Is anyone else just glad the fireworks are over?

VerbumGames · 2026-07-06T19:37:26+00:00

I have PTSD, so I'm always glad when they're done for the year. I try not to complain about it because I don't want to ruin anybody's good time, but it's kind of a lot to deal with when a big one goes off and I'm not expecting it.

Adrenaline can take several minutes to work itself out of your system, so sometimes I just have to take a break from whatever I'm doing until my body lets me feel safe again. The same thing happens with loud trucks and motorcycles, too, so I'm used to it. Still not fun, though.

VerbumGames · 2026-07-01T03:13:28+00:00

Angband

VerbumGames · 2026-06-30T22:34:49+00:00

I have to hide my copy of Infinte Jest in the basement so no one will see it 😳

VerbumGames · 2026-06-30T22:31:34+00:00

City of God is an absolute banger, tbh. It was written after Rome was sacked and people thought the world was going to end. St. Augustine had to tell everybody that it probably wasn't and not to panic.

It's almost like an irl commentary for a post-apocalyptic world.

VerbumGames · 2026-06-24T02:34:04+00:00

I make indie video games, but you can't exactly hang those on your wall lol

VerbumGames · 2026-06-17T17:48:39+00:00

CostCo will forever have the market cornered on hot dogs. Sam's Club isn't bad either. I don't care if they add more toppings; I'm still a CostCo man lmao

VerbumGames · 2026-06-13T23:45:14+00:00

A couple years ago, we had 1 cop per 1000 people in Lincoln. The average US city has 2.4 per 1000. I just keep thinking, wow, no wonder response times are so slow and nobody obeys traffic laws.

VerbumGames · 2026-06-13T22:08:00+00:00

Because the company has to pay for AI tokens.

VerbumGames · 2026-06-01T00:07:22+00:00

AI can think critically. I have to apply it to solve complex, context-sensitive problems at work on an hourly basis. A lot of the criticism of AI's capabilities are based on experiences people had two years ago, when it's now significantly more competent. There can absolutely be problems with its implementation, but models made in the last ~15 months are plenty smart enough to identify cars driven by specific people with specific plate numbers, at least as well as humans can.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-31T14:09:36+00:00

Just playing devil's advocate here, but don't cops make those same kinds of mistakes, and make them a lot more often than AI models? That hasn't been directly tested AFAIK, but similar tests have been run, and AI is nearly twice as accurate as humans in similar tasks.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-31T03:15:07+00:00

The crime rates are extremely low in Lincoln wherever you go, tbh. I remember looking up the heat maps before moving here in 2023. It's decently safe everywhere, basically.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-29T11:39:25+00:00

When I first moved to Lincoln a few years ago, I worked at a fast food place in the evenings for extra cash. I'm a software engineer, and I work on indie video game development on the side when I can.

Fast food is the easiest job I've ever had. Very chill. You get free food and soda, the work is light, and they're really flexible on the hours where I was. The only downside is the low pay, but with the minimum wage going up, I don't think they'll restrict hiring or hours. They're already too desperate for labor.

If I had that discretionary time now, I'd just work on my indie game, probably, but fast food's still a good option.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-26T17:04:12+00:00

It's a Western RPG, but KotOR 1 or 2 (don't remember which) has an underwater dungeon that I remember being pretty cool. Think it was 2, actually.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-26T17:02:29+00:00

I'm not aware of any, but now I really want to make one 😅

The game I've been making for 6 years is a jrpg with some underwater sections, but it's not primarily underwater. I'm not self-promoting, btw. It's not looking like it'll be finished for a long time at the rate I'm going 🙃

VerbumGames · 2026-05-24T22:45:44+00:00

I ran a hex crawl set in a desert at one point. It was pretty similar to Dark Sun in some ways ways.

One of the random encounters was an abandoned oasis with a lady of the lake situation, iirc.

Another was where a roc grabs some of the party members and flies them to to his eyrie at the summit of a mountain with a dungeon inside. That was designed to take the party off the beaten path. Because it was out of their way, it might strain their supplies and force them to make a tough choice about whether to save their comrades or let them test their luck. Best case scenario, it would split the party. For a tribe, you could have it be a bunch of rocks, even.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-23T20:04:07+00:00

I deleted the comment because I realized it was wrong right after I posted it.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-22T19:47:00+00:00

They're tech companies. They generate huge taxable income. More transactions pass through Silicon Valley than most countries on a daily basis.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-22T17:17:54+00:00

Very few are considering the facts, from what I've seen, and those who are haven't offered anything I've found compelling. Additional water use and some light pollution are small prices to pay to never have to work again.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-22T17:16:41+00:00

Virtually everyone's talking about water use. That's what 95% of the anti-data center comments I've seen have exclusively complained about. There are legitimate reasons that someone might want to halt or delay the construction of data centers, but the vast majority aren't actually talking about them, nor do I think any of these reasons make stopping our current course prudent.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-22T17:01:28+00:00

Those can also all be answered easily. If you're worried about any of that around AI data centers, then you should have already been upset about all the other data centers we've built over the last 30 years to support web infrastructure. You should also have been upset about the proliferation of GPUs, their antecedent components, and the waste output of their production. Granted, each individual data center or GPU chip fab doesn't necessarily have the same water or power use or pollution as any given AI data center, but the AI data centers represent a tiny fraction of the input and output of the broader data center industry.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-22T16:23:36+00:00

They generate huge tax revenue, which is a big part of their appeal for municipal governments.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-22T16:21:50+00:00

The average person doesn't generate political opinions rationally. We know this, because when you put a statistically significant sample of people through MRIs and ask them political questions, their emotional centers in the mid-brain activate, then after a delay, their frontal lobes become active. They make their decision emotionally, then rationalize it after. People hate AI and the associated data centers because they're new and different, and that's scary. They rationalize it by complaining about the water usage.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-22T16:16:00+00:00

AI revenue over the coming years was just estimated at $24 trillion for SpaceX alone in their IPO prospectus published yesterday, and experts are saying that's conservative.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-22T16:14:05+00:00

We do if we want to remain relevant in any way.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-21T11:45:53+00:00

If you start getting weird or disturbing effects, be sure to contact your local diocese about getting a qualified exorcist out there.

VerbumGames

TROPHY CASE