Pilosophos' Circle (Writing)

How to answer questions like "Is cereal soup?" and other "Is X a Y?" questions

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

How to answer questions like “Is cereal soup?” and other “Is X a Y?” questions

Until you have an idea of why you want to know the answer, the answer is indeterminate.

The problem

You’re trying to figure out whether a bowl of cereal with milk is soup. You decide that you need a definition of soup that you can compare cereal to. In trying to do so, you fall into a vicious cycle:

graph TD
    S[Start defining soup] --> A
    A[List properties of soups for your new definition] --> B[Definition includes too many things that are intuitively non-soups, or excludes too many soups]
    B --> C[Decide to revise definition]
    C --> A

Most likely, the cycle is broken either by settling on an unsatisfying definition of soup, or by giving up and doing something else. Either way, we have failed to adequately define soup, which is weird, because society seems to have no trouble understanding the words soup and cereal in daily life, so there should be a definition… right?

What do words mean?

Soup and cereal are words. Like all words, they are things we use to make something we want to happen, happen.

If you need to borrow your friend’s phone charger, you say "Can I borrow your phone charger?", because those are the words that let him know that you want a phone charger.

The fact that words have purpose behind them also means that they’re situational. You don’t say, "Do you like hedgehogs?", or "I've never seen Star Wars", or "Pineapple", because those words won’t make your friend give you what you need.

The meaning of a single word, like pineapple, is also situational. If your friend asks you what flavor you want out of a bag of jelly beans, and you want the ones that taste like the tart, yellow-inside, green-topped fruits you see at the supermarket, you can say "Pineapple." In this case, pineapple means a flavor of jelly bean.

If you’re watching a war movie and the main character wants to use a Mk 2 grenade and asks for a pineapple, then "Pineapple" means an exploding thing that looks vaguely like those tart, yellow-inside, green-topped fruits.

If I invent a game where you have to run around until someone says "Pineapple" and then everyone has to stop for ten seconds or they lose, then "Pineapple" means "Stop or you're a loser".

There are an infinite number of situations where "Pineapple" could be used, so it means an infinite number of different things. It’s just that in most everyday situations, it has something in common with those tart, yellow-inside, green-topped fruits, so that’s what goes in the dictionary. Importantly, the dictionary entry does not imply that whenever someone says "Pineapple", it must refer to a particular set of fruity, green-topped objects. What it does is give you a hint: if someone says "Pineapple", it typically has something in common with the fruit, whether it’s size, shape, color, taste, or something else, but not always.

Obviously, lots of things in the universe have something in common with the fruit in some way or another, so the only way to really narrow down what pineapple means is to have a situation where it can only mean a certain set of things.

Same thing with soup: you can have tomato soup, primordial soup, quantum soup, and all kinds of other soups, all of varying degrees of similarity to each other. Until you are in a situation that gives the word some meaning, like biology class or at a restaurant, "Soup" can mean virtually anything.

Okay, fine. The definition of words is situational. How does this help me figure out if cereal is soup?

Why do you want to know?

If you’re trying to come up with a definition for something, "Why do you want to know?" is the single most important question to answer. Only if you know the answer can you come up with a satisfying definition.

For instance, if the answer is "I want to know I should give my parents a bowl of cereal when they ask for soup at lunch", then the definition of soup is "Something that your parents want for lunch". Would your parents be satisfied with a bowl of cereal? No? Then cereal is not soup.

If the answer is "My friend is a jokester and I want to make him laugh when he asks for soup", then the definition of soup is "Things you could present to your friend that would make him laugh when he asks for soup". Would your friend get the joke when given a bowl of cereal? Yes? Then cereal is soup.

If the answer is "I'm running a cereal factory in the United States and I need to know if what I'm making legally counts as soup", then the definition of soup is codified under Title 40 of the Federal Code of Regulations, Section 407.81(j). Does the law say your cereal is soup? No? Then cereal is not soup.

If the answer is "I'm chewing the fat by discussing the metaphysics of soup and cereal", then the definition of soup is indeterminate, because the definition doesn’t matter for the situation. You can discuss the nature of soup as long as you want and come to any conclusion, and it will still satisfy your purpose.

Conclusion

To know what a word means, you have to answer the question "Why do you want to know?", because the meaning of words depends on the situation. In daily life, you usually have the answer to this question without thinking, because you’re already in the situation, so you can intuit the meaning of words pretty quickly.

Conversely, answering metaphysical questions like "Is X a kind of Y?" is hard, because you’re divorced from the situation that the meaning of Y needs to apply to. The “situation” that it applies to is unclear, and until you clear it up, the meaning of Y will be indeterminate.

The Famicom: more than just a game console

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Famicom: more than just a game console

This article was written on 2025-12-19.

A picture of the legendary Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES.

Ever since the release of the Steam Deck, which allows you to play PC games on a handheld game console, the distinction between a game console and PC has been significantly blurred. But what if I told you that all the way back in the 1980s, the difference between a PC and game console was already becoming indistinguishable, and that the console we got in the West as the NES was supposed to be a general-purpose computer?

The Famicom: a Family Computer

While Nintendo had previously flirted with video games with the Color TV-Game, home consoles that could only play one game each, Nintendo really became a household name with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), a system originally released in 1983 as the Family Computer, or Famicom in Japan.

The original Family Computer, or Famicom. The NES that we got in the West was redesigned to resemble a VCR and came with a robot, to distance itself from game consoles after the American Video Game Crash of 1983.

The name Family Computer alludes to the fact that it was originally envisioned as a computer masquerading as a toy by Nintendo’s late president, Hiroshi Yamauchi. This would make the Famicom less intimidating than a PC and would be something even kids could have fun with. He appointed Masayuki Uemura as head of Nintendo R&D2, the new hardware division of the company, to design what would become the Famicom.

Since the Famicom was intended to be useful as a general-purpose computer, part of its basic design was a chip that would allow peripherals to talk directly to the CPU― anything from keyboards, to modems, to disk drives.

“It was why the machine would later be called Yamauchi’s Trojan Horse: It slipped into living rooms with nothing but a pair of controllers, innocently toylike, yet it included the capability to do far more than play games.”
― From Game Over, Press Start to Continue: How Nintendo Conquered the World (p. 34)

Famicom addons

Sure enough in 1984, a year after its release, consumers got Family BASIC, which let anyone program the Famicom using its dialect of the BASIC programming language. It included a keyboard that connected to the expansion port in front of the console to make programming easier.

The Family BASIC cartridge and included Famicom Keyboard.

Out of the box, it came included with a few programs: Calculation Board, a calculator, Music Board, a music sequencer, and Message Board, for writing notes. A nearly identical version of Family BASIC, called Playbox BASIC, released for the Sharp C1 TV-plus-Famicom combo system, comes with Biorhythm Board instead of Message Board.

Biorhythm Board tried to predict fluctuations in your physiological, emotional, and intellectual state using psuedoscientific biorhythms. Other than replacing Message Board, Playbox BASIC was otherwise identical to Family BASIC.

Image source: Playbox BASIC vs. Famicom BASIC comparison page (in Japanese)

It also had a manual that showed you how to make eight different sample games with BASIC, including Route 66, a top-down driving game, Type Master, a typing game, and Sample Program 8, which the manual insists is just a tech demo, not a game.

Sprites were provided with Family BASIC that you could use in your own programs. Image source: Mario Wiki

Sample Program 8 is a turn-based… “non-game.” The player moves Penpen, then Nitanita moves to catch him. You get points by moving Penpen onto the flags.

Image source: Screenshot from Mikasen’s Family BASIC sample program showcase video

Page 101 of the Family BASIC 2.1 manual, showing the code for Sample Program 8. In the top right, it says ゲームではありません, translating to “This is not a game.”

For Penpen, this is a matter of life or death.

Many third-party games and programs made in Family BASIC were distributed in books and magazines like Program Pochette, Micom Basic and many more. Like the examples in the Family BASIC manual, these were lines of source code that you would have to type into your Famicom manually in order to run.

While typing the full code to a program may seem tedious to us today, this was a fairly common way to distribute programs at the time, including for the best selling desktop computer of all time, the Commodore 64.

Although most of the examples focused on games, Family BASIC was a complete programming language, so you could make anything you wanted. If you knew how the hardware worked (or were patient enough to figure it out), you could even unlock the Famicom’s full power by calling low-level CPU instructions with the CALL function.

Alongside Family BASIC, you could also buy the Famicom Data Recorder, to save your programs to a cassette tape. This was identical to a normal tape deck, on which you would hook up the microphone and speaker ports to corresponding ports on the Famicom Keyboard.

The Famicom Data Recorder is cassette deck that says Nintendo on it. Other than printed source code, cassettes were another popular way to share programs on home computers, Commodore 64 included.

It wasn’t until the release of the Famicom Disk System that the Famicom could use floppy disks. Rather than normal floppy disks however, Nintendo came out with a proprietary disk format called the Disk Card, which slotted into the disk drive part of the addon.

The Famicom Disk System addon consists of two parts connected by a cable: The disk drive where you insert Disk Cards (bottom), and a RAM adapter which slots into the Famicom cartridge slot (top).

Since the Famicom Disk System occupied the cartridge slot used by Family BASIC, there was no officially supported way to save BASIC programs to a Disk Card. It took until the year official support ended for the Famicom Disk System in 2007 that Japanese console modders found a way to do so.

The main use of a Disk Card was to take it to Disk Writer kiosks at game stores where, for just ¥500 (~US$4.46 in 2025), you could overwrite it with a new game from Nintendo. With disks being cheaper than Famicom cartridge games, and with game cartridge rental becoming functionally illegal with the Japan Copyright Act of 1984, the Famicom Disk System managed to sell 4.4 million units before it sales ended in 1993.

A Disk Writer kiosk. Image source: Nintendo (in Japanese)

Certain Disk Writer kiosks were also fax enabled. Some Disk Card games would write your scores to the disk, and you would take it to one of these Disk Fax kiosks to fax your scores to Nintendo, allowing you to participate in a nationwide leaderboard. It’s a bit of a stretch, but you could arguably call this Nintendo’s first “online gaming” service.

Famicom Network System

Yamauchi was a staunch believer in Nintendo as more than just a game company― he wanted his company to be a key player in the upcoming Information Age. In a speech given to his employees, he proclaimed:

A Famicom Network System modem attached to a Famicom.

“From now on, our purpose is not only to develop new exciting entertainment software but to provide information that can be efficiently used in each household.” Translation from Game Over, Press Start to Continue: How Nintendo Conquered the World, p. 77.

