In order to be incorporated, a company has to have stock. Private companies still have shares even if they aren’t traded on public exchanges.

It’s possible that Gabe owns 100% of Valve’s stock, but it’s also possible that he’s sold some to other people or entities. Originally when Valve was founded, it was a split between Gabe and Mike Harrington, but Harrington reportedly sold his shares to Gabe when he left.

It’s also very likely that Gabe owns shares in other corporations, even just as personal retirement investments. But that’s not what I was talking about.

This is exactly why I’m wondering if “Bubba” could be referring to someone else. Maybe not a celebrity.

Heck, could be a giant novelty dildo. Or a dog.

I hope you’re able to get that alone time soon, and I wish you the best of luck in hanging on until then!

Alone time is something that’s been on my mind quite a bit recently. It seems like I’m the only person I know irl who actively seeks out time alone. Most people i know seem to dread the prospect.

I hear people use phrases like “I am stuck in my head” or “being around other people helps me get out of my head”. To me, the idea of your own head being something so bad that you want to avoid is horrifying. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved having time alone to organize my thoughts and like, do maintenance on my mind. To review memories, get them all organized and solidified in my head. To try to evaluate myself as objectively as possible. To directly confront ugly and painful thoughts and work through them. To update my impressions of other people. To make predictions and forecasts as best as I can, to mentally prepare for things. Not as in psychic visions or anything like that, but like a chess player tries to predict the opponents moves. Stuff like “I got invited to my friend’s Halloween party, but he’s also friends with this guy I don’t like, so there’s a good chance he will be there too. I better be prepared to be civil and neutral and try to avoid him”, which is way better than just showing up and being surprised.

Alone time has been hard for me to come by the last few months too, and I can feel it. It’s like I’m floating, disconnected from reality. I’m being reactive rather than proactive in my life. I’m normally known for having a great memory, but lately I’ve been forgetting things or worse, incorrectly remembering things. I have always been aware of the fallability of all human memory and tried not to rely on mine too much, but I e been disappointing myself lately. I’ve started journaling to try to structure what alone time I have, to be more effecient, and to have a record to use to help my memory. I’m not sure if it’s working.

I’m curious to hear about yours, or any other people’s experiences.

As an American I can confirm it goes back way further than 1950.

“Billionaire” is a convenient modern buzzword. It used to be “millionaire”. The classic joke from Austin Powers where Dr. Evil demands money is a good example. It’s just inflation.

Plus, a lot of “billionaires” are only considers such because they own shares in their corporations. It’s a “theoretically if they could find a way to sell all of those shares at the current price without tanking the market value of those shares in the process, they could get $X billion from that”.

If there were a theoretical global revolution, on of the the first steps of eating the rich is to seize and nationalize those businesses. Later, land reform will seize the extra mansions they own. They will still be left with adequate personal property to live quite comfortably. Finally, the justice system will need to evaluate what labor laws (or other laws) they may have been violating for years and using their wealth to get away with.

Start with the biggest fish and watch as the rest start to downsize voluntarily and cut deals to avoid jail.

I don’t expect to see any of this in my lifetime. Not in any major country, and certainly not globally.

None of that was invented by Valve. “Normalize” is subjective but I would argue they didn’t do any of that either.

Launchers existed for a long, long time before Steam- part of what made Steam so successful was having a centralized launcher for games from a lot of different companies together. Before then there was usually a separate launcher for each game.

Online DRM has existed for as long as the Internet was ubiquitous enough to get away with it. Offline DRM existed before that. Even back in the 80’s games would ship with all sorts of anti-piracy mechanisms. The only 2 Valve games that ever had DRM were Artifact and DOTA 2, both of which were online multiplayer-only games, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Maple Story is pretty widely considered to be the first game with micro transactions, and they were in the form of loot boxes. By the time Team Fortress came out the concept was already popularized in MMO’s, Facebook games like Farmville, and FIFA.

Achievements aren’t something I really care about, but game had those concepts for years. I remember playing Spyro 2 as a kid and tracking down all the skill points. Sure it doesn’t use the word “achievement” but even today Sony uses the word “Trophy” to mean the same thing.

Corporations aren’t your friend of course, it’s just weird that people think Valve invented these things. And Valve’s implementations are some of the most benign and consumer-friendly cases in the industry.

The launcher i consider a positive - it’s a great way to organize my library, including non-steam games. There’s tons of free features I use all the time, like Remote Play, free Cloud Saves, friend management. It’s great for managing inputs from all sorts of different controllers, managing systems with multiple displays, allowing me to control everything with a controller without having to set it down to use my mouse and keyboard. They have great mod support for the games that use it. There’s tons more features I don’t use. It’s not just a launcher like EA Play or UPlay- it’s a full platform. It’s so useful that I even added GOG Galaxy as a non-steam game.

