Reading, Gaming, Thinking Diverse

Hello everyone,

Had a quiet week off last week, which was pretty much the plan. I did think I’d find my way over to Cardiff or otherwise out of the house. I’m a little disappointed in myself that didn’t happen, although when I think about going to places like Cardiff, I’ll go to regular haunts, see what I didn’t buy before and … don’t buy it again. It would have been good to get out and about though.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a sad grey cat with blue eyes looking over the top of a sofa to left of picture. The caption is "I spent all day sleeping ... Now I'm tired."
Why does this always happen ?

So what did I get up to outside of hiding indoors all the time ? Lots of gaming. Lots of reading. Lots of music listening. Thinking about the next laptop, although the trojan scare I talked about last post is resolved. The warning popups haven’t been back. Phew ! So the laptop will hang in there for another little while. It’s let me catch up a bit on the new music, which includes acquisitions from a recent steam sale in the Skyrim, Rimworld and Fermi Paradox soundtracks.

Still not played Rimworld.

I did have a look at this one though :

Game screenshot. Frostpunk. We're looking at a dark scene where snow covers a barren land except for a circle in the centre which is bare and thawed. In the centre, there is a tall cylinder structure with a fire coming out of the top. There are tents clustered in a circle at its base. The words are "Our city. Day 1. Population 80."
Chilly out

That’s Frostpunk, which is a survival base builder strategy game. A new ice age has hit the Earth and your ragged band of survivors are huddled around a steam generator that is the only thing between them and a frostbitten demise. It’s a hell of a game, superbly balanced (I’ve watched a few playthroughs of the scenarios) and really, really hard. I got my city up to about 300 people and almost the end of the Londoners storyline before abandoning that run. I couldn’t get them harvesting coal fast enough to keep the generator running and could see the inevitable death spiral coming.

I’ll probably be back in this one. Other first looks for me include Fermi Paradox, which is a very simplified thing where you have a cluster of star systems that independently evolve intelligent life. Will they survive ? Will they thrive ? Will they embark on conquests of the stars ? A curious game, maybe not ready for a recommendation though.

I also completed the last achievements on Car Mechanic Simulator 2021, so I’ve been looking at CMC 2018. It’s ok, the newer game is better in pretty much every way and it has mouse acceleration which can’t be turned off. Never put mouse acceleration in your games people … I’ve also been looking at Rover Mechanic Simulator, which is the same thing with a limited number of rovers that you rebuild from your pod on Mars.

There’s something about the mechanic games … and other simulator type games have carved out their own little niche too. With the car one, it’s that feeling of progress as you tear down a car and rebuild it into something shiny.

Sacrificed some of the life in my neck to Rogue Tower – I could do with looking at my chair and replacing it with one that still allows it to raise. That’s an odd thing that … The posture I’m in at the moment is ok for eye height with my eyes being roughly level to the top half of the screen. That’s ideal … But when I’m in a game like Rogue Tower, I’ll lean forwards which lowers my head so I’m looking up and wrecking my neck. Oops.

Oh and there’s the truck games too. I’m enjoying these again now having recognised and gotten used to some of the irritations with the AI of the other vehicles.

Game screenshot. Euro Truck Sim 2. We're in the cabin of a lorry, looking right towards our passenger. He's the yellow of a Pikachu (small cute animal with a lightning shaped tail).
Where to Pikachu ?

I’m doing that thing again … Where I thought I’d rattle through some stuff fast and not have that much to talk about :-D. Reading ?

Finished The Human Division by John Scalzi, it’s book 5 in the Old Man’s War series that I would happily recommend. It’s like an inspired by Starship Troopers book, where the lead character in the first 3 books finds himself leaving Earth as a 75 year old to be reborn into a super starship trooper body that’s then thrown at Humanity’s enemies. Of which there are many. Yet there’s more nuance here, as they’ll talk about what’s actually going on in the universe. And you steadily get a feeling of “Are we the baddies ?” I’m curious as to where it’ll go in the last book, with its foreboding title of The End Of All Things. But not yet, because I’m indulging the diverse reading thing by going into Elizabeth Bear’s Ancestral Night.

