The Penny Arcade iRacing league continues to grow as we enter its second year of operation. The league has over 300 drivers now and a regular schedule of events all week long. I always drop in for the Thursday night race which you can watch tonight on Twitch starting at 7:30PT! 

the show is really starting to come together behind the scenes, and we've just opened up Applications for new Enforcers at hashtag PAXWest 2022.  If you've ever been to a show that doesn't have Enforcers, you know the difference, and you can be part of it.  If it is your intention to join this hallowed order, it is a simple matter: you just head over to PAXWest22.com/Enforcer and make your will known.    

(CW)TB

It's bad for him to have a dork store so close, but it's bad for me too because I gotta drive by this thing on my way to his house. Technically, I gotta drive by it twice - once on the way, and once back - so they've literally got me coming and going. In my arrogance, I always assumed that was mere euphemism. But now I'm trapped between Scylla and Charybdis!

I feel for Ron. I don't even experience it anymore, to be honest - that… omnipresent malevolence. I'm conscious of it but it doesn't really touch me. I'm sure that's bad. I'm probably not the best person to ever draw breath, but purely as a ratio I've invested those breaths in other people more than I have myself. Eventually the caricatures become so cartoonish that it's a trivial matter to distinguish them from the truth.

I haunted their booth like a wailing spectre at PAX, and it was full almost the entire time. This is a really interesting take on building toys AND tactics, with an AI deck that can drive opponent ships. Come check it out!

I’ll be playing in this along with my eldest son Gabe who I call Gorb and who is turning 18 yo this year cuz I am very old. https://t.co/dgDlXxfdhw

— Gabe (@cwgabriel) July 1, 2022

(CW)TB

Ron Gilbert was talking about Monkey Island, but he's not gonna do that anymore because people were mean online. Which… I think they're always doing that. I don't observe this in order to absolve it; I've worked here for like twenty-five years or something and it's been like this from the jump. There had been threats of death, mutilation, and unspeakable violence almost from the beginning, but the earliest specific one I can remember is when I suggested that Final Fantasy VIII's "Draw" system didn't really do anything for me. I feel like, you know, the punishment doesn't really fit the crime there.

I think Valorant is pretty cool, but mostly to watch. In practice, it's like a Counter-Strike I'm even worse at. I'm never confused about why I died, but I'm not sure there is a training montage with enough buttressing power to get me legitimate on this one. I made my peace with it.

What are you doing on Wednesday? 

The title dates me substantially; there was a kind of bubble bath that was marketed as a woman's portal to a realm of luxurious pleasure. I need a type of cleansing bubble that operates exclusively on the mind.

Oh boy, oh boy!  Eric keeps bringing cool people into the studio.  Join Kiko and I as we learn the new version of Car Wars tomorrow afternoon.  Here's the thingy with all the stuff:

Tune in tomorrow from 3-5pm PT for a special #sponsored look at Car Wars Sixth Edition! @SJGames will be dropping by to show off all the latest automobile carnage, live on https://t.co/A9BCAQYM4H! pic.twitter.com/BQwHvtT6WV

— Penny Arcade (@PA_Megacorp) June 27, 2022

By Episode 5, Obi-Wan had figured itself out - which meant it was in position to deliver a finale taut with savory juices. I was already in - even before the last few minutes, the two rapid-fire scenes at the end.

I knew Kara before I knew Mike; we knew each other from Choir. I always gravitated naturally toward Altos; they're natural allies. She grew up what I would describe as "very" Mormon, in the same way I grew up "very" Evangelical, but for whatever reason (perhaps the deleterious effects of an older brother) they didn't have exactly the same edicts about secular music. She was denied caffeinated soda, and I was denied Journey. Music is still something we talk about, decades later.

I knew from the first trailer Neon White was gonna be shit hot. There was some confusion last week when I deployed this terminology, so let me be clear: that's an admirable quality. I don't know where the "shit" comes in, that's the rhetorical locus of the confusion I believe, but long story short: Yes. Neon White executes its intention with aplomb (also good).

Something I wonder about Game Pass is what it means for the people who create games inside it. There's a lot to discuss when it comes to the service broadly; I'm not saying this is the main thing to consider, it's just the one that's closest to me personally. And I'm not talking about the third parties who sign on to the service for launch, or who join the service later as part of the catalog. I mean… the traditional metric for products is sales. We all sorta understand that part. For Game Pass, is it more of a Netflix thing - with "play time" swapped in for "watch" time? And what does that do to your thinking?

I’ll be doing two streams for the price of one today! Here's the schedule:

You can find a substantial body of doomsday cultists established particularly around the realm of Artificial Intelligence. That mythos isn't particularly interesting. I understand that might be seen an unserious position, but I find this type of anxiety about as compelling as "worship God just in case!!!" so you can potentially spare yourself annihilation. People want you to believe in their God - that would certainly be a huge plus for them - but they need you to believe in their devil. Then again, I do try to live my life according to an extended club remix of religious precepts, it's how my momma raised me, and it's been better for the people around me that I have. So maybe I'm just kind of a mess.