The keystone to this vision was the Famicom Network System, developed in cooperation with Nomura Securities, a stock brokering company. Nintendo would build a modem for the Famicom, and Nomura Securities would build a database that could be reached using the modem to access up-to-date stock market data.

Like dial-up internet, the Famicom Modem used a phone line to connect Famicoms to services on the network. Data would be encoded as sound and travel through the telephone line, and finally decoded back into data by the modem.

Image source: Developing the Famicom Modem in Nikkei Electronics, translated by Glitterberri

According to Uemura Masayuki, Nintendo R&D2 “wasn’t confident that they would be able to make network games entertaining,” but with Nomura Securities handling development of the database, Nintendo figured that the infrastructure would already be in place and they could figure out making online games fun later. Ultimately, this meant that few games were actually released for the Famicom Network System aside from Konami’s Tsuushin Shogi Club.

Instead, the Famicom Network System launched with exciting titles like Nomura no Famicom Trade, which allowed you to trade on the stock market. You would insert the Tsuushin Cartridge (“Communication Cartridge”) into the modem, and with the number pad on the Famicom Network System’s special controller, you could choose which stocks you wanted and in what quantity.

A Famicom Network System controller with numpad. Image source: raphnet.net

Copies of Nomura no Famicom Trade, as well as programs for other stock brokers can be seen in this picture. The box featuring Doraemon is Sumitomo Homeline, a program for doing your home banking with Sumitomo Bank.

Image source: famicom.suppa.jp (in Japanese)

The most popular use of the Famicom Network System was gambling on horse races with JRA-PAT, or JRA Personal Access Terminal, developed by the Japan Racing Association. It was so successful that it captured 35% of the Japanese horse betting market, competing with PCs and dedicated betting terminals.

Unfortunately, much of the software released to use the Famicom Network System has become lost media since the network was taken down. For instance, there are Japanese newspapers mentioning Post Transfer Home Service for dealing with the post office, Cattleya AV Club for buying CDs, and a program for buying clothes, but the whereabouts of these cartridges are unknown.

This news article tells of upcoming programs that would let you buy train tickets, do online shopping, and make hotel reservations all from your very own Famicom.

Image source: JDMA News, 1989 November 15 (in Japanese)

There’s also the Famicom Fitness System, developed jointly with Fukuoka University and a few other companies, that allowed the Famicom to read data from an exercise bike. It was marketed to fitness gyms and medical institutions, and was scheduled to be marketed to the general public in December 1990, but it is unknown if this ever happened.

With an exercise bike connected, you could then enter your weight and age, and pedal for 12 minutes. After uploading your pedalling data, you would receive a personalized exercise regimen.

Image source: famicom.suppa.jp

What eventually killed the Famicom Network System was the onset of the Lost Decades, a period of nationwide economic stagnation, starting in the early 90s. With stock trading comprising much the Famicom Network’s traffic, consumers’ plummeting interest in stocks was the final nail in the coffin for a service that was already difficult to set up and use.

In the West, Nintendo hoped to create a similar network to the Famicom Network System in the United States with partners like AT&T and Fidelity Investments, but the idea came under fire when a program to play the Minnesota State Lottery was announced. Concerns over underage gambling were raised, and the NES modem was killed before making it to market.

The NES modem would have connected to the unused expansion port on the bottom the NES.

If Nintendo of America hadn’t started with the Minnesota State Lottery, could we have been online shopping and doing our taxes with an NES?

Image source: The NES Cat

Legacy

Despite its demise, some of the ideas behind the Famicom Network System were recycled for the Satellaview, a satellite service for the Super Famicom (known as the Super Nintendo in the West). Satellaview allowed users to receive satellite broadcasts to download games, magazines, and other media.

The Super Famicom sits neatly on top of the Satellaview. Like the Famicom Network System, this was also a Japan exclusive. Image source: Muband on Wikipedia

The horse betting program JRA-PAT, being one of the most popular applications, was re-released for the Super Famicom. As time marched on, internet connectivity became the norm with consoles like the Sega Dreamcast, which had an inbuilt modem and yet another re-release of JRA-PAT that had excellent music.

Nowadays, we often take both our PCs and the internet for granted. Everywhere we go, we are constantly connected to services that let us do everything the Famicom could do and more. But for a time, not every home had a PC. You might just have a TV, a landline telephone, and a Famicom that was more than meets the eye.

Your game consoles are so much more

Even though Nintendo no longer designs game consoles to be general-purpose computers, most game consoles nowadays are essentially PCs with specialized gaming hardware.

The original Xbox (short for DirectX Box), is really just an x86 Intel Pentium PC with a customized version of Windows for gaming.

Linux on the Playstation 2 and 3 were officially supported by Sony with PS2 Linux and OtherOS. This was such a useful feature that researchers built compute clusters using PS3s to speed up black hole simulations, cryptography research, and analyzing satellite imagery. When Sony removed the OtherOS feature in 2010, a class-action lawsuit was brought against them, proving that people really did care about Linux on their game consoles.

The PS3 Gravity Grid was a cluster of 400+ PS3s built by Dr. Guarav Khanna to study black holes. Image source: University of Rhode Island

The Nintendo Switch is an ARM-based computer capable of dual-booting into Linux and Android with Switchroot. Using Linux on the Switch is great because you can carry it around to do most things you’d do with a PC, and it even comes with a convenient dock so you can connect it with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor when you’re at home.

The catch? Nintendo makes it as hard as humanly possible to do so. Developers had to hack the device by shorting two pins on the Joycon connector to gain access the bootloader and install other OSes. When this was publicized, Nintendo changed the hardware so you now need to install a modchip to do so, requiring incredibly precise microsoldering skills.

In our hands, we hold the ghost of Nintendo’s dream: a Nintendo computer in every home that could be your portal to the world’s information. In a way, Nintendo got that wish― it’s just not profitable for them anymore.

A Pokémon that meant a lot to me

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A Pokémon that meant a lot to me

Posted by @ValCedar 3 days ago
6 minute read (1,604 words)

I wrote this for Language Arts class in my second year of high school, when our teacher prompted the class to write about “A Pokémon that meant a lot to you.” I found it again while trying to find some photos on my old laptop, and when I read it over, memories of my childhood that I had seemingly long forgotten hit me again, like they had happened just yesterday. I’m posting it online so I can come back to it, and maybe other people will like it too. ―Valentina

My dad was never quite the same after my mom divorced him. He wiled his days away at home staring blankly at the TV, watching re-runs of The Pokémon Whisperer, with hardly a smile left in him anymore. Conversations with him consisted of vague nods and one-word responses, starting and ending in less time than it takes Billy Mays to sell you on Dusk Balls during the commercial break. Even if you went up to him and told him your best joke, he would only give you that pained half-smile that says, “I get it, but I’m not laughing.”

Unable to stand the emptiness of my real home, the library became where I spent all my time after school. I read books of all sorts, and soon I became what everyone started calling me: a nerd.

This was a time before geek chic. Nowadays, I see kids start to play Dungeons & Dragonairs out in the open like it’s no big deal, but back then, being a nerd meant you were a weirdo. That’s pretty devastating around middle school when all the girls who were your friends in elementary school start to care. They start to care about their hair, and they start to care about their clothes. They start to care about their social status, and most of all: they start to care about boys.

These topics were the focus of most of the conversations at the lunch table. Boys especially. I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t like boys or anything― quite the opposite. Centerfolds of Wallace in Teen Vogue made my heart skip a beat like any girl with a working pair of eyes. But I wanted to talk about the book I had read at the library yesterday, and middle school girls don’t feign polite interest. They only listen to what they want to talk about.

So I learned to blend in. I learned who the school’s dreamboats were, learned who was crushing on who, and circulated rumors about what Alyssa and Lucas were doing in the bleachers at the assembly.

It’s amazing how deeply we could get into these conversations. If people can say about four words a second on average, and at least one person at that lunch table speaks though the whole forty minute lunch period, that’s at least 9,600 words every lunchtime. If we put as much thought into those 500 word, two-page essays in Language Arts class as we did tweenage drama, every one of us would have had As.

I could only pretend to care for so long, though. Day by day, I started saying less and less, and started zoning out more and more, wishing I could talk about the Collected Mythology of Unown or Science Experiments You Can Try At Home.

Then one day, as I zoned out eating my sandwich, I decided I was tired of having people talk around me. I mean, whether or not I contributed to the conversation, those same 9,600 words are still gonna get said by someone. So, as Melanie on my left craned her neck to talk to Amanda on my right about how Josie might have been flirting with Derek yesterday, my sandwich and I got up from that table and went right out the cafeteria door. The both of them just kept talking.

With every step I took, all those words started to fade away. After a little wandering, I settled down on a concrete stoop behind the gym. Leaves rustled in the wind. Pidgeottos flew past, high in the sky. Now, there were 0 words.

That’s where I met that Psyduck.

I had tucked into my lunch once again, looking vaguely at the tree in front of me, when all of a sudden a Psyduck waddles up to me from behind a bush. As I raised my sandwich up, mouth wide for a bite, he snatches away my sandwich― my sandwich!― and tosses it right into his big fat gob. In one singular gulp, that sandwich was history.

I was furious! As he stared at me with his vacant little Psyduck eyes, I yelled at him for what felt like ten minutes straight, until the bell rang and I had to get back to class. In my parting shot, he turned right around and hopped back into the bush he came from. His tail wiggled amidst the leaves before he disappared from sight.

Even though I could no longer see him, that Psyduck still showed up in back of my mind all day. After school, looking for a new book to read, a subconscious Psyduck led me to the Psyduck section of the Pokémon shelves. When I went to bed that night, I stared at the ceiling counting Psyduck. They weren’t different, unique Psyduck― I just counted that one Psyduck over and over.

The next day, I returned to that spot behind the gym, with the rustling leaves and the Pidgeottos overhead. I returned even though I knew that Psyduck could come back to take my lunch, and even though it had frustrated so much that he appeared in last night’s dream, surfing on a giant sandwich far from my reach.

Looking back, I think that deep down, I wanted to be furious. I wanted to yell and scream away my frustrations until my throat was hoarse, because it gave my heart a break from just feeling lonely.

So I sat down on the concrete stoop and sure enough, several minutes later, I spy that Psyduck peeking at me from behind the tree. I drew in a sharp breath and held my sandwich so tight the mayonnaise leeched from its sides. After considering me for a few moments, he waddled up to me just as he had the day before. My pulse quickened as he stopped right in front of me.

