"releasing a game"
↑ One sentence horror

Sometimes I think people outside narrative sincerely believe that placeholder text reads like “[PLACEHOLDER] I am reloading.” because the writers don’t have time to write anything else, and not because it needs to be highly noticeable amongst hundreds of lines of finished dialogue.

And the thing you wrote was so very wrong! It was not Raph Koster or Frank Lantz that wrote the take the next time; it was Bogost, risen again! Fool!

(I'm sure several others have done it in the meantime but I really wanted to make this joke okay)

ADHD-posted a bit here; on a second look at your post, you seem to focus more on having the info, which I wholeheartedly agree with! Knowing where the power comes from – but not necessarily using it *as* your argument – is very good advice.

If they use renewables, that becomes a point of *defense* for the AI because look, it's being "ecologically responsible!" But it's still not. That renewable energy could've offset more coal if a datacenter wasn't eating it.

Still, it's good thinking to point this out, imo. Useful stuff to consider.

This is useful rhetoric to know for the back pocket, but I wouldn't use it as a first- or second-line of reasoning if possible, because talking about where the energy comes from risks legitimizing AI use if renewables are powering it. LLMs & GenAI don't deserve that.

Hang on, gotta google something.

...Okay, done. Why are you pelting someone with a fruit?

If you REALLY ABSOLUTELY GOTTA get the sarcasm out of your system, I understand, but by god please just talk about it in the abstract. *You do not have to repeat the words of the shitheads.* Leave them on the floor where they belong. Do not give them an audience.

"nobody needs to read" as in "literally doesn't matter so long as it's written at all" or as in "never read until it's suddenly super important, e.g. a rare-but-huge investigation"? Because the concept of the latter creating AI-hallucination-timebombs is a nasty-sounding idea!

Shit like this is why I can't go a week without thinking of your advice against arguing with (and thus increasing the audience of) shitbags. People never realize the power available in visibility, and they mess it up so frequently I almost wish Bluesky would just ditch quote skeets.

But *that* said, I think obsession is a theme in this game, and that's why it's trying to get you to be obsessive. And... I don't like that either! It's cool how effective it is, but it's also not terribly fun (as you saw), and there's a thing later that I wanna say but can't because spoilers, fuck

That said, in fairness, a chunk of those puzzles (including this one) have other ways to find them out too. Me & a friend of mine solved this because he eventually realized the formatted text was out-of-place, and ended up skipping the A New Clue hint completely.

I think the game's design expects you to instinctively use the Magnifying Glass on basically everything you *can* use it on, which is why this (and so much else) is hard to spot without it. Which does feel kinda bad, yeah - this game relies on obsessiveness a LOT.

Keep the stream recordings if you can! I recorded my Undertale playthrough so I could watch it back years later to experience the first time over again and it's been a gem to have that. Can't recommend it enough.