Just my blogroll - BlogFlock

Post-Dinner Interview with the Uncle Who Was Demoted to the Kids’ Table at Thanksgiving - McSweeney’s

2025-11-26T00:30:00.000Z

REPORTER: I’m here live with Uncle Bill just moments after Thanksgiving dinner. Bill, can you walk us through what happened tonight?

UNCLE BILL: Sure, I mean, obviously, I’m not happy with the result. Before we took our places, I was informed I’d be sitting at the kids’ table, which, frankly, I think is a slap in the face given my history with this organization. Everyone likes to preach that we’re a family around here, and you just don’t expect to be treated this way by family. I respect the host’s judgment, but I disagree with the decision. I just tried to focus on the meal and do my best out there.

REPORTER: Were you given a reason as to why you were demoted?

UNCLE BILL: I honestly have no idea. I’m always offering new and exciting conspiracy theories to encourage open, socratic discussion. I’m the undisputed leading devil’s advocate in the family. If I have to get up to use the bathroom, I always crawl under the table so nobody has to scoot their chair in to let me squeeze by. I bring a lot to the table, but tonight I was told to take it elsewhere. I won’t lie to you. This hurts.

REPORTER: Did you talk with the host about the seating arrangement? Maybe it was a mistake?

UNCLE BILL: You know, I tried, but it’s hard to get a straight answer around here. I just wanted to have an honest conversation, so right after Grandpa blessed the food, I yelled out to the host, “What exactly is your problem with me anyway? You’re always treating me like a baby, and I’m sick of it!” She had nowhere to run. You should have seen her face.

REPORTER: I can’t imagine she appreciated that. How did she respond?

UNCLE BILL: Well, everyone stared, and she laughed uneasily to try to break the tension. She then deflected by saying the kids’ table “has a better view of the living room TV, so I wouldn’t have to get up to check my DraftKings parlays during the meal.”

REPORTER: I did notice that this year’s kids’ table was actually pushed against the grown-ups’ table. Did that help soften the blow at all?

UNCLE BILL: It helped some, but not much. It was still humiliating. The kids’ table was a good six inches shorter and wobbled whenever I tried to cut my ham. It was a safety hazard, and we’re lucky no one was seriously injured, especially considering how fast and loose some of those kids were playing with the hot gravy boat.

REPORTER: How did you adjust to the style and pace of play at the kids’ table? Some say it can be a totally different ball game.

UNCLE BILL: I gave it my best shot, but I could not find any common ground with these kids. We’ve never really eaten together, and we just didn’t have any chemistry. I was with a handful of nieces and nephews under ten years old, cousin Becca’s dweeb boyfriend of four years that no one likes, not even Becca, great-aunt Helene, who just played Candy Crush on her iPad with the volume up the whole time, and Bandit, the family labradoodle, who absolutely did not need his own place setting.

REPORTER: I imagine it took some time to get settled and start operating as a unit?

UNCLE BILL: We had our moments late in dessert. When the family went around the room asking what everyone was thankful for, I got all the kids to say “beer,” which was pretty awesome, but we ran out of things to talk about pretty quickly. We didn’t like any of the same cartoons, and the turkey made everyone sleepy. Not exactly an all-star performance from any of us.

REPORTER: This year, we saw Ted become the youngest family member to get promoted to the grown-ups’ table at only 12 years and 209 days old. Do you have anything to say to Ted?

UNCLE BILL: Welcome to the big leagues, Ted. Enjoy it while it lasts. One year, you’re the wunderkind who is “so mature for his age,” discussing your slightly above-average standardized test scores, and regaling the elders with your future plans to become a doctor, lawyer, astronaut, or some combination of the three. At twelve, you’re on a meteoric rise, but only thirty-five short years later, if you’re not careful, you’re the dinosaur that the meteor wipes out. Eventually, you’ll find yourself seated in a rusted fold-up chair, placed at the head of a plastic card table with no tablecloth on Thanksgiving day, defending yourself against the “spilled mac and cheese on the ground” accusations.

REPORTER: What’s next for Uncle Bill?

UNCLE BILL: I think a lot of uncles my age would take this as a sign to retire and become one of those old dudes who eat by themselves in the living room recliner during family meals. Not me. I’m still hungry. And that’s why I’ll be immediately appealing this decision to the family elders and hope to be reinstated to my rightful position by Christmas.

