lunch

Does anyone know the name of the book about cooking in Leningrad that Rob referenced?

Thank you. I was trying to find an upload of it during the podcast and couldn't. Does anyone have a link to the story about the Mario statue?

I've never had such a steep decline in my enjoyment of a game. The first few chapters are wonderful, with gorgeous art direction, a lovely world, and in spite of the thin, uninteresting plot, both narratively and presentationally, really excellent character interactions. Chapter 9 onward suddenly decides to focus on a story that the last eight chapters (which were about twenty hours for me) never laid the foundation for. I'm now at the infamous Chapter 13, and for the first time I find myself actually speaking aloud as though a developer on the game were in the room with me, asking how someone could turn a game I adored into a terrible Dreamcast survival horror game where I'm hiding in crevices, tracking down keycards, and running around the same drab environments. The scantily clad female characters and fey villain, versus the occasionally overbearing machismo of the party (namely Gladiolus), is also fairly off-putting. I really wish I could strip out the entire story of this game and just explore this world and engage in its combat. It's a shame.

As someone who hasn't played RimWorld (and in light of the developer's response, might not), how did the game handle mental health in a way you found poor?

I don't know about employment law, but I'm incredibly sorry to hear that you have to put up with that. Having an employer strong-arm you into revealing sensitive medical information, and becoming defined by your depression, can be demoralizing.