I ended up in an argument with some Americans about the British stealing the tradition of Halloween from the US.

“How can it be British?! You didn’t have pumpkins”.

I had to point out that we know the British didn’t ‘steal’ the tradition from the US because we know we stole it from the Irish.

I do find it interesting that folk think Renaissance art is realistic.

I’m being a little glib, but the truth is that we are still looking at hyper-idealised bodies.

The main difference,I suspect, is the use of perspective rather than drawing on a flat plane. In a way it took a leap of imagination to make things look more “realistic” whilst sculpture was merely (again, said with a certain smirk) just mimicking what the artist could see and feel in the real world.

That is to say that sculpture is reproduction whilst drawing is representation, and with representation you need to be able to take some pretty big leaps for both the artist and the viewer to work these things out.

It replaces workers with robots so it would probably save money too.

And now the workers cannot afford bread.

Next move?

Here

Gaiman needs some cash.

Dead drops and one time pads.

Set up a numbers station if you can afford it.

You’ve managed to get the affinity stuff working under wine? I can’t get publisher to work correctly. I just wish they would make a native version. I’m happy to give them money for it even.

It’s hard to make money from Adobe when they charge you £66 a month.

I have a theory that our job is just to get out of the way when the boomers die off.

Hand over the power to the next gen.

Maybe let us have some basic income and our first gen consoles and we’ll be cool.

That makes a lot of sense.

As far as I’m aware, if your TV did start to provide feedback as you played you were in for a bad time.

I guess I’m thinking more holistically. Gaming is often seen still as a visual medium, but you’ll know that the physical set up was part of the fun/not fun.

I suspect you might remember man parties and lugging gear around just to play with friends. In theory it wasn’t exactly easy, but somehow still enjoyable for it.

And I forgot the smell and the heat too. That warm ozone thing a lot of them had going on.

Yeah, when you turned them on they frequently had push buttons with satisfying resistance and a click.

As an object they had their own tactility, often solid and heavy (as opposed to the sort of articulated physicality of most modern monitors). You could often feel the static electricity across the glass.

They even had their own sounds. The hum of warming up, the whine and clunk of being turned off.

When we talk about nostalgia it’s often the sensations adjacent to the activity that we are talking about.

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People will knock nostalgia … They see it as a sort of softness, a yearning for the past…

But what they miss is the way that it can create intergenerational connections.

That’s a really lovely thing to hear about your relationship with your dad and Ms Pac-Man.

Wait, that sounds libellous.

I think people who played those games on CRTs originally remember the feel of the visuals. It is a rather nostalgic thing.

The filters aren’t the same, but they’re not a bad approximation. Mist of those games were not meant to be played on modern hardware and look worse for it too.

Then there will be a ton of folk who just do it because they see other people do it. That’s fine too, especially if they are enjoying themselves.

That’s the point. If the filter makes you feel happier, go for it. It’s an aesthetic choice.

Though that is great example of mental dexterity.

Considering something from a number of angles.

‘4 kelvin essay’ is also a decent name for a math rock band.

I dont know if this is cool, but I recently published an essay on why generalism is a cool sort of specialist to be.

Nothing in particular

It’s a slightly long read (4k), so in case that isn’t your thing, the upshot is that generalism is specialising for uncertainty and that being a polymath is pretty cool.

Also, being a polymath is your default state and capitalism really doesnt like it.

Someone knows their cock rights.

Oh no, I get you. I think we are a similar age.

I was at the Reading Festival in '96 and I think offspring were playing.

There was a slightly older guy stood in the middle of the crowd shouting, you call this punk… This ain’t punk. This ain’t shit.

The kids were laughing at him.

This week in Glasgow Green Day played a gig and all I saw was middle aged men and their daughters wearing matching merch t-shirts.

I’m assuming at some point I travel back in time to '96 to try to stop this.

She may be a Puncke: for many of them, are neither Maid, Widow, nor Wife.

W. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1623)

Damn, you really old.