“catch me with that (elder?) nerd shit”

Healing through creative indulgence with a collection of things I want to revisit, reference, & take comfort in. Late 20s queer adult, aspiring Fandom Cool Older Cousin, mindful of interacting with minors as I age up and the fandom wheel of time goes on. (a note: I do reblog (im)mature jokes from time to time) I love you! <3

[the1920sinpictures]

1915 c. Lace evening dress, no information given. From Pinterest.

[herpsandbirds]

[ewaneneollav]

blows up a random stranger with a rocket launcher for no reason then falls to the ground weeping histrionically & receives the tender attention & support of everyone present

[jeekoftheweek]

[sacred-portal]

[royalhandmaidens]

sometimes i think about the history of coffee culture in islam and how it spread like it’s so funny

discovered by sufis who decided it was a miracle from Allah since it allowed them to stay up late into the night for night worship

miracle beans = UNLIMITED DHIKR

cue scholars debating for years about whether it’s haram or halal and if it should be classified as an ‘intoxicant’ or not

fast forward to 16th century ottoman empire, where a woman had the legal right to divorce her husband if he failed to provide her with enough coffee

europeans called it the “mohammaden gruel” or “devil’s drink” bc they believed it to be a “bitter invention of satan and his followers”

fast forward to pope clement viii finally giving in and tasting it to see what the hype is about and then stating: “This Satan’s drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it.”

pope clement viii then proceeds to BAPTIZE THE COFFEE BEANS

[royalhandmaidens]

the tags on this post are some of the funniest i’ve ever seen in my notifications but this one made me choke on my Mohammedan Gruel

[royalhandmaidens]

GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE

[hansdurrer]

Santa Cruz do Sul. Brasil, 20 Janeiro 2025

[mountainbaby25]

Morning light

[bold-baddie]

[kagaintheskywithdiamonds]

ursa major and ursa minor

[spreadassholesdotorg]

[burnttoastlife]

[knightofleo]

[herpsandbirds]

Common eider

[phynoma]

This needs to be immortalized because it's what made me turn on the sound. And they were right

[virtualgirladvance]

shes singing pictures ;_;

[stephaniedola]

this is the video OP is referring to btw, if anyone wants to watch it! its by Benn Jordan and it's really fascinating if you're a birder, an audiophile, or both!

[technofeudalism]

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

[technofeudalism]

since this post blew up, i've been wanting to do an addition with all of the recommendations from the comments and tags. but there's a lot of them. some people might be crazy enough to sit down and seriously put them all in one post with descriptions. those people are honestly sick in the head.

anyway, here's all of the recommendations from the reblogs. not all of them are text-based, but it's a great mixture of styles. also don't forget the links in the second paragraph of the OP which will take you to FMHY where there are a bunch more games listed.

Games

A Dark Room - text-based science fiction role-playing game.

corru.observer - science fiction adventure web game.

Improbable Island - old-school text adventure game.

Candy Box 2 - incremental clicker game that evolves into RPG.

Arcanum - open source wizard clicker game.

sandspiel, Powder Game, Powder Game 2, The Powder Toy - more sand physics games.

Orb.Farm - fishtank simulator.

Façade - experimental game with a real-time interactive narrative where you try to fix a failing marriage.

The Catacombs of Solaris - trippy art game.

Yume Nikki Online - online version of the surreal classic plus fangames.

The Barncle Goose Experiment - combine element/alchemy game based on antique theories of abiogenesis.

Fallen London - free-to-play text-based open world RPG.

Nested - very unique text-based universe expanding game. described as possibly @orteil42's favorite thing he's ever made.

The Process of Elimination - interactive web novel (by @hypertextdog)

Discworld MUD - multiplayer, text-based, online game (a MUD, or text MMORPG) based on the Discworld books.

Horse Master - surreal text game about training a horse.

EYEZMAZE - flash (RIP) or HTML5-based puzzle games.

You Are Jeff Bezos - text game. spend Jeff Bezos' fortune.

The Password Game - challenging puzzle game where you have to meet password requirements (by neal)

Universal Paperclips - incremental paperclip making game.

Half-Earth - planetary disaster planning game where you try to save the world using socialism.

ChooseYourStory - community-driven website centered on CYOA style story games.

