iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 18h

I suspect the original poster's handle "Professional Shitooster" was an actual clue this time!

Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The purpose of cats is to wreck everything in your house and prevent you from doing anything by getting in the way so that you can then say "Well, at least I have my cats."

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

This was the point when Ian actually stood up in the theater and shouted "The planet fucking what?"

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

As predicted, but anyone who mentioned this was called "hysterical" and "overreacting"

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The central conceit of the power source of Mage: The Ascension--the Avatar as a fragment of an alien/pre-human spirit that collects past memories and gives you superpowers if you unlock it--is just Dianetics

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

These days, mostly uh... Ryan Coogler, I guess?

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I'll find out when I get to watching it! I am really not Gunn's target audience.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I read one analysis that it's a great True Detective show that makes hamburger out of the lantern/power ring premise?

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Add it to the big stack of laws that he's already violated and for which he will never suffer any consequences ever

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Every time some pundit claims that no one would work if their basic needs were met, I think about how many creatives make mods and adventures for games and just release them for free to their communities.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Feels like the same dance with the same musical chairs all over again.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

... because everyone at the banks is making so much money they cannot make it stop, the regulators are out to lunch, even when they realize that it is pigslop they can't stop, so they use their financial power to distort the market as long as they can and keep Number Going Up.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Like, they short the housing market, b/c they figured out it's all a house of cards with NINJA loans and ARMs and nobody is gonna make their repayments and mortgages are about to go belly up, they bet against it, and the big financial institutions keep pushing the numbers higher IN SPITE OF this

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It's darkly funny to me that @edzitron.com and Michael Burry seem to clash on AI even tho they both believe it's overhyped and not sound fundamentally. All I can think of is the moment in "The Big Short" where the shorts are going "how can this number be going up? The fundamentals are unsound!"

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Me: Why do I smell nasty fish Me 20 minutes ago: *ingests fish oil pill*

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Writings that purport to teach someone to be a skilled GM are actually teaching them to be a game designer.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It's beautiful. I especially like that you got Frank to smile.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Sometimes you align on physical health, sometimes on mental health Bangin' gravy = mental health

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It's uh... hm. Difficult to describe. It feels like it leans into goofiness a lot. While it ostensibly focuses on a "cleric," the cleric in question actually wants to be an engineer, and spends time doing doofy stuff like rolling a scroll into a tube and putting a light spell on a stone in it.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Bring me back some balsamic vinegar!

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

That peek-a-boob art was so provocative in its time that there is actually in-world fiction to explain why Alias' armor looks like that in the original picture.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

*Quietly regards the serene beauty of this post, adjusts robe*

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

So like, a paladin's cleric spells?

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

In the case of the empires appearing inside my lines, it was too early for jump or psi jump technology, and I always line my borders with detection arrays. As far as I can tell the game just plops down enemies wherever it feels like it.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

... and the game just ignores the pause, so I have to realize that it's still running the clock and tell it to pause again. It happens so often that I can't imagine them not having this happen internally. Just a cavalcade of problems.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

With the UI, I routinely have problems like I'll click a button and it will briefly flash the "loading" icon and then just not register the click. So I have to pause and do it again. Or I'll hit the pause (space bar) to do something and immediately as I do so a window pops up...

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I had a recent game where it spawned an enemy empire's homeworld three jumps from mine, and gave them systems directly connected to my homeworld. Of course they immediately declared war and game was over in less than 100 years.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

... no wormholes, no jump drive, no gateway, no quantum catapult, no way in, they just suddenly are there one day with no viable way to get there. And again it wasn't a pre-FTL that achieved space travel, because it was an empire elsewhere in the game.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

... and they didn't have quantum catapult or jump drive technology, and there were no wormholes or gates. Similarly, one game I had an area of stars that I'd explored but not set bases in yet, and suddenly at one point it is all controlled by another empire. Once again...

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

One recent game, I wound up at war with a neighboring empire, and I was working on the border when I realized I was getting notifications about my various worlds being captured. I looked back and found they somehow had a fleet way back in a locked-up area...

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Well, for instance, in three recent games I set my initial settings to "5 other empires" and yet wound up running into at least 10. Too early for pre-FTLs to uplift, and species tracker showed they were all distinct. So it just ignored that setting.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It's absolutely ludicrous that a game like this could actually sell for real money, when it is clearly completely busted. Settings that are just ignored. Your own ships just magically vanishing. Unresponsive UI. It's kinda a great negative example.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I really don't understand how anyone can play Stellaris. I want to like the game, but it cheats so egregiously that it's just not fun. Enemy fleets simply appearing out of nowhere? Entire empires magically appearing in the middle of your space with no entry point? Fleets with 1000× your fleet power?

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Yeah I kinda couldn't talk about it until a week ago :D

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I'm not saying I implemented some tiny amount of fishing stuff, but I'm not NOT saying that

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

One of the amazing parts of working on World of Warcraft Forever is realizing that it's a significant point in gaming history. You don't always know in advance that something is going to be a cultural moment for the community, but this one... yeah, we got some juice comin'.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Yeah, I'm on T2 Classic ("Forever")

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Game industry's a relatively small place, eh?

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The problems with GenAI are not "merely" about its inability to be creative or about its training on material stolen by the companies pushing it. It is an attempt to seduce you with the offer that you can have anything you want as long as you never think for yourself and just do what you're told.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

(There are crossovers here with the idea of people who crave authoritarianism, who want Big Daddy to tell them what to do with their lives and seek the approval of Big Daddy and don't understand Those Other People who can't just Be Normal Like Them)

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

And there are Certain People who love the idea of an entire clade of humans who have no autonomy because they do not WANT autonomy. They have outsourced their autonomy to a machine to do all of the hard thinking for them and they just do whatever they are told. A populace that craves management.

Poster from the game "Helldivers 2," showing a picture of Earth printed on blue fabric over a line of seven stars, emblazoned over with yellow text that reads "Managed democracy is the true path."

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The owners of GenAI companies want to put a fence around your ability to think for yourself, and then rent it back to you for a monthly subscription fee. They want you to believe that it will do all of the mental and creative tasks that you are unable or unwilling to do for yourself.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Abdicating problem-solving to GenAI creates helplessness. It creates people who are incapable of looking at a problem and figuring out a solution for it. They are only capable of asking the genie how to solve it for them. In a crisis, they are frozen, because they don't know how to think.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

People try to survive in terrible situations, lost in the wild, stranded on a tropical island, crashed in remote mountains, trapped in a collapsing state in a civil war, all of the time. They try to figure out what they must do to make it another day, create tools, make shelter, find food.

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Jesse Heinig @jesseheinig.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Many people would die under such circumstances. Some would be unable to figure out how to survive. Some would lose access to the medical expertise needed for their continued survival. Some would be physically incapable of the rigors of such survival. But people would try.

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