#oneaday Day 639: The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies

There's a telltale sign you can use in any online argument that it is Time to Step Away From the Computer, and that is someone pulling out what I like to call The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies.

What I mean by this is that point in an online argument where people start going on about "ad hominem", "strawmen", "motte and bailey" and "No True Scotsman". And probably some others.

These are all valid logical fallacies, of course, but the sheer frequency with which they are trotted out by people absolutely desperate to win an online argument makes it absolutely exhausting to even attempt having a discussion about some things. Because more often than not, the person busting out The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies isn't actually interested in getting their point across or changing anyone's mind; they just want to feel like they "won" the argument. And, at the point The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies enters the picture, this is usually part of an attempt to paint themselves as the victim.

Other telltale signs include attempting to argue that positive representation of marginalised groups is actually a form of racism and/or sexism (against straight white men, obviously), taking great offence at the concept of fascism even being mentioned (and often expressing a desire that it be "discussed" or "debated"), using the term "diversity of opinion", claiming that women, non-white ethnic minorities and/or transgender people in leading roles are somehow "unrealistic" and, of course, turning to that old favourite term: woke.

Now, I won't lie. There were a few years where I found myself skating around this territory. I've talked more about that in this post, so I won't repeat the soul-searching and heart-opening from that post (though I encourage you to read it if you would like to know more). However, people can learn, grow and change, and that is exactly what I have done over the years. Across the COVID years and into Trump's second presidency, I have come to see that a lot of the things the people I once dismissed as online firebrands were attempting to warn us all about have actually come true.

And, as an extension of that, I came to see that some of the times I was needlessly defensive and insular, I should have been standing alongside people. After all, my beliefs have always erred on the left-leaning side of things; my frustration from those dark years was, as much as anything, frustration at being lumped in with right-wing-to-far-right-outright-Nazis based on nothing more than the media I enjoyed — particularly anime-adjacent stuff that often took a walk on the lewd side of life.

I knew that I wasn't a bad person, and I knew that enjoying the things I enjoyed didn't make me a bad person; frustration at being assumed to be a bad person based on those tastes was what caused me to lash out and, at times, do and say things that I regret. And yet even back then, I could see those deploying The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies as what they were: people who didn't really care about anything other than scoring imaginary Internet Points. They were not my allies. They were not my friends. They were insufferable dickheads.

Today, I recognise that it is, in fact, possible to have the interests and tastes I do and not find yourself drifting towards the shit-encrusted mouth of what is typically referred to today as "the alt-right pipeline". There are lots of left-leaning folks who do love sexy stuff, and one thing I will say for online discourse is that discussion over such things has improved over the course of the last ten years or so. There's still a way to go, but it's better.

As part of that, it's important to recognise that certain parts of popular media do have a far-right problem. And as part of that recognition, it's important to stand up and say that you will not stand for tossers ruining the thing that you love, rather than being frustrated at feeling like you're getting lumped in with said tossers. You probably aren't, so long as you're not using their talking points.

Such as, you know, The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies. There really is only one type of person who busts out The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies during an online discussion. And believe me, you don't want to be that person.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 638: Actual progress

I'm pleased to report that my weight loss efforts are actually making some meaningful progress. Not only have I crossed the "1 stone lost" boundary, I've also crossed a bit of a "plateau" I had felt stuck at for a very long time, meaning the big number at the start of my weight has gone down by one.

This is a meaningful, worthwhile step because although "1 stone lost" is also a milestone, it somehow feels more significant when your actual weight has a particularly noticeable difference in it — like the "stone" figure being different. This, to me, is a good sign that what I'm doing is working — and, more to the point, that it's something sustainable that I'm not about to get bored with and give up on in frustration.

The trouble with a lot of diets is that they become demoralising and boring. And very few things make you want to eat like boredom — at least that's the case for me. What I've found, by calorie counting each day, is that I can still enjoy all the things I like to have and still lose weight. Along the way I'm finding ways to be more "calorie efficient" with those things that I like, too, while not feeling guilty about having an occasional treat — usually within the boundaries of the daily calorie count, but I've found that having a day a week when you "cheat" does wonders for the morale.

