With that as context, I was eager to try the new Silent Hill F. I’m always curious to jump from the original game in the series to the most recent and I had never gone back to catch up on the Silent Hill games aside from the original. As I would have expected, Silent Hill F was a similarly unnerving experience, perhaps more so given the substantial advances in technology over time. It does things with graphics, lighting, and sound design that the original obviously never could. 

The story has a completely different setting and isn’t tied to the world of Silent Hill. Instead, it’s set in 1960s Japan and has as its protagonist a teenager named Hinako Shimizu. The psychological horror in the game derives from Hinako’s abuse at home and her attempts to find refuge in herbal remedies alongside her friends. It is shortly after trying one of these remedies that a fog envelops the city and red lilies begin to appear and devour it. Not long after, grotesque monsters begin appearing. As in the original Silent Hill, there is a parallel dream world where a portion of the story reveals itself. 

The game is very effective at being unsettling. As the kids would say, it definitely nails the horror “vibe”. Playing through the game, I found myself consistently scared. The footsteps in the distance, monsters appearing from the corners, and the general feeling that something evil was waiting; all contributed to keeping me on edge. The combat system relies on breakable weapons, so at times, I found myself having to sneak past monsters rather than fighting them head on. Eventually, I tried my best to avoid fights altogether because the combat felt pretty sluggish and it was easy to get disoriented. 

In between combat encounters and stretches of exploring the city, there are a number of different puzzles. These vary between being mechanical and those I would describe as more riddle-based. The solutions were often based on clues found in the environment and in the various letters and other artifacts found throughout the adventure. At times, the puzzles were quite difficult. I definitely had to refer to a guide a few times only to find out that I had missed something in the game that would have prevented me from solving the puzzle.

Ultimately, I ended up stopping my playthrough at about the halfway point. The story never really grabbed me and I struggled to understand what was happening beyond the moment-to-moment gameplay. I gather that the story was slowly revealing itself, but it felt too slow for my tastes. I didn’t feel invested in the characters. After several hours, I felt I understood its approach to horror. It got to the point where the combat sequences weren’t that enjoyable. I read the story summary online to get some closure and learned that a complete experience required multiple playthroughs, so I’m glad I cut my experience short. Overall, the game did a great job exploring the feeling of horror, but the story didn’t do enough.

For the most part, there isn’t anything too surprising, aside from the fact that I apparently listened to a lot of ScHoolboy Q in July. I really don’t understand that one. I would have expected to see some more of my weightlifting soundtrack — Gather, Time X Heist, Strife, and Earth Crisis — make an appearance, but I guess I haven’t succeeded at becoming a straight edge gym bro yet.

Also, as someone who works on the web, I was a bit disappointed by how Apple presents their Replay. It’s all JavaScript-based and they do things like disabling the copy function and not presenting the content inside the HTML, so it was a drag generating the list. I ended up having to take screenshots and using an AI tool to parse them for the lists. Not exactly user friendly!

Top Artists by Month

• January: Slowdive
• February: Liz Phair
• March: Guns N’ Roses
• April: Guns N’ Roses
• May: Conflict
• June: awakebutstillinbed
• July: ScHoolboy Q
• August: Yasunori Nishiki
• September: Boysetsfire
• October: Nirvana
• November: Camp Cope

Top Albums

1. Chaos Takes the Wheel and I Am a Passenger — awakebutstillinbed
2. Friends In Real Life — Friends In Real Life
3. Short n’ Sweet — Sabrina Carpenter
4. OCTOPATH TRAVELER II Original Soundtrack — Yasunori Nishiki
5. This Much Remains — Conflict
6. American Thighs — Veruca Salt
7. Persona 5 Royal Original Soundtrack — Lyn / ATLUS Sound Team
8. Lucky for You — Bully
9. Garbage (20th Anniversary Edition) — Garbage
10. After the Eulogy — Boysetsfire
11. Brave Faces Everyone — Spanish Love Songs
12. This Bitter Garden — For Your Health
13. Look! A Rainbow! — Kara’s Walk Home
14. Use Your Illusion II — Guns N’ Roses
15. Whip-Smart — Liz Phair

Top Artists

1. awakebutstillinbed
2. Guns N’ Roses
3. Nirvana
4. Metallica
5. Fifteen
6. Apes of the State
7. Sabrina Carpenter
8. Liz Phair
9. Friends In Real Life
10. Bad Religion
11. Boysetsfire
12. Mineral
13. Propagandhi
14. Everyone Asked About You
15. ATLUS Sound Team

The plot of the game is a good Indiana Jones story, and it would likely be just as successful if it was a film. At the center of the story is a fascist plot to uncover a mythical power that is related to a series of mysterious sites guarded by a forgotten group of giants. Without giving away plot beats, it involves a Vatican mystery and ties to ancient societies. You eventually meet a reporter, Gina Lombardi, who is alongside you for most of the game. She’s there primarily for narrative reasons, but she has an interesting backstory and is well-written and performed. The characters and mystery are strong and it wasn’t long before I was invested in the story.

