Blog Posts by Syrsly

Mangmi Air X - A 2026 Review

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 21:53:00 UTC

Seen above is the Mangmi Air X, an Android-based retro gaming handheld released in 2025 for middle tier retro gaming and emulation at a price range of $79 to $100 depending on where you shopped and what color variation you wanted. The price increased with inflation soon after and now sits in the $100-$150 range.

The $100-150 budget tier handheld has typically been the best tier for a good SNES emulation experience that doesn't involve a ton of setup time or any major headaches. The Mangmi Air X released into the lower end of this tier's budget right before inflation made this budget less obtainable, but that's both a bad thing and a good thing for this handheld, because it means you get a slightly more expensive price overall but relative to its competition, the price is still very reasonable.

The Mangmi Air X is a great emulation handheld, but there's a lot of opportunity with this handheld to also play virtual consoles and mobile games. The systems the Air X supports well and runs smoothly include PS1, N64, and Dreamcast. Dreamcast needs some frameskip sometimes but it runs pretty well. PS1, if using the right emulator app with the right settings, runs incredibly smoothly. N64 is hit-or-miss but mostly hit with all the most popular games. Air X also runs some PS2 titles at an almost playable framerate, but it's not quite as enjoyable as I'd like. PSP emulator apps have some trouble on the Air X for some reason, but the hardware can technically run PSP games very well... just not without a ton of headaches, including missing controller input and random crashes.

The Mangmi Air X sports a 5.5-inch full HD IPS touch screen with 400 nits brightness and a 16:9 ratio. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 processor and Adreno 610 GPU, paired with 4GB LPDDR4X RAM, more than enough for PS1 and N64 emulation on top of Android OS version 14. The 5000mAh battery lasts quite a while with typical usage and charges easily enough to feel confident that this will last through a lengthy car ride, especially if you have an additional battery to charge on the go. The weight comes in at just 286g with a very comfortable grip, and the 9mm headphone/aux jack is very reliable but you can use Bluetooth 5.1 devices with this handheld if preferred.

The touchscreen on the Air X is a welcome addition, because it helps with Nintendo DS emulation as well as makes this basically a tiny tablet that can play mobile games and browse the internet. Unfortunately, the DS emulation doesn't work well with only 1 screen to work with, but it's technically playable. I also found myself wishing this had a 3D toggle for 3DS games and for just having a nice pop to the visuals on menus, but alas, it does not have such features, and I doubt you'll find those features elsewhere, especially at this price. The touch screen is comparable to a budget smartphone: not great but passable. You'll definitely want a stylus (not included) if you plan to play DS games on this thing.

The Mangmi Air X can be found at Amazon for ~$150 USD and should include a USB-C power cable and a manual. It does not include a micro-SD card, but it has some internal storage (64GB eMMC, very slow but good enough for most files/apps), and the micro-SD card acts as extra storage, which you'll likely need for your PS1 library. You may be able to find the Mangmi Air X cheaper on AliExpress or Temu with new customer discounts or similar deals, but I recommend getting it from a reputable seller. The Mangmi Air X is a great handheld for the price and well worth consideration as long as you don't plan to get a Steam Deck or something similarly powerful. Obviously, you can get more bang for your buck with something that costs just $50 more, but this is a great option within the $150 tier if you don't plan to push the hardware much.

Mangmi Air X - A 2026 Review

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 21:53:00 UTC

Mangmi Air X - A 2026 Review

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 21:53:00 UTC

WTF Happened May 2026

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 09:55:00 UTC

Welcome to yet another edition of WTF Happened, a monthly recap of news from a variety of topics and sources with some personal reflection on recent events. The whole reason this exists is we didn't want to have to ask AI for event recaps in the future. Everything is hand-researched and hand-written... or at least typed with a mouse and keyboard.

I want to first apologize for the delay of this month's article. I wanted to focus first on getting the Syrsly.com website redesign fully implemented, but in the process, I broke the backend system severely before realizing what I had done. I ended up spending weeks putting it back together, and it's still not 100% how it used to be. The article editor has changed a lot behind the scenes, and with these changes, I inadvertently made things harder for myself. A lot of work goes into these articles not just for each individual article's content but also for the website as a whole. We don't just throw together Wordpress blogs like most news sites out there nowadays. We're almost ready to take on new team members to help take the site's content to new levels of awesome. Follow @Syrsly.com on Bsky to keep an eye out for more info, but keep in mind this will be a volunteer editor position, not a paid job.

World News

U.S. State of Affordability Report 2026

The "States of Affordability" report (Brookings) was posted May 27. It's an article listing depressing stats about making ends meet and living well rather than struggle-bussing to live at all. I don't want to make this about me, but I imagine a lot of people reading that report would feel like the report was about them. U.S. ain't lookin' pretty!

Blue Origin Spaceship Rocket Exploded During Static Fire Test

The Blue Origin New Glenn LN-01 rocket was being put through standardized static testing and it failed by blowing the fuck up!

This explosion set back NASA's plans by at least half a year. Both the rocket and the launch platform were ruined and will have to be reconstructed.

