"If you can merge gaming with aviation, why not?"

🚨 2,000+ Gamers Hired for AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL@SecDuffy: “They multitask. They have to think on their feet. They work with their hands and their eyes, and they’re making great controllers… We had 14,000 applicants, 8,000 qualified. We were getting the best and the brightest.” pic.twitter.com/C0U6eRj0IC

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) August 14, 2026

"[B]reast reduction and implant-removal procedures have surpassed enlargements for the first time. This is amid a cultural shift away from 'exaggerated curves'..."

"... to a smaller, lighter, more 'delicate' shape, aka 'ballerina boobs,' also known as 'yoga tits.' Well, this is all great to know. I look forward to hearing this kind of talk applied to male appendages.... But may I also say that I suspect much of this might be a load of balls? Could the well-endowed women who are having reductions simply be sick of having back pain and two grooves on their shoulders like a workman’s ditch? Could the women having their implants removed simply have realised it’s hard to get clothes to fit and they don’t want to hoik two silicone jellyfish everywhere with them that may at some point leak?"

Writes Carol Midgley, in "Now is no time to have a voluminous bosom (and M&S won’t measure you)/It turns out that big ones are over and the ‘ballerina boob’ is in" (London Times).

I like that word "hoik." It has an interesting array of meanings. According to Wiktionary:

"They said garage bands are coming back with kids, which is kind of means nature is healing."

From a Joe Rogan conversation that starts here:

From the transcript, which blends the voices of the 4 interlocutors: "It's so sad that rock is dead.... We were talking about that. Yeah, it's all queefy now. When was the last time.... Where's the new rock bands? The new Zeppelin... It used to be the biggest part of music. Rolling Stones, AC/DC.... It used to be the biggest part of music was rock and roll. What the fuck? That's kind of crazy.... What happened to rock? What happened to rock? Who are the biggest? They said garage bands are coming back with kids, which kind of means nature is healing. Yeah, that's a good sign.Yeah, kids are tired of playing video games. Want something real. But the thing about that that doesn't make sense about rock music is everybody still loves it, right? Everybody still plays covers. Oasis is doing giant arenas all over the place. I took acid at that Oasis concert...."

And that last line changes the topic. Too bad! I wanted to hear more about the return of garage bands and why that's a sign of health, but then I understand the argument. I just wanted to spend more time on it and on Joe Rogan, it seems they take every opportunity to get back onto drugs. 

"Candidates and incumbents should center each day on content creation.... creating output tailored specifically for TikTok or Instagram or YouTube."

"It means several hours a day filming in campaign offices — even candidates’ homes.... Successful candidates understand they are putting on a permanent show. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has championed the use of livestreams, including appearing on Twitch while playing Madden. James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, has used town halls and a late-night TV appearance as part of a strategy to produce nonstop content. Zohran Mamdani did this in his campaign and is still doing it as mayor of New York, understanding that reaching citizens should not stop when the campaign does. The bulk of Democratic candidates don’t have the range or talent of these three. Some who try to replicate it, like Andrew Cuomo, come across as more cringe than confident. But they still need to build the production studio..."

Writes David Plouffe, in "Always Be Posting: The New Rules for Democratic Candidates" (NYT).

The future looks a little something like this: 

"Do better; this is simply not possible."

Immediately after this video, the 18-year-old intern was right back in playing with your account.

Nobody believes that you are the global top 3 player in between running the federal government and managing world companies.

Do better; this is simply not possible.

— Tom Navarro (@NavarroThinker) March 29, 2025

"Chayka, a millennial, is nostalgic for... the images he once shared on Tumblr; an earlier, jankier World Wide Web of illegal file-sharing, blogs and and massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) forums."

"He first heard 'My Favorite Things' not in 'The Sound of Music' but the John Coltrane version, listening to an indie station as he wended his way back from a friend’s house in the suburbs in the early ’00s. Boomers and Gen X, with more years logged algorithm-free, might find 'Filterworld' unduly bleak; Zoomers, hopelessly naïve. Or, as they say on the internet, YMMV."

I'm reading "Can You Escape the Algorithm?/‘Filterworld’ Gives It a Try. An experiment in digital disengagement prompts Kyle Chayka to consider how technology has narrowed our choices and dulled the culture" (free access link to the NYT).

That's a review, from a couple weeks ago, of the book "Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture" by Kyle Chayka (commission-earned link).