I'm sure the challenge factor will increase as my weight lowers and the number of calories I can have per day falls accordingly, but one thing that I've found having successfully stuck to this for quite some time now is that I'm not feeling the same urge to want to overindulge that I have done in the past. I'm finding that having a modestly sized breakfast, lunch and dinner and a number of guilt-free snacks throughout the day keeps me going and well within the calorie count. Essentially it's following the principle of never allowing myself to get hungry enough to want to demolish an entire large bag of Doritos or something.

Like I say, though, the best thing I've found so far is that I'm able to enjoy things that I just plain like eating, and haven't had to turn to the sort of "success stories" you read in weight loss magazines — you know the sort of thing, "I used to have a massive fryup for breakfast every morning, now I start my day with a glass of water, half a banana and a handful of chia seeds". Nope, I can still quite happily have cereal with chocolate in it for breakfast, a bacon sandwich or noodles for lunch and pretty much whatever I want for dinner.

Of course, I might lose weight more quickly if I was having more salads and vegetables and fruit and whatever — but I have to be realistic about this. If I eat something that I don't enjoy or don't find filling and satisfying, then I just end up wanting to eat something I do like later, and I end up having much more food than I really need. Right now, with the weight I am, I need a decent amount of calories just to keep ticking over, so I'm going to continue enjoying the success I'm having the way it's working at the moment. When I weigh significantly less and will need much fewer calories per day to continue losing weight, then we'll have a look at even "healthier" options as means of keeping the weight off.

For now, this is working. And I'm pleased about that. It's making me feel like I might actually be able to do this; I might actually be able to beat this. Let's see how things are looking in a few months' time.

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#oneaday Day 637: Slow Roads

I'm very fond of weird little software toys that don't really have a point, but which have obviously had some love, care and attention devoted to them. One of my favourites in this regard is a Web-based driving "sim" of sorts known as Slow Roads. You can fiddle around with it here.

Slow Roads isn't really a "game". There's no objective, no win state, no fail state, no punishments for doing things "wrong" and indeed no "right" way to do things, save for the implied suggestion that you stay on the road. As you can see from the screenshot above, this is not mandatory.

Slow Roads plops you into a procedurally generated world based on either the rolling English countryside — the sort of undulating terrain you'd see if you were driving around the Peak District, say — and invites you to just drive. There's no other cars on the roads so you can drive as safely or unsafely as you like; this is a pure playground in which you can take your electric car, bus or futuristic motorcycle and just go. It's a pleasantly liberating, relaxing experience that I find myself turning to in quiet moments when I just want to do something, but I don't want to have to think about it too hard.

I forget who first pointed me in the direction of Slow Roads and even when it was. I've definitely had it on my bookmarks bar for several years at this point, and over the course of those years it has continued to evolve gradually. The first version I tried only had the car and the countryside terrain in the daytime. Over time, more features have been added, including the ability to adjust the countryside scene between four different seasons and four times of day and set the weather conditions, choose how winding (or not) you want the road to be, how wide you want it to be and a variety of characteristics about how the controls handle.

The game has somewhat sim-like tendencies in how it handles. You have to slow down for corners, and the three different vehicles have a very different feel to how they handle; the bus, for example, appropriately feels like a large, lumbering vehicle that it's probably not a good idea to throw into a corner at 80mph, while at the other end of the spectrum, the bike provides a frighteningly fast thrill ride, and could probably get you around the most twisty roads at high speed once you learn how to handle it.

That's it. That's all Slow Roads is. There's no point to it. And yet I love it. It's not trying to be anything that it's not. It's not being designed for "player retention" or "monetisation". It just is. It's a lovely little thing, and if you've never spent any time fiddling around with it, I highly recommend it.

The one long-term goal for Slow Roads appears to be for it to have a standalone Steam release, which looks set for April of this year (2026 if you're reading in The Future, assuming we're not all dead by then), with a demo towards the end of this month. It will be great to see this project finally come to some sort of "fruition", such as it is, and I have whiled away more than enough hours in the Web-based version to quite happily toss the developer a few quid when the full version finally arrives.

