🎲 Issue #18 - Weekend at Reddit

Holy fuck, but it is becoming harder to LALALA plug my ears when it comes to bad shit these days. I don't want to use the term “bury my head in the sand” because I’m not ignoring the shitty reality and cascading pile of shit we’re being buried under.
I just refuse to let it take over my waking moments, my nightmares, my time for relaxation, or any other time block I haven’t named yet.

When I wrote this piece about AI, my focus was very narrow. Namely, we really shouldn’t be outsourcing everything to this crap, because it’s going to have huge ramifications for human ingenuity and creativity. (Which, btw, is already in short supply with a specific bucket of US citizens, but I’m going off topic.)

I loved this post from Aftermath, though, about the absolute garbage some of these tech bros & CEOs spew daily. (This article is specifically about the CEO of Microsoft.)

Maybe if the uber-rich had actual (living) level-headed friends (and not sycophants), someone would tell them to quit getting high on their own supply and stop their shit before they kill us and the planet faster than anyone expected.

7D2D released update 2.5, named SURVIVAL REVIVAL, to the Stable Branch. (Does anyone else think the name is just a wee bit weird? How do you revive something that never existed??) As my sister pointed out, many of the changes/items included seemed to be just…Fun Pimps giving back shit they had stripped out of the game previously?

Anyway, I’m not going to dig into it too deeply here, because the plan (at the moment) is to have Dee and me pen up some small back and forth on the update/gameplay once we’ve spent some time with it. It’s actually going to be new on multiple levels for us, since we briefly popped back into the game when they did all of the biome changes and then left in abject boredom. So TLDR, but a whole lot of shit is new for us. Like, the Apiary is very cool and very new, and we haven’t made one yet, but is there any reason I can’t just keep (and carry around in my pockets endlessly) the little piece of honeycomb with the adorable bee on it? Just asking questions!

Shoot me back a reply with your thoughts, because so far, my ire is rattled over this part of the patch notes:
“To balance gameplay, jars are one-time use, not refunded by default. The dew collector unlocks at Workstation Crafting level 16, is now crafted on the workbench, and additional resources are required for crafting. Murky water and other drinks still have a chance to be found in loot.”

TO BALANCE GAMEPLAY, JARS MUST MAGICALLY DISAPPEAR, AND THE DEW COLLECTOR MUST MAGICALLY SPAWN JARS THAT ALSO DISAPPEAR. ALSO, IGNORE DRINKING FROM OR OTHERWISE COLLECTING WATER FROM ANY BODY OF WATER YOU FREQUENTLY PASS, YOU CANNOT FOR REASONS.

Corsair is making a mechanical gaming keyboard with built-in Elgato Stream Deck. (For $350.) And it’s really cool looking! (And $350!) And you scroll and you scroll down this looong webpage and you can see all the gaming application for the feature (Becca actually already uses her Stream Deck for shit like her hearthstone in WoW), and then the application for controlling other programs. Which, again, if you already have/know of the Stream Deck, it’s more of the same shit we’ve been doing for ages. It’s incredibly sexy looking, though, and seems interesting enough that you start to side-eye gear from other hobbies and wonder who will survive. And, of course, the pièce de résistance:

Simply Hashtag

Earlier in 2025 I revived, briefly, the Hashtag Survival Subreddit, though I didn’t really have a clear goal at the time. I (try to) make a habit of tying up my important handles or brands on various social media platforms, just to keep the communication avenue open orrrr not taken up by asshats. I had a bit of a vague idea of using it to amplify posts to the Hashtag site, which I did for a bit, or using it to provide summaries of /SurvivalGaming - which I also did for a (little) bit. But a branded subreddit without a well known brand is a hard sell, so I let it lapse.

At some point during 2025, I also hopped on as a moderator for the /SurvivalGames subreddit. Which, if you’re part of it, you know is random AF because it’s been dead for…like over half a decade. But the name is valuable, and I thought maybe it had some potential, so I jumped in as a mod and eventually petitioned to take over the dead sub - which was granted!

I spent some time housekeeping: updating details and looks, removing the old post history, etc. (It’s weird how it never took off, many of the posts were lucky to get a handful of upvotes at best.) Earlier this week I also posted a tiny little…I dunno. Statement of intent?

There’s a very rough idea spinning in my head, of using the subreddit as a game feed and posting the links and small signs of life/activity blurbs that have lived (lately) in this newsletter. It’s linear and easily searchable and easy to browse. I think it clicks there better than previous spots I’ve tried it, like here, Discord, or website. It would clear some space from the newsletter, allowing me to try new segments here, like brief thoughts on new titles, game reviews, or similar stuff.

Let me know if you’re a Redditor, if you find Reddit easy to browse and handy for little news snippets, and your thoughts on the idea.

Curator Updates (Link!)

This week, I added Alone on the Lost Isle.

Coffee & Code

Just a handful of links and updates this time.

Comments of the Week!

From my article on Derelict’s saying jack shit on Patreon for half a year:

From Churn #5, my free Patreon post, which included my delight at my upcoming vacation. (We probably all saw this coming.)

Alright so this website lets you examine different levels from different games, and it’s kinda addicting??

As a 10000% Avatar megafan, I am dying to see Ash & Fire. But! I was so pleased with my plan to wait a few weeks to avoid the crowds and the plague carriers running around with the flu that I forgot about all of the cool shit they dropped during that first week it hit theaters. WOMP WOMP. So I missed out on the giant ass Banshee popcorn bucket (unless I want to pay 4x the price on Ebay) and all of the other nifty shit.

Speaking of movies, has anyone else noticed that we’re getting some neat shit with a little smidgen of that survival tension? Or at the very least, this kinda outdoor badass vibe type deal.

I love both of these actresses, so bring it on!

- Jordan

P.S.: I respond to every email, so lemme know your questions, feedback, criticisms!