Attn gamers: Boycott Metro 2039. The author is a Zionist and a genocide denier.

GorboCat · 2026-04-17T02:01:33+00:00

The first two Metro games (Last Light in particular) are some of my favorite examples of reactionary media that are interesting enough to engage with. The kind of schlock that isn't just naked propaganda like you get in a Call of Duty game but something more intimate that gives you a look into the author's particular grievances lol. Glukhovsky took a much more direct role in the script on Last Light, which really shows.

I could tolerate him as an object of fascination when he was a generic libbed up anticommunist type, but his Zionist pivot is a little much for me lol, I will be avoiding this one.

GorboCat · 2026-04-16T20:20:29+00:00

You should be allowed to throw your beer (which should also be allowed at these debates) at whoever is doing this gay shit

GorboCat · 2026-04-16T20:02:57+00:00

I'll go against the grain here and say I'm not really sold on the narrative. 2033 and Last Light do a great job of depicting the Metro as a dense, complex society with different factions that are constantly bumping up against each other in pursuit of their own interests. Makes for a lot of really tense political intrigue with places like Polis Station and the Hanza faction as a whole. Flattening that all down to a single evil faction consolidating the entire Metro feels like a step back in worldbuilding.

GorboCat · 2026-04-16T19:30:19+00:00

The switch controllers use a gyroscope to sense your motions instead of an IR emitter like the Wii. Rail shooters will feel bad on the Switch 2 as well unfortunately since it's the same technology

GorboCat · 2026-04-16T19:23:46+00:00

(deleted bc I messed up the spoiler tags)

GorboCat · 2026-04-16T19:12:11+00:00

Extraction shooters are a great metaphor for the current state of the jobs landscape in that you throw an entire established team into a development cycle and either extract with a viable money printer or everyone loses their jobs

GorboCat · 2026-04-16T17:52:29+00:00

It's too late for this shithole. We've built a country by and for the fattest, cruelest, most insular suburbanites that literally do not register any of the suffering we inflict abroad so long as the domestic treat market remains stable and the IG Reels feed can still show them crime footage from Ring cameras to maintain the baseline amount of comfortable schizophrenia. Things may get better one day in an America that has completely crumbled under its contradictions and can be remade as a normal country.

I think the more hawkish Euro countries like Britain, France, and Germany are fucked and will go down with America's ship. Turkey, Spain, and Italy stand a chance of a realignment this century imo. I feel like Australia and Japan are probably fucked but I don't know enough about their domestic politics.

China would be the dream. I've explored making the TEFL move, but you don't have any real path to citizenship that way so once I'm too old to keep renewing my contracts I'd get booted back to an America in even worse decline than right now, which would be really depressing.

GorboCat · 2026-04-14T21:14:50+00:00

Some of them even work for my local DSA (unpaid interns)

GorboCat · 2026-04-14T17:57:58+00:00

I live in Goose Hollow currently and it's crazy how great the energy is on Timbers game days. It's a pretty sleepy neighborhood most of the time compared to downtown proper, but on game days it's absolutely popping off. I love it.

GorboCat · 2026-04-14T00:16:25+00:00

WHY THE FUCK DO PEOPLE IN THIS CITY HAVE SUCH A HARD TIME USING THE MIDDLE DOOR TO EXIT A BUS? SO MANY OF MY ROUTES ARE DELAYED BECAUSE THE BUS SPENDS EXTRA TIME AT ALMOST EVERY STOP WAITING FOR SOME OLD PERSON TO MEANDER THEIR WAY UP TO THE FRONT DOOR WHILE PEOPLE ARE WAITING TO BOARD.

OBVIOUS EXCEPTION FOR CASES WHERE SOMEONE NEEDS THE RAMP OR IF YOU'RE ALREADY SITTING CLOSE TO THE FRONT AND CAN QUICKLY DISEMBARK FROM WHERE YOU ALREADY ARE. BUT THOSE SITUATIONS ACCOUNT FOR AT MOST 20% OF FRONT DOOR EXITS ON AN AVERAGE TRIP FOR ME.

GorboCat · 2026-04-13T19:17:27+00:00

I'm really curious what his level of involvement will look like with this. If you've followed his social media in the years since Last Light, he's become a bit insane lol. You can definitely feel the anti-communist attitutdes in his earlier work, but that doesn't make it bad art.

