We posit a grim future in today's strip, and you could be forgiven for thinking I was talking about the future, because I did say the literal word "future." But this is more or less the way things work now. If you said "energy" instead of "fuel" you'd be describing the same functional process.

I made this little doodle of Samus in my sketchbook last week and I really liked it.

I understood that Reddit was "the front page of the Internet," but I am not a Redditor and to be perfectly frank I don't know what's required to become one. I don't know if that refers to some Dark Conclave of supermods, or if it applies to people posting things, or if it can apply to a person who reads things but doesn't post them and also doesn't post on things other people have posted.

My post obliterated his, according to the old ritual, because that's how shit go. But he just reposted it above, and I'm glad, because it's great and human and useful. He has a very different relationship to hardware than most reviewers would, and he used it to write something cool.

I was aware of the Surface Pro but I wasn't especially interested in it until I heard it came with a stylus and supported pressure sensitivity. I love gadgets and drawing so it only makes sense that I’ve always been curious about gadgets you can draw on. Since the old Windows tablet computers I've been looking for a good way to draw digitally on the go. I gave the iPad a shot but I don’t like drawing with the “eraser tip” capacitive touch styluses. When I read that the Surface Pro uses Wacom tech I was interested. I went down to our local MS store to try one on the day they launched. The demo machine only had one drawing app on it called Fresh Paint which seems like it’s mostly for kids but it was enough to see that the pen felt good and the pressure sensitivity was solid. I came home and mentioned on Twitter that I was interested in the Surface Pro as a drawing platform and I was contacted by MS and offered a machine to test out (I love my job). A few days later I had a brand new 128gb Surface Pro to play with.

It's so funny; we just did a strip about how Riot's karma engine was upgrading humanity. But he was back in practically the next day, absorbing bioaccumulative abuse from brigands re: his plainly amateur shit. So, maybe it doesn't work on everybody. It's possible that if your brain is mostly pockets of dead fluid you don't benefit from these civilizing efforts.

The 24th (this Sunday!!!) is the last day to pre-order the set, which includes such delicacies as:

There were actually two separate presentations by Sony during the reveal of the Playstation 4: one for developers, which might have been better situated at a GDC, and a second presentation which showed incredibly high resolution videogames in various states of undress. Predictions were verified, or sundered, by virtue of their truth content. The bump to eight gigs of ram was clearly a recent addition, and there's a lot of gesticulation toward the more "wibbly-wobbly" and "timey-wimey" aspects of the backend. By the end, though, they showed a machine that was exquisitely tuned to this particular nanosecond.

is going at full blast pretty much, and you can see the blast - and its fullness - over at Zeboyd's site.

The weird thing is that if I actually wanted to hold to the idea that I only play tactics games where Men Long To Sweat Together Outside Of Combat, the only tactics games I'd be allowed to play would be earlier versions of Fire Emblem. Well, and XCOM. My XCOM headcanon states that the biomodifications which allow them unmatched battlefield prowess also flip the genetic switch that makes them want to get all the way up in that ass. In addition, potent "revigorator modules" allow soldiers to fuck for ten days without food (three without water).

John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, from the strip "Green Blackboards (And Other Anomalies)," has proven itself incredibly durable as a conceptual tool. I see it everywhere. It is beyond delicious that its natural truncation - GIFT - is both an actual word and an implication that it is something we have granted, in Promethean fashion, to the race of man.

I am not obsessed with cars, but I am obsessed with the Tesla; it's unconscionably priced lifestyle totem, which means (among other things) that it's dork catnip. I don't care about "The Earth" beyond putting things in the right garbage cans; I like electric cars because they're electric cars. They're inherently fantastical, in that they are like the tiny vehicles you play with as a young person and picture yourself driving. The doors really open, though, and they're large enough to enter. These things grant them serious advantages in this arena.

...but I just saw that Ben did. Hot on the heels of PAR's Aliens: Colonial Marines review, he delivered a longer form meditation on what makes an "Aliens" game such a difficult proposition.

I posted about our PA: The Series Season 3 DVD last week and now I have a little video to share. This is a quick look at some of the behind the scenes/never before seen footage that you will find on the DVD

Well before the public crucifixions, the editorial back channel was already building pressure re: Aliens: Colonial Marines. They were filing their teeth, waiting to bite.