True History of Britain: Facts You Won't Get Anywhere Else.
The Total and Complete Encyclopaedia to the world of Interesting Things and Notable Curiosities located on, or in relation to, the Island of Britain. (unfinished)
asked one of my coworkers how she's doing today and she goes "could be better, could be worse," and another coworker nearby who was eavesdropping chimes in with "could be a lil bit o' alligator curse!" i have no idea what he meant by that but i do know that it has been immediately added to the lexicon.
I was watching a movie or playing a game with friends (it was inconsistent) that involved four black female US police officers. For some reason this movie/video game/TV series was also a rip off of Power Rangers (and not just that one version of Power Rangers where they were space cops, which I've never seen). They each had their own squad car, but this car could also transform into a humanoid mech suit, and they could then combine into a larger mech suit. Also, while they did have colour coded costumes like the Power Rangers, it was the Blue one who was the leader, not Red. I considered this notable enough to comment on in the dream.
For around 550 years, ending in 1827, all graduates of the University of Oxford had to swear an oath to never forgive the crimes of Henry Symeonis, despite the fact that for much of that time no one knew who Henry Symeonis was or what he had done to deserve such treatment. It was only in 1912 when his identity was uncovered by Reginal Poole, Keeper of the Archives of Oxford University, who identified Henry Symeonis as being the artificial bioconstruct created by the vast supercomputer buried beneath Oxford University, known simply as SYMEONIS itself. The university had been founded atop the machine as it used its then-limited processing power to share valuable information with the local population. Care and attention from centuries of students brought SYMEONIS back to full power, whereupon he created the 'Henry' construct in order to gain a greater understanding of humanity. According to the archival records, Henry's lack of moral understanding resulted in him killing a man and finding the sense of power deeply pleasurable. Professors at the time feared that if Henry Symeonis ever returned to Oxford and shared his newfound bloodlust with the 'father' computer, it would spell the end of mankind. Or, at the very least, the end of Oxfordshire.
Oxford University's exact date of founding is unknown, but it is known that some teaching went on there in 1096. Likewise, the age and origin of SYMEONIS are unknown, with theories ranging from a crashed alien spacecraft, the result of a time travel disaster, or another rare instance of a supercomputer being created through natural causes. After its rediscovery in 1912, use of SYMEONIS has only been allowed in exceptional circumstances. The misuse of the supercomputer earlier this year (in an attempt to break the long running curse of the Oxford-Cambridge boat race) has led to all access being cut off for the foreseeable future.
It was very hot last night (as it is across the UK right now) and because my subconscious mind is a natural comedian I dreamt I was watching the classic 1967 mystery drama film In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier.
One problem with this is I have never actually seen the classic 1967 mystery drama film In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier, outside of the famous scene where he tells the town Police Chief that folks back home call him "Mister Tibbs". I'm fairly certain that it does not take place in the Old West (though it is set in the South, I know that much), the murderer is not revealed to be three black drag queens, and at no point does Detective Tibbs jump out the window of a moving train.
With the news of RTD leaving Doctor Who again, I'd like to throw my hat into the ring to be the new showrunner. 'cause you know, why not at this point? My only experience with writing for Doctor Who is this previous post where I shuffled some character dialogue around and still managed to use the phrase "I suppose" three times in the first five lines because I did no further editing whatsoever, but, and this is the key part, I would have marginally less contempt for the audience than RTD and I would be sure to wrap up every plot thread he left hanging in a way that is so unsatisfying it will make my subsequent weak writing all the better by comparison.
With the news of RTD leaving Doctor Who again, I'd like to throw my hat into the ring to be the new showrunner. 'cause you know, why not at this point? My only experience with writing for Doctor Who is this previous post where I shuffled some character dialogue around and still managed to use the phrase "I suppose" three times in the first five lines because I did no further editing whatsoever, but, and this is the key part, I would have marginally less contempt for the audience than RTD and I would be sure to wrap up every plot thread he left hanging in a way that is so unsatisfying it will make my subsequent weak writing all the better by comparison.
It is common knowledge these days that the 'lead' of a pencil is not and has never actually been made of lead; lead is a terrible substance to try and write with, and the core of a pencil is in fact made of graphite. The modern graphite pencil was invented in Italy, using material taken out of Britain from the graphite mines in Cumbria where the substance was first found. These graphite deposits are still the only pure source of solid graphite discovered, and the only place in the world where graphite still grows into the large subterranean 'graphite trees' due to their possession by the ghosts of ancient forests, compressed under extreme pressure. Originally the mines were flooded to prevent the growth of the extruding graphite seams, but this only slowed things down. The seams are now regularly cut down and transformed into pencils, which can be purchased at the nearby Derwent Pencil Museum in Keswick.
