I'm not a gamer, Karl, but love the idea of confronting the objectification of others, learning how to identify it and then to not participate in it.
Regarding censorship, I decided to make monthly donations to my favourite go to publication, Consortium News -- and when my payments wouldn't go through I called my credit card holder -- a credit union in Canada -- and asked them why. They checked and said that it was being blocked, but that they could remove the block manually and put the payment through, so I had that done.
I reported this to Consortium News, the most reliable news source I know of, and hopefully they followed up.
Thanks, Karl. I still don't know where this block came from -- I think it was considered fake news or something, that couldn't be further from the truth. Not mainstream news though.
So I started reading thinking it might be a review of the excellent, 50 year old album by Patti Smith and instead found something very, very different: a game that looks like it was made by David Lynch's incredibly evil twin.
I'm not clear on the purpose or intention of the game. If, as it seems, it encourages or obliges you to stoop to inhumane levels in order to 'play', wouldn't some of the sick ****s out there just get a kick out of tormenting the 'horses'?
I think Lynch was an influence. There's an Eraserhead dreamscape feel to some of it. :-)
The game is probably making the point that it is easy to be pushed into evil by fascism; it them moves the narrative towards (spoiler) freeing them, and the consequences of acting or not acting. You don't have free reign (sic) to do what you want, it's quite tightly controlled so is more like a film at times. You certainly can't go off and just keep doing evil things on your own, you have to follow the story. There's a whole theme of agency versus passivity, and the game mechanics are part of that. Trying not to spoiler too much.
I used to play Elite on my Amiga, and put a Strauss CD in the hi-fi so I could play the Blue Danube during docking sequences (a la 2001: A Space Odyssey).
Thoroughly depressing world situation, thank you for highlighting it in one place.
I'm not a gamer, Karl, but love the idea of confronting the objectification of others, learning how to identify it and then to not participate in it.
Regarding censorship, I decided to make monthly donations to my favourite go to publication, Consortium News -- and when my payments wouldn't go through I called my credit card holder -- a credit union in Canada -- and asked them why. They checked and said that it was being blocked, but that they could remove the block manually and put the payment through, so I had that done.
I reported this to Consortium News, the most reliable news source I know of, and hopefully they followed up.
Here's an article about the founding of Consortium News.https://consortiumnews.com/2025/12/09/cn-at-30-why-bob-parry-started-consortium-news/. It's won many awards for journalism, including the Julian Assange Award in 2023.
Well done on following it up! We need to resist it, or they'll end up fully blocking all decent organisations from receiving money.
Thanks, Karl. I still don't know where this block came from -- I think it was considered fake news or something, that couldn't be further from the truth. Not mainstream news though.
So I started reading thinking it might be a review of the excellent, 50 year old album by Patti Smith and instead found something very, very different: a game that looks like it was made by David Lynch's incredibly evil twin.
I'm not clear on the purpose or intention of the game. If, as it seems, it encourages or obliges you to stoop to inhumane levels in order to 'play', wouldn't some of the sick ****s out there just get a kick out of tormenting the 'horses'?
I think Lynch was an influence. There's an Eraserhead dreamscape feel to some of it. :-)
The game is probably making the point that it is easy to be pushed into evil by fascism; it them moves the narrative towards (spoiler) freeing them, and the consequences of acting or not acting. You don't have free reign (sic) to do what you want, it's quite tightly controlled so is more like a film at times. You certainly can't go off and just keep doing evil things on your own, you have to follow the story. There's a whole theme of agency versus passivity, and the game mechanics are part of that. Trying not to spoiler too much.
Thanks Karl.
'Eraserhead' made quite an impression on me when I first saw it....
Me too!
For context, I've not played a computer game since the original Elite 🚀👵🏼
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game)
I used to play Elite on my Amiga, and put a Strauss CD in the hi-fi so I could play the Blue Danube during docking sequences (a la 2001: A Space Odyssey).
❤️