The California State University system has had critical thinking as a mandatory lower-level general ed class since at least my freshman year in 2001. Mine covered syllogisms, logical fallacies, and recognizing when rhetorical devices are being used in place of substantive arguments. Didn’t quite cover everything you’d…

The closest I had was a segment on spotting quacky health supplements in middle school PE, and then a fairly standard critical thinking class in college. I feel like that was a strong enough intro to false info and bad arguments, but... yeah, I think even a one-semester high school course on fake news - evaluating…

It’s been a week of the Castlevania Advance Collection. I’ve had it less than a week, and I’m already most of the way to wrapping up all 4 games.

I don’t really need any visual improvements or QOL upgrades. The three GBA games are what I primarily think of when I think Castlevania, even as someone old enough to have traded NES carts with grade school friends to play the first three games. They’re mostly untouched, but the in-game loot drop tables and friendly…

And if Grohl says no, I’m gonna keep this one in my pocket in case King Missile needs to redo any of their album covers.

Photoshop out the baby so it’s just a penis going after the dollar

Nah, a lot of people, myself included, feel like Sonic games both encourage you to race through the stages and punish you for doing so without having the layout memorized. Game’s like...

I enjoyed even the mindless simplicity of those sections because it helped establish that I wasn’t just beating demon ass; I was rebuilding the world in the service of human beings. It made me feel like I was bringing them an era of peace by slowing the pace of the game down and making combat feel more like simple main…

Actraiser Renaissance was such a big surprise drop last week. The original Actraiser isn’t a game I usually think about when I’m compiling a list of all-time favorites, but it’s one I can’t go 5 years without replaying. Sad to hear they didn’t quite capture the tone of the original story - the “the people don’t need…

I really wish there was a simple class selection screen in CotM with no unlocking requirements. Instead, you have to finish the game once to get magician, then once as magician to get shooter, then once as shooter to get thief, and thief mode, with its ridiculously high drop rates, was easily my favorite playthrough…

Canceling the football game would mean we couldn’t feed the losing team to the worm.

I had something similar happen, except I work for a urologist, so instead of giving me a PS5, he just placed a catheter.

Oh my god, my mom’s part of the deep state!

Nah, for a troll style hot dog, you get a plain hot dog on a standard, harmless bun and get to customize it with whatever condiments/fixins you want, you think you’re good, but when you bite down, turns out the wiener was just ketchup in casing - a chupwurst, they’ll call it.

Getting through O&S for the first time, I was excited that the fight finally clicked and that I knew I could do it again, so I spent a couple hours being people’s ghost guide through the fight before moving on. The feeling of mastery and the excited XBL messages I got back from a few people who’d been stuck on the…

I really had fun with Operation: Tango. I felt like it was a great take on what Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes would be like if you weren’t trapped in the same room the whole time, and I especially appreciated that the players took turns on who had all the info and who was shouting, “No, I don’t need that yet! I…

The circles that I travel in on Twitch are really into the Yakuza series, but every time I pop in to watch people playing them, they’re finishing some major fight, then heading onto some crowded market street where they can sing karaoke or fan dance to rhythm game mechanics, and it all feels disjointed and weird in a…

Are the shitworms wearing pants?

I generally tend toward making nicer decisions in games, but man, going through as a dark-side female jedi with a focus on charisma/manipulation brought out some of the best dialogue, in a game that already featured HK-47.

I watched someone play through the first chapter of the original Life Is Strange for their first time this week, and make countless incorrect guesses about the direction the story was going to go, and genuinely get engrossed in the experience. It made me want to catch up on the series. I really enjoyed the first game. …