Now, maybe just a few miles before bed…

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#oneaday Day 636: Esoteric Ebb and Flow

Well, my original plan was to play at least one of the bonus episodes of Resident Evil Revelations this evening, but then I was distracted by some screenshots of a game that apparently came out recently, and which I hadn't previously heard of: Esoteric Ebb by Christoffer Bodegård, published by the "indie publisher to watch" of the moment, Raw Fury.

Here's one of the screenshots that convinced me to buy and play this game:

If you're looking at that and thinking something along the lines of "cor blimey guvnor, that sure does look like Disco Elysium and no mistake", you'd be absolutely right. The game isn't trying to hide its inspiration. But the other thing you may well notice from this screenshot is that this is Disco Elysium, But Fantasy.

In Esoteric Ebb, you play the role of The Cleric, an ostensible agent of the government who has been sent in to investigate an explosion in a local teahouse. As befits a CRPG hero, whether or not you actually get stuck right in to this "main quest" is entirely up to you, because the small but well-crafted world of Esoteric Ebb certainly has lots of distractions. You do have a time limit, though; the setting is having its first ever democratic election in five days' time, and the current sitting government would really rather all this unpleasantness was quietly dealt with before that happens.

If you've never played Disco Elysium (or, indeed, games like it, since they appear to be Becoming a Thing right now) the simple pitch is this: they're a cross between classic "Infinity Engine" RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment and the like, with almost all of the combat removed, and a strong emphasis on the game responding to you a bit more like a human dungeon master during a tabletop gaming session would. That means all of your stats get a workout, with most sequences in the game involving either passive skill checks (which you will just automatically pass or fail based on your current stats) or active skill checks (where you roll a die and your stats can potentially boost or penalise the score).

Crucially, failure is not necessarily a bad thing, because it can lead to amusing situations or alternative solutions — much as real tabletop sessions are often at their best when things get a little improvisatory.

Skill checks are only half the story, though. The other defining feature of a game following the Disco Elysium mould is that your stats "talk" to you, reflecting your character's often conflicted inner monologues about the situations in which they find themselves. Exactly how helpful you will find these "Chimes", as Esoteric Ebb calls them, depends on those aforementioned passive skill checks; failure often means you misinterpret a situation, fail to notice something or do something clumsy, depending on the context, while success can mean anything positive: performing a complicated physical task correctly, finding just the right words to say in an awkward situation, feeling empathy for the person you're talking to.

Esoteric Ebb adds a few additional features atop this, too. One of the most notable is that you can examine any of the interactable characters, and a skill check of variable difficulty (with the exact stat being tested depending on the character you're examining) will determine how much information you can tell about them just from looking at them. Failing to pass the check at all means you just about notice their basic appearance; passing higher difficulty level checks will let you know their level, class, stats and even pieces of information they would rather remain hidden — you might recognise someone who is trying to conceal their identity, for example. These pieces of information can often be used in conversation.

Other interesting features are the interconnected web of quests in place of the usual quest journal; this indicates how various happenings around the city relate to one another, and upon successfully finishing one of the major quests, you then get to reflect on the situation and allow your stats to "debate" one another, with the eventual result being a nice chunk of experience and a new feat based on the eventual conclusion you came to. In this way, there's a real sense you're building your character just by playing the game; you do "level up" in a conventional RPG style, and you can increase one of your stats when you do so, but it's not just about gaining experience — and, indeed, given that it's a game where it's impossible to grind, you're best off just exploring the world and seeing what happens.

This can, of course, sometimes have fatal consequences in unusual ways. Thus far I have died from attempting to retrieve a shiny object that was stuck in a set of gears, which caused me to get crushed and then fall to my death just to make sure, and from being eaten by a "Roper" enemy hiding in the rocks. I also narrowly escaped death in the very first scene of the game, where I felt an uncontrollable urge to try and eat a path through a room-filling pile of apples, but thankfully my sense of self-preservation kicked in early enough to allow me to survive.

