I'd like to add that like in all industries, when we stop understanding how our tools work, we become entirely dependent on the corporate entities that own the mold. We are trading the ability to build and repair for the convenience of being permanent tenants in someone else's infrastructure/subs.

One reason Minneapolis remains in the world's eye is we have one of the most robust & independent media ecosystems remaining in the country. You all need this...and more! @mprnews.org @startribune.com @sahanjournal.bsky.social @minnesotareformer.com @minnpost.bsky.social @racketmn.com etc.

obviously the wrong person for the job, but I also question the wisdom of using a one-size-fits-all linear narrative to continue a story people loved pretty much entirely because its characters inhabited a world of unprecedentedly vast player-driven choice deadline.com/2026/02/bald...

Published my first piece at @wired.com today, about a string of AI thrillers that have bombed (most recent being the hopelessly naive Chris Pratt vehicle 'Mercy'), the backlash to Darren Aronofsky's YouTube slop take on the American Revolution, and a grotesque nostalgia-bait Super Bowl ad:

we're live!

Modern civil conflict utilizes all aspects of a full spectrum assault, including economic warfare, and that is what we are seeing as Blue states are cut off from the federal government. The federal government is retreating and leaving blue states to die.

In a week of announcements from the likes of Nintendo, Blizzard, and WaPo – not necessarily the good kind – we're gonna make the biggest of all (citation needed) on today's stream, perhaps involving @adashtra.bsky.social and @jmrivera.bsky.social. We go live at 4 PM ET www.twitch.tv/aftermathdot...

whoever this "they" is, they need to calm down

life comes at you fast

We hope you enjoy the Dosa Divas demo that's out now on Steam and if you do please leave a review and wishlist! If you're fans of Expedition 33, Sea of Stars, Mario RPG, Octopath, Thirsty Suitors, this is for you.

turns out, I’m gonna be at DICE next week on behalf of @aftermath.site! DM/email if you want to meet up for a demo, interview, or just to talk

I understand folks are scared but I want you to think about the mechanics of this. There are more polling places (>100k) than ICE and CBP agents combined, so they can only pick a few districts to try to intimidate. Now what happens when cell phone footage of that goes online in the early morning?

trails in the sky is simply a perfect jrpg

With the awful WaPo layoffs and the state of journalism more broadly, if it's useful for any writers and reporters considering going indy, @molly.wiki, @xoxogossipgita.bsky.social of Aftermath, @jasonkoebler.bsky.social of 404 Media, @edzitron.com and me will do a little workshop next week.

I say without one iota of humor that the democratic party needs to be completely dismantled top to bottom and reassembled into something with actual values.

it’s cool how the thought that immediately follows this is always “maybe more money will help”

Nearly 1,500 people have already used this tool in under 24 hours. Please share with your friends, neighbors, community, etc.: StopICEToday.com

Hey this is the first I’m hearing of @aftermath.site and now I am subscribed. Thanks to @defector.com for the repost!

agree with this, except for the part where riley says bezos, trump, and co want a worse environment for journalism. no, I believe they want to destroy it entirely and, where traditional publications are concerned, are well on their way

I love video games

everyone is discussing, screenshotting, and reporting on epstein’s emails, myself included. they are of obvious public interest, which should transcend bluesky’s arbitrarily applied rules. ludicrous and stupid

I know it’s annoying that I constantly ask people to sub, but subbing makes a huge difference. @aftermath.site has around 5,000 paying subs right now; most of us still work other jobs on the side. we have over 90k bluesky followers. if a fraction subscribed, it would literally change our lives

Whatever you think of the Washington Post at this moment, here's a chance to support the dedicated, hard-working journalists who were just laid off. If you have the means, your donation is most welcome. If you don't, a kind thought and maybe spreading the word to others is support enough 💙

whoever figures out a way to bundle independent journalism subscriptions will be a hero

Former race and ethnicity reporter Emmanuel Felton wrote, “I’m among the hundreds of people laid off by The Post. This comes six months after hearing in a national meeting that race coverage drives subscriptions. This wasn’t a financial decision, it was an ideological one.”