Casual CSV - Irreal

2025-11-25T22:18:43.000Z

Charles Choi is back with another app in his Casual Suit.This time it’s Casual CSV, a front end for csv-mode. As Choi says, CSV is a seemingly simple format but the rules are really fussy and easy to violate. That’s where csv-model comes in. You can see Choi’s post for some of the amenities it offers but the nicest, in my opinion, is the ability to display the file in a spreadsheet format. Again, see Choi’s post for a screen shot. One of the things that Casual CSV adds is the ability to select a region of rows and export them to an Org or Markdown table (if your flavor of Markdown supports tables).

Choi says that he thinks of CSV files as a data exchange format and avoids editing them if he can. I certainly agree with that. I’m sure I could count the number of times I’ve edited a CSV file on a single hand. Nonetheless, it’s nice to have a tool that can make having to do so a bit easier.

At the end of his post Choi offers a few suggestions to make working with CSV easier. He says you should turn off line wrapping and turning on field alignment and separator auto detection. He provides a bit of Elisp that you can add to your configuration to do this automatically. Now he could only find a way of having me wrirte CSV instead of CVS (the pharmacy). I got it wrong more times than right in my first draft of this post.

Sidenote

Sorry for posting this late. I’m traveling and my network connection is sketchy.

Emacs Flaw: kill-buffer Command Induces Buffer Accumulation - Xah Emacs Blog

2025-11-25T22:12:25.000Z

2025-11-25

Emacs Flaw: kill-buffer Command Induces Buffer Accumulation

Predicting Steam Machine prices would be a lot easier if RAM costs hadn't gone horribly wrong - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-11-25T17:57:08.000Z

This week’s most popular game is not a robovoiced extraction shooter or a buggy martial arts RPG, but Guess The Steam Machine Price: a well-meaning (if largely speculative) timepasser wherein whoever most accurately converts Valve’s teasing into a final street price for the resurrected SteamOS mini-PC wins. In 2026, when it launches.

I feel left out, so will have a go myself below, though there’s quite a serious kink in mine or indeed anyone’s plan to ticket the Steam Machine by speccing an equivalent DIY PC. Alas, RAM prices have gone stratospheric, in a manner not seen among computing components since the Great Graphics Card Dumpster Fire of 2020.

Two Point Museum: Zooseum DLC is the biggest yet launching December 2 with a free update out now - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-11-25T17:29:05.000Z

SEGA and Two Point Studios revealed today that not only will the Two Point Museum: Zooseum DLC be the biggest yet but it's also arriving really soon.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Saturnalia creators Santa Ragione will "wind down operations" after Valve ban horror game Horses from Steam - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-11-25T17:13:55.000Z

Saturnalia and Wheels of Aurelia developers Santa Ragione have announced that they will "wind down operations and face a high risk of closing the studio", following Valve's refusal to allow their upcoming horror game Horses on Steam, PC gaming's largest digital storefront by some distance. They say they have the funds to support and update Horses after launch for around six months, but claim they "will not be able to start new projects unless Horses somehow recoups its development costs without access to more than 75% of the PC gaming market".

Dosa Divas is a flavourful RPG village roadtrip and a more assured follow-up to Thirsty Suitors - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-11-25T16:30:00.000Z

If you're fond of crispy South Indian cooking, JRPG-style road-trips that take you from village to village, older female protagonists, turn-based combat with a healthy garnish of QTEs, slapstick satire, and food-themed reinventions of familiar mechanics... you have probably already wishlisted, bookmarked or otherwise made preparations to buy Dosa Divas, the next game from Thirsty Suitors developers Outerloop.

In this low-angle diorama-style fantasy, you play Samara and Amani, two wandering chefs who are fighting a fast food corporation run by their estranged sister Lina. Samara and Amani travel and battle by way of their "spirit mech", Goddess, an ambulatory LEGO forklift in optional oven mitts, whose tricks include clubbing enemies with her own unplugged leg, and whipping up fresh dosas from gathered ingredients in a sort of culinary mind palace.

Quantic Dream's Spellcasters Chronicles plays better than I thought, but is still an oddly passive MOBA - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-11-25T16:00:45.000Z

One of 2025’s unlikeliest game announcements was Spellcasters Chronicles, a 3v3 MOBA in development at erstwhile singleplayer specialists Quantic Dream. It’s a three-lane magic-slinger starring a selection of flying mages, with an emphasis on summoning creatures to do your structure demolition work for you, and I’ve now played a couple of games ahead of its closed beta on December 4th-8th.

