J. Martin

July 3, 2022

Heating Up

Where by “heating up,” I don’t mean the summer, which is fine, but Corona incidence rates of 800+, the end of free COVID-19 tests, and the phasing out of most mask mandates around where I live. So far, I’ve been lucky—I attended two events, the Match Me last week and the Indie Game Fest two weeks ago. At the latter, I kept masking up most of the time, and for the former, you had to show a negative test result from the same day (and most of the action happened outside anyway.) As far as I can tell, everything went well. But with so many bullets flying around, getting hit by one becomes more and more probable, and then I can only hope that my four shots will mitigate or even prevent some of the worst effects. You have to wonder if Germany’s Corona policies are rooted in willful ignorance or in economic calculations indifferent to suffering. If you factor in how Germany’s federal government drags its feet with regard to Putin’s brutal war in the Ukraine and the impending climate catastrophe, it’s probably the latter. Either way, I think we’re fucked.

Last week, I wrote a linked-list item for just drafts about Unity’s recent layoffs and a blog post about my first thoughts about a Voidpunk game at my Voidpunk blog. Then there’s a new album on Flickr with 15 images from residencies in Singapore, where I’d love to be right now, and two re-edits on Glass, one cityscape shot from the Haidan District in Beijing, China, and one shot from the Shenzhou V Capsule & Space Suit at the National Museum of China, also in Beijing. Plus, one entry each at my Instagram accounts betweendrafts and voidpunkverse.

Didn’t get around to playing new games, alas. But please enjoy this terrific mini-cartoon on the one hand, and the viral “Windhorst” clip set to Hans Zimmer’s “Mountains” on the other, which cracked me up last week like nothing else. (It’s about sportswriter Brian Windhorst, captivating the “First Take” panel with his conspiracy theory on why the Utah Jazz decided to trade Royce O’Neale, but don’t worry—even if you have no idea what that’s about, it’s still outrageously funny.) Enjoy!

J.