I'm reading that this morning after searching the NYT archive for "MMORPGs," a very annoying set of letters that I'd never noticed before, but ran across as an answer in a crossword, clued as "RuneScape and World of Warcraft, for two: Abbr."

My reaction was: If that's the way it's going to be, I'm not doing your crosswords anymore.

Overreaction? My test of whether this is something I should recognize, because it comes up in real life, is whether it's in the NYT archive. This was not the NYT crossword. And, yes, I'm a Boomer.

You can see that the recent appearance of MMORPG was in parentheses, after a spelling-out of what it abbreviates. Before that, it hadn't appeared since 2019. But back in 2013 and in 2005-2006, the annoying letter combo appeared a handful of times. I see the phrase "the wonderfully named MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games)."

I guess I won't boycott that puzzle, but I can see how puzzle publishers risk alienating their audience. Puzzles are full of things that are easy for Boomers like me and that must be very annoying to Millennials and Zoomers. But when I see something like MMORPG, I just think it's a pathetic play to get young people to think this thing is for them. And please don't say YMMV either. 

And yet MMORPGs are among the things the "Filterworld" author is nostalgic for. It's not new. It's old. Mid-level old. Like blogs. I'm nostalgic for blogs too, of course, but I'm still here in mine, and I presume there's this other group of people — who the hell are they? — who are still out there in their MMORPGs.

"Casino owners discovered in the late 1980s that people who gambled on screens became addicted three to four times faster..."

"... than those who gambled at tables. The rest of America had learned that lesson by 1992, when a third of homes had Nintendo systems. Men without jobs have video games the way men without girlfriends have pornography, and growing numbers of men are finding the substitute good enough to be going on with, declining to pursue either permanent employment or marriage. The historian David Courtwright calls this 'limbic capitalism,' the redirection of America’s productive energies into inducing and servicing addictions."

From "Boomers/The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster" — a 2021 book by Helen Andrews (and I earn a commission if you buy it using that link).

Here's a 2019 Vox interview with Courtwright. Excerpt: "I make a distinction between ordinary capitalist enterprises like companies that sell people rakes or plows or nails or whatever.... But I think of limbic capitalism as capitalism’s evil twin, a really cancerous outgrowth of productive capitalism. There is a certain class of brain-rewarding products that lead to a form of pathological learning that we call addiction...."

"He wore what he always wore: a wrinkled T-shirt and cargo shorts. His bare knee jackhammered up and down at roughly four beats per second..."

"... while his eyes darted left and right and collided with his interviewers’ gaze only by chance. His general demeanor was that of a kid pretending to be interested when his parents hauled him into the living room to meet their friends. He’d done nothing to prepare, but the questions were so easy that it didn’t matter. Crypto Wunderkind, read the Bloomberg chyron, while the numbers on the left of the screen showed that, in just the past year, bitcoin’s price had risen by more than 500 percent. That first TV show Natalie watched from her own desk, but later, during future interviews, she’d walk around behind Sam to confirm that, yes, his eyes moved around so much because he was playing a video game. On live TV!"

Writes Michael Lewis, in "Play it again, Sam/Inside Bankman-Fried’s last year in the crypto game" (WaPo). 

It's a long article, and Lewis has a whole book: "Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon." — #CommissionsEarned.

"Often, on live TV, Sam would not only play a video game but respond to messages, edit documents and tweet. The TV interviewer would ask him a question and Sam would say, 'Ahhhh, interesting question' — even though he never found any of the questions interesting. And Natalie knew he was just buying time to exit whatever game he was playing and reenter the conversation. Natalie didn’t know how a person was supposed to behave on live television, but she suspected it wasn’t like this.... Sam was odd on TV, but he was also odd in real life.... She decided against media training — or anything that might make Sam seem less like Sam...."

What's going on here? Hillary Clinton is performing concern about our loneliness

This caught my eye:

 

I copied the whole layout — headline, author's name, lugubrious image— because it's so absurd. And yet, it's just going back to her roots: It takes a village.

"The E-Sports High School... was founded with the intention of feeding the growing global demand for professional gamers...."

"In truth, few of the students will become pro gamers. E-sports have never caught on in Japan, where people prefer single-player games. And careers are short anyway: Teenagers — with their fast-twitch reflexes — dominate. By their mid-20s, most players are no longer competitive." 

From "A Video-Gaming School Stumbles on a Way to Get Dropouts Back in Class/Japan’s first e-sports high school thought it would turn out pro gamers. Instead, it attracted an unexpected demographic" (NYT).

