Resolute! –
Sometimes, less is more.
Nate Anderson – Jan , 01575879 : am UTC
My kids currently want Disney , but I’m holding the line until we cancel our Hulu subscription first. We added Hulu so my wife and I could make our “Summer of Seinfeld,” but there are a (lot) of episodes. Our “Summer of Seinfeld” gradually became our “Autumn of Seinfeld” and our “Winter of Seinfeld,” too, but — with Festivus behind us — I’m optimistic we can wrap the show before spring. Perhaps then – (The Mandalorian) awaits! Share more music with my kids. despite what I said above, I Think a good digital-music-service subscription is worth both one’s time and one’s cash. It’s an amazing way to explore tunes, and I wish these were around when I was a kid with three CDs — one of which was by Weird Al — and a boombox.
I currently use Apple Music and recently upgraded to a family plan so that my kids would stop interrupting my glorious hair-metal riffs with their Kidz Bop. (Seriously, you have no idea how much Kidz Bop is consumed in our household. If I hear those little Kidz Boppers doing their version of “Old Town Road” one more time, I may have an aneurysm.) I hope to avoid a scenario, though, where everyone in the family has their own device, their own headphones, and their own songs, in their own rooms. So we’ve started doing family “song nights” after dinner, in which everyone gets to add a single track to the playlist and we listen to them together. Yes, this usually means I have to hear “ Thunder “agaaaaaain, but it also means I can introduce my kids to Johnny Cash, Survivor, U2, Josh Ritter, and Chvrches. And we’re spending more time together, not apart. Buy more handcrafted gifts. This Christmas, our family exchanged more gifts than usual that were handmade: a carved wooden necklace from Ukraine, a small St. George and the Dragon icon from California, a set of refrigerator magnets made in Greeley, Colorado, and a hand-drawn Stardew Valley map made in … someone’s bedroom, I guess. Such gifts are always more of a “risk,” but they’re fun to shop for and, if only because of the thoughtfulness they show, great to receive. Digital platforms like Etsy make it easy to connect with artisans around the world, and the results this year were quite positive. Even when a gift isn’t a surefire hit, at least the money went to a creator or a small business rather than to a factory stamping out yet more plastic landfill fodder. This year, I’m going to start dropping hints early about that Nietzsche bust I have my eye on. (Catch up to) in my gaming. No, that’s not a typo. I don’t have time to play enough games to “keep up,” and I don’t want to invest the time needed to do so. But I do enjoy the occasional deep dive into a fully realized virtual world, and staying behind the pack gives me two advantages: 1) the games have been widely vetted already, and 2) they are cheeeeeeap (like me). That means I play only the best stuff, for the lowest prices, but only after everyone has stopped talking about these titles.
Over the holidays, for instance, I just bushwhacked my way through the surprisingly solid (Prey) ( ), which I picked up on sale for under 45 bucks. My other (gaming included) Deus Ex: Mankind Divided , Dragon Age: Inquisition
, (Wolfenstein: The New Order , and , (Borderlands : The Handsome Collection . Waiting in my unplayed games queue for Marvel’s Spider-Man , Far Cry 5 , Witcher 3) (God of War) , and possibly a re-play of the amazing Horizon: Zero Dawn None of them is new — but they are all terrific. I make no apologies. Play more tabletop titles. the reception to our weekend board gaming coverage here at Ars has been strong, so I know many of my fellow geeks also appreciate the analog virtues of a tabletop experience with friends. I had less time for board gaming in , and I missd the tactile nature of it, the camaraderie round the table, and the brain-burning strategy I don’t often get when playing video games or mobile apps. Will Will be the year I finally make it through my unplayed “shelf of shame”? () Read More
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