I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about Spellcasters based on the original reveal. And after two games of mostly bodyguarding other, bigger, cooler magical beings, I’m still not convinced. That said, it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared: it makes bold, maybe even brave departures from wizard fight genre conventions, some of which pay off rather nicely.

Emacs Keys: Keybinding Functions, Emacs 29 Change - Xah Emacs Blog

2025-11-25T15:56:06.000Z

2025-11-25

Emacs Keys: Keybinding Functions, Emacs 29 Change

Cold Fear, I Am Alive and more arrive in the GOG Preservation Program along with a Black Friday sale - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-11-25T15:32:46.000Z

For those that prefer the DRM-free store GOG, they've expanded again with new enhanced releases of Cold Fear and I Am Alive along with a Black Friday sale.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

TRX an open-source reimplementation of Tomb Raider 1 and Tomb Raider 2 version 1.0 released - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-11-25T14:56:37.000Z

With lots of enhancements for the classics Tomb Raider 1 and Tomb Raider 2, the TRX project version 1.0 is out now with an LUA scripting engine for modders.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Security updates for Tuesday - LWN.net

2025-11-25T14:46:41.000Z

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (buildah, firefox, go-rpm-macros, kernel, kernel-rt, podman, and thunderbird), Debian (erlang, python-gevent, and r-cran-gh), Fedora (buildah, chromium, k9s, kubernetes1.33, kubernetes1.34, podman, python-mkdocs-include-markdown-plugin, and webkitgtk), Gentoo (Chromium, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge. Opera, qtsvg, redict, redis, UDisks, and WebKitGTK+), Mageia (cups-filters and ruby-rack), Oracle (kernel and libssh), Red Hat (.NET 8.0, tigervnc, xorg-x11-server, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), SUSE (act, bind, cups-filters, govulncheck-vulndb, grub2, libebml, python39, and tcpreplay), and Ubuntu (linux-raspi, linux-raspi-realtime, openjdk-21, openjdk-25, python3.12, python3.11, python3.10, python3.9, python3.8, python3.7, python3.6, python3.5, python3.4, and runc-app, runc-stable).

Monsters Are Coming turns boring skill upgrades into urban planning decisions with deadly stakes - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-11-25T14:11:14.000Z

I get no joy from skills and gear in games that tweak back of house stats. An upgrade that adds 0.5% to explosion radii. A helmet that multiplies your base 'luck' total. A god's blessing that increases your character's attack rate by 4%. On paper these boosts change a game, but I often find them unsatisfyingly intangible in practice. I am but a simple editor of words and, as such, numbers confuse me. If I had wanted to be up to my chin in numbers, I would have followed my uncle into the abacus-making business. (For one thing, I'm glad my house isn't filled with loose beads waiting to be painfully trod on while barefoot.)

Which is why I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying Monsters Are Coming, a game that if you lifted up and shook would rattle with invisible numbers like a rainstick.

Voivod: The Nuclear Warrior shows off a new prototype trailer of the heavy metal platformer - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-11-25T13:37:38.000Z

Chaosmonger Studio continue working on Voivod: The Nuclear Warrior a retro-styled heavy metal platformer in partnership with the band Voivod.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

You can get 18 different stories in the Assemble Entertainment Humble Bundle - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-11-25T13:31:21.000Z

A nice big mixture of games, themes and stories here available in the Assemble Entertainment Humble Bundle.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

I’m in Charge at This Hertz Location, and Buddy, You’re Not Getting a Car Today - McSweeney’s

2025-11-25T13:01:00.000Z

Here’s how this is gonna go: First, you will step up to the rental counter only when I give you The Look. The Look is not markedly different from my resting face. In fact, it’s no different at all. But it’s your job to recognize The Look, so pay attention. If, upon your turn, you hesitate for one single second, I will call out “Next,” in a way that strikes fear into the hearts of God, everyone in line behind you, and this cardboard cutout of Hertz brand ambassador Tom Brady.

When you get to the counter, do not ask how I’m doing—I’m stuck inside a Hertz location for eight hours a day. How do you think I’m doing?

What you do need to do is give me your driver’s license and credit card within the first three seconds of approaching the counter. This is not something I’ll ask you verbally. This is something you must understand innately, while I stare at my computer and hold out my hand just enough to suggest I might be waiting for something, but not enough to make it clear what I’m waiting for. And I swear to god, if you start reading me your reservation number out loud, I will shut you down and send you out of here on a bicycle.

Since you brought it up, can you ride a bicycle? I ask because we have no cars.