Dog Shot Woman From Inside Truck

A woman was shot with a shotgun blast from inside a neighboring vehicle at a traffic light. The neighboring truck was harboring a dog that was getting antsy and started messing with its owner's shotgun which was fully loaded. (Yahoo!) Oof. Or should I say woof? According to reports, the woman was hospitalized but is making a full recovery with no life-threatening injuries. The dog was also reportedly fine. This could have been a lot worse.

Swimmer Won The Enhanced Olympics Without Enhancements

The Enhanced Games sports event was hosted May 21 to May 24, 2026, where it welcomed athletes who take performance-enhancing drugs. (LA Wonders) The 50-meter backstroke swim was won by a swimmer named Hunter Armstrong who took no drugs at all and beat the previous world record by 0.02s. (SFGate) He's like a gamer who plays their favorite game in "New Game +" mode at the highest difficulty because otherwise the game is just too easy to be enjoyable.

DOJ Issued Anti-Weaponization Fund

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the fund will compensate and formally apologize to those alleging government weaponization. (Fox) I know little about this fund currently, but it's nice that the Department of Justice is at least trying to make things right for those who were taken advantage of for political gain.

Iran Peace Treaty Ceasefire In Works

The U.S. appeared to be wrapping up negotiations for a temporary 60-day ceasefire with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. (NPR)

South Korea Martial Law

Speaking of ceasefires, a woman in North Korea, I mean South Korea - sorry, I just am not used to saying South and Korea together with anything violent - a woman in South Korea grabbed a soldier's gun to yell at him in the middle of being blocked from the National Assembly. (BBC)

Ebola Outbreak In Africa

There was another ebola outbreak in Africa around early May 2026. There was a rather efficient outbreak control unit in Africa ran by the U.S. since the 2014 outbreak, which reached the U.S. with 9 reported external cases and 2 reported internal cases with both internal cases fully recovering (CDC), but the U.S. response system has since been cut back and is no longer actually responding to the outbreak at all. (Washington Post) This could mean we see a lot more cases of ebola and other viruses and mutations of such viruses.

Dutch hospital workers were also quarantined due to PPE failures during a perceived hantavirus exposure. (Mirror) This was also confused as the same virus outbreak seen in Africa, but it is not ebola. We live in an age of misinformation, so please read up on this stuff before you share info on social media.

Trump Got Crazy Tax Protections

Mid May, we saw Trump's IRS lawsuit take a surprising turn: The settlement plan signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche included a clause that the IRS could never again investigate Trump, his family, nor his businesses. (Politico) This all started with a leak that happened during Trump's first term.

The Ballroom Defenders

President Trump has always had quite a few defenders on network television and at his rallies and on social media, and it's always crazy, but this time around, it seemed as if they were reaching new lows by thanking God for Trump being able to see that a ballroom needed a remodel. (Flipkowski)

Social Media & Internet News

Bluesky Talks About Edit Button

The most asked for feature on Bsky, the edit button, was discussed more openly this month on a thread by @alexbenzer, an employee of Bsky. It didn't really amount to much action, but it was a show of care by the staff that it needs to be considered more.

Ask Jeeves Shut Down

Ask Jeeves and its parent community site, Ask, have shut down. The Ask Jeeves site was shut down officially on May 1. (Reddit)

StreamElements Not Doing So Hot

StreamElements was rumored to be shutting down following a rather convincing employee leak. Later in the month, StreamElements confirmed they were considering shutting down the service but were also pursuing acquirers to keep their funding and had already secured further funding. (GamesBeat) It is my opinion that all streamers should move to self-hosted bots and alerts solutions. It makes no sense to pay tons of money for such a service, but at the same time, the services cannot fund their platforms if customers don't pay for the service. The solution that makes the most sense to me is to use something you can run on your own computer or host on your own server. I highly recommend PhantomBot to those who want to self-host a chatbot and alert system for their stream. I use a customized PhantomBot setup for my own stream. I previously used StreamElements and later StreamLabs but wanted something I could run 24/7 on my own server with little maintenance and little performance hit to my gaming PC.

New Burger King Logo Generator

Pixel Design comes out with new logo font generator toys very frequently, but this monthy, they added the Burger King logo. Immediately following the release of this generator, Old Hobbit posted a McDonald's "I'm lovin' it." injection. I was going to gather a bunch of the good posts here, but I gave up on that idea when almost everything I saw simply wasn't nearly as funny as the initial McDonald's injection.

Discord Partnered With Game Pass

I don't know if they ever did such a partnership before, but I saw advertising around mid-May for Discord subscriptions including free months of Game Pass.

UCF Pro-AI Teacher Got Rightfully Boo'd

A clip from a speech in a large commencement event for Spring 2026, posted on YouTube May 8, made its rounds around social media because it featured a woman being pro-AI and getting immediately boo'd. To be fair, the speaker was trying to tie businessmen to her career with a phrase, "embracing innovation." She struck a cord with her audience, but her speech painted a picture of a woman who was out-of-touch with reality and was living too comfortably to know she was in a safety net.

