Real suggestions from Real RRD employees

clothes 2kg chargers and laptop 2kg toiletries 0.5kg print and paper samples 50kg books 0.2kg someone who is good at packing please help me budget this

finished up at Frankfurt book fair today; there’s something quite lovely about getting production nerds to talk at length about their special interest. The last meeting I had featured ombré neon page edging which apparently can only be done by one woman in the factory wielding two paint guns at once

I saw a tragically AI-generated version of this poster, so I have recreated a 100% human-made version for all your protest sign needs.

MSNBC Grandmas in Skechers seamlessly reclaiming the frog from 4chan Nazis in about six weeks has gotta be the political upset of the century.

I find myself at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where I have acquired two sample kits so enormous that I suspect I might not be allowed to take them on the train home. But one of them includes gold-flecked cork as a book cover material so if I have to choose between that and clothes, well…

One hundred games is a heck of a lot of games to play, or even to own, but it's a staggering number to write, even if they're only a single page long. Chase chats to Grant Howitt, designer of Honey Heist and many other one page games, about the game jam he's running to celebrate the milestone.

today I collated 391 Hollows objects, checked them all against the revised full rules, resolved internal consistency, fixed all the places where the letter D was incorrectly capitalised, did a full proofing check, and honestly I don’t understand how no one noticed the autism till well into my 30s

ME: Now Mom, just remember, there's a lot of disinformation and AI in your social feed and your friends' Facebook. MOM: I know! My friend sent me this crazy post where someone used AI to make an image of a giant frog fighting Army troops! ME: ... okay, no, that one's ... goddamit, Portland.

Surprise! I have joined the fearsome and terrible hive at RRD, and will be the new Soc Media wretch! Lots of love and mouth full of dice, Naomi xoxo

The Greens currently have the same number of MPs as Reform, but less than 1/3 the number of members. Just in case you’re looking for a small but significant action you could take in this moment.

"You don’t fight the politics of violence by quibbling with the details. You stamp it into a million pieces! You draw a f*cking line!" If Keir Starmer won’t even make a moral case against deporting our friends and neighbours, then what is the point of him?

Vanity Fair and Newsweek of all places have some explainers— tho the latter's article is characteristically far more willing to imply the alleged shooter held leftist ideologies than far-right ones, & of the two only VF's digs into the gaming culture aspect, so I'd say it's definitely the better one

And this has happened *without* a massive sea change of actual popular opinion in favour of these thugs; the elite flip has not been responding to the public, but to social media

Shot, chaser Young men more likely to vote Green than Reform. Young men second most progressive group of any demographic. Combined right-wing vote barely bigger than Green vote alone for young men

No seriously media outlets: Get gaming desks, your internet culture desks, & your extremism desks linked up YESTERDAY or you're going to find yourselves missing so much context it'll be fundamentally embarrassing. Already seen things from NYT, BBC, & AP all failing to elucidate CRUCIAL information.

Protesters Urged Not To Give Trump Administration Pretext For What It Already Doing theonion.com/protest...

meanwhile on yesterday’s stupid little walk (salt flats) I met this flamingo

trying to work out which combination of flags I can fly to signal “fuck this bullshit it’s my country too”

You are conducting a performance review of Gregg Pendleton, your direct report. The other party is the GenAI-powered software trying to replace you. Also, Gregg died last week. If you got 5 minutes, I'd love for you to play my free twine game about grief: For Gregg. barilleon.itch.io/for-gregg

appear to have reached the point in complex book editing where I fire up Touhou Mystia's Izakaya and go to Portugal

LAST 48 HOURS to back Ways & Means! It lurches incrementally closer to reality, second by second! Get it while it's largely theoretical!

I did not have “become deeply if narrowly knowledgeable about trade taxes” on my list of “positive things to do during the authoritarian takeover of the USA” but here we are

can’t fix anything or do anything about anything so here’s some fast-moving weather from the stupid little walk I went on earlier

“every hobby becomes logistical minefield” is an elegant summary

We were going to do another big marketing stunt for THE TOXIC AVENGER UNRATED. Instead, Toxie, whose life was upended by crushing medical bills, has joined forces with Undue Medical Debt to erase at least $5 million in un-payable medical debt for those who need it most. Learn more:

Big update to our public Hollows reference materials today. Re-reading the changelog is always fun

So, on 29th August, the US is ending de minimis treatment for parcels under $800 value globally. It's already done this for China; now it's going to come in for everyone. If you post parcels to America, this is going to affect you, in one of several ways.

Hello. I wrote a nice long essay about AI and this very strange moment where we're constantly told we're living in the dawn of a strange new future but the only thing that's actually clear is that everyone feels pretty unmoored and uncertain. I hope you'll read it

stupid little walk (bum)

Douglas Adams was, once again, correct

When our current hiring process is done, I should write something about how to build a good CV if you don't have a lot of relevant experience. I'm really grateful we have a process that doesn't rely on CVs, because if we were only going on CVs, we would miss some really interesting folks.

IT LIVES. Back Ways & Means RIGHT NOW so we can PAY MONEY to these EXCELLENT WRITERS & ARTISTS to make EVEN MORE HEART buff.ly/8x6LWln

Hello again, tabletop RPG designers! The second Bannerless Games Tabletop RPG Grant is now taking applications! I'm looking to award up to 10 grants at $200 apiece. Applications open until the end of the month. Apply here: bannerless.games/grants

Devastated to learn, after not going for a stupid little walk for three (3) days, that the stupid little walks are in fact essential for mental wellbeing

Did you pick Substack for your newsletter and now regret it? Help is here: leavesubstack.com

Newgrounds' approach to verifying age is interesting and transparent.

national package emergency no longer just for Chinese goods, and now with greater legislative authority

these two documents share a very similar design space

meanwhile, I'm opening up free consultation slots again from Sept, so if you're a TTRPG person who'd benefit from a bit of focussed chat about (a) spreadsheets (b) running a functional micromultinational enterprise or (c) creating books for absolute sickos, hit me up docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

So we are hiring at the moment for two jobs - one in social media & marketing, and the other across customer experience & community. Links are here rowanrookanddecard.com/work-with-us... and I want to talk for a minute about what we’re offering beyond “a job in games”.

Back in 2001, Black Sabbath did a 1000-seat gig in support of the charity that ran the homeless hostel I was living in, and (as one of the few current residents who already owned a Sabbath album) I got a backstage pass. He was much smaller in real life, and far, far friendlier. He got it.

I can't believe i missed that this week's netrunner deck of the week contains a full writeup of the UK Nationals Pronoun Meta a complete analysis of the most successful pronoun choices and discussion of whether the "he/him" dominated meta is getting stale XD netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/...

Waiting for a 9am NHS call; making breakfast. Phone rings exactly once then disconnects. Receive a text message admonishing me for missing the appointment and rearranging for another time. There is no phone number to call back. It is 9.07am. I am now a Missed Appointment Statistic.

stupid little walk (weather)

stupid little walk (bow)

stupid little walk (troll)

Also talked about The Onion being inefficient on purpose. www.status.news/p/the-onion-...

stupid little walk (cloudbow)

I’ve carefully read, massaged, restructured, trimmed, reworked & developed about 10,000 words today, and done light structural tidying up on another 20,000 or so. Plus a dozen or so customer service tasks, two calls & a meeting. So obviously my brain is on one about not having finished my emails.