iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

(Which also largely fuels my utter distrust of the AI industry, since they basically flaunt all existing law which should apply to them, most entities who could make them kneel are in bed with them, and their ideas of self-regulation are a joke.)

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Illustrating the important factor that the greatest universally net-positive benefits of tech will only arrive once they are forced from the system at gunpoint.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

They don't have the guts or self-awareness and it will never happen, but the real curveball would be to tell the whole story from the covenant perspective and actually commit to the bit.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Dear god, please tell me that you do not write for a living on a laptop keyboard. (It's understandable if you absolutely need to work on the move or covertly, but still)

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Yeah, one of the more surprising things about it is how pinpoint-topical it feels. Most works that aim to be current necessarily end up being a bit stale by the time they're actually done. Wonder if it's more a function of them being pre-emptive, or our present zeitgeist overstaying it's welcome.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

This kind of just seems like an extension of the trivially true observation that any truly conscious process capable of learning will by necessity be a product of it's time and place, and any description of this process will require the corresponding time and place for context to be precise.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I've been there since launch so I could probably ramble on for another hundred posts about this game's various problems and the weird corner the devs painted themselves into where they can't really acknowledge how their own game works or what it even is. These days I mostly just mod it.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

(Note, the player count doesn't actually matter much - The game is built so that liberation contribution from completed missions scales down heavily if more people are playing. Makes sense since, again, the GW is not a real system, it's just there for the sake of narrative.)

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The game's playerbase is also stuck in a completely content-based cycle. Like 100k people only show up for two days when a large patch releases to try out the new content, and then they forget the game exists until the next one.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The players were never provided with any in-game communication and/or clan systems which could be used to coordinate. This is because the game can't actually require coordination, since as noted, the GW is not a real reactive system, it's a narrative device manually controlled by the game master.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

...so people only engage with it half-heartedly at best. The gameplay of factions is a matter of taste, so like half the playerbase never leaves the bug front (Since they are the closest to "fair"). The war cannot actually be won because then there would be no game.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

One thing I would add here, you should keep in mind that a lot of these things are caused by meta-level game design problems. In short, if you think about it, it becomes extremely obvious that the galactic war is not a real system, and it isn't always a good way to experience the game's content...

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It kind of feels like the video essay equivalent of relaying sage life advice and then ending it with "idk tho", like you're afraid people will actually take you seriously so you gotta disclaim liability ahead of time.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Idk if I'd even say "insightful", because one of the things that has always annoyed me about JG's work is that while his prose is evocative and his editing is good, he always seems to stop short of actually _saying something_ and committing to a point, instead of just sorta open-endedly implying it.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

You're presuming people will always have the good sense to grift in the moment, when sometimes people are just actually dumb as rocks and believe this stuff earnestly.

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Reposted by Zerk Dungbit

Sam (ABeardedPanda) @abeardedpanda.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Anyways, this is genuinely the funniest chart in the world because it shows Jill Stein's twitter use spikes every four years and only during years where there's a federal election so if she's breaking her silence now *someone* is panicking

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

YA fiction is when you're named Daved. If everyone just calls you "D" you're either in an edgy videogame story or possibly some sort of vampire fic.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

(The whole "These are not the same people" spiel is completely off-base, considering a lot of the bad ideas that got us here apparently came from the oldest timers who could not be questioned)

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I get that idea in the very specific sense that Bungie really seems to have arrived at this positive decision after exhausting all other options & people should probably hold applause until they demonstrate that they really can commit. But I do not think Asmo's coming at this from this angle.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I appreciate the bright colors and the glitter! Calls to mind the earnest energy of oldschool sparkledogs but in a more refined and measured form.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Between end of service for Destiny, Marathon player counts in the hundreds, and nothing else being in the pipeline, I guess it was either this hail-mary redemption arc play or actually just liquidating the studio.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I think they're all way too high on their own supply at this point (Though, honestly, were they ever not?) to realize how this is bad for them.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Yeah, I think the combat balance was definitely one of the original's biggest misses. Between how the stats and enemy levels work, either you're min-maxing your mods and everything dies instantly, or you're not and every enemy is a complete bullet sponge.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

