Today marks 1 year since the tragic passing of one of my earliest Twitch friends, @Banewreaker . It hasn't gotten easier in a year... tl.gd/n_1srt36i via @SkinSinge #LongLiveTheSplatGod

The research behind this is wild. If you played Pokémon as a kid, you have a tiny region in your brain that exists only because of Pokémon. Not a metaphor. Stanford put people in brain scanners and found it. The study was published in Nature Human Behavior in 2019. They scanned 11 adults who grew up glued to their Game Boys and 11 who never played. When they showed both groups images of the original 151, the players' brains lit up in one specific spot every time. Same spot across all 11 people. The non-players showed zero response. That spot is a little fold in the back of your brain that normally processes things like animal shapes and cartoon faces. In the Pokémon players, a chunk of it had been permanently reassigned. Their brains carved out a Pokémon department sometime around age 6 or 7 and just never took it down. And the reason it ended up in the same place in everyone's brain comes down to the Game Boy itself. The screen was 2.6 inches. Every kid held it at roughly the same distance. So those 151 characters hit the exact same patch of each kid's retina, thousands of times, during the years when the brain is still soft enough to reorganize itself. Where an image hits your retina in childhood is what tells your brain where to build the wiring. Reading works the same way. Humans invented writing about 5,000 years ago. There's zero evolutionary reason for a brain region dedicated to recognizing words. But every person who learns to read grows one, roughly the size of a dime, in the same part of the brain. Brain-imaging research from 2018 actually watched it appear in children's heads as they learned their letters. It grew by quietly taking over nearby tissue that wasn't doing much yet. Stanford published a follow-up this year showing this region is way smaller or missing entirely in kids with dyslexia, and that 8 weeks of intense reading practice physically grew it back. London taxi drivers show the same thing in a completely different part of the brain. Brain scans from a 2000 study found the region that stores mental maps had physically expanded, and the longer they'd been driving, the bigger it got. These drivers spend 3 to 4 years memorizing 25,000 streets before they get licensed. About half wash out. The common thread is childhood. Harvard researchers trained young monkeys to recognize new shapes and they developed brand-new brain regions in predictable locations. Adult monkeys trained on the same shapes never got those structural changes. The young brain wires itself in a way the adult brain cannot replicate. If you're wondering whether a Pokémon patch in your brain means you lost something else, no. The region sits alongside your normal visual processing areas, not on top of them. Your brain has hundreds of millions of neurons in that zone alone. The lead author noted that every participant in the study had gone on to earn a PhD.

I've played with AR disabled since day 1. Even if it still scans, they can have their pictures of the palm of my hand, or top of my desk!

Let's goooo @MegaCrit !!

Everything I have seen about this game is extremely sad. I'm interested in it but I also don't want to play Pokemon: Depression Island.

I learned how to fix these with 8 pennies and a bit of electrical tape and I would buy them on Craigslist and re-sell them fixed. About 12 cents in "parts" and 10-15 mins of labor.

I've been a Discord user since they demo'd it at the first TwitchCon in 2015. I've been a Nitro sub since 2018. It will still be so easy for me to cancel it all and move on, if this actually gets implemented.

Noooooooooo 😢 I love their music so much. I was fortunate enough to see them years ago performing in Raleigh and it was fantastic. RIP Greg!

Dumb, and also fucking stupid.

Mickey is one of the greatest to ever do it.

They scored less than their opponent. Hope this helps!

Eat it and start your install, @shroud #TheGameAwards

Raising Canes is THE MOST overhyped/underwhelming food spot we've ever tried. $18 for 6 tenders that taste worse than frozen Tyson ones, and the Canes Sauce is strangly like sweetened bay seasoning in yogurt? Sam and I are confused about the crazy fan following of this place?

Modern person discovers interest.

I legit just updated Discord, and 30 seconds later it told me that I was ready for another update.

He wants to be Pavel so badly.

Necesse 1.0 is finally out. Thank you all — seriously. To celebrate, enjoy 50% off on Steam.

This looks like shit and isn't even the same Pokemon.

The Necesse 1.0 launch is popping off with 20K concurrent players and still rising! If you haven't picked up our game yet, then I'd check out some of the juicy bundles we got going with our friends over at Palworld and Core Keeper! ..and we're on 50% sale right now as well 😉

Nice job @gobrightspeed ... 0/10, do not recommend.

The entire reason I fell in love with hockey!