Any business needs to balance the needs of its stakeholders. Owners, partners, creditors, consumers, employees, governments, etc. Valve is one of the fairest companies left alive in 2025 at balancing all of these entities, and yet in every online discussion about them someone always feels the need to pipe in and be like “well aktually they are secretly very bad!”, just because they don’t have the power to stop other companies from being shitty. They don’t have the bargaining power to tell Sega to get rid of Denuvo on a games from prior generations selling for $20. They don’t have the bargaining power to Ubisoft or Larian to drop their annoying launchers. They don’t have the power to tell other publishers and devs to stop adding pay-to-win mechanics. They don’t have the power to stand up to payment processors that are demanding certain content be removed from the store.

Valve DOES have the power to promote Linux as a legitimately viable operating system for gamers, behind Linux enthusiasts. They have the power to get Microsoft to drop their ridiculous store. They have the power to get Ubisoft to at least add their games to Steam, even if you need a dumb launcher still. They have the power to clearly and consistently label games with DRM in their store so consumers can make informed decisions without spending hours digging through the legalize or EULA’s or doing research on enthusiast forums.

It’s fair to question whether Valve’s 30% cut is justified for every publisher, though we also know that some publishers have been able to make separate deals at times. I’m sure you can find other things that are fair to question. It’s really weird to accuse people of “kissing Gabe’s ass” just for recognizing that Steam is the best platform for a consumer to use right now.

I think the main hangup is going to be: how easy and simple is this thing for the average person?

The Steam Deck is, any way you slice it, a better value than the Switch or Switch 2. The Steam Deck has sold roughly 6 million units in 3 years. The Nintendo Switch 2 has sold close to 11 million units in about 5 months.

I hope you’re right and that Valve really shakes up the whole industry, but I’m not going to start expecting that until I see it.

My advice is to envision what you want the future to be, and do what you need to do to make that happen.

That can look like a lot of different things. Sometimes it’s having a hard and direct conversation. Sometimes it means employing subtlty: jokes, passing comments, body language, etc (all the more important to understand and purposefully engage in these skills when communicating with someone who is not autistic). Sometimes it means putting on a mask of civility. Sometimes cutting someone off entirely.

Revenge in my experience is usually not satisfying.

I started typing up my own personal observations about Rush lyrics changing over time, but then I found this quote from Geddy Lee himself:

A few songs may have also been a little naive in their original intent. The nasty little tale called “The Trees,” of course — a comment on forced equality. Being a much more liberal-minded adult, I now have a softer approach to things in life and I’m much more open and willing. I put a lot more importance on social responsibility now than I ever did. I talk about that, of course, when I’m referring to free will. There were a few things we sang about in our early twenties that seemed very important. But as time has gone on, you ameliorate those views because life has told you it’s not so simple. Once you encounter problems and you begin to help your family or friends with some of those problems, you learn a lot about how much of life has lived in the gray areas as opposed to the black and white areas.

The Trees was, and still is, one of my favorite songs for the sake of the music. And I can see how the lyrics may have worked a lot better back during the cold war, just a couple of decades after genocide and famine wiped out millions in the USSR and China.

I grew up listening to both a greatest hits CD that has libertarian tracks like Freewill and The Trees and 2112, but also listening to Snakes and Arrows that had polar opposite messages in songs like Far Cry, the Way the Wind Blows, and The Larger Bowl. They got smarter and more aware of their own privilege as they grew older and saw more of the world.

First of all, stretching. The same stuff I learned back in gym class. The same stuff my soccer coaches made me do in elementary and middle school. Having a morning routine is good, but also taking a moment to stretch before physical activity helps. Whether that’s working out, mowing the lawn, moving the Christmas decorations down from the attic, having sex, or whatever else.

Then there is exercise. I have had a basic structure for years that I landed on in high school, and I keep changing it as my needs change. I’ve also gone through years of my life where I have stopped exercising and faced the consequences.

The core structure is a super set of arm workouts with free weights. Curls, front raises, overhead extension, hammer curls, lateral raises, overhead press. The amount of weight, number of reps, and number of sets varies. If I haven’t worked out in a while and just want to get my joints used to moving again, I might not use any weight and just do 20 reps of each for 2 or 3 sets. If I’m strength training that might be something like 5-10 reps at 25lbs each hand (honestly higher weight/lower reps would be better, but those are my biggest weights and I don’t want to spend the money or dedicate more space in my house for bigger ones right now).