It's a really fun game, so long as you're on board with a slow pace. There are combat encounters in the game, but rather than being a matter of lining up and attacking or quasi-strategic combat, these instead unfold much like all the other encounters in the game: through skill checks, dialogue and choosing actions to take that are always more interesting than just pressing "attack".

I played for a good few hours this evening, and I'm looking forward to exploring it further. The full thing is apparently about 10-15 hours or so, so it's not a game that outstays its welcome. This, to me, is a selling point. It also means it's potentially replayable, and in a choice-heavy game like this, that's always a good thing.

So yeah. A confident thumbs-up from me on this one from my few hours with it this evening, then. Grab it on Steam (don't think there's any news of console or alternative PC storefront releases as yet) — it's 10% off until the 14th.

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#oneaday Day 635: Revelated

I finished Resident Evil Revelations 2 this evening. I've got what I think will be an interesting article in the tank for some point in the not too distant future, so I want to save that for MoeGamer. I do want to talk a bit about the game, though, so here I am!

I say "finished" — I've beaten the four main episodes and seen both the "bad" and "good" endings. I haven't yet done the two extra episodes; it's getting late tonight, so I will likely save those for tomorrow.

I was initially dismayed that getting the "bad" ending is the result of making a choice halfway through the third episode that would seem to make narrative sense at the time, and a bit annoyed that correcting this "mistake" would involve having to replay half of the third episode and the finale half of the fourth episode — about 3 hours' gameplay in total. But then I figured that I was already invested in this story and game, so I might as well do it.

So I did it this evening — and I enjoyed it! It helped that for the finale chapter, I had unlocked one of the bonus weapons with infinite ammo, so this all but eliminated any worries over not having enough ammo for the final boss. You can only get a "C" rank for a chapter if you use a bonus weapon, but I was primarily in it for the story, so I wasn't particularly interested in getting a high rank. The additional "stuff" in the "good ending" was definitely worth the effort required.

For the unfamiliar, Resident Evil Revelations 2 determines which ending you will get based on which of the two playable characters finishes off a boss. This isn't a matter of simply fighting as the "correct" character, since there's a narrative consideration: throughout the relevant part of the game in question, only the "lead" character, recurring series heroine Claire Redfield, is able to use firearms, and her companion, Moira Burton, is traumatised from a past event and unable to even contemplate picking up a gun. During the sequence in question, Claire ends up pinned by the boss monster in its death throes, and you have the choice between either making her use her willpower to reach her dropped gun, or switching to Moira and giving her a nudge in the direction of overcoming her trauma.

Okay, yes, it's unrealistic and probably disrespectful to anyone suffering similar trauma, but it does make narrative sense for the more "dramatic" option — Moira overcoming her fear and blasting the shit out of the monster to save Claire — to be the "correct" choice that leads to the "good" ending. My initial frustration was down to the fact that I also felt it made sense for Claire to be the one to make the kill; as a generally nice human being, Claire would have respect for Moira's trauma and thus wouldn't want to make her pick up a gun if she didn't absolutely have to.

But part of Resident Evil Revelations 2's narrative concerns our responses to fear and trauma — the game's virus affects people differently according to how much fear they feel — and thus the concept of someone becoming stronger as a direct result of overcoming their fear, which is what is implied happens to Moira to allow her to survive being buried under a bunch of rubble, does make sense, in retrospect. And having to replay those two half-episodes didn't take that long altogether.

Anyway, I enjoyed Resident Evil Revelations 2 a whole lot! I think it's a very good Resident Evil game, and one I suspect often gets overlooked due to technically being a "spinoff". Its original release as a downloadable episodic game (remember that brief trend?) probably didn't help it either, but these days you can just buy the whole thing (including what used to be DLC) on a disc and enjoy it all in one go. And I recommend you do that, because it's a really great take on the series that strikes a good balance between the more action-oriented nature of post-4 Resident Evil games, and the traditional "survival horror" feel of the earlier titles.