It's likely a function of social-cooperative beings even more than language, necessarily. If we impose a general consensus of what happened and what's happening now, we can all make decisions from the same starting point. Helps groups stay reasonably cohesive without constant oversight and orders.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I feel like, if anything, they might facilitate some fuckass terrorist act or false-flag/sabotage.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This strikes me as an LLM bot prompted to start arguments that mistook the video as actually talking about/criticizing Liberator pistols from WW2. ...or possibly a very high concept meta-level troll emulating that same misunderstanding for the sake of comedy.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

IIRC the closest they come is referring to it as a "gun/sword/this space intentionally left blank"

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Since this is Remedy I'm pretty sure they're "doing a thing" here, but this game's fate hangs on them absolutely nailing whatever the thing they're doing is.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Yeah, the absolute farce that is the data center power supply situation is certainly going to figure into this in interesting and surely not at all single-point-of-failure ways.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Right - My point being, does this functionally make him more like a problematic-but-sincere democrat driven by principles, or an insane republican niche-splinter-factionist type.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Your body exist within the laws of physics and therefore has limitations contingent on it's make-up. It is your prerogative as a sentient mind inhabiting that body to test, expand, and work within those limitations to do the stuff you need done. That's basically it, the rest is just debatewank.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

My simultaneously most conservative AND progressive coded opinion is that most people do not actually comprehend even basic real-world implications of biology. A lot of effects that gets chalked up to some sexual thing are actually just misattributed general effects of inhabiting a physical body.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I think this is sorta contingent on whether you actually believe the substance of what he's saying. I.e., is the lack of AI regulation a genuine existential threat, or is this just another in a long line of scare tactics to make the tech seem far more grandiose and imposing than it is.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The pengularity, if you will.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

And a future where it actually goes basilisk, but only specifically for the people who believed in that idea and no-one else.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Jedi mind trick but it's just "Shit yourself immediately".

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

True, but it kinda feels like faint praise by being overly specific, because there are weirdly few Ace Combat like games out there. There was HAWX, I guess, and I'm blanking on any others.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I'm sure it will arrive together with the DOGE cuts savings dividend and the tariff dividends. Any day now!

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

If you've done your own research right, you should be left with more questions than answers on average (Because this is also a general hallmark of correctly-conducted professional research).

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Yeah, as far as I've seen HelikonTex is like the only brand who explicitly has women's cuts and sizes for anything at all.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Yeah. Like, it sucks to see the franchise passed over, but this would 110% have been the reaction.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

The team aspect along with the human impossibility of keeping all the various micro-tasks and build timings 100% consistent gives MOBAs an inherent ego-defense reservoir in this regard.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

This is an important nuance to the point here - "Power users" are usually specialized, and they can have extremely different underlying reasons for why they became power users. Many of them will fall on wildly different sides of this split.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Yeah, I imagine there will be a lot of tiny detail improvements like this. Such as uniform pressure foam instead of springs for specific stuff like magazines, everyone having 3D-printed grips for individual hand dimensions, and solid state/lattice propellant (For more consistent burn).

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

And any step we take towards normalizing it still directly feeds _the_ absolute worst people in tech and beyond, no matter how useful it is in a vacuum. Some of them say the time of local personally/community-owned models is coming, but I just do not see that happening without a complete upheaval.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

In my time at university, I had one (1) professor who was adamant that the customer is not always right, a software developer should have opinions and standards & should push back when asked to build stupid solutions. The fact that he was the odd one out for this was certainly a sign, looking back.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This is a very important thing I wish more people understood. A very large part of the reason why SE/coders specifically have found so much use for LLMs is because their field of engineering is a uniquely lawless uncivilized dog-eat-dog wasteland where everyone keeps having to reinvent wheels.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

On a side note, it's also equally an issue with the on-line options, in the sense that none of them are quite dialed in. Most stuff is optimized for the lowest common denominator, and the few outliers are usually all the way at the other extreme where you have to schedule it like a second job.

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

The crossbows it introduced are probably the most satisfyingly kinetic weapons in the game. (This is Skyrim so the bar is basically in hell in this regard unless you install mods, but it's true!)

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Zerk Dungbit @zdungbit.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

That's kind of the thing. Our modern lives are insulated from most (if not all) immediate and measurable consequences for believing falsehoods or hearsay. In this context, the line between reality and memes is completely subjective and does not exist in any actual functional sense.

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