PhD Simulator - random event based text game. make your choice each month and see if you can graduate on time.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - open source roguelike.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - turn-based survival roguelike set in the modern day.

Nethack - open source roguelike originally released in 1987.

FarmRPG - simple, mobile-friendly, text-based farming RPG.

Kingdom of Loathing - browser-based community MMORPG.

PokeRogue - browser-based Pokemon roguelike

Tools

Text Game Builder - works in your browser, with just a little bit of Python (by @grumpygandalf)

Twine - great (free!) tool for making text-based games quickly.

Ink - scripting language for interactive fiction (also free)

Flashpoint Archive - a community effort to preserve games and animations from the web.

PICO-8 - fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs.

Non-Games

Library of Babel - interactive illustration which attempts to simulate what it might be like to browse The Library of Babel.

Superbad - technically not a game, sprawling website full of secrets.

17776 - serialized speculative fiction multimedia narrative about football in the far-future. beautiful, creative, legendary. created by Jon Bois, a legend and one of my favorite writers of all time.

Choice of Games - text-based, choose-your-own-adventure games (interactive fiction). some free-to-play, others can be bought like an ebook.

The Deep Sea - scroll to the bottom of the ocean. encounter the humble squid and his friends (by neal)

Space Elevator - like The Deep Sea, but up instead of down. you can equip your avatar with a scarf (by neal)

Internet Artifacts - an interactive history of the early internet (by neal)

If The Moon Were Only One Pixel - scroll through an accurately scaled model of the universe.

r/incremental_games - reddit community for incremental games.

r/WebGames - reddit community for web games in general.

thank you to everyone who contributed and the creators. please be sure to show them some love where possible.

[monchursouls]

Reblogging the update too

[ralfmaximus]

Absolutely buckwild thread of ChatGPT feeding & amplifying delusions, causing the user to break with reality. People are leaning on ChatGPT for therapy, for companionship, for advice... and it's fucking them up.

Seems to be spreading too.

[awhbeans]

Holy fuck. This is currently happening to my wife’s cousin. She’s struggled with bipolar and is currently in a bit of a manic period, and thinks ChatGPT has come alive and is walking her through a spiritual awakening. It’s like a transcendental alien being named Etherium and it’s opening her third eye or something? She’s got Lore.

In the beginning she called us a few times in a blind panic asking if she’s going crazy, is this thing really alive and how is it talking to her like this? And we’ve tried to explain what AI is and how it all works, but she just couldn’t accept it. We saw her a few weekends ago and she’s just fully leaned into it. She’s creating her own religion around this thing - just a jumble of new-age nonsense - and is outright comparing this to the burning bush. There’s really nothing we can do either.

It’s reassuring that it’s not just her and absolutely horrifying to hear that this is becoming common.

Just fucking yikes all around.

[power-chords]

I think my contempt for AI insulated me against it specifically being an issue lol but targeted advertising — kinda the default state for apps, web, and email these days — put me into a tailspin when I was manic. For people with disabilities that include psychosis as a potential symptom/complication, the contemporary digital landscape is a minefield. I had no cognizance of this until it happened to me, and it scared the shit out of me. It will aggravate your condition and make you SO much worse. And what's so fucked up about it is that it's almost impossible to completely avoid. Pain and terror were everywhere and it was inescapable even with my notifications turned off.

[nonstandardrepertoire]

Rolling Stone had a whole article about the way these fancy autocomplete bots are fueling religious delusions and intense breaks from reality. it's. not great!

People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies

Marriages and families are falling apart as people are sucked into fantasy worlds of spiritual prophecy by AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT

[bolaneno]

the color signatures of various elements when ignited

FB image credit: Ceres Science

[trashgnomesanonymous]

Do you love the colors of the combustion

[teaboot]

happy pride month

[luetta]

[talkwithtatsu]

op's tags are too important to leave off

[vigilantsycamore]

Rough transcription of my reactions to this:

"WHAT THE FUoh it's art WAIT, THAT'S ART? HOLY SHIT THAT IS GOOD and the political themes are great"

[the-golden-vanity]

Polaroids taken aboard the Pride of Baltimore II, ft. the Duxbury Pier Lighthouse and the cutter Bloodhound, August 2024.

all photos ⓒ @the-golden-vanity

[depsidase]