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Cake day: September 17th, 2023

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  • Many noted a striking similarity to the case of Savita Halappavanar, a 31-year-old woman who died of septic shock in 2012 after providers in Ireland refused to empty her uterus while she was miscarrying at 17 weeks. When she begged for care, a midwife told her, “This is a Catholic country.” The resulting investigation and public outcry galvanized the country to change its strict ban on abortion.

    But in the wake of deaths related to abortion access in the United States, leaders who support restricting the right have not called for any reforms.

    My country’s aptitude for remaining entirely unmoved by preventable tragedies that utterly upend political trajectories in other nations has become one of our most globally defining traits.





  • I gotta vent a little about Jedi Survivor - I really did not enjoy it much at all and am surprised it was so critically lauded. The combat aims for souls-like but is way too twitchy and glitchy to make it feel fun and rewarding. I came out of 60% of combat encounters feeling bored, 20% feeling relieved that some erratic imbalance or technical tomfoolery didn’t make me repeat it, and 10% feeling frustrated for the same reason but on the other side.

    The same core issues affected the bosses too. I didn’t feel like the game earned my dedication to “solving the puzzle” the way games like Elden Ring and Returnal do.

    Exploration was mostly fine in a zone-out kind of way but grew quite stale by the end, being the same vertical platforms and grapple spots on every section of every world. And the story too was just too out of focus. The whole Tanalorr thing was a late first-act development completely divorced from the course of the opening, and there was never a clear or necessary enough idea of why they wanted to get there to justify it becoming a priority to drive the story.

    spoiler

    By the time they were trying to chase down the last compass, they’d garnered enough attention from the raiders and the empire that it no longer felt like a hidden secret. And the fact that all Cal had to do to get there was press a button to align the arrays…how long will they be safe on Tanalorr before the empire figures that out? It simply never felt like it was worth the trouble everyone was going to for it.

    I still like the characters, but I was desperate to be done by the time I was fighting a notable turn-of-the-second-act boss, whose appearance elicited an eyeroll rather than excitement. I set the game to story mode at that point and just rushed the ending.

    While that was going on though, I did play Animal Well all the way through (“layer 1” anyway), and that was extraordinary fun.

    Oh, I also tried out the Metaphor Refantazio demo and that feels incredibly promising, especially with the incredible reviews it’s getting today.










  • I’ve been enjoying Pacific Drive this week. It’s a great survival crafting game in the vein of Subnautica, which is to say there is a linear progression path for upgrades and improvement, and a well-defined objective and end goal.

    I just wish it was less stressful. Even just the normal act of activating a gateway to end a run requires a race through your current zone where one misstep can cause you to get stuck long enough to fail. And sometimes conditions just really stack up against you in a way that can be unexpected and frustrating.

    Overall though it really hits the spot with its loop. I love returning to the garage and going through the ritual of healing, fueling up, recharging, transferring supplies, and checking on upgrades.

    Oh…I also finished and platinumed 13 sentinels earlier this week. I enjoyed that one a lot more than I expected. It’s as compelling as it is eye-rollingly funny how many sci-fi tropes the main story burns through, but I i was frequently and pleasantly taken by surprise. And the battle system, which through the first area I thought was so easy it was basically a formality, really did become more challenging and tactical, especially when trying to get S ranks.




  • 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. I am about 25% through with both Remembrance and the battles… Destruction? I’m in awe of the narrative’s complexity. It’s also a little overwhelming, it feels impossible to get any kind of handle on things. The game adds new layers every time you think you’re getting it.

    Im really enjoying it though, the mystery is really fun to dig at.

    I also beat Malenia this week, which is pretty much the last major thing I had left in my first Elden Ring save. I got help of course (thanks superelva11), but it’s been really satisfying tying a bow on that. 140 hours, plus another 30-35 on a second save - Elden Ring is officially the most time I’ve ever spent on a single game by quite a large margin.


  • Good luck my friend. Hollow Knight is a special one, but those bosses can be punishing. A few of them took me separate sessions over a few days, which is a frustrating way to play games for me, but it’s such a rewarding experience otherwise. I recently rewatched my recording of beating one of the bosses and I was fumbling so bad, I could see my own desperation in the way I was playing.

    Apparently there’s a secret phase for the final boss that I was more than happy to experience via YouTube. I was perfectly satisfied with just rolling the credits.



  • 13 legal actions total regarding:

    • Prohibiting trans youth care: 6
    • Vaccine skepticism: 2
    • Limiting immigration services (including for victims of torture): 2
    • Censoring content: 2, both of which to my layman understanding would be blatant violations of the first amendment rights of Yelp and Media Matters if brought to suit. The Yelp investigation in particular is mind-boggling.

    For a brief second I thought the last might have actual merit:

    On March 28, the attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division contacted Spirit AeroSystems, a Boeing parts supplier, seeking documents and communications related to airplane product defects.

    But of course:

    The attorney general’s investigative letter also demanded records “that Spirit relies on to substantiate its claim that a diverse workplace improves product quality,” enhances performance and spurs the company to make better decisions. In a news release, Paxton’s office said his office was investigating “whether those commitments are unlawful or are compromising the company’s manufacturing processes.”

    You can see by how many of these organizations immediately acquiesced to the state’s “concerns” how transparently Paxton is using state power vexatiously to just…bully compliance with his political ideology. Paxton is a D-grade villain.