I’ve been working on upping the production value of our Gabir Motors streams. So far, I’ve made the waiting screen slightly more fancy. Dabe is currently working on a custom intro and overlay for these streams that I am sure will be amazing. In the meantime, I have added some cool sounds and drawings. I’ve had a few requests from the Pit Crew for a high res version of the new waiting screen art. Here’s a good look at Gabir Liel and Carson Bolt. 

I bought Minecraft when it was ten dollars, way way back, but I'm not certain I ever got completely into it. Certainly, I clicked in such a way as to make the game memory resident. I moved the mouse; my left hand made the Sign of the Wazdi. And then I mostly watched patch notes for the remaining time. It was a perfect fit for the rise of the YouTuber/Let's Play phenomenon until now it's a culture as much as anything else. I love that it's out there but I am not of it. The most I ever did was play hide and seek with my son when he was very young. We only had two houses at the time, and they each had one room. It wasn't, like... great.

Comic. Also, this:

I am by no means an expert, it could be that this shifts later, but the Minecraft Dungeons Ronia and I are playing here is a Diablo-style ARPG, complete with its little wireframe map, where every piece of equipment has a couple little trees in it that you can explore. And since your character is made up of six or so slots, you can choose which of these paths would work as a whole. She's never seen anything like this, but it's the key to a lot of gaming literacy. What if deckbuilding, but only six card? You'd be surprised what you can pull off.

I live my life guided by robust, enlightened, scientific principles. Yes, I do enjoy Rick and Morty. So when I say that the Dragon module didn't deliver human beings to the ISS the other day because one of us was watching it, that's not mysticism. It's not some missive from the Land of Faerie. It's our science, the God we made, saying in a clear voice: "dude don't watch it wtf is wrong with u."

We're still just learning about racing, which is… vast. It's not one thing. There are a lot of different kinds, and most of them have nothing to do with each other. We spend a lot of time on the channel attempting Ovals, which as a physical and intellectual exercise is often distilled as simply "turning left," and… that's not true. Holy shit.

Our race streams continue to deliver real thrills in the evenings. I know it can be difficult to catch these live since there is no set schedule. We’ve got a big back log of VODs at this point if you’re curious what all the fuss is about though. 

I can't find the page now, it's possible it's just gone, but even the day Crucible launched I was trying to find the game on Amazon - I thought for sure they were gonna utilize their launcher or something to distribute it. They had a page up with some rudimentary information and the suggestion that they didn't know when it would be available, on its literal launch day. I had a hard think about that. In 2050, you'll buy a liver for your son from Amazon because he has Pfizer Syndrome and you don't want to settle for the Walmart liver even if it's half the price because it comes in a two-pack and that seems weird. But You Don't Skimp On Stuff Like This. Today, in 2020, they don't even know when their game is coming out because of how nerve signals attenuate in an organism of that size.

Now, more than ever, extroverts need our help.

Our son's counselor called up Brenna a couple days ago to ask how things were going here at home with school out. I think maybe it's supposed to be bad; certainly, we've made those jokes too. There's a lot of horseshit involved with their online platform, something we've been struggling with for years because there's no universal doctrine regarding its use internally. In truth, I have three different websites I have to log into in order to understand what's happening at school. And once I gain access to these haunted-ass Precursor Mausolea, I gotta teach a bunch of complicated shit I forgot twenty years ago. But: Brenna's response was, "Uh, I think this might actually be better for him."

I liked Control a lot - it's the last game before Doom Eternal that I just straight burrowed through essentially every moment I could spare. The only thing that fucked me up about it was that there's a very significant defensive ability that isn't required to complete the story, it looked sorta like a sidequest thing, and I found the whole thing so fascinating that I only stopped and did things like that later on (as sometimes happened) if I got too curious about them from a story perspective.

I only picked up this Sim Racing hobby back in March but I’ve already poured a lot of time and money into it. The last time I fell this hard for a new hobby, it was D&D and that was more than a decade ago. My enthusiasm also appears to be contagious because our racing streams are always packed. If you’ve been wondering what’s going on with all this sim racing and how to get involved, I’ve got you covered. 

Unfortunately, or… I mean, I guess we'll see how it turns out, Mike Krahulik was invited to an iRacing Pro Am event. You have to take that opportunity when it comes to you. That being said, it's in Rallycross, which we don't have supreme experience in, and it is on a track called Hell.

My racing obsession continues to intensify and it seems to be catching. Judging by my twitter feed and the folks I talk to during my streams, Motorsport madness has gripped a lot of you. In fact just last night we had our very first Penny Arcade league race in iRacing and it was an absolute blast! 

The enduring vigor of Minecraft - at once a game, a place, and platform - is something I primarily observe from afar. But I like it out here. I can look in at all the stuff, and I don't have to do anything. It's my favorite place to be. But younger people have notions about their parents' omnipotence, namely that it extends in some way through all fields of endeavor, and Minecraft is a good opportunity to show that your dad is is strong in some places and at some times and in other places is as crisp and fine as a butterfly wing.

Are you getting more emails from your family members about The Beast, and his Mark? Because I am.