to professionals, to amateurs, to everybody. And I just don't feel like my behavior here is having any meaningful impact on the outcome. So why make my life harder to stand on a completely useless principle?
... To feel better about myself? ...
huh. maybe.
...
But I refuse. I stand by being a hater. And so I refuse. But man, it is really tempting sometimes.
(The other idea is a Command Line Tool in which I can save commands. Example, I type clt new and it opens an editor to write a script. I save it, then the tool prompts me to ask what command to save it as. Now a script is saved, and I can do clt help to see a list of available commands. I can type clt command_name to run a saved script. And I can also add options to commands or group commands. Like clp stream start to change any settings and open all the software I'd use for streaming, and clt stream end to close everything.)
