Lucio’s Rambles

The Horrors of Personal Style

2026-03-13T18:47:26+02:00

While I couldn’t go to this year’s GDC, the friend I was planning to go with did. They are very fashionable and great with people, two things I am incredibly jealous of them for; they managed to make connections with a bunch of people in the industry already, including getting someone to pay for their expensive lunch on day 1.

I asked them to teach me their ways, how did they manage to get so many people to know them so quick. They said I should compliment people and then naturally introduce myself to enter the conversation (good plan, however I am terrified of talking to new people, so it’ll take work), and to “dress in a way that makes you easy to recognize or stand out”.

This second part is the part I wanna talk about. Because man oh man do I have negative points in style. The most I know about matching clothes is owning 200 green T-shirts because I have green eyes. Beyond that point it’s up to god whether I look good in the mornings or not.

For years I’ve wanted to get some sort of style going, but I never really got how to do that. I look online for advice, or skim descriptions of books, and they all already assume you have some sense of natural style. “Try new clothes and see which ones fit your asthetic!” How do I know if they fit, if I don’t know what my asthetic is, or what clothes even compliment it? The few times I’ve gone with people to shop, they would usually rip whatever I picked off the shelf from my hands and hand me something else to try out.

And even then, how do I look memorable? I am a tall bearded white guy, I already look “default” in most work-related conferences I go to, so my clothes really need to pull their weight here. What do I wear? In terms of accessories every guy wears a watch and a necklace so those seem like boring options. Do I get a print tee? Are print tees cringe? Is wearing tight shirts too self-absorbed? Where do I START???

I’m probably gonna pester that same stylish friend for tips once GDC ends and they’re not running around meeting everyone in the industry within record time, but until then I’ll just scream at the heavens and wonder what the hell “matching patterns” even means.

Also, on the topic of self-grooming. I have tried waxing my legs today.

Hoooooly shit, it took like an hour and I only waxed half my leg. And it took so much goddamn wax! How do women do this shit???

You Are Not Affiliated With Me!

2026-03-09T22:11:55+02:00

I was just added to a group chat by a friend who I have not talked to in many moons. Good friend, known him from highschool, chill guy, does cosplay. He opened a discord chat for other israelis who are currently trapped at home bc of the war.

I join the server and notice that there’s a game of gartic phone going on, so of course, I join in. Many laughs are had, silly drawings abound.

I immediately notice two of the guys are… edgy. Incredibly liberal usage of the hebrew N-word, “ironic” misogyny jokes, you know the drill.

Except this time, they tried getting me in on it. I was the only other cis guy in the chat and no hint of fruit in my voice, so I figure they figured I’d be a likeminded individual to share in their hatred of women and how shallow they are.

I kept shutting that shit down and commenting on how their views on women were both unrealistic and harmful to themselves.

I don’t want a medal or anything it just SUCKS when people assume “my team” is one I do not subscribe to IN THE SLIGHTEST.

My Flight Got Cancelled

2026-03-06T09:26:29+02:00

I have been planning to go to this year’s GDC for the past 6 or so months.

I talked to an american friend of mine for us to both meet up. We both organized a place to sleep in, some stuff to do, places to see. Planned the GDC schedule. They got me a gift. The stars were aligning for next week to be an incredibly memorable one.

Last week, Israel bombed Iran.

I already knew this was probably spelling doom for me, but I wanted to hold out hope. Partially because it’s better to over-plan than to miss my flight because I assumed it won’t happen, but mostly because I didn’t want something I’ve been fantasizing that much about to go to waste.

As my flight was approaching, I was growing in nervousness. All flights were grounded, but it was announced that outgoing flights would be starting on sunday, the very day I have my flight.

I looked this morning at the flight tracker, and the flight still seemed to be on. I was nervous but happy. Maybe I get to get out of this shit and go have fun.

While I was at the supermarket checkout, buying stuff to give my friend, I got an email saying the airline cancelled my flight.

I finished checking out to not hog the line, got outside, and just

stared at it. for a few minutes.

I didn’t really move. I sent messages, I was active on my phone but I was just

all the energy drained from my body. it still has, I’m typing this so very tired.

Told the friend. They’re bummed out, I’m bummed out. I told them to still go to GDC and do the stuff we planned to do without me, but they mentioned that a lot of other people also cancelled going to GDC due to the trump administration’s ICE bullshit.

I still want to go see them. I was planning to meet my family, see some other friends on the way.

I might start planning to go to the US anyways, just to see people. I might start planning to go to gamescom in august instead.

I don’t know.

either way, this is going to ruin my entire week.

la bomba

2026-02-28T14:57:25+02:00

Hello lads. It’s a saturday morning, I am idly poking away on Instagram, when an alarm clock rings. Not my alarm clock, no no, but rather a giant siren several kilometers from my house, blasting the loudest horn you could imagine, waking up everyone who was trying to use the weekend to catch up on lost sleep.

