Puppies. Because we all need cute in our lives. Unless you are terrified by puppies, in which case consider this a content warning.
Not as cute, but strangely relaxing, People Sleeping In Museums. Sometimes you need cute. Sometimes you need folks snoozing.
Was reading this article about the 2010's, and the game industry, and culture in general. I have complex feelings about the authors experiences, because they are so different from mine. I'm a white cis dude, with all the advantages that implies. I'm a co-owner of an indie game studio. I believed, and still do to some extent, in the utopian possibilities "the net" could provide. But the reality of how capitalism and consumerism glom on and take over and feed back to us what was once transgressive and radical and package it up into a commodity to be sold is a wet blanket that i can't quite push off. It is a note that the past decade was kind of shit, and there is a lot of real work to be done going forward if we don't want to keep sliding into a world were we have less and less control over our culture and selves. Just saying it doesn't actually get it done, and i bear guilt over not doing more. I am happy that we have been able to crave out a space via our company for folks to work together and not be horrible to each other. Trying to make some good, if not world-changing, games.
And as something to look towards or an alternative to some of the hard realities of that previous article, there is Solarpunk.
Starting reading "Salvation Lost", the second book in Peter F. Hamilton's latest trilogy. I find myself judging these kinds of aliens-want-to-wipe-out-humanity space operas against "The Three Body Problem" and nothing can measure up to that. I'm still enjoying the book and series, but it doesn't have the ... depth? Something. Which is fine, it is still fun speculative fiction, and i'm enjoying it. But. Now everything is, unfairly, measured against TTBP.