You make fair comment. I don’t disagree with 99% of what you say. However, I stand by my words about addiction. I agree gaming is potentially a very benign thing and I get a lot of pleasure from gaming but I still want to red flag some aspects of it where addiction does seem to be a factor. Being addicted to gaming has led to health problems for players e.g. repetitive strain injuries or tendonitis - it has adversely affected my health, made my arthritis worse, caused tendonitis so I have had to cut back etc. In extreme cases, addicted gamers have murdered their own babies or been violent to partners because they were distracted by them while playing, lost their temper, and lashed out. And getting players addicted is obviously potentially profitable but making profit from addiction is evil. I say ‘responsible gaming’ needs to be the uncompromising rule just like with anything else that can be addictive or mood-altering or get under our skins the way a well-made game can.

Cheers, thank you for that info. It’s good to hear from people with lived experience, real knowledge and experience. Yeah, I use a vpn and suspected it was the problem but even after I turned it off, cleared my browser cache etc, the captcha thing was not working. Bit of a mystery still.

I am not fanatical about stuff. I would consider changing my gaming set up - I like playing on a console so I might try a Steamdeck one day, like when my Switch needs replacing. I like the games I play on my Switch - but they are all ported from other platforms and were developed for them. I find most of the games available for Nintendo Switch, i.e. developed for it, totally uninteresting. Not the sort of thing I would ever want to play so in future I would be looking for a less restricted technology and access to more content. Also, I find the Nintendo shop unuseable. I recently looked for a virtual tennis game because I thought it might help me be more active and I used to enjoy tennis. Could not find a decent option - just cartoonish rubbish like some Mario tennis or Pokemon tennis rip-off. I get the impression Switch games are made to exploit children. That is a big ethical violation in my view. So, yeah, its a complex topic and I am still learning my way around.

I tried creating a Steam account and was blocked by the revolving captcha security thing - took days to try to get help from their customer care and by the time they got back to me I had lost interest. I spent the waitjng time researching Valve and I decided they are not an ethical business. Made me sad as I loved the idea of a customised-for-gaming-on-console linux OS and liked the look of the hardware. But Valve is a monopolist and has too much market share and too many users and thus too much power - USA politics today shows how big a risk that is. Valve supports unethical business models like ‘rent game to play’, AI-generated junk games and IP violations so it debases game development and hurts indy developers, live-streaming games which is bad for environment. It promotes ‘easy access/always on gaming’ and is thus profiting from addiction-to-gaming, which ix a MASSIVE problem and few gamers admit it. It’s an American corporation and I distrust American corporate culture. Most of which might be said of other console/platforms so its not just Valve/Steam, I feel wary of but the whole industry. I bought a second-hand Switch so did not help Nintendo/Japanese corporate power directly. I bought a bundle of 2nd-hand games on sd card with minimal download content (except for ‘No Man’s Sky’ which constantly updates). I am trying to be an ethical gamer - limit my time gaming to stop me becoming an addict etc. But I admit I am compromised - I spend too much time gaming, being retired its easy to lose track of time. Honestly, I feel like a vegan who wraps bacon in thick wholemeal sandwiches and pretends they are not really eating pigs since its mainly bread. I am ‘a work in progress’.

“If anyone says they’re a libertarian, I just shrug and leave.” - Atlas In His Own Words

Drum roll, ting on the cymbal! Lol!

I think it would be easier to just get WW3 over with and see how the dust settles!

I switched to Linux on my laptops years ago. Recently, I retired and started playing video games like Skyrim. I play on a Nintendo Switch. I considered playing Skyrim on a laptop so I could use/build mods. I bought a laptop with Windows 11 and spent forty minutes removing the bloat, ads, spyware, ai nonsense, and other dross, fixing it so it did not ‘update’ to restore everything I deleted, and installing my preferred alternatives (browser, search, email etc). It reminded me why I hate Windows almost as much as Mac OS (which is even more controlling). Microsoft have hundreds of engineers ‘enshitifying’ everything. It is more than a full-time job trying to stop them and block their ‘improvements’. I am retired. I have better things to do.

I did not enjoy playing games with a laptop (hurts my arthritis, I prefer using a console and an easy chair) and resented having to reverse engineer everything I installed to keep it running but without sacrificing my privacy so the laptop now just sits in a drawer. It amazes me that anyone still tolerates Microsoft products, or any of the monopolists stuff. Why is anyone still using google search or chrome browser, why bing or any of it? Why is anyone still seeing adverts? Why is everyone still being fed by algorithms? You must chose this - but why? I always sought out better and if it did not exist, I built it, and if I could not build it, I did without. There is a lot of dumbing-down around technology. Back in C20th, we used to build our own hardware, write our own software. We were skilled hobbyists (later I got an M.Sc. to reinforce my hobby skills with theory and even ran a business for a while as an engineer). Around 2000 +/- five years, the monopolists offered ‘help’ in the form of WYSIWYG editors to write code for us or ‘click buttons to register your account’ platforms to host content for us instead of us running our own websites (blogger, wordpress, facebook, twitter etc). They dumbed us all down, farmed us like animals for data and used clickbait to get ad revenue and undermined our politics, culture, even changed our sense of being human. Now old folk can build resources but younger people can only consume. We have to re-skill and resist the seduction of the easy and free-to-use. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Never trust a tech bro, whether USA or any nationality.

