I’m using Obsidian. The minimal size makes syncing faster, and I enjoy the mobile interface.

I’m also using Syncthing to sync up my notes between my laptop and phone. It’s been great! Less Google doc use.

Since I’m a little embarrassed by the mistake, what do you look for in an incremental game? I can look through the ones I’ve played for Android and see if any could work?

Oh, right, so I was so excited to mention it I forgot it’s not a mobile game >.<

It’s on steam, but yeah, my bad.

Thanks for posting this. I really enjoyed getting to play Magic again thanks to Forge, and Anuto is a really solid tower defense.

Hey, it’s a paid game (non-freemium) but you could try Orb of Creation. I think there’s a free demo on itch. One of the most fascinating incremental games I’ve played. I actually played all the way up to the current content’s end.

Eagerly awaiting updates.

I’m starting to set up the groundwork to do freelance work. Not sure how well I’ll do, but it’s a strong step towards a happier me.

I’m glad someone is fighting the good fight. It’s becoming more and more obvious that the prevalence of these tool in academic circles may cause more harm than good.

It’s increasingly hard to find things that are like that for everyone. It’s an unfortunate trend that means I have to very aggressively curate my feeds to keep from being dragged into it.

This situation is really rough. I wish I could offer you financial support, but I can’t right now.

I want you to at least know that I’m thinking about you and I care.

You should check out the policies for your local libraries, if there’s a conveniently placed one you may still be able to get intermittent access?

Hey, have you used Tumblr? I ask, because I don’t think that this is always people trying to infiltrate a political discussion to paralyze effective leftist organizing. I do think it totally is sometimes- but sometimes it’s because of how people structure their values and philosophy of engagement with the world, politics and moral actions.

I have become very familiar with how, on Tumblr, the dominant cultural paradigm has a strong tendency to several of those traits purely because of a combination of ways that the internet, and that website, is structured; and, the ambient cultural values of the US informing how they structured their beliefs about morality and politics.

People who are part of this paradigm tend to have a strongly dentological bent, and are obsessed with if an action is good or bad in and of itself; and, especially critically- if there is any part of it that represents any moral compromise, no matter how small. They do not want to ever have to compromise their principles, and frame those principles as actions and behaviors and not ends. They are very focused on maintaining a sense of moral purity and superiority, which naturally leads to inaction due to the inherent compromises present in political action and general life.

Paired with this is a deep desire to prove one’s virtue, which is done by performing it- frequently by finding an acceptable target for harassment or abuse, then heaping unpleasant behavior on them in order to show that bad people are bad and they, a good person, is good. It’s very simplistic and results in people who are constantly vigilant of if anything they do can be construed as wrong, because then it becomes a vector for harassment and attack, and who are constantly trying to discern if someone else is currently vulnerable to the same.

This mixes with a general lack of critical thinking skill, reading comprehension and fact-checking that so defines our modern septic pit of an internet; and, you have a cycle of inaction and abuse that accomplishes very little. It’s very frustrating, and a major contributing factor to me not using Tumblr anymore. I got really burnt out on people who would use, for example, you not reblogging a post supporting a specific political point as proof that you were maliciously against the political point, even if you openly advocated for it, or it was about a marginalized group you were a part of.

I feel like you are identifying a pattern that is very real and important, but I think your conclusions about why it happens may be too narrow. I think there’s a multiplicity of groups of different political and philosophical tendencies that are contributing to this atmosphere. I also feel like sometimes people need a place to vent about how incredibly infuriating US politicians and politics are- I try to keep that to my friends and personal writing, nowadays, but there was a point when I was incredibly bitter about how the Democrats continued to neglect and ignore people in need due to political exigencies. Sure, I get it, and sure, I support them whenever I get a chance to, but damn if it’s not frustrating.

I increasingly feel like there needs to be more sectioning of discussions on platforms to allow constructive discussion and vent-posting to be clearly separated and have that be aggressively enforced.

Hmm, I often don’t pay attention, but it’s a bit long for me because I take a lot of time to check stats and moves. I’d say at least 4-6 hours per run, depending on how you’re playing? The default run is against eight gym leaders in a succession of increased difficulty, and you can get to them pretty fast depending on how you decide to route things.

Having played for a day or so, I’m feeling better. Emerald Rogue is a fantastically well done total-conversion romhack. I really love the challenge it can offer, and how customizable that challenge is- you can adjust different facets of the game and it uses a lot of procedual generation to determine what kind of pokemon you have available and what the teams of the gym leaders are like.