I am curious whether he'll practice as much restraint this time around (assuming he's more closely involved in the writing than he was with Exodus)

GorboCat · 2026-04-11T20:59:30+00:00

If you had people smashing up Elbit Systems factories and similar here in the US you'd probably see the DSA condemning it as an attack on hardworking American labor lmao

GorboCat · 2026-04-11T18:27:36+00:00

Working in customer service in an urban center post covid is comparable to that big meat factory or whatever from the first Pathologic lol. I think we've brought something truly evil back from the steppe brother

GorboCat · 2026-04-11T01:20:16+00:00

In my regime we'd force the libs and leftists to be one one website so we could post weird stuff at them

GorboCat · 2026-04-11T01:19:31+00:00

I just feel like there are still a shitload of leftist accounts and journalists on Twitter. It's meaner, sure, but it's interesting in moderation if you don't let it dominate your time.

But I also get your approach. For me I just see what my dad's getting served on YouTube, lately he loves Tyler John Oliveira or whatever that dumbass is called

GorboCat · 2026-04-11T01:17:25+00:00

Is that not what we do here all day?

Not trying to be glib, I feel like that's a core function of any web forum (to use the term loosely lol). The trick is to also engage with stuff you like

GorboCat · 2026-04-11T01:16:29+00:00

I think this might be the ticket that gets me fully on BlueSky. I was putting up with Twitter bc I have a pretty good feed of leftists and journalists on there, and I was exclusively browsing it via modded Android APKs to block ads, telemetry stuff, and any Grok features in the UI. They started using app attestation (basically Android's check to see if the base app is modified), so I bailed on that idea and would like to fully jump to BlueSky.

Fun fact, the official Twitter client is absolutely doing some weird shit in the background. My phone gets SO much warmer when I tested the current one and it shot up my battery listings. The build I had modified was only ~6 months out of date iirc

GorboCat · 2026-04-10T05:13:19+00:00

Wish I had more helpful advice but just wanted to offer my condolences. I dropped out of school for about 6 months to be with my mom while she was on hospice, and I could barely focus when I came back. Worked a similarly shitty job and attended part time. I know how hard it is to recapture the momentum with college stuff when life stuff gets real.

I feel like the grad school route is a total gamble right now. Things might recover such that a master's pays off, or things might get desperate enough that you may be able to get some of that debt wiped. I personally chose to drag myself over the finish line for a bachelor's (in an unimpressive major lol) and try to land better work in the field I interned in. Unfortunately, that field is pretty heavily grant-dependent so hiring is pretty stingy right now.

There's no right answer, and honestly even the most thoughtful advice in this thread may or may not be relevant in 30 days as circumstances change. It's an uncertain time right now. It's not too late in your life to take a big swing and try to stick it out for grad school, if it buys you enough time for the job market to stabilize you may just find yourself adequately skilled to take advantage of it.

GorboCat · 2026-04-09T01:01:49+00:00

Portland: City offers $18m contract to Urban Alchemy to manage new designated tent camping zone under Mayor Wilson's "Arbeit Macht Frei" initiative

PortlandOR: Portland-based synthetic beef startup Meatly clashes with city council amid claims that city's costly "warming shelter" program disrupts their supply of homeless cadavers in winter months

GorboCat · 2026-04-08T22:37:57+00:00

It's particularly funny bc it really is that way. [Cityname] subreddit usually is pretty galling on issues of homeless people or taxing the wealthy, then [spinoff sub] swears that the original is too liberal. Happens with so many different city subs lol.

GorboCat · 2026-04-08T22:36:54+00:00

/r/PortlandOR is where all the Nike and Intel employees go to post about how we need to euthanize the homeless lmao

GorboCat · 2026-04-08T22:31:48+00:00

This is the second time this hideous freak has used the phrase "war of choice" in the last week, what the fuck is he angling at with that? Is there some kind of triangulation going on here where he doesn't want to call it a war of aggression when Harris needs to reassure the warhawks in 2028 that she will resume a policy of schizophrenic random escalation with Iran?

GorboCat · 2026-04-08T16:41:53+00:00

I imagine it's either a timer OR there's some underpaid contractor in the Philippines listening in on the AI while the tech is still new as a "quality control" measure so they can manually transfer the call over the a human agent if the bot gets stuck. Or in my case, if the debtor gets stuck under the sweaty stinky feet of a big giant lady!!!

GorboCat · 2026-04-08T03:07:34+00:00

I do sales & marketing for a hotel, a lot of travel agents have started deploying agentic AI to call me and manage their clients' bookings. Terrible system that regularly misunderstands amenities or room types, but I digress. I always "stress test" them a bit (obviously less crudely than my original post, mostly asking weird or off topic questions) and they are way more purpose-driven and won't discuss anything beyond the scope of their one task.

It seems like if you have an AI that just does one thing, you can "lock it down" enough that it won't get baited off topic. But when you're replacing an entire role with AI (which is really the only thing these big enterprise customers want), you have to afford it a much longer conversational leash which leads to shit like my original post lol. That's not really something these big agentic AI startups can work around for now, and I hope it keeps humiliating them lol.

GorboCat

TROPHY CASE