The game is told via a first-person action perspective so you spend your time being Indiana Jones. It’s fairly convincing and you make use of his iconic whip while engaging in a lot of fisticuffs. The game encourages you to pick up all manner of objects lying around the world, so it wasn’t long before I was bashing fascists with brooms and cast-iron skillets. The game involves a lot of sneaking around, either by staying out of sight of the fascists or donning various outfits to blend in with the surroundings. In my playthrough, the stealth aspect felt required. Any time I tried a combat-first approach, I was quickly overrun by the enemies. The combat doesn’t feel great, Indiana Jones tires quickly (the game has a stamina bar), but that feels intentional because Dr. Jones isn’t a combatant at heart.

For me, the game felt pretty reminiscent of Uncharted, albeit with more emphasis on stealth and puzzles. Throughout the story there are a lot of puzzles to solve and secrets to uncover. While I didn’t engage in most of the side quests, they are there if you want. For the puzzles, they were mostly environmental in nature. You’ll need to solve various riddles and move objects around to unlock chambers. I found that the  story progressed at a pretty good pace, although I did feel I got bogged down during some of the open world portions. A few areas made progression unclear, and I occasionally had to wander until a contextual prompt appeared indicating what I had to do. Along with that, there were a few parts where there were frustrating jumps that I found pretty difficult to make with the first person perspective. Neither were enough to take me out of the story completely, but there certainly were a few frustrating parts. 

I played on a PlayStation 5 and the game looked stunning. There is a lot of attention to detail in the world. The character model used for Indiana Jones is a convincing recreation of Harrison Ford and the voice work is almost uncanny how well it mimics Ford’s performance. There were times where if I squinted enough, I’d think it was a lost Indiana Jones film from the 1980s.

Overall, I’d recommend giving Indiana Jones and the Great Circle a try. It’s a fun adventure story that earns its place in the Indiana Jones canon. I’d wager it’s probably the best Indiana Jones game ever made and is definitely the best Indiana Jones story outside of the original three movies.

Reflecting on that time, every once in a while, a memory will pop into my head and I’ll recall a band I had the privilege of seeing before they became huge. One such band was The Locust. I remember seeing them at Michigan Fest and it was one of my more memorable experiences in punk. There was a lot of hype around The Locust and the crowd went wild: people had placards, there were some costumes, and everything erupted. I remember the chandelier getting smashed by garbage (captured on video). It was one

I saw The Locust at least a couple more times in this era, but they weren’t a band I listened to or really sought out. Some years later I remember being surprised to learn from a friend outside of hardcore that The Locust was well-known. I’m sure at the time I probably had some pithy response about how they were better when I saw them. Now, I just cherish the memory.

Here are some articles aI am reading and found interesting:

• Why publishers are preparing to federate their sites
  digiday.com

  The Verge and 404 Media are exploring the fediverse as a way to take more control over their referral traffic and onsite audience engagement.

  Tagged: internet

• People swear this adorable new app helped break their phone addiction
  woodtv.com

  I’m intrigued by this app but somehow the article failed to mention the name of the app

• AmigaVision
  amiga.vision

  I didn’t have an Amiga, but I always thought the stuff that came out of the demo scene was neat. Glad to see this stuff being archived and made accessible.

  Tagged: internet, bbs

• I Hacked Monster Energy and You Won't Believe What They Think You Look Like
  bobdahacker.com

  Monster Energy’s corporate infrastructure exposed: employee training, customer stereotypes, Beast Bux rewards, and a file system API that’s STILL wide open.

  Tagged: security

• Why the Internet is Turning to Shit
  currentaffairs.org

  A good indictment of the current state of the Internet.

  Tagged: internet

• How one password destroyed a 158-year-old business
  secretsofprivacy.com

  This is an extreme example, but it shows how dangerous it can be to rely on weak passwords.

