So a bit of background. in the spiritual practice of alchemy, the philosopher's stone was a mythical element that when added to lead, would transmute it into gold, but would also transmute the alchemist into a supposedly perfect being.

I've long used this to make a philosophical point, because as we know today, gold is actually less dense than lead by atomic weight, so I would argue, sometimes it's not what we add, but what we remove that makes the difference.

Today, however, I went on a wild hair, wondering what if we took this advice literally, what might come up?

So I started by subtracting the atomic weight of gold from the atomic weight of lead, and searched for that, landing initially at beryllium, but beryllium is barely present in most people's bodys, so I went for a different angle and tried to see what elements in the human body have a total atomic weight of 9, and what came up was florine.

If you've ever come across arguments about fluoridation of drinking water, you're probably at least passingly familiar with sodium floride and it's use in drinking water. I could speculate further, but honestly, I want to see where this conversation heads.

No this has nothing to do with James Rolfe, lol.

When you look at a woke game <insert whatever relevant example springs to mind here>, it seems nonsensical that they would target an audience that, frankly, has no interest in games in the first place, while alienating the core demographic of gamers who will practically break down the door to buy the game on launch if they think it's worth it.

But there's an old internet adage that covers why they do this;

Please don't feed the trolls

think about it, they wind us up ruining a perfectly good franchise, and inevitably some gamer or group of gamers go off on the game, crap-flooding the dev/publisher's social media with abuse. (I know, not every gamer is like that, but let's just be real, every group has its members that the rest would like to distance themselves from, and gamers are no exception.)

the dev/publishing team then play the victim, and inevitably this gets the "modern audience" of woke sycophants, who wouldn't otherwise be caught dead in a gamestop or KB Toys, to buy the game, just to own those evil, racist, mysogynistic, yada yada gamers, making angry gamers free advertisers to the target demographic.

The only problem with this strategy is it doesn't seem to be working anymore, at least not to the degree it might have ten or fifteen years ago. maybe people are wising up? I dunno, or maybe the economy is so bad the virtue signalling crowd can't actually afford to own the gamers anymore.

I guess what I'm saying is if instead of getting angry, we all reacted with indifference and moved on, the devs would have nothing to sell their games on, because core gamers wouldn't buy it, and there's no shitshow to sell it to woketards.

i realize it's not a perfect strategy, but it is something to chew on.

I haven't gotten especially far into the game, maybe an hour or two played in total, but it's an okay time-waster.

Essentially, you're a newly dead ghost who's managed to score a haunted house, and you have to scare people to gather the energy needed to keep you from passing on. The game starts with a basic tutorial and gives you an "easy" night to learn the ropes, then presumably, the difficulty ramps up over successive nights.

The graphics are simplistic and cutsey. Not gratingly so, but there's a definite feel that it was targeted at a younger audience, or maybe that was the aesthetic the game was pitched with, who knows? the isometric view was handled in a way that doesn't grate on my nerves.

The sound is inoffensive and pretty forgettable. It's well done for what it is, but nothing special either.

Gameplay wise, it feels like a cross between the sims and plants vs zombies, with your ghost navigating around an isometric "world" (really the haunted house and a huge plot of land around it), scaring the daylights out of anyone who ventures into his/her domain either manually, or through the use of "traps," ie: purchased assets that frighten people while you're busy elsewhere on the map. customization of your haunted house is handled through a purchasing system, which allows you to expand and upgrade your haunted house as you see fit. the navigation system could be better, and as stated before, the gameplay isn't exactly addicting.

Overall, it's a decent diversion if you've got twenty minutes or so to kill, but it's not something you're liable to invest hours in. A casual game to be sure, but something you could load up while you're on hold or waiting for a more graphics-hungry game to boot up. the five dollar price tag seems fair, though maybe get the demo first to be sure it's your thing.

Full disclosure: I played on Fedora 39 via steam's proton compability layer.

Thanks again to u/stalememes for the game code, and sorry for the tl'dr post.

Fun game, even if you're not a fan of the people the playable characters are based on.

Edit: thanks to u/patrikstar24 for the upload

going off my vague and admittedly rusty memory, there were at least three major examples of this that I personally encountered:

• 1. The Marvel Civil War story arc in the comics
• 2. The Twilight Saga Edward Vs Jacob marketing for the movies (which admittedly was handled somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I seem to recall a fast food commercial taking it to what I hope was an intentionally absurd degree)
• 3. The MCU retread of Civil War from the comics, adapted to the silver screen

• *** 4) Edit: Injustice: gods among us (thanks to u/Kinglion for pointing that one out)***

Whether this was intentional or not is beyond the scope of this screed, but it is interesting to note how many real-world examples of this phenomenon occurred during and after these campaigns, gamergate, the ghostbusters fiasco, the trump/anti trump movements, etc.

maybe it's nothing, or maybe it's something. I honestly have no idea, but the timing is certainly interesting at the very least.

Don't know why, but I've often thought about lying.

Not a specific act, but the concept itself. In particular, one question has percolated in my head over the years; What is the most effective kind of lie.

I've come up with many answers, lies that contain a hint of truth, lies that are mostly true, lies that are 100% true, but imply falsehood... (you may notice a pattern, lol)

All good answers, but there's one particular genre of lie that beats them all:

The lie you tell yourself.

Think about it folks, who can lie to you more effectively, more enticingly, who knows what you want to hear to believe something better than you yourself?

Obviously self deception is dangerous in and of itself, but once you've convinced yourself of a falsehood, it becomes easier to convince others, because the sincerity of your words compels others to believe what you say is true.

Something to chew on.

is it any good?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/367710/Afterlife_Empire/

they don't have to be anything special. could be generic in every way as long as they're actually fun

indie or major studio, doesn't matter as long as you enjoyed playing them.

Disclaimer: yes, I own a raspberry pi, no I don't want a bunch of games ported(I really don't care, I have plenty of emulators as it is), I just think it would be funny if a bunch of studio execs were scratching their heads trying to figure out why this semi-obscure platform suddenly has a bunch of people begging them to port to it.

I'm not saying story is a bad thing. It's not, but it seems like a lot of devs focus so heavily on coming up with an engaging story and good visuals that they forget to actually make the game fun to play.

I think about some of the games I've played over the years, and a lot of my favorites either had fairly limited or even downright absurd plots that basically boil down to an excuse to make the gameplay loop happen.

Just a random musing.

something some thing double standards, yada yada, no standards.

Not a good guy, just under Trump's thumb to a certain degree.

thoughts?

Anyone who played any beloved third-party NES game:

Oh, that's cute! 😏

Edit: Just so we're clear, I'm poking fun here, I like Demon/Dark Souls just fine.

but waay too many games get compared to them as though they're the first game with ball-retracting difficulty, lmao.

Calling it a game is probably the wrong term, hence the virtual toy secondary category option.

the only real problem I see is you'd probably need something of an old school gaming peripheral, but with three paddles instead of two, though you might be able to cheat it by tearing apart an old scroll wheel mouse and wiring a set of digital rotary knobs to the x, y, and scroll wheel axes.

(amazon link provided only for reference. I have no idea if that would even work for the intended purpose, but it gives you an idea what I'm talking about.)

I dunno, could be interesting