Matt's Homepage

William Shatner became the oldest person (90 years old!) ever to go into space in 2021. He spoke about the experience immediately after the fact. It was clear that it shook him up, but we would have no idea until 2022 when he released this statement in an op-ed for The Guardian. In it, he describes his experience of a well documented phenomenon experienced by many astronauts – the Overview Effect:

While I was looking away from Earth, and turned towards the rest of the universe, I didn’t feel connection; I didn’t feel attraction. What I understood, in the clearest possible way, was that we were living on a tiny oasis of life, surrounded by an immensity of death. I didn’t see infinite possibilities of worlds to explore, of adventures to have, or living creatures to connect with. I saw the deepest darkness I could have ever imagined, contrasting starkly with the welcoming warmth of our nurturing home planet.

This was an immensely powerful awakening for me. It filled me with sadness. I realised that we had spent decades, if not centuries, being obsessed with looking away, with looking outside. I played my part in popularising the idea that space was the final frontier. But I had to get to space to understand that Earth is, and will remain, our only home.

This highly emotional and moving experience is a well known phenomenon. Wikipedia gives us a good description of the Overview Effect:

The overview effect is a cognitive shift reported by some astronauts while viewing the Earth from space. Researchers have characterized the effect as “a state of awe with self-transcendent qualities, precipitated by a particularly striking visual stimulus”. The most prominent common aspects of personally experiencing the Earth from space are appreciation and perception of beauty, unexpected and even overwhelming emotion, and an increased sense of connection to other people and the Earth as a whole.

One of the earliest experiences was by Edgar Mitchell in 1971 as part of the Apollo 14 mission and the 6th man to walk on the moon. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1970, but had this to say when looking at the Earth from his trip to the moon:

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”

Casino Azul makes some pretty crazy Tequila bottles: weird still contraptions, animals, funky glass constructions with flowers in them, and even ships and AR rifle bottles.

No word if their tequila is actually drinkable, but that’s usually not the point with these sorts of things.

I think everyone has heard of the scandals at some of the largest game studios. Sexism, emotional abuse, gaslighting, and toxic working conditions were just some of the stories that have come to light. Many smaller developers have been extraordinarily vocal at denouncing these studios at GDC and online.

Fast forward a year or two, and now we’re finding out that some of the most vocal Indies are turning out to be as bad, if not worse, than those they were complaining again.

Some of them have had major allegations by dozens of former employees and partners – allegations that have now been confirmed as they have stepped down, issues apologies, and are being stripped of the very awards against abusive environments they claimed to be against.

This isn’t to denounce these particular people – but to point out that abuse can happen anywhere and everywhere. Anyone or any group that pretends to be superior than others are almost certainly putting themselves in a position to become hypocrites. After all, we’ve seen these issues from triple A studios to indies to Linux kernel development to world renown peace and love artists like John Lennon.

(Sidebar: John Lennon, known for his songs about peace and love, has been repeatedly and brutally denounced by his own son as being a hypocrite as his father abused, abandoned, and then physically assaulted members of his family.)

Warning: this might be a little hard for some to watch. It talks about some serious emotional abuse by trusted leaders.

Links:

• https://www.thegamer.com/indie-developers-abuse/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/th4yo8/investigating_three_indie_superstars_accused_of/

Fr Longenecker offers an modern example for one of Flannery O’Conner’s most famous quotes.

Flannery O’Connor’s is famous for saying “tenderness leads to the gas chambers”. It was borrowed by Walker Percy in his novel The Thanatos Syndrome, but what did O’Connor mean?

The plot of Percy’s book involves a group of well meaning scientists who discover a drug that makes everyone happy. It calms people down, eradicates their stress and guilt. The results are terrifying and hilarious. The local community begins to disintegrate into crimes of passion, but no one really cares because everyone is “happy.” This idea is even played out as a completely unrelated recent horror game called We Happy Few.

Both O’Connor and Percy are not opposed to well meaning tenderness per se. They are opposed to tenderness or compassion as the only virtue. It appears today that anyone that dares to make a statement that is critical of anyone else – then that person who has made the observation, stated an opinion or even simply stated facts–will be excoriated, vilified, cancelled and censored by the thought police.

When the tenderness police take these steps they do so with a terrifying self righteousness. The gas chambers are operated by people who believe they are doing something good. They are ridding the earth of the unworthy–those who dare to not be tender enough. If you think this is an exaggeration ask yourself about the attitude of those who already censor, use emotional blackmail and attempt to silence and exclude those who are deemed incorrect. Do they not go about their campaign with their heads held high–confident in the righteousness of their cause and confident also in their own superior virtue?

What happened to the old adage: live and let live, or respect different opinions, or using reasoned data based debate and arguments to decide the best ideas (instead of emotional appeals and the use of logical fallacies)? I guess that’s where the phrase “Evil preaches tolerance until it becomes dominant – then it silences good”

Japanese Streamer Mutekimaru Channel has a long-running series where their pet fish plays a variety of pokemon games. It does this by swimming over a grid of labeled controls, which is then picked up by a motion tracker that relays which controls the fish is currently swimming over.

During a recent stream of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, the game unexpectedly crashed.

First, the fish navigated to the home menu, opening up the settings and changed their owner’s switch username. After this, it browsed around it’s owner’s friends list. The fish decided that it wanted to browse the eshop. The fish opened it’s owner’s wallet page, revealing their credit card information live on stream. The fish then decided to add 500 yen to it’s owners eshop balance.

It got into the Nintendo Switch Online App, where it would purchase a variety of profile icons and download the N64 App. Satisfied with its exploits, the fish then returned to the home screen and closed the console, ending its reign of terror.