Urgh. The week that just passed was bad. I was basically out of action for the whole week due to an acute URTI (yes... that's URTI). Normally I would just try to ``suck it up'' till I'm in a position where I can operate nearly normally, but thanks to the existence of a high-enough stakes external meeting, I just had to get well enough to go through it.
And so to the doctor I went, and was given enough meds to knock me out cold for a while.
Now I'm in the odd position of still having some viscuous as hell phlegm, but without the usual pus dissolved in it because the bacteria that were causing the trouble had been eliminated through the course of antibiotics.
But I don't really want to talk about that here.
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I finally caught up with this year's SGDQ. The games that were showcased were sufficiently varied, the production quality high, but as always, the longer the GDQ events are run, the more mainstream they get, and therefore the more they will ostracise the fringe despite being fringe events on their own right.
Part of the annoyance that I have is the many instances of in-your-face virtue signalling on things that aren't directly related to the charity organisation that the particular GDQ event was organised for.
``But MT, you know that the so-called `virtue signalling' you are referring to are very real issues that the individual speedrunners are facing, and thus when they are given a global platform such as GDQ, they should be allowed to express themselves!''
Uh-huh. But the slippery slope begins---why this particular issue deserves a shout-out, while others are taboo? I'm fine with having causes other than the target charity that the speedrunners might have, but it just feels odd to have anything else other than the target charity's mission being shouted at ever so often.
If it were a protest, it would make sense---the idea of a protest is to be as inappropriate with the vibe of the venue as a means of drawing attention to the cause (hence: ``protest''). Thus, a group of people protesting against the execution of some person in some country by standing outside of said country's embassy within the protesters' country makes sense, even if it may be illegal. Or in the extreme, the provocation of violence on the streets to draw attention to a cause in the form of protesting against the authoritarian nature of the state also makes some kind of sense, legality and escalation issues aside.
But what happens at GDQ isn't a protest, because the folks who are watching GDQ aren't the ones who are likely to be part of the cause of the issues in the first place.
An expression of solidarity then? Maybe, but it just feels off at a charity event.
Or maybe I'm just getting jaded from observing that the current trend of the world tends towards the ``might is right'' mentality after having veered away from it for nearly fifty years.
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I think I need to get back in the saddle of my bicycle. Three-ish weeks of non-cycling due to my work-from-home days being nullified as well as self-diagnosed plantar fascitis surely does not help matters.
I think that's about it for now. I really don't want to write more for now, and would rather get some rest. Till the next update then.
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