She compared generative AI of 2026 to hardware getting more convenient and the internet getting faster. Yes, I can see how all of these things were transformative. Not all of them were damaging to the world, though. The internet didn't cause entire fields of work to vanish over the course of a few years. Phones getting smaller didn't destroy the economy or cause the world's CO² emissions to skyrocket or make the phone technology somehow less consumer-facing. Generative AI services have caused data centers to hog the world's resources more than they already did in the middle of a worldwide effort to reduce pollution that has now reversed due to the greed of the companies which are now in a figurative and almost literal arms race to see who can reach singularity first.

Celebrity News

Tom Kane Died 64

That headline reads like a game for Nintendo 64. Tom Kane, the voice of Yoda in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, died at the age of 64. (IGN) Sugar, spice and Chemical X could not save him. IYKYK.

New TV Shows

In May 2026, several new TV shows premiered, including Born With Luck on May 4, Dutton Ranch on May 15, The Boroughs on May 21, and Star City on May 29. We also saw new seasons for Zillow Gone Wild (Season 3) on May 1 and Deli Boys (Season 2) on May 28. Additionally, the limited series adaptation of Lord of the Flies debuted on May 4 and we got a spin-off prequel episode of The Bear titled "Gary" on May 5. There was also a movie-like finale for Good Omens on May 13 on Amazon Prime Video where it was listed as a third season but was really just one very long final episode.

The Boys got its finale on May 19 and aired on Amazon as well as in theaters, mimicking the finale of Stranger Things. Unfortunately, the finale of The Boys felt less like an ultimate showdown of world-ending powers and more like a rushed brawl in the White House.

New & Upcoming Movies

Masters Of The Chinese Universe

"Masters Of The Universe", the 2026 live action adaptation of the classic He-Man origin tale, was first shown in a Chinese theater on May 18 with the movie slated to release in American theaters on June 5. Everyone else was treated to some great promo material on social media.

I saw the film at its June 5 release and really enjoyed it at the time, but it doesn't outdo the Kevin Smith adaptation of the cartoon. The film was a box office failure with a budget of $200M and only half that in box office sales worldwide. It was set up for a sequel, and the sequel is said to still be in development, but I won't be surprised if the sequel gets canned. Thankfully, the story mostly wraps up nicely and can be watched as its own self-contained story.

The Whitest Kids You Know

The Whitest Kids You Know, an extremely popular sketch comedy group known for their Monty Python-esque dark humor, released a barely marketed cartoon movie titled "Mars" on May 1. Looks interesting as someone who loves their previous work.

Plenty of Others

Some other May movie releases included Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come and A Great Awakening both on May 5, Hamlet and Project Hail Mary on May 12, The Mario Galaxy Movie and Normal on May 19, and Iron Lung on May 29.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day Hyped

The upcoming Spider-Man movie got a mid-May poster design (DiscussingFilm) and was announced in theaters with a brand new trailer showing more hints about a telepath being the ultimate villain of the film. Many people hinted that Jean Grey, the female telepath from the X-Men cast, would be featured in this film. If that's the case, we may see some kind of tie-in scene in the end credits to tie this universe to the upcoming X-Men films and the new Avengers phase, but because this is a Sony film, it may not tie into anything and may drop the ball entirely.

New & Upcoming Games

GTA6 Slated to Release In May

Grand Theft Auto IV was slated for a May 26, 2026 release date (Rockstar) but was delayed again to a November release.

Mixtape Pushed In Our Faces

Mixtape released May 7 with high ratings and suspicious popularity. The game had good visuals, but it seemed to come out of nowhere with no real selling point. It still did well and got pushed by major gaming publications around its release and soon after. One reviewer said "I cannot get it how it got so much 10/10 reviews." The answer is they likely gave the game to the publications and reviewers and probably paid to get high ratings in some publications. It's also likely the people at said publications aren't gamers. There's a massive disconnect between glowing critic reviews (including many perfect scores from major outlets) which didn't often criticize the game at all and highly polarized player feedback that criticized the game's short runtime and lack of challenge and mostly passive and linear narrative design. I heard the game had some sexually suggestive content in some scenes which featured underage teenagers. I really don't want the game enough to try to confirm that or see how uncomfortable those scenes are, but I will say it seems like the type of game you could watch rather than play. Don't feed money into such games. Support the good game studios instead.

AOE4 New DLC: Yue Fei's Legacy

The new DLC expansion for Age Of Empires IV, Yue Fei's Legacy, released May 7 as well. May 7 really was a big game release day. This DLC was met with mostly negative reviews which turned to mixed reception later in the month. To me, the DLC is too expensive for what it adds to the game. For ~$15 USD, you get 2 new default maps and a new civilization, the Jin Dynasty, as well as a short single player campaign and a couple new music tracks. If AOE4 is your bread and butter, you likely already got this DLC, but if you're a casual player, the money is better spent on a whole new game.

Moss Going Non-VR

Moss franchise was a loved part of the VR ecosystem for a while, and the first and second Moss games were announced to be coming to all major platforms as a non-VR remake containing both titles. (Gematsu) While it sucks that the non-VR version will be a remake and not just an update to the VR version, I will likely pick up the Switch 2 version of the game eventually just for the portability of it.

New Sim: Breadboard 3D

We saw Breadboard 3D released on May 9. This is more of an app than a game, but it qualifies as a game because it includes some gamification of the breadboard mechanics to teach users how to use breadboards. You can buy the game for $4 USD on Steam.