From behind his back he produced a misshapen crabapple, and held it out in front with his stubby little arms. Quite bewildered, I shakily reached out an apprehensive arm and grabbed it. This seemed to satisfy him, and he plopped himself down next to me with his own crabapple.

I guess he felt bad for taking my sandwich, and he’d brought something he thought I could eat as a peace offering.

For several moments, I just stood there, completely still, the crabapple in my hands, unsure how to react. But as the Psyduck sat there munching away, occasionally casting me a sidelong glance, I felt my eyes just suddenly start to well up. Tears streamed down my cheeks. Was I sad? Was it that I felt bad for having yelled at such a remorseful Psyduck yesterday? Or maybe I was just lonely and this Psyduck was the only being that seemed to care about me? But in that moment, my brain couldn’t think and make sense of it all. I could only hug him so tight that, after a minute, he started to flail around in panic and I had to put him down.

From then on, I started skipping the lunchroom and started having lunch with this Psyduck. Sometimes I’d bring him snacks that he’d gulp down all at once, only for him to clamor for more. I’d watch him pick up leaves that had fallen on the ground, gathering them in his arms until they were overflowing and scattering all across the floor. One time, I brought a playground ball and tried to teach him how to play Wallball. That was not a success.

In all that time playing with him, I wondered vaguely whether he was someone’s Pokémon or if he was wild. I’d never seen him with anyone else, or anywhere else for that matter. I just know he’d show up at lunch, and we’d hang out. I didn’t have a Pokéball to try to capture him, but as long as he came back each day, I was already happy enough.

When it came close to summer in my last year of middle school, I knew our lunches would be coming to an end. I think he knew it too. When the lunch bell rang in those last weeks before graduation, he would tug at my legs with his little arms as if telling me not to go.

I didn’t want my time with that Psyduck to disappear, so on graduation day, I slipped away and stole a Pokéball from the janitor’s supply closet. I met him once again at the concrete stoop behind the gym, right on time, at noon.

I gripped the Pokéball in my hand. Dozens of simulations of the throw raced through my mind― angle and velocity of throw, air resistance, wind direction― absolutely everything accounted for. I had always been a lousy pitcher in P.E., but somehow, just this once, I knew I couldn’t miss.

I drew my arm back, poised for the throw, and with a whoosh in the air, Mr. Davis the Math teacher appeared behind me and stopped my hand.

“I don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news,” he said, taking back the stolen Pokéball “But that Psyduck isn’t yours to capture.”

He told me that the Psyduck was named Daisy. She belonged to a student named Adrian Lee, and had been coming to the area behind the gym every day for six years at noon, the time and place she and Adrian would play together when he was at school. Adrian hasn’t been seen for many years, but Daisy has never missed a single day. The police have run out of leads on his whereabouts, but his parents have never given up hope that, one day, he’ll be back.

And neither, it seems, has that Psyduck.

Callback

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Callback

Thursday, June 10, 2010

I lost my job a little more than two years ago after Castelia Financial went under. In my last few months there, that company worked me to the bone with fifty, maybe sixty hour work weeks. During the morning, I’d catch my reflection in the mirror while brushing my teeth, and staring back was an increasingly gaunt 30-year-old man with bigger rings around his eyes than a Dunsparce overdosed on Adderall.

At last when I got the email thanking all the employees for their hard work and dedication, but that there would be no need to come to work anymore, I felt nothing but a sigh of relief as I sank back into my pillow and hibernated for the rest of the fiscal quarter. I knew that when I woke up, I’d have to find another job to trade my precious time for rent, but that’d be a problem for a future, more well-rested me.

A couple years and a few thousand rejected job applications later, my bank account balance had started to look a little barren, and I could barely look my landlord in the eye anymore. It hurt my pride, but there wasn’t much for me to do but call my mother and ask if she’d take me back.

I hadn’t talked to her in about eleven years since leaving for the big city. She was opposed to me leaving, you see. She always said how it couldn’t possibly end well, and that I should just stay in the country. I’d always felt a little awkward calling since then, so I didn’t.

Years went by. The longer we didn’t talk, the easier it became to forget. I’d think about phoning home, but before I could dial, I’d think how pained and guilty I’d feel if she lectured me for being a terrible son and not calling all these years, and I’d always put the phone back down.

I knew that wasn’t an option this time, so I steeled my resolve and picked up the phone. With every digit I dialed, I could feel my pulse quickening, braced for whatever she might say when she picked up.

I dialed the last digit. A jumble of apologetic phrases coursed through my head.

It started to ring my mother’s phone. “Sorry, it’s my bad,” I thought about saying. Would that be too nonchalant?

The sound of the receiver being picked up. “I should have called more.” Would that make it more sincere?

“Hello?” she said.

“Hi, it’s me, Jake.”

“Oh, how wonderful to hear from you, dear! How have you been?”

Her happy tone only made it that much harder to disappoint her and tell her what had happened to me. I bit back my tongue before I started to explain, because for a split second I considered just hanging up the phone and sparing her the depressing news. But with my livelihood on the line, I closed my eyes and told her the real reason I was calling her.

The train arrived at my old hometown precisely on time at six in the evening. The station was small, hosting just a single platform and the station master’s hut right next to it with boarded up windows. In front, the clock had been so clouded by dirt that you could barely make out the hands beneath the glass. Even though it had sat there abandoned for such a long time, it inexplicably still ticked along.

The train chugged away from the station, taking away my last chance to turn back. After it shrunk into the horizon, I clutched the suitcase of my last earthly possessions and turned towards the familiar country road to my childhood home.

As my suitcase rattled across the asphalt, I still felt guilty with every footstep I took, no matter how friendly my mother was over the phone. I had no doubt in my mind that she’d was disappointed in what I’d become, and that I was due for a stern talking to. She’d have every right to, after all.

So when I came to the Poké Mart on the side of the road, eager for any distraction from the unease, I stopped and turned to take it in.

My first memory of the Poké Mart was when my mother was buying food for Buster, our family’s new Growlithe pup, and I had wandered into the snack aisle. Being a little brat of three or four years old, “transaction” was still just a word I couldn’t pronounce. All I saw was a big box of mini donuts that I wanted, and so I tore into it like a Gulpin at a Poffin House.

When the owner found me gorging myself on unpaid merchandise, his face turned red as a Darmanitan and he yelled at me until I burst into tears, and my mother had to carry me home on her back. I can’t really remember what happened after that, just that she tried to reassure me that if I promised not to do it again that everything would be okay.

I was scared of the Poké Mart from then until when I was about eight, when I got lost during the village festival. Of all the people to find me, it was the owner of the Poké Mart. I hid behind a tree when I saw him approach, but I was never good at sneaking around. He put on a reassuring smile, and remembering the incident from all that time ago, even gave me a packet of mini donuts as he helped me find my mother.

When you get to know him, Steph’s actually a pretty nice guy. He gave me a job at the Poké Mart when I was a teenager, where I learned that he liked to tell weird stories and collect rocks. He’d sometimes wander around the woods after closing up to see if he’d come across any evolution stones. “I usually don’t find any,” he said, “but that just makes ‘em all the more precious when I do.”

I snapped out of my memories and walked up to the door. There stood a faded notice, peeling away at the edges. “Going out of business. Thanks for 33 great years! ―Steph”

With a napkin, I wiped a small section of a window, cloudy with dirt, and peered inside. The shelves were exactly where they used to be. Except now, there were no more mini donuts and no more Pokémon food. No more 2-for-1 deals on Super Repels.

My gaze lingered at the Poké Mart sign as I pulled myself away and continued down the street. Where is Steph now? He always said he wanted to visit the Orange Islands. There’d probably be some great rocks there.

On the side of the road was the playground where me and my older brother Marty used to play. We’d bring our plastic tanks and toy soldiers and pretend the jungle gym was Castelia City with all its skyscrapers. We’d wage war for supremacy over the land and, even though it was all make-believe, he somehow managed to win every time as the older brother. Those war games were always rigged.

One summer, while pretending we were having a aerial dogfight, Marty threw a toy plane into a tree on the edge of the woods by the playground. We spent hours trying to get it down, even as the sun set, and my mother would have gotten worried and started to search for us. That night, I tried one last time to climb up the tree. I’d even gotten pretty far, when suddenly an angry Hoothoot swooped directly at my face to defend its perch.

Our mother had found us, just as it happened, with Buster in tow. Buster came charging in, and leapt up a tremendous height to defend me from its vicious attack. In the moment, all I could see was a black and orange blur of fur, but according to Marty, Buster “Soared through the air like a Moltres” and looked “Totally awesome!”

The ensuing tussle between Buster and the Hoothoot ended with the Hoothoot getting scared away, but not before it had ripped off a gruesome chunk of fur on the back of his neck, and we had to rush him to the Pokémon Center. He made a full recovery afterwards, but that patch of neck fur never did grow back.

Looking up at the tree now, you would never know an incident had taken place here.

At the base of the tree was a little swing set, which looked a lot more worn down than in my memories. Much of the paint had chipped away, its rusty chains squeaking quietly as it was jostled by the breeze.

I used to lay belly-down on the swing, and have my brother push me with my arms outstretched, pretending to be Superman flying to whoever needed my help next. One day, I learned that Kryptonite was to Superman as gravity was to ten-year-olds when I came tumbling down and spent the night getting x-rays and fitted for a cast. Buster refused to leave my side for the next three months. Wherever I went, he would follow, trying to keep me safe from myself, even though I was older than him.

Now the swing barely fits me just sitting down. It creaked and groaned in protest as it bore the weight of a grown man. Perhaps this was my petty revenge on the swing for sending me to the hospital all those years ago.

The sun started to set behind the fields in the distance. If there’s anything that’s nice about the countryside, it’s how quiet it is. In the city, a grown man sitting by himself on a swing attracts dirty looks from parents and passersby. Here, there’s nobody to bother you, only the thoughts that keep you company.

I wonder if the toy plane is still stuck in that tree. I never did see it again. Still, I couldn’t believe Marty would just be okay with leaving it up there. Maybe he went back to get it with a ladder and he just didn’t tell me, so that he could play with it all by himself in secret. That would be very much like him.

How is he doing these days anyway? We haven’t really talked since he got married and moved to Galar. I’d always wanted to go, maybe pay him and Anne a visit while I was there, but never could find the time.

Now that I have the time, I don’t have the money. Funny how life works.