  Tagged: security

• The Open-Office Trap
  newyorker.com

  This was an interesting examination of the “open offices” that have come to dominate workplaces in the U.S.

  Tagged: work

• Podcast: The Inside Story of Tea
  404media.co

  This podcast about Tea (the recently hacked viral app) is wild. What a sketchy company.

  Tagged: internet, privacy

• ChatGPT 5 power consumption could be as much as eight times higher than GPT 4 — research institute estimates medium-sized GPT-5 response can consume up to 40 watt-hours of electricity
  tomshardware.com

  But the figures rely on hardware and usage assumptions that may be inaccurate.

  Tagged: ai

• From Nintendo Power Hotline To Now, Human Labor Has Always Been The Soul Of Video Game Guides – Aftermath
  aftermath.site

  Despite its boosters’ claims, AI will never be able to replace a human guides writer

• AI Killed My Job: Tech workers
  bloodinthemachine.com

  Brian Merchant put together this collection of stories from tech workers displaced by AI.

  Tagged: ai

• We caught companies making it harder to delete your personal data online – The Markup
  themarkup.org

  Not at all surprising. The data broker world is a black hole of bad practices.

  Tagged: privacy

• Kenneth Thomasma's books
  americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com

  I was curious about the portrayal of Native Americans in a book from my youth and this blog post does a good job of covering all the problematic aspects.

  Tagged: books

• From bootcamp to bust: How AI is upending the software development industry
  reuters.com

  Bootcamps always sold inflated promises, but I’d imagine it’s much worse now.

  Tagged: ai, internet

• ChatGPT Shared Chats Were Indexed: SEO Visibility Gone Wrong
  growtika.com

  Over 100,000 ChatGPT chats were shared publicly. Some were indexed, many archived. What went wrong, what it means for SEO & what happens next.

  Tagged: ai, privacy

• Smithsonian removes Trump from impeachment exhibit in American History Museum
  apple.news

  What is truth? What is history?

  Tagged: history

• First Came Tea. Then Came the Male Rage.
  apple.news

  “What Tea has accomplished, though, is showing what women are up against. The men so hell-bent on revenge against Tea’s users are illustrating that hatred of women is alive and well.”

  Tagged: internet

• tokens are getting more expensive
  ethanding.substack.com

  An interesting look at pricing for AI usage and how costs scale.

  Tagged: ai

Its obscurity has bred rumors. Some say Vangelis was embarrassed by it and rejected the ideas it contained; others point to a very limited release in France and Greece. In the current era of streaming, it isn’t available. I’ve never been able to track down a physical copy. I still listen to my old MP3s, but I’ve since found a better recording on archive.org.

But beyond its scarcity, what makes the record remarkable is how it blends art and politics into a single sonic experiment. Fais Que Ton Rêve Soit Plus Long Que La Nuit mixes Vangelis’ compositions with sounds he recorded on the barricades in May 1968. The record sleeve describes it as a “’Poème symphonique” or “symphonic poem” which is an accurate description. I’ve always found the album to be quite compelling. Musically, it is rather chaotic with a background of sounds of street battles (tear gas containers, sirens, shouting, etc) with fragments of spoken dialog alongside rather haunting lyrics chanting the slogans of the day. It captures the excitement of the era, the euphoria of believing that the protests have won, and then ends with the somber announcement that French President Charles DeGaulle is re-taking control of Paris and that the occupied university, the Sorbonne, at the heart of the rebellion had been retaken by government forces. The lyrics highlight the revolutionary ideas of the time, drawing heavily from the posters that lined the streets.

More than fifty years later, this strange “symphonic poem” still feels alive—half revolutionary echo, half forgotten artifact. It captures a moment of euphoria, defiance, and eventual disillusion, etched into sound. If you can track it down, even in a dusty corner of the Internet, it’s worth the listen.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon follows Ichiban Kasuga, a low-ranking yakuza member who takes the fall for a crime he didn’t commit. After serving 18 years in prison, he’s betrayed by his former boss and left for dead in Yokohama. Determined to uncover the truth and rebuild his life, Ichiban gathers a band of misfits and fights to expose corruption while chasing his dream of becoming a hero. What surprised me most was how earnest Ichiban is—he’s a goofy, big-hearted mess of a character, and that’s exactly what makes him so lovable. Most of the side quests and the main story largely consists of Ichiban trying to help people. 

