Here are some things I'm thinking about on Christmas eve day, numbered, but in no particular order, except that they are numbered. Obviously. They are numbered like you can see the numbers but the numbers did not go through like a rigorous process of selection. They don't determine like importance or intensity. They are just numbered because my brain likes orderly lists.
1. Whenever I see people post pictures of themselves on Twitter anymore like outside of locked its kinda crazy to me a bit because like, first that picture is like now EULA'd into the stupid AI model that Musk is trying to peddle to his goonish userbase as part of the value proposition of his inane subscriptions. This doesn't like cause you any immediate harm or even any real future harm probably, though there are ways to get AI models to spit out their sources its probably not going to spit out yours even if prompted-- that being said it's still just kind of weird to me. It feels weird to have my like government face just absorbed into this project alongside thousands of people drawing extremely bawdy anime broads. Like how this site is now at least some percent dedicated to just openly robbing the content of its user base rather than robbing the user in a more indirect sense generally. Second is that the site is like full of braying atavist lunatic 100% Hitler Juice guys, like that and bots who ask leading questions to pretend like real engagement happens, those are the two courted types of users for the site now. So if you're a trans woman and posting a ton of pictures of yourself there I can understand if you're like feeling yourself and you want the world to know but like, it's just not very opsec I guess. I would lock if I was posting that kinda thing I guess. I hope in the new year everybody understands their security concerns more I guess is what I'm ultimately pondering here. At length.
2. Every recipe for pot roast just assumes you have a dutch oven, like yeah take out your dutch oven that you own, and also assumes like what you want to do with that dutch oven afterwards is chuck it in the oven. And like maybe this is the best way to do this but I don't have a dutch oven and I'm not going to get one and I don't even want one all that much, I think we all need to investigate this a bit more, to think a bit more about what Big Dutch Oven is doing, what this propaganda is intended for and who benefits. Anyway I do think you can just do this on the stovetop and I found one recipe for stovetop pot roast and I'm going to try that, to feed my wife, and theoretically the family I don't and let's be clear will never have. I just think that in this world of 2024 we really should actually have all the data at my fingertips, like mine personally, and it's crazy that we don't. In fact the data is getting less and less in my fingertips. The google AI thing that appears whether you like it or not whenever you are searching for anything banal enough to be graced with its fuckass pilfered knowledge of the world was like "first you need a dutch oven" and I was like no I fucking don't. Go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself on Christmas Eve trending on artstation cinematic quality.
3. I feel like the outfit balance in Infinity Nikki is kind of crazy. (I've been playing Infinity Nikki-- if you were not aware.) You are basically drowning in Elegant and Sweet clothes and there's so few accessible Fresh outfits in the game it feels like, but the way the game is designed the Sovereign of Fresh is the current hardest styling challenge and you have to win it to craft Wishful Aurosa and complete the current storyline. Building up outfits for every other style is so hard on your resources, and this is as someone who plays every day, spending all of my stamina, and started playing like 2 days after launch. I barely had anything in the tank for a Fresh outfit and while beating the stylists to get the clues for the Sovereign of Fresh does get you sketches for a 3-star Fresh outfit you have to craft the outfit, which requires some materials that aren't super easy to come by or farm, and then you also need the resources to glow it up. I ended up building up the like the stoneville floating outfit which happens to be Fresh and it did pretty badly everywhere but just enough to eke out the Sovereign of Fresh medal. It's kind of crazy. Maybe there is a full fresh outfit in like open world chests or in the bling gachapons or in the inspiration quests somewhere, I dunno. I must be missing something I guess. Anyway I did beat the main story and its insanely fun. Infinity Nikki kinda my GOTY lately if I'm being honest with myself. Truly a wonderful time. You can't see it but as I am writing this I am shaking my head to let you know I think gambling is bad and dangerous and that games shouldn't have it and that games with gambling have no other value or qualities.
4. Lately I've been seeing a lot of good art of characters I like in varying states of injury and pain and it really makes me want to write a story where characters can actually get grievously injured and maimed in the main dangerous circumstances of the story rather than like popping like bubbles made of meat the instant their mech gets penetrated. I've been wanting to write a second project for a while just to get out these feelings. But I'm having so many issues deciding anything. Part of it is that its hard not to think that nothing matters at this point-- making Unjust Depths is kind of My Thing so I keep doing it, and its like fine enough when I'm in the zone and writing like it's not like that's odious to me or anything but I've been wanting to do something fresh for a while for a change of pace and it's like. It feels like doing so is kind of against my self-interest in a weird way, like "starting another thing" is just going to be deleterious to me, it isn't what anyone wants or expects and it won't lead to me having achieved anything. Which is kind of an insane way to think about it and kinda just harkens to grindset culture stuff I'm trying to avoid but it's difficult not to think about it. And anyway even beside that I just can't decide what to do with it. I have basically two major ideas, and they are incompatible because of their subjects. One story is really military-focused and it's kind of about the things I usually write, like about living authentically in a dying world, fighting for liberation, the banal consumptive forces of imperialism, fascism and capital, etc; while another is much more like a street fantasy type thing, where the characters are not military subjects and their whole thing is trying to survive and like the assault on your personhood that constitutes survival under capitalism. On any given day you could ask which of these two ideas I want to do and I can't answer you that. I tried one time to combine them under a framework of like spatial or dimensional travel or like "they're AUs of each other" "it's all a simulation" or other frameworks like that but they were too stupid and I felt like I couldn't seriously sustain that unifying premise just to absolve myself of my indecision. So I'm back where I started.
5. Christ these got long. Merry Christmas I guess. There's a new chapter of Unjust Depths tomorrow.