On my in-laws' recent vacation to Portugal, they saw deportees forced onto the plane on the flight over, and then people snatched off of their plane by unknown authorities upon their return. All other passengers ordered to remain in their seats, during both operations.
My in-laws normally spend all the time they can traveling the world, but they've canceled their plans for the foreseeable. (They did have a wonderful time in Portugal.) #uspol
I remember the Times trashing this show after it opened last year, because it wasn't the movie, I guess? Or the last revival from the aughts?
This staging is funny and dark and sexy and disturbing. It waits for you to laugh and then it hurts you and asks why you stopped laughing. This feels about right given the subject matter, and how that juxtaposes with the state of things outside of the theater, right now.
Saw "Cabaret”, which was amaaaazing. #NYC
This was also my first experience at seeing a headline role swap out mid-show due to off-stage illness. The audience gasped at the announcement, but then got ahold of itself and applauded. And the show was no worse for it, because, you know, professionals.
Still, felt like a little bit of bonus drama!
Recent “Um, y-yes? Why, what were you doing before?" discovery: If you salt and pepper the egg you're frying while you're frying it, the result is absolutely delightful.
This episode and the previous one (https://venthuffer.com/2025-05-12-11-neon.html) are some of my best creative work. It feels right for this moment to cap another six-episode “season" here and work on other art projects for a bit.
I absolutely plan to return to Venthuffer later in the year, though, whether or not I keep the Steam Deck framing (which is barely present in the last two episodes). Gotta give it some time to breathe.
Please enjoy episode 12 of VENTHUFFER, telling the story of “Halstrick”, the name I've been using for gaming and game-related projects in recent years.
I had originally planned a meditation on chosen names, but a moment of cursory research turned the script into something entirely different. This show is the result of one the most profound and personal investigations I've ever performed, and I'd love it if you listened along. #Podcast #History #SteamDeck
A happy recent memory: Visiting #Chicago in 2022, and a fellow visitor approached me to ask: Which building's the Sears Tower? I pointed it out to them: see, the one with the rabbit ears! And I pointedly did not “correct” what they'd called it, and I felt like a good ambassador of this city I'd been in for maybe two days at the time.
TIL also: According to Wikipedia, the legal name of the old Hancock building (and hence its article title) is "Berkeley Building". I lived in sight of its beacon for nearly 30 years and I have never heard anyone call it that.
So Boston has its own version of #Chicago's Sears Tower too, except in my experience everyone knows that’s named "Willis Tower" and just refuses to call it that out of spite. In the Hancock building's case I think it's more like willful (and perhaps justified) ignorance?
TIL that Minneapolis had a skyscraper weather beacon that predated the one on #Boston's Old Hancock building by one year. Gone since 1982, but fondly recalled still. @rationaldoge
I rode the Amtrak out of South Station one evening earlier this month and slipped underneath the Hancock lights, flashing away amidst the drizzle. It made me happy.
https://hachyderm.io/@rationaldoge/114568539731946969
There's some kind of jigsaw puzzle exchange or meetup or auction with labeled tables goin' on at the Rubenstein Atrium in Lincoln Center if you're around there right now and that's your thing. 🧩 #NYC (i dunno man i just hang out here to type words into the word machine sometimes)
Is "A New Clue" book a troll? It really smells like trolling the player. "Oh, you're stuck, huh? Have you tried randomly anagramming everything? No? Have you tried obsessively putting all the text you found into a grid? Oh, no dice, eh? Well gee. It's gotta be in there somewhere!”
I went through the trouble of uploading a video of this I, Robot run to YouTube because I want the fediverse to see what this game looks and sounds like. This is the latest output of a game creator who has known their whole life exactly what they want to see more of in their chosen field of art, and who has been honing and refining this vision for over 40 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7RzQA-BcrY
(This is not a “winning run” or anything, just a personal best, so far.) #VideoGames https://youtu.be/M7RzQA-BcrY
Bwahaha, made it to both the million-points club and the top 100 players of I, Robot. Which probably implies that not nearly enough people are playing this game yet, more than anything else, but I’ll take it #VideoGames #SteamDeck
@THECITY has published a really well designed quiz-style website to help you get a better sense of which of the many #NYC mayoral candidates support what policies, and can suggest which candidates align with what you care about. https://projects.thecity.nyc/meet-your-mayor-2025-election-quiz-candidates
Video games are the first things I ever wrote about out of choice, scribbling "articles" all over notebook paper and writing awkward letters and pitches to game magazines, and really I am long past the point where I need to accept that I will write about them for the rest of my life. I will write about them even when going through grouchy-old-man "Bah, I hate video games" phases. Even if continue my still-perfect streak of earning $0 from all this writing, I'm doomed to it. Just go with it, jmac
Ta to @dougo, @zarfeblong, and @mogwai_poet for their critiques of some of the audio-editing experiments that I've been adding to the latest Venthuffer episodes. The show's better for it!
I'm so pleased with this latest one that it energizes me to make more, after 12. But I think I might weaken the conceit of making it about Steam Deck, versus a more general "Halstrick (who likes Steam Deck) talks about games (and himself)”. I fear the current framing turns away audiences who don't own a Deck.
Folks mentioned in this episode include @llamasoft_ox, @gilesgoat, and @imalcolm. Extra-special thanks to Ian for posting about the launch of “I, Robot”, which inspired this episode. (And do let me know if I butchered the pronunciation of anyone's name; will correct.)
Please enjoy issue 11 of my video game audio zine Venthuffer, which is the inevitable Jeff Minter episode, on the occasion of Llamasoft's new remake of "I, Robot”: https://venthuffer.com/2025-05-12-11-neon.html #SteamDeck #Videogames #Podcast
I have reason to be reading Wikipedia articles about classic Underworld albums and this is how I learned that the color-reciting monologue at the end of “Juanita / Kiteless / To Dream of Love" is based on Karl Hyde recording himself naming the colors of cars passing by. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juanita_(Underworld_song)
@zarfeblong and I are both fascinated by the tri-polar axis of GenAI opinions amongst the technologically literate ("It's useless!" / "It's evil!" / "It's amazing!”).
Zarf's latest post explores the Worldconn controversy du jour as an applied example of this phenomenon. Specifically, how an entire community—such as professional fiction writers—might as a bloc stick to one corner of this triangle, and woe upon any who fail to read that particular room. https://blog.zarfhome.com/2025/05/seriously-even-more-worldcon-drama