#366

Well, letting it rest on 365 for a bit was nice. 366 is a cool number in its ow right, in many ways cooler than 365, at least to me. Without the context of what we know about elliptical orbits and the arbitrary decision to measure time by them, I wouldn't care a jot for 365. 366 though, that's a dope number. Three followed by two copies of its double. Multiplying each digit in sequence gives you 108, whose digits add up to 9, a number very closely entwined with 3 and 6. It is also the 9th multiple of 12--a number closely entwined with 3, 6, and 9--so dividing it by 12 makes 9. I don't know why stuff like that is so effin rad to me, but it always has been.

The rules of how to write out numbers in writing are important, but I give myself permission to eschew them at least partially whenever I do the type of paragraph that precedes here. This type of paragraph is a whole thing with Factually Pointless. Search for posts with numbers in the tags, and be amazed by more of this content than you ever dreamed you'd need, or existed, probably!

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Sequentially speaking, since I'm not gonna write about sports today, Factually Sportsmanlike 2024 is over--for now. When the time comes, maybe soon, Factually Musical 2024 will retain is week-long posting space, but for things like Factually Sportsmanlike--any type of subject to be featured in a specific way--will have an establishing sequential trial run and then be available to feature whenever I chose, perhaps as a one-off, perhaps for a short run. Factually Musical may eventually roll out this way, too. 

Of course, I might write about anything at any time. The features are about how focused a post must be on its subject and how that might be amplified or played with in the overall structure of the one post and the posts around it. Any one ordinary post might contain subject matter fit for multiple features, but is not a feature, per se. 

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Both Golden Sun games for the game boy advance are playable on the switch online, and as one whose very first complete RPG experience was, in fact, Golden Sun, this is delicious. I delight in revisiting them at these screen sizes and resolutions, and even more in the idea that a new generation of gamers will be able to enjoy them. They are pure artistic and mechanical joy, amazing art, shape language, color stories, gorgeous light and particle effects, battle summons whose whole graphical pachage defy the machine's limitations, everything. A way of using the pixel to sculpt three-dimensionality with a smoothness rarely achieved. And dudes, the fucking music. It's just some of the best music written for any games ever. Period. At eleven years old, I sank hours into plunking away at a keyboard, transcribing the theme music. I would go to the overworld and just lie down with my headphones plugged into my GBA, blissing out on the composition, the astonishing painterliness achieved with the midi tones.

They are simple and workmanlike games on one level--lotta these puzzles are gonna feel rote and characteristic before too long, though for every few dull repeats and going back to square one, there's memorably interesting and devious ones--but they explode with such character, beauty, and contain such surprising depths: djinn mechanics and the choices around them, summons and class builds, and a special profundity in the characterization of people moving through a living, changing world. The huge story rolls out with a confidence in itself and an ambition that is almost unwarranted, but pay themselves off and deliver incredible finales. 

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Ok, I'm hungry. Then I gotta do school shit. Have not been as diligent as I expected myself to be, despite completing all my work and doing well so far. What I need is to both chill more and work harder, or maybe smarter. HA! What I need is universal basic income, healthcare, shelter, and nutrition. It is incredible how low our bar is for calling ourselves a modern, scientific society. Fucking pathetic. I give us an F. F for fuck that. Everything I just said is cheap, both literally and if you just decide it is. 

I'll say it here, and I'll repeat it whenever I can: the role of government as we have understood it is done. All it can hope do to now, the only way to save itself from being supplanted entirely by the corporate ecosystem which already wields greater powers, is to become a bunker for the people. It must provide the basics of life--roof over the body, food on the table, and the doctor whenever you need it, FOR FREE, plus money in the pocket so you can go always, without fail, go out and give at least some of it to the corporations, so you can be that nomadic dollar that bleeding-edge capitalism needs you to be. Let people try to get rich, whatever. Let them lose everything, but never their basics. Let everyone have the basics. I know that if you allow yourselves to look at it as math problem, and prorate those effects honestly, you will know that I am right. You will know it can be done, and you will come up with the logistics. 

Infrastructure? Man, incentivize it somehow, make a pool rule, and have the six or seven biggest companies foot the bill. Shit, you could rebuild every city in the world sharpish on the same tip. 

Need more money? Fucking print it. More labor? Fucking pay for it with the money you just printed. Get it done, get some actual shit done, and figure out the rest later.  

Punch up as hard as you can now or get killed in the tenth round. Up to you.

--JL