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digimon x-evolution itself is like. i don't even know what to compare it to. it's an indelible part of my psyche and has been for like 15 years. it's cinema. it looks like dogshit. it's the movie version of those NES games where the story was in the manual. it is some kind of ascendant genius work in the form of v-pet commercial. i don't know a single person i'd actually recommend watching it to

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cyber sleuth will never ever ever get a retranslation or remake that fixes any of the stupid janky things about it so it is simply forever going to be this fucked up chimera of a game, simultaneously gorgeous and hideous, absolutely broken ass grindy RPG disaster with glitched out text box dialogue options, and i will be here until the end of time insisting that it's basically a religious experience. yeah no i know it makes no sense. i know the - actually yeah idk what's up with v-mon girl either, that's a cameo from a game that never came out in english. yeah the entire first two seasons of the digimon anime and their associated movies at least are required viewing to get it. but like - oh yeah x-evolution too, can't forget that one. and read a hundred-odd digimon profiles maybe. but after that point, yeah cyber sleuth is like, probably the best game of all time. oh yeah no the PS4 version is basically unplayable,

i remembered this morning for the first time in a while that my steam display name is still "play cyber sleuth". and it has been since, uh, whenever the fuck the game originally came out in english for the ps4. which was approximately, a long fucking time ago. fingers crossed i can just cleanly change it to "play time stranger". c'mon guys don't let me down.

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i remembered this morning for the first time in a while that my steam display name is still "play cyber sleuth". and it has been since, uh, whenever the fuck the game originally came out in english for the ps4. which was approximately, a long fucking time ago. fingers crossed i can just cleanly change it to "play time stranger". c'mon guys don't let me down.

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i have a special affection for digimon story (formerly ": cyber sleuth" but maybe now just digimon story, period?? time(stranger.) will tell!!) FOR MANY REASONS BUT because of like - so every monsters game/anime/etc has something about the relationship between the monsters and humans right. the thing that gives the player or protagonists or etc license to be raising or commanding these monsters. some kind of familiar relationship or soulbond or whatever. and these can be very contrived in pursuit of not just doing pokemon over again.

the digimon franchise contains multitudes so it plays almost every point on the spectrum, from digimon in null canon/v-pet lore being just like, little guys, technically the inadvertent creations of humanity but largely doing their own thing and just being researched by humans, to the adventure take where they're not even soulbonded bc they're just, like, your souls?

anyways digimon story is the most pokemonnish of all the digimons, breaking from the v-pet raising game vibe to let you collect the little bastards, and (new) digimon story handles this in a way that to me is so. i just. like i can't even say much about it without ruining it because the point is that they don't say it, right? because it's working from this huge established body of digimon lore, all these built-up expectations you have going in about what the digital world is supposed to be and what a tamer is and blah blah blah and you get there and it's like. "what is the nature of the bond between humans and digimon" 🫵 absolutely jack shit. something wonderful and terrible has happened and there's a hole in the world and inside the hole is a brand new world. get in there, use your eyes, and ask a better question, cyber sleuth.

i hope time stranger keeps this rolling. habu ?not being involved? got me worried bc he had some fantastic interviews that made it sound like he was the source of the really keen insight the last few games had on digimon lore and franchise conventions, but like. surely it'll be fine. i still believe.

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It is so disingenuous when supermarkets have "grown by: Farmer X" on their packaging because it's like, I'll be looking at a pack of strawberries grown by farmer x and he'll actually be the managing director of a fruit farm that employs 2,000 people as pickers!

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You may remember me spotlighting the Mawasi Al-Qarara Mutual Aid Project (MAQMAP) in the past. MAQMAP is now Relief for Rafah (R4R), as the organisers and inhabitants of the camp return to their homes across Gaza.

Relief for Rafah needs funding to provide clean drinking water, food, and cash assistance to families in the Al-Genina District of Rafah. Despite the ceasefire, the aid entering the strip is not meeting the needs of the Palestinians in Rafah. Clean drinking water is desperately needed as well as edible food. Not to mention, the level of displacement remains high, with many families returning to piles of rubble. We aim to step in where the international aid organizations aren't. By donating, you are helping us sustain dignity, life, and love within the community. Your contributions will go to providing food, water, and basic life neccesities. Please help in rebuilding the lives that were destroyed by supporting and sharing our work.