FLAW!

A new indie shooter released May 12 on Steam under the title FLAW. This shooter looks really fun and takes me back to the 2002-2005 glory days of low poly narrative shooters featuring badass main characters.

Subnautica 2 Early Access

On May 14, Subnautica 2 released into Steam's Early Access program. The original Subnautica was great, but its sequel has that much sought after coop feature! Unfortunately, the game's content is very short (takes ~6 hours to complete by yourself) in its early release, so we suggest waiting for the full 1.0 release.

Subnautica 2 also got a VR mod soon after release (VR Games Showcase) that may make it worth a look for some who are starved of good PCVR content.

New & Upcoming VR Games

Myst & Riven PSVR2

Myst and Riven remakes' ports for PS5 and Xbox were announced May 5. (Cyan) On PS5, VR is an optional feature instead of a separately sold title. Myst was already ported to Xbox Series X/S, but Riven is getting its port on May 19.

Blind Touch VR Demo

The demo for Blind Touch VR released May 8. I'm indifferent toward this game, because it looks kind of cool but isn't as educational about blindness as it claims to be. Blind people are not like The Daredevil. They don't see sound waves and don't see the whole environment from a single soundwave, either. That said, the demo is free, so it might be a good time-killer. This is a VR port in progress of a non-VR game by the same basic title, Blind Touch, which was released back in February, but I believe it was designed with classic VR staples in mind, so playing it as a flat game seems pretty pointless.

H3VR2

H3VR, short for Hotdogs, Horseshoes & Handgrenades VR, was a well received experimental VR shooting range game with the theme of hotdogs. The creator of the game and I have argued a lot on Twitter in the past, but I still loved the framework and enjoyed it enough that I openly requested a proper sequel several times. The constant updates were great, but I just wanted the game to be called done so I could move on.

Well, I'm finally getting what I asked for, and the sequel, H3VR2, was announced May 6 on Bsky.

Fan Projects

Someone posted this cool Miss Twisted cosplay. There was also a concept circulated for a modular retro handheld design, the RG Modular, and I reposted a screencap of it here.

Tech News

Unity Asset Store "$2+ Sale"

The Unity game engine has always had one of the best commercial asset libraries on the market, which means it should surprise you when I say it has always had the worst possible asset store experience. The site is clunky and constantly finding ways to get in the way of business rather than facilitate business. In light of this, Unity has some really epic sales every few months if not more often. The only problem is their sales sometimes make no sense. That's what we dealt with when the "$2 sale" was launched. It was a "$2+ sale" where most items were $3.50 or higher. It lasted from May 22 to the end of the month and continued into June. The deals of this event are historically low prices for some really good assets. However, it's all tied to a game engine that no longer holds a place in many former users' hearts. I'm still using Unity as a kind of toy, but I've been slowly porting my personal assets to Godot for future projects. Godot is faster and smaller and just provides a more straightforward development environment that doesn't give nearly the same amount of headaches as Unity.

A Big Graphite Editor Update

On May 26, Graphite Editor got its May update. Graphite Editor is a vector art tool. The May update didn't get a proper blog post, but instead we got a lengthy YouTube video explaining the added features and improvements. There were a lot of additions to cover, but to summarize, the video demonstrates new non-destructive features including layer blending, morphing capabilities, and improved gradient controls. This release also introduces dynamic data attributes, extensive text and JSON processing nodes, and a customizable workspace interface. You can use Graphite in your browser, so trying it is quick and easy.

Rust Week 2026

From May 18 to May 23, a Rust programming event titled RustWeek was held in Utrecht, Netherlands. I always thought Rust was a pretty cool programming language, and I'm only slightly surprised it got a week long event.

Anthropic Greatly Handicapped Opus AI Model

Anthropic, the creators of the Claude AI service, released a new version of their Claude Code AI model titled "Opus 4.7" that was meant to make the Opus requests more efficient but ended up being practically unusable. Reddit saw many great memes about it, including this one... and this one. I had some other posts saved, but the mods of the subreddit like to delete a lot of these posts.

Flipper One, the Flipper Zero Sequel

Why can't people name things appropriately? The first product is supposed to be 1 or just nothing at all after the base name. The second is 3.1. The third is 95. The fourth is 98, and the fifth is 2000! It's basic counting!

On May 21, The Flipper One was unveiled to be the sequel to the popular hacker doodad, Flipper Zero. (TechCrunch) I want one! I mean, I want Zero, too, but One is pretty cool. It may be a difficult price to justify if you're not really into cybersecurity, but the final cost of the base model is yet to be determined.

Nintendo Price Hike

Nintendo Switch 2 price increased from $449 to $499 in the U.S. (IGN) Other regions were also affected, so if you live elsewhere, you can get more info at the source.

Board Gaming Just Got Easier With MythOS

MythOS, a system-agnostic digital game master's toolkit, released May 7 on Steam. This app seems really promising for those who are into D&D and similar board games where a game master is required.

