If they can only guarantee that your footedness is 1% determined genetically, there seems little point in mentioning it (other than as clickbait).
The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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9:52am on Saturday, 20th December, 2025:
Anecdote
Overheard in Sainsbury's, from a hassled shelf-stacker who shouted it at her colleague:
"Don't you criticise MY stacking, Mr Leaning Tower of Pancetta!"
He was wearing a Christmas jumper, so probably got off lightly.
12:17pm on Friday, 19th December, 2025:
Weird
Ancestry is clearly running out of ideas for its "dominant traits" DNA updates.
If they can only guarantee that your footedness is 1% determined genetically, there seems little point in mentioning it (other than as clickbait).
9:48am on Thursday, 18th December, 2025:
Anecdote
My wife wanted some ricotta cheese, so I had to walk to the local Co-Op to buy some. They didn't have any, so I walked to the Nisa store further away. I was a little apprehensive, because I knew they were rebranding and the changeover date was the 18th. Were they closing on the 18th or opening on the 18th, though?
They were opening! Yay!
They were opening three hours after I got there.
I asked at the door, but they didn't sell ricotta cheese either.
8:43am on Wednesday, 17th December, 2025:
Weird
I found this business card at the dentist's last week.
You can see why people would say to him, "with a name like that, you should have been a barber!".
You can also see why people might ask him, "Are you related to Sean Lock, the comedian?".
You can also see how, being faced with one of these two responses every time you introduced yourself to someone new might prompt a career in psychotherapy.
9:06am on Tuesday, 16th December, 2025:
Anecdote
We went on the Colchester light walk yesterday, which was a fifty-minute trail through Castle Park. It was quite good!
Never mind that, though. There was a section where you could write a wish on a luggage tag and tie it to a wire-mesh wall. Most people expressed wishes for health, happiness and peace, but not this person:
It would have been well worth the entrance fee for this alone, except my younger daughter bought me my ticket so in my case it was free anyway.
9:29am on Monday, 15th December, 2025:
Miscellaneous
On the left, a scan of a photograph of my paternal grandmother, which I helpfully uploaded to Ancestry.com a few years ago,
On the right, what someone is claiming is a photograph of my paternal grandmother on Ancestry.com .
Thanks to AI "enhancements", a hundred years from now no-one will know what any of us actually looked like.
My grandmother's eyes were very, very dark brown.
8:45am on Sunday, 14th December, 2025:
Weird
I'm not up to speed on fairy yuletide fashion, but it seems to me that wearing skirts made of holly leaves will inevitably lead to serious leg injuries.
8:37am on Saturday, 13th December, 2025:
Weird
8:38am on Friday, 12th December, 2025:
Weird
8:46am on Thursday, 11th December, 2025:
Weird
It's nice to see games competing with Disney movies for Lego sets.
Fortnite has a PEGI 12 rating, but the Lego sets are for children aged 7+, 9+ and 10+.
I'm sure there's a Games Studies paper in the making called "Lego: Gateway to Violent Video Games", although you could replace the word "Lego" in that with pretty well any toy and still have a publishable Games Studies paper.
11:36am on Wednesday, 10th December, 2025:
Comment
The longlist of the games that are up for BAFTA's Best Game award is now out. There are 64 games in the running for at least one award (whatever "in the running" means), and ten that could win Best Game. The ten are:
ARC Raiders
Blue Prince
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
Dispatch
Ghost of Yotei
Hades II
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Split Fiction
I voted for two of those (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Dispatch). I won't say what the other three I voted for are, because you might have worked on one, but two of them aren't up for any awards at all.
As a guideline as to the merit of these nominations, here are the Steam ratings for these games as given by English-language players (rather than all players), ordered by overall rating then number of reviews:
Dispatch overwhelmingly positive 81k+
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 overwhelmingly positive 80k+
Hades II overwhelmingly positive 56k+
Split Fiction overwhelmingly positive 19k+
Hollow Knight: Silksong very positive 126k+
ARC Raiders very positive 101k+
Blue Prince very positive 10k+
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle very positive 6k+
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach [not on Steam, PS5 only]
Ghost of Yotei [not on Steam, PS5 only]
From this, I assume that a good many BAFTA voters didn't actually play all the games for which they voted; Indiana Jones and the Great Circle stands out as something of an anomaly. I couldn't vote for DS2 or GoY because I don't have a Playstation, so I didn't; I know they're highly-rated on Metacritic, but (like Steam) Metacritic doesn't get a vote. I guess some people don't have PCs, so only voted for the console games they could play. That would explain the disparity.
As with movies, games that are released when the electoral college is making its decision will score higher, but unlike movies, games aren't released in the hope of winning an award and thereby boosting sales. Hollow Knight: Silksong might have been getting award-friendly publicity by releasing when it did, but it wasn't released then in a cynical attempt to win any awards.
The US Game Awards have a shortlist of six games up for Game of the Year. Here they are with their Steam ratings:
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 overwhelmingly positive 80k+
Hades II overwhelmingly positive 56k+
Hollow Knight: Silksong very positive 126k+
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II very positive 52k
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach [not on Steam]
Donkey Kong Bananza [not on Steam, Switch only]
I don't know how much of this is down to lobbying or not, because I don't vote in the US awards, but I can say I wasn't lobbied at all for the BAFTA votes. I think more US voters use consoles than in the UK, which would explain how Kingdom Come: Deliverance II made the final six.
It'll be interesting to see who wins, anyway.
I abstained from the music category as I don't feel qualified to vote on it, but given that the soundtrack for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 topped the Billboard classical chart for ten weeks, I think it's safe to say that if it doesn't win the music BAFTA there's something seriously wrong.
9:06am on Tuesday, 9th December, 2025:
Weird
10:21am on Monday, 8th December, 2025:
Weird
I have to say, the definition of what a miracle is has become diluted over the years.
8:54am on Sunday, 7th December, 2025:
Weird
Knowing it's going to be someone's first doll is clearly a cause for concern.
That's one apprehensive doll.
8:57am on Saturday, 6th December, 2025:
Weird
I saw this in Asturias a week after I saw the wide typewriter in Poland. It's from the days before calculators.
The keyboard at the bottom explains why the carriage is wider than the three-inch roll of paper installed.
Machines like this should be in a museum, which is why it is.
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Copyright © 2025 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).