The "unexpected demographic" is the young people who are simply refusing to go to school, such as "Torahito Tsutsumi, 17, [who] had left school after bullying drove him into a deep depression. He spent all day in his room reading comics and playing video games. When his mother, Ai, confronted him about it, he told her that his life was 'meaningless.'"

"Some critics who have called Rowling’s positions anti-transgender — a sentiment she denies — called for a boycott of Hogwarts Legacy...."

"The back-and-forth over Rowling’s positions grew particularly heated in the gaming community, where members tend to be deeply invested in online controversies and harassment can run rampant. Although Hogwarts Legacy quickly broke one million concurrent viewers on the streaming site Twitch, some streamers refused to play it, and a few websites devoted to gaming coverage decided not to review it.... On forums dedicated to Hogwarts Legacy, the topic was front and center, with moderators seeking to tamp down talk about Rowling in favor of the game itself.... "

From "Hogwarts Legacy Sells 12 Million Copies During Dispute Over Rowling/The video game generated $850 million in sales in two weeks. Online discussion before its release was largely about the “Harry Potter” creator J.K. Rowling’s comments on transgender issues" (NYT).

"The world is changing, and Soviet Union will not be left behind."

"Players can also ostensibly play as trans characters; the game offers the ability to choose one’s voice, body shape..."

"... and whether they want to be referred to as a 'witch' or a 'wizard'.... There is also a character who is (almost) explicitly transgender: Sirona Ryan... the owner of the Hogsmeade pub... says the line, 'He recognized me instantly. Which is more than I can say for some of my own classmates. Took them a second to realize I was actually a witch, not a wizard.' While it could be assumed that her inclusion was a direct rejection of Rowling’s beliefs, sources familiar with the game’s development have said that the move was 'performative bullshit,' and that the character was only added after the initial backlash to the game...."

Writes Rebecca Jennings in "How the Harry Potter video game became an ethical minefield/Hogwarts Legacy is one of the most anticipated video games of all time. Whether or not you play it is a question of morality" (Vox).

Goodbye to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

 

I found out via my son John's blog. John noticed the death announcement at the author's Facebook page. He quotes something I copied onto my blog a while back, Csikszentmihalyi's enumeration of the elements of "flow":

First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.

ADDED: I'm still not seeing obituaries at mainstream news sites. It's possible that the author's Facebook page is wrong. In any event — alive or dead — Csikszentmihalyi is wonderful. I highly recommend his book "Flow," one of the most useful books I've read in my life.

AND: I've blogged about Csikszentmihalyi, many times over the years, as you can see if you click my tag (which I just discovered had been missing the final "i" all this time, corrected now).

Coke saves the world.

 

I ran into that at the subreddit r/cringe, where the top-rated comment is: 

“Think people! How do we appeal to the younger generation while sending a positive message?"  

“Let’s make a video game character become sentient at the sound of a coke being opened in the real world in the middle of a bloody battle and have him lay down his arms in the name of peace.”  

“Fuck yeah.”  

How in the fuck did that ever make it past initial pitch? 

I was reading that subreddit after we got into an extended debate about the word "cringe" as it's used in discussing comedy.

We were talking about the new Dave Chappelle comedy special, which I consider a genius work of art, but I see Fast Company calls it "boring, transphobic." I guess "fast" means "dumb" now.

"If The New Yorker is going to make gaffes like 'deadbeat,' I'm going to have a lot more trouble going along with things like 'lambent.'"

I'm quoting something I just wrote because I want to let you know there's a big new addition to this post from yesterday.

Also: "There's a part of me that wants to admire the writer's way with words and a part of me that's about to blurt — to paraphrase George W. Bush — What the fuck are you talking about, lambent?"

That link about Bush goes back to a post I wrote in May 2004, when this blog was 4 months old and William Safire was still writing "On Language" columns in the NYT.  Oddly enough, Safire was talking about a passage in the new Bob Woodward book. 

Some things pass away and some things stay the same. From Safire:

"The Homeland Security bill was being blocked in the Senate by a filibuster,'' writes Woodward. ''Calio told the president that they were about to 'vitiate' the filibuster."

George Bush's reaction —"What the f**k are you talking about, vitiate?" — was the first time I'd written "fuck" on this blog, albeit with asterisks. I was puritanical about it, saying it was a word "which I ordinarily never write, but consider importantly quotable in this context." Ha ha.

