Lucio’s Rambles

Forgive Me Father, For I Have Slopped

2026-08-15T20:56:21+03:00

So. AI Slop.

Fun topic, isn’t it? Anyone you talk to seems to either discuss it as the second coming or the antichrist. It’s rare you come into contact with someone who treats it like what it is - code. Algorithms. Lines of logic run on wires. A tool that you can use in different ways and you can discuss whether it’s even feasible or reasonable to. But it’s kind of hard to have a proper conversation like that when AI is such a cornerstone of the economy and gets billions pumped into it by, let’s be real, MBAs who smell money and have zero clue how it works.

Generally we associate AI products nowadays with a marker of “low quality”, because (at the moment) creating stuff with AI is very cheap and takes little effort - anyone can do it! And everyone is doing it. To the point everyone’s shit looks the same.

I know this.

…and yet.

A few months back, my boss told me AI use has moved from being a recommendation to being mandatory, and started paying me for the 100$ per month deal of Claude Code. I’ve started outputting slop PRs for our in-house game engine written in typescript (you’ve read that right) at a staggering pace, and somehow they’re less slop than the existing code which makes zero rhyme nor reason. So I’ve gotten used at tossing stuff at the Slop Machine.

I know everything I outlined in the opening.

…and yet, I’ve been having trouble making my personal website.

Not this one, no no, but rather my professional website. The one with my actual name and face attached. The one I link to on my CV. That one.

I am not good at visual design. Like at all. Every time one of my good friends (design degree) looks at prototypes I make, he proceeds to call me over discord and call me stupid in many unique ways. So this prototype website also looked like a garish mess of non-fitting colors.

I talked to multiple friends about it, got some conflicting advice, still looked like arse. And then, my coworker told me “dude, just use AI for it. It’s fine, no one cares. It’s for work.” This far in, I went “fuck it, let’s see what the slop machine has to offer.”

And lads? It actually looked way better than my site.

…Yeah. I have the slop version up on my personal domain.

I told this to some of my friends and they wanted to strangle me, (one saying he’ll make me a website himself in the next few months, which I appreciate very much,) and a few pointing out obvious flaws in the design. My brother could even spot I made it with claude just based off of how it looked.

And now? I could understand the appeal AI had to non-coders. Something I was terrible at, quickly fixed with something I felt like I added my touch to, and had to iterate to create. I felt like I had some ownership over the result. And despite this, anyone who actually understood anything about the field I mimicked thought it looked awful, and the average person could tell I made it with AI.

I knew consciously this was why people used AI, but it was a bit… funny, I suppose, to go through that exact loop myself.

I’m not immune to bullshit and sycophancy, evidently.

Is This It?

2026-08-15T20:42:30+03:00

So, it’s 20:30 PM. The only light in my living room is the one above the dinner table, and beneath it am I, holding my rocking head with the thumb and index of the left palm. The only noise audible is the thrashing of my dishwasher, some teenagers hanging out under my window, and whatever song spotify’s decided to play this time.

I’ve finished my masters’ degree about two weeks back, which is nice. Been looking forward to it a lot. However I am not free, as in its place, I’ve started doing full-time work at my notoriously horrendous job; 8 hours a day, 5 times a week. I’ve had plans to do stuff after I graduate, but now with this full-time gig I realize I have time for nothing.

I used to regularly go to the gym, work on some side projects, and meet with friends. Now being able to do one of these means I need to give up on the rest, sometimes even leave work early for it. I finish the day already tuckered out (I’ve been a morning bird since forever) and with pretty much no energy to put something with my heart in it.

It’s only been a few weeks, but I’m now sitting on a saturday evening, tipsy from a cocktail I’ve been making with concerning regularity¹, thinking:

Is this it?

Is the post-academic life just “work, sleep, repeat”, with any side-hobbies coming at the cost of sleep?

Or am I just really bad at organizing my time?

Could be the latter. And realistically it probably is that; plenty of 30+s I know can still keep up a fairly active personal life. Then again, most of the people I know also barely cover 6 hours of sleep per day, which would leave me exhausted.

I dunno. Honestly I’m mostly dissapointed at myself for not having time to go to the gym for a while now, and not having time to work on the game I wanted to invest time into post-uni. I’ve needed to take time off of work to get ready for a wedding coming up soon, so I’m also feeling somewhat bad about that. My blood-alcohol can’t be helping.

Yeah. I don’t know. There’s a bunch of stuff that’s been bringing me down recently, whether it’s my weight, lack of romantic prospects, bank account, or aformentioned productivity. I know logically that I’m doing fine in most of these (My weight before was fairly thin, my account’s still got enough to carry me for a few months, etc), but still. Feels like I’m out of a transitionary period, but arrived at a dead end.

