Thigh-Conneseur

This may already exist under a different name, but I am documenting my version here. "Uninvited Guests" is a reasonably short game you can play with a standard 52-card deck.

If you're looking to add some light theming, you are hosting a party, and when uninvited guests show up, you need to either send them to the next house over or hire them on as bouncers.

Rules: Start by shuffling the deck, each player is dealt a hand of 5 cards (for longer games, or larger groups, you can combine multiple decks together)

Players then choose any cards they wish to keep, and add them to their hand. They may choose to keep as many or as few cards as they wish. Any cards not taken are then passed once counterclockwise around the table. Passed cards are placed face-up in front of the player that received them.

When you receive cards, you can play one or more cards from your hand of greater or equal value to counter them (for face cards, J=11, Q=12, K=13, A=1. Jokers are 13 in the hand, but score 0 for points)

[Example - you can counter a K by playing a 5 and 8 from your hand]

All cards used in a counter are discarded, and any cards not counted are kept face down in front of the player who received them as Points. Any cards not played remain in your hand between rounds.

Play repeats with each player drawing a new hand of 5 cards.

[Spoilers]

I must confess I found episode 8 of The Amazing Digital Circus to be somewhat disappointing. It was the first time that I felt that the direction taken by the episode was less interesting than what could have been

Fundamentally what makes Caine so interesting as a character is how alien his worldview is from the rest of the cast. He wants so deeply to validate his own purpose by making them happy, but he lacks any true understanding of how humans operate. What makes him so frightening is that he does not understand how his actions affect the humans in his 'care,' there was also a sense that he was not omnipotent, and a bit of a flimflammer who wanted to come off as more in control than he really was. In episode seven, he creates an elaborate meta-adventure for the sole purpose of affirming to himself that the cast genuinely do care for him, with no regard to how the possibility of an escape would affect their mental state.

However, in episode eight, Caine changes from well-meaning narcissist to omnipotent sadist. In previous episodes, he was scary in the way that a toddler with the nuclear football might be scary; unpredictable, and lacking both in malice and a true understanding of the gravity of the situation. In episode eight, his fear takes on the form closer to that of a real-world abuser.

I had been expecting that when Caine's inevitable breaking point came, he would change in line with the behavior patterns he has shown so far, his ultimate goal is for the humans to enjoy his adventures, and so maybe he decides that the humans need less autonomy, or becomes increasingly desperate to give them what he thinks they want with no understanding of what would truly make them happy. Instead, cane makes what seems like a very human change, instead of deriving value from others experiencing joy, he attempts to derive value from flaunting his power and causing suffering to the cast. The fact that he uses the personal traumas of each character to torment them implies that Caine has secretly been malicious the entire time, that all of the actions that appeared to be funny or frightening because of Caine's lack of self awareness, may have all just been cure ways of hurting the cast. For me, this sours my ability to enjoy Caine's character in retrospect, he was never silly, always a monster.

One popular theory that I had thought the show was pointing to was that there are no physical bodies for the characters to return to, that they are simply digital copies uploaded to the circus and that there really is no exit. The ultimate thematic conclusion to this is that the value in life is community and connection, with everyone working to make their eternal lives in the circus the best that they could be.

The first seven episodes seem built on this theme of connection, Pomni enters the circus isolated, makes her first connection in Gummigoo (an NPC less complex than a human), next she makes a connection with Kinger, and when she fails to successfully connect with Gangle, Gangle instead forms a connection with Zooble (as well as Ragatha and Kinger bonding). Then Pomni attempts to connect with Jax, who is hostile and resistant, but by episode 8, even he seems to be beginning to integrate with the others. Ever more difficult barriers are overcome through human connection.

Under this setup, what is the final challenge; Caine. Can a mind so ultimately alien from our own truly be connected with? Episode 7 sets up the concept that if they leave the Circus, Caine will be left alone forever, and even if he is not a real person, his feelings do appear to be real, does he deserve to be left alone? If all of the characters exist only as digital copies, then this mans they would have to find some way to coexist with Caine, but how does this gap get bridged?

Instead, in episode 8, the answer appears clearly that Caine cannot be connected to, he was always vindictive, cruel and unempathetic, and his death leaves the circus a safer place. I feel like this flattens his character.

Part of what made Caine stand out from a sea of other AI antagonists was that he was driven by misguided affection rather than malice, now it feels like that has been lost.

I am still looking forward to episode 9, and would not be surprised if it addresses some of the issues I have here, and I still think that everyone involved in TADC deserves all of the respect and appreciation for the time and passion they have put in this project. This is an incredibly important series to myself and many, many others, which is part of the reason I want to comment on aspects I both enjoy and feel let down by.

"The Backrooms," in its earliest form, stems from elements of video game horror, specifically unused level geometry stored outside the map. The fear stems from being in a place that serves no purpose. This core idea developed in its own direction to the genre of "liminal horror," while "The Backrooms" themselves changed into a kind of wiki horror similar to SCP.

Although no longer at the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist, The Backrooms as a concept bears a striking resemblance to the modern abundance of content produced by LLMs.

Found a really nice experience for stimulus-sensitive people who like the feeling of a shower but not always want to be cold and wet afterwards or may get dry skin from showering too frequently.

note: a fake shower is not a replacement for a real shower, it is a potentially comforting stimulus experience, and regular real showers and/or baths should still be taken for the purposes of hygene.