I mentioned diversity … a comment in a conversation got me thinking about the people I follow and support through things like twitch subscriptions. I like to try and keep myself honest there with a little bit of internal watchdogging. I have a little concern about what I’ve spotted there …

First up is the subscriptions – I’ve moved these around a little bit. I’m down to 9 Twitch subscriptions now, they’re all actually women now. I was actively subscribing to a bloke but ended that because he wasn’t doing the interesting content any more. Similar with another lady streamer. And the other bloke streamer lost my sub due to behaviour in his community. They’re all white too, none are people of colour. Not sure what that says about me to be honest. There are a couple of threads there :

The streamer communities I’m involved with don’t raid into people of colour streams much at all, so the exposure to hook me in doesn’t happen. However, I will mention Nathan Whatiskiss who I know as a wonderful roleplayer (but I haven’t seen his gaming content) and TrooperSJP who is another wonderful roleplayer. I don’t follow Trooper because he misbehaves with how he self promotes his own streams (he breaches rules on discords that aren’t his).

I think that’s the main reason why my follows are missing the people of colour, because the rare times people raid into them, I’ll quickly skip into a stream done by someone I do actively follow. Maybe I should give the raided a bit of a chance more often. Perhaps it’s a problem more on Twitch’s end, where people of colour might not be getting the same exposure.

The male female split is slightly deceptive too, as I actively maintain Patreon subs to 1.5 men. (The 0.5 is shared between Tashnarr and TheWanderingInn for the 40k layers model painting show).

The question someone asked was actually more about LGBTQIA+. The split on there for my subs is 3 straight, 1 bi, 1 pan, 2 lesbian and 2 where I have no idea. And that last ? is something I’m very ok with because we should only know where people are on those categories if they want to tell us, it’s not something that really should matter. Oh and there’s a trans person in that list too. And a person who would quite happily be first in the queue for the Probing when the aliens land.

Personally, where people place themselves on the LGBTQIA+ doesn’t really matter to me. I’ll go back to the series Another Life there (scifi series, in space, very tense and atmospheric, dramatic) where the character I was most interested in was Zayn who is played by the non-binary JayR Tinaco (imdb link). The character was interesting from an intelligence and challenging dialogue point of view. They also came over as knowing what they were doing, which was key in this particular series.

That’s the thing about diversity – our differences make us strong. And interesting. They give different perspectives on how to live, laugh and love. And what people get up to in the bedroom and with whom really isn’t any of our concern. If people love each other, they should have the chance to explore that without prejudice.

What really matters is (easy geek points on offer here) being excellent to each other, in all ways.

Picture. Meme. A sad looking cat with big eyes is laying down looking at us. The caption is "It hurts when someone you love says mean things like..." "It's time to wake up"
One more minute ?

It was definitely a bit of a wrench this morning switching from the time off timescales to a work from home timescale where I’m actively working from 7.50am.

I think I’ll leave this one there. I’m a little concerned as to whether a bit of prejudice has crept in with the stream watching, although that’s mostly down to who I get raided into (A stream raid is where a person finishes and takes their audience over to another person to watch). I should give the raided a bit more of a chance, it’s how you find fun people to watch. That said though, of the channels that twitch is showing in the shortcut list at the moment, none of them look like people of colour. (Oh wait, there’s Caustic Phoenix coming in with the Pink Pixels show – there’s one !). There are none being promoted on Twitch’s front page at the moment. I’m not watching the lovely Caustic because I was watching Tashnarr already and Ashlinaa (new name !) on the laptop and the Pink Pixels show will run on too late.

Perhaps it’s twitch that has the problem.

Stay safe everyone, be well, be good to each other.