Don’t Look Up (2021) or, alternatively, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

I’m making an order for strategy games and historical war games for some research I’m doing. What recommendations do people have for interesting stuff? (deep cuts appreciated) (image for attraction)

Very excited to be hosting @ckunzelman.bsky.social at Seattle U next month. Stop by if you're in the area!

I think my favorite part of “AI” being crammed into everything is that recommendations for how to “better write” my emails in Gmail come up before it tells me if I misspelled a word (if it does at all!) and, honestly, that is the perfect metaphor for “AI” in general.

Here's the link to the free pdf of my new book The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet. Access is so important and I'm grateful that the press is platforming it as one file that is easy to download. www.upress.umn.edu/978081669906...

First student prototypes of the year! From civilian resilience to evacuation to Klaipėda Revolt of 1923. A great start, looking forward to see how they develop in the coming months.

Getting inevitably closer to the US Government announcing that interest in AI is ‘too big to fail’ and all these grossly insolvent companies will be bailed out by taxpayer money.

REALIS IS LIVE! After 5 years of development, countless hours of playtesting, and invaluable ashcan feedback, the hardcover edition of @austinwalker.bsky.social's debut TTRPG Realis is now funding on Kickstarter April 1-30. Learn more & back the campaign today at www.kickstarter.com/projects/cru...!

I got to contribute some art for this! Incredible to be alongside so many talented artists and so much amazing writing. No prizes for guessing which class I got to illustrate here

Duelist, class illustration for Realis. Check out the kickstarter! www.kickstarter.com/projects/cru...

frodo: the burden of The Ring is so heavy, sam. and it plays tricks on me. it twists things until they’re unrecognizable, makes me see things that aren’t there sam (pokémon voice): samwise gamgee

TWO DAYS. Give the page a follow if you wanna make sure you don’t miss it!

I can't get behind the idea that art is for nerds/snobs, because making & engaging with some kind of art is something all humans do: be it films, books, chairs, sandwiches, clothes, sex, jokes board games are a part of this; the impulse to treat them as somehow different is nuts

As a critic I chafe at the idea that you shouldn’t write about certain pieces of media on ethical grounds. I believe that to understand the ways in which these objects are morally and objectionable, as a you HAVE TO engage with them, especially when it’s as pervasive as Potter.

A new favorite is Twisted Teen’s latest album, *blame the clown* - it has an infectious, earnest energy in the performance and the songwriting is great. Standout tracks include Wild Connection, 100 bill is gone!, peekaboo hand, who could it be?, and white hot coal cpnpc.bandcamp.com/album/blame-...

Are you looking for a distraction from the horrors of modern life? Try: watching baseball Starting now, for the next 6 months, 30 teams will play 2430 games (~2.5 hours each), for about 13 games/day. That’s 32 hours of baseball every 24 hours Your team lost? Sorry. They play again tomorrow 🔁

A new favorite is Twisted Teen’s latest album, *blame the clown* - it has an infectious, earnest energy in the performance and the songwriting is great. Standout tracks include Wild Connection, 100 bill is gone!, peekaboo hand, who could it be?, and white hot coal cpnpc.bandcamp.com/album/blame-...

Revisiting probably my favorite collection of essays by Rancière in *Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics* and the back-to-back essays on “The Aesthetic Revolution and Its Outcomes” and “The Paradoxes of Political Art” are straight up bangers. Feels immediate and useful in an age of ‘dank memes.’

Okay but when are they going to pick up my Donna/Cameron spin-off of Halt & Catch Fire -- The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Tech Girls in Love?

I don't know about the rest of the millennials but I make all purchases via real computer because I don't have to Download Yet Another App to do it and the browser there is better at blocking all the stupid fucking ads and trackers. At some point you gotta take control of the hamster wheel, kids.

Voloshinov’s 1929 book, *Marxism and the Philisophy of Language,* argued the “sign becomes an arena of the class struggle” and that signs withdrawn from pressures of social struggle lose force and “degenerate into allegory.” Protection gave way to plunder because LLMs promote degeneration of signs.

Soon!!!

Have you ever reviewed an old skeet and thought, “damn, that’s an entire essay topic right there!” and also thought, “when was I smart enough to come up with this idea?”

Our (@mahliann.bsky.social, @marcuscarter.com, and I) book GAME STUDIES: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE FIELD is officially OUT everywhere in the world except the US for some reason. So here is an actual thread about why we wrote it and what we were trying to achieve with it.

