came_apart_at_Kmart

Trailer: https://youtu.be/JZEjlBCwap0

this is totally not my typical type of game. i'm not a shooter guy, but this is so addictive. there are probably 40 different types of vehicles. massive slow walkers, hover tanks, flying crafts, and small vehicles mini mechs. like probably a dozen of each with their own stats for movement, turning, visibility, strength, etc. they each have 2 weapon slots, and there are probably 50 different types of weapons, plus special abilities. so you can seriously bespoke your guy to fit your play strategy. are you a little run and gun creep ninja? do you want to long bomb mortars and then flee the scene when the patroling units come to investigate? or do you like to appear massive on the horizon, move slow and straight toward your objective and obliterate everything that does not run from your judgement?

also, the environment is top notch. it's all destructable. the world is grim vision of the future where capitalism has gripped the galaxy, so you see corporate mega farms, lonely highways, core district suburban mcmansion neighborhoods, decayed industrial worlds, neon cities of endless distraction, massive slums, spaceports, extractive utilicorridors. lots of detail. and your vehicle's weapons can fire right through some wretched mansion to obliterate the units behind it, chewing it to bits. you can also crash through just about anything. or make noise and get a bunch of units to chase you through a gas station or other explosive depot and then shoot it up after you're outside of the blast radius.

the music is really strong too... heavy, driving synthwave beats really take you there and get stuck in your head.

the story campaign of the build world is interesting and ultimately the game is about being a mercenary pilot during a politically unstable time, doing missions for whoever is paying and making phat stacks to buy more vehicles, buying weapons / testing configurations, and accessing more of the in-game lore.

i find myself trying different missions (tons to chose from) and making money, then i get rolled a few times and quit. only to come back like 30 minutes later because i thought of an idea for a vehicle/loadout combo.

anyway, for under $10, it's a no brainer. and yes, i do feel bad when innocent civilians get chewed up as collateral damage, but my pay isn't docked. basically, all carnage increases the pay, so there are some twisted incentives baked in. it's like john carpenter's mech warrior.

lmao - what an oaf, hilarious that the band is playing "We are the champions" while couchfuck seizes his moment to spectacularly bungle it.

the way trump watches him, you know he's thinking "Jesus."

This article is 8 years old, but the article about a Catholic healthcare provider denying MAID services reminded me of it. i learned about it from a friend who is a researcher of medical/healthcare policy in the US.

Basically, when Catholic hospitals merge or are even bought out by secular providers in the states, the Catholic church inserts language into the contract (the property becomes "encumbered" I think is the term) to require facilities to follow / adopt Catholic restrictions in perpetuity. These restrictions can never be unwound and are generally hidden from public knowledge during the deal.

Since 2001, the number of acute care hospitals operating under Catholic doctrine has shot up 22 percent.

As Mindy Swank discovered, it’s often impossible to know when a secular hospital is operating under Catholic restrictions. Genesis became a zombie religious hospital in 1994, during a merger with Catholic Mercy Hospital in Davenport, Iowa. The trend has accelerated in recent years, as secular hospitals have joined forces with Catholic facilities in an effort to hold their own against insurance companies and to comply with requirements for greater collaboration under the Affordable Care Act. In five states—Alaska, Iowa, South Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin—more than 40 percent of acute care hospital beds now fall under Catholic doctrine.

It feels incredible. With the organization for 10+ years, in the role for 6+ years. I got passed over for a promotion I was overqualified for because my shithead boss, with his beautiful mind, calculated that promoting me would mean twice the paperwork (having to fill my old position). Who cares that it would have meant a 20% raise and increased stability to me. Not to mention all the attendant exploitation in a anti-labor / zero social safety net state normalizing a continuous stacking of projects and responsibilities on people.... because "where are they gonna go?" The answer might surprise you!

To be fair, I have been feeling the unstable vibes here for a few years and been casually putting out applications for other jobs. Like maybe once every month or so, when some new fresh idiocy drives me to tweak and submit my resume somewhere.

Not even 4 weeks after my application was ignored, I got offered a job in a strong union state in the public sector. And not just offered, they said after the panel interview that I blew the competition away. The way my bosses and overseers have treated me here, alongside the limited bites in applications over the year, was starting to wear me down that I started wondering if maybe they had a point.... like maybe I'm not that valuable. So it feels nice to have someone interview me, look over my body of work/portfolio, and say, "Wow, yes please!" Not to mention, there's a real future for me in terms of formal professional development, job grade advancement, and time-in-position compensation bumps. Because, there's a union in a pro-union state! All shit my previous employer had foreclosed on, because no union and anti-union state.

Anyway, suffice to say, I took it and they are being super chill about remote-until-relocation, offering to help etc. I put in my official notice to my boss 24 hours ago (no response lmao) and workfriends/collaborators who are all sad to see me go, super happy for me, or some combo of both. They all get it.

I am doing what I can for the people I work with to cover their asses with their own bosses, but I know >80% of the plates I've been spinning are going to come crashing down over the 6 months after I'm gone. I tried for years to have get the bosses to support cross-training and redundancy, even under the principle of "what if I die in a car accident?" but they ignored me. One of the reasons I am going so far away from this organization is so the bosses will have no social capital to fuck with me at my new place of employment and try to backchannel / pull strings to get me to keep those things maintained once the angry emails and calls start coming in from stakeholders. Hell, I'm not even telling them where I'm going. They can ask their subordinates if they want to know. LOL

Anyway peeps. I know the job search is the worst, but I had a good story and wanted to share.

i was lost in my own thoughts when this ancient, new grounds web-animation popped into my head. this was originally uploaded almost 20 years ago (October 6th, 2004).

nostalgia for the oldheads, i guess. i don't really get what the inspiration for this was. just another weird, low bandwidth flash animation. i guess the dad is jacked up on the devil's lettuce... back in the days when buying the weed drugs from some guy in the parking lot of an IHOP meant you were literally helping Al Qaeda do more 9/11s.