In comparison to recent weeks things have been slower over here at thejaymo.net. I’ve even found some time to start playing a bit of Boltgun on the Switch.

Rolling straight into it after the Quake 1 remaster (by way of Zelda) has been really fun. I love the fast paced run and gun nature of 90’s shooters and Boltgun delivers on the same feeling. It’s an absolutely fantastic boomer shooter, great concept and also very silly. Its also Warhammer related so its right up my street. I really like the infodump/cut scenes between each of the major missions.

One of the things I enjoy the most are ‘my own interests’. The filter bubbles and rabbitholes of culture that I’ve cultivated and spend time in over the last few years or so are really rewarding. I *could* follow people with my interests on social media along side everything else, or I could seek out places where people are talking about the things that interest me.

I really like meeting other people who are really far out on limbs of their own interests. A friend who I saw this week has got into watchmaking and is currently building a lathe from a sewing machine motor and parts bought off ebay. how cool is that?

As I sat down to post this, Simon published a follow up/response to my Weeknote last week on how weird it was to find an AI written profile about me on the internet

He picks up on my conclusion and runs with it:

Culture that can share its context and its process alongside its output well, is culture that will more readily succeed in an era where machines can replicate easily.

I particularly like his conclusion. It’s definitely on an adjacent track to where my own thoughts are also headed.

With AI redefining process, both physically and ideologically, it allows “process” to come out under the shadow of its predecessors and take a new place as a form of media in and of itself.

It’s like the audio grain of a tape recording, the 8-bit noise of a Gameboy, and the nostalgia of a lens flare. Where in the past, the process was a necessity, the process will become a choice. Context matters and the process will reveal it.

I see Colin Walker received issue 7 of my zine in the post this week. All recent paid supports should now have received their issues of SSR zine. I was working on issue 8 just yesterday in fact. There’s still time to get on the mailing list before it goes out.

Permanently Moved

Autonomous Worlds: Misusing The Money Machine

Exploring blockchain’s shift from finance to creating games in digital universes. A look at this tech’s new role in gaming and virtual worlds.

Full Show Notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2023/11/25/301-2339-autonomous-worlds/

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Invoicing lol
• Taxes
• Writing and finishing up some odd and ends
• I finished Nanowrimo on the 21st LOL
• Working on experience.computer stuff
  • I commissioned some new intro music
• Calls. 1 with PGR, and two worlds related calls
• Started Zine #009

Terminal Access

Cade has published a long essay over on NDC entitled Too Late for the Earth, Too Soon for the Stars. It might just be the best thing he’s ever written. (I did a CIWM with Cade a few years ago).

The overwhelming beauty of visiting Elite Dangerous’ future version of our solar system is famous among the game’s player base. Players who livestream on Twitch have broken down in tears in front of their audiences as they watch the sun rise from orbit upon returning to Earth or after tracking down the Voyager probe and hearing recordings of peace[8]. This is the appeal of the open world genre, where play and exploration mechanics mix with in-game social interactions in a beautiful and often hyperreal environment that can engender profound and unexpected interactions between players.

The essay is wide ranging in scope and explores virtual reality, video games, and human experience in the context of our larger societal and environmental issues. It also talks about the moral dilemmas and inhumanity of virtual worlds and how they may become capsules depicting real environments in a time of climate change.

This criticism cannot be levelled against Minecraft alone. Other games involve scenarios like the arbitrary slaughter of animals to craft rare equipment or the demolition of procedurally generated but often pristine environments for raw minerals, and the open world almost always absolves the player from consequences for these actions in service of play.

He also critiques the irony of consuming real-world resources in the form of graphics cards and material computing culture to create digital worlds.

Honestly its fantastic. Check it out.

Dipping the Stacks

Decentralization on a Spectrum: How Fully On-chain Games Are the Future of Web3 Gaming

Of course, traditional gamers will complain that fully on-chain games aren’t just better versions of what they already know. So what?

The Handcrafted Artisanal Web

But it is true, things have gotten shittier. Sites have gotten greedier while also getting worse. I feel like technology in general has been following a path of gross oversimplification in a race to the bottom

Gods and influencers: ringside at KSI vs. Tommy Fury – The Face

This strange and inscrutable form of entertainment, which sits somewhere between Celebrity Deathmatch and the unlicensed fights of the 1970s, has taken over Manchester for the best part of a week, and I have been given Triple A access to the circus.

The World’s Most Popular Painter Sent His Followers After Me Because He Didn’t Like a Review of His Work. Here’s What I Learned

Devon Rodriguez’s art agents and PR handlers might gently tell him that, if one of the things you are selling is likability and good vibes, cheering on this kind of vicious reaction every time you get a review you don’t like is probably not a sustainable career path.

Return To Office is all about power

No matter which way you cut it or which tools you use, remote work does depend on trust in your employees, more devolved power and distributed equity, high transparency, and great, bi-directional communication.

Reading

Still chipping away at Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic Over Role-Playing Games Says About Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds by Joseph P Laycock. Great book, don’t know why I haven’t read it earlier!

X by Y

I’m back to reading the first draft of my friends textbook. I put it down in the business around Turkey. But i’m now aiming for 15 pages a night. Should be done by the end of next week I reckon.

When the Roses Come Again – Daniel Bachman

Last years sonic journey ‘Almanac Behind‘ was about climate anxiety and disaster. It was one of my favourite pieces of media released last year, and When the Roses Come Again is right up there for me in 2023 too.

The album was recorded in the spring on a laptop in a cabin next to Shenandoah National Park. The tracks on the album are whittled down from a full week of eight hours of guitar improvisation every day. If you pay attention you can feel the presence of the music. What was coming up for Bachman is what was laid down on the recording.

According to an interview I read the album is a reflection on samsara. And this shines though I think, especially in the instrumentation. The ghosts of 100 years of recorded American roots music haunts the album . Each track as the immediacy of a jazz track. Meditative. The artist is present – as it were.

Someone’s Roaming In the Gloaming on side two is only 2.26 long but it builds and builds to an immense wall of white noise that wouldn’t be out of place on a Tim Hecker album

Bachman is one of my favourite musicians/artists. I find his music deeply moving and inspirational.

A soundscapist.

Remember Kids: