u/12_oz_senkin

This is just outside the town of Jermuk.

For the last five years or so, I usually end up playing games one, two, sometimes three years after release, if not more. But yesterday a miracle happened, and I played Mixtape on launch day!

I had been waiting for it since the first trailer. The game set certain expectations, and it absolutely delivered. Genre wise, it is my favorite kind of “movie with barely any gameplay”, but the opening scene alone makes you feel like a young rebellious idiot with healthy knees again. Pure joy.

The pacing is pretty unusual. The game jumps rapidly between moments in the characters’ lives, shifts through time, and the main heroine keeps talking directly to the player. It feels fresh, the jokes land well, and I love the unserious tone with serious things underneath.

Mixtape feels like a playlist. Honestly, it is a playlist. The music carries every other part of the game the same way a skateboard carries you downhill. The directing is built around the soundtrack, the heroine’s personality is tied to it, and even the conflict revolves around music. The girl is about to leave her small hometown for New York to become a music supervisor, but to do that she has to leave her best friends behind.

This is a game about friendship. Stuff like that always gets to me, because half my friends are scattered around the world and I miss them, and Mixtape almost feels like it is saying: “It is going to be okay. There is still a lot ahead. Wanna go for a ride?”

Play it. The game costs way less than a real skateboard.

Back in 2021, you could get a boarding pass like this from a special NASA website. It was a cute little campaign to get people interested in an upcoming real mission to Mars.

Those were good times.

And now I’ve belatedly seen the news that this year’s flight to Mars was canceled. Still, I’m sure humanity will make it to Mars, and fairly soon. In the end, our pull toward the stars and the urge to explore outweigh everything else, even our urge to destroy.

Those glowing dots in the sky keep calling to us and give us the strength not to give up.

today this error showed up in Google Sheets and Google Docs on my laptop. literally in the middle of the workday. I tried changing the page zoom, unfreezing rows, and changing the language, but nothing works. trying to find a solution online didn’t help either. maybe I’ll find some help here?