For you see, dear readers, we have attacked Iran as of this morning. Yes, again. The loud-ass siren didn’t wake us up to warn us we were being attacked, no, the government just wanted us to know that they attacked in Tehran and were very proud of themselves.

Later in the day we were actually attacked by Iran, prompting me to go to my new building’s bomb shelter for the first time, and WOW this is a deluxe shelter if I’ve ever seen one. I’m used to hiding in staircases, small metal rooms with a bed because it was being used as someone’s bedroom, but this time - this was a giant ass shelter. It had a wifi router, it had toilets and showers, it had a worktable, several sofas; this was a fallout shelter if anything. Very comfortable place to sit in while hearing faraway shockwaves rattling the doors of the building.

Other than that? I’m doing pretty good, all things considering.

Actually there is one thing I’m worried about right now - my plane tickets. I am supposed to fly to San Francisco in a about 8 days to go to GDC 2026, and if this bombing run escalates into a proper war, I’m going to miss that, which would suck. I planned this for about 8 months now and am going to meet up with a friend from the US who I planned on bunking with, so I really am hoping this ends up being nothing.

Always bet on nothing, as they say.

Possibly delusional considering I was just in the bomb shelter this morning, but a man can dream.

Anyways i’m doing chill. Spent this morning reading some academic papers and working on my paper for school, tried installing Cookie Clicker and turns out Linux can’t even run the thing (a blessing in disguise really), watered my plants, played some deadlock… life’s chill.

Wimp-Lo Internet Theory

2026-02-16T12:28:03+02:00

I was just now browsing reddit, (specifically a subreddit which copies posts from tumblr, not helping the idea that 90% of the internet is four social media sites linking to eachother,) and I found an incredibly useful term I think others would be interested in:

Wimp-Lo Internet Theory: The internet is full of people who were trained to argue wrong, as a joke.

The idea is, when the reward for a post is engagement, you’re incentivized to make the dumbest possible takes, to encourage the most engagement. Good arguments are hard to counter-argue, so fewer people are likely to engage. Bad or nonsensical arguments are easy and draw in the most engagement.

I don’t have much to add here, it’s a pretty straight-forward definition and it explains a lot about the kind of things you’re bound to see browsing the internet. Like Bikeshedding and Cunningham’s Law state, people love nothing more than to prove they’re smarter when there’s absolutely nothing at stake, and algorithms which boost these kinds of behaviors teach us to repeat them more and more.

I Like Linux

2026-02-11T22:55:00+02:00

About a month ago, I installed Linux Mint on my laptop. This came following a long and agonizing period of constantly debating if, when, and how I should move to Linux, and man oh man I wish I had done that sooner.

Windows 11 being awful is something pretty much everyone online is aware of by now. The constant AI slop being pushed down each of our pores is one thing, but the fact many of the basic features just break is pretty alarming, especially for something as fundamental as an operating system. The siren song of the third operating system on the block has been one I’ve been hearing for quite a long time, but I always had something else holding me back. “It’s not the right time,” “I have school,” “there’s one project I gotta finish,” yada yada. Never the right time, never the right place.

Well, about a month ago, one of my friends asked me to install Linux on their machine. That was enough to finally make me do it.

His laptop came prepackaged with Windows 11 (to the extent that it has a COPILOT BUTTON), and he mentioned how the computer constantly sounded like a jet engine about to take off. “Linux is less heavy on my computer, right? Please for the love of god get this shit off mine.” I did not expect a non-programmer friend of mine to be the first one to make the jump, much less one of the artists who notoriously are bound to Adobe and their demonic whims, but so it was. He got it, told me how convenient it all was, and I went “fuck it, I want some of that too.”

Wow this operating system is nice. Not because it changed my life or anything, but because of all the things I no longer need to think about.

On windows, my laptop fans were on pretty much 24/7. On Linux? I actually thought I broke my fans because they would not turn on, until I found out my computer was running so cool they never needed to. Installing Windows on a new machine is a nightmare of missing drivers and arcane sections of the system configuration.¹ I installed Linux and everything just worked out of the box. I thought Linux was supposed to be the hard one, I was lied to.

I can’t even complain about games all that much. The one thing that holds people back from moving to Linux is compatibility issues with apps that just assume you’re a windows user, but since the release of the Steam Deck this is much less of a problem. To those who don’t know, the Steam Deck is a portable gaming machine that can run games right from your steam library, which made it very appealing to PC users. It also runs Linux, meaning that if you wanted Deck users to buy your game, you needed to make it Linux-compatible. Nearly my entire library runs on Linux now.

