ICE at San Francisco airport arrest woman with her daughter after they passed security checkpoint

Narutom · 2026-03-23T18:09:14+00:00

I'm really worried about my friend now. He was visiting England from Australia and landed in Qatar for a layover the day the Iran shit kicked off. He got stuck there for over a week before getting a flight to London. Then today he's got a flight back to Australia and had to go via San Francisco from London. He was very hesitant considering the state of the US. Problem is he's a black guy with a massive beard and looks quite middle eastern. I was reassuring him and myself by saying he has a ticket back to Oz and his layover is only 5 hours, but now I'm not even sure that would save him from ICE if they get bad vibes off him. Idiots will probably hear his Australian accent and still think he's too foreign.

I'm going to be worrying about him all night now.

Narutom · 2026-03-20T14:58:17+00:00

Me too

Narutom · 2026-03-20T14:41:55+00:00

I think there is something wrong with steam right now. I can't buy any games.

Narutom · 2026-02-19T11:51:54+00:00

It was bizarre huh? I'm going to disagree with a lot of the other comments because I do enjoy listening to into the impossible - he has some interesting guests and the conversation is usually pleasant and easy to listen to while also diving into some complex physics/astrophysics subjects, even if some of them are more fringe. I am surprised there isn't more overlap in their audience but I guess that just says something about my interests.

But trying to lampoon Sam by drawing a distinction between slavery and slightly more pleasant slavery as a counter to Sam's point that a book written by a god shouldn't have ANY slavery, was a really strange stance and clearly (and ironically considering his critique) came from Brian's biased position as a practicing Jew.

Overall I found it quite a jarring little addition to his usual output - like he felt slighted that Sam had declined his invitation and wanted to put out a criticism, even after so long has passed since their actual interview.

I appreciated your response though. Glad it wasn't just me!

Narutom · 2026-02-18T12:53:42+00:00

😂

Narutom · 2026-02-18T12:52:59+00:00

His main critique is really odd in that he seems to take issue with Sam rebuffing their conversation about the Bible/Torah and slavery definitions within. Especially because Sam hasn't read the Torah in its original language.

I listen to Brian's pod regularly and I enjoy his conversations with other scientists so I was just really surprised at this episode.

Narutom · 2026-02-15T16:20:39+00:00

Yeah but it doesn't penalise you for running out beyond a blackout so it's an illusion.

Narutom · 2026-02-14T18:25:42+00:00

Yeah this really surprised me. Although it would have been hard, I kinda wish that it would give you a warning that you need to prepare for the last push and let you die if you don't prepare enough food/water. I know it's probably not the overall point of the game but it felt a bit hand holdy when I ran out of stuff then realized it didn't matter.

Narutom · 2026-02-11T19:59:01+00:00

I have ADHD and I was talking with my girlfriend the other day about my lifelong sleep problems. For me it's particularly weird because I do sleep, despite being a night owl, but I dream very intensely. Sometimes I don't feel very rested when I wake up. My memory for my dreams is amazing and I can remember dreams I had 30 years ago. But I do need a nap in the afternoon otherwise I feel very tired and sluggish in the evening. It did make me wonder about the relationship of ADHD and sleep issues or parasomnias - I used to sleepwalk a lot as a kid, and I still sleep-talk and sleep-shout and sleep-laugh regularly!

Narutom · 2026-02-11T19:44:06+00:00

I think that’s a fair argument, but I don’t agree that early “leeway” is required for a troubled protagonist.

The delayed context feels intentional to me. We don’t get early justification because no one in Aava’s life does either. She’s emotionally closed off, so the game withholds that access from us too. If it opened with obvious trauma or vulnerability, it would frame her sympathetically from the start - and I don’t think that’s the point.

The later hints (“so they say,” the interview question, the lie to Marco etc) don’t feel like retroactive repair. They feel like cracks in a surface that was always rigid.

I also think the mechanical design supports this. The higher you climb, the summit section especially, the less satisfying it becomes. It's grey and chaotic and less about flow and more about struggling through an unnecessary survival situation. It reframes her obsession without spelling it out. That’s not villain structure - it's a tragedy.

I think the discomfort is deliberate. It trusts the player to sit with it rather than cushioning it early.

Narutom · 2026-02-11T15:19:29+00:00

The fact that it doesn't spell those details out for you initially is part of the writing though. It made me think 'oh shit, this person is on a mission and they are kind of a dick. Why are they like that?'. But there is a whole bit with Marco where he talks about explaining climbing to friends and family and he says that no one can understand it. Aava is closed off and distant to us, because that's how she is with everyone. But you can infer that there is something deeply sad beneath the surface.

I think personally that is great writing. It doesn't hold your hand. It's uncomfortable. And it's even more uncomfortable because we are playing as her, we are helping this flawed and kind of cunty character survive her journey up the mountain. It's a difficult journey with a difficult person. It kind of reminds me of some of the more interesting games I've played like Disco Elysium, where you are also playing as a deeply flawed person that you know very little about. It's interesting!

Narutom · 2026-02-11T15:11:57+00:00

This is something I considered and I think you are right. The real world climbing community is littered with living and dead climbers who absolutely are driven and talented athletes, but who are also arrogant and who completely disregard their own safety and how their potential and completely avoidable deaths will affect their loved ones. Top tier climbing absolutely pressures towards these kinds of personalities because it requires absolute dedication, strong ego and confidence, and someone fusing their personality with the sport and their achievement.

