The Master’s Tool

politics, television Leave a comment

The following blog contains mentions of violence, bullying, and child abuse. Will Smith Apologizes to Chris Rock for Oscars Slap: ‘I Was Out of Line and I Was Wrong’ (msn.com) On page 169 of his memoir No Struggle No Progress, American education “reformer” Howard Fuller writes about taking a flight for the purpose of using corporal punishment on one of his sons, Malcolm, for an alleged act of stealing. By itself, the description of this event wouldn’t have caught my attention so much, had it…

Read More »

Anything (Someone Else Does) for a Dollar

internet, politics Leave a comment

Bandcamp Bought By Fortnite Maker Epic Games (Spin via yahoo.com) I’d been looking forward to this month’s Bandcamp Friday for a while. The fact that Bandcamp has been willing to forgo its usual fees for selling music in order to assist independent musicians, who have been even more likely to suffer serious problems due to the pandemic than musicians with record deals, was a cool enough thing to start with, but I’ve been making an effort this year to give even more to independent artists.…

Read More »

Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost

politics, videogames Leave a comment

Nintendo announces closure of Wii U and 3DS eShop (Yahoo! News) I used to carry mini-notebooks around to jot down ideas in, and I can still distinctly remember making a list of video games I wanted to buy at some point in the nineties. One of those games was Arcana, a dungeon-crawler JRPG for the Super Nintendo along the lines of Shining in the Darkness for the Sega Genesis. I’d rented Arcana a couple of times, and while it didn’t feel like anything particularly special…

Read More »

Stuck

personal Leave a comment

[The following blog contains mentions of bullying and other abuse.] One of the first things you learn in therapy is that painful memories never really go away. If something painful sticks in your head for any reason, it’s practically impossible to get it unstuck. Often times, the most effective coping skill is to develop mental mechanisms to soften the relived traumas of those past memories: Remembering better times, or recalling that you have people who care about you in the present, or just recognizing that…

Read More »

Déjà Rêvé

personal, transgender, videogames Leave a comment

As I’ve been looking to both improve my mental health and build my Twitch channel, one of the video games I’ve had my eyes on is Unpacking, a puzzle-style game where you unpack items from boxes to organize various living spaces. I’ve enjoyed puzzle games all my life, and the low-key nature of Unpacking definitely places it in the “cozy game” genre that I’ve been trying to play more of, to help me maximize the benefits of using video games to help me unwind from…

Read More »