Science News

New Sea Creature Named Snuffleupagus

In a study published May 2026 in "Journal of Fish Biology" (Wiley), scientists announced the discovery of Solenostomus snuffleupagus, a new species of ghost pipefish named for its uncanny resemblance to Mr. Snuffleupagus, the woolly-mammoth-inspired character from Sesame Street. (Newcastle Herald) This fish species had already been spotted several times in recent years based on previous spottings found on iNaturalist, but spottings unfortunately don't count as a species discovery until the species is scientifically confirmed to be unique. (NatGeo)

Closing Story: You Should Waste More Time!

I read a few articles this month about things like women coming back to games in their later years after being cut out of the gaming scene by a sense of their time spent on games being unjustified (Cosy Gaming Over 40). The overwhelming narrative was that people thought gaming was a waste of time, but as time went on, they realized what I realized when I was a child: there's nothing inherently wrong with wasting time... as long as you're enjoying what you're doing. It's only really a waste of time to me if you don't either enjoy the things you're doing or enjoy the end result.

I work to live rather than live to work. Not many people can say they enjoy their job, and I'm included in that. If I work on something fun, it typically doesn't pay the bills, so almost all my fun work is unpaid, but that brings up my main point: Why do I work outside work hours? Why do I push myself to deliver a news article every month? Why do I build websites when I could be playing games? The simple answer is I enjoy making stuff and enjoy the end result of adding content to my sites and having something cool to show others. I don't have complete control over a bought smartwatch, but if I make my own smartwatch, I can do whatever I want with it, and it becomes a link in a chain of events that leads me to another project and then another and then another until I'm either dead or just bored of everything. At which point, I'll likely play more video games... which will reinvigorate my interest in a hobby I never actually lost interest in, because I never stopped playing video games. I never stopped wasting my time. You shouldn't either. Enjoy your time on this Earth; Don't waste time doing things you don't enjoy.

I think I'll write a bigger article on the topic of wasting time later. I got some catching up to do on the monthly recaps first. Come back every month around the 5-15th of the month (or in this case, over a month later) for another month's recap. In the meantime...

WTF Happened April 2026

Mon, 18 May 2026 21:30:00 UTC

Welcome to the April 2026 edition of WTF Happened! This is a recap of the highlights of the month of April in the year of our lord Gaben, 2026. These recap articles cover world news, tech news, a little U.S. politics with a sprinkle of non-U.S. politics and a bunch of other stuff with the goal of highlighting the biggest news of the month! The general goal is to give you highlights for the month for a variety of topics, not to give you the most important events in chronological order, even if that will sometimes be the order we use.

World News

Another Failed Assassination Of Trump

This is getting ridiculous how incompetent these shooters are. They never seem to hit anything of consequence. Trump went to the correspondents dinner on April 25 and was evacuated from the premises after a failed shooting. The shooter was apprehended moments later and Trump had a public briefing afterward where he used this as an excuse to explain away his White House remodel.

Veterans Arrested At U.S. Capitol During Iran War Protest

Police explained that the protest was illegal because it was inside the congressional buildings, which is not allowed. Protesters were given opportunity to leave the building and protest outside but refused and were arrested because of that refusal to vacate. (The Hill) The footage posted all over social media (like this one) of this event showed a peaceful protest with plenty of room to conduct business as usual, so it amazes me that they'd be arrested for their protest when the arrest alone warrants greater news coverage than they ever would have gotten on their own. The message these vets were trying to get across was that we should stop the war any way possible to save lives on both sides from needless bloodshed and that each soldier has a right to refuse to go to war and should refuse to go to this one.

Ukraine Shot Down Drones While Flying Old Planes

Some really crazy footage of Ukrainians shooting down drones using planes and guns was posted to the r/PublicFreakout subreddit May 1. This footage was a short compilation video of actions really performed back in April or earlier, but looking at the footage, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was some time travel themed war game trailer generated by AI, because the Ukrainian soldiers flew prop planes and the clips were extremely short and jerky. One of the planes shown was the Yakovlev 52, a training plane from 1976. These planes were still in production until 1998 but even then, that's nearly 30 years ago.

Controversial Plan For Healthier School Meals in England

There was legal pressure for schools to have healthier meals in England, bbut now that a plan is in place to have healthier meals, people are pushing back, saying there's a "devastating effect" on an already struggling sector. (Guardian) This pettiness would make the United States proud. Healthy meals is a good thing, people! Stop painting it as bad when the cost goes up if the real cost of the old way of doing things was students' well-being.

Port Montreal Port Expansion Underway

There's this port called the Contrecœur Terminal. Don't ask me how to say that. It's too small, I guess. Canadians are getting to build it bigger thanks to a big $1.16B loan from CIB which was confirmed April 9, and I'm told it'll generate revenue or something. This port expansion will bring more import/export potential and create job opportunities near the eastern coast (sort of, it's on a river that comes in from the Eastern coast and comes close to the United States border) and will do so without killing the environment around it. (Port-Montreal.com) I really don't know why you'd make a biigger port in Montreal when you could make a port further out in some place like New Brunswick, but my best guess is it's easier to carry heavy weight on the water than to truck it everywhere.

