Okay, so the main reason I haven't been posting very much here as of late is because I've been spending almost all of my free time playing Fallout 4.

It's an understatement to say that the current generation of computer games is addictive.  As proof, I'll point out that just like any true addict, I've not only been spending all my free time playing but I've even been concocting bullshit reasons to leave work early to have still more free time for playing. I've been skipping shows, even ones to which I've bought tickets in advance, to spend more time playing. I've been skipping housework and yardwork and paying bills on time for more playing time, and the only reason my cats get fed is because they interrupt my game playing by jumping on the keyboard when it's dinnertime.

These games have become more and more realistic and engaging as they've evolved from arcade games like Space Invaders and Pacman to video games like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Brothers to the current crop of computer games, which have evolved from linear narratives like the Tomb Raider series to sandbox games like Fallout, and I haven't even begun to explore virtual reality games yet.  

As technology improves on its exponentially accelerated rate, these games will only become more and more realistic and more and more lifelike, even to the point where in a century or so, if not a few dozen years, they will become indistinguishable from reality, not only to those playing the games but also to the other characters in the game, and virtual existence will seem exactly the same as base-level reality existence.

In fact, there are those who've proposed that we ourselves may be part of some future computer simulation.  How would we know?  At some point in the future, not only would there be computer simulations where each character (e.g., you and I) be sentient and self-aware, but over time there would be thousands, maybe millions, of these simulations run.  There might even be simulations where the characters in the matrix would be creating simulations of their own (games within games). Given all that, it's nothing but the purest of hubris to say that the so-called reality in which we happen to exist is the one true reality and that all others are artificial.  Mathematically, it's statistically more likely that we exist in a future computer simulation than in the one base reality.

But I digress.  I've been spending most of my free time playing Fallout and not posting.  Didn't mean to ignore you.