IN THE COMMENTS: 

Deevs said:

Lambent. A word I learned from playing the Gears of War video game over ten years ago. Maybe that's also where the New Yorker writer learned the word, and his pretentiousness is actually a demonstration of his own low-brow hobbies, past or present.

Aha! 

"The Lambent are mutated Locusts who have been infected by Immulsion. A yellow liquid-based parasite used as a fuel source by the Human population of Sera..."

"China Limits Videogames to Three Hours a Week for Young People/New regulation will ban minors from playing videogames entirely between Monday and Thursday."

 The Wall Street Journal reports.

China on Monday issued strict new measures aimed at curbing what authorities describe as youth videogame addiction, which they blame for a host of societal ills, including distracting young people from school and family responsibilities.... Videogames have become a particular object of ire as Beijing seeks to reshape an industry it has described as motivated by profit at the expense of public morals.... Chinese leader Xi Jinping, too, has warned publicly in recent months about the perils of youth gaming addiction, remarks that have put more pressure on officials to act....

"After a long day of fighting Republicans in real life, I don’t always feel like fighting with hobgoblins in a game, even though the digital versions are at least bound by rules and artificial logic."

"So the game I keep coming back to, for well over a decade now, is the one that gives me ultimate control over every little detail of my virtual life: The Sims....I picked a neighborhood and moved all the prepackaged Sims out. I moved my Sim family and Sim friends in. I have to be around Sims that I want to be happy, after all. No Republicans are allowed in my game. I’ve even deleted the files of prepackaged Sims that give me any kind of Republican vibe.... The friends I do put in the game are people I really like in real life, people I’m happy to be reminded of as my Sim-self jogs through town... My world is much browner and, well, gayer than what I started with. That’s just what happens when you let Sims flirt with whomever they want and marry people who share their interests. But I do occasionally have to add a family I don’t personally know just to decrease the chances of inbreeding: So, the Obamas are in my game. Sasha grew up and married my grandson. I’m buried in their backyard. Frankly, I couldn’t write a better utopian postscript for myself: a founding member of a brown, gay, rainless world that banished Republicans who is buried under the kiddie swing of his progeny.... Sometimes, I just need the terrible world to leave me alone with my doll." 

 Writes Elie Mystal in "In My Own Private Utopia, There Is No Rain—or Republicans/In The Sims, one of my favorite video games, my goal is for everyone to be as happy as possible" (The Nation).

Mario is 40.

"Donkey Kong is an arcade game released by Nintendo in Japan on July 9, 1981."

That was 40 years ago today.

"Its gameplay maneuvers Mario across platforms to ascend a construction site and rescue Pauline from the giant gorilla named Donkey Kong, all while avoiding or jumping over obstacles. Donkey Kong is the product of Nintendo's increasingly desperate efforts to develop a hit to rival Pac-Man (1980) and break into the North American market.... The game debuts Mario, who became Nintendo's mascot and one of the world's most recognizable characters" — Wikipedia. 

Newborn, Mario looked like this:

And as long as I'm talking about Mario, let me once again show you this clip, from the movie "Putney Slope," containing what was for me one of the top-10 funniest things I ever heard in a movie, "How many syllables, Mario?": 

  

The director of that movie, Robert Downey Sr., died 2 days ago. From the NYT obituary: 

“Putney Swope,” a 1969 comedy about a Black man who is accidentally elected chairman of a Madison Avenue advertising agency, was perhaps Mr. Downey’s best-known film.

“To be as precise as is possible about such a movie,” Vincent Canby wrote in a rave review in The New York Times, “it is funny, sophomoric, brilliant, obscene, disjointed, marvelous, unintelligible and relevant.”...

“They’re uneven,” [Downey] said of the films. “But I was uneven.”

"Task-driven, repetitive, monotonous but immersive, often very frustrating, it’s exactly like having a bullshit job."

"The best thing about childhood, the bit that makes up for people constantly telling you what to do and where to be, is that you have those years outside the productive economy, where no one thinks to measure your worth by the net value you create, where all you have to do is grow and be endearing. While it remains the case that none of them is creating any value, in every other respect they are at the coal face, wage slaves without the wages. I’m worried that the kids have a seriousness of purpose, a rigidity of application totally out of whack with the task in hand, that nobody should rightly learn until their mid-20s...."

From "Video games have turned my kids into wage slaves – but without the wages" by Zoe Williams (The Guardian).