Of course, arms alone is a terrible workout. If I am in a hurry, I’ll do what I consider a “focused” set. I start with pushups (using my 25lb weights as hand holds), then upright rows (with the 25lb weights I still have), then situps (using the 25lb weights as footholds, often grabbing extra weights to hold in my hands). Then I stand up and do the 6 exercises I mentioned earlier, and end with a handful of squats. Then repeat one or two more times. This is usually between 15-45 minutes depending on how long I take to rest, how many reps, and whether I’m doing 2-4 sets. My biggest complaint is that I get bored. I can put in music but that only does so much.

If I want a longer workout with more cardio, I have other options. Until a year ago I had a treadmill and a 10" Fire tablet I got real cheap and hacked to allow regular android apps. I installed Steam Link and used a MayFlash USB adapter to connect joy cons, and this let me play games from my gaming PC while on the treadmill. Not all games work- I found a lot of 3D games disprorienting, and fast-past games were hard because I wanted to time my inputs with my walking pace. But stuff like emulating Pokemon games, visual novels like Ace Attorney, and other turn-based games like Wargroove were great. Playing games and working out made me really enjoy working out, it was great to make progress on my backlog, and it was overall blorerty great. Did that for years and went through a couple of treadmills that broke.

Last year when the treadmill broke my wife and I discussed other options. I have a bad knee and so I wanted to try something lower-impact. The treadmill was also really loud- headphones were required. So instead we got an exercise bike. It’s been even better than the treadmill was, but being more stable means I’m more comfortable with lifting weights while I use it than I was while walking on the treadmill. Which is great multitasking, but instead of playing videogames I just watch videos on the tablet. Still good, but I do miss the gaming time sometimes. But it’s also really nice to get arms and cardio in at the same time.

Ultimately it’s a balance in constantly tinkering with. The beauty is that once you have the core movements down it’s very easy to customize. Strength, cardio, endurance, muscle mass, time, entertainment value, whatever it is I need. It’s good to alternate throughout the week. At my peak I workout every day, but that’s rare to sustain because life gets in the way.

Nutrition… I’m sure some vegans and vegetarians are going to hate on myself for this, but I’ve found the best results come from a nearly-carnivorous keto diet. Eggs for breakfast. Zero-carb protein powder smoothie for lunch (with a bit or orange juice, peanut butter and ice. Some banana if you can spare the carbs). Chicken or pork with leafy green veggies for dinner. Cheese and nuts for snacks. I don’t do it all the time, but every time I’ve done it i usually lose about 30lbs in 2 months. I’ve tried other diets and general CICO and it just doesn’t work the same- I can actively feel my metabolism change as I enter ketosis. And once I’m there, I can shove as much protein into my face as I want and still lose weight.

Which brings me to my final tip: marijuana. Other people my age swear by Tylenol or ibuprofen, but THC is my drug of choice, especially for my bad knee. I can still feel the discomfort in my knee and know that something is not quite right, it just stops bothering me. I feel less likely to accidentally do something that damages my knee further, plus it’s better for the kidneys and liver and stomach than those other drugs. Plus it’s fun to get high… On the exercise bike… And then snack on a bunch of cheese and nuts with no consequences. It really feels like what my body wants to do.

Final tip: Pedialyte makes freezer pops. It’s basically Gatorade as a freeze pop form, and they’re only 4 carbs each! Great frozen treat in the summer when you’re doing something that involves sweating.

Those Brits do all kinds of irrational and silly things for their royalty.

Is this confirmed not real? I remember seeing something a while back about Nintendo partnering with museums to have special 3DS’s that function as audio/visual guides. This could be total BS, but it seems at least plausible to me that a museum could have done something like this during the national mourning period.

Pro-tip: I invested in rechargeable batteries, including 9v’s. Every solstice I just go ahead and change out the batteries proactively. (Could use the equinoxes instead but I usually have a bunch of other chores winterizing or de-winterizing the house at those times).

It’s annoying and probably overkill, but it’s way better than dealing with those annoying low battery beeps that always seem to start happening at 3AM.

Well… You totally can. I like towerr defense games too, but I’ve never played one that I would call perfect. Even my favorite games I could dig deep and give design notes on. Where it’s feasible a lot of games have mods or hacks. A lot of people like Pokemon romhacks more than actual games. I put hundreds of hours into Civ 6 starting vanilla, but mods can fix a lot of the little inconveniences and add new content to the game. I think I’m in the minority of Skyrim players who prefers to keep it vanilla- most people mod the hell out of it.

