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2025-11-20 23:13:00

I've been writing on bear for 6 months now, I'd be lying if I didn't say that it has flown by.

When I initially started, I wanted to write something every single day... I was motivated and excited at the thought of writing every day to and building up an audience of wild fans who hung onto my every word.

That motivation and excitement clearly didn't stick around for very long, but something better happened for me, I realised that my expectations on consistency were due to listening to other people and their expectations of what consistency should be for everyone.

Consistency is the art of doing the same thing, over a long period of time. What it doesn't say it needs to be is how often you do that same thing on the smaller scale. For me, I realised that I only needed to be able to post once a month. That's it. I've been thankful that I've posted more than once every month but I was under no pressure to do so.

The noise around how important it is to post every day wasn't right for me because I wasn't trying to compete for attention, I have no expectations for this blog to be anything other than a hodgepodge (love that word) of different thoughts, ideas and ramblings that will probably not make any difference to anyone but me.

But that's enough.

There's no niche, no problems that I'm solving, no advice, inspiration or entertainment for others. It's all for me.

Selfish? Perhaps.

But I've been able to publish something at least once a month for the last 6 months after having no success previously.

So I'm calling that a win.

Here's to the next 6 months.

2025-11-20 22:24:00

I've always been fascinated by people who use physical notebooks to keep track of things. However, I never really tried it myself. Checking videos of other people and learning about bullet journaling is as far as I would get. Everything of what I do is digital.

20 years ago, when I started working, I did use a physical notebook to keep track of meetings and tasks. However, as more was to be shared online, I took digital meeting minutes, for convenience and something to return to quickly. I also didn't have a system for tasks, so every day, I had a huge list if things, of which I picked a few, only to return to an as big list the next day.

So when task managers emerged, I jumped on the digital bandwagon and never looked back. The same with my note-taking, I went from OneNote to Obsidian to Tana, and have stuck with this for years. I've perfected my setup which helps me keep track of everything going on. Meetings, projects, people,...

The same applies to my personal setup. I've been using task managers for everything I had to do, and when I got an interest in personal note-taking and journaling, I started with Obsidian. I still us it to this day. Although not consistently every day, requiring a catch-up from time to time. But sticking with it, I managed to have a lot of notes I can look back at. Memories, events,... that are easily accessible.

But that manual fascination has never gone away. Earlier this week, via a recommended article list from Medium, I stumbled on The only thing that stopped me from infinite scrolling, of how he fixed certain aspects of his life by using pen and paper.

This intrigued me, as part of our digital addiction comes from the fact that we use our phones for everything. And it's true. If today I would log a habit as complete, I open my phone, go to a specific app to mark the habit as done. This puts me at risk to get triggered to check out other things. Not to mention the different apps I use for different purposes. Again with the risk of getting lost. Sure, I can configure my phone as dumb one, but still, distractions are only a search or swipe away.

Another thing I noticed is that I enjoy physical writing, whether it's writing in a notebook or using an Apple Pencil on my iPad. I enjoy that feeling.

However, before completely diving in, I feel I need to assess whether it's really something for me, and not just a temporary fad. Also, to define what I want to do with it and how, as there are many methods, tools, and gadgets available.

And more importantly, I'll need to get around the FOMO that I'm currently experiencing with this transition. I've been into digital for such a long time, that it feels look losing all of it once I go manual. The question if I still should update my digital notes, resulting in extra work.

But I don't want to let it go.
So for now, I'm going with a tiny experiment, writing some work notes and task observations via an iPad, and logging some of my habits via a physical notebook. Let's see where it'll take me. Maybe in time I can add my story or wins of the day in such a notebook as well.

And maybe I'll learn to let go, that I don't have to keep everything forever.

Do you log everything manually?
Or have gone through a similar transition?
Or use a hybrid manual/digital method?

I'm all ears to hear your experiences.

2025-11-20 21:42:00

On the 30th of October, I officially finished my data protection law certificate! I'm a bit late to post this because I was so busy and still needed to wait for the actual paper to arrive plus getting a frame and all. :)

The certificate ('Diploma of Advanced Studies') is intended for 3 semesters in part-time. I finished it up in one semester with a grade average of 2,2¹ while continuing my other part-time degree (a Bachelor of Laws, LL.B) and full-time work.

It is quite a bit more intensive than the 2-week crash courses to be a data protection officer and I had to write 6 exams in total, but it enables me to be one plus the permission to call myself a certified consultant for data protection law. I'll have to refresh it every 4 years with a refresher course, or lose it.

While I love to write about commercial tech and social media through a privacy lens here and burn for that topic in private, I intend my career/professional focus to be about health data and AI. I already work with pharmaceutical databases in my job, and I wouldn't wanna miss that part of my work day.

