This is legit part of my research into competition, privacy, and the digital market. Facebook's takeover of Giphy was blocked by the UK authorities because of data issues and market distortion. In response, Giphy's argument for the upcoming court case:

As the world mourns The Queen of England, I'm mourning a very different soul today. Today it's already (only) been 5 years since my dad passed. Lots has happened since, that I wish I could've shared. I'm sure he'd be proud of me; I've come a long way.

I just watched a feature film's length worth of cutscenes in Xenoblade 3, and it was entirely worth it. The hits just keep coming with this game!

Chameleon friend! Designed by Wonseon Seo. Quite happy with how this turned out: the paper is thick enough that the tail actually supports it hanging. Chameleon are fascinating, they're like the Terminators of the animal kingdom. #karmakarmachameleon

Taking a break from XC3 to finish Live-A-Live. Nearing the end, and I've enjoyed it a lot. It does suck that I got spoiled in that stupid coy "Boy howdy I sure hope nothing bad happens to [character X], that would suck!" kind of way. Pic semi-related.

From now on, any time I find some money on the street, I'm going to proudly announce it with: "Whoa, got a RARE doo-dah right here!"

Snuff me, Xenoblade 3 is by far the most complex the series has ever been. Over a dozen hours in (because work T.T) and the game is still stacking on new mechanics. Even XC1's gem crafting (which I never grasped) or XCX's map don't come close. Love it!

Pursuit ~ Cornered goes with everything. And by "everything" I mean "Awful people getting legally dunked on."

I did not expect the Legendary pokes to be Transformers, but I'm here for it. That said, I wasn't waiting for yet another battle gimmick that's just Mega Evolution again but worse. Overall though...big "this could've been an e-mail" energy.

For my friend's birthday, I gave him a Sherlock Holmes boardgame. It's really neat! You follow leads, there's a newspaper that might have clues, and an old-timey map of London. End of day, we uncovered basically everything!...except for the murderer.

It's no secret that I have mad passionate love and/or lust for Xenoblade 1. I liked X more than most, and 2 is a mixed bag. But 3 is going very strong so far! I'm digging the tone; I did not expect this game to open like Starship Troopers.

I'm really feeling it! I'm going in completely blind other than what I can see on the box art. I don't even know the main character's name yet. Let's get stuck in!

Man, I love 16-bit humor. It's so amazing to me how much character you can put into a scene with just movement, a number of exaggerated facial expressions and some clever repurposing of sprites.

A year ago I had barely heard of this game. Today I'm ready to live some lives.

...I need it.

Karp friend! This is obviously more than one piece of paper, but it's still cute. Designed by "Sakusaku858".

Dear SEGA, why is Sonic Frontiers not just a bunch of those "cyberspace" levels glued together? Those actually look fun! Great Direct overall, I have mad nostalgia for Battle Network, and also now I can't get around playing Persona 5 anymore.

I've had a throat infection for a week now...bad. It's been hurting for a while but got debilitating Thursday. I can't eat, barely drink, speaking hurts, and I've had trouble sleeping from the pain and the swelling. I'm falling apart over here...

I'm becoming a little lost on Tunic. It's been great so far, and pretty good at guiding you through. But I just got a very significant upgrade and fighting a very significant boss, but I have no idea if I'm supposed to. Spoilers in comments.

I'm quite surprised by where Triangle Strategy's plot has ended up taking me. I just got to the big ending choice, but I never expected that I would willingly choose to side with... [Spoilers in the comments]

Pokemon Scarlet/Violet seems to have some sort of Past vs. Future theme going on which is neat. Miraidon looks like a robot dragon and "mirai" is Japanese for future. Also...why yes, I WILL buy the one with the sexy cave woman with midriff for days in it.

I'm trying the Mario Strikers trial, and the game tells me "Press Y to tackle". What I didn't expect was that by "tackle" they mean "Have Mario kick Yoshi square in the face."

Koi friend! It's been some time since I did a more complex origami model. This was quite tricky, and I had to take some shortcuts here and there, but it turned out pretty good. Designed by Meng Weining.

I've been quite into puzzle games lately, it's helping me take my mind off things. Opus Magnum is especially cool. No set solution; it just lets you build whatever machine you want, as long as it delivers the correct result. It makes for satisfying gifs!

Never got into the original Rogue Legacy. I felt that the movement was extremely basic, didn't really give you the tools to deal with the challenges, and every class played exactly the same. So it's fantastic how RL2 specifically fixes those exact issues!

I've been absolutely hooked on 13 Sentinels. It's the most jigsaw puzzle of a story ever, but it's really cool trying to piece it all together. But I sound like a raving madman trying to explain the story and my working theories to myself. Current status:

I've been watching Mystery Tournament lately; a tournament where they blind race a random game they've never seen before. It's been a great way to get introduced to some neat obscure indie games. This may be my favorite they showed off. It looks great!

Happy to see that Best Mario Girls are enjoying their stay in the Netherlands. Now let's hope that the new Mario Kart Tour Amsterdam track will also come to Mario Kart 8. Because it's still not enough to get me to download Tour.

Since I'm quarantining, it's given me time to finally finish The Great Ace Attorney, which was on the backburner for a while. Second game is especially great, and the final two cases were amazing. Especially the very final bit. Spoilers in the comments.

Tested positive today, even though today I was going to be teaching. So we're just moving it online, but still. Only a minor headache though, otherwise I feel fine.