Okay, now you’re getting upset. You’re getting upset despite the fact that we have strict rules against getting upset at this Hertz location. But tell me, honestly, when you reserved a rental car through Hertz, you thought… what? That we were going to set aside a special little car just for you? Seriously? Oh my god.

Let me put it this way: If we had cars around here, we would’ve given one to the man who was in line in front of you. Look at him now, crying in the corner because he “has no way to get out of here.” Does it look like he has a car? He doesn’t.

Wow. I can’t believe I even have to say this, but no, I don’t know "where all the cars are.” I’m not the keeper of the cars, okay? Jesus. I mean, really. Everybody expects us to have cars around here. Like that’s the only thing we’re good for. Like we also don’t have mini bottles of room-temperature water sitting out on the counter because we thought you might like that. Great, now you’re crying too.

I don’t think you’d be crying if you saw the situation from my perspective. Here’s what happened: You reserved a rental car. You paid for that rental car. I gave that rental car to somebody else. Or wait… did I? Haha, I honestly don’t know. I’m looking at your reservation now, and I’ve never seen this car in my life.

Jesus, fine. We have one secret vehicle in the garage out back. It’s a fifteen-seat, stick-shift passenger van. It’s seven hundred dollars a day, and I just put you down for it, and you agreed to take it by failing to interrupt me before I started this sentence.

Seriously? Now you don’t want the car? You come in here begging me for a car, I hand you one on a silver platter, and suddenly you don’t want it? I’m starting to think you never wanted to rent a car in the first place. I’m starting to think you wanted to take an airplane back to your hometown for Thanksgiving, but you couldn’t do that because your family wouldn’t stop sending you videos they saw on Facebook of terrifyingly long security lines at the airport during the government shutdown. Well, I’ve got news for you, pal. Around here, we respect cars. We value cars. We don’t fly in “airplanes.” You think Tom Brady flies in airplanes? Newsflash: He rents cars at Hertz. Yeah, that’s right. Tom Brady—a man worth $300 million—is a Hertz Head.

So, if you’re “so mad” that your “reservation didn’t mean anything” and if you’re just “too good” to “pay for a vehicle” you don’t “know how to operate,” you can take your sorry butt over to the airport and pay hundreds of dollars for a flight that’s going to get delayed by one hour every hour until it’s canceled at midnight. How’s that for a happy Thanksgiving?

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 multiplayer review - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-11-25T12:42:05.000Z

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's multiplayer is better than its awful, terrible, abominable, ghastly, hideous, not very good campaign. But 'better' in this case does not necessarily mean 'good'. This year's anxious flurry of maps, modes and zombies achieves the base requirement for a satisfactory shooting experience, and there are a couple of ideas that are interesting if inconsistently successful. But the overall quality is wildly incoherent, while the whole package is overshadowed by the spectre of generative AI.

The biggest change to this year's multiplayer is also the least interesting to discuss, its approach to skill-based matchmaking. Call of Duty's habit of matching you with players allegedly on your ability level has come under fire in recent years for flattening the experience. So this year, Treyarch offers you a choice, letting you play with 'standard' SBMM, or in a pool where SBMM is 'minimally considered'.

The Steam Deck LCD is 20% off, and I'm still not buying one because it's crap for RTS - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-11-25T11:49:02.000Z

The original 256GB LCD version of Valve's Steam Deck is 20% off till 1st December, knocking it down to around $319.20 or £279.20 in the UK. It's all part of this year's Blackening of Friday, whereby whimpering price tags are shoved partway into sausage machines for the benefit of the first Xmas shoppers.

"That's a chunk of cheddar," whistled our new editorial director Julian, a choice of words I choose to take literally, mostly because he's just ruined my sausage machine analogy. According to the UK's Office of National Statistics, cheddar was 873p a kilogram as of January 2025, the last recorded figure. Assuming that average holds true, the Steam Deck is currently worth 32 kilograms of classic farmhouse cheese. That is a chunk of cheddar. Good work, Julian! This is why they handed you the big boss trousers.

Nominations begin for the 2025 Steam Awards - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-11-25T11:38:13.000Z

One of the biggest events of the year for game developers is here, with the nominations now open for the 2025 Steam Awards.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Classic racers FlatOut and FlatOut 2 get Steam Achievements, bug fixes and more improvements - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-11-25T11:29:05.000Z

ZOOM Platform Media just gave the classic racers FlatOut and FlatOut 2 some more free upgrades, nice to see them continued to be supported.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.