My first of hopefully many pieces of paper on that wall². Would love to do AIGP, CIPP/E, CIPM and ISO27001 Lead Implementer some time, and obviously finish my Bachelor degree and start a Master's in data protection law. This cert consisted of the first 3 modules of that Master's degree already, so I know what's ahead of me and I know I can do it. :)

Now I'm off to another MRI, because my body is being difficult. I hope to post more soon <3

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2025-11-20 15:02:26

Today, on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, I’m remembering more friends and family than ever before. I don’t mean that in a vague “all trans people are my family way”; I mean, I’ve attended more memorials in the last twelve months than ever before, for friends and family who couldn’t cope in in the UK any more.

Also today, on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, our Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) leaked their intention to ban people from single-sex spaces based on how they look.

Under the new guidance, places such as hospital wards, gyms and leisure centres will be able to question transgender women over whether they should be using single-sex services based on how they look, their behaviour or concerns raised by others.

I’m quoting directly there, but the quote is bullshit. Since the point of the “questioning” would be to find out if someone is transgender, the truth of the guidance is:

[…] will be able to question women over whether they should be using single-sex services based on how they look […]

But this interrogation that they’re planning to legalise can’t include a documentation check, because there’s no documentation that could possibly prove what they’re looking for. They’re legalising harassment based entirely on vibes.

The final code instead says it would “unlikely be proportionate or practical to ask for further evidence of a person’s sex” even if doubts were raised.

It said “there is no type of official record or document in the UK which provides reliable evidence of sex” because people can change their sex on passports and driving licences without a GRC.

And here’s the kicker. If your interrogator doesn’t believe you, they can kick you out anyway.

But it says that if there is “genuine concern about the accuracy of the response” it may be proportionate to exclude a transgender person anyway.

…though, again: this quote is bullshit. Just because the cops believe you’re trans, doesn’t make you trans. The truth is:

But it says that if there is “genuine concern about the accuracy of the response” it may be proportionate to exclude a person anyway.

And after all that, if you’re one of the Good Ones and decide to use a single-sex space of your sex-assigned-at-birth anyway, they can still kick you out.

It also states that transgender people could be barred from single-sex services even when their biological sex matches, such if a trans man […] attempted to use a women’s changing room. It says that they can be barred because they are likely to be seen by others as the opposite sex.

So, a short list of places that trans people won’t be able to use bathrooms:

• Shops
• Gyms
• Government
• Police stations
• Hotels
• Restaurants
• Theatres
• Cinemas
• Hospitals

Fuck you if you go to a restaurant and need to pee. They don’t want us in their restaurants.

Fuck you if you need medical attention and need to pee. They don’t want us in their hospitals.

You have to be honest with yourself--look at the legalised harassment and ban from using toilets in hospitals--and admit they want us gone.

Next year’s Transgender Day of Remembrance is going to be horrific.

2025-11-20 11:33:00

This weekend, I fly out for my final travel of the year to Mexico City for the first time. It will also mark the 21st country I’ve visited.

I’m someone who loves traveling but avoids making plans. For example, I once booked my flight and accommodation to Chiang Mai, Thailand the night before my departure. My first moment in Rome after taking the train from the airport consisted of me wandering into the city and happily getting lost for two hours. While friends have told me that this way of traveling would stress them out, it’s led me to unexpected places and friendships.

While I usually pack the night before my flight, the pre-trip excitement usually hits me most when I'm on the way to the airport.

A lot of people hate that part of travel and even get anxious about it. Not me. It’s where everyone is going somewhere. It’s the official start of leaving where I am. It’s a huge reason I love the airport-centered films Up in the Air (2009) and The Terminal (2004).

During my last few trips, I started the tradition of arriving early enough to hit the airport bar for a few drinks before my flight. Yes, the drinks are overpriced, but I see it as a celebration of what’s to come and the real beginning of my holiday. One of my favorite memories came from that ritual: last year, while waiting to board a flight to Taiwan, I was having a beer at the LAX bar when I sparked up a conversation with the guy sitting next to me. He was on his way to India for the first time for business, and that immediately led to my favorite kind of talk: travel talk. We traded stories about past trips, business travel, and our upcoming destinations. After a few round of beers and a high-five goodbye, I unintentionally boarded my flight to Taiwan pretty tipsy, which conveniently helped me fall asleep almost instantly.

I have a tradition for the return experience too: one final meal in the visiting country’s airport. And while it is never the best meal of the trip, it always makes for a nice, bittersweet goodbye.

While I’m super excited to explore Mexico City for ten days starting this weekend—including daily travel blogging/journaling for the first time (!)—I’m also looking forward to returning to the airport bar this Saturday afternoon for that drink or two to kick off another new round of cultural experiences.

2025-11-20 09:36:00

Aura, on Bluesky, posted:

given no one in this thread can even agree what an "immersive sim" is except "it's made by someone who worked on deus ex or system shock", I feel like it's time you all got together and made a Berlin Interpretation to get pissed off about for the next 20 years

Okay, sure.