Intrigued to try the extra episodes tomorrow, and then move on to Resident Evil 6. I understand people don't like Resident Evil 6 all that much, but as regular readers will know, I often take "people don't like this" as a challenge and do my best to find the good in it. Will I manage that with Resident Evil 6? I have no idea at this point — but if not, I can at least take solace from the fact that some of the series' most well-regarded recent entries await on the other side.

For now though, bed, and doubtless a few dreams about slobbering monsters.

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#oneaday Day 634: Revelations... too

With all the talk over Resident Evil Requiem recently, I thought it about time I resumed my efforts to catch up on the series. When I last left off, I had played all of the mainline games (in the form of their most recent incarnations/remakes) up to and including the first "episode" of Resident Evil Revelations 2, which means after that I still have Resident Evil 6, 7, Village and now Requiem still to go also.

I forget why I pressed pause on Revelations 2, because returning to it now, I'm enjoying it a lot. I remember when Resident Evil 4 was first announced, I was skeptical about the series' apparent shift towards being more action-oriented, but the two Revelations games are underappreciated examples of this working really well, having shed the clunkiness from the original incarnations of Resident Evil 4 and 5 to behave a bit more like how we today understand a conventional third-person shooter to play.

That said, Revelations 2 doesn't feel like a relentless third-person shooter; it's nicely paced, with a nice ebb and flow between moments of quiet menace and dread, and moments of all-out action. It's still got enough "survival horror" in its DNA to make it so that if a zillion enemies are coming your way, the best thing to do is, in fact, to run rather than attempt to fight them all off, since standing your ground will almost certainly result in you running out of ammunition.

The two story threads, visiting many of the same locations six months apart, work well and are intriguing enough to keep things interesting, but the game never lets its narrative aspect overwhelm the gameplay side of things; this is a game where it feels like playing the game is the important bit, and a snippet of story is your reward for succeeding. Over the years, I've had changing thoughts about the relationship between story and narrative, and I'm still not sure I have one, single coherent position — it generally depends what mood I'm in — but at the moment, I'm very much enjoying the fact that in Resident Evil Revelations 2, you spend the majority of your time actually doing stuff.

Also the game fully embraces the cheese factor. One of the first lines in the game features an admirably excruciating pun about terrorism that part of me can't quite believe made it into the final script, and frequently throughout the rest of the game, characters reference some of the most notorious moments in the early games' terrible dialogue sequences. Yes, that includes "master of unlocking" and "Jill sandwich" — albeit it's "Claire sandwich" here.

Another nice thing about Resident Evil Revelations 2 is that, much like earlier entries in the series, the whole thing has no shame whatsoever about being a video game. Finish an episode and you unlock special "Countdown" and "Invisible" modes, challenging you to make it through the same scenarios with special conditions. The real long-term appeal comes from the "Raid" mode, though, which is a development of something introduced in the first Revelations. Here, you take control of a character in a series of completely narrative-free, arcade-style challenges and battle for high scores, power-ups and goodies. You can play it multiplayer, too, and I bet it's a ton of fun to do so — maybe one day I might actually get to try it with someone, although nailing anyone down for a multiplayer session of something these days is, much like anything else involving social interaction, like pulling teeth.

Anyway, regardless, I'm having a lot of fun with Revelations 2 right now. I'm just about to start the fourth and final episode this evening, then after that I'll have to decide if I want to fiddle around with some of the extra modes, or move right on to Resident Evil 6. I know people don't like Resident Evil 6 very much, but I am curious to play it — and if I'm doing the whole series, I might as well give the less popular entries a chance. (For the record, so far my least favourite by far has been Resident Evil 5, which does not surprise me, given its less than stellar reputation. But I was at least open to trying it, and I didn't hate it by any means.)

On that note, then, it's time to go… back to the mansion! Wait, no, that's something else.

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#oneaday Day 633: Garfield had it right all along

Pic unrelated. I was just experimenting.

I hate Mondays. I mean, I hate getting out of bed most days, but on Mondays it's always particularly challenging, for a variety of reasons. The most obvious, of course, is that getting out of bed on a Monday is an acknowledgement that the weekend is, in fact, over, and that you are going to have to do something vaguely useful with your existence for the next five days.

