I miss Brian David Gilbert hosting polygon, his absurd videos like cooking every recipe in Zelda were great. AnyAustin has kind of stepped in to fill the void (and then some!), but BDG was doing great stuff. He’s still around with his own channel which can be very funny but it’s not quite the game related stuff I miss.

Ah young one I was once like you until I realised, that by not making the bed, your fitted sheet ends up absorbing more dust and moisture during the day and you have to change them more frequently. For truly optimal laziness it’s best to at least throw the quilt over.

I never really thought about it before but semantically ‘atheist’ only means ‘no belief in God or gods’. Technically it shouldn’t preclude belief in spirits or other supernatural elements. I suppose the closest thing to complete disbelief in the supernatural is ‘skeptic’ but even that’s up for interpretation. Do satanism and humanism explicitly rule out any supernatural?

For a second I thought you said the ‘Trials’ games. I guess living in a world of cartoonish side scrolling motocross wouldn’t be so bad

I wonder if there’s different kinds of aphantasia for sound and vision (mind’s ear vs mind’s eye)?

Interesting thanks. It seems like it takes a lot of practice! It makes me wonder if it’s possible for an “earworm” song to get stuck in your head if you’ve only ever heard it with your “mind’s ear”

I wonder if anybody can do it for an orchestra? I suppose Beethoven was composing symphonies while he was deaf so he must have been able to!

Edit: Deaf not dead 😅

Interesting! It sounds like you might be in the minority. Does it work both ways? Like can you hear a note immediately know what it is?

Take heart friend, big changes are coming for you! Up until this point in your life your friendship groups, your family and the other people in your life have been largely determined by chance - but starting now you have the reigns. From now on, where you choose to study or work or hang out will be a reflection of your personality and the odds of meeting like minded people goes up hugely. It sounds like you already know a lot about who you are, the reason you’re coming up feeling incomplete is probably because you’re a bit different to most people around you. That’s actually a huge strength and something to be proud of. Embrace your uniqueness and enjoy finding out more about yourself.

The chaos and uncertainty of being a late teenager is not easy so don’t feel like you’re a failure, a lot of those people who seem to have it all together really don’t. One final note - be conscious that it’s very common for the first onset of predisposed mental health conditions to rear their head in late adolescence. If it’s all becomming too much, make sure you see a doctor and talk about it.

True 😅, but I can’t help but think he would approve of the mistake.

Just watched it! It’s amazing how much effort he goes to. Makes me appreciate how complex and expensive carbon capture and sequestration at any kind of scale must be.

I always wanted to have a full team of glitch Pokemon:

Ash is wading along the beach on cinnabar island when suddenly he falls over onto the hard ground. Bright light comes from all around as he looks up in shock to see a strange emtpy wireframe space.

As he gets up, a piercing noise shatters the silence, it seems to come from inside his own head. A shadowy, pulsating form fades and crackles into view. An ‘arm’ extends and throws a ball, completely black like a void. Exploding from within is a pokemon…? No It can’t be! Ash stares wild eyed at the strange rectangular form, a chunk missing in its top right corner. It shrieks as it ripples with strange patches of incomprehensible randomness.

Ash’s vision flashes for a moment back to the beach, he’s staring up at his friends as he lies on the sand. They’re saying something but he can’t hear it. He can’t speak, his eyes are portholes and he’s trapped inside. Then he’s gone, back to the broken liminal space.

The pokemon is approaching. Or is it? It doesn’t seem to exist properly, a 2D form in a 3D space that only seems to grow in his vision. Ash looks down to see pikachu by his side, hair standing on end. They exchange a glance and he knows what to do.

The fight is a blur, each new opponent more incomprehensible and impossible than the last. As the final entity is destroyed. Ash falls to his knees, his mind shattered by the infinite cosmic chaos. The strange ‘gym leader’ begins to fade and the world starts to crumble to blackness. A bright light is shining. A voice emanates from all around. “Wake up ash you’ll be late for school.”

Ash opens his eyes and looks around, he is in bed. The world seems so much more detailed, so much more real. A handheld gaming device rests on his chest, white light flashes from its LCD screen as a pixelated title cutscene plays. A single word appears. PoKéMoN™

Most of my favourites have already been mentioned but here’s a few that I haven’t seen:

• Chris Spargo - Documentarian ‘Answering life’s little questions’ (in his own words)

• HowTown - Well researched, slick documentaries on science and sociology

• Useful charts - Family trees and history combined with some nuanced religious history

• Map Men - Somehow both an incredible geography channel and very funny skit show

• ToldInStone - Regular and endlessly fascinating ancient history content

• Captain Disillusionment - A one man special effects genius makes funny deep dives and debunks on special effects topics

• Nile Red - Chemistry wiz kid makes alcohol from toilet paper - The closest thing to a modern alchemist I can imagine

• Joel haver - Inventor the rotoscoped paint cartoon, funny, creatively driven and refuses to sell out

• Patrick Boyle - Educated, nuanced and cuttingly dry humoured takes on popular economics issues

• Steve Mould - High quality science demos and explanations with an engaging and humble host

I’m afraid to say I did too and it wasn’t until I saw his time-lapse that I was fully convinced. I think it’s the soft, studio ghibli like style. One of the chat GPT models was spruiking it a year or so ago and everybody was posting ‘Ghiblified’ profile pics so now it’s kind of synonymous with low effort AI art (which is such a shame).

Congratulations on your masters that’s something to be very proud of! What kind of career are you interested in?

This too shall puss

The tram was originally in Fallout 3, the broken steel expansion, not NV. The tram hat was used because of limitations in the engine. I assume the obsidian Devs just copied the existing solution for NV. Also more fun, it wasn’t an NPC, it was you, the player character and the tram wasn’t a hat it was a technically piece of shoulder armour.