See also: Chalk, another common writing implement found in unusually high quantities in Britain, and also commonly haunted by ghosts. It's an ongoing problem in the art world. For more information on this subject, see the Chinese folktale of the Magic Brush, the Greek legend of Pygmalion, or 80s children's cartoon Penny Crayon.
I get that one all the time, but I never get the luxury of waking up because of it. I'm just there trying to tell my teachers that while, yes, I never finished my A-Levels there, I think my Bachelors in Quantum Physics makes it a little superfluous.
Also, I'm a grown man now and it seems inappropriate for me to be back in secondary school. I have a beard and taxes and everything.
All the games I have on Steam that are First Person Shooter-Style Puzzle Games About Women Navigating Abandoned Scientific Research Facilities and Solving Cube and Button Based Obstacles With Their Robot Buddies, rated by how much I'm stretching the terms to fit this name
My word, that's a long title. Anyway, The Talos Principle 2 was on sale recently and, while I haven't actually played it yet, it reminded me that back when I did a post about The Entropy Centre I mentioned it added another entry to my another item to my list of “First Person Shooter-Style Puzzle Games About Women Navigating Abandoned Scientific Research Facilities and Solving Cube and Button Based Obstacles With Their Robot Buddies” games, a.k.a. Portal-likes™. I was going to do a post about them, and never did. So this is that list, and here are the criteria.
First Person Shooter-Style (FPS) Puzzle Games: Is it first person? With shooting? But in a Puzzle context?
About Women: Is the player character female?
Navigating Abandoned Scientific Research Facilities (SRF): Are you in one of these? After it has been abandoned? Navigating it? (Also, the player character being there won't count for judging the abandonedness of the place)
and Solving Cube and Button Based Obstacles (CBO): Cubes with which to push buttons? Buttons to be pushed by cubes? Cubes that have buttons on them? Buttons that have cubes on them but in a different way to the cubes activating the buttons?
With Their Robot Buddies: Do you have a lil' robo buddy to chat with between puzzles? Is this lil' robo buddy 1) little, 2) a robot, and 3) your friend?
Spoilers abound, so be wary.
Portal
The OG. Surely this one has to pass with flying colours, right?
FPS: Indeed, Portal is entirely first person, and you fire your Portal gun. Handy side-effect of being based on the Half-Life engine, I guess. 5/5
Women: Chell does appear to be a woman. In the absence of any evidence to suggest she is not, I'm going to assume she is. 5/5
SRF: This depends a lot on your definition of the word 'abandoned'; Aperture Science is less abandoned and more everyone died from deadly neurotoxin. The only person actually working in it is GLaDOS, but then against she is the entire operating system for the facility. And yes, I'm considering sapient robots to be people, c'mon now. So... 3/5
CBO: Lotta Cubes, lotta Buttons. You put the cubes on the buttons. 5/5
Robot Buddy: Well, Chell has GLaDOS. But she's not really a buddy; heck, for the first half of the game she's treated like a completely automated message system. Also, she's trying to kill you. That's not very friendly of her. So I'm afraid this only gets 1/5.
Total: 19/25
Portal 2
The OG 2. Let's see how much this one holds up.
FPS: Gameplay is identical to Portal 1. 5/5
Women: Chell makes her return, so she's still as much a woman as she was before. 5/5
SRF: Aperture is more abandoned than it was before, if we're counting 'everyone dying' as 'abandoned'. And while GLaDOS was around for the first one, she too has succumbed to the passage of time and Chell. Wheatley and the nanobots are the only entities around. I'm sure they're doing their best, but 4/5 'cause it fits the aesthetic better.
CBO: Still more cubes and buttons to be pushed. Even rounded safety cubes and new receptacles for them. 5/5
Robot Buddy: You actually have two now; Wheatley and GLaDOS herself. So while there are stretches of the game where you don't have them around, or one of them isn't very friendly again, they're integral parts of the story. Wheatley fits the robot buddy archetype better at the start of course, which GLaDOS being a reluctant hanger-on. But even GLaDOS gets some growth, and while I won't say she likes Chell, she has definitely grown a respect for the lass. 5/5
Total: 24/25
The Entropy Centre
It's like Portal, but with time instead of space.