I am personally organising bank transfers for this organisation and have been in personal contact with the organisers for some time. I can assure you that your donations are doing important work in Rafah.

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hey folks if you have an android phone: google shadow installed a "security app".

I had to go and delete it myself this morning.

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i hate people who know highways. “i’m heading south on I-65” okay man. i’m moving my rook to c2

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Anyone with a milk allergy needs to be on high alert. In the midst of a flurry of ongoing food recalls, the FDA has updated its initial recall of a handful of Cal Yee Farms' chocolate products to the highest risk level. Originally, the FDA announced a recall of numerous Cal Yee Farm products because they may have contained undeclared milk, soy, wheat, sesame, FD&C #6, and/or almonds. The recall has now been elevated by the FDA to the most serious level of recall, Class 1, for only a few of the affected products: the company's dark chocolate almonds, dark chocolate apricots, and dark chocolate walnuts because the chocolates contained undeclared milk.

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Really cool write up that links to the original paper that just came out this year (2025)!

This is a really cool example of foraging innovation.

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really funny to illegally unemploy thousands and thousands of type A service minded people who had been content to spend their entire lives making less money to quietly do public service.

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February 15, 2025 is World Pangolin Day

World Pangolin Day is celebrated each year on the third Saturday of February.

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mental health checkpoint! when you consider your leitmotif from the past 7 days, was it more often (A) Triumphant (B) Tormented (C) Aggressive (D) Defeated (E) Melancholic (F) Absent

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"A tribal-led nonprofit is creating a network of native bison ranchers that are restoring ecosystems on the Great Plains, restoring native ranchers’ connections with their ancestral land, and restoring the native diet that their ancestors relied on.

Called the Tanka Fund, they coordinate donors and partners to help ranchers secure grazing land access, funds needed to install and repair fencing, increase their herd sizes, and access markets for bison meat across the country.

That’s the human part of the story. But as Dawn Sherman, executive director of the Tanka Fund, told Native Sun News, they’re “buffalo people” and these four-legged, 2,000 lbs. “cousins” are equal-part-protagonists.

The return of the bison means the return of the prairie, one of the three great grassland ecosystems on the planet, of which just 1% remains as it was when the Mayflower arrived.

“Bringing buffalo back to their ancestral homelands is essential to restoring the ecosystem. We know that the buffalo is a keystone species,” said Dawn Sherman, a member of the Lakota, Delaware, Shawnee, and Cree.

“Bringing the buffalo back to the land and to our people, helps restore the ecosystem and everything it supports from the animals to the plants to the people. It’s come full circle. That’s how we see it.”

As Sherman and the Tanka Fund help native ranchers grow their operations, everyone is well aware of the power of the bison to transform the environment: just as nations across Europe are, who are reintroducing wood bison to various ecosystems, for all the same reasons.

Sherman points out the variety of ways in which buffalo anchor the prairie ecosystem. The almost-extinct black-footed ferret, she points out, lived symbiotically with the bison, and with the latter gone, the former followed—nearly.

The long-billed curlew uses bison dung as a disguise to hide nests from predators. Deer, pronghorn antelope, and elk all rely on bison to plow through deep snows and uncover the grasses that these smaller animals can’t reach.

Everywhere the bison hurls its massive body, life springs in the beast’s wake. When bison roll about on the plains, it creates depressions known as wallows. These fill with rainwater and create enormous puddles where amphibians and insects thrive and reproduce. Certain plants evolved to grow in the wet conditions of the wallows which Native Americans harvested for food and medicine.

Native plants evolved under the trampling hooves of millions of bison, and that constant tamping down of the Earth is a key necessity in the spreading of native wildflower seed.

Indeed, Sherman says some of these native ranchers are bringing bison onto lands still visibly affected by the Dust Bowl, and already the animals are acting like a giant wooly cure-all for the land’s ills.

Since 2020, the Tanka Fund, in partnership with the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council and the Nature Conservancy, has overseen the transfer of 2,300 bison from Nature Conservancy reserves to lands managed by ranchers within the Tanka Fund network.

“[T]he more animals that we can get the more of that prairie we can restore,” said Sherman. “We can help restore the land that has been plowed and has been leased out to cattle ranchers.”"

-Article via Good News Network, February 13, 2025. Video via Tanka Fund, July 17, 2024.