"Click To Cancel" Rule For NYC

With all the dark patterns and schemes behind corporations' subscription business models, Zohran Mamdani and the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection have announced a "Click to Cancel" law that would require all companies to allow a single click process for unsubscribing from any service offered to NYC citizens. (Bsky) The law is not yet finalized, but after a 30-day review period, it's likely this law will pass unchanged or barely adjusted. It's a good protection act in my opinion as a former Adobe customer. Even if this law is passed, it doesn't mean the end of dark patterns, it just makes it harder for companies to get away with such practices without consequences. In the end, we have to advocate for open source alternatives whenever we can so we can live in a world where no software company has leverage over the populous like Adobe used to... and kind of still does. Read my "Stop killing old software!" article if you're interested in my point of view on this subject.

NASA Artemis II Launch & Moon Fly-By

A closeup view shows the Orion spacecraft and launch abort system for NASA’s Artemis II test flight at Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026.

On April 1st, Artemis II launched with the mission to fly around the moon and back to Earth. The mission was a success and resulted in some new images of the backside of the moon as well as some fantastic images of Earth. (NASA)

Here's a picture of Earth from Artemis II:

And here's a picture of the side of the moon, showing part of the front side and backside:

You can see more fantastic images and videos and audio from Artemis II here.

Memes & Internet Jokes

Your Indie Band Name

This chain meme took off on Bluesky around the end of April. It went like this: You quoted the previous poster's band name and reposted the image, which said "Your Indie band name is: Your favorite fruit + the last reason you took painkillers" and say your own band name in the response. Mine was Banana Beat Saber but I changed it to Banana Hiking Accident. (Bsky)

Robin: Stand User

Someone found an old photo of Robin Williams doing some weird dramatic pose and decided to sketch it for practice. This resulted in one user saying "Robin would have been an amazing Stand User " (Bsky) then others took this observation and went further with it, making some fanart and mock-ups of Robin Williams as a stand user in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure universe.

A Ballroom For Protection

Following some insanely stupid thing Donald Trump said about why his ballroom renovation was necessary, tons of big name celebrities and normies alike went to social media to announce they're building ballrooms for their own protection. This trending joke was funny in the saddest way.

First New Photo From The Moon

During and following the successful Artemis II moon fly-by on April 1-9, we saw a meme popularized where you would say "First new photo from the moon" and then post an image from a popular media you like that's set on the moon. You can search for the memes here, but I included a few highlights below.

Celebrity News

The Vampire Diaries Star Admittedly Broke After Retiring

Ian Somerhalder, known by many as one of the vampires in The Vampire Diaries or the handsome dude in Lost, left his lucrative acting career quite early due to trying to start a business and ending up in an 8-figure debt. This wouldn't be April 2026 news, but I thought "Oh, wow, I haven't heard about that guy in ages," so why not point out an interview about something that happened years ago! It's a stark reminder that not everyone who looks well off is actually well off. You can read more on E! if you're curious, but there really isn't a lot of detail given.

Looksmaxxing Influencer Suspected Overdose During Livestream

Some guy with the silly handle Clavicular didn't want to get a normal job, so he took up drugs or something and started showing some skin and said a bunch of stuff about looking good... and I guess he's famous now? Is that really all it takes these days to be a celebrity? Well, this guy has hospitalized after overdosing on something during a Kick stream. (Page Six) Also, he was said to be a suspect in an ongoing investigation into the shooting of an alligator in the Everglades. This guy's getting around! Page Six even went as far as to call him a "incel-ebrity" - Lmao. I will start using that term for people like Asmongold.

Internet News

Bluesky Major Outage

I'm a big supporter of the Bluesky social media platform, but nothing on the internet is perfect, including Bluesky, which will sometimes result in downtime. On the up side, while the Bluesky site was down most of a day, some third party feeds were still working, and many users were able to still use the alternative feeds to post new content and stay connected. Users who used only the main bluesky site were unable to log in and unable to see notifications or post new content for most of April 16. Some residual downtime showed on the following day, but it was mostly resolved by the evening on April 16. Many of the users expressed relief that they'd not have to read depressing news for a day. Those users apparently don't use any other part of the internet at all.

New & Upcoming Movies

Mortal Kombat II

MORTAL KOMBAAAAT! ^*Ahem.* Mortal Kombat 2 came out May 8. I had been hyped about this movie since last year, and I created a Scorpion mask to wear to the theater to celebrate. The feeling before this movie released was that we waited an extra year to watch this but it might be worth the wait. In retrospect, I believe it was well worth the wait, but it wasn't nearly as memorable as the 90s movie.

Spider-Man

On April 13, CinemaCon saw the opening sequence of Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse, the third part of the acclaimed animated Spider-Man movie trilogy. (DiscussingFilm) We also saw a publicly released new trailer for the Spider-Man: Brand New Day film, coming July 31. View the Brand New Day trailer here.

New & Upcoming Shows

Scrubs Season 11

Scrubs revival series got renewed for season 2 AKA season 11. (Bleeding Cool) To this day, I don't think I've watched all of the original series, because it aired in syndication out of order and was one of the last shows I watched on an actual TV channel before moving to streaming platforms.

