Triphibian

The whole paragraph that starts with, "Smartphones are anti-enchantment devices" is gold. Love where you are coming from with this.

I bought Ween's Brown Box collection in this period. A band's entire studio output on CD for $50 felt like a great value. When I see single CDs at Barnes and Noble with a MSRP of $18 and more I feel otherwise.

He has a Lightphone which he hates. That's how I know it is working. He built a gaming PC last year, so I am aware that Pandora's box is open there. But look, it has been thirteen years of playing whackamole with YouTube. I can't keep him off it. They watch it at school. They give him chromebooks that I have no control over. And the stuff I do have control over the control is tenuous. I have largely given up. He is pretty much grown now. But man, has it felt like gaslighting when people are like, "Do parenting. Use the settings. Get a dumb phone. Problem solved."

And have you ever tried to find or access parental settings on a school Chromebook?

And of course these settings do nothing if he just opens any browser and watches YouTube logged off.

It took some digging but I found that setting on browser. Thank you. I'd love a big toggle for "brain fucking" that you could just set to off.

Where's the setting to make YouTube not display shorts?

You're the pro. But as a casual observer, games tend to have menus with lots of settings options. Every other bit of software I use has next to none. Totally anecdotal, so I totally understand that my view is probably skewed. Keep up the good work?

I keep observing that accessibility features often contain the tools we need to make our devices and apps more humane. This is one area that video games have been way ahead on.

There are public domain movies in the collection, notably Night of the Living Dead and Carnival of Souls.

I did find the over-sized Godzilla Showa Era box on the shelf.

In another universe he called it "Whizzing on an electric fence."

YouTube.

Sometimes it is nice to have one thing that does its one job extremely well.

When I lived in Tehran in the late '70s people said "merci" to express thanks.

The dev explains more here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3716836/klaser-a-printable-...

I bet you could suggest collection databases to include. Was thinking Discogs would be cool too.

Your collection or wishlist, printed onto standard 63 × 88 mm game cards. Movies, books, board games, video games, comics: don't look at your phone to decide what to watch next, when you can shuffle cards and let fate decide (*)

The Backrooms kid got to spend three years working on a project he was clearly passionate about. He wasn't chasing clicks, creating daily content to keep the algorithm happy or worrying about ever mysterious ebb and flow of Google's payouts. He had an agent and manager that got him a deal and probably points on profit and who will make sure he gets paid. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.

This story at Deadline really does a good job of outlining the strategy for the film. https://deadline.com/2026/05/backrooms-kane-parsons-box-offi...

Hollywood is looking for a slightly different skill set than what YouTubers do, but what they do want is that relationship with an audience. Filmmaking chops can be taught and nurtured, but that trust that some of these creators have earned is gold to them.

Liminception.

I suppose if The Daniels were the last directors to enjoy the music video > Hollywood path then Neil Blomkamp might be the proto-example of Internet content > Hollywood.

I saw a Youtuber recently make a compelling argument that one of the features Hollywood has been missing is the pipeline of young, imaginative talent that music video direction used to provide. Backrooms, Iron Lung, etc. make a good case that YouTube can be that new pipeline.

Backrooms and a new Boards of Canada record coming out on the same weekend feels like some kind of cultural signal.

Andrew Callahan of Channel 5 has mentioned several times that he adopted the technique of "active listening" which largely amounts to letting people talk until they stop. And then when you are tempted to prompt them, just wait and let them continue. And when they do that is when they start to really get real.

I had the good fortune of being able to hang out and watch him and some vintage Apple enthusiasts recover some source code for an old game. I have a lot of admiration for his dedication.

I remember showing up to buy a new Call of Duty game on release day, back when physical was the only way to buy games and seeing tons of people with boxes full of old games and consoles. I realized then that GameStop's differentiation from other retailers was that it was also a kind of pawn shop.

I have been kicking around this idea for a bumper sticker. "The '90s were lame, but they were still better than this."

I remember not loving the '90s when I was living through them, but my sense now (and I am hearing it more and more from others) is that we didn't realize how good we had it.

Same. I don't like to yuck other people's yums, but I don't get a lot from those kinds of games. Talking to strangers is not a problem for me.

I have been spending a bit of time at the local board game shops and the crowd sounds quite similar to the crowd you are attracting. On a very basic level I just try to model being a social adult and hope it rubs off.

It has been my experience that social deduction games are very attractive to folks who have problems socializing in day-to-day life. You can see them almost come alive when they are given the permission.