Personally, I want to ‘jail break’ my Switch and make mods for my console version of Skyrim. I can’t do that now as it is illegal but when they bring out the Switch 2 and the old console is ‘obsolete’ and they stop trying to get money for Skyrim, I reckon we tinkerers will get a chance to re-purpose the old console to play the old games in our own way. I reckon some exciting engineering is happening amongst the recyclers and re-purposers rather than amongst the corporates. I only buy second-hand for ethical reasons and to save money. I always install my own software based on AOSP or use a more ethical distro or alternative to the commercial options. I always debloat or degoogle or remove unwanted stuff. I wish that kind of personalisation were more common. There is a zero sum relationship with tech: either the technology controls you, or you control it. I urge you to control your own tech. Don’t be enslaved by it. I feel I am in a minority in wanting sovereignty over my damn phone. It makes me sad.

AI does this with MLM. I rest my case.

I tried learning Japanese and struggled for exactly the reasons you describe so clearly. I felt I might manage to learn if I were living in Japan and picking up the contextual clues but I could not learn Japanese effectively from a textbook. Visiting Japan is high on my wish list, maybe one day.

That occurred to me too - I am old and can recall how we used to communicate and we were much more likely to give people time and hear them out than now. I am British and we now typically speak faster than we used to, youngest generation gobbles so fast I find what they say incomprehensible except for the expletives, and our accents have changed - standardised around Americanised, Londonised, British generic. There used to be strong regional accents, even separate dialects that had survived for centuries, but now these have effectively gone extinct and if I use a dialect word no one under fifty knows what it means. I find that rather sad. As for writing, this too is abbreviated and simplified e.g. using emojis instead of trying to describe complex emotions. I see this as a top-down change driven by technology and monetisation of social lives - it promotes brief attention spans, rapid turn-over of thought/feeling, quickly onto next topic, see another ad, move on, repeat, no leisure to reflect or second-guess or share a process with others. I find it debases public culture, encourages divisions and intolerance, and promotes political extremism (mainly of the Right since the Far-Right approves instinctive action over rational choices - ‘move fast, break stuff’ as does predatory capitalism - ‘don’t think, just buy!’). Everything is ‘hot takes’, empty slogans, and algorithm-led scripted reactivity.

I am not surprised that there is a global loss of literacy and language comprehension skills - in China, reliance on mobile technology means using predictive speech-to-text (Chinese language cannot be written effectively with keyboards) or voice control with the result that even university-educated Chinese now struggle to read or write less common words e.g. ‘brassicas’ rather than ‘cabbages’. Take away phones and/or censor the use of this technology e.g. ban some vocabulary so it cannot be communicated in writing, spoken to others via technology, or be used to control technology, and Chinese citizens will soon be unable to communicate or think independently.

To avoid dystopian futures, I think we will have to take responsibility to reclaim these skills and/or resist the change by being ‘old fashioned’ especially when using new technology like AI or when online. Like I am now - writing a lot instead of a few hot words and expecting others to donate time and bother to read me. This kind of communication is either reactionary or revolutionary now, radical Right or radical Left. This kind of English is the luddite sabotage of the C21st. I want to use this kind of slow language to promote Leftist politics. Bring back the verbose! Bring back slow time! Save humanity! I guess I am in a minority on this but I always have been all my life so I shrug and continue. In practical terms, I ration my exposure to fast language and spend a lot of time reading paper books or listening to archive audio from C20th where the language is slower and at a pace that supports meaningful conversation (even if it is just imagined dialogue between the reader or listener and the author or speakers). Thank you for reading this far (if you did).

I taught myself Mandarin and found it quite do-able, especially reading it whereas speaking it is harder. Then I tried learning Japanese and gave up. I think you need to know more about Japanese culture and the unspoken meanings to really get the hang of it and use it correctly/politely. All I now can remember of Japanese is ‘maramoto’ (? spelling) which means ‘cute little thing’ and is Japanese for ‘guinea pig’ and ‘chrissimassy cakeo’ which, you’ll never guess, is Japanese for ‘Christmas cake’! I try to imagine myself visiting Japan and trying out my language skills - walking into a hotel and talking to reception by improvising with my only vocabulary - ‘Maramoto, (greeting with a polite bow). Chrissymassy cakeo? (pronounced with accompanying hand gestures so as to convey ‘do you have a room with view of the sea and en suite?’)’ I imagine being politely but firmly shown the door! Ha!