So here’s one approach to genre, heavily influenced by the way Borde and Chaumeton originally sought to define film noir¹.

We start with a corpus of works that are near universally agreed to fit within a genre; we then identify their commonalities. We define a genre ultimately not through some ‘if this then that’ predicate but as a fuzzy cluster of works that are featurally related. We insert some (subjective) critical judgement in trying to grasp the thematic core that unifies these works and from which these individual characteristics stem.

In the end, we view the genre as having a ‘core’ made up of that definitive canon, but also a ‘mantle’ of more diverse works, and a ‘crust’ of genre blends, sub genres, and variants. It is true that games may or may not have the immersive sim nature; but it is also true that some games have it more than others.

I'm also not going to litigate whether the term "immersive sim" is a good one, semantically. It's just a historical term attached to a particular canon of games, from which I'm trying to divine commonalities and lines of design thinking. My definition doesn't make any references to concepts of "immersion" or "simulation", because I don't actually think they're useful to understanding immersive sims!

1: The Core

Everything stems from our choice of what that canon is. The goal is not to be exhaustive; the goal is to include a good sized set of works that embody the genre. My list is:

• Thief
• Thief 2
• System Shock
• System Shock 2
• Deus Ex
• Dishonored
• Prey

That’s a pretty short list, with some deliberate omission.² It’s also notable that all these games are the work of very few studios that are all related in some way.

What, then, generally unites these games? Here’s a list of morphological and ludic commonalities:

• First-person camera perspective.
• Linear, level-based structure with authored (not procedural) scenarios.
• Individual levels have an open structure that allows for varying routes and approaches; levels as spaces for the player to pursue goals, not gauntlets of challenges arranged sequentially.
• Combat and stealth are both present if not coequal options.
• Embodiment and physicality – ie being able to see the player chatacter model and affordances like mantling, crouching, going prone, leaning.
• ‘Systemic interaction”. Things that obey rules and act on their own independently of the player, allowing for emergent behavior, chains of cause and effect.
• Use of the environment or scenario to the player's advantage; assess-then-exploit play.
• Wide gamut of player affordances that interact with those systems in different ways or empower the player to manipulate scenarios in creative ways.
• Resource management as a limiting factor in those affordances, usually with resources scattered throughout the environment.
• Complex NPC or enemy behaviors, often around player stealth.
• Thematically, these games generally posit the player character as a lone operator going into hostile environments with a mission that they accomplish on their own in the field.

Before talking about this list holistically, I also want to mention one specific point which is more of a design attitude, or a contract with the player than a specific individual feature. This is the idea of verossimilitude³ and completeness: elements of the environment incorporate rich behavior pervasively. The design aims for a world model without "gaps" of expected interaction. If there's both puddles of water and a gun that shoots lightning, the player can safely expect that shooting the lightning gun into water will electrocute everyone in it. If you can light things on fire and throw objects around, you should be able to propagate fire between objects.

Things behave in ways that are consistent (all like things have like behavior), comprehensive (all things have all expectable relevant behaviors), and verossimilitudinous (all behaviors are legible representations of real-world referents).

Because actually implementing this principle is really, really hard, immersive sims often have individual exceptions or misses in achieving it. But their design points in that direction, if that makes sense. And I think this direction is that thematic center that unifies the genre; this idea of "lots of player affordances that point at rules-based systems, embodied in a design that aims at verossimilitude and completeness."

Which isn't to say that this sentence is a complete "definition" of immersive sims; I think all of the elements listed above are to some degree important to that core identity. The lone-operator theme and the sense of embodied presence, for example, are universal to the canon listed above and you could easily put them on the same level of importance as the idea of verossimilitude and completeness.

Classifying things by their features is always fraught, of course, because there's always going to be something you miss, or something that's borderline. One example is character progression systems; people tend to point to the abilities in Dishonored as an RPG-like feature, but they're actually fairly common. But they tend to take very different shapes; progression in Deus Ex, through things like the augmentation canisters, doesn't look much like progression in Dishonored. And Thief doesn't really have much of a progression system at all. So that feels much more like a borderline property of the genre – although of course, if you defined the canon differently, you'd get a different perspective on that. This definition isn't necessarily definitive, but it is at least somewhat systematic.

The mantle and crust

The 'mantle' of the genre, then, includes everything that's clearly within the genre but deviates in one or two ways, or simply isn't so obviously and universally regarded as an immersive sim as to make it into the core. Deathloop is an Arkane immersive sim that twists the formula a bit with its time loop conceit, making it almost a run-based game. Weird West ditches the first-person perspective and thus is lower on the "embodiment" characteristic of most of the genre, but it is very selfconsciously an immersive sim in most ways that count.

