The Art Of Not Asking Why

Polygon has a good introduction to Observation:

“Set in the year 2026, Observation’s story plays out on a titular low-orbit space station left stranded in the wake of some mysterious catastrophic systems failure. With no way to contact Earth or reliable means to ascertain the location of the Observation’s crew, medical officer Dr. Emma Fisher must repair the station’s systems, locate and secure any survivors, and re-establish contact with Earth to coordinate a rescue effort.”

“But you are not Dr. Emma Fisher. You are SAM: the Observation’s semi-omniscient operating system, rebooted following the blackout and tasked with assisting Dr. Fisher in the station’s repairs. Which is to say, you’re not aboard the space station. You are the space station.”

It’s a game geared toward people who like scary sci-fi stories happening in space and who enjoy puzzles and mystery-like narratives. In other words, me.

The game’s puzzles are easy, though it’s sometimes frustrating to understand the rules. I’ve gone in circles for a long time before I gave up and looked into a walkthrough to tell me that at this point in the game, I could blast through air vents or that the communication mode I’m looking for is in another tab on the UI for SAM, for example. These minor annoyances do not happen often enough to ruin an otherwise polished, well-made game.

You won’t find fast action here or explosions and guns (ok, /some/explosions), which I find refreshing. The game hooked me enough to want to keep going and see what happens next all the way to the end.

Even if you’re not a gamer but like a good sci-fi story, you should try it. The game is easy enough to pick up and play with a keyboard and Mouse on a modest computer (it’s 3D in space in parts, but the game wasn’t too demanding even when it came out five years ago), and you can probably find a deal for it somewhere on the web.

Polygon has a good introduction to Observation:

“Set in the year 2026, Observation’s story plays out on a titular low-orbit space station left stranded in the wake of some mysterious catastrophic systems failure. With no way to contact Earth or reliable means to ascertain the location of the Observation’s crew, medical officer Dr. Emma Fisher must repair the station’s systems, locate and secure any survivors, and re-establish contact with Earth to coordinate a rescue effort.”

“But you are not Dr. Emma Fisher. You are SAM: the Observation’s semi-omniscient operating system, rebooted following the blackout and tasked with assisting Dr. Fisher in the station’s repairs. Which is to say, you’re not aboard the space station. You are the space station.”

It’s a game geared toward people who like scary sci-fi stories happening in space and who enjoy puzzles and mystery-like narratives. In other words, me.

The game’s puzzles are easy, though it’s sometimes frustrating to understand the rules. I’ve gone in circles for a long time before I gave up and looked into a walkthrough to tell me that at this point in the game, I could blast through air vents or that the communication mode I’m looking for is in another tab on the UI for SAM, for example. These minor annoyances do not happen often enough to ruin an otherwise polished, well-made game.

You won’t find fast action here or explosions and guns (ok, /some/explosions), which I find refreshing. The game hooked me enough to want to keep going and see what happens next all the way to the end.

Even if you’re not a gamer but like a good sci-fi story, you should try it. The game is easy enough to pick up and play with a keyboard and Mouse on a modest computer (it’s 3D in space in parts, but the game wasn’t too demanding even when it came out five years ago), and you can probably find a deal for it somewhere on the web.

Changed my about section, and removed a couple of pages from the navigation (they are still there!) as I’m cleaning up a bit.

I have a confession to make.

For the last two weeks or so, I’ve been toying around with the idea of resurrecting my college-days blog about the Middle East and international happenings in general. There’s no way any post that even vaguely touches the topic won’t turn on the flames, so I’ve been mostly avoiding it.

Everyone has an opinion; that’s human. At the same time, the internet is shit, and it’s getting worse. Services like Instagram and Twitter have a long tradition of censoring (or not censoring) users when they shouldn’t (or should), while AI companies vacuum up all this crap and spin it back, as large news outlets often use the same resources to break the news. It’s an echo chamber that’s hard to escape, filled with often the most noisy, not most accurate, information.

