All's well here at The Dispatch. The snails are building their own pretend city out of cardboard boxes in the attic. It started out pretty simple, with a few different boxes taped together with holes in the side for windows. But they have been industriously working on it all week and it quickly evolved into a sprawling system of connected structures, each intricately detailed and decorated. They say that they modeled it off of Rome and are starting to talk about forming a government. We're obviously worried thing will get out of hand soon, but the snails have assured us their government will be a democratic republic for the snails and by the snails.

Game Boy 👾

• Magic
  • Arena and some IRL EDH
• Baldur's Gate 3
  • Had played the alpha version a while ago on Stadia, when it was incomplete and super buggy
  • Definitely more polished now, but still with some rough edges
  • The amount of variability in the game is really cool though and how much is dynamic based on player action
  • Doing a lot of save scumming though to make sure I get the right outcome in fights and fights can take a long time (which is also my biggest qualm with DND in general)

Links 🔗

• It’s weird how design systems are so rote, yet so difficult
  • Thoughts on how tools can make creating design systems easily, but coordinating with others is the hard part
  • "It’s not so much that design systems are difficult, but rather that alignment and understanding and the resulting decision-making around design systems is difficult."
  • 👆 this quote I think applies to all software development
• Database Fundamentals
  • A cool-looking walkthrough of how databases work through a toy implementation
  • Skimmed and saved for later
• Card Forge
  • An open-source rules engine for Magic the Gathering
  • Save that for later

Albums 🎧

• "Bromst" by Dan Deacon
  • Hadn't listened to this in a long time, but feels like I'll be into it
• "God Save the Animals" by Alex G
• "City Sun Eater in the River of Light" by Woods
• "Light Up Gold + Tally All The Things That You Broke" by Parquet Courts
• "Master and Everyone" by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
• "Big Time" by Angel Olsen
• "The Jordan Lake Sessions" by The Mountain Goats
  • Getting into knives is when it really takes off
• "Father of the Bride" by Vampire Weekend
  • Also hadn't listened to this in a long time and had sort of written it off as a not-great album, but I feel like I get the vibe more now and can come to it newly
• "Wide Awake!" by Parquet Courts

Podcasts 🎙️

• Not Another D&D Podcast