I think the big differentiator for this one is the carrying capacity. They list 50kg instant/30kg sustained carrying capacity which is very impressive and I can't think of other humanoids with similar capability off the top of my head.
The connections are too easy to the point where the main challenge for me was to remember/locate where I had stored the nodes of that category. I think the fun in a connection puzzle comes from trying to figure out what the link is that connects different nodes, and resolving any red herrings by deduction (which is what makes OnlyConnect's connection wall great and NYT's knockoff mediocre). In this one I can spot the intended category for each node without even looking at the others.
Have you actually completed it? There are plenty where the category is obvious, sure - but also many ambiguous entries. It's not trivial to fully complete if you're aiming to keep errors low!
E.g. in ROT13: Cuvynqrycuvn pbhyq unir orra n zrzore bs "H.F. Pvgvrf", "Purrfrf", be "Gbz Unaxf zbivrf"
That aspect makes it kind of a massively parallel "startup name or fantasy sword" challenge, once you get past the obvious ones (whether that helps or hinders I wouldn't claim either way, but it rhymes?)
> Would they do what they do if they had zero dollars?
No, probably not. Isn't it a shame we live in a world where we have the technology to automate all meaningful production, but people still need to justify their existence through often meaningless labor?
That said, I know artists that make the bare minimum to survive, on purpose, so they have more time to focus on art.
Yes, as long as they have enough to survive, people generally have some free time. I know someone who's living paycheck to paycheck and they make music as a hobby. Obviously, if you have to work 16 hours a day to survive they wouldn't do it – or at least they wouldn't have the capacity to share it.
I'm really impressed by Factor. It has a lot of the niceties that I like about Common Lisp, like restarting on errors and the compiled-but-interactive development approach. On top of all of this the development environment is presented as a very cohesive package, including standardized project structuring styles, a documentation system and a UI library.
The last time I tried to learn it I stopped because I found the concatenative syntax even harder to parse than s-exprs when any math was involved. I'm giving it another go now.