I sat there wallowing away for about a half hour when something fiery orange caught the corner of my eye. The heat from its body could be felt even from several yards away, and the air grew hotter and hotter with every inch that it drew closer. The creature’s bushy white tail and the mane around its neck billowed in the air as it crept carefully across the playground. Its towering figure loomed over me, and all I could do was sit there, stunned, with bated breath.

It was, unmistakably, an Arcanine.

It stopped just in front of me and sniffed the air. Even in the middle of June, clouds of steam wafted to the sky with every exhale. Its fur was patchy and matted up close. Looking up, its eyes were a cloudy white, like smoke behind clear glass.

After what felt like an eternity, it sat down beside me, and finally nuzzled its head into my lap.

I moved my hand to the back of his neck, but in my heart I already knew exactly who it was.

“Hey Buster,” I said, hugging him as tight as I could, as if it would make up for lost time. “Let’s go see mom.”

Creating character chemistry for RP

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Creating character chemistry for RP

In a character-focused RP, the most important factor to consider when making a character sheet is whether they’ll have good chemistry with other player’s characters. Since social interaction is the focus, good chemistry makes for good RP, which itself is a result of characters having reasons to interact with each other. When there are no reasons, there is no chemistry, and the RP dies.

To illustrate this point, imagine you’re packed into a crowded bus, with people all around you. You don’t know them, and you have no reasons to talk with any of them, so despite the fact that you’re all physically close, everyone is standing around looking at their phones. There is no chemistry here.

Similarly, characters that are in the same RP need to have reasons to interact, otherwise they’re just sitting around doing nothing. Simply being in the same RP is actually a rather weak reason to interact, so you need to put some thought into your character’s personality and background to avoid the crowded bus problem.

Chemistry through personality

If I’m a player who’s deciding if I want my character to interact with yours, the first thing I look for in your character sheet is their personality, so that I can compare it with my characters’. If there’s a good fit, then that’s a reason for them to interact.

Obviously, two characters with similar personalities will have more reasons to talk to each other, and would probably make good friends. However, even characters with diametrically opposed personalities can have good chemistry. They might dislike or hate each other, but if they’ll start arguments, play pranks on each other, or are actively trying to ruin each others’ lives, then this is great chemistry because they’ll always have reasons to talk to each other. As long as the characters’ suffering is fun for everyone to RP, characters being enemies can be just as satisfying as being friends.

The most difficult personalities to play are shy characters and characters who brood silently in the corner. The problem is that nobody has a reason to talk to the corner-sitters, so they don’t. Or if they do, the corner-sitter pushes them away before a deeper interaction can happen, so there’s little motivation to keep interacting. If nobody wants to interact with them, they may as well not be there.

This is not to say that a shy character could never work. Shy characters could open up when certain people talk to them, which encourages further interaction. However, people still need that initial reason to approach a shy character. This is where the character’s background comes in.

Chemistry through shared backgrounds

Shy or not, all characters benefit from having a full and varied background. A good background doesn’t just tell the character’s life story up to the start of the RP. Rather, it needs to be useful for answering the question: "How is my character's life connected to other player characters' lives, whether directly or indirectly?"

Crucially, the answers to this question are the reasons that other characters should interact with yours, which is where we get our chemistry. The more “plot hooks” you add to their background, the more other players can find some reason to interact with them. Even little things like hobbies they’ve picked up, successes and failures they’ve experienced, or places that they frequent, can create good reasons for two characters to interact, even if their “main story” is different.

For instance, a programmer who works on bank software appears to have little to do with a journeyman plumber at first blush, but add one simple detail— that they both have a love of football from having played in high school— and suddenly their lives could have crossed in multiple different ways. Perhaps they played for the same high school team, or played against each other at different schools, or they frequent the same sports bar and became friends that way.

Conversely, if your character’s background consists of training in a secluded mountaintop all their life, you’re probably going to have a hard time. It doesn’t matter how much detail you write about their mountaintop home, their childhood, or their training— due to their seclusion, there is no way for other players’ characters to cross paths with yours, so your character had better have one hell of a personality if they want to fit into an RP.

Summary

In a character RP, character chemistry is the engine that drives the entire experience. Therefore, the most important aspects to character creation for character RPs is making a personality and background that gives other characters’ motivation to interact with them. Without this, a character is doomed to standing around awkwardly doing nothing, like a shy person at a house party who doesn’t know anyone there.

North Downtown Station

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

North Downtown Station

9:30 PM. Crowded as always.

Commuters filter in and out of the platform through the escalators, holding bags of the latest merchandise, immersed in their screens. Lights dance in their faces and in their eyes. The profile pictures they swear are their friends are right next to them, but pretend to be from Erothena to seem cool. They live in Dwarf Quarter.

A cold male voice resonates though the air in three languages. “The E train to Technology Park 15 is arriving in two minutes.” The voice isn’t alive. At least, not anymore. But it sounds exactly the same as it always had. Aunt Nava swears she can hear the difference, though maybe she’s just getting on in the years.

An absentminded faerie whizzes by, holding a smartwatch like it was a tablet, nearly missing a man’s face. “Hey, watch it, Recyclable!” the man says. “Up yours too, asshole!” the faerie shouts back. The crowd around them furrows their brows and give the two of them dirty looks. You can almost feel the social credit going down.

A foreigner rushes into the platform and hurriedly asks a lady in a blue velvet skirt if he made it in time for the E train. She has a soft, delicate voice. You swear you’ve seen her in a dream before. The blaring morning alarm wrenched away all the memories of the dream except the warmth and gentleness of her smile. The resemblance is probably just a coincidence, but you can’t help but wonder what kind of person she is. Does she like skydiving as much as her dream self said she did? Is her favorite color really blue? Is she a tea girl or a coffee girl?

A tall, scruffy elf struggles with a lighter and a pipe in front of the No Smoking sign. They say elves are naturally beautiful, but the grime on his face and the tatters on his jacket say otherwise. The sparks consume the last dregs of his lighter fluid, and he slumps down to the floor in defeat.

A sharply-dressed businesswoman stares into the crowd, looking angry. Suddenly she raises her voice to chew someone out you can’t see, and the scruffy elf’s head jolts up in fright. She notices him, throws a look of disgust down in his direction, and stares ahead again. “If our profit margins are down again this quarter, heads are going to roll!” You realize now she’s wearing a wireless earpiece.

A draft by the tracks signals the arrival of the E train. A piece of trash drifts across the floor, bobbing and weaving between a forest of legs. An elderly man clutches his cane tighter as though it were the only thing rooting him to the ground. The headlights of the train project onto the walls from the subway tunnel. Louder. Closer. “The E train to Technology Park 15 is now arriving. Stay behind the red line.”

A small crowd pours out of the train, and another crowd pours in to replace them. Rushes of air blow past your face as you cut through into the train. You dodge a faerie engrossed in a paperback novel up above, her tiny shoes grazing your hair. The book has a spaceship and a wormhole on the cover.

The lady in the blue velvet skirt stands just outside the window. The commuters rushing past her jostle her auburn hair to and fro. Did she spend long on her hair this morning?

A middle-aged woman races down the stairs against the people going up, a mass of colorful shopping bags streaming behind her.

“Hey!”
A man with a robotic arm shouts and holds his soda aloft to keep it from spilling as she rushes by.

“Ouch!”
A bag hits a small girl in the head. Her mother crouches down to hug her close.

“Watch it!”
Tissue paper floats away from the woman’s shopping bag onto a dwarf’s tablet screen. His beard is moving, but his thick accent renders him incomprehensible.

“Careful!”
A large, bespectacled man clutches his glasses tighter to his face. His head looks like a melon.

At last she squeezes herself and her bags in the spaces between commuters, and hunches over to catch her breath.

The train speakers beep rapidly. “Doors are now closing. Stand clear of the door.” You know, maybe Aunt Nava was right. Maybe it does sound a little different than it used to. What did it used to sound like again?

It’s easy to zone out on the train. Stations zoom by the window, one after another, as if they were scenes in a dream easily forgotten. They say that at night, the rhythmic beat of wheels on the magic-imbued tracks can lull commuters into a kind of trance. Or maybe it’s because it’s 10 PM and the unpaid overtime is taking its toll.

“Now arriving in 48th Street West. Alight on my left. Remember to take your baggage with you when you exit the train.” Commuters all over the train clutch their backpacks, purses, and shopping bags close, afraid of losing their baggage. It’s incredible how much people can carry.

There she is again, by the foot of the escalator. The lady in the blue velvet skirt, looking as charming as she did before. How did she get here? It must be magic. The curiosity is overwhelming. The tiredness, the fear of talking to someone you don’t know, none of that matters anymore. “Hey, I’m so sorry to bother you, but I swear I’ve seen you before. Were you in North Downtown station earlier?”

“I’m sorry, I do not know how to respond to that query,” she says. “I can provide information about Dorovec Light Rail routes, arrival times, and other DLR-related questions.”

Up close, her image flickers. Her eyes aren’t as warm as you dreamed they would be. Up above, a hologram projector. “Ah, never mind then.”

How to get a pictorial postmark

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

How to get a pictorial postmark

What are they?

A pictorial postmark from Fenelon Falls, Ontario, Canada

When you send a letter with postage stamps, your country’s mail service will stamp over your postage stamps with a postmark, usually with a date on it. This does two things: the date tells you when the postal service collected your outgoing mailpiece, and it also slathers ink on your stamp so it can’t be reused (known as stamp canceling).

Pictorial postmarks are just fancy postmarks with pictures on them. Usually they commemorate some kind of event, like a county fair, but some are available permanently. Many countries’ postal services allow you to get a piece of mail stamped with one of them if you know how to send them in, even if you didn’t attend the event.

Just tell me how, internet man

Your national postal service will periodically post a bulletin with a catalog of postmarks that are available now and in the near future:

Canada Post maintains a list of Pictorial Cancels
UK Royal Mail calls them Handstamps, which can be found from the Postmark Bulletin linked from the Postmarks page
American USPS customers who want one should google pictorial postmark <current or previous month> <current year> because the USPS publishes a new webpage every month (ex. August 2024).

Each pictorial postmark will have a corresponding address where the postmaster will apply the postmark. You will need this address. For example, many UK postmarks are stamped at the London Special Handstamp Centre at London SHC, Royal Mail, Mount Pleasant, Farringdon Road, LONDON, EC1A 1BB.