For me, I have the added annoyance that Monday is Meetings Day. I have one at 10am, another at 11am, sometimes another at 2pm and yet another at 3pm. Somewhere amid all that I have to figure out a week's worth of stuff to get done in the space of a couple of hours so that I can actually use the rest of my week in a manner that is productive and useful to the rest of the team.

I despise meetings. I always have. I'm not sure I've ever had a meeting that I walked out of where I felt "that was an excellent use of my time". I got in trouble at one job for finding a meeting so boring that I actually fell asleep in it. When working from home started, I discovered that I could literally go to bed and fall asleep during the 60-90 minute long "Good Morning Call" meetings we had every Tuesday at the job I was working at the time, and no-one ever noticed. I am the embodiment of the concept "This Meeting Could Have Been an Email".

And yet certain people are obsessed with the idea of having meetings. I'm talking generally here, not about anyone specific at my current or previous jobs — these are just some observations that I've seen over the course of various occasions of employment. But yes. Some people are obsessed with the idea that having everyone looking bored on Zoom or Teams several times a week is somehow productive, when in fact everyone would be much more productive if they were left alone to get on with their job, and only got bothered when someone specifically needed their attention on something.

I sort of get the justification. The idea is that if you all get together — preferably face-to-face — on a semi-regular basis, you will communicate better with one another because you are more likely to think of one another as actual people. But I can't help but feel there are much, much better ways to do this than Having A Meeting.

I don't know anyone who relishes the prospect of weekly meetings, at any job I have ever worked at. I know plenty of people who dread it, particularly if they have been forced into having to speak or present something, but no-one who actually enjoys these things. So why do we continue to insist on them?

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#oneaday Day 632: New Tricks

Longtime readers may recall that back in November, I started watching a show called New Tricks from the BBC. It's a detective show with an interesting concept: following the exploits of a fictional Metropolitan Police department known as the Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad (aka UCOS), the show sees its core cast (which gradually changes over time) reopening various cold cases and getting to the bottom of them.

I'm just coming up on the end of the tenth series out of twelve and I've been enjoying it a lot. It's been a consistently interesting watch, with some excellent characters who have some good backstories that get some decent payoff over the long term. I understand that the point I'm currently watching is where some people feel like it started to run out of steam a bit, leading to, among other things, one of the original cast members moving on because he felt things had become stale and another two departing after an apparently public spat with the writers, but I'm still enjoying the show with its new cast members. Former lead Amanda Redman said she felt like the cast had lost their anarchic edge in the later episodes, and I see why she said that — but really it's just a different vibe thanks to a different set of characters.

Of particular note is the presence of Nicholas Lyndhurst, an actor who I'm sure most people associate with comedic roles thanks to his most well-known appearances as Rodney in Only Fools and Horses and Gary Sparrow in Goodnight Sweetheart, but in New Tricks he does extremely well as a particularly serious-seeming member of the team. He still has his humorous moments, but they're mostly delivered through deadpan humour; the show is somewhat on the "gritty" side, but isn't above a bit of levity, primarily through little character moments.

The show covers an interesting time period, too. It launched in an era before smartphones and ran until the mid-2010s. A lot of things changes about society in that period, in retrospect, and it's interesting to see the show reflect that. Quite a few early episodes of the show are about Redman's Detective Superintendent Pullman character having to fight to be taken seriously in a world that is still very much male-dominated — and particularly after her assignment to UCOS came after a botched raid in which she shot a dog — and there are frequent explorations of the challenges people with mental health concerns have to face in their daily life.

Of particular note in this regard is the character Brian "Memory" Lane, who is a recovering alcoholic and highly likely to be autistic. Some of the best character moments in the show come from an exploration of Brian struggling to deal with simply existing in a world that he doesn't quite feel comfortable in, and the unique challenges he faces considering his background and his daily struggles. He could easily have become a pathetic, tragic character, but the show handles him well and shows that people contending with the things he is dealing with still have something to offer society, and that they can often find great comfort from the love of people who support them unconditionally. His exit from the show, involving an extremely satisfying resolution to a plot thread that had been dangling for most of the series' run, was handled very well.

