Last week I had the worst week of study since I started my new structured study plan in June. The good news is the cause is not burnout. The bad news is it’s related to bigger mental health stuff that’s going to take me a while to work through. I’m not great at relaxation/recharging. I can do individual days well, but like, I try to vacation for a week and I’m a disaster by the end of it. Ugh.

On the positive side, I finished a page of listening notes in my notebook and it felt really good to see:

Here I’m jotting down timestamps for stuff I’m struggling with and then go back over it with the transcript after I finish the podcast episode. The tactile notebook and pen gives my brain something to fidget with while I’m listening, and that might have been the magic key for me. I feel pretty good about it now, and if I were testing for N4 in December I’d be in great shape, but alas, I’m aiming higher. There are another 100+ episodes in this series and I might do them all. The great thing is, once I go a step higher than this podcast, there will be tons of content available to flip through and the conversation will be more interesting.

Concentrating on everyday usage is a great thing and I really should do it more. Especially stuff as simple as taking a few minutes each day to describe something around you or a thought in the language.

When one breaks something down to its components, nothing is new under the sun. I used to feel the same about games several years ago (albeit a little more about story rather than gameplay), but I eventually I reframed that into familiar systems and stories being comfort food. Now I actively seek those things out. That way, I’m generally assured of some enjoyment at worst, and at best I find some fun ways developers are putting twists on frequently-used concepts. Some of my all-time favorites are games I’ve played only in the past few years.

I also felt that way about time wasting, but once I started being more intentional and structured about my daily goal setting and time boxing my day, that went away. Now when I’m done for the day, I’m done for the day and I give myself permission to have downtime. Tangentially, Adderall also helped with this by giving me a hard physical signal to tell me I’m probably not going to get much more done for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, these days now I’m often too tired during the week. 🤷🏻‍♀️

That said, I also don’t like achievements. It’s something I would have loved 30 years ago back when there was way less to play, but there’s too much choice now. I’d rather see what else is out there instead of spending time digging into something I’ve already seen most of. Feels like diminishing returns. Some people really get into it, though.

For DS9, yeah, they don’t even introduce the main plot line of the series until the end of the second season. A lot of it early is continuation of the same threads from TNG, and it gets much better in the seasons where it finds its own identity after TNG went off the air.

Honestly, Lower Decks is the best Trek we’ve had recently.

Safe mode is the better experience, unfortunately. Probably the most common criticism for the game, the stealth sections just don’t do much for the game and take away from the experience at times.

Mass implementation is a mistake, and I suspect implementation in consumer goods is where the bubble’s bursting will be the most devastating. Recent news tells us Dell has figured that out already, and I don’t think it will be long before society decides it can’t tolerate things like AI companions for young children.

Ultimately, I don’t think widespread implementation with any sort of value will be possible unless someone figures out how to make effective prompt creation so easy anyone can do it. Everyone seems to think AI is just a box you press a button on and it’ll spit something out, but getting valuable output isn’t like that. Good prompt engineering and tool selection is hard, and it’ll have to be a trained skill for people working with the systems generative AI does stick around on.

The really unfortunate thing is LLMs are the perfect snake oil for sociopathic executives. They can provide something approximating meaningful human interaction to these lonely, workaholic MBAs, and from there, it wasn’t a hard sell to make them believe they could replace their pesky labor force, too. When you’re that far outside the real world, sycophantic illusions are seductive.

Forbes 2.0

Would be one of the better outcomes for the tech’s adoption. I’m not optimistic about their chances this time, though. AI has way more financial and political backing than AOL and Internet Explorer ever did.

Having to use something like Windows IME on a phone for Japanese is nightmare fuel

まあまあです。Been letting distractions get in the way this week. I talk in Japanese on Discord a bit, which is good! But then I also end up down rabbit holes from there in the same app, which is bad.

On the plus side, now that I’ve settled into a new routine–mixed things up halfway through–I’m proceeding at a faster-than-expected pace in my textbook. I should be finished with it a few weeks, maybe even a month ahead of schedule. Feeling good about having enough runway for dedicated study after that with my December deadline, but don’t know if it’ll be enough in the end until I get there. Fingers crossed!

Tokyo Story is really cool from a film-making perspective. After seeing its cinematography, I never looked at The Silence of the Lambs the same way.

Not gonna lie, if they get Ashly Burch I’m gonna pick it up.

Definitely Trails Beyond the Horizon and Ys X: Proud Nordics. I’m not a “must play day 1” fan for Ys like I am with Trails, so it was pretty easy to wait for the new version considering how quickly they announced it after it finally came out in English. I also just started the Dragon Quest III remake in Japanese and already am having a good time with it. Plan to continue nibbling at that for a while.

The currently announced games in the genre are honestly kinda lean for me. Leanest in recent memory. The only ones I know for sure I’ll play are the last of the FF7 remake and the Persona 4 remake, and if I remember right they already said P4R isn’t coming out this year. So that means I might try catching up a little bit on some other series. I’ve got the following on my playlist:

• Atelier Escha & Logy
• Breath of Fire IV
• NEO The World Ends With You
• Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven
• Rune Factory 5
• Tenchi wo Kurau 2
• Yakuza 0 (probably will jump straight to LAD7 from there)

Yeah, Fantasian’s on my shortlist too. Keep hearing good things about it and there’s enough potential nostalgia triggers in it for me to give it that extra bump.

Well, something to consider is that engaging on Reddit isn’t even on the level of limited individual action like voting is. You’re having a cascading effect on the viability of the site by engaging with other people. It’s what makes the site function. You’re the product for advertisers in more ways than one.

Besides, clearly you believe in the power of collective action making a difference, given you’re promoting firearms training with others. Same energy applies to withdrawing from the site.

Fire Emblem and Disgaea would like a word

We saw very different responses to DioField.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see FFTA2 with a fast-forward, but unfortunately Square and Enix peaked in this genre all the way back in the 90’s between FFT and Tactics Ogre.

The original King’s Quest on an IBM PC Jr.

Might finally take the plunge on this now that it’s gone 1.0. Been too intimidated by it, I keep hearing the learning curve is brutal.

It’s also going to get more efficient, like Amazon’s data centers have been over time. By the way, where was this zeal over water usage from people back when AWS and other data centers started popping up all over the place?

The water issue will end up being more in how local water tables are affected, not overall consumption.