Reasons To Be Fearful. Or Cheerful. Your Choice.

For once, I'm serious when I say I don't have time to come up with a real post but I'm darned if I'm going to let that stop me. What I'm going to do is precis the two posts I would have written today, if I'd had the time. Maybe later I'll get to write them in full and maybe I won't but at least if I ever read this back I'll know what I was thinking of doing.

#1 - Square Enix Loves Money

Yeah, they do. Wilhelm was the first to point to this in his 2022 Predictions post but now everyone's talking about it. Just in case anyone hasn't seen it yet, here's a link to the full and chilling announcement from Yosuke Matsuda, President and Representative Director of SQUARE ENIX HOLDINGS CO., LTD. (His capitalization, not mine.) It reads like the set-up for a dystopian SF novel. Jack Womack would be proud to have thought of it.

I'll just add that I'm becoming less and less certain that the prevailing "It'll never happen" view is sound. Oh, none of the "good" things will happen, you can bet on that. We won't get rich doing our dailies or trip gaily from FFXIV to World of Warcraft to Guild Wars 2 all while playing the same character and waving the same sword, but whether online games or even the worldwide web will still look remotely like they do now in ten years' time, I'm not so sure. And the idea that "governments won't allow it to happen" seems laughably naive. Governments are generally a decade and change behind any technological or cultural shift. They won't be in a position to do much about it until it's too late, by which time we'll be onto the next post-capitalist nightmare. 

 #2 - New Music is the Best Music

I follow a blog by Simon Reynolds, called blissblog (or possibly blissout, as it says in the Blogspot address). I'm always on the verge of unfollowing it because I rarely read it and when I do I even more rarely like any of the music or agree with any of the opinions expressed. 

Yesterday, however, Simon linked to another blog, this time by his son, Kieran Press-Reynolds. Kieran has a list of his top 20 songs of 2022, plus some that nearly made the cut. I started listening to them out of idle curiosity and ended up spending over an hour there, first listening to some of his choices and then following up the YouTube links they generated. 

 

I didn't like everything I heard and I only dipped in to the stuff that caught my eye on a first glance but the quality overall was staggeringly high. I'll be going back to check out the rest of Kieran's faves and to explore the areas, styles and performers I take a shine to in a great deal more depth. No doubt, some of the fruits of that labor will end up here, in due course. You have been warned.

Thanks to Kieran for doing the work and to his father for sending me there. Also, Kieran writes beautifully, which is a bonus.

I said I was going to keep this short and I already haven't, really. Better stop while I still have enough time left to do those dailies. Need to keep in practice for when all our games become virtual sweat shops. I imagine there will be quotas.