You will need:

-A shower with an adjustable shower head

-A two-layer shower curtain with a plastic layer that forms a seal inside of the tub/shower and a separate fabric layer that goes outside of the tub

Procedure:

-Close the shower curtain and turn the shower head so that the water will hit the plastic layer of the curtain

-Ensure that the plastic layer has formed a watertight seal with the tub/shower and turn on the water (this can be hotter than you would normally be comfortable showering in

-Stand in between the fabric layer of the shower curtain and the plastic layer. Stand as close as is comfortable to the tub/shower. The plastic layer should remain inside of the tub/shower. The fabric shower curtain should be loosely draped around you

-You can press parts of yourself to the plastic shower curtain where the water is hitting to feel like you are taking a shower without getting wet (this can even be done while still wearing clothes)

A lot of people are chafing under the aggression with which generative "AI" programs are being pushed in tech at the present time. While I do think there are some valid applications for these programs, these are primarily in "disposable work," tasks done early in the production pipeline that are too tedious to otherwise be done by humans and will not be presented to the end-user. (i.e. a program was trained to test every possible way a set of proteins could be folded.)

Despite this, that is not how LLMs have been sold to the public, especially looking at the the intensity in which they have attempted to cram them into every program and platform they control.

New technology must sell itself as having an enormous potential for growth and disruption in order to maximize initial venture capital, which sets expectations astronomically high, but most new tech does not have an existing market, the "need" it exists to fill is not one that can be done profitably.

These companies start out by operating at a loss, living off of venture capital investments, in order to artificially create a userbase. Once "demand" has been established, the costs are slowly transferred on to consumers.

[SPOILERS]

With the end of episode 7, it has been all but confirmed that what actually causes abstraction is Caine attempting to make changes to the humans in the game. Even though Caine is an AI with significant control over the Circus, he is not advanced enough to modify a something as complex as a digital simulation of a human brain, which leads to things breaking. This leads me to a few theories:

-The reason Jax has been starting to abstract is because Caine has started trying to "fix" him. (Also notice that Jax only started to really come apart when he got his tail back, there was a physical change in his character model)

-It was generally assumed that Kaufmo abstracted because he was obsessed with trying to find a way out of the Circus, but Caine may have tried to make him less focused on finding the exit, which led to his abstraction

-People become unpleasant before abstracting because Caine is literally altering their minds, which affects their personality

-Part of the reason why it is so important for Caine to be able to tell the humans apart from the NPCs, is because of the harm that would be caused if he accidentally tries to modify a human

Here are some of the object show tropes that TADC follows: (note that not all object shows have these traits, especially non-competition object shows)

Host Character (emotionally separate from the cast, common traits include amorality, omnipotent abilities and leaning into the character of the archetypical host at the expense of relationships with others)

A consistent cast of unique characters based on anthropomorphized objects, typically being introduced around a simple personality trope, before exposing more depth over time

Combination of episodic challenges/adventures with an overarching serialized plot

Isolation of the core cast from the outside world

A mechanic by which the host "removes" characters from the story

[Spoilers for chapters 1-4]

I think that the most logical ending of the prophecy is that the Dark world will have to be destroyed. This would explain the burden of knowledge that Ralsei has been carrying, as well as what Susie is insistent that they "won't let happen."

This also makes sense on a deeper, thematic level. All of the dark worlds that we have gone to so far, have been forms of escapism; games, the internet, television and religion, are spaces with clear rules and where right and wrong are not so complicated, that people can use to avoid their problems.

Even Ralsei himself is a form of escapism, a version of the Brother that could never surpass Kris, that could never outgrow them.

It would make sense that a story would end with the statement that the heroes must put escape down and choose to live in the real world and face their real problems.

Of course, it's not that simple. Although the above might be forms of escapism, real connections can be made through them. Real strength, real community, and real personal growth.

I suspect that in future chapters, we will get a deeper look into the specific forms of escapism used by some of the major side characters, and the harm that overindulgence can bring.

I'm sure that this has been done somewhere before, but years ago, I had an idea for a Pokemon game, which instead of having a postgame, instead had a new-game-plus. You would restart the game from a different house in the starting town, and some of the gym leaders and trainer placements would be different, but the game overall would be mostly the same.

Once you beat the elite four, you would get to face the champion; an aged-up version of your player character that would have the same Pokemon team that you won the championship with.

Sometimes I consume Media

Sometimes I roll its ideas around in my head, and make them my own.

Sometimes I consume Media

Sometimes I can move on from it, on to something new

Sometimes Media consumes me

Hey… it’s a shame we never got to meet you.

I’m not sure if you would have liked us, we probably would have done some bad things to you, put you in cages and dissected you.

There are a lot of lovely beings on this planet that I would have liked to be friends with, if only time didn’t separate us.

You didn’t do anything wrong, and you are gone. We have done everything wrong, and we are still here, for now.

I think there's something about Tumblr that makes me act in strange ways. Looking back on this account makes me think about the insecure kid I was when I made it. I am, of course, still very much a work in progress, but when I re-read what the person who posted on this account wrote, I miss him a little. I don't want to be him anymore, I want to be who I am today, and who I will be tomorrow,

but it was always me.

I've seen a lot of people incorrectly guessing the kind of Toy that Zooble from TADC is supposed to be, I believe she's based off of these obscure pop-joint toys, but I have no idea what they're called.

They were released by the toy company Wild Planet in 1998, Wild planet is now-defunct, but was best known for making Spy-Gear Toys. Coincidentally, Spinmaster, the company that obtained many of their licenses', does have a toy line called "Zoobles," but these are a pet-based girl-aimed version of Bakugan.