In countries that allow you to get pictorial postmarks without personally going to a postmaster, the process usually involves two things:

A piece of mail (e.g. postcard) that you want the pictorial postmark to be applied to. This should be addressed to the final recipient (this can even be your own address). It should also have enough postage stamps to be sent from the postmaster’s address to the final recipient.
An outer envelope in which you should put mailpiece #1 inside. This envelope should have enough postage stamps to be sent from your location to the postmaster’s address.

Then, you send the outer envelope through the mail. Depending on country, there may be additional instructions you need to follow:

Special instructions depending on country

Canada (Canada Post)
United Kingdom (Royal Mail)
United States (USPS)

Canada (Canada Post)

Most Canadian pictorial cancels are permanently available. For these, there are no special instructions and you just have to send the outer envelope.

United Kingdom (Royal Mail)

Royal Mail must receive your outer envelope before the date that the handstamp becomes available. Since each Handstamp Centre applies many different handstamps, the outer envelope also needs to clearly show the words Special Handstamp and the serial number of the desired handstamp.

If you are not in the UK and you are sending something to the Royal Mail for a handstamp, you get an extra 28 days after the handstamp’s date for the Royal Mail to receive it.

A handstamp as it appears in the Postmark Bulletin, with serial number and date. The outer envelope needs to be marked with the serial number (15997), the words "Special Handstamp", and be received by Royal Mail before 8 Sep 2024. This particular handstamp is stamped at the London Special Handstamp Centre, so the envelope must be addressed to there.

United States (USPS)

Pictorial postmarks are made available starting on a certain date, and the USPS must receive your outer envelope within the 30 day period following the availability date. Each postmark will have its own address.

A pictorial postmark as it appears on the USPS postal bulletin, with date and address. The address starts from "Rollag Station." The outer envelope should be received by USPS by 29 September 2024, 30 days after the availability date.

Piss Corps

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Piss Corps

Click to expand file metadata for: my_diary.diary

    File metadata for:  my_diary.diary  (regular file)
    File handler: Agent M. Rosenthal #16F37DA4
    Note: This file was decrypted using the agency backdoor key
          and entered into evidence by Agent Rosenthal.
    -- Original filesystem stat --
    File: my_diary.diary    (regular file)
    Size: 214 kB    Blocks: 418     IO Block: 4096
    Device: 1,3     Inode: 56701968     Links: 1
    Access (0644/-rw-r--r--)    Uid: ( 1000/kat)    Gid: ( 1000/kat)

4 January 2078 11:01 PM

God, how do I start this thing? I haven’t had a diary since I was a kid. Am I supposed to be writing to someone?

You know sometimes you see those published diaries by people who are all long dead? Maybe on my deathbed I’ll give someone the password to this thing and everyone in the future can read about how shitty my life is on planet Eurydice a hundred years later. By the way, when I say my life is shitty, that’s not a metaphor.

About two months ago, I got reassigned to the Piss Corps by Boss Li because of a liiiiittle mistake of losing a key of coke on a run. Okay? Mistakes happen. So now of all the stinking duties I have to be stuck with, of course it’s going to be my piss-poor luck that I’m stuck with the Piss Corps.

What the fuck do we do? Basically we spend all day scouting construction sites for Porta-potties, tracking big trucks with septics tanks around until we think they’re full, and hijack them. Then we drive them over to wherever Jerry says to, and unload all the piss and shit into another septic tank. God knows what the point of all that is.

I tried asking Jerry what it’s all supposed to be used for, but he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. “Mind your business and do your job,” he said. That’s what he always says. Try to ask him anything― “How’s it going?” or “Where are you from?” or “Where’s the train station?”― and all he’ll say is “Mind your business” or “Do your job” or both.

Someone should get him drunk one of these days. I bet he’ll say some really dark shit. Maybe he gets off to torture porn or something really fucked up.

I tried asking Nybble, the jackass who hacks the traffic cameras and stuff on our runs, what we’re collecting all this shit for. But all he did was go, “You really don’t know?” and scoff. He thinks he’s better than us because he sits in his pajamas pushing buttons while we do all the real work on the street. Believe me, if he ever has to come along with us and actually risk his own ass for a change, he’d shit his pants. No question.

He’s never shown his face either. I bet he’s got a super punchable face, you know what I mean? The kind of face you take one look at and are instantly compelled to see fist meet nose. And I bet he has no idea what we do with this stuff either.

Rathead doesn’t know but at least he’s not a dick about it. He’s a chill dude. He lets you borrow his Mickey Mouse lighter, and if you ask nicely he’ll drive the truck if you’re not feeling up to it. But he’s kind of wack-job though.

This one time we were playing Poker with Maddis and JC in the back room of Boss Li’s Mahjong parlor, and out of the blue his chair clatters onto the floor and he’s shouting “Eureka!” and starts putting Pizza Rolls on one of those personal-sized frozen pizzas. It was his turn to bet.

That’s not the end of it either. After taking it out of the toaster oven and about two minutes of eating this monstrosity, he leaps out of his chair again and comes back with a can of pineapple giggling like a madman. As he’s dumping canned pineapple on his Pizza Roll pizza, he’s all slack-jawed and looking in amazement like he’s invented something revolutionary. He takes one bite and goes, “Duuuuude… this is gonna take over the world!!!”

The only person who seems to have any ideas about what we’re doing with all this shit we steal is the new chick, Mara. She’s really nice. Maybe a little too nice for her own good. She greets everyone when they pass by, she tries to make small talk with randos in the Mahjong parlor to the point Jerry had to tell her to stop, and she can’t bluff in Poker for shit. If she has a good hand, she scrunches up her little nose every time. I’d really hate to see her in any trouble.

“They’re probably selling it, right?” she said, “Like, you know when you flush the toilet it goes into the sewer? There’s some facility it goes to and the water gets cleaned and then farms can use it to water crops and stuff.” Man, if recycled piss-water is being used to water crops, no wonder food these days tastes like shit.

But even if you sell recycled sewage, I can’t imagine it’s really worth stealing. Who the hell is buying illegal sewage? I tried asking Mara but even she doesn’t know. She just shrugged and said, “I’d love to know. Let me know if you find out, alright?”

I’m really curious now. Seriously, who’s buying this stuff?

7 January 2078 1:02 AM

I was driving today’s sewage truck to the dropoff point with Rathead when we start to hear sirens blaring in the distance. Usually it’s someone trying to hold up a convenience store, or someone’s husband’s had a little too much to drink. What usually doesn’t happen is when the guy who’s supposed to be hacking all the traffic cameras starts muttering “fuck, fuck fuck” under his breath moments before you hear the sirens.

“Okay team, we fucked up,” he said as I was driving down the intersection. The only time Nybble calls us a team is when he does something horribly wrong. “We have to get you somewhere the drones can’t see you. I’m giving you a new destination.”

I learned today that Rathead doesn’t like dark tunnels. Can’t fucking stand them. For four hours Nybble had us holed up in an abandoned tunnel with the truck before we got the all clear. Four goddamn hours trying to keep Rathead from freaking the fuck out. He’d always been a tad claustrophobic, like he’d be all fidgety in the elevator unless he’d had his smokes beforehand. But I never thought I’d see the day when he’d fully lose his marbles in front of me.

Today of all days would have been a great time for him to have his smokes, but by some twist of fate he’d left it at home. I thought he carried it everywhere, like it was his life force or something. One time when we were emptying our truck, he thought he dropped his lighter down one of the septic tanks and spent an hour magnet fishing before realizing it was in his pocket the whole time.

I tried getting him to calm down and all that, but after five minutes of his nervous trembling and mumbling about how we’re all fucked, I started to lose it myself and gave him a big slap. Right on the face. I thought maybe a sudden hit like that would reboot his system, but this only made things worse because his mumbling turned to howling and I started really regretting my life choices.

Ten minutes after that I’d broken down myself and started to plead. “Please, would you just pipe down? It’s gonna be alright Rathead, you know? You know what I’m talking about? Everything’s gonna be fine,” I said, eyes wide and breaking into a cold sweat. I was really grasping at straws here. “Look, Rathead, what’s your favorite food? You remember that Pizza Roll pizza you invented? With the pineapple? Imagine that― when you get home you can eat all the damn Pizza Roll abominations you want.”

Suddenly, his voice cuts off. His head slowly turns toward me. He had a face like he’d been drained by a fuckin’ vampire, with bags under his beady eyes that made him look like he hadn’t slept for a week. But miraculously, from the corners of his mouth, he starts to give this defeated half-smile, even though he’s still trembling like a motherfucker.

So I knew I just had to keep talking. “When we get out of here, I’m gonna get me some pasta with that Cajun cream sauce. That’s shit’s real good, you know what I’m talking about?”

He just sort of did this little nod and slowly he opens his mouth and says, “Poutine.”

“Fucking what?”

“You asked me what my favorite food was. Poutine.”

“Another one of your inventions?”

“Naw man, Poutine. P-O-U-T-I-N-E. You take fries, right? And you put cheese curds on it. Then you get gravy all over them fries, maybe add a little bacon. You haaave to try it sometime. It’s fuckin’ righteous.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“Well my friend, we’ve got to get some culture into you. If the wormhole opens again, I’ll show you around my hometown. You’re going to love the Big Orange.” Then he started to mime out a big circle above his head with his arms.

I thought the “Big Orange” was the city’s nickname, like how “Big Apple” is actually New York City. But no, apparently it’s a big, round, orange-shaped building where they sell orange juice and this poutine thing. You know what? He’s right. I’d totally love to see that, not like in a “Wow this is really awesome!” kind of way, but more like “Wow, so that kind of thing really exists, huh?” way.

That’s all kind of a moot point though, unless you actually think the wormhole is going to reopen in our lifetime. I mean, it’s been eight years― you’d think if they were going to open it they’d have done it by now instead of leaving everyone on this side trapped. All the companies that poured countless bags of money colonizing Eurydice must have at least tried it rather than give up on their sizeable investment. And at the very least, every family with someone stuck on the other side of the wormhole would give an arm and a leg just to talk to their children again, so if they could open it up even just a peep, I’m sure we’d know by now.

He kept reminiscing about all these little things about his home, what his life used be to be, and what he’d do the moment he got back to Earth. Slowly the color returned to his face. He seemed so damn sure he’ll be able to go back someday that I just had to ask him why, even if it’s so damn unlikely.

“Because it just has to,” he said to me, “Because one day, I’m gonna hug little Sonya in my arms again, even if she’s all grown up, because that’s just the way the world is meant to be. Isn’t that enough?”