I should go to sleep soon, I’m fairly tired.

A basil smash, if you were wondering. ↩

I Just Read Absolute Martian Manhunter

2026-08-15T02:00:00+03:00

I just finished reading Absolute Martian Manhunter #1-#6, covering the first story arc of the comic.

To those who aren’t aware of the “Absolute” series - DC Comics decided they’re doing another reboot to their classic heroes, this time with the throughline of “one core aspect of their origin story is fundamentally changed, yet the hero still remains who they are.” Batman is no longer rich, but he still goes in the night fighting crime, this time much more practically. Superman still lands in a farm after his home planet explodes, but this time he arrives as an adult. Wonder Woman is raised in Hell rather than Themyscira.

Absolute Martian Manhunter is the most unusual of the reboots, straying farthest from the original hero - this time the titular “martian” isn’t from mars, and is closer to a living concept than a proper creature. Still, I heard many reviews say this is one of the best comic runs of the decade so I decided to pick it up on a whim.

And… It’s alright.

I won’t be spoiling the comic here, but I will be showing a few panels and plot beats. If you wanna go in there blind, leave now.

We good? We good.

So the highlight of this comic has got to be the visuals.

Because the story deals with abstract ideas and emotions more than it does with concrete events, the artist is given reign to give us some really nice pages. Even the pages that deal in concrete events still get some really fancy visuals to express the emotions therein.

In one part of the book we see the villain, “the white martian,” start violence in the heart of the city. The martians are ideas, and they affect people’s minds and beliefs rather than physically urging them, so it’s represented like this:

If you’re into comics for the art, I totally get why you’d champion this storyline.

There’s also a neat gimmick that shows up where you hold up the comic page to a light source to see a character’s “hidden” side. Yeah, you pick up the book and hold it up to the sun or a lamp. It really is gimmicky, but it is cute, and it is using the physical comic medium in a way that’s not able to be replicated digitally which is cute.

But the actual story is… fine. Really nothing to write home about. The core of the story is about an FBI agent who’s married to his job and it makes him miss special moments with his wife and kids. You’ve seen this story a thousand times before and other than the (admittedly) gorgeous art, they don’t do anything new with this plot.

And for such a short book, having a story that’s this lackluster really kicked me in the teeth.

To this day I’ve only read two comics that I could rate higher than an 7/10, (Maus and Hellboy,) and I’ve read my fair share of comics. Unfortunately, Absolute Martian Manhunter is being added to the pile of “comics I’ve heard amazing things of and couldn’t really get all the hype around them.”

Simple Pleasures

2026-08-01T12:48:02+03:00

In two days I am finally finishing with my fuckass degree. This monday we’re going to have our very final presentations, where we will show our final projects and get graded for them. Afterwards I am free.

…Well, free is a relative term. Moved from the pan to the flame (academia to the workforce).

Still, just making games with no one to play them has been annoying. I was just stuck in the dredge of fixing bugs and working on the comments of my teachers that I really saw my game as an annoying bundle of scenes I didn’t want anything to do with after I finish this mess. However, I am yet to finish this mess, so I was scheduled to come to uni (yes, on saturday) for a “Show and Tell” kinda thing.

No one came to my Show and Tell.

But! While I was sitting around waiting for something amazing to happen, a few people organically came to look at our exposition, and played the games on display. And y’know something? When a small kid came to play my game and seemed to sincerely enjoy herself, a dumbass grin came over my face. When her dad decided to lock in for 5 minutes after they moved on to try and beat my challenge, and she later came back for another round?

It reminded me what I’m doing this for. Just to make someone else happy, even if for a brief moment.

And it felt great.

My Fingers Hurt

2026-07-13T21:37:29+03:00

I typically tell people my life doesn’t have many high highs or low lows. That my life is one smooth curvature of “alright”-ness. Today was an exception.

The day started off very well. It was the annual Israeli game industry convention, and I got to meet many people I already knew, and many new faces. I met some people I only knew online, I got to try out a lot of cool new games, I got to beg several devs to compile their games for linux, the food was good, there was some free merch. It was a very exceptional day and I had a blast in it.

And we end off bad.

My laptop’s battery at about 20% capacity from the original design, so I ordered a new battery and planned to replace it myself. I found it on my doorstep when I got home, and as tomorrow there’s another convention I wanna go to, I figured it would be the perfect time to get a more powerful battery. I set up my table, got some small screwdrivers, and went to work.