It really is this nice. I’m glad I started with Linux Mint, and I’m really glad I finally made the jump. All I need to do now is put mint on my desktop computer, and my transfemmification- I mean, switch to Linux will be complete. Just need to get thigh highs now.

I can attest to this because said artist friend needed to reinstall Windows to use Adobe products, and for the past week he cannot get the trackpad to work. ↩

bird

2026-02-06T14:59:45+02:00

It is friday morning, and there is a bird stuck in my net.

My apartment building has AC units on the outside of every unit, and following what I can only assume to be a constant barrage of various pigeons and doves choosing to make said units their nests, large nets were installed to stop the birds from getting to the AC units. However, as anyone who’s had any passing experience with birds will know, these creatures will stop at nothing to enter spaces they shouldn’t be in.

As of this morning, one of them has managed to infiltrate a hole in my upstairs’ neighbors’ net, and is now stuck on the top of my net.

Somehow, this majestic creature has managed to get its right wing stuck in such a way it cannot pull up nor down to unlodge itself free, as the bottom of the wing, and the very top, have both crossed the net. This creature, upside down, stares at me as I am holding a basket of laundry.

“…I’m sure it’ll figure out how to get out of this mess on its own.”

It is now 13:30, about 5 hours later, and the bird is still stuck in the exact same place. Well, shit, I’m gonna need to do something about this myself.

I go to the upstairs’ neighbors first, and ask them if they can dislodge the bird themselves. They proceed to show me how the net is so large, they can’t even see the poor pigeon hidden behind their AC unit. They suggest I call the city vet hotline, but they’re closed on weekends.

“If I don’t want this bird to die here, I’ll need to do it myself.”

I pick up a broom, and try to move the net so the bird has an easier time escaping. Doesn’t do much.

I get as close as I can to the bird without falling out the window and start trying to dislodge it with my hands. It’s hard, I feel like I’m going to tip over any minute, but after some struggle I manage to remove its right wing. However, majestic a creature as it is, it managed to get its other wing stuck while trying to escape. It’s significantly worse than the first wing was, and I can’t get it out without seriously hurting the bird.

I grab some scissors.

I make a hole near the bird (I do not trust myself to cut the hole its got its wing stuck in), and it rolls over and falls free, right next to my AC unit.

I can’t see the bird anymore.

I sat down to type this post, and decided to go look at the poor thing once more. I can see it now! It’s wobbling next to the net. It’s still alive, but I imagine its wings hurt.

I try to think of how I can get it up and outside, as it’s about two meters from my window to the bottom of the net. I have a broom that’s wide enough at the bottom that I imagine it could comfortably stand on, and I could comfortably raise. The bird stands confused as I poke it several times with the business-end of a broom.

There’s a final project I have open in the other monitor that glares at me as I keep thinking of different ways to rescue the flightless creature.

Any suggestions would be very sincerely appreciated.

Indie Games in the Tel Aviv Sparks Festival

2026-01-28T13:09:00+02:00

It’s 12:51 on a wednesday, and I’m currently sat in the Tel Aviv Expo Conference Hall, because it is currently hosting the Sparks Innovation Festival for 2026. Most of the floor is filled with tech startups, mostly what you’d expect; cybersecurity, AI, nd many acronyms that I sincerely can’t make heads or tails out of. But that’s not why I’m here today. I’m here today because in the leftmost corner of the hall, right next to the inexplicably placed Tesla cars, is a section for up-and-coming indie games.

This section has been crowded since the expo opening, which actually hasn’t been that long ago (the doors opened at 11), but I took a second to look at every game shown in the lot. And almost all of these are really exciting and (hopefully) spell good things for the indie scene in Israel!

The very first game next to the entrance door is NTD, a game I have not gotten to play yet bc it’s constantly crowded near it, but seems very interesting. It’s a tower defense game (woop woop!) where you take an active role in the defense of your castle rather than just placing down towers. They position this as a unique element, which I keep finding hilarious, because if I had a nickle for every tower defense game unaware of all the other tower defense games where you take an active role in the defense of your castle, I could probably afford to quit my job. Still, it has a very neat pixel-y style, and seems fun to play. I’m rn downloading it to my laptop to try it at my leisure.

Right next to it is UvsU, a game I’m sincerely very excited for. It’s a dev that’s made multiple other fun games before, and showed off a prototype of this game about a year back in a small tel-aviv playtest session. It was a lot of fun then, and it’s neat to see how the game’s improved since - a cool plastecine presentation, a decent-enough soundtrack, a lot of small QoL improvements that really make the game pop… I can’t wait for it to come out, wishlisted it.

I’m not gonna go down every single game there, there are a lot, but there are two other games I wanna mention, as they looked neat: There’s Antlers, a platformer where you play as a deer-creature with a positively wonderful artstyle, and The Adventures of Bentzy in Bentzyland, a gameboy-style game that they actually had running on a gameboy! (And ran significantly better than the big demo, might I add).