The exit of Redman's Pullman character was a little more sudden, however, and it was a little unsatisfying. It feels like she just sort of suddenly decided to move on, and her reasons for doing so just weren't really explored all that much; on top of that, I feel like it would be a much longer process for someone in the Metropolitan Police, particularly in a leadership position, to be able to move on, whereas she was pretty much just out the door and gone. Her replacement, Tamzin Outhwaite's Sasha Miller, seems like a solid character, though, and has already had some interesting things happening to her in just the two episodes I've seen her in so far.

Dennis Waterman's Gerry Standing, as the longest fixture in the series, is a great anchor point for the show. While his cheeky chappy Cockney act could have easily become a bit tiresome, he is shown throughout the series to be a character with some interesting depth and plenty of admirable qualities, even if he sometimes takes a somewhat laissez-faire approach to following the rules. Some of his interest comes from his three amicable divorces and the fact that all his ex-wives and children form one big extended family, but he also gets plenty of his own moments to shine.

The show isn't anything particularly revolutionary and I'm sure it's not regarded as a "classic" or anything, but it did successfully run for twelve series, which suggests it was doing something right along the way. I've enjoyed watching it so far, and I'm glad I took a chance on it; if you're after a detective show to spend some time with, you could do far worse.

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#oneaday Day 631: Hope not hate

It's a strange and scary time in politics the world over. The fact that a dangerous dipshit is at the helm of one of the world's superpowers is old news, but the fact he's seemingly kicked off a brand new illegal war in the Middle East is new, if not entirely unexpected.

Over here in the UK, we saw an interesting development in that the Green Party — long assumed to be a distant "they'll never get in" option, lagging behind even the Liberal Democrats — successfully managed to take the hotly contested Gorton and Denton by-election in Manchester earlier this week. You could feel a significant portion of the nation breathe a sigh of relief as Hannah Spencer (now Hannah Spencer MP) successfully fended off the Greens' nearest rival, the odious Reform UK.

For those reading from outside the UK, Reform UK are a successor to the UK Independence Party (aka UKIP), and an openly racist hate-filled group led by the scuzzbucket Nigel Farage. And before someone takes issue with me calling them openly racist, I direct you to Reform's candidate for Gorton and Denton, Matt Goodwin, responding to his loss by claiming that "a dangerous Muslim sectarianism has emerged".

But Goodwin, badloser (sic) that he is, is not the most interesting thing about what happened in Gorton and Denton. The media response to the Greens' success is. Multiple publications have demonstrated a bizarre resistance to the Greens' message of "hope, not hate" with openly hostile interviews and attempts to smear the party as being "The Green Menace".

To the eternal credit of the Greens' leader, Zack Polanski, he has been taking all this in his stride, and has been handling the outright abuse being thrown his way over the last couple of weeks with absolute ease and professionalism. It's the first time in my life I can remember seeing a politician — a party leader, at that — going about their business in a way that I actually consider to be admirable, rather than something that I just feel like I would reluctantly put up with were they to find themselves with any sort of power.

In many ways, the Greens' recent success feels like the UK is having our own "Mamdani moment". New York, USA elected Zohran Mamdani, an openly socialist mayor, a little while back, and he has also had to fend off some absolute bullshit coming his way from the media, other politicians and political commentators — and he, too, has taken it all in his stride, giving the distinct impression that he actually wants to make a positive difference for once.

I feel like we might be on the cusp of something noteworthy in terms of politics right now. People are sick and fed up with the billionaire oligarchs being the ones who have a say in how countries are run, and people like Mamdani, Polanski and the people who follow them seem serious about actually doing something about the problem.

Whether or not they will be successful is another matter, of course, and I am still not in a place where I am at all hopeful about the immediate future for most of the world. But I can say, with all honesty, that this is the first time in my life, at the age of 44, that I actually feel like there are at least a few politicians out there worth listening to and worth supporting, even.