Hitman (2016) fits almost every feature listed above: it has a linear structure of individually open-ended levels (though replaying them is encouraged) driven by missions. It's about a lone operator going into a hostile environment. It has rich NPC behavior and various interlocking systems – including, yes, puddle electrocution. Perhaps the main thing that might make immersive sim purists tilt their heads is the game's reliance on scripted scenarios, but I'd argue that every script in Hitman is a scenario, that is, a set of initial conditions and rules for how they move towards various outcomes rather than simple "a thing that happens." The idea of verossimilitude and completeness seems to be present.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution and its sequel do count, I think. Most arguments to place them outside the genre are about those games' relative "complexity" or "depth". You could say that a wading pool is still a pool; or you could say those games gesture towards immersive sim ideas more than they actually enact them.

And then, even further out, you have the broad "crust" of genre blends, twists on these ideas, and games that are informed by immersive sims in their design but are radically different in structure or conception. Shadows of Doubt, for example, is an immersive sim in all but its superstructure – it's a procedural open world that the player navigates in totally self-directed ways, unlike the level-based structure of traditional immersive sims.

The first-person RPG genre is just as descended from Ultima Underworld as immersive sims are, and so the shared DNA manifests in phenotypic similarities that you can easily read as immersive sim influence, or even as those games being immersive sims – if you want to look at the genre expansively. Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and so on all feature stealth and combat, certain tropes of immersive sim interaction (like password locks and environmental clues to their solutions). But they don't necessarily aim towards that idea of completeness and verossimilitude; if you cast Lightning Bolt into one of Skyrim's rivers, you don't expect to electrocute all the fish. Similarly, games like Kings Field (and Lunacid) have that Underworld DNA but are not necessarily built around richly prevalent systems or environmental features.

Of course, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a game in which you can electrocute fish. It seems hard to argue that the game isn't an immersive sim but for the fact that it's an open world and that it doesn't selfconsciously share design lineage with "0451 games".

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic has a lot of immersive sim ideas built into it, but it mostly plays like a straight action game in which kicking enemies into walls of spikes is a central mechanic. Similarly, Bioshock is more linear in its approach, and that series gets less immersive-sim-like as it goes. It's reasonably easy to argue that the original Bioshock is an immersive sim, albeit an action-oriented. It is, after all, a puddle-electrocuting game. But Bioshock Infinite is almost impossible to view as anything but a straight shooter with some funky special abilities the player can use.

Speaking of electrocuting puddles: is "Divinity 2: Original Sin", the ultimate puddle-management simulator, an immersive sim? Food for thought.

Always lurking in the background of immersive sims is the broader idea of an action-stealth genre, into which we can place basically every core immersive sim but also Far Cry, Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2, Splinter Cell, and so on. The line does blur, here; does the Far Cry series acquire the immersive sim nature in Far Cry 2 and then immediately drop it?

My overarching point here is not to argue for the futility of definition, or to try and place any games (besides the canon at the start of this article) exactly in or out of the immersive sim genre. It is, rather, to point out that there are so few truly unambiguous immersive sims that the immersive sim genre does not really fulfill the typical role of genres in games culture. That is, it is not a marketing label you can use to readily find more similar games like the one that you liked; if we imagine the corpus of available video games as one gigantic store, the shelf labeled "Immersive Sims" barely exists. If you go on Steam and look at the "immersive sim" tag, you'll see basically no games that have anything of the immersive sim nature – rather, you'll see job simulators like Power Wash Simulator and Truck Simulator.

Many fans of the immersive sim genre have exhaustively played every game they think is an immersive sim, which is certainly not a feature of a normal genre!

Therefore, for immersive sims to be a truly useful concept, we have to think of them more as a broad cultural force in video games than as a specific canon of games – hence why it matters to list this broad "mantle" and "crust" of immersive sims, this wider space of games that have the immersive sim nature at some level even if not everyone is willing to fully place those games in that box.

Immersive sim ideas get used over and over again and permeate a surprisingly broad swath of games, even if a game everyone can agree Is An Immersive Sim only rarely seems to come out. Arguably⁴, the entire idea of entity component systems in game programming has the immersive sim nature.

I do want to go back to that core idea of verossimilitude and completeness. Games where things behave; things behave as you expect; things behave everywhere; things behave with each other. Centering that lens without entirely disregarding questions of structure (open levels, linear campaign) and embodiment, I'd propose a secondary canon of games that I do think are immersive sims:

• Hitman (2016) and its sequels;
• Deathloop;
• Shadows of Doubt;
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom;
• Far Cry 2 (and no other Far Cry);
• Weird West;
• Ultima Underworld;

This list is very debatable – purposefully radical, even. It is not meant to be a definition so much as one interpretation of the definition above. May this essay, then, be not an end to arguments but just a tanker full of gasoline crashing directly into the discourse. Forever and ever, amen.