https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/ancestors-1.jpgThe last few weeks I have been unduly fascinated by Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, a 2019 game that was supposed to make the whole of human evolution playable in a breathtaking journey.
You might think that’s promising a bit much, and it is. The game released to rather critical reviews and never made the impact it was supposed to.
And I see why. The game is intentionally impenetrable. It seems in the beginning it didn’t even have the visual cues for the actions I came to rely on, and even with those barely anything is explained. The tutorial is brief and drops you directly into an intensely dangerous world, and the game delights in telling you it won’t give you further hints.
You start as a tribe of hominids about 10 million years ago (the missing link) and have to make your way to about 2.5 million years ago.
In between you have to steer your hominids, start figuring out the world (horsetail good, mushrooms uuugh but filling), invent the first tools like “stick” and “mud” (a truly versatile tool!), and, well, die a lot.
Everything seems made to kill you. Go too high up the tree and an eagle gets you, go through grass a python gets you, walk through water a crocodile eats you. And then there’s the stalker cat which often comes unannounced and pounces you. And unlike the others the cats will stalk you until they can kill you. I had one follow me from one side of one biome to the other.
https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/ancestors-2.jpgIn between you carry kids with you, because it’s not important what you do with your current character, unless kids see you do it and learn from it. If you do enough of a particular action neural energy will grow and new neurons will activate. In the end its a skill tree system, even if developing it needs generations, or hundreds of thousands of years and a single character will never survive it. From one generation to the next a limited amount of newly learned skills can be kept, but what you really need to get is mutations. These come randomly with new kids, but they won’t become apparent until you do an evolutionary leap. But you need them because some skills are gated by them, and you won’t be able to progress unless you have them.
It’s all very complicated and worse, barely explained.
Unlike many other games this game has nearly no fantastic elements at all. Everything is based on scientific research, there is no story at all, outside of the story of how humans start becoming bipedal and omnivorous… and start killing everything else I guess. The only element I would term fantastical are the meteors.
Danger, here be spoilers: Every once in a while you discover a new landmark and it triggers a cut scene where meteors rain down on the landscape. These will smoke for a while (multiple generations and even generational leaps), but in the end they stop. If your hominid finds them they will gain further unity with the universe, and they will get a free skill, and all kids present get a mutation. It becomes a convenient shortcut to organize an expedition to a meteor site with as many kids as possible to lock down as many mutations as possible over one or two generations. Of course it turns out all these meteor sites have some rather dangerous wildlife nearby, or are in rather inconvenient sites.
https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/ancestors-3.jpgEven the actual goal of the game is barely communicated: you have to reach the last evolutionary step in the game, reaching the genus homo ergaster, and then the closing animation plays. I guess it was planned that the next part of the series show the further development, alas I don’t think the game was successful enough. It is rather niche, and the only reason I even got it was because it was part of my Humble subscription at one point. Still. It is an interesting game, and one that I spent a lot of time on. It gives you an appreciation of how far we’ve come, and how dangerous cats used to be. Or still are.
None of these people exist, but you can buy their books on Amazon anyway. Here's an article on Amazon authors with GAN-generated faces and the books these authors publish (which appear to be almost entirely devoid of original human-created content).
My theory is that the edges of trees are actually invisible to us, so they are touching (on both ends, obvs), but not in a way we can see. What they are not doing is fighting each other for the light. They are optimizing and cooperating. https://toot.lgbt/@book/111749320285900616
Friends I still can't find a safe home, I have had to go to a local shelter to be safe, but I am having a very bad time here since there are many people who hate transgender people and I have had many problems, please could you help me ?
"Websites made with Google Business Profiles are basic websites powered by the information on your Business Profile. In March 2024, websites made with Google Business Profiles will be turned off and customers visiting your site will be redirected to your Business Profile instead. The redirect will work until June 10, 2024."
Call for papers - ‘Intersectional and Critical #ADHD Thought: ADHDers Think Back’, for a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies. [ETA: The abstract deadline has been EXTENDED till 25th Feb 2024.] The editors are seeking critical intersectional papers that “‘think back’, explicitly or implicitly, against medical and denialist models of ADHD.”
“At this point, it is fair to conclude that ADHD Studies is an acritical and non intersectional field, produced by non-ADHDers. What we need is critical and intersectional ADHD knowledge produced by ADHDers themselves.”
Submissions are welcomed from academics, PhD students and activists. See the CfP for a great list of topics, from “Trans-ing while ADHD-ing: questions for intersectional justice,” to critical approaches to ADHD and religious faith.
@EVDHmn@theADHDAcademic@actuallyautistic Can I ask you to field questions to the organisers? I just shared to spread the word. I don’t know anything about the project beyond having heard it’s happening
I was just talking to my partner who is adhd as well fmg grad..tech writer…we have learned so much from the community.
Hopefully we can attain some workable solutions as a team that understands some of the hurdles, perhaps help contribure to pave the way to an inclusive diverse landscape!
Either way it should be a fun project!
@itchi5 Depends on your country, the laws and what happens exactly. If you have a publisher, normally it's their work to instruct a lawyer. Large publishing houses even have their department for this.
Even if you have published the print at your own expense, you will not be able to avoid a lawyer. Professional organisations can sometimes help with the costs.
Perhaps @writers or @law can help you more.
I’ve bought a new pot, red, beautiful and enameled. The old one I used to have was cracked. And my two cast Iron pots are not enameled.
So I ended up cleaning that cupboard & sorting pots and pans (not really what I planned to do today). And I have loads. Some from the bottom and back are really dirty & need a thorough clean.
I will have to decide which should go for keeping in the basement. For a single person the amount is ridicules & I’ve not even got to the lids on the top shelf 😱 @cooking
Sounds delicious. I love cooking large portions and freezing later. One of my favorites is kinda a bastard chicken cacciatore I got from food network ages ago, some fireman cooked it for all his buddies in the firehouse. So, huge portions if you follow the recipe as-written, which I don’t recommend unless you know a lot of firemen or something.
Whoopsies! "Free speech absolutist" "accidentally" suspends the accounts of journalists who are critical of him, and people whose political views he disagrees with.
He seems to have quite the habit of firing or banning people he disagrees with, doesn't he?
Via Gizmodo:
"X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, purged an unknown number of prominent accounts over the last 24 hours with little to no explanation, and then restored the accounts minutes after this article was published.
"The list includes popular accounts belonging to journalists, writers, and podcasters. Among them are Ken Klippenstein of the Intercept, writer and podcaster Rob Rousseau, Texas Observer correspondent Steven Monacelli, the account for TrueAnon, a left-wing politics and news podcast, and a number of others.
"One thing the accounts have in common is recent criticisms of the Israeli government.
...
"Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist” has previously said no one should be banned from X unless they break the law.
"Update, 1:12 p.m.: Shortly after this article was published, Musk responded to a question about the issue from far-right influencer Jackson Hinkle. Musk promised to investigate, and the accounts went back up soon after. Musk later blamed the “mistake” on X’s spam algorithms. The Hamas account is still suspended."