I know a nuzlocke isn’t to everyone’s taste, but it’s way less painful than I’m used to those being, primarily because you reach the level cap basically instantly and the process of learning moves has been so substantially improved I have a hard time imagining playing a normal pokemon game. There’s literally a UI element in your menu that lets you pull up all moves your pokemon could know by level-up at their current level and you can swap between them anytime between fights. This, paired with some tools for gathering information about the upcoming gym leader, offer a really satisfying experience for customizing your mons’ moveset for the fight.

I am playing on a really high difficulty because success in this game is less important to me than the enjoyment of a real challenge, and the highest difficulty is balls hard. There’s a number of toggles that could make that easier, but I’m having fun as is!

I love this romhack. <3

Feeling moody and irritable right now. Trying to distract myself with pokemon roguelike.

I’m thinking about doing some personal writing about my feelings on the Internet of my youth and how I need to let go of it. So, somber?

Getting annoyed that Meta brought so much attention to shadow libraries that make a lot of otherwise inaccessible academic information available to the general public.

I took a two week break from social media because I wasn’t engaging with the political crisis situation in a responsible way. Now I’m just going to try to engage in more productive and meaningful discussion.

Little high, little low. I’m adjusting to online discussions after not being part of them for quite a while. Had some fun conversations with my partner and I am writing again, which is great. Job hunting is such a drag though. Simply inhuman.

I am really enjoying it. The resource management is pretty gentle by default, so I’m probably going to start a new run on harder settings, but the basic mechanics are very enjoyable. The system for rooms in your magic school is actually quite interesting- whenever you make a room, it gets some tags based on how it’s shaped and where it’s located. For example, rooms can have the “Skewed” tag if one wall of the room is higher than the other, or a room can have the “Silent” tag if there are no adjacent work-rooms or class-rooms. Different room designations require different tags on the room and room designations are useful and carry significant bonuses. Currently, I’m grappling with the fact that it’s hard for me to find a good spot to put certain things I need now, so I may have to build an wizard tower that’s disconnected from my central school simply to have the control to make a set of rooms with the correct qualities.

Which I find very exciting, interesting and fun! The little meeple also pick up personality quirks and traits over time that cause them to have a higher Conviction (the equivalent of Mood or Morale in most colony sims) when they’re met, or a lower Conviction when they aren’t. For example, several of my wizards have relationships where they prefer to sleep in the same room as a specific other wizard, while another one may want to eat in the same dining room as another one, or a wizard may deeply dislike doing a particular task, or love being outside. I often find the “personalities” assigned to the pawns in colony sim games either overwhelming in detail or irrelevant. This strikes an interesting balance, because they pick them up over time and each of them is simply a thing that you can try to do for a small (but relevant) bonus, or strategically avoid by meeting other needs.

The basic loop for gameplay consists of taking in new students; using your staff to take care of upkeep, food and teaching; graduating or hiring the student once they are fully trained; and then getting new students. You expand your school and gain progressively more options to make better and better students, eventually upgrading their magical powers or advancing them to higher tier students called “Apprentices” who can do more useful work and have higher magical stats. The eventual goal is to cultivate a good student base and then retire staff members who are less useful and replace them with better iterations of themselves, gradually expanding the total number over time.

It feels pretty good- you get strongly rewarded for teaching students and having someone leave by graduation or retirement gives you very useful rewards that will help with long-term progression and strength.

I enjoy the architectural system for the depth that the tags and room requirements have, which will naturally create interesting structures and break up a monotonous optimal uniformity. You are encouraged to have specialized, oddly shaped, and carefully positioned rooms. The game has systems for checking structural stability, which makes upgrades that enhance that or give you additional structural options interesting and exciting.

I haven’t even gotten all the features of the game yet, despite playing for several days, so I’m excited about its long-term potential. My next run will definitely focus on the dark magic of the game, which allows you to make adorable quilted undead minions to do various manual labor tasks for you.

The combat the game has is instanced, turn-based and pleasant. There are options to prepare for fights that offer interesting strategic choices, and the tactical decisions available are distinct, useful and purposefully minimal. My most talented combat-wizards only have a handful of spells (3-4) and they each have a use-case. The game has complete information about fights before you commit to them, allowing you to prepare carefully and strongly favoring good strategy over luck.

So, yeah, highly recommend. Love it, kind of surprised no one told me about it until now, since I’ve been aching for a colony management or survival game focused on wizards for ever.

I’m also playing Mind Over Magic, a magical school colony sim game by the people who did Don’t Starve (IIRC).