Good Omens 3: The Finale

Good Omens, starring Harry Potter's David Tennant and Passengers' Michael Sheen, received its finale in the form of a confusingly short 1-episode final season that showed up on Amazon Prime Video under the guise of a "season 3" with the first and only episode being titled "The Finale". I went into it not knowing the final season had been reduced to only one episode, so I mistakenly thought it would have more episodes later. The show ended on a cliffhanger rewrite that was hardly satisfying and felt like something out of The Good Place. I'm trying to be vague in case you haven't seen it, because I still prefer you watch the show if you liked the previous seasons. There wasn't enough payoff to earlier hints toward the end of the story, and it felt extremely rushed. I was hoping to have a whole season about Hell, because in season 2, it was starting to hint that Hell was a better managed version of Heaven that might be used as a reference to improve Heaven's heirarchy and security. Hell was giving Beetlejuice's afterlife vibes. We unfortunately won't be getting that content in season 3.

The Punisher: One Last Kill

A trailer for Punisher: One Last Kill dropped on YouTube on April 9. It was slated to be released on May 12 on Disney+.

The Boys Season 5

Season 5 of The Boys stretched across March through May with most of the season shown on Prime Video through April and early May. The finale will be shown May 20.

Invincible Season 4 Finale

The final episode of Invincible season 4 'aired' April 22 on Prime Video. The finale was amazing but also left us wanting so much more.

Gaming News

Portal 2: Community Edition

Portal 2: Community Edition released April 17! This is a community mod project that aims to modernize Portal 2. Check it out here! It's free!

Metro 2039 Announced!

I got an email about this upcoming game from the DeepSilver newsletter on April 17.

This is the email sent on April 17.

You can see in the above cropped screenshot that they were intentionally vague about the game's features and release date but were driving traffic to this reveal trailer on Vimeo... albeit locked behind a marketing landing page with tons of JS and ads.

Anno 117 Expansion DLC: Prophecies Of Ash

April 30 saw the Anno 117: Pax Romana expansion titled "Prophecies of Ash" and earned a "Mostly Negative" score on Steam for a combination of its vague use of AI for assets and its absurd marketing lying about what the DLC actually offers. The volcano featured in marketing is hardly in this DLC at all... hidden to the side of your city with a camera system that doesn't offer easy viewing of the volcano. I say wait for a major sale discount and buy the game and this DLC for cheap, because they both feel cheaply made and not worth supporting. Ubisoft has become lazy over the years and isn't really trying at this point.

TerraTech Legion

On April 30, the full TerraTech Legion game was released on Steam. It's a great action roguelike, and yes, I streamed it several times already! Highly recommend this one!

Invincible Fighting Game

We all knew it was coming: an Invincible fighting game! Invincible VS released on most major gaming platforms April 30. Check it out on Steam if you're interested. The story of it is not a rehash of the show's story and is actually a fun elsewhere style story very loosely inspired by the show. It does still require some suspension of disbelief as some power scaling is very broken in this game with certain weak characters being pitted against characters they have no chance of ever beating.

War Of The Western Deep Demo

Image shows anthropomorphic squirrel wielding
a short sword in War of the Western Deep.

This game looks too good to come from an indie studio, but the Steam demo came out April 11 with the release date yet to come. (Bsky) Granted, it has that furry appeal, but to me, it's more like going back to the old Disney cartoon movie of Robin Hood. The art style is simply gorgeous!

Limited Run Promised No Future Delays

Limited Run was started to offer physical copies of digital media, primarily video games. They're also known for delaying shipment of orders for months and sometimes even canceling orders weeks or months later due to not being able to fulfill orders. They've had a ton of controversy over the years, and you can read up on said controversy via Gamespot. However, Limited Run has promised no future order delays for future products and shown a commitment to change by saying "the date is the date" and firing old management. They're restructuring, and unfortunately and ironically, that also means more delays for existing orders.

New VR Games

April 1 saw a new roomscale VR game titled Space Control. This game looks fun but in that way that it's not something I'm hyped to play at release. The game released on Steam and Meta at the same time, though, which is to be respected. I'll likely grab this one after I get my hands on a Steam Frame to see how well it holds up on new PCVR hardware.

April 8 saw a PC SteamVR port of a previously Meta-focused VR game titled The Pirate: Republic of Nassau which promised a semi-realistic pirate adventure experience with many VR-focused interactions and gameplay mechanics, including but not limited to swimming with your hand movements and swordfighting in a physical way. According to the marketing and some community discussion, one of the selling points of the game is its trading system where you can truly live the pirate life by raiding ships and selling the goods back to people. Reviews were "Mostly Positive" on Steam... but I would wait for a sale since the game has been out for a year on Meta at the same price and likely will require some months to get some patches for known bugs on the port. Besides, it's an indie mobile port, so its graphics aren't great by PCVR standards.

On April 14, we saw Game Dev Simulator on Steam. I'd like to play this one. It's exactly $10.00 at release, so it's affordable, but there's also a demo to try. It appears to be built on a Unity VR framework titled Auto-Hand from the looks of it. I'd love to see what this dev accomplished with that framework, and the trailer makes the game look like a ton of fun... if not a bit too creepy!

On April 16, The Amusement released on Steam. This had a demo about a month earlier and was really promising. I passed on grabbing the full game for now, because my VR gear was being sent into a repair company, but I will likely grab the full game whenever I get through the rest of the VR backlog in 3-4 months!

On April 23, 2026, Little Nightmares VR: Altered Echoes released on Steam. The game was on sale for $26.99 (USD) on Green Man Gaming.

