u/Historical-Drag-8002

This essay hit a little too close for me. Poor Gregor was already living like an insect before the transformation happened.

Snippet that stuck with me:

“Gregor Samsa, after living his life like an exploited cockroach, wakes up one morning as precisely that insect. A hundred years later, people still live like Kafka’s cockroaches and face similar awakenings, not in the physical body of an insect, but in the same painful realization that life is slipping away in an endless chase after the interests of a capitalist machine that grinds the individual down and uses him to the very end.”

I know this has probably been discussed many times, but I genuinely wonder how many people connect Kafka with economic exploitation.

Article: https://www.advance.hr/en/articles/culture/kafka-s-metamorphosis-are-we-the-insect

I was just reading an interesting article that highlights something I notice everywhere: the media, especially in Europe, really portray the situation in Cuba as if it came about “on its own,” without mentioning at all that it is largely the product of the U.S. blockade.

Article for context: https://www.advance.hr/en/articles/topic-of-the-day/an-iran-in-the-caribbean-instead-of-trump-s-trophy

I’ve been thinking about this recently. Will AI maybe create a new appreciation for old hand-made pixel art?

Old point-and-click backgrounds still look beautiful, but lately I feel there’s something else there too. You can almost feel the limits behind them: the palette, the patience, the compromises, all those tiny human decisions. I keep staring at old backgrounds from games like Monkey Island 1, Maniac Mansion, etc., almost imagining someone sitting there and placing those pixels one by one.

There’s an essay I read that uses Future Wars and Éric Chahi’s early work as an example of this, and it made me wonder whether old adventure game art might actually become more culturally valuable in the AI era. Not just as nostalgia, but as proof of human authorship.

I dunno, if I was one of those original artists, I’d feel pretty damn proud right now.

Essay for context: https://www.advance.hr/en/articles/culture/against-artificial-art