gru:Bz

I was surfing different streaming apps last night when I realized Peacock has the entire backlog of Saturday Night Live available to watch. My favorites were always the 90’s stuff, so I started with one that Tom Hanks hosted back in 1992, just a few weeks after the Rodney King riots.

George H-Dubya was still president but Ross Perot and Bill Clinton were campaigning hard right before the elections that November. Watching the Weekend Update with Kevin Nealon for the next few episodes was like stepping into a time capsule.

You can just open your laptop, go back in time and get a taste of what was happening around the world any given Saturday for the last five decades. I think that’s pretty neat.

It got me thinking about blogging. I’ve heard a few people on the indie web say something to this effect, but the longer you maintain your own little website, the further back your personal time machine goes.

Blog for your future self, if no one else <3

I really need to start paying attention to the devs behind the games I play.

I started Sea of Stars, from Sabotage Studio, a while back and it’s one of the best classic style RPGs I’ve ever played.

Then I got kinda sidetracked and found a new obsession with Metroidvanias like Blasphemous and Aggelos for a while.

I kept thinking man, Sea of Stars has such great artwork and mechanics, I wish these guys would make a Metroidvania. I bet it would be fucking gnarly.

Well, turns out they did! Way before Sea of Stars, back in 2018 they made a game called The Messenger and holy shit is it good!

When I beat Aggelos, it kinda left a void in my soul for the more simplistic, 16 bit side scrollers with snappy controls and sick pixel art. Blasphemous was close, but it was a little more technical and modern in a lot of ways. Still a dope game but I need a break before I get more into Blasphemous 2, so The Messenger is my latest obsession.

So many good Metroidvanias out there if you know where to look! Still haven’t finished Sea of Stars yet with all this side scrolling action though.

I haven’t posted a whole heck of a lot about my pinktoe tarantula since I got it.

I’ve been working six days a week for what feels like an eternity, but I finally got a couple days off and I was able to hang out with the little guy for a bit.

I mist the enclosure with a spray bottle every couple of days and he cant resist drinking water off of the screen. He comes running every time he hears me.

edit: video quality is kinda janky, here’s a better upload on bsky

I regret that I haven’t traveled much so far. I’ve never been outside the United States. Hell, I’ve never even been to a blue state before. That didn’t even dawn on me until I started thinking about it just now.

There is so much awesome culture around the world but for most Americans, we act like this is the only place you ever need to be. Rootin' tootin', cowboy hat wearin', gun shootin', in god we trust ‘Merica. It’s the only place in the world that blue eyed, blonde haired, white baby Jesus really cares about.

I want to go to Europe, and China, and South America. Even just Canada would be a nice little trip. It’s like the USA if the USA didn’t have a parasitic brain worm.

I hope I can get my shit together enough to see more of the world before I get too old.

I’m not religious, but I have to believe some kind of karma exists out there. Even if it’s just the consequences of a few billionaires' shitty actions.

Even the most gullible, brainwashed conservatives will eventually have to realize how bad they’re being fucked by their daddy in chief. You can only suck up to a bully so much before you realize it’s not benefiting you in any way anymore.

Or maybe they’re all just masochists, I don’t know.

I’m a huge fan of RSS. It gives you complete control over how you get the news. It’s a perpetually updated stream of information hand-curated by you. It’s a neat little hobby coming up with the ultimate personalized news feed. No two are alike.

Lately, it’s been pretty depressing opening up my reader. Of course there are always indie blogs and other websites that post about non-political stuff or niche topics. But if you want any news at all, you’re stuck scrolling through miles of articles about all the things Donald Trump is destroying across the country on a daily basis. He just does so much so fast, it’s hard to look away.

I miss when the news was boring.

I love that people are migrating from TikTok to Red Note in droves. Our oligarchy is banning TikTok under the guise of national security; never mind the fact that any American reading this post is likely doing so on a device manufactured in China.

Never mind the fact that SHEIN and Temu are both Chinese apps that collect the same data as TikTok but no one cares because there’s no actual threat. Nothing beyond what Facebook or X does with our data anyway.

They’re banning TikTok because it’s the biggest social media app that the US government has no control over. So people are directly, knowingly and willingly handing their data over to an app that actually is controlled by the Chinese government in protest.

What a time to be alive 🤭