: Many blogs read as if the user sees him- or herself at the center of the world, with his or her …

: The 20/20ness of the Nintendo Switch's success Nintendo announced the Switch 2 today. The conventional wisdom is that it’s …

: 2006 music reviews rocked: The Web site … shows a NYC apartment populated by, among other things, a …

: Tonight’s game is The New Addams Family Series for the Game Boy Color, played on a glow-in-the-dark …

: A blog-shaped peg in a social media-shaped hole Follow for follow is an ancient scam: A complete stranger looking to growth hack1 their account …

: Old wine, new bottles, etc.

: Two reasons Ebert’s gaming critique still stings and stirs: Games are impermanent compared to …

: Bluesky is a retreat What are the major sources of left-liberal ideas and activism in the U.S.? Academia, the labor …

: It’s not the economy, stupid For almost a decade now, U.S political commentators have been vainly searching for the answer to one …

: The Last Doomscroll In the spring of 2006, I was detached—from following politics, from my coursework at college, from …

: The last paragraph of Gary Indiana’s Five O’Clock Somewhere (screenshot by Ryan Ruby)

: Andreas Malm and Wim Carton in Overshoot: And what was the world capitalism built? An overheated …

: From Stephen King’s The Gunslinger: The eyes were damned, the staring, glaring eyes of one who sees …

: The falling leaves reveal the shape of the wind. Its breath blows its disguise by sucking their life …

: The Last Unicorn, 1982

: The leaping and creeping ritual in Gulliver’s Travels—where contestants jump over or duck under a …

: What is sound? What is sound? Yes, it’s noise—but scientifically it’s changes in air pressure caused by vibration. …

: Becoming a fountain pen guy. This is the Jinhao Shark, a $2 pen that’s refillable via cartridge, …

: A perfect album. It gets a better “surround sound” effect from 1967-era analog stereo panning than …

: The Prince of Persia art for Super Famicom is super different than the Super Nintendo equivalent

: Star Wars: A New Hope on Video CD, a pre-DVD format that was most successful in Asia. Think …

: Amazing set for only $30: 5x Super Audio CD (SACD) with 5.1 mixes 2x Blu-ray Pure Audio with one …

: Made an all-organic matcha latte: organic powder, oat milk, and sugar used an electric milk frother …

: That Dark Souls feeling when you approach a place you’ve been before, but from an unfamiliar angle, …

: NaNoWriMo Part 2: Pitchfork This is the belated follow-up to my earlier NaNoWriMo post. – The old house once removed and …

: I remember the day I bought this album, on an impromptu afternoon walk through gray rains to a …

: NaNoWriMo Part 1: Joseph and I discuss CD indexing I’m trying National Novel Writing Month this November! Not sure if I’ll be able to get …

: That oily sweat-tingling feeling from unexpected autumn warmth—when it’s hot out but oughta be cold, …

: Two screaming album covers for albums without much screaming on them

: Some throwback listening 💿

: Basking in the fall sunlight

: Even my 🐈 enjoys Super Turrican: Director’s Cut, a restored genuine Super Nintendo game that’s …

: Some cassette tape listening

: Diet culture, exposed: the legacy of Requiem for a Dream “I’m thinking thin!” In the 2000 film Requiem for a Dream, that’s the hopeful refrain from Sara …

: There’s so many reasons to hate “obesity” discourse, including how it makes eating less fun by …

: Collection of Super Famicom games

: Amazing that Tactics Ogre came out in 1995 for the Super Famicom. The depth of its gameplay is way …

: This morning’s listening:

: Unless you exert conscious effort, you’ll deem the music of your youth as the “greatest” ever. …

: There’s a lot of media hype about Wegovy that doesn’t grapple with how at its core the drug seems to …

: Three versions of Pink by Boris: 2006 🇺🇸 CD 2006 🇺🇸 LP (different sequence, longer versions of 3 …

: The Analogue Pocket has 100x (not a typo) the resolution of a Nintendo Game Boy Color (GBC). Here’s …

: The agony and the Ear-X-Tacy Sometime in the mid 1990s, I saw it for the first time—the bumper sticker reading “Ear X-Tacy,” on a …

: Don DeLillo, on the last day of summer in Underworld: “It is all part of the same thing, the feeling …

: Like a 🐅 camouflaged in the jungle

: Some ☕️ and 🌈

: Bright red tomatoes from my backyard garden

: “The economy” isn’t real—but your perceptions are One of the inescapable meta-narratives of the Biden era had been centrist and center-left writers 1 …

: Essential reading

: Saw this red bird earlier on top of my 🍅 cages

: The past isn’t quaint while you’re in it Many once-ubiquitous customs and behaviors have become so obsolete that it’s puzzling to anyone who …

: The Old New Memories Sometimes, events from many years ago can feel much closer to the present than much more recent …

: 🐝 🌼

: It was so tough to quit Twitter even in the Musk era, because it felt like a news source unique in …

: If I had to propose just one cause of 🇺🇸 ‘s current ills, it’d be cars—not only due to the …

: Now we’re all gamblers in the ESPN casino ESPN—yes, the U.S. cable sports network—once offered a mobile phone plan. In late 2005, the company …

: Watched Daddy Longlegs by the Safdie brothers. Tense, terrifying, and yet funny in their distinctive …

: Today’s morning listens: In Stormy Nights by Ghost: This vinyl edition of this psychedelic band’s …

: Batteries not included (or required) AirPods seem like such a fixture of our world that it’s weird to think they debuted only seven years …

: Really excited to dive into this. I like that they had the courage to pick Donkey Kong Country 2: …

: 🌺 blooming

: Dragonflies

: Miserable adventures in Threads land I was among the first few thousand Facebook users 1. Some time in the summer of 2004, my dad 2 …