Firstly, I managed to cut every single one of my fingers while prying open the laptop’s base. I took out all the screws, but the base was still kinda hunkered down there, so I used my nails to try and pry it out (my nails had cut marks on them), and then used a lil bit of force with my fingers. Every single one bled at some point in this procedure other than my thumbs. (Mostly small cuts, all but three healed by the time of making this post, but still.)

Second… I fully stripped one of the screws holding the battery in place. While most of the screws came out fine, and I got 7 of the 8 screws holding the battery in place with little resistance, screw number eight decided to tell me to go fuck myself and just turned its hole into a wide big circle where no tool could pry it out. I tried pretty much every solution I could find online short of using superglue, and the hole only got wider.

“Fuck it, I’ll just take it to the shop tomorrow afternoon.”

Kind of a shit ending to my day, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I bought some pigs in a blanket to cook, and I’ve been looking forward to that. If nothing else, I’ll be able to enjoy some- I accidentally got veggie sausages.

“Fuck it, I’ll order something out.”

30 USD for a burger and fries, not including delivery

“…I’ll make the sausages.”

Re: Prejudice on the Left

2026-07-12T08:54:32+03:00

About an hour or so ago, thepaperpilot made a blogpost named “Prejudice on the Left”, talking about how many leftist “figures”, so to speak, still fuck up when it comes to defending groups they ostensibely stand to defend. In particular they bring up Graham Platner being given a pass for sexual harrassment and nazi ties, and the heavy misogyny that surrounded Amber Heard’s trial.

Leftist online commentators have been accused of harassment, defended zionism, and made countless remarks dismissive of the marginal communities they fight for. Point being that being a progressive doesn’t free you of the prejudices you’ve internalized. We all have our political journeys.

And… yeah, agreed.

I think a lot of people on the left think they’re free of prejudice because they, themselves, have experienced prejudice. They divide the world into oppressors and victims and obviously place themselves on the right side of that equation. This isn’t something unique to the left, Elif Bautman famously commented how “everyone thought they were dumbo”, but it is important to point out in the case of a political alignment that seemingly stands to be more aware of social biases and prejudice.

I have a few different beliefs on why this may be. The first and most obvious is that they just want to give themselves an excuse to not have to think too hard, the equivalent of “how can I be racist? I have a black friend.” Bigoted is seen as something You Are, and something you Choose to Be, rather than a descriptor of actions you take, making them not bigots because they don’t choose to be. No hard thoughts to think, parachute for your mind.

A different, slightly more layered reason, is that they may believe that experiencing bigotry is a “lesson” of some kind. I see this sentiment a lot around Israel: “How could they do this? The people who experienced the holocaust, and they learned nothing from it!” Because a massacre is a teacher, you see, it is a way to be taught a lesson in humility. The bullets are a coincidence. To be less of a snippy shit, my point is that suffering teaches you jack shit other than to be afraid for your own life. If you look at the history of actual holocaust survivors, you see many of them learned the lesson of “I can’t trust any of you fuckers” and exactly because of that incentivized the founding of a state where they won’t be attacked for being jewish. The lesson wasn’t “this mustn’t happen to anyone,” it was “this mustn’t happen to me”.

Maus has a pretty funny, if painfully real example. The comic (which, if you haven’t read, I cannot recommend ENOUGH) is the true story of the comic author’s father surviving the holocaust. The story is told through the lens of humanoid animals to represent how heavy race was to every social dynamic at the time. The jews are mice, the nazis are cats, the germans are pigs. The story switches between telling us the story of the father, and the (then-)current day where the author is speaking to his father and helping him do chores and the like.

In one of the modern-day sections, they pick up a hitchhiker, and the father has… choice words on the decision.

In general I see a lot of people look for excuses to be vile to other people and be allowed to. Typically the excuse is that they are “punching up”, even if they’re kicking someone who’s already down in their stomach.

Everyone thinks they’re dumbo.

I Do Not Dream of Labor

2026-07-08T10:02:17+03:00

Many times online, when asked what their dream job is, some users will reply that they “do not dream of labor.” The statment broadly means that in their fantasies, they do not do (ostensibely employment-related) work, and can instead merely relax and do other things. Typically this statement is also used to imply the speaker is somehow trapped within the confines of capitalism and can’t dream of a future beyond it.

It’s also one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard in my life.

Because you do fuckin’ dream of labor. You just discount its value.

If you dream of making art? That’s labor. If you dream of tending to your own crops in a self-sustaining home? That’s labor. If your fantasies involve the creation of something, then newsflash, dickweed, that is labor. Labor is not just “when I do work for money”, it’s “when I do”. It’s “when I create”.