I can’t imagine ever having any kids, and I’ve never cared much for my own family either. I didn’t know my own mother for long, and when my father wasn’t wallowing in self-pity after she left him, he was busy putting down my accomplishments and doubting me every step of the way. But sometimes I see how everyone else gets along with their family and wish I had that too. How would my life be different? Would I still be stuck on this shithole of a planet, driving sewage around and hiding in dark tunnels?

When Nybble finally gave us the all clear, we dropped off the sewage and went back to the Mahjong parlor to report back to Jerry. He dismissed us, except for Nybble, who I hear was chewed out extensively. He fucking deserves it.

Maddis and JC had gone home hours ago, but Mara was still hanging around, apparently still trying to get used to the place. She said she’d passed by Rathead who just wanted to be alone for the night, and asked me what got us so late. So I told her what happened: Nybble fucking up, hiding in a dark tunnel for four hours, and Rathead’s mental breakdown. Mara’s a good listener. She’s always asking all these questions that lead you into different little topics, and half an hour later you forgot how the conversation even started but it’s okay because you’re having fun. And she’s always so attentive even though I’m sure I was so damn boring to listen to.

“If that happens again, you have to be gentler. Boys need soothing words too,” Mara told me, “I think when you asked him about his favorite food, you got him to imagine a future Rathead where he’s enjoying poutine safe at home, and it gave him a bit of hope. That’s probably what calmed him down.”

I wanted to talk with her more, so I asked her if she’d want to grab dinner with me or something if she hadn’t eaten yet. But she said she still had something she had to do. “Ask me again next time,” she said.

So I went home alone, swinging by the convenience store on the way, where the windows still haven’t been replaced after being smashed in last month. The Cajun cream sauce pasta ready meal costs 50 friggin’ Lyra each now, so I had to just reconstitute the shitty nutrient powder I had at home. I’m getting real sick of this artificial chocolate flavor. Urgh.

I guess I should head to bed.

12 January 2078 9:45 PM

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I fuckin’ miss Rathead, man. He got Jerry to give him time off to recover from his mental breakdown, so this week I’m stuck running jobs with fucking Maddis.

I rip on Rathead for being a wacky airhead sometimes, but if there’s anyone around here’s who proper fucking apeshit, it’s Maddis. Maddis, as JC puts it, is mad. Last week he threw a chair through the window of the Mahjong parlor while Jerry was telling him he needs to be more discreet and stop fucking capping the drivers of every goddamn truck he tries to jack. God knows Jerry’s constant nagging can get on your nerves sometimes, but he has a point― if Toilets Inc. has a truck full of shit stolen now and then, it’s just business. But if too many of their employees die, the CBA gives them a 2 million Lyra fine and Toilets Inc. starts sending corp security after you.

If there’s anything scarier than the cops, it’s corp security. Except maybe Maddis.

Maddis is so batshit crazy that even Nybble is willing to stop being a high and mighty piece of shit when it comes to dealing with that psycho. I guess he’s afraid Maddis will suddenly fly into a rage and somehow deck him in the mouth through the radio if he so much as breathes into the microphone wrong. I mean, fuck, I’d like to see a cage match between Maddis and Nybble and see his sorry ass get handed to him― but definitely not when I’m within a 100 foot radius of ground zero.

When Maddis isn’t around, you know Nybble is talking all sorts of shit about him. According to some of the stuff he’s dug up, Maddis was dishonorably discharged from the North American Space Force after beating a crewman into a bloody pulp, all for knocking his fucking spoon off the table in the mess hall. He became a drifter in Eurydice after failing to adjust to civilian life on Earth, and ended up regularly sinking what was left of his money at Boss Li’s Mahjong tables.

Now, I’ve never played a game of Mahjong in my life, but I know there’s only one reason he wins anything at our Poker games: when you’re sat within arm’s reach of a menacing 6 foot 4, 250-something pound behemoth with anger issues, you have to let him win a few hands unless you’re willing to bet that the two pair in your hand also magically makes your fucking skull indestructible.

We forgot to tell Mara about this aspect of our table etiquette, upsetting a delicate balance the first time she played a game with us. Like many, she picked up Maddis’ tell almost immediately: he starts looking around the table, giving everyone the fucking evil eye if he’s bluffing his ass off. But being an innocent new recruit, she wrongly assumed that Maddis was a normal person, so after hoovering up all of his chips and calling his final, desperate attempt to go all-in with an obviously garbage hand, we could all feel time slowing down as his seething red face contorted into pure, unadulterated rage.

Chips jumped off the table as he slammed his gargantuan fists onto its surface, moments before he transformed our game into 52 card pickup by heaving the table across the room and screaming “FUCK YOU, YOU STUPID FUCKING BITCH!” at the top of his fucking lungs.

Normally, JC runs with Maddis, but with Rathead gone and Jerry making JC show Mara how to maintain the septic tanks, I was stuck with the madman. I tried to volunteer myself as the teacher and maybe spend some quality time with Mara, but for some fucking reason Jerry was pretty insistent that JC do it. “He’s got more experience,” he said, as if teaching it requires a third-degree black belt or some shit.

Maddis basically spent the entire route to the stakeout location spouting his bullshit politics and saying how Myriam Morgan should be the Chairman of the Eurydicean Council since she’s going to get rid of the tiered income tax. He thinks that “it’s unfair to everyone who earned their Lyra fair and square.” Nevermind the fact that, as members of the fucking mafia, none of us pay income tax, nor is any of our Lyra earned fair or square. I sat through his entire fucking spiel trying to keep myself from engaging because, let’s face it, people like Maddis cannot be reasoned with.

True to form, not one nanosecond passes after spotting the newly loaded septic truck before Maddis takes out his sawed-off and goes, “I’m going in, you better cover me.”

And when I tried to remind him that this is exactly the kind of thing Jerry yelled at him for just last Tuesday, he goes, “Fuck that guy, I’m not gonna sit around for five fucking hours to jack a truck,” and bolts out into plain fucking view of the truck driver as he was climbing into the truck cab. Surprised, he shouted something indistinct, and in the next instant, my ears started ringing. Maddis had guaranteed himself another lecture from Jerry.

The driver’s blood, brains, and skull were splattered all over the fucking truck cabin. I watched it all slowly drip from the ceiling into a pool of blood gathering on top of the seats. Each and every drop sent a ripple through the blood, shimmering in the moonlight. I thought I was gonna be fucking sick.

All this while, Maddis was just wiping off the windshield with the truck driver’s shirt. When he was done, he tossed it aside onto the pavement. The driver’s name was embroidered on the shirt. Samuel, it said.

“You comin’?” Maddis said. He planted himself in the driver’s side blood pool without a second thought.

I always thought the more you see people killed in front of you, the easier it would be to shrug it off and just move on― to tell myself that, yeah, people die, you know? like everyone else in this business. But no matter how many times I see the blood, I can never stop remembering what it was like the first time.

I was 23. The wormhole had been closed for two and a half years. I used to think I would have become a journalist by then, or a photographer― literally anything else. But instead, I was broke, starving, and holding a gun to a poor teenage kid who had the misfortune of stumbling upon Boss Li’s cocaine operation.

Urban exploration, he said. It was his hobby.

He swore he wouldn’t tell a soul.

If he didn’t get home by midnight his mom would worry.

He winced every time I hesitated to shoot him.

I cried that night. Silent tears, laying in bed, until my eyes were raw.

I tried to wash out the images with the cheapest, foulest cleaning product that could still be legally called vodka. And yet, every time I see the blood, it’s always there.

It never goes away.

13 January 2078

The morning alarm hit me harder than a dump truck slamming into a pedestrian on the Petrakas Bridge. I thought about just melting into an unmoving blob on top of the mattress and staring at the ceiling, as if waking up today would even matter in the long run. But through the throbbing in my head I remembered the only reason I even had a ceiling to stare at in the first place is because I haven’t given Jerry enough reasons to get rid of my broke ass yet. I sighed and dragged my ass out of bed.

I usually don’t take the bus, since the Mahjong parlor isn’t even that far away. But today if I had to walk, I might collapse along the way, with the odd passerby throwing me dirty looks and crossing the street to avoid me. So instead I stared at the crows tottering around the street and waited for the slow-ass bus to come.

A car rides by every so often and the crows all swarm up into the air. When there’s been no traffic for a while, they all come back down. Soon another car putters along, and they all scatter again. Back down, back up, back down, back up.

You’d think they’d learn to stop squatting in the middle of street, but whatever trash they’re picking at on the pavement must be mana from fucking heaven. In a way, it’s actually kind of charming― they give absolutely zero fucks that there are multi-ton hulks of metal barreling toward them all the time while they eat breakfast.

Finally the bus came, scattering the crows one last time before I was whisked away. They flew up to the power lines and started jeering at me through the window as the bus pulled off the curb. Have a good one, you sick fucks.

The bus doesn’t take the most direct route to work, so whenever I ride it, places I’d normally never think about pass by the window, stop by stop. There’s a gas station near me, apparently. The attendant stands behind the plexiglass on the counter scrolling through his phone. A customer saunters up with a beer and a wallet in hand, and he swiftly completes a transaction without even looking up. Now that’s impressive.

The bus stops at an intersection. An absolutely ancient old woman crosses the street with a walker, every so often inching forward while the timer on the flashing hand thing runs out. I check my phone. I guess I can wait. If I’m just a few minutes late, how mad can Jerry get anyway?

Eventually, once the old lady had completed her daily exercise, the bus lurches forward once more and passes by a disused carpet store. I’ve seen this place a few times before. It’s been closed for as long as I can remember, with carpet samples just lying around behind the display window gathering dust. I can just imagine that at some point, a real human being decided one day, “Yeah, I’m gonna start selling carpets in this shithole of a town. I’m gonna sell so many damn carpets, just you wait!”

I really want to meet this person. I wonder what the grand opening was like. Where are they now? I hope they’re still alive.

RFC: Cola chicken wings

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Recipe for Cooking (RFC): Cola chicken wings

Summary

This recipe prepares 4 whole chicken wings (including drumette and tip) in approximately 20 minutes. The wings are cooked in a 90s Chinese-style Coca Cola-based sauce with minimal ingredients. The final product is intended to taste salty and tangy, and nothing like Coca Cola.

This recipe could use improvement, as the wings produced are slightly dry (see §Discussion).

Ingredients

Food

30 mL vegetable oil
4 whole chicken wings
320 mL Coca Cola, or Coca Cola Spiced Raspberry (see §Discussion)
40 mL all-purpose soy sauce

Cooking utensils

1 stovetop
1 pan
1 spoon or spatula

Instructions

Before cooking

Create a mixture of all 320 mL Coca Cola and 40 mL of soy sauce.
(Optional) separate drumettes from the rest of the wing.