: Limited Run Games announced it was reissuing the two SNES/NES/Game Boy Jurassic Park games for …

: My grandpa had a grove of Chinese 🌰 trees. They yielded lots of fruit, and were very compact. In …

: Same location 30 minutes apart in Lombard, IL

: 🦋 🐝 photos from around the garden

: Some light reading while almost sweating to death the other day

: Snagged this picture of a monarch butterfly on the milkweed before it flew over to the neighbor’s …

: Some very KJV-like language from Colson Whitehead in Zone One: They would force a resemblance upon …

: 🐝🌸

: Second painting from yesterday. Super C, 8x10, acrylic on canvas. Name inspired by the NES game of …

: First of three paintings I completed today. Lively lemons, 8x10, acrylic on canvas

: Got this Apple Extended Keyboard II the other day and it’s a joy to type on, with lots of travel and …

: The bald truth about baldness cures Death, taxes, and baldness—they all loom like anxiety-inducing storm clouds that (usually) aren’t as …

: The state bird of Illinois (and six other states) keeping watch over someone’s Amazon package

: Weird DVD facts: They don’t have square pixels, and the pixels have different non-square shapes for …

: She likes this toy from 🇯🇵

: Thirsty 🐈 I thought of this segment from Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott: She lives with little joy …

: The Super Mario Bros. Movie was better than I expected: Fast-moving: I’d forgotten the joy of a …

: This beer manages to taste smooth and almost sweet despite being 9.5% ABV.

: Glimpsed this faint🌈 over Super H Mart last night

: These Chicago-style hotdogs were really good: poppy seed bun dill pickle spear neon green sweet …

: A handful of Game Boy games can, when connected to a Super Nintendo/Famicom (SNES/SFC) via a Super …

: Loved this tree at my doctor’s office.

: What is Dolby Atmos? Dolby Atmos is having a moment. Although the immersive audio format dates back to the first term of …

: My original 1998 cart of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX for Game Boy, running on an …

: Nap time

: The long refactor In 2000, I took a high-school computer science class (“Computer Applications” was the …

: Went out for a walk in the neighborhood, wind was blowing briskly enough to have all these spinners …

: Little squirrel keeping watch

: iPod Syndrome and the FOMO machine Staring at a blank page in Microsoft Word1 can be a traumatic experience. Not only is it empty, but …

: Saw this little one while watering the plants in the backyard

: Apple Vision Pro reuses the Vision branding of its 90s CRT displays. A Q&A page for one is still …

: Latest Play-Asia haul: Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection Switch blue light screen protector …

: Part of The Grouch by Menander. The speech is about how both the affluent and the destitute can see …

: Afternoon relaxation

: I bought this complete DVD box of Space Ghost Coast to Coast in 2013, and am glad to have it now …

: Test post EDIT: Appears to work just fine. I updated a bunch of pages in my blog’s custom theme to …

: Robin perched on the fence, looking at another robin out of frame. They’re regulars in our backyard.

: The only way to win is not to play In 1999, I rented Final Fantasy III1 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Immediately …

: My nephew’s trying to learn Mario Paint, seen here running off of the original cart in 1080p, 8:7 …

: The Attic Greek word for water is ὕδωρ, which is a fitting root of the English word hydrangea1. …

: Colson Whitehead imagining the post apocalyptic device landscape in Zone One: His parents were …

: Micro Monday! Brandon’s Mid-Life Reset by @BrandonWrites, a nice blend of topical content and posts …

: Why print encyclopedias still matter: a little voice in the back of my head reasoned that it would …

: Faded gnome (used to have a red cap) keeping watch over the garden

: Ensuring text accessibility is a key part of my day job, and it’s influenced my personal life, too. …

: Plants and books basking in Saturday sunlight from open windows

: The first game I ever had on CD was King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow. Its copy protection …

: The joy of posting Substack has no public API. That means that if you want to post anything there, you must use the …

: The Nintendo DS was a haven for point-and-click adventure games: Again even featured full-motion …

: Circa 1996, I needed a lot of thick proprietary cords and power supplies to run all the games on …

: Hollywood killed two and almost three super reliable cash cows—cable TV, DVDs, and theaters—because …

: Is the Vision Pro the next: Lisa?: A $$$ precursor to a genuine breakthrough 1 …

: Bird on a wire

: Living in the age of captions and subtitles Closed captioning for TV is relatively ancient technology. The NTSC analog TV specification, …

: Why “content creator” is such a bad term: Union shops such as the Directors Guild have long fought …

: Drinking some really yummy margaritas next to the interstate feeder road 🍹🚗

: The magic cloud computing button When I worked for a content marketing agency 1, we added Shutterstock photos to our lightly …

: When something has ads, I’m tempted to look for an ad-free alternative. Did so with: Google: Kagi …

: Most important WWDC for Apple since the 1990 one that featured a VHS tape with a conference …

: SNES edition of the New Nintendo 3DS XL, with purple Panasonic earbuds whose purple hue matches the …

: The red queen has ruled Out not having colorblindness After seeing this scene and decreeing It …

: Anything called “content” is in danger, b/c that term centers the platform owner—not the artist. And …

: So much depends On an orange cat Brushed by breeze By the also-orange bricks

: Milkweed coming along nicely

: Retreat? Retreat! Attic Greek has two words with substantially different meanings that both translate into English as …

: When you call everything content you treat it as: interchangeable capable of being made by a …

: Drive My Car was exceptional—my favorite movie of the 2020s so far.

: The U.S. Constitution and conservative sophistry Conservatives love to say they’re “originalists” who’re just upholding the …

: Hello world! 1 Trying it out here to see if I might like it. Here’s my cat helping me paint. …