I think one thing people outside Minnesota don't understand is that after Good and Pretti were killed by feds while observing, the most normal people you could imagine have made peace with the fact that they could be next, and they are still out there because they say it's the right thing to do.

its boring to keep saying this, but the site only exists with subs. that's the business model. but even if you just sign up to our 'free' tier, you're still getting stuff, and that's a start!

please subscribe to a good website aftermath.site#/portal

6/ The Post has lost over 375,000 subscribers in just over a year. If 10% of those readers subscribed to The 51st instead, we could hire 10 reporters and five editors, dramatically scaling our coverage of the city at this critical time. 51st.news/signup

Billionaires don't buy newspapers or tech companies because they care about journalism or free speech. They do it because they care about which speech is the freest

I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.

This randomly brings to mind something I read many years ago about how Q-Anon was basically a real-life "game" - that if any of it were real, none of it would operate with the structure and flow that it did, which were discernible design principles of games

Important thing Nathan points out is that the viral "OMG Epstein was responsible for microtransactions at Activision" to clipped, zero-context emails was completely false and misleading. It was the only part of these emails many sites covered and they got it dead wrong.

My co-author Dr. Megan Condis and I gathered nearly 3,000 print ads from the console wars era to analyze whether the popular narrative that "Sega was for rad teens and Nintendo was for babies" actually holds up. The results paint a slightly more nuanced picture. Read about it on @aftermath.site!

I subscribe to a lot of indie pubs, but here are five worker-owned companies I'll never abandon: - @404media.co: essential technology! - @rascal.news: essential tabletop! - @aftermath.site: essential video games! - @defector.com: essential everything! - @hellgatenyc.com: essential New York!

Oh hey. It's me. I'm back. I wanted to talk to all the devs who took the war chest from their popular games (and YouTube careers!) and turned it into a publishing studio to find out what they're doing differently and if its working out for them. Turns out...yeah seems like its going good!

the washington post is run by fools

probably the willing well III: apollo II: the telling truth from good apollo I’m burning star IV volume one: from fear through the eyes of madness

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and again and again)

Remembering the massive interest among billionaires in edutainment game pitches from indies in 2013 and wincing.

hey remember when I got shit on for years for trying to warn people that GamerGate was just Nazis and not just about harassing women and not just about some “consumer revolt”

jeffrey epstein's apparent association with the likes of bobby kotick, steve bannon, and peter thiel – and his fascination with game design as a means of controlling others – paint an unsettling picture

great demonstration of what “more of us than there are of them” actually looks like

Media coverage of Gaza has plummeted. So today on @thenation.com, we're doing something pretty special: we're only running pieces by people in and from Gaza. We're calling it "A Day for Gaza." You can find links to all of the incredible pieces here. Please read! www.thenation.com/article/worl...

I’ve launched a Citation Needed membership drive to celebrate publishing my 100th recap issue! Citation Needed critically covers cryptocurrency, the crypto industry, and its influence on policy. Paid subscriptions support much more than just the newsletter — here’s what goes into this work:

the affected hospitals have spent more than ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS on “short-term staffing” aka scab travel nurses. Yes Kathy is doing this in an election year and she has a primary challenger, @delgadoforny.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/n...

It's been really lovely reading all the tributes to Dan. Many people have asked if they can contribute to support his wife and son. You can do so here: everloved.com/life-of/dan-...

people say these guys want feudalism, but even that gives them too much credit, because kings and queens and lords in feudalism had substantial obligations to the peasants, and worried about being disemboweled by the mob if they shirked those obligations for too long

An unbelievable thing happened last night. 3,083 people from the @minnmax.com and @giantbomb.bsky.social community stepped up to protect the people in Minneapolis from ICE. You can still donate to VEAP here - bit.ly/iceoutminneapolis Here's the archive - youtube.com/live/SMcO71c...

this handful of independent journalists (my former colleagues at Motherboard) do more impactful journalism than 75% of the corporate tech press on a fraction of the budget