"Hope, not hate" is a simple but powerful message, and one I would like to believe is one that good people can latch onto and throw their support behind. I guess it remains to be seen what the future holds in this regard, but the Gorton and Denton result is, at least, a good start if nothing else.

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#oneaday Day 630: Mr Cellophane

Cellophane, Mister Cellophane
Shoulda been my name, Mister Cellophane
'Cause you can look right through me
Walk right by me
And never know I'm there

(Mister Cellophane by John C. Reilly, from the musical "Chicago")

I don't wish the following to sound like self-pitying or a cry for attention, but it will almost certainly come out that way, and for this I apologise in advance.

Do you ever have days where you feel like you're "invisible"? Like, if you just weren't there, no-one would notice? I seem to be feeling this a lot more as I get older, but it's something that has always followed along with me to one degree or another.

As young as my teenage years, I remember, on several occasions, feeling like I wasn't sure if my friends really liked me, or if they were just putting up with me as a sort of "attachment" to one of their other friends. Given the oddly volatile nature of hormonal adolescent friendships, this is perhaps not a surprising way for someone to feel — I recall multiple other occasions where, for one reason or another, several of us who were, under normal circumstances, best friends, suddenly just… weren't any more for a little while. This normally only lasted a day or two, and it usually involved the one who instigated the temporary "split" trying to get "in" with some of the cooler kids. I don't recall any occasions where something like this resulted in a member of our mutual circle of friends completely abandoning us, but it is this sort of thing that made me uneasy and anxious at times.

At university, I had friends and acquaintances I attended my course with, but again, there were times where I felt like if I just wasn't there, nobody would really give a shit.

A lot of this stems from what I now know to be social anxiety caused by autism, but that unfortunately doesn't make it much easier to deal with — because I still feel this sort of thing to this day. I find it difficult to "maintain" relationships because I get overly worried about being a bother to someone who, in my mind, I have built up to be someone who resents my presence. And, on occasions where I feel like I have been someone who has been making that effort, it's hard not to feel rejected when the other parties involved aren't as interested in maintaining the relationships as you are.

The reason I'm talking about this today is because, once again, a video game site has been suffering layoffs — this time the long-established Eurogamer. And as the various people announced that they were no longer working there, and that they were looking for employment, lots of other people piped up and said how important their time together had been, how much they enjoyed working together, what fond memories they had of various projects they collaborated on.

I saw that and I felt painfully conscious that, when my career in the games press came to an unceremonious end, I didn't really feel like any of that happened for me. I feel like very few people really noticed my time on USgamer, let alone GamePro before that, and very few people spoke up for me to say that they had enjoyed my work. I certainly didn't get a string of adulation from former colleagues waxing poetic about past collaborations. And all that kind of hurt, frankly; I had made that site my life for the time I was there, and I was immensely proud of all that I had done. And yet when people look back on USgamer's existence now, I'm not even a footnote; I doubt anyone other than the few people who did regularly read my work there — most of whom are still online friends, I should add — would even be able to tell you that I was a founding member of the site.

I feel this under other circumstances, too. There are several Discords I'm a member of where I feel like my presence and existence is often forgotten about. I don't really have an online community that I feel like I can call "home" any more, and that is, I think, where a lot of this stems from; it's that age-old fear that, if you were to drop dead tomorrow, no-one would notice or care. (My wife, at least, would. Hopefully.)

And I don't really know how to "fix" this. As I say, my social anxiety makes it very difficult for me to step up and say "hey, hello, please pay attention to me" without feeling like I'm inconveniencing or annoying people, and as such, I continue to just sort of quietly exist in the hope that I don't get forgotten entirely.

If you're reading this, none of the above applies to you. I am grateful for your presence, your support and your friendship — because if you are reading this at this point, you are someone who is present in my life; you are someone who has, in one way or another, supported me at some point over the years; and you are someone that I'm happy to call a friend. I thank you, sincerely, from not letting me become completely invisible to the world at large.

And perhaps I should be content with that.

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