WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]

  • 0 Posts
  • 18 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 26th, 2020

help-circle




  • During my time getting an advanced degree I spent a lot of time learning about RNA and that contributed to COVID discourse being so disconcerting. It wasn’t my first time learning about RNA vaccines, I worked with human applications of Ivermectin, and I even looked at an old textbook that had a chapter about coronaviruses and fears about possible mutations.

    I learned about cool shit like interfering RNA (RNAi) and how you need RNAi to have proper growth of hands in the womb. There was this theory that DNA and protein are just convenient ways for RNA to express itself. There was this theory about “the RNA World” that was the original self-replicating nucleic acid. I learned that only ~2% of the human genome accounts for protein translation and some of it encodes RNA and we (aren’t/weren’t) sure what they were for. That section was really cool. It was kind of cool to get to the point where we were talking about viruses and RNA because it took all the building blocks that went all the way back to high school biology and physics as necessary building blocks to get to these awesome ideas about the nature of biology.













  • For my money, I’ve found myself fascinated by the inner workings of games. Art directions, concept art, changes from beta versions, sound tracks, music theory of the soundtrack, and coding (panonenkoek, the guy who did watch out for rolling rocks in 0.5A presses). It lets me appreciate games that are pieces of art more richly and deeply. I know every surface texture and midi file of Majora’s Mask. I have artist renditions of video game music on my playlists. Pallet Town on violin, Gusty garden galaxy on violin, song of storms on piano. I have a poster of a Pokemon card.

    Do I play many games? No, not really. It doesn’t mean the flame dies out, it just means my interests diverged and morphed. The appreciation never left. The same inner child who would be saddened by the departure would get a kick out of my writing. The same critic who didnt like Tales of Symphonia’s sequel put their money where their mouth is and wrote about an ex-main character from an outside perspective. All of this lets me expect less from games and be able to see the effort that went into the individual parts. The dev team doesn’t need to fill the open world with big laser beams, it can let me soak it in for a while.