The entire Human Behavioural Biology unit lectures at Stanford, by the brilliant Robert Sapolsky, are online and they will change the way you understand yourself and others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D

It’ goes into some fairly deep science but is still very accessible, Sapolsky is a brilliant educator. His book Behave is basically these lectures in book form, the audiobook of it is on Spotify.

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I call this the Jersey Shore Effect. Something starts out as an object of ridicule but through media saturation people are exposed to it so much, for so long, that it becomes normalised and then aspirational, purely through conditioning; it’s in people’s brain all the time so at some point they decide they like it.

It’s the same way that music worked back in the days of radio: play something enough and undiscerning people just start liking it, because its in their head all the time.

Like pedophiles?

These comments are a real Dunning-Kruger festival.

This is the most reddit post I’ve seen all week.

Yeah the bleakness of From’s settings is definitely an inherent part of their worldbuilding.

Elden Ring has the deepest, most complex worldbuilding of any game ever made, and it’s not even close. For anyone interested in worldbuilding I strongly urge you to watch some Elden Ring lore videos from The Tarnished Archaeologist to learn about the techniques that the Elden Ring devs use to put incredibly deep and subtle worldbuilding into their games. It’s changed the way I think about worldbuilding in any context.

https://www.youtube.com/@tarnishedarchaeologist

As a young nerd obsessed with RPGs and William Gibson’s work I was outraged at the idea of putting fantasy into cyberpunk. But then I picked up a damaged copy of the Shadowrun rules from a bargain bin and was blown away by the worldbuilding, they really found a way to make it all fit thematically and logically and I ended up running the game for years.

I pretty regularly say or think “Have my years of wild hedonism finally caught up with me?”

We call the top roost of our cat castle The Angry Dome. She only gets up there when she is bonkers with the zoomies.

The gaahbij paahts.

I regularly say “Hooray, I’m helping!” to my wife.

Listen to the sound of pure, animal pain this guy makes when the cat gets its claws into him (and that’s through his denim jeans):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ubQxtEukvw

Warning: this cat is in some distress.

What a work of art that game is.

If 90% of the world’s food production was going towards making cake, would you be mad at the food industry and the people who only eat cake?

I think they’re just kind of a symbol for the shallowness of the movie industry, self indulgent pieces that are all budget and no art. I get it.

A lot of people really hate these movies.

Thanks for this thoughtful, nuanced contribution to the community.

What a wild time to be alive, man.