Right at the end of April, the hype surrounding the new TMNT game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City, really started to push the game's release, and pre-orders became available on the Meta store. However, the Steam version didn't get the same treatment. The Steam version looked a little better, and I honestly despise Meta as a company, and I knew I'd be wanting to play this on Steam Frame eventually, so I grabbed the Steam version as soon as it released.

There was a Itch.io VR Jam on April 23, titled VR Jam 9. This game jam resulted in exactly 3 indie small titles being produced under the theme of dungeons & dragons. I was participating at first but backed out after some other participant was ugly with me and ruined my motivation. That and I really didn't like the theme and saw no reason to try for this when there was no prize.

Anyway, the participant entries were as follows:

1. Full Contact Dungeon Bowling VR

2. Snerling Story

3. Souls of the Necromancer

You can view the entries here. The voting period is over, but you can still download and play these prototypes.

On April 29, we saw a demo for an edutainment app called Cloud Journey VR on Steam. This one looked like it might be promising, but the full version has a vague release date. I'll have my historian wife give this one a go sometime.

Tech News

Snapchat Unveiled New Smartglasses

The smartglasses craze continued with Snapchat unveiling a new generation of their smartglasses, Spectacles, with augmented reality capabilities. (KTLA) The profile for these glasses was huge, so I'm not very interested in them personally at the moment, but I think if this profile can be used for wireless VR soon, that will be something I could get into as an improved at-home VR experience as well as an improved arcade VR experience.

Apple Vision Pro Officially Getting Steam Link

Those who were early adopters of the Apple VR/AR/XR ecosystem likely didn't get a lot out of the experience at release, but Apple's definitely trying to work out new functionality and improvements for both the software and hardware side of the expensive Vision Pro headset. Recently, PSVR2 controllers were confirmed to work with the headset via Bluetooth. On top of that, on April 3, Apple and Valve both confirmed Steam Link is coming to the headset. (Tom's Guide) For those still unaware what Steam Link is, it's an app that lets you stream Steam apps and games to other hardware via local network or the internet, essentially allowing you to play your gaming pc from anywhere with a good connection to said gaming PC with lesser hardware like handhelds and phones... and now, XR headsets AKA spatial computers.

Godot 4.7

On April 9, Godot version "4.7 Dev 4" released. (Godot) This release came with some technical features that I really didn't care to read about, but it did show the engine was taking performance seriously. Version "4.7 beta 1" released April 24 with tons of bugfixes as well as major additions to the animation extension, input, and physics systems. (Godot) There's also some quality of life updates to the scene editor, making it a lot more competitive compared to the big contenders in the industry.

The Robot Olympics: Humanoid Robot Half Marathon

On April 19, the Humanoid Robot Half Marathon was hosted in China. The goal was to show what humanoid robots are currently capable of without human guidance. According to MSN, approximately 40% of the participating robots were fully autonomous this year to show off some companies' capabilities with making robots that can avoid obstacles and follow guidelines. However, many of the robots were still guided by humans. This is the second year of the marathon event, so it'll likely keep growing and attract greater interest next year with more autonomous robots participating. For now, however, we can rest easy knowing that the robots are still failing hard and getting put on similar stretcher to humans.

Claude Design Sparked Open Source Alternative

As recently as April 17, Anthropic officially announced Claude Design in open beta (Anthropic). This tool was basically Claude's regular AI with enhanced visual tools to allow rapid UI design iteration. This sparked a renewed interest in open AI alternatives for UI design tools. Thus the Powerpuff Girls were born! I mean, thus Open Cowork AI's Open-Codesign was born! On April 23, Open-Codesign v0.1.4 released with some usable features, including a ChatGPT tie-in to allow you to get similar design tooling out of ChatGPT models. Of course, Open-Codesign isn't as easy to use as Claude Design and won't generate as appropriate of results. You'll also likely still have to subscribe to a service to get optimal results without a data center worth of PCs.

Closing Story: Data Centers

Recently, we've seen a lot of data centers popping up all over the world thanks to the AI bubble. According to More Perfect Union, many communities were uplifted from data center development despite media coverage claiming the communities welcomed the data centers. The communities apparently didn't want such developments, but the higher-ups didn't prevent these companies from imposing their own wishes upon not just the surrounding area but the direct neighborhoods and have even affected the municipal water supply negatively.

The data center problem extends to not just pollution but also power hogging. These data centers require a lot of electricity to operate, and the people behind these data centers are not even trying to make their power independent from the local municipality. This results in power costs being higher for residents because the power demand is too high.

In some cases, the power for data centers is taking power away from residents. Local power providers, which can be privatized companies, are now abandoning residents to focus on data centers because it's more profitable. Look at Lake Tahoe, California for a good example of this. (Tahoe Daily Tribune) This issue is a reminder that we should not rely on privatized businesses for vital services.

Alright, that's all I have to talk about for now. Oh, by the way, I finally decided to uninstall ARC Raiders. It was too much of a time sink, and my friends simply weren't playing anymore, so I gave it up. I'm going to continue the "Don't shoot!" meme into the rest of the year regardless. I'd revisit the game if it was given a non-PVP mode, but until then...