This will allow for better sauce coverage during cooking.

Cooking

Put pan on stovetop set at 350 °F (=medium heat).
Cover bottom of pan evenly with all 30 mL of vegetable oil until pan reaches 350 °F (=medium heat).
Sear all 4 chicken wings for 2 minutes per side.
Set stovetop at 400 °F (=high heat).
Pour the mixture of Coca Cola and soy sauce into pan.
Until the mixture has reduced into a thick, syrupy sauce, stir the pan thoroughly every 1 minute.
Press each wing down, on each side, into the sauce-covered pan to sear and caramelize the sauce on the wing. ∎

Discussion

Chicken produced is slightly dry

This recipe produces chicken that is slightly dry, probably due to overcooking. It may be better to reduce the searing time, or remove the searing step altogether. I have experimented with pre-steaming the wings for 5 and 10 minutes instead of searing, but there is no appreciable difference in quality.

If the wings are not pre-steamed, fat is noticeably rended into the sauce mixture about halfway into cooking, which reduces the juiciness of the final product.

Coca Cola Spiced Raspberry

The original Coca Cola may be substituted for the Spiced Raspberry variant which I prefer, since it makes the wings slightly more aromatic (a vague raspberry smell) and gives it some depth. The difference is fairly minimal.

If you have improvements

If you have improvements, please reply to my Mastodon post, or email me at pilosophos@gmail.com.

The Conversation Game

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Conversation Game

The Conversation Game is a game for two players, where each player tries to steer the conversation towards a certain topic without being too obvious. I made this game to practice my conversation skills.

Rules

These rules were last updated on 2025-07-11 21:40 UTC.

Selecting a question

Each player selects an icebreaker question (e.g. What's your favorite ice cream flavor?) which they will keep hidden from the other player. You will try to find out the other person’s answer to your chosen question. Both players should then agree on a third, neutral icebreaker question that both players must answer before continuing with the rest of the game.

The chosen questions should be content questions that contain a who, what, when, where, or why.

Yes/no questions are too simplistic, but you can convert a yes/no question into a content question by adding the “why”: (e.g. Do you like ice cream? Why or why not?).

Main gameplay

The game is played by having a conversation. After both players have answered the neutral icebreaker question, you can win by one of three methods:

You obtain the answer to your icebreaker question from the other player
You successfully guess what the other player’s icebreaker question is within three guesses
The other player has incorrectly guessed what your icebreaker question is three times

Any player can guess what the other person’s question is at any time, and the other player must reveal whether it is their winning question. If the guesser is correct, they win immediately. Otherwise, the guesser loses one of their guesses. For clarity, the guess should be accompanied by saying, “this is one of my Conversation Game guesses.”

If a player believes they’ve won because they have the other person’s answer to their question, they should declare what their icebreaker question is and the other person’s answer.

Either player can start talking first.

FAQ

Is lying cheating?

Yes. The point of the game is to have a conversation and get to know the other player, so lying is counterproductive.

Variants

Multi-round variant

If players want to keep going after someone has won, the winner selects a new icebreaker question and the loser’s incorrect guess count resets to 0.

The loser may select a new icebreaker question also, at the cost of resetting the winner’s incorrect guess count to 0 as well.

When the players decide to stop playing the Conversation Game, they may compare the number of times they won, and whoever has the most wins is the overall winner.

More than two players?

If you have suggestions for how to adapt this to more than 2 players, please send them to pilosophos@gmail.com.

Changelog

Most recent change last.

2025-07-11 21:40 UTC
- Added the neutral starting question to reduce the advantage for the first person to speak.

Trivia

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Trivia

This is an unsorted collection of miscellaneous trivia that I come across. Originally, these trivia items were written down in my notebook. It’s harder for me to quickly draw pictures for a webpage, so trivia with pictures might get left out.

Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs)

Assigned to ranges of IP addresses controlled by an organization that are ISP agnostic. You can tell different ISPs to use your IP addresses using your ASN and the BGP protocol.

Cistercian numerals

Early 13th C. numbers written in a single glyph, where lines’ positions on a central staff determines its place value. Encodes numbers from 1-9999.

Kmonad

A software keyboard remapping tool.

Dashes

En-dashes are for ranges, relations, and scores.
Em-dashes are for pauses or where a period is too strong.

Formula E

Electric car version of Formula 1. Fans vote before a race who gets an extra jolt of electricity for a ¿few seconds at the start of the race?

NASCAR

Originates from moonshiners with modified cars for faster smuggling. After prohibition, races were frequently held at Daytona Beach. Originally raced with actual stock (bought from manufacturer) cars with modifications.

Electromagnetic resonance (EMR)

Graphics tablets with a grid of wires behind the display transmit EM waves via induction to the coil in the pen for electrical energy. The coil is used again to transmit data back.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

Evolved from Judo practitioners in Brazil.

UFC was originally organized after video demonstrations of BJJ practitioners defeating practitioners of other martial arts. The Gracie family of Gracie Jiu Jitsu wished to promote BJJ to a wider audience by accepting challenges in the UFC.

Kendo

To score points, you must shout the area of the body you wish to attack first, such as “men” (head).

Immersed tube/tunnel

Tunnel building technique for tunneling across water.

Tunnel segments are prefabricated, floated to their destination, sunk, and linked together.

Refrigeration loop

Condenser (hot side): coolant condenses into liquid, heat energy released.
Evaporator (cold side): coolant expands into gas, heat energy absorbed.
Under low pressure, the boiling point of the coolant is lowered.

Tsugaru election (津軽選挙)

In Aomori Prefecture, electoral fraud was so openly prevalent that candidates would bribe voters by going door-to-door handing out money, asking voters to verbally ask election officials to write the name of the candidate for them on the ballot, and handing them onigiri filled with cash.

Merge algorithm

Have two sorted arrays and two pointers. Advance whatever pointer has the smaller of the two and put the value in the merged array.

Areal features

Features of a language that exist in languages within a geographic area that have spread due to language contact.

Feature transmission

Most language features that are structural like syntax and morphology are spread from parent to child. Language contact tends to only spread lexical and phonological features.

Wasps

Wasps cannot fly well under 10 C but can keep active below freezing.

Monad

A monad is a container type that implements a flatMap method and contains one or more values
- [1,2,3].flatMap(x => return [x*2])
  - Returns [2,3,6]
- [1,2,3].flatMap(x => return [x, x])
  - Returns [1,1,2,2,3,3]
- [1,2,3].flatMap(x => return [])
  - Returns []
Monadic functions accept monads and return monads
Monadic functions can be chained together

CBOR

A non-human-readable serialization format

Protobuf

A serialization format where the client and server need to know the schema beforehand. Non-human-readable.

Unification Church “Moonies”

Korean new religious movement that encourages followers to donate large sums. Sun Myung Moon believes he is the second coming of Christ. The UC has a lot of influence with the Japanese LDP, which led to the assassination of Shinzo Abe in 2022, who was killed with an improvised gun.

SRAM

Static RAM.

Uses flip-flops to store bits
Data persists as long as power is on
More expensive than DRAM which needs to be refreshed every second or so

Incompatibilism

The idea that free will is incompatible with determinism. Compatibilism is the inverse.

Kombucha

Black tea fermented by a culture of certain bacterias and yeasts.

Splatbooks

Name derives from the asterisk (*), or splat. World of Darkness supplement books were called things like clanbooks, traditionbooks, thingbooks, which were collectively known as *books on Usenet.

Stockfish

Originally a classical chess-playing algorithm, it was augmented with a neural network in 2020, and in 2023 is now entirely a neural network.

The classical algorithm works by looking at the tree of possible game states starting from the current state. Each state gets a score (in centipawns):

If during some state it is the computer’s turn, then the score is the max of the child states’ scores (it wants to make a move that benefits itself).
If it is the opponent’s turn, then the score is the min of the child states’ scores (the opponent wants to make a move that hurts the computer).

Then the algorithm will make the move that maximizes the score. This algorithm is called Minimax.

Alpha-beta pruning

Because the tree can get really big, to make it faster, Alpha-beta pruning stops evaluation (prunes parts of the tree) when it encounters a move that’s proven to be worse than another move that’s already been evaluated.

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)

ATM is a data-link layer protocol (like Ethernet or I²C) mainly used for creating WANs. First, to connect to another client, a virtual circuit is created specifying the route that the data should take along the network. Then all the data packets, which are all 53 bytes, are routed through this circuit.

Unlike Ethernet, you can guarantee an ATM connection’s Quality of Service, such as its data rate and maximum delay. ATM is used in DSL networks.

Tea

Black, white, green, oolong, and pu-erh tea all come from the same plant species, the tea tree (Camellia sinensis). The difference between them is the level of oxidization achieved when processing them, with white tea being the least oxidized and black tea the most oxidized.

Pinky

Pinky is a really small scripting language designed to be easy to implement by people learning to write compilers and interpreters. (source)

Calibri used to detect forgery

In the wake of the Panama Papers, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif was under investigation for tax evasion. He produced documents purportedly dated 2006. The documents were typeset in Calibri, a font created in 2004 and available in beta versions of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007, before both became widely available in 2007. (source)

Menko

Menko are Japanese cards used to play the game of the same name. Players put down Menko, and use a third Menko to try to flip the other two over. Whoever flips a Menko gets to keep the flipped Menko.

The earliest Menko-like tokens date back to the Edo period and were made from fired clay, but over time other materials were used. Lead Menko were banned in 1900 because kids would lick them to gain an advantage and poision themselves, ushering in an era of cardboard-backed cards.

After the Japanese defeat during WW2, the MacArthur administration banned the glorification of the Japanese military and soldiery, and Menko started to depict baseball stars rather than planes and samurai. (source)

Eliica

The Ellica (Electric Lithium-Ion Car) is an 2004 electric vehicle prototype designed at Keio University. It reached a speed of 370 km/h on the Nardò High Speed Track in Italy and accelerates from 0-100 km/h in four seconds. It has eight wheels for traction, and they are smaller than normal passenger wheels so the car sits lower to the ground. It seats the driver and three passengers. (source)

Rembrandt lighting

A lighting technique named after the Dutch painter Rembrandt that causes a triangular patch on the face’s darker side to have a triangular illuminated patch below the eye. It is seen in film noir to evoke emotions and create a sense of mystery. (source)

Modulex

A company that spun out of LEGO in 1963 to make serious LEGOs for architecture. Modulex blocks were smaller and designed to be used in 1/20 scale models. They originally bore a LEGO wordmark on the studs, but this was changed to a simple M, in order to distance themselves from LEGOs, which were commonly seen as mere kids’ toys. As architectural trends turned away from blocky shapes, Modulex switched to marketing towards factory and city planners.