So pleased my TEXTPOCALYPSE: AN ENDGAME FOR THE INTERNET will be a part of this. Jeff has an inspiring vision, and I will have some amazing co-series authors.

It is increasingly clear that a certain strand of AI enthusiast believes talent or ‘genius’ is innate and that AI tools will separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. It is a misguided view fed by assumptions based on racist, bigoted, and misogynistic foundations that define ‘value.’

AI slop, then, is like Disneyland in Baudrillard's argument: it is meant to make us think "content" still could have content, that posting could be other than just slop

generative models plugged into these delivery systems don't make "content"; they demonstrate that there is no such thing anymore (i.e. just replace "reality" with "content" in Baudrillard's schema)

the message in all content becomes "engage with content" — which means that "content" is abolished and replaced with pure form: ceaseless engagement with engagement disjunctionsmag.com/articles/end...

The intent of this exercise is the bedrock of aesthetics but in the hands of bad faith actors the language of aesthetics is nothing more than a veil for mimetic desire. They celebrate this art and their creators because they want others to emulate/copy their values and opinions.

New Alt-History show for Prestigeniks: Captains of Twittustry

Nice visual/written essay by Terry Godier on how material goods of capitalism (phone, appliances, apps) shifted from being products to becoming relationships. This shift is a mirror of neoliberal subjectivity that demands ‘work on the self’ via moral imperatives. www.terrygodier.com/the-last-qui...

An evening bonus: an hour-long interview with @meredithgran.com about the wonderful PERFECT TIDES: STATION TO STATION. Check it out for free over on the Ranged Touch Patreon! www.patreon.com/posts/meredi...

The flailing neoliberal regime fosters only an endless supply of crises that, in turn, allow neoliberal and, increasingly, fascist political and tech apparatchiks to peddle experts and expertise like so much snake oil. AI is an intensification of the exploitative nature of this expertise peddling.

Game 16 of Deadball with the 5 year-old was maybe the most memorable yet. Skubal pitched a 6-inning gem with 2 hits, 1 run, and 10Ks. But Newton Codwallop’s 3-run home run with two outs in the bottom of the 8th capped a comeback that saw the Goose Hollow Hussars walk away with a 6-5 victory.

(Ian Malcolm voice) “Gambling, uh, finds a way.”

The focus of these pieces is always the material output of AI which needs to be seriously grappled with in terms of its impact and end use. But zero of these pieces ever come close to the material realities comprising AI; environmental costs, community costs where data centers are built, etc.

We're announcing our new theme: Analogue. It's an open call, and full details are available on the HGN blog here: www.historicalgames.net/call-for-con...

I wrote a little bit about 1490 DOOM and how I think skirmish war games are the answer to a whole lot of problems in the world.

I work in Family Law and can tell you the Slopalanche of pro se parties submitting 40-page Declarations has already begun and is yet another tactic a party can use to drain the financial resources of another party that has representation. You still have to review and respond to it and it’s a chore.

guess what nerds it's time for space trains hollandspiele.com/products/ray...

I would have gotten into Geese so much faster if someone had told me the lead singer is David Bromberg.

I hear the Miniature Counterfeiters' Guild is accepting new applicants, if you're looking to make a little coin

A little surprised Trump hasn’t labeled ICE the sword and the shield of the USA by now.

“The quality of a card’s likeness becomes the gateway through which epistemological valuations and concerns can be enacted both in the encoding and decoding process. [Haunted Screen and Rick Grimes] are clones that players look at and ask, “is this real?”” drive.google.com/file/d/1wE9A...

*You can't lose interest in historical developments just because everything seems rigidly and relentlessly enshittified *This is what Havel is talking about here *A lot of people click this essay, it's rare for people to read all of it *I read it rather often. medium.com/@bruces/the-...

This is one of the great pieces of writing from a past that feels relevant now. People keenly feel the absence of ‘living in truth’ and it would behoove us to understand why that is the case and how we begin to move the other direction. Havel, and many other Soviet dissidents, have wisdom to share.

I promise I won’t keep posting my essay re: Magic cards and mimetic aesthetics. But the ‘discourse’ is popping off about the TMNT set and I think the question about *why* these cards are generating such affective responses is worth examining and has broader linkages to media consumption in general.

“For a Magic card, the mimetic aesthetic both solidifies denotative meaning and facilitates that meaning’s access to the deeper, richer connotative meaning. It is the access point through which gamespace takes hold. It is what makes a card a clone.” drive.google.com/file/d/1wE9A...