During college, our newspaper advisor kept repeating the slogan “Check your facts.” That’s because we often didn’t. It’s a human habit to run with rumors, like rabbits’ perking up their ears at the possibility of a predator.

On my Middle East blog, I rehashed news from the media. Taking my advisor’s mantra to heart, I developed a habit to check my information from at least three sources. I then provided my own explanation, linking back to my sources. If I couldn’t find the sources but wanted to post stuff anyway, I’d say so on the post; more often than not, someone educated me, one way or another.

I was often scorned by opposing sides, sometimes on the same piece. There were angry comments from readers based in Lebanon about my lack of knowledge and worried emails from my family in Israel that I “lost my way.” I made a friend with a Palestinian woman on campus, who took to call me “cousin,” and we sometimes argued about heated topics. Another time, I was refused an official interview - but offered a meeting - with a Middle Eastern affairs professor at a nearby university about the history of the region. It was a hobby that got out of control: looking at it now, it was irresponsible of me to worry my family and piss off strangers. It was also probably unsafe, knowing what I know today about what happens to some folks who voice their opinions - and I’m talking about here, in the US.

Writing about heated topics like these is hard on your soul. You become cynical. You believe everyone’s out to get you or want something from you, and there’s almost nothing plainly good about the world besides a walk in the woods, away from the human race. Perhaps this is why journalists adhere to the stereotype of bitter looks, cigarettes and coffee (I have a feeling NYT reporters are a stark opposite of that, but I digress). Being a good reporter means you’re constantly wrong, and people who don’t know you often hate your guts on principle. Fewer people today want to be journalists, and very few want to remain ones. It’s a dying field with no paycheck to show for the punishing effort. So, I chose to turn my back on it and chase a more rewarding career. The thing is, I never had a choice.

I recall a conversation I had with one of my journalism professors. It was in his hole-in-the-wall office, loaded with piles of books and old yellow newspaper from floor to ceiling, just like a scene from a movie. He told me no one in their right mind would choose to be a journalist unless they got the “germ,” and he was sad to inform me (so he said) that I got it. It had nothing to do with my writing (average at best) or editing (much worse) skills, but my appetite, or more accurately, my compulsion.

The germ does not make you a reporter or a blogger. The germ sits in your brain and eats your mind slowly with an impossible urge to resist: dig.

You read something, and you’re not satisfied, so you start asking questions. Questions lead to more questions. Before you know it, you end up having a couple of paragraphs written of your findings (or perhaps pieces of articles on the wall connected by pins and strings), because you got to do something with all the stuff you dug out.

At that moment, you’re not a human being with opinions about the world, but an instrument of need to write and explain, and god help you, you’re going to do it against all the good reasons and advice people throw at you. You keep doing this over and over, until you end up with a column, a blog, a wiki, whatever. You can try to bury what you find, but you can’t bury the need. You’re obsessed. You’re driven by a disease. That’s the germ. That’s a reporter.

Throughout the years, I wrote different blogs. I always had some sort of a graveyard with buried findings. At times I made it a couple of months without digging, but I never really stopped.

By now, you might think I’m writing my justification for some illusions and false confidence I have toward being a reporter. Nah, you got me wrong, sorry. Let me spell it out for you so there’s no doubt: I got a germ. I got an itch. I got a shovel, and if it breaks, I’ll use my bare fingers. I can’t help it. There’s nothing self-righteous or glorious about this.

This blog, or any other I’ll write, will probably die off someday at some corner of the web. Fine with me. That’s not the point, and I don’t think I have one anyway. I just have to dig.

Tumblr and WordPress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools

I’m still looking into the sources of this article, but 404 Media has a good reputation so far:

internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.

This is not surprising. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tumblr will be shut down completely within the next 2 years either. Many users are angry, but I guess few will actually do something about it and jump ship.

Goofing around at the park

I need to do something about my mobile layout:

Some fixes are obvious. I can decrease the owl’s bottom margin, preventing the description from splitting (the font might need to be smaller, too). Other fixes are more challenging. I should have fewer buttons, but which to remove or join together? 🤔