Hey all, been lurking for a bit since the bluesky influx and thought I’d post an intro/response prompt. Most stuff are as in my bio, but I’m also a software engineer turned manager and have small humans I’m raising with my partner in our small portion of the world.
I don’t want to doxx myself by sharing too much, but think it would be worth sharing three pieces of media:
- one I found formative as a child
- one I’ve been enjoying recently
- one that I’m hella looking forward to
For the first, I’ll admit to enjoying the perhaps somewhat problematic Settlers II (1996) by bluebyte software. I loved building the economic engine and the emergent pattern of hexagonal road networks that the isometric nodes of its world resulted in. It was the first game I enjoyed that had graphs as part of the metrics you could use to determine how well your colony was doing and I poured hours of myself into it. I didn’t appreciate how colonialist it was at the time given that the game’s main campaign puts you into the sandals of ancient Roman occupiers and defeating in-turn African, Scandinavian and East-Asian enemies (all of which have exactly the same mechanics as the player’s colony - it’s just the sprite graphics that were different!) before pitting you against another Roman faction. As these enemies are increasing in difficulty this results in some extremely problematic implications. The core game however was gorgeous.
Currently I’m enjoying the reboot of Mike Duncan’s revolutions podcast with the latest series covering as speculative fiction a future Martian revolution. It has a great write up here, which I’ll not attempt to emulate as it would be a poor facsimile at best, but suffice it to say that when I discovered there were six episodes of this new season I hadn’t yet heard, I binged them all in both directions of my commute, loved every single moment, and am enjoying each weekly release as it continues to come out.
Finally in something I’m looking forward to, on a recent day out with my partner, we picked up from a lovely bookshop an anthology of solar punk short stories. I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to read physical books in recent years, so very much look forward to diving into the pages and hope that there are some lessons for the future we can share with our family.
I invite others to share things of a similar vein and look forward to hearing them!
I had no idea Mike Duncan started a new series of Revolutions that it’s purely speculative fiction. Interesting 🤔 I’m in the middle of the Russian revolution series and going kind of slow since it’s the last one and I know that I’ve heard that he turns on it at one point, so not looking forward to that.
Good news! In the latest episode, he’s shared that after the 2 year break he’s come around to the idea of continuing the series with other revolutions, which he’ll do after the Martian revolution is over. I think the Russian one kind of wore him out tbh, it was a long haul!
Welcome, comrade
That’s nice
Would you like to be the 2nd hand man to the Supreme Eternal Leader of Glorious Revolutionary Palestine?
Welcome! Let’s see
one I found formative as a child
The Redwall books (I met Brian Jacques a couple of times as a kid and still have signed books), C. D. Payne’s underappreciated masterpiece Youth In Revolt
one I’ve been enjoying recently
I caught a 4K restoration of The Wages of Fear that really surprised me. Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World blew me away recently. Currently reading a collection of Ursula K. Le Guin’s writings on gender and feminism called SPACE CRONE
one that I’m hella looking forward to
This band I really dig called Weakened Friends has new album in the works
Thank you so much for your answers!
Wow, meeting Brian Jacques must have been wild! I enjoyed the Redwall books too, though not as much as my sibling, who had and read all of them multiple times; my partner really loved them too, so it’s been a joy to begin to share them with our child, who is getting deep into them.
I’ve not got a connection to anything else you’ve posted (though enjoyed some of LeGuin’s other works) so thank you for the recommendations 🙏
Wow, meeting Brian Jacques must have been wild!
He was really nice. My kid is not quite old enough for Redwall, but I’m hoping he’ll enjoy them
Read Settlers II: The Whitening
Anyways rn I’m enjoying reading Domenico Losurdo’s Western Marxism, a critique of how the cultural turn of the Marxism of western europe led to the dominant left intelligentsia of imperialist countries to align with imperialism against decolonial efforts. It started pretty slow and methodical but now he’s starting to cook now that he got to Hannah Arendt.
Oooh, sounds fun - I’ll have to check that out
Welcome to Hexbear!
For formative media, I think I’ll go with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams’ style of humor has generally had a big impact on me, I think.
For media I’ve been enjoying recently… Most anything they show on Hexbear’s Cytube watch parties. Since I happen to currently be in a time zone where 8 PM EST is not the middle of the night, I’ve taken the opportunity to goof around in the chat and enjoy all sorts of curiosities — everything from seven of the eight parts of Endless Eight, to a documentary about NYC ball culture called Paris is Burning, to a surrealist Czech film from the 1960s called Daisies.
For media I’m looking forward to enjoying… Everything I’ve downloaded to occupy myself with on the upcoming flight back home. I’ve got a lot of Marxist and postcolonial theory like Settlers and Wretched of the Earth, I’ve got the Sailor Moon manga in Esperanto and likewise Cardcaptor Sakura in Russian, I’ve also got about four hours’ worth of assorted anime (some of which is actually good), and five hours’ worth of Dakota lessons, and about three hours and fifteen minutes’ worth of music.
I’m also certainly looking forward to what I’ll be reading once I’m actually back home with regular access to my own book collection and several libraries I don’t need a car to get to, and I’m also thinking I’ll finally boot up Half-Life 2 again to check out the developer commentary.
Sent from Mdewakanton Dakota lands / Sept. 29 1837
Treaty with the Sioux of September 29th, 1837
“We Will Talk of Nothing Else”: Dakota Interpretations of the Treaty of 1837
Hello
The main thing im enjoying is the new Ultimate Marvel books, i like the worldbuilding they have been doing especially in the one year in one shot