I thought the gameplay wasn’t that amazing, but the fact they had an actual rulebook with characters and a physical box is absolutely adorable, major props.

There were a lot of other games there, but they were mostly student projects (something I wish my uni would invest in). We had a lot of high-profile hitters from Tiltan, a uni in the north that is considered the cream of the crop when it comes to game design (and I wish I went there instead), and some low-polish projects from Ariel (a nonremarkable but decent uni). Tiltan has an in-house game studio called Clover Bite (bc “tiltan” is hebrew for “Clover”), and most of the projects there were games that are coming out to steam. The main one that caught my eye was Chef Knight, which needs serious work but looks like it has promise.

Anywho, it’s now lunchtime, and I want to be a cheap coot and eat some free catering-quality food. Cya’ll.

I Need To Quit Like, Yesterday

2026-01-26T10:20:53+02:00

I actively have a throbbing headache from a meeting at work.

To those who haven’t seen my previous meltdowns about my place of employment: I work at an indie studio. This studio has no future, and seemingly no plan. They’re making a custom game engine, with a custom programming language, using typescript and electron. They originall wanted the main selling point of their engine to be multiplayer compatibility and having enemy AI that was actually smart, but the AI tech is kinda doodoo so they gave up on it, and in this very meeting I was told we may do multiplayer “in a year and a half atleast”. So what the fuck’s the point.

They pay me incredibly poorly for hi-tech standards and said they cannot afford to pay me more, it’s four hours a day which is not full-time but it’s four hours of my life per day, and increasingly the work I’m doing feels more like churning water. I started here by programming an entire board game into a digital format, through some pain and complications, but I got it going. Now? I’m copying over dialog windows. “Oh, it’s just copying text, what’s the prob-“ nononono, every dialog window is a unique, separately designed game scenario, which I need to recreate, and then copy the relevant values over. There’s over 100 of them and only half the game’s dialog is written. “Wouldn’t it be a pain to change anything about the dialog later though?” yes. yes it is.

The main benefit I’m getting here is crossing the “junior dev” threshold. Like, having it written on my CV that I worked here for X amount of time as a programmer. But at this point I’m wondering if it’s even worth it anymore.

I’ve gotten a site running with rust, postgres, and s3 out on my spare time while working here. If I had more spare time, I could probably make that even fancier (and resistant enough that I could link it here without worrying that it might blow up) and have that on my resume. Money isn’t that much of a concern for me, even though I very much do appreciate not being in red in the bank right now.

Is it even worth it?

I’m honestly considering quitting. Have been for a while. I am barely motivated to work anymore.

I’ll probably ask my parents and family what they think.

What the Fuck is ‘Spiritually Israeli’

2026-01-26T10:13:41+02:00

To those who don’t know (or are reading this in the future), american ICE agents have killed a man who was, at the time, already disarmed and did not pose a threat to them. It’s not the first nor only time they’ve done so recently, (any black americans could testify to this,) but this particular instance has blown up on the news and social media. I open reddit, open a meme site I browse, and I see someone posted a quote-retweet of the killing with the statement: “UNITED STATES OF ICE-RAEL.”

And under this post, the most upvoted comment is:

ICE is spiritually israeli

Guys what the fuck are we doing

This is far from being the first time I’ve seen this kinda thing - “something is vaguely bad? it’s israeli clearly.” There’s been the meme on Instagram of inserting a caption such as “when bro says he can’t play games until 2 am bc he has work in the morning” and putting it over a video saying “he is the greatest israeli soldier”, for example, but like… seriously, what does “spiritually israeli” fucking mean.

I’ve seen it applied to labubus, matcha tea, Love Island (the reality show), Sydney Sweeny, Taylor Swift, crumbl cookies, bisexuals?, linkedin, overwatch characters, anime characters, fantastic four fanart,, whatever the fuck else you can think of, it’s just a way to say “thing bad”.

And like. I know I’m obviously biased here, but you guys do see the danger here right? Labelling anything remotely malicious as “reminding me of those jews”?

It’d be one thing if we were talking about the IDF’s actions, sure, but that’s not what people use this fuckin term for. Know Your Meme says it’s used to “describe trends in consumerism that were co-opted by people as culture and taste due to internet and influencer influence”. Like, fuckin’, “capitalism and greed oddly reminds me of the jews! I am sure there’s no further reading I should do about this.” Am I crazy here??

And even if there wasn’t the antisemitism thing, this is just basic bigotry, right? The russians got the brunt of this when putin started invading ukraine, getting shit on relentlessly for the crime of nationality. Like the thing being mocked isn’t the actions or political beliefs, it’s being from the country at all. It’s low hanging fruit. And it’s basic xenophobia.

I feel like I’m going nuts.