Bloodborne was still fun, especially on subsequent runs and with co-op. I think it would be a way better game overall if they designed any sort of real onboarding experience. A training dummy in the hunter’s dream, maybe the ability to try out different weapons there before investing resources into them. Using better language (shooting someone is not a “parry”, and why does the axe do blunt damage while the hammer does piercing damage?). An actual goddamn map. A journal system to keep track of what you’ve done in the game so it’s easier to pick up again 3 months later. Clear item descriptions that include numbers. Explanations for what the stats actually do. None of this is what I would call “difficulty”, and once you gain the initial knowledge and experience these problems aren’t as big of a deal, but it does make the game a lot less accessible for new players.

And I question how much value their absence really adds to the players who do stick around to push through and get that experience. It seems like more of a marketing gimmick to be “different” and foment an elitist, hipster-esque fan base. Or maybe it’s a question allocating of the development resources. It’s a shame because there’s a lot of great design too, it’s just hidden behind these frustrating problems that the rest of the industry solved decades ago.

If I wasn’t motivated to play it for my boyfriend I would have just dropped it early on. I don’t feel like I accomplished anything by suffering through that frustration, I just feel annoyed that I had to deal with these problems I feel like I should not have existed in a 2015 game.

I keep on getting told this by people, especially fans of FeomSoft and soulslikes.

I figured I’d take a crack at them this year, and also Bloodborne is my boyfriend’s favorite game, so I played it. And that feeling that everyone describes about the satisfaction and accomplishment… Never happened. I beat the bosses and was just like… Okay, on to the next one then I guess. I did have a much better time playing through co-op with him, but I still wouldn’t say I felt accomplished by it.

I’m in a similar boat- the members of my polycule have been raving about it for a long time ad we finally watched it last month (both the movie and a live production).

The plot is almost non-existent. Like, not a whole lot really happens in the story. It could easily be condensed into an 11-minute cartoon runtime.

The music is… Bad. Just generic, theatrical, musical rock 'n roll. The songs aren’t really memorable or catchy. Tim Curry gives a great acting performance, and he has given great singing performances in other things, but all of the songs are written as more musical conversations than standalone songs. I’ve never even seen Frozen but I still get Let It Go stuck in my head sometimes. I hated Rent but I still get the stupid “525,600 minutes” song stuck in my head. From Rocky, I only remember funny moments like when he goes “antici… Pation”.

It’s dropping with elements of sexuality but never really uses them to say anything. Frank N Furter spends most of the time in a corset and garter, and a good chunk of the cast gets out in similar outfits too, but it’s more funny than sexy. There’s no message being sent about trans people. There’s very little even said about sexuality- maybe a soft message that Brad and Janet need to loosen up a bit, but at the same time Furter’s promiscuity is kind of condemned.

I do see a couple of strengths in it though. Most of the film/play is characterization. There’s tons of dialogue that doesn’t really explain what is going on but does give insight into the personalities of the characters. The long, drawn out, repetitive songs give plenty of time for the actors to dance around and interact with each other and the sets.

The other part is just… Fan service, I suppose. Especially for people who like muscles- even in the live production I saw both Frank and Rocky were impressively jacked. Colombia and Magenta show plenty of leg and cleavage. And I think you’re really on to something about there just not being a whole lot of queer media at the time.

Do you feel like you’re accomplishing something by playing a difficult game?

Personally I do not, and that’s fine. I play games to take a break from accomplishing things.

I enjoyed difficult games a lot more back before I got a job.

As others have mentioned, I’m not a huge fan of positioning this with introversion and extroversion because it seems to be getting at something else entirely. That being said, I do think there is value in looking at the personal motivation to assimilate into groups and how that may be correlated with other autistic traits.

Anecdotally, I remember a lot of my childhood revolving around the idea of “fitting in”. I remember being made to watch videos in school on the dangers of peer pressure. Cartoons, books, the posters decorating classrooms, even the memes all reinforce this idea. Either you’re part of the “popular” or “normie” group or you’re part of one of the “other” groups, but surely you’re part of a group… Right?

Reality and adulthood are in many ways more nuanced, but I still find people stuck in this way of thinking a lot. People ask questions like “do you like musicals?” or “do you like anime” or “do you like horror movies” or “do you like metal” and I’m like… I like the good ones.

Alternative folks give me weird looks because I don’t have any tattoos or piercings, and I wear simple clothes- no logos or patterns or prints or graphics, no spikes or studs or tears or patches. Non-alternative folks seem weirded out that I’m a guy with long hair and a long beard. Personally, I don’t put much consideration into fitting in with these groups when I’m making these choices. But it seems most other people do.

Another way of putting it is that a lot of culture seems to be consumed in bundles, while I prefer to make my selections a la carte. And I would be interested to see how strongly that trait relates to autism.

Increase productivity?