Life is mostly maintenance.
Irrational beliefs come from insisting maintenance should feel like achievement.

If it surprises you, it's information. If it confirms your bias, it's entertainment. If it makes you hate your neighbor, it's a weapon.

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And there are a lot of lessons you could take from that about the nature of getting immersed in a piece of art [by spending 21 hours livestreaming to live a mundane working class week in Cyberpunk 2077]. But for me, I think my main takeaway is something I've always said on this channel. *If you want to get more out of something, put more into something.* This goes for games. It goes for movies and other forms of art. But it also goes for your relationships, your health, and your life overall.

Years ago I had an annual tradition of making "Virtual Advent Calendars" - little toys and games that could run in the browser, one each day for Dec 1-25.

I was heartened to find out that the first years' (which I thought were lost because Java Applets are now deprecated) can be run if you use a Chrome plugin called CheerpJ.

Anyway, here are links to all 7:
2009 (Java Applet)
2011 (Java Applet)
2012 (Started remaking in JS)
2013 (Seasons)
Ed Emberly Animals (plus Santa)
2015 (Games)
2016 (Finale)

Sometimes I miss making these things! It was a fun little tradition, and nice creative outlet.

ROS: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
GUIL: No, no, no... Death is... not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being.
You can't not-be on a boat.
ROS: I've frequently not been on boats.
GUIL: No, no, no - what you've been is not on boats.
ROS: I wish I was dead.

RIP Tom Stoppard! My friend Kay made up these shirts for me:

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Just saw the new Knives Out ("Wake Up Dead Man") at Kevin Smith's theater.

Solid "locked-room mystery" with interesting Catholic themes - both the positive sense of the spirituality of forgiveness and love, and kind of a warning of how it ties into bad authoritarian right wingism.

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"Google trends for Washington DC and Tel Aviv expose another CIA/Mossad assassination"

Music is to the soul what the wind is to the ship, blowing her onward in the direction in which she is steered.

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Also : "We are not allowed to sing this tune or that tune, do
you say? Secular music, you say, belongs to the Devil?
Does it? Well, if it did, I would plunder him of it, for
he has no right to a single note of the whole seven.
Every note, every strain, and every harmony is divine
and belongs to us. "