What I'm Reading / Watching / Playing - March 2025

I've been doing so much reading on the train this month (Photo by Anastasiia Nelen / Unsplash)

Welcome back to this (aspirationally) monthly post in which I share my thoughts about interesting things I've read/watched/played recently.
In February I was busy moving houses, and this month I've spent a lot of time turning our new apartment from an assortment of moving boxes into a proper home, so I've been a bit busy to keep up to date with everything I'd like to. That said, March was also the month in which I got into RSS feeds, which means I've been reading a lot more interesting stuff on my commute than I did before. And I even managed to finish Citizen Sleeper 2!

Let's get into it.

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Reading

Gareth Brown - The Book of Doors

I'm about halfway through this at the time of writing, and I'm having a good time. I like the magic system and the characters; Drummond is my favorite, and I love how Brown makes him come off as this quirky—actually kinda goofy—guy who's been through some shit. It also has one of the most unsettling villain introduction chapters I've read in quite some time. Looking forward to see where the plot is going.

Joe Wintergreen - on: automating yourself out of a job

Joe Wintergreen is a game developer I follow who's worked on some cool games. I've been enjoying his forays into Scythe, a level design tool for Unreal Engine that looks pretty fun to use!

In the post in the headline, Joe succinctly explains why using generative AI makes you less valuable as an employee, a coworker, a developer... it makes you a less valuable person, because you've just outsourced your value to a dumb machine.

I think my favorite part is the last paragraph, but I also like what comes right before it:

But less comically, this wasn’t very union of you, was it? You knew your whole life about automation, and the risk of being pushed out of your livelihood by bosses who don’t mind if the work is worse or the community is hurt as long as they don’t have to pay workers, and now here you are actively facilitating all that out of sheer gormlessness. In Australia, we call this a Dog Act, and you a Dog Cunt. It’s pretty dog.

No one says it like the Australians.

Henry Catalini Smith - Survival Mode

If you've been tapped into the news about tech unionization in Sweden, you probably recognize Henry Catalini Smith as the former chairman of the local union club at Spotify. We met once at a union afterwork, although I'm not sure he'd remember me, as I was too star-struck to go up and chat with him that time.

Like Joe's post above, "Survival Mode" is Henry writing about generative AI; specifically, how he realized that using Copilot when programming was killing the joy of coding for him. I love his analogy between coding with Copilot and playing Minecraft in Creative Mode (hence the title). As someone who never particularly enjoyed Creative Mode in Minecraft, I think I get where he's coming from; when things become too easy, it can remove the joy of accomplishment—and make the output less interesting in the process.

I'd also recommend his post about "onshoring his DNS", in which he writes about migrating his website's domain name services from US companies to Swedish ones. He explains why in the post, but I'm sure you can guess.
If this website suddenly starts having a .se TLD, that post will be the reason why.

Aftermath - CWA And Video Game Workers Launch New Industry-Wide Union Anyone Can Join, Even If They’ve Been Laid Off

You love to see it. I actually found out about the United Videogame Workers union from IGN, but this article from Aftermath (the link in the headline is a gift link, so you should be able to read it without a subscription) was the one that put it into context for me.

As a Swede, the concept of a "direct-join" union is completely normal to me, as that's how all unions in Sweden (and Denmark, as far as I'm aware) operate. Local unions at companies exist, but those are just local clubs of the central union organizations. Most Sweden join a union early in their careers, and stay with that union as they switch jobs; the idea that switching jobs in the US might mean you lose your union membership seems pretty shit to me, and I was sad to hear that the members of UVW-CWA won't be afforded the same rights and protections as members of "normal" US unions. Still, organizing workers across workplaces is essential to a successful labor movement, so I think this will have a big impact on the industry in North America. Best of luck to them!

Watching

Andrewism - The REAL cost of Fashion

Andrewism is a leftist youtuber from Trinidad and Tobago who I love for his content about the various evils of capitalism (shocker, am I right?), but also for his inspiring videos about how we could organize society differently. He's completely changed the way I view anarchism as an ideology—if you're curious about that, I highly recommend his video "How Anarchy Works".

In "The REAL cost of Fashion", Andrew talks about fast fashion and how the fashion industry causes immense harm—to the climate, to the people that make the majority of the clothes, and to people's spending habits—and he also talks about how globalization has led to fashion becoming more or less the same all over the world. I've definitely been noticing this myself, with a lot of fashion trends in Sweden and Denmark seeming heavily inspired by the US and (to a lesser degree) Japan. Andrew proposes a different world, one in which people express much more of their cultural and geographical identity through their clothing. It sounds pretty swell.

This video comes with two "further reading" recommendations; first up is Worn: A People's History of Clothing, which serves as the basis for much of the video. Anyone interested in fashion history should probably give this one a read.
Second is Social Fabric; Clothing in a Free Society, a speculative fiction essay that paints a picture of how fashion could work in an anarchist society. It ties into the idea of the "library economy" that I've also heard about in some of Andrew's videos, like this one.

RagnarRox - Darkwood: A Love Letter to Slavic Horror

I recently discovered RagnarRox because of his amazing retrospective of the Amnesia franchise (developed by Swedish game studio Frictional Games!). My favorite thing about the video is how Ragnar talks about the series' relationship with Lovecraftian horror, and the video contains a description of "A Machine for Pigs" that—were I not way too much of a wimp to play horror games—would have immediately convinced me to play it:

A tale of an incomprehensible cosmic madness straight out of the late 19th century; a vast death-engine put into motion by human hands that is simultaneously far, FAR beyond the reckoning of mortals. Indeed, the real "Lovecraftian Horror" on display here is... fascism.

I watched the Amnesia video earlier this year, so I didn't get a chance to write about it; I'm kind of using the fact that I watched this video as an excuse to write about that one, although the video about Darkwood is great in its own right.
I actually played Darkwood for a little bit many years ago, but bounced off it for some reason I can't remember.

The video makes some interesting reflections on the design of survival horror games, and I'm always happy to hear people's thoughts about this genre that I refuse to experience other than from a distance. Give it a watch, but maybe watch the Amnesia one first.

Playing

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector

I already wrote about this in last month's post, but I've actually finished the game now. You'll never believe it, but I haven't changed my opinion; this game is a rare gem, and everyone should play it.

The way the mechanics contribute to the narrative tension—there were several times when I found myself being forced to make tough choices because of unfortunate dice rolls or gambles that didn't pan out—is wonderfully elegant in its simplicity, and the additions that have been made since the last game only further help bride the gap between systems and story.
The writing remains the major highlight for me, and the ending—which I will not spoil here—actually made me think long and hard about the choices I'd made and how they might reflect on my priorities in my own life.

It also makes me realize that I really need to finish Disco Elysium. One day.