My neighbor, who has made games in all kinds of places but playing and designing Magic: The Gathering is probably the most recognizable, told me once that "Gamers gonna game." Even as a snip of text, there is the psychic implication of a shrug. In another context, it might be called Bias Toward Action. He deployed this language to suggest that when engaged in a system, the desire to poke, prod, and otherwise manipulate that system is very strong, even when doing so might be suboptimal.

I tend to get stuck in loops like this when I've gained a new ability of some kind - it also happens in Wargames, whose mechanical whorls and perturbations... Actually, hang on. I think I might be doing the writing version of it now. The urge to "show you them" when it comes to my word collection can occasionally supersede legibility. That won't stop me; only death can. The end result of what I do might be "writing," but what I actually do is play with words, and not playing with words makes my liver itch.

One place these dynamics can absolutely be found is in racing. Typically not at the professional level, because they have already internalized the crystalline wisdom enunciated in today's strip, though anything is possible at a couple hundred miles per hour. Normal people who do not</> make their money being a human bullet might enter a simulation of racing thinking to themselves, how hard can it be? We're just driving in a circle. The answer is "incredibly fucking hard."

We want to do things, and have other things happen as a result! As counterintuitive as it is, doing less is… shit. Could I have just said "less is more" at the top?

(CW)TB out.