FPS: It's like Portal, but with time instead of space. Rather than a Portal gun that opens Portals, you're equipped with an entropy gun that reverses objects through time. 5/5
Women: The heroine of this game is Aria Adams, a woman. 5/5
SRF: This might be the only one where the facility is actually deliberately abandoned rather than having all the residents die. I mean, the residents did die, but only after they decided to collectively abandon the facility. 5/5
CBO: The Entropy Centre not only has cubes, but it has more types of cube! We've got regular cubes, we've got cubes that shoot lasers, cubes that make light bridges, cubes that help you jump, cubes that mimic other gameplay elements in Portal... point is, they're all in cubes or cube-like shapes (cuboids). And buttons, those too. 5/5
Robot Buddy: Aria is joined in her mission by ASTRA, a friendly little AI built into Aria's entropy gun. She fills Aria (and, thus, the player) in on the backstory of the eponymous Entropy Centre, though as she has had her memory wiped just before the game she can't help you with the current situation beyond telling you where to go and providing encouragement. Also, you can give her a little hat! Adorable. 5/5
Total: 25/25, this game is somehow more Portal-like than Portal itself.
The Turing Test
It's like Portal but with... robot philosophy? I don't know. I'd say 'energy balls' since that's what you're using most of the time, but Portal also had energy balls for puzzle elements before they were swapped for lasers in Portal 2.
FPS: Like in Portal, your main tool is a gun. In this case it simply absorbs and releases energy balls, but it's even more gun-shaped than the Portal gun. 5/5
Women: Ava Turing is a woman... but this only gets 3/5. If you want to know why, read on to 'Robot Buddy'.
SRF: The moonbase on Europa is not actually abandoned at all. Not by the inhabitants at least, the people on Earth seem to have given up on it but the ones sent there are still around. They're hiding from you, but they're still there. Waiting. In the walls. Or in a secure area, whichever. 2/5
CBO: This is the kind of game you'd think has a lot of buttons in. There are cubes, sure, and you can pick them up and move them around and stuff. But these cubes are all power sources to be slotted into sockets, there really aren't many puzzles that require placing them onto buttons, Portal-style. 2/5 because it does have cubes and the idea of putting them in places (though they're not even really cubes anyway. Cuboids again.)
Robot Buddy: The puzzles are broken up between little dialogues between Ava and TOM, where they discuss things like the Turing test, the Chinese room, and other thought experiments related to the sentience of AI. So normally, this would bring it to 5/5, it's like the quintessential robot buddy sidekick role. Except, as one will learn mid-way through the game or by continuing to read this sentence, you aren't actually playing as Ava at all. You are playing as TOM, who is in turn controlling Ava's actions. So if anything, the roles are reversed. TOM is the player, and Ava is his human buddy sidekick. 1/5.
Total: 13/25, on a technicality
The Talos Principle
Hey look, it's the game I mentioned at the start. The first one, anyway.
FPS: It's first person, that much is true. You don't get a gun, however. You do get an axe, and the image of a robot running around with a primitive metal axe is very nice, but it's not a gun. However, and this is a point that needs to be made; The Talos Principle actually started life as a testing area for Serious Sam, which is an FPS. So it has FPS in its bones. 2/5
Women: So, the Talos Principle's protagonist is a robot. And you learn nothing about who they are as a person. I'm not even sure they know who they are as a person. But, one thing I do know about the second game is that your character names themselves Athena, and I am assuming considers herself a woman. Does that mean she was a woman during the first game too? I really don't know. The philosophy of gender identity is a complex enough beast for humans, so I'm really out of my depth when it comes to robots. 2/5, barring any further information.
SRF: Welllllllllll... Kinda. You are in a scientific research facility, and there are no humans left in the world. But the actual gameplay doesn't involve the place much at all. Your character is actually in a simulation of different environments running on a computer (Elohim) within this facility. But the simulation you're in is also a series of ruins. So... 2/5 again?
CBO: It's actually called a Hexahedron, I'll have you know. This is a fancy geometry term meaning 'cube'. 5/5
Robot Buddy: In addition to The Player/Athena being a robot, you also get to chat now and again with an entirely digital entity known as Milton. It's kind of a dick, honestly. And it's not there all the time. So there's always an AI present since you/the world are/are inside of an AI for all/most of the game, but you/Elohim don't count as a 'buddy'. Sorry. 3/5
Total: 14/25
For further comparison purposes, here are two games that, while not simply mods of Portal 2 (you need to own Portal 2 to download them but they are their own separate application within Steam) are non-canon fan games designed to expand the world of Portal in a non-canon fan fiction way.
Portal Stories: Mel
FPS: As this is, as mentioned, a fan made stand-alone mod of Portal 2, it runs off the same engine and is intended to be a non-canon prequel to the events of Portal 2. So yeah, the gameplay is pretty much the same. 5/5
Women: You play as Mel, who, like Chell, I'm pretty sure is a woman. She's an Olympic athlete, and one of the volunteers for Aperture Science's experiments back when they could get that quality of volunteer. If the name sounds familiar, it's probably because Mel is a very common name. Also, she was intended to be the player character of Portal 2 before they went with Chell again, and then was going to be the Player 2 in the co-op campaign before they went with the robots. 5/5
SRF: Like I said before, this is set between Portals 1 and 2, in the long stretch of time between GLaDOS dying and GLaDOS waking up. So the facility is about as abandoned as it ever was and is ever gonna get. 4/5.
