🥇 Thanks to maya.land and Jason F. for sponsoring the blog! If you'd like to learn how to support my writing and get a shoutout here every Sunday, check the sponsors page. 🥇

article

Mystery Meat 1: Cubic Independence Movement by Kissy Jr.

I want to remember the ocean but all I can remember is the grid - ah! “The gamer’s curse.” Basically, the world is a square that’s broken into smaller squares, each of which contains a Thing, and you must go from one Thing to another, and then sometimes back to the same Thing again but from a different angle… You lay your wind-direction like a rule across the world of squares and try to get from here there in the fewest moves. And eventually the sea itself starts feeling like a dream appendage of this other world, the grid world.

podcast

The History of English by Kevin Stroud

I'm all caught up with The Constant, so I asked the fediverse for recommendations for other must-listen history podcasts. franklint recommended this one. I've listened to the first few episodes and I don't think I'm going to be able to binge it the way I did The Constant—it's a little dry, and listening to dozens of hours about the same topic is a recipe for burnout—but it's interesting and I can see myself working through it slowly, a couple episodes a day.

music

Snare, Girl by Sonic Youth (youtube link)

In get to know me better, one of my "top 5 songs" was Mote, by Sonic Youth. I felt a little bad, because I could have easily filled the list up with Sonic Youth songs, and a dozen more, but for the sake of interest I wanted to vary up the bands. This is one of the many tracks vying for the title of "favorite Sonic Youth song" in my head. Also, next Sunday officially marks the start of Spooky Season, so I thought it'd be nice to offer something gentle and pretty before 13 weeks of monsters and demons.

game

Daggerfall Unity is an amazing fan remake of a DOS RPG from 1996 that, although one of my favorites, was notoriously buggy and difficult to play, both at the time and on modern computers. The developers used the Unity engine to completely revitalize the game and, frankly, make it playable. The game's free and it works even under linux on the 7-year-old laptop I'm currently using. If you're using Windows, you can try the GOG cut, which seems to include some uprezzed textures and additional mods by default. I haven't tried that version, so YMMV,