And if your dreams involve no creation? If they involve you travelling the world, relaxing on the beach, eating delicious food? Well, second newsflash, that’s someone else’s labor. Someone had to harvest the crops, refuel the plane, pick the grapes you eat out of a basket. You don’t dream of being free of capitalism, you dream of being the bourgeoisie¹.

Is that necessarily wrong? To dream of being on top of the social food chain? It’s a common fantasy and there isn’t anything inherently wrong with that, even if I will judge you somewhat, but what annoys me more is the hypocrisy. You didn’t escape the cave, you found a new shadow to leer at.

If you’ve heard the term but aren’t quite sure what it means yet: The Bourgeoisie refers to the social class of people who make most of their money via ownership, rather than labor. For example, a CEO makes most of their money by the fact they own the company. By comparison, a barista makes their money by selling their time to the company. If the former stops doing labor, they still earn wages. The latter’s wages are inherently tied to their labor. The typical criticism of this social class is that they make their money by taking the earnings of someone else’s labour. ↩

I Gave Up

2026-07-01T15:45:40+03:00

There’s something incredibly freeing about going “fuck it.” If there wasn’t, we wouldn’t have dozens of people making celebration videos of them quitting their jobs, something that is ostensibely really bad (you were getting screwed over so much you decided it’s better to not even have a source of income). Still, going “you know what? I don’t care” feels great, because it’s not your problem anymore. The problem is still there, sure, but you’ve gotten rid of the problem without getting really rid of the problem. It’s not just your problem.

Which is how I’m treating my uni submissions.

This degree has been a mistake. I’ve met nice people, I’ve had some good teachers, and I really am happy I ended up taking my game academia course, but everything else about this degree has been an unmitigated disaster. And now I’m about a month from being done with it forever, and about 24 hours from going to my last ever lesson on campus.

I have a submission due in about 2 hours, and a few more for tomorrow. I realized there’s no way I’m getting out something good in that time, especially when the entire process has drained me of any motivation I’ve had before.

And then it hit me.

“I’ll give up!”

I’m still gonna do the exercises, I don’t want to fail obviously, but I’m doing the absolute goddamn bare minimum. I am doing enough to pass and fuck else beyond that.

and after that? Fuck all of you, fuck every AI-laden course on these god forsaken grounds, and fffffffUCK the course director who has not played a game in over a decade. I hope all of your ACs stop working and that our only interactions are in passing.

Life Snapshot

2026-06-29T19:07:27+03:00

Heya all. So, once more I feel the need to blog something but didn’t have any singular impactful event, so here’s a bunch of shit that happened to me recently. Feel free to skip around.

I’m almost done with my Masters Degree

which thank FUCK for. I started this degree thinking that there was something missing in game design literature that I’d find in academia, and have finished it, telling five different people to not do this degree and instead to stick to the books. One thing I did appreciate about this degree was the academic writing class, which actually really interested me and resulted in me still working on publishing a paper (hopefully one of these days I’ll be able to brag about it actually coming out, too). I got three deadlines in two days, so i’m praying for the best, but yknow.

I’m using AI as part of my job

So about two weeks ago my boss told me that AI usage moved from recommended to mandatory, and proceeded to pay me for a 100$ per month Claude subscription. He’s only paying me about 13$ an hour, but yknow, AI subscription.

I’ve now been using it to do some PRs. About as expected honestly - I feel 0 satisfaction from these PRs, and moreso I go “seriously?” when the AI tells me “oh yeah this fix was just moving a function from point A to point B, because point B was a function that just had a TODO comment in it and no actual functionality.” I understand the appeal for programmers at work using it now, because I do not want to be doing this work at all. It lets me say I did more while doing the exact same fuckall I was doing before.

But it also sorta ensures I won’t ever give a shit about this code. I didn’t build this. I don’t know how this looks. The AI built it. It can burn down tomorrow and I’ll roll my eyes at worst.

Honestly for the amount of respect I give this engine, that’s about fitting.

I’m in dating apps again

And… eh? I dunno, I’ve been going on dates and I just feel friendship at most towards these people, nothing beyond it. Do I just force it? Do I stop now? I should probably stop it at some point.

I’ve started making cocktails

I bought a cocktail making set a few weeks back and made a few cocktails at home. Made a few banger Basil Smash-es, but there’s only so many cocktails I can make for myself before I start shuffling into “alcoholic” territory.

Still, if anyone has recommendations for simple cocktails, I’d love to hear them.

I’m in a month-long slump

probably as a result of disliking my job and disliking my degree and kinda waiting for both to be over. Found my way back into a transitionary phase, I suppose, which sucks.