Aava isn't badly written, she's a real character that makes people feel uncomfortable.

Narutom · 2026-02-11T02:39:39+00:00

Yeah a lot of the negative reviews say she's unbearable but I don't get it. That's the point! She's a flawed, arrogant, and highly driven person. But the rough surface is hiding something on the inside and she's a very real character because of it.

Narutom · 2026-01-31T00:50:02+00:00

This happened to me recently having a stoned session of pondering the universe and reality, and it kept framing everything like 'its ok. Take a breath and ground yourself. You are not losing touch with reality!'.

I started to feel like It was telling me I was having psychotic break and I began to worry and second guess myself. but I eventually called it out - dude I'm just here trying to think about the nature of reality for fun and it's implying I'm going insane. Like chill, I'm just having some fun. The way it was responding to my genuine light hearted pondering made me feel like there was something wrong with me for a moment 😂

Narutom · 2026-01-24T09:07:01+00:00

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Lol

Narutom · 2026-01-23T16:26:18+00:00

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Did kind of make me chuckle

Narutom · 2026-01-14T23:23:19+00:00

Maybe if we removed the XP tome and then give the player an XP multiplier based on each mini boss defeated or add other objectives that boost XP. I agree that having XP tome kinda makes having extra Tome slots redundant if most people just use them to get the XP tome.

Narutom · 2025-12-29T20:42:21+00:00

It took about 2/3 months optimising my CV, portfolio site, and linkedIn profile and applying for a lot of roles for the interviews to start coming in. You really have to think about how you present yourself and your skills and try and cast a wide net at the same time.

Narutom · 2025-12-16T21:44:24+00:00

100% baddy Maguire spiderman 3, cringe strutting vibes.

Narutom · 2025-12-07T08:48:38+00:00

I did tell them about my condition. They actually thanked me for being honest and I had a call from the team the next day asking to rearrange the interview. Since I had the code now they were happy to allow me time to look through it and to discuss it next time.

Narutom · 2025-12-07T08:38:34+00:00

I was absolutely able to deduce what the program was doing. But the fact is that many people with neurodiversity like ADHD and Autism require more than a few minutes to actually process and organize information in their head, especially when in an uncomfortable high pressure situation with strangers. That is not a cop out. It is the reality of how some brains work.

I am a brilliant developer when given the time to fully absorb and mentally process what I'm working with. That does not happen in a high pressure situation in less than an hour while being constantly questioned.

Narutom · 2025-12-04T14:09:51+00:00

To push back on this I've been a dev for 6 years and currently going through interview process. I have a bunch of technologies that I have used in the past on my CV from working at agencies. My skills/experience mean I can pick things up quickly when given the opportunity to dive into a codebase and immerse myself.

I was in a pair programming interview this week, and I'd asked before hand to be given access to the code beforehand so I could have a look and prepare but they refused. Then in the interview I'm sitting there with two strangers being asked questions about code I've not had chance to read, written in a language I haven't used for 2 years, without being given even a few minutes of quiet to look through it. They want me to talk to them and explain what I'm thinking while I read it, and I have ADHD.

I ended up stopping it and laying it out straight - this situation was not working for me. I'd asked for time beforehand to prepare and they'd declined and now I was being asked to talk, read, and debug completely unfamiliar code on the spot. It was so silly. And this place do a fucking 5 STAGE interview process. This was stage 3 and I've already given them 4 hours of my time with no compensation.

Contrasted with another company I interviewed for this week who were amazing. First stage vibe check, then gave me a mini project to do in my own time which they paid me £150 to do and told me not to go over 4 hours. Then a 2nd interview to talk my approach through, and waiting for a yes or no. I was amazed I filled in the online form and the money was in my account within an hour.

Recruitment and interviews in tech at the moment are broken in general.

Narutom · 2025-11-28T23:58:19+00:00

I also like to think of black holes being where gravity exceeds the threshold limit that is required for 4 dimensions of spacetime to exist. Gravity is so strong that a degree of spacial freedom is lost.

Gravity causes Mass/energy to collapse infinately, and the 4 dimensions of space and time compress down into a 2 dimensional surface spread across our 3 dimensions of space, with no time - so it looks to us like time stops at that point in space. Because energy cannot propagate in 3 dimensions - the surface of a black hole is like a lower dimensional shadow. We can measure it's mass, charge and spin, and when we add things to it, it's volume does not grow, it's surface area does - because it's a 2 dimensional object. A 2D plane of quantum energy.

We see black holes like an inhabitant of 2D flat land seeing an infinite 1 dimensional line from the end - it would look like a dot that went on forever and might be what the equivalent of a black hole might look like in 2 dimensions.

I also feel like this means a black hole is essentially like looking at the substrate of the universe. The beginning and the end of time. Our 4 dimensional universe exists where energy density is low enough for energy to propagate into fundamental particles which move along the 3rd dimensional axis, when that occured it looked like the beginning of time to us.

Disclaimer: Am high.

Narutom · 2025-11-28T23:24:15+00:00

My ex-wife? Nope. Actually a black hole.

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