We have now reached a stage of collective madness where a drug that could potentially save thousands of lives is actually seen as bad, because it doesn’t fit the accepted propaganda line. Or as Matt Taibbi puts it so eloquently:

Since the start of the Trump years, we’ve been introduced to a new kind of news story, which assumes adults can’t handle multiple ideas at once, and has reporters frantically wrapping facts deemed dangerous, unorthodox, or even just insufficiently obvious in layers of disclaimers. The fear of uncontrolled audience brain-drift is now so great that even offhand references must come swaddled in these journalistic Surgeon General’s warnings.

• The Cult of the Vaccine — “The jab” is just the latest story to be reported as mantra

Security story of the day:

• Navy Warship’s Facebook Page Hacked to Stream “Age of Empires” Gaming — The destroyer-class USS Kidd streamed hours of game play in a funny incident that has serious cybersecurity ramifications.

Twitch has reset everyone’s stream keys. Presumably because of the hack. Funnily, they don’t say why in the email they sent out to streamers. Maybe they presume everyone knows of the hack by now? Interesting corporate communications strategy there…

Notes on Deathloop #5

Well, played as Julianna the first time and promptly my game crashed.

Apparently this is a know issue with the game’s handling of refresh rates and VSync under strain. If it happens to you, this might help. Seems to have fixed it for me.

Notes on Deathloop #4

Jesus. This game is fucking with my brain on so many levels.

Notes on Deathloop #3

Well, a restart of the game fixed the dual wield icon issue. At least that’s something… Although I still don’t understand the default layout. Such a weird design choice.

Notes on Deathloop #2

Why the fuck is the dual wield control on mouse/keyboard this idiotic in this game? By default, left hand is right mouse button and right hand is left mouse button. And even if you change the bindings, the permanent icons at the bottom of the screen are still wrong. What the fuck!?

The amount of times I’ve ended my stealth run by accident now because I looked at the icons and squeezed off a (very loud) SMG burst instead of using my (silent) machete… This is infuriating!

Notes on Deathloop #1

Well, despite continuous warnings that my old GTX 980 has about 2 GB too few VRAM, the game actually runs quite well. I mean, it isn’t exactly pretty and I sometimes have some screen tearing, but it’s very playable and actually quite smooth. And since it’s a very stylised look anyway, even more than with previous Arkane games, it’s actually not that jarring to turn the graphics settings down to low.

The Wall Street Journal once again very good at pulling people into a story, even if the story is largely just what anyone with a modicum of common sense would expect:

• These People Who Work From Home Have a Secret: They Have Two Jobs — When the pandemic freed employees from having to report to the office, some saw an opportunity to double their salary on the sly. Why be good at one job, they thought, when they could be mediocre at two?

I mean, why are you surprised? The reason for this is obviously that many people are only working half as much when they are working from home. I can’t possibly be the only one who noticed productivity tanking across the board with all kinds of organisations last year – from Ikea’s invoice department to all kinds of support hotlines to governmental offices and even regarding teachers in schools (from what I hear from people who have kids.)

There are clearly people who work well (and a lot) when left largely to their own devices. I’ve been a freelancer working for myself for almost three years now, I ought to know. But these people are clearly in the minority. Most people just work less, the less supervision they have. And it should surprise nobody that some of these people have figured out how they can work just the same at home, just for two employers making bank twice. Especially in America. Come on, you don’t have to be a genius to figure this out!