never write a blogpost in a funk jesus christ ive tried to talk about my feelings like four times and im getting nowhere so im going to talk about the interesting things i found in january instead

i dont like modern lego

i visited a lego store this month and was pretty shocked at just how much of it caters directly to adults. the entire right wall, half of the store, were the black boxes of architectural sets, master builds and 🤢 hurk 🤢 lego flowers

look, if you like these that's fine, but i used to be an avid lego builder deep into my teenagerhood (and probably would still be if i lived in a place larger than nine square meters) and ive found this recent trend of targeting almost all lego options at middle aged people with six figure jobs fucking soul crushing. if you watch lego's own film about how good lego is, the VILLAIN of the film is a guy who just makes things once and never touches them again, thereby missing half of the value of the toy. and that is 100% what you see with most people my age who buy it - theyre being bought basically entirely for the nostalgia, to be seen as someone who's still youthful and playful, but entirely missing the point

this is an extremely unnuanced take and i have a million caveats to this personal rule (if you're displaying something you designed yourself then fuck yeah, awesome), but i have no caveats for those fucking flowers. if you're under 35 then get rid of them theyre ugly and you can get flowers by going for a walk down the street with a pocketknife

nora brown - sidetrack my engine

pseudonym jones's mum

this comic is short but its unbelievably sweet and somber and soul crushing. my relationship with my parents isn't bad per se but it did make me wish for one that was a little bit closer

also pseudonym jones' comics and aryt are so fucking beautiful please look at the rest of their artwork

fermata on the pithos

i spent a bunch of time looking into this game that used to maybe look like it was coming soon? i think i was following the original twitter page that was providing updates. my travels led me to this handy dandy youtube video that kind of goes through everything we know about the maybe-not-a-game. it seems like it was meant to be a 3d platformer about being a robot in a post apocalyptic drowned world, with a gameplay look conceptually similar to death stranding but with less focus on balancing boxes and even footing and more scooting around with jetpacks through old structures and coral reefs. its super nifty looking! and might not ever actually come out 😔

[click here to load the youtube video]

talos principle 2

i enjoyed the talos principle 1 a lot and have had access to the second game for a while, but had kind of been putting it off because it ran terrible on my 2070 super. i've been out of my house for interesting reasons for the last week so my progress has hit a standstill, but im about 60% of the way through and im really enjoying it! its a combination of fun physics puzzles, interesting philosophical musings that dont hold your hand but also dont punish you for "thinking the wrong thing", and really, seriously, beautiful vistas. i'm actually holding off on showing you the super cool ones because the experience of seeing them for the first time was actually breathtaking and i want you to experience it yourself

i have a strong feeling that i'm going to do a big post on this like i did for the witness, so maybe watch this space

butchering a chicken

[click here to load the youtube video]

i started butchering chickens this month on the advice of this video. i've broken down roast chickens and turkeys before and that gives you a good legup for doing it on raw ones. your financial savings for meat, at least in australia, are maybe not quite as drastic as they make it seem in the video, but the leftovers for chicken stock and shmaltz make it totally worth it. i have noted that the thigh fillets from butchering your own birds tend to be smaller than the ones you would buy from the shops, but i also tend to trim the drumsticks and treat them as extra thighs so it kind of balances out. it's got me thinking about the process of actually properly slaughtering a chicken, just for that feeling of understanding where your food comes from, but im maybe a little far from that just yet

champagne.pages.dev

link
this site is nominally a guide for smart piracy, but it also aggregates a lot of useful little tools and sites in a way that's really easy to compare - their file hosting and storage page is great for this. give it a little skim, you'll see if there's something that's helpful for you pretty quickly