📰Tax Prep Waifus, Sweatpant Overalls, and Fortnite's Return

Move over Minecraft and Roblox

Mar 27, 2023

Hey friends! I’ve got some fantastic news for you this week

We’ve surpassed 2,000 subscribers!

2000!!!!!

Thank you so much to everyone - whether you’re a new reader or you’re an OG from 2019.

I never thought I’d have so many readers - ever in my life. I started this newsletter as a way of sharing all the random (yet interesting) information I encounter every day.

You can ask my wife or close friends - I hear “Where the heck did you hear about this” quite often.

So - once again, thank you for reading. It means a lot to me.

Now - let’s get to 3,000 shall we?

Share the Land of Random far and near!

This weekend was quite busy. We finished our wall - and FINALLY - will be starting our garden next week.

I pulled up all the detritus that the previous owner planted - and discovered a few beautiful surviving tulips.

You see - the previous owner wasn't aware of the perennials (tulips, Daffodils, etc) so he just yeeted some random ugly plants into the front garden beds.

RIP.

I’m quite curious to see if Little Caesars cursed corn cob pizza will come out - but it’s a masterclass in marketing. That ad got sooooo many free impressions.

On the flip side - I can tell you that the Pepsi x Peeps soda is pretty good. Peep this can.

Let’s dive on in!

📰Tax Prep Waifu

Wish filing taxes was a game?

Don’t want to go through the trauma of filing your taxes alone - with nothing more than your dwindling bank account to keep you company?

Meet Tax Heaven 3000, an anime-style dating simulator you can actually use to file your taxes.

Well . . . maybe . . .

The game was delisted from Steam - but will apparently be released on March 27 - at least according to the website.

MSCHF created the game as a sort of commentary on the real-life villain TurboTax.

As a product, TurboTax is awesome - other than their dark patterns and government lobbying so people can’t file their taxes for free.

Here’s a little bit from the Tax Heaven website, written from the perspective of the in-game waifu.

Hi there! Iris here~
It’s always been a dream of mine to meet that special someone…and file their tax return. Join me and we’ll search for deductions while searching for love! But be careful! We’re not alone. Corporate tax filing services like TurboTax are (by dint of extensive lobbying) predatory, parasitic bottlenecks that deliberately complicate the tax filing process in order to make it unnavigable by ordinary people. They feed us their poison so that we buy their medicine . . . TurboTax, per its own internal documents, is built on the “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” that ordinary people have about their taxes. Against this, we pit free software instead built on parasocial desire for intimacy and benign horniness! If TurboTax is Dark UI, TH3K is Pink UI, the nightcore of tax software. (source)

It’s a sarcastic sort of “let’s fight fire with fire.”

Why would I file my taxes with TurboTax when Iris can help me?

I can’t miss pointing out that Turbo is an actual character in the game too . . . and that he’s an “unsavory SaaS bro.” LOL.

Check out the website at the link! There’s even wattpad fanfic . . . which is bizarre.

If this game actually comes out - and you do file your taxes with Iris, please let me know.

Tax Heaven 3000

👖Sweatpant Overalls

I FINALLY got a TikTok ad that seemed to be reading my mind.

I’ve lamented the fact that there are no “fun” jogger dress pants or suits . . .

The last interesting thing I saw in this niche was the Tuxy

and it appears that the algorithm heard about my desire for fun joggers.

BEHOLD - the Swoveralls. Sweatpant Jogger Overalls

They’re sweatpant overalls - suitable for wearing out and about AND staying comfy.

Here’s a quick ad video that demos what they look like on various people. The fir is really clean tbh.

The overalls are available in a wide variety of colors and sizes - and there’s even shorts versions as well.

Based on the pictures, they look “clean” enough to look like normal jeans if you stick with Black or Indigo French Terry.

I read through many of the comments - and there’s a lot of praise for them - heck I’m pretty sure some people have changed out their wardrobe for these.

Go check them out at the link!

I think I may try to pick up a midnight black pair of these in the fall.

Swoveralls

🎮Fortnite’s Return

Fortnite is BACK.

I don’t mean a new season or a new game style.

Years ago, Fortnite introduced a creative mode - and like Halo of yore, people made fun maps and such.

The newest Fortnite update takes that creative mode and raises it to the world-building levels of games like Minecraft or Roblox.

For example - it was hard to believe this trailer was made in Fortnite.

Epic has created a new application called “Unreal Editor for Fortnite.”

With UEFN, anyone can design, develop, and publish their own custom experiences directly into Fortnite Creative mode. The app is launching in a public beta state and co-exists with Fortnite's legacy Creative toolset, making it essentially an enhancement of those earlier tools rather than a wholesale replacement of them . . . Alongside the reveal of UEFN, Epic has announced it is building a "unified 3D marketplace" called Fab Marketplace. As a singular storefront, it will combine several of Epic's most popular game dev toolsets that previously existed on their own: Unreal Engine Marketplace, Sketchfab, Quixel Bridge, and the ArtStation Marketplace. (source)

All these tools allow creators to create their own games within Fortnite - want a horror game? a COD-style game?

All possible.

Though we’ve certainly seen this sort of thing in other games - Fortnite adds an “ease of play” factor that no other “non-blocky” (jah - Minecraft and Roblox I mean you) game has access to.

Get the map code from someone for their custom horror Jurassic Park adventure - and go play! Simple as that.

I remember the worlds crafted in Little Big Planet on PSP and being in awe of the worlds that people created.

Skip around in this video - it’s incredible.