The game is a turn-based RPG, which was a shift for the Yakuza series. I haven’t played any of the previous games, so I can’t comment on the how it compares to the beat-em-up games that preceded it, but I found the turn-based combat to be pretty enjoyable. It’s relatively basic RPG fare with the usual buffs/de-buffs, special skills, and upgradable weapons. The job system, which lets characters switch between quirky roles like chef or breakdancer, adds personality—even if I mostly stuck to defaults.

The overall story could be broadly described as a redemption arc that sees Ichiban left-for-dead in a homeless camp and sees him uncover the mystery around how he ended up there. It intersects with his life story and he learns a lot about who he is and where he came from. It feels a bit like a soap opera with lots of twists and turns, but for the most part, it’s engaging and I was invested in it. 

The biggest drawback for me was the difficulty spikes—they dragged the pacing down and forced me into hours of grinding I didn’t enjoy. In Chapter 12, the game basically prompts you to start grinding levels via the 30-story Sotenbori Battle Arena. You get some good gear, but it feels like padding. There are other similar dungeons — Yokohama Underground and Kamurocho Underground — that exist primarily for grinding. They are dull and felt very tedious. Near the end of the game, I basically had to spend several hours grinding to level up my character for the rather difficult final section. I generally don’t mind grinding when it’s something I decide to do, but this felt mandatory.

Grinding aside, Yakuza: Like a Dragon reminded me why I love games that balance heart with humor. If Infinite Wealth builds on this foundation, I can’t wait to see where Ichiban’s journey goes next.

Originally a mobile game from 2015, WitchSpring has been reimagined here as a full remake. While developed by a South Korean studio, it shares plenty of DNA with classic JRPGs—turn-based combat, dungeon crawling, quirky characters, and the familiar sense of leveling and progression.

You play as Pieberry, a young witch living in exile deep in a forest, cut off from the outside world where witches are hunted. The narrative gradually unfolds as you explore, uncover more about the world, and learn where Pieberry fits within it. The story isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s told in a charming way that kept me engaged.

Combat is relatively straightforward turn-based fare, but it introduces some neat wrinkles—like turn bonuses, which reward you with extra actions for defeating enemies with physical attacks. The game also discourages grinding by limiting experience gains to an enemy’s first defeat. Instead, progress comes from training Pieberry’s skills through mini-games, collecting pets that can fight alongside you, and dabbling in some light crafting. (I didn’t spend much time on crafting and still managed fine.)

On the presentation side, the game shines. Its art direction is colorful and whimsical, and it looked great running on my PlayStation 5.

Overall: WitchSpring R is a cozy, compact RPG that doesn’t overstay its welcome. If you’re looking for something light, charming, and relatively short, I’d recommend giving it a try.

Last week, the topic of jailbreaking ereaders came up on the Reading Glasses podcast and it reminded me that it was something I was considering. Best of all, they gave a nice, non-technical overview of why one might want to do it. The increased flexibility was enough to get me interested again, and they confirmed that it still works with Libby. They also shared a helpful video overview:

I don’t remember how I came across the book, but it’s been on my mind since I read the first volume a few years ago. It’s a graphic novel that tells the intertwined story of a group of teenagers growing up in the 1990s who discover the world of online computer bulletin board systems (BBSes). The kids all come from different but challenging backgrounds and find refuge in the world of the mysterious “Evol BBS”.

I was able to relate quite a bit to the stories in the book. In the 1990s, finding out about computer BBSes felt like a lifeline. Much like the characters in the book, BBSes provided me with a group of friends with shared interests (so hard to find in the real world). It was invigorating to find a digital community of folks who were interested in computers, underground music, and teenage rebellion.Some of my BBS friends would become my punk rock friends. Like the characters in Incredible Doom, I often found the lines between the digital and offline worlds blurring.

Aesthetically, the book is a joy to look at with a stark black, blue, and white color palette for its illustrations. The pages in between the sections feature ascii and ansi characters, which is quite evocative of the era. The art is a perfect accompaniment to the bittersweet story that it tells. 

I recently read volume two and found it just as engaging as the first volume. It focused more on the fissures in the community that folks were building around Evol BBS and their collective living situation, which was a nice progression. Often these seeming teen utopias had their own internal challenges, so it’s nice to see the characters struggle with them, even if it did occasionally feel rather bleak. It also introduced a touring band and underground music shows, which again mirrored my experience.

I’d definitely recommend Incredible Doom to anyone with nostalgia for the 1990s and the (mostly) pre-Internet era. If you grew up in that period with similar experiences, it will no doubt prompt a lot of reflection.