I head out Monday for PAX Aus, and when you leave Monday for PAX Aus you actually arrive on Wednesday. I'm sure that I say that every year, I'm not even going to check. I'll never get used to it. I can look directly at the time it is in another part of the world and disbelieve it. I'm sure I've said that too. Last year I did the posts like twelve hours in advance because I didn't trust anything. Surprisingly, having reality perpetually called into question does not hamper my enjoyment of said trip.

I heard an interview with Untitled Goose Game creators House House on NPR. Blink 182 co-signed the Goose at TwitchCon. Does… does that mean it's over? Has it reached the end of its life cycle and released it spores or something? Is it even okay to talk about anymore. The Goose, as geese are wont to do, has ranged far afield of the Monastery and has inserted its ample beak firmly into the greater culture. But here, while we can still see its wings outstretch'd on the horizon, let us praise this malevolent, chaotic force.

PAX Aus is fast approaching, and with it - as though upon the wings of angels - comes this show's deliciously arranged Pin Post. Behold!

You have the ability to make a particular Switch the main Switch in a family, Switch Prime if you will, and Gabe made his new Lite the locus of that power. The thinking is probably that the machine with the dock attached to the TV is most likely to have Wireless Fi? Maybe? Even though that never kept it particularly tethered before? Or he really just likes the new form factor, the feel, which is hard to argue with. It's nice. Can't stream it, but that's only a concern for a vanishingly small cadre.

Now available for purchase. It is VERY CUTE.

Even though he understands perfectly well that Ad Astra has spaceships in it, he's still invested his weekend leisure dollar elsewhere. I keep trying to reverse engineer some kind of portent out of it.

I did a search for E3 Leaks, to get something I could put in the post about their recently exposed presentation about the future of the event, but the article that came up first was about another, different leak. Generally speaking the "dunks" on this presentation refer to some of the language used, and that's the ground we cover in the strip. It's hilarious, but it also feels weird to read, which is why it's travelled so far. But the idea that they want to add life to the show by actively recognizing the texture of the moment we live in isn't wrong.

Because I spend so much time thinking about Theranos, I must have thought that Gabe did as well, even though that's not how thinking works and every moment of our union would have indicated otherwise. For my part, I think about it a lot.

The first roleplaying game I ever got Mike to play - this was back in high school, so at a much less amenable point of orientation toward the Table - was Mage: The Ascension. Yes, that's correct. I started a neophyte player with a game about the interplay of philosophy, belief, and magic, which is to say, I pushed him head-first into the deep-end of an empty pool. That's kinda my move.

I stopped playing mobile games that weren't by Nintendo when it became clear that most games on phones don't actually function under the circumstances you want them most, or when I do at least, which is on planes. I've had this policy for a while now and I've been well served by it. Even games you wouldn't think would necessarily be stymied by a lack of data join this dark fraternity of useless lures.

I definitely can't keep track of this kind of shit anymore, and I don't think it's only because my advanced age has converted the tender parts of my brain into porous bone. I think it's because increasingly what's required to Open The Seals of a beta is indistinguishable from some morally tenuous blood ritual. The shortcut, invariably, is whatever subscription service the publisher happens to be offering now. If you have worked in IT at all you've seen centralization and decentralization occur many, many times, but wow. I guess technically WoW itself represented a form of centralization as well, strong enough to occur a second time. But what we're seeing here is fascinating from a meta perspective: Centralization, then decentralization, and then a profundity of secondary Centralizations this time at the publisher level. I have a hard time making the case for Uplay+ in my head at fifteen bucks a month, because… yowza, but the fact that it includes the really expensive versions of games I want to play like Breakpoint and Legion confounds the math substantially. If I purchased the versions of the games I wanted to, like I did with The Division 2, I'd technically be up. Right? And it also features all the operators from R6: Siege. Hm.

If you look at me, it's pretty clear that I love tattoos. The problem is that I really, really hate getting tattoos. I am a huge baby and I don't like pain. I sweat and cry and try to make jokes because that is my natural defense mechanism. This makes for great stream content I am told.

Overwatch is moving into Skyrimmian territory, a creature made manifest in all places at all times, a star-sign reckoning that a platform has come of age. I feel like there's places Overwatch may not be appropriate or maybe there's people for whom Overwatch reveals gruesome psychic fault lines which you sorta have to keep an eye on. But if this proliferation is gonna continue, they need to get on Single Sign-In like fuckin' yesterday.

World of Warcraft Classic may be difficult by modern standards, but at the time it was release it was actively, purposefully a response to to the the player cruelty that was the norm in the space. I'm fascinated that people want it but also not fully surprised, because people value the things they earn.

PAX doesn't truly end until the Enforcers have been honored at the Afterparty, and now that the ritual has been concluded in full, I can endeavor to reintegrate into normal life. The gulf between these two worlds - the one where I am Omin, Jerry, and Tycho and the one where I am somebody's Dad - is profound. I come home from doing interviews about shit and hosting events and then I do the dishes and make sure his calculator is actually in his backpack.