Confessions of a Quirky Christian Artist

I finally beat Nuclear Throne last night.  It's in my current favorite genre which could be called Action Rogue-Lite.  These are games very loosely in the linage of a very old game called Rogue from 1980, that was a turn-based, procedurally generated (That means the levels are randomly (not ACTUALLY RAMDOM) created each time you play) dungeon crawler.  Besides the random levels, the other thing that made Rogue special was that you had ONE chance to beat the game.  I mean... once you die you have to start over.  Unlike most games where you can save and load your saved state if you die, or where you have a bunch of lives and continues, Rogue was Hardcore Mode before such a thing existed.  Throughout the years a smattering of games tried to preserve this mechanic but it mostly faded from the game design zeitgeist for a couple decades.  Most people just don't find the emotional toll of starting completely over when you die to be fun.  As videog...

Here’s something I’ve been kicking around lately. Part of my continuing development as a human who wants to be the most loving person possible, I’ve been seriously investigating claims, philosophies, movements, politics, etc. that I’m naturally inclined to ignore or reject. The latest of these issues is the Black Lives Matter campaign, a popular movement swirling around a range of issues, but primarily instigated by the perception that police disproportionately kill more black people than other races. The status quo backlash response has been a movement rallying around police with the slogan All Lives Matter, or Blue Lives Matter. I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of the issue because there’s a billion resources for anyone who wants to look into it. The point of bringing my investigation of the issue up, is to tell you about my experiences with social media. I’ll start by saying that I really love using Facebook. I love the unexpected things I see and hear through it fr...