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I have been caught by the writing bug tonight. Well, it is more like a spirit that moves me, fixating me on my keyboard. Best to get the most out of it.

I hope tomorrow that I can get a lot of work done and write summaries of my coursework readings to post on here. I feel that is a good exercise that I’d like to get into the habit of, but my first few weeks back have been hectic. It’s only been this week that I’ve got my footing. The handout and the essay I posted earlier were both official assignments, so I was more stressed about them. Usually, I don’t have that much work right at the beginning of the semester, so I was very thrown off.

I’m unsure if my writing is flowing naturally. It’s part of being in that trance state.

What I did today

I had a very full day. I got my gym membership at a very nice place in town. They have a sauna and a cold bath. God, I love saunas. Saw significantly more old men’s penises than I normally do. But that’s what I paid for.

I’ve gotten into the habit of listening to the essays I have to read for class before actually reading them. I’ve been paying for a decent text-to-audio software for a while, and I’ve put it to good use. I can kind of cheat at work, doing other things while getting the gist of the stuff I should focus on later. I’d imagine that (in my brain) some of the initial cognitive work, e.g. understanding the structure and context of the essays, is separated from the more intensive analysis of the arguments. This hypothetically makes me better at philosophy.

I’d like to imagine that my brain is subconsciously processing complex philosophical topics in the background. I don’t think there’s any reason why I should believe this. It certainly can’t be that I’m thinking up entire arguments in the back of my head, but there is something about spending more time away from a subject and then realizing that you have something to say about it. Perhaps this is just hindsight bias, as I don’t output quality processed thoughts about just anything—only certain things. Still—there’s something to “sleeping on it.” It seems there’s an optimum number of sleeps on a subject to facilitate thinking about it before, of course, it slips from memory.

I mention this habit because I performed it today. I walked around, went to the gym, played a game, did some chores, all while listening to Kuhn, Laudan, and Lakatos.

Of the game, I did finish Silksong. Well, I haven’t beaten Lost Lace yet, but I’m at the arena, got to the second phase, lost, and then decided to put it down. I did the same thing with the Radiance in Hollow Knight. I guess I can’t bear to finish it.

Review-wise, I don’t know what more I have to say about it. One thing is that despite the crests the game gives you, it loves to take them away in special zones and then force you to do platforming challenges. To my mind, that’s a fault in the game design—a kind of mechanical confusion. I get that the hunter crest is Hornet’s, and that there are literal memory flashbacks that warrant her having that crest. But it doesn’t require that she wield that crest (she could be currently traveling through her memory). Frankly, it just puts a big stopper in the flow of the game whenever it happens. As far as criticisms go, that’s all I’ve got. For now.

I decided to play another Catholic-coded Metroidvania: Blasphemous. Can you believe that Catholic Metroidvania might be its own subgenre now? It is much slower than Silksong, so it is much more relaxing. And if I’m just using it to listen to audiobooks, I don’t mind the game being slow and constantly killing me.

I also played D&D today. I am enjoying the sessions with this group less and less. It seems that the DM enjoys giving us a bunch of crazy magic items, but this makes the turns excruciatingly long in combat. I lose focus, and by the time it is my turn, I don’t have any clue what I need to do. It seems that the other players in the group feel similarly, but I am not close enough with any of them to make a collected front.

Misc.

Speaking of a collected front, there are protests going on which I will be participating in. I won’t purchase anything as part of the economic protest. And if there’s a physical one where I’m at, I think I’ll track it down. My girlfriend is going to a physical one tomorrow.

The Five Nights at Freddy’s community realized something that I’ve known for a couple of years: the foxy mask is in the box. I saw a video with a substantial amount of views that argued that as the main thesis. I have mentioned this obvious fact to many FNaF fans in the last few years, and none of them have bought it. I think they all must have been stupid or dogmatic. Like, obviously that’s what’s in the fucking box. I genuinely don’t feel the need to make an argument (and I love making those).