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Joined 13 days ago
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Cake day: August 10th, 2025

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  • There is also the tragicomedy of the German communists following instructions from Moscow about how to engage in rebellion against the social democrats of the day, which was a big part of setting the backdrop of political chaos that enabled Hitler to seize power, while Stalin occasionally ratted them out to Hitler’s secret police. And then, when it all went tits-up and the ones left alive fled Germany for the USSR where they could finally live with their communist allies, Stalin had them all killed.

    The more things change amirite


  • This interview is really phenomenal. Among other things, they talk about why it took so many years to release the game.

    “We’ve been having fun,” Gibson said. “This whole thing is just a vehicle for our creativity anyway. It’s nice to make fun things.”

    The lengthy production wasn’t the result of development challenges or obstacles, they said. They just needed all these years to ensure that Silksong was exactly the game they wanted to make.

    “It was never stuck or anything,” Gibson said. “It was always progressing. It’s just the case that we’re a small team, and games take a lot of time. There wasn’t any big controversial moment behind it.”

    “I think we’re always underestimating the amount of time and effort it’ll take us to achieve things,” Gibson said. “It’s also that problem where, because we’re having fun doing it, it’s not like, ‘It’s taking longer, this is awful, we really need to get past this phase.’ It’s, ‘This is a very enjoyable space to be in. Let’s perpetuate this with some new ideas.’”

    The longer development lasted, the more pressure Gibson and Pellen felt to ensure that everything was as fine-tuned as possible. They’d already spent four years on it — why would they rush now? The more time they spent polishing some parts, the more time they needed to apply it consistently across the rest.

    “There’s a level of finish that has to be met throughout the entire game,” Pellen said. “All the way the systems interact, all the hidden work that pops up later on. It’s multiplicative. As you add stuff, the process of tying it all back together just increases.”

    Gibson and Pellen say they’re happy that the game is finally coming out — and even happier that they will get to keep working on it, which they still find enjoyable even after seven years. They haven’t burned out or shown any desire to take a break. Instead, they’re already making big plans to add extra content to Silksong in the months and years to come.

    This is, of course, what work is supposed to be. But we have lost the way.









  • Way-back-when, long before WFH or any of these modern things the kids are up to nowadays, I did consulting from home, and I found it was actually way better to make a “workplace” for myself. I wound up talking with a startup run by friends of mine and they kindly agreed to let me bring my computer in and set up a desk for myself, just so I would have an “office” that was conceptually separate from the “office” in my bedroom. I got a lot more done in there.

    One, it was bringing me anxiety, that I would wake up in the morning and my workplace was right in the room with me. Two, I found I got a lot more done when the workplace was separate. YMMV, but that was what I found.


  • In the olden times, it was a big point of pride of American politics that a lot of people didn’t want to kill the leaders. It was sort of assumed that in feudal style European politics, of course the common people kind of wanted to kill you, because you were threatening their safety and taking their stuff. In America, the way we did things was to earn the respect of the people you governed. The people actually wanted this person to be in charge. Why would I shoot that guy? That’s who we picked, we like him.

    Of course there are some caveats (slavery large among them). The reality never matched up to the ideal. But we’re going back to where even the approximation of consent of the governed that we used to have, isn’t assumed anymore. Fuckin bullshit


  • You seem to be assuming that the volume is immediately replaced by the external atmosphere, which I doubt is valid

    No, I was assuming your volume decreases. I don’t actually know that to be the case, but my assumption is that there isn’t “extra” space inside a person, and so if you lose material from a part of your body that isn’t encased in anything rigid your volume decreases slightly.

    So maybe I did have my terminology wrong. When a hot air balloon deflates, it falls. The density went up, but that’s not what’s directly relevant. The weight went down, I guess, but the “number on the scale”, weight minus buoyant force, went way way up, because it lost some lower-density volume that was making the whole thing float. The weight (in a strict physics sense) went down, sure. But the number on the scale (which I was incorrectly calling “weight”) went up. Same thing for a farting person.





  • Fart gas is warmer than the surrounding atmosphere, therefore less dense. Your digestive system is under very slight compression (10-20 mmHg gauge pressure according to the internet), which I would guess does not equate to enough pressure to be more significant than the temperature gradient. Fart gas is also less dense than air at a given pressure by a pretty significant margin (1.06 g/L compared with 1.20 g/L).

    When you fart, you’re releasing gas that is less dense than the atmosphere, which means you get slightly heavier. Think of yourself as a hot air balloon with a very tiny chamber, and when you release a 90 milliliter fart, you lose a little buoyancy and sink a little. You get heavier when you fart.

    I haven’t done the math, but I looked around on the internet at some numbers, and that’s what I think. I also ignored this because it is clearly AI slop, which is a little upsetting.