Modulex would go on to produce sets for building corporate project planning boards and other signage. As computers improved, providing convenient project management tools and CAD capabilities, Modulex bricks became obsolete. Though the bricks were discontinued in 2004, the company continues to this day as a manufacturer of commercial signage and displays.

In 2015, a company called Modulex Bricks A/S was founded to make Modulex bricks from the original moulds, but it was bought out by the LEGO company and it has no intention of manufacturing them. (source)

Stage stations

Stage stations, also known as posting stations or relay stations, are facilities along main roads or trade routes where travelers can rest or replace exhausted horses for fresh ones. (source)

Shukuba (宿場) are Japanese stage stations, which were built between 1601 and 1624. Post stations would have lodgings for public officials, which were supported by subsidies from the Shogun. Shukuba-machi (宿場町) are the towns that developed around the stage stations, which often featured inns, tea houses, and retail stores. With the advent of railroads, these stage station towns entered a state of decline. (source)

Stripped book

Books are cheap to produce but expensive to ship. When a bookstore purchases a lot of books from the publisher, it does so at a considerable markup over the manufacturing and shipping price price, and adds an additional markup when selling the book to the customer.

If the books haven’t sold after a certain period of time and the bookstore wants to dispose of the book, they can recoup most the the cost from the publisher by destroying them. This is done by ripping the covers off the book, and the bookstore sends the covers back to the publisher as proof of destruction. The publisher doesn’t actually want the books back; they just want to know that no additional profit can be made from the books.

Books destroyed this way are called “stripped books.” Since such books are not supposed to be sold, the copyright page of some books indicate that if the book was sold without a cover, that it is stolen property.

Citations: 1, 2, 3

Xbox 360 development tools

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Xbox 360 development tools

What you need to get started with Xbox 360 homebrew development

Summary

Most people are advised to download the Xbox 360 SDK, which will also require Visual Studio 2010, to write homebrew in C++. To use C# with XNA, you should also install XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh and XNA 4.0 Extensions, which requires Games for Windows Live.

Alternatively, a fully open-source C/C++ stack is possible using LibXenon, but the compiled executables are not recognized by Aurora/FreestyleDash and requires booting into Xell to run.

This article explains how to install each of these things and in what order.

This article is up to date as of Christmas 2023.

Developing with proprietary software

This article assumes you are running Windows 10.

1. Visual Studio 2010 (required)

The Xbox 360 SDK will not install unless you have VS2010. You can install later versions of Visual Studio after you install 2010. VS2015 is known to work according to a user on Se7enSins.

You can download VS2010 Ultimate for free directly from Microsoft at my.visualstudio.com. Log into (or create) your Microsoft account and click the “Downloads” tab. Search for “Visual Studio Ultimate 2010” and click download. Mount the .iso file and install it.

Filename: en_visual_studio_2010_ultimate_x86_dvd_509116.iso
md5: 1c7436f7289263abf712a70287d75c02
sha256: 602926c864fa1ddc087fefb1ed952216da4122d4db774050d8e9373d3e4bff98

2. Xbox 360 SDK (required)

Xbox 360 SDK version 21256.3 (afaik) is the latest version. This is widely used in the homebrew community and is easily found with a quick Google search. This will also install Xbox 360 Neighborhood, which will let you copy files over to your Xbox via a LAN connection.

If you only plan to develop in C/C++, you can stop installing stuff after this.

Filename: XBOX360_SDK_21256.3.exe
md5: b329b79db2804e2989688bffbaf49691
sha256: efec946c7b4436d53a6c41bb6bcff8373387ec97557e92f0ef672c85eadc4bc7

Creating and compiling an Xbox 360 game with C++

Start VS2010 and open the Create Project window with File → New Project.
Click Visual C++ → Xbox 360 Project.
Enter a project name and path at the bottom and click Ok. This opens the Xbox 360 Application Wizard.
Click Next, then Finish at the Application Settings screen. This opens the code for a new game in the main window.
- You can check ☑ Empty project and get a basic DirectX 9 spinning triangle demo instead of the default Dolphin demo
On the toolbar near the top, click the dropdown that says Debug and change it to Release_LTCG. This changes the build config to compile a single runnable .xex file that is runnable from an Xbox 360.
Click Build → Build solution from the top menu bar.
Copy [project_path]\[project_name]\Release_LTCG\[project_name].xex to your Xbox 360 (via USB or Xbox 360 Neighborhood).
Run the .xex file on your Xbox 360. You will see either a dolphin or a spinning rainbow-colored triangle on a success.

3. Games for Windows Live

If you want to program in C# with XNA, you need to install Games for Windows Live (GfWLive) if your version of Windows doesn’t have it preinstalled (e.g. if you use Windows 8+), otherwise XNA Game Studio will not install. It can be downloaded from microsoft.com or xboxlive.com.

filename: gfwlivesetup.exe
md5: 0e20d50b6ad6229520911b203deeef36
sha256: c8582a16f4647365e0be04826442a77de257b9bb26bac610fc1fb74319a2548b

If you encounter a network error during installation, before you close the installer do the following:

Navigate to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\GFWLive\Downloads. There will be two installer files here. If there aren’t any, you closed the GFWLive installer prematurely and you need to get back to the network error screen.
Run both installers in any order.
Close the GFWLive installer and GFWLive should be installed.

4. XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh

XNA Game Studio (XNAGS) 4.0 Refresh is the last version of XNAGS and can be downloaded from microsoft.com.

Filename: XNAGS40_setup.exe
md5: 1980210d04a80865ab2dca9f92a65695
sha256sum: e905f67edefb228ebb58277f8d24e1ec3460ead5d0ab57bd544246cb4465154b

Installing XNAGS is technically enough to write a C# Xbox 360 game, but this will compile to a .ccgame file which cannot be run on an Xbox 360 directly.

5. XNA 4.0 Extensions

XNA 4.0 Extensions allows us to compile C# games into .xex files that can be run from Aurora or FreestyleDash. Installing this will add XNA Game Studio 4.0 XDK Extensions to the Visual C# section of the New Project menu in VS2010. I can’t provide a download link, and unfortunately this is less well known in the homebrew community.

Filename: xdk-xna-extensions.msi
md5: d55fc409100ce97d0d9791a9d896a0c9
sha256: ba80a0518062dbf649df7e2775f0dba59d2e85c0e576523585346da9b5227786

Creating and compiling an Xbox 360 game with C#

Start VS2010 and open the Create Project window with File → New Project.
Click Visual C# → XNA Game Studio 4.0 XDK Extensions → XBLA Game Title (XDK).
Enter a project name and path at the bottom and click Ok. This opens the code for a new game in the main window.
In the Solution Explorer, open LiveFiles\Title.gameconfig.
Replace the title ID of titleId="0x00000000" in the <GameConfigProject ...> tag to any other 8-digit hexidecimal number (e.g. 0x12345678).
- You should choose a title ID that’s not used by any existing Xbox titles by checking a title database like XboxDB.
Click Cancel on the Connect to Team Project dialog. (Unless you really want to use TFS for version control, but why would you?)
On the toolbar near the top, click the dropdown that says Debug and change it to the Release build config.
Click Build → Build solution from the top menu bar.
Copy the entire contents of [project_path]\[project_name]\[project_name]\bin\XDK\Release\ to a new folder in your Xbox 360 (via USB or Xbox 360 Neighborhood).
- Since LTCG isn’t available for C#, your homebrew’s resources are not compiled into a single .xex, so the other files are necessary for it to run.
Run default.xex on your Xbox 360. Your screen should turn a solid light blue (specifically cornflower blue) on a success.

Developing with open source software

See https://free60.org/Development/LibXenon/ for instructions.

I haven’t actually tried this because my interest kinda dropped off after I made a homebrew the “normal” way, but the instructions on there look approachable enough.

Xbox 360 region-free DVD playback with RGH/JTAG

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Xbox 360 region-free DVD playback with RGH/JTAG

Even with an RGH or JTAG’d Xbox 360, your console will likely be unable to play DVDs from a different region unless its NAND has been patched to allow it. This guide describes how to patch your console’s NAND to play DVDs of any region.

Prerequisites

You must already have an RGH or JTAG’d Xbox 360, which is a hardware mod.
You need a way to transfer files to/from the Xbox 360. You can use either:
- A FAT32 formatted USB drive or
- Xbox 360 Neighborhood

Risks

This procedure involves rewriting the console’s NAND, which is required for it to boot. Writing a bad NAND will brick your Xbox 360.

Dumping your NAND

Extract Simple 360 NAND Flasher and transfer the files to your Xbox 360.
On the Xbox, run Default.xex to start Simple 360 NAND Flasher
Press X to dump the NAND with rawdump
In the same directory as Default.xex, you will see a new file called flashdmp.bin. Transfer this to your PC.

Obtaining your CPU key

On your PC, extract and run X360 NAND Dump Checker.
- Bad blocks are normal, as long as "NAND Verified as OK!" appears at the end. If it does not, you may need to redo the steps in Dumping your NAND.
Press Check NAND and select flashdmp.bin.
In the same directory as flashdmp.bin, you will see a new file called cpukey.txt containing your CPU key.

Creating a region-free NAND

Extract and run J-Runner with Extras.
Click Load Source and select flashdmp.bin.
If the CPU key is not already filled in, paste in the CPU key from cpukey.txt.
In the top menu, select Nand → SMC Config Editor.
In the SMC Config Editor, click Edit Config at the bottom.
Change the DVD Region dropdown to FREE.
Click Save Config and close the config editor.
Verify that the XeBuild section in the top right matches for your console. Incorrect values could result in a bad NAND that bricks your console!
Click the Create XeBuild button.

Flashing the region-free NAND

By default, J-Runner creates a new directory named after your console’s serial number, which will contain updflash.bin. Copy this to the same directory as Simple 360 Nand Flasher’s Default.xex on the Xbox.
On the Xbox, run Default.xex to start Simple 360 NAND Flasher.
Press A to flash the NAND with Rawflash.
Wait for the process to finish and for the console to turn off.
- If the console shows a red ring, do not panic. You may simply have to turn the console off and on again.
You will now be able to play out-of-region DVDs.