CBO: I said before that the gameplay was the same, and that's the case here too. There are a few new puzzle elements, but the Cube-and-Button aspects stick around. 5/5
Robot Buddy: Mel is joined by Virgil, another personality core who acts as Mel's guide to the world after she's woken up from her primitive form of cryogenic storage. He is friendly to you. 5/5
Total: 24/25
Portal: Revolution
FPS: Again, like Portal Stories: Mel, this is a stand-alone mod of Portal 2 so it runs of the same engine yadda yadda. 5/5
Women: The player character is not named in this game, but in true Portal tradition she is a woman as well. Let's call her Pel. 5/5
SRF: Yeah, like before, you're in Aperture Science between the events of Portal 1 and 2, 4/5. Listen, you cannot say that the facility is being poorly maintained by sapient robots and get full marks for abandonment, that doesn't work. Either get rid of the robots' intelligence or eat the point loss.
CBO: Again, Portal 2, buttons, cubes, the whole shebang. They even have the red energy barriers that kill you like in Mel (these are used in a variety of Portal 2 fan games). 5/5
Robot Buddy: Pel is woken up by Stirling, a Wheatley-esque Personality Core. Like Wheatley, he needs your help to escape the facility as it is breaking down. Also like Wheatley, he turns on you mid-way through the game and becomes the main villain of the story. Unlike Wheatley, Stirling is more condescending to you from the start and just not as likeable as the pre-corruption Wheatley was. After this shocking but inevitable betrayal, Pel is joined by Emilia, another Personality Core who is more of a typical robot buddy. If I'm being honest I didn't care for either Core too much; Stirling spent most of his time being patronising and Emilia spent most of her time trying to tell me stuff I already knew. 3/5
Total: 22/25
In Conclusion:
Huh? I'm doing conclusions now? Oh OK. Well, Portal 2, despite being the alleged baseline that these games are working from, didn't get full marks (albeit over a technicality regarding the word 'abandoned'). The Entropy Centre did, the Portal 2 mods got the next highest, and the lowest points went to The Turing Test, or The Talos Principle if we're not going to count the other technicality with who the 'player character' of TTT is. But then again, is higher points in this list something games should be striving for? If anything, a lower score on this list is just a higher score in the 'originality' list. Don't get me wrong, I liked The Entropy Centre a lot, but the Portal influences were strong even if the core gameplay mechanic was totally different (or mostly different, anyway). While the two games designed to be like Portal 2, which were also enjoyable, I didn't care for anywhere near as much. There's a lesson here, somewhere.
Irn-Bru is a popular carbonated soft drink here in the UK, famous for its vivid orange colour and indescribable taste. It is considered one of Scotland's national symbols, and even has its own unique pattern of tartan. It is bottled and canned in the town of Westfield, North Lanarkshire, with the liquid extracted on-site from the large Irn-Bru spring now contained within the Barr's company building. The drink emerges in a large hole approximately 17 metres in diameter and 12 metres deep. The exact height of the Irn-Bru 'fountain' varies, but rarely reaches two metres above the surface of the pool. Geological surveys suggest the source of the Irn-Bru is far deeper than most aquifers providing spring water, but attempts to excavate down to this source have been rejected.
The original drink to be named 'Iron Brew' (stylised as IRONBREW), actually came from America, and was first produced in 1889, ten years before the Scottish 'Irn-Bru' was being sold. This drink and the Scottish beverage of the same name have very little else in common; IRONBREW was a dark brown with a vanilla flavour and, like most of the soft drinks being created in the USA at the time, was an attempt to recreate the viscous substance believed to be the ichor of the god K'uk'ukola (possibly a local version of K'uk'ulkan), enemy of the trickster spirit Pepe Sico.
Haha, I'm glad you liked the 9/11 post I made! It was partly inspired by your excellent post on The Boat Race, which I enjoyed so much I've had to gleefully read it to several friends ^^
Genuinely very nice to hear, thank you.
Oh, and the 2026 Boat race was quietly cancelled and secretly replaced with an AI generated version to be aired on TV. The footage created was of very poor quality; teams frequently changed position, the water in the Thames was often flowing backwards, and a sudden power cut killed the generation during the final segment of the video before any crew could cross the finish line. Boat race organisers were forced to confess to their deception and pay compensation to the broadcasters, as well as cover the electrical costs for misusing the Oxford University supercomputer SYMEONIS.
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