The Stochastic Game

Ramblings of General Geekery

On Reading the News

This article from NiemanLab titled “I’m a journalist and I’m changing the way I read news. This is how.” didn’t start particularly well for me. It read less about ways to read the news, and more about the inability of some people to just, you know, keep their phone in their pocket when they’re with other people. I know some people truly struggle with this, with connectivity, social media, and all that stuff leading to real mental health issues but, well, I don’t get it.

Anyway, there’s a great bit in the middle of the article, when the author decides to change their ways:

I’ll read news, not other people’s reactions to news. I have resubscribed to print newspapers because they are finite; when you’re done, you’re done

Read more…

This is your reminder that ever since video games moved to online services and proprietary servers, they effectively stopped being a form of art. They’re just “content” and “monetization” until they’re thrown away. Want to work in video games? Stick to the indie scene.


Apparently cheese heists are a thing now? Where is this “cheese black market” they mention? Is it just average cheese cut with low quality cheddar to increase margins? (First slice is free!) Or can I get French imports of good, rotten, stinky cheese? Asking for a friend. Who is me.


I wasn’t paying attention to the changes in PC hardware these last couple years, so imagine my surprise when my employer sent me this 8TB storage to add to my workstation, while my home NAS still has giant old school hard drives with half that capacity…

Left: a Western Digital NAS hard drive with a 4Tb capacity

Right: a tiny Sabrent SSD drive with 8Tb capacity

My teenage kid in real life: stays in bed and complains about having to take out garbage.

My teenage kid in Persona 5: hangs out with friends and signs up for part time work.


All TTRPGs are meant to be “play to find out”. That’s sort of, err, the whole point about playing a #TTRPG?


One of the great unsolved technical problems of our times is to figure out if a ZIP file has all the compressed files at its root or inside a directory, so I know whether to unzip it inside a new directory or not.


The Lord of Rings is a good reminder to #TTRPG GMs that players will always fuck up your plans. Send your most evil NPCs after them? The best you get is stabbing one PC! Ride your most powerful villain into combat on a big monster? Another PC one-shot-kills it with a critical roll!