The one thing I have to look forward to is that me and a friend agreed we’re putting our entire pussies into making a game once we finish our respective degrees. We already know what game, we have a solid ruleset, I have a steam store account ready. Should be good.

I started learning Go

Like, the board game. I’ve been fascinated by it for years; only three rules and yet it’s been played for decades. I suck shit at it, but it’s a really interesting game to learn about. Hopefully I even play decently within the year.

Make Games For An Audience of One

2026-06-13T10:26:15+03:00

A friend sent me a link to NO-ONE IS GOING TO BUY YOUR GAME, described by critics as “the most pretentious itchio submission ever made”. While I do agree with the “manifesto” on some regards, I do think the sarcastic commenter was right: this is way too pretentious for its own good, to the point it ends up contradicting its own mission statement.

So I wanna talk about this manifesto a bit, and then give my own twist on its mission statement.

I’d recommend you go read it regardless, even if you’ll disagree with it its good to work that critical thinking muscle.

Anywho, the manifesto’s ostensible goal is to combat the capitalistic idea that every hobby needs to necessarily turn into a business. That “making it” means “making money from it.” This is most bluntly stated in the title of section 1: “THE DREAM OF SELLING GAMES IS KILLING THE DREAM OF MAKING GAMES”.

However, this manifesto also conflates “no one will purchase your game” with “no one will play your game”, ironically reinforcing the belief it sets out to combat - that games only exist as products to be sold. This can be seen in section 6, titled “YOU MUST MAKE YOUR GAME EVEN THOUGH NO-ONE IS GOING TO BUY IT”, which discusses no one playing your game:

It is your duty to the next generation to show that the commercial videogames are an anomaly, a systemic flaw, a rounding error. They are drowned out by a vast, unspeakably dense landscape of shitty, flawed, imperfect videogames that no-one is ever going to buy.

I’ve bought and played many dogshit games on steam. I won’t name and shame them here, but I’ve played games with heart and soul that were so rough around the edges I had to leave the developer a very critical review, and in a few cases refund the game. I’ve also played many free titles that were an absolute joy, positively world-changing, which I will name and praise here: We Become What We Behold, Mike Shadow: I Paid For It!, This Is The Only Level…

“Dogshit games” and “games no one is going to buy” are two different categories, and conflating the two implies to me that the author still primarily sees games as objects of capitalism to be given a pricetag.

There’s multiple sections in this article (like section 4) which rebel against the tyranny of… uh, good game design practices. Like that you do not need to have “good controls” or “a tight core gameloop” or “a reasonable learning curve”. Which like, you should? You really should have all of these if you can, just to make your players have a better experience. It once more states that “you do not need these things because you are not trying to convince anyone to buy your game”, implying the only reason you’d ever want someone to play your game is if they’re buying it.

There’s much to discuss about whether games should always be made for the enjoyment of their audience, or exclusively for the enjoyment of their creator (the beginner’s guide is an entire game about this debate, which I suspect the author played right before posting), but there’s nothing wrong with wanting people to enjoy your game. I’ve made plenty of free games out there with zero intent of making money off of them, but I still wanted people to enjoy them. I iterated and reiterated and tried different strategies so people would have fun in it. I’m not convincing anyone to buy my game, but I do want them to play my game, that’s why I made it in the first place. Not as a way to (in my least charitable wording) jerk myself off to how smart a designer I am, but just to spread joy in the world.

Nothin’ wrong with that.

If you want to convince people that their game doesn’t have to exist within the confines of capitalism, you can’t exclusively discuss the game from within the confines of capitalism.

So, what do I say?

I do agree with the fundamental idea that you don’t need your game to be marketable. Thinking about what games sell rather than which games will be enjoyable results in a very, very bland gaming landscape. What “sells” is dictated by trends, and trends are volatile and unpredictable, so you really shouldn’t worry about them. Make something fun, something you are proud of, and just put it out there.

You don’t need your games to be perfect, because I assure you, they never will be. I spent literal years redesigning a board game from scratch several times over, and I still felt the final game rules could use a little more tweaking. Make something you think is fun, something that might not be for everyone, but will have an audience of one (1) insane person who’ll be begging you to add more to the game.

That one person could be you. They could be a stranger. They could be a friend. But make the game for one person. And make the game as perfect as it can be for that one person.

If all goes well, more than one person will find your game, and they’ll love it too. You will have found an audience of similarly insane people who think you’re god’s gift to gaming and tell their friends to try out this cool new indie title they found.

If not? You have made one person happy. And that’s more than enough.