In the comic Transmetropolitan, senitent viruses study the laws of The City, and identify miniscule moments where loopholes exist, where for a split second in one location it is legal to do a thing, like release mind-control gas to make you buy products. This is how Machine Learnign products work-

If you make something easily confused for a better mousetrap, but breaks most of the time, the world will be enslaved to beat a path to your door anyway.

You are all welcome, the community here is not great and this place is a goddamn nightmare exactly like the house you fled. Ignore the discourse. Try not to go mad. Leave often.

I'll go you one better: just lift other people up. You don't have to make friends or like people. You just support them. Every success I've ever had in this industry I can lay at the feet of giving a fucking damn about others.

If I were trying to get people to agree with me, I might say something like "I love Kat, and I hope this works attract and engage and do good. There are good reasons why campaign finance is so tracked however, so this is risky and not every campaign can do it, or do it in a useful way - be careful!"

The answer to your rhetorical question is, "Authoritarian Fascist systems of political, economic, and thought control, portrayed in attentive n engaging stories of cutting-edge conceptualization to imagine what is possible."

New episode! We were going to lead with @tinstargames.bsky.social's career, but he fell ill and couldn't listen to it ahead of time, so we switched 'em. @mattthr.bsky.social You might find a dog in this one, especially re: using reviews as recommendations. FIXED LINK: tinstargames.podbean.com

Carrie Fisher left us 9 years ago today, and we miss her terribly. ❤️

this is just to say I have loosed  the blood-dimmed tide that you were probably saving for the ceremony of innocence forgive me the best lack all conviction while the worst are so passionate and so intense

There's a larger point though: animals go to other animals for help too. It's not that they think we're special. Or not especially kind. Or especially clever.

This week a left-supporting journalist made a Bad Skeet which made him look like a fascist, and a lot of people got mad at him, then other people got mad at the people getting mad and so on and so forth. But the problem is: that's how social media works. Yes, don't post things without context but-

In some very important ways, games like Apocalypse World are way, way better than D&D at doing the things D&D claims to do. But at the same time, they are in other ways, doing it just as poorly. It is not enough to hate D&D, grasshopper. You must hate ALL titterpigs.

Bobby: "See, Joseph, with Powered by the Apocalypse games, you only need these two six-sided dice. And you use 'moves' to change the narrative flow of--" Hank: "Bobby, what are you doing in there?!" Bobby: "Uh... playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dad!"

Saw another "white men are an oppressed minority" piece which used as evidence for this the fact that white men will be a minority by X date. What they forget is that minorities aren't always oppressed! In fact, most of the time, majorities are oppressed.

It is soooo normal for a country to have a TV news report about its gulag system removed from the broadcast

sometimes when you're in an industry you can't say "oh that person is an asshole" because if you can't prove it, you're just being a jerk and they could say the same about you. it's the code. Similarly, a lot of games I think are just huge misses but I can't say. Like "give me my money back" suckage

This article goes through what pretty much any person who has done any student politics has experienced, and certainly anyone who has done left/liberal stuff has run into: that there's a bunch of backbiting assholes who trash movements... BUT leighstein.substack.com/p/the-end-of...

PSA: If you work for #60minutes and don't at a minimum shout far and wide that Bari Weiss is hijacking your work and trying to paint a different reality, you're not a #journalist. You want my respect? Fucking quit. There are more noble ways to make a living.

Basic income is the most effective core policy to save the people, save the country, and save the market economy in a future society where jobs are disappearing and polarization is severe Lee Jae-myung President, South Korea

In the case of the D&D comment, it's a strawman and moves the goalpost. Few think D&D is genuinely "bad" or "not a good time." It's unwise to "look down on it." But monolithic cultures are inherently *restrictive* and generally bad. D&D isn't "fit for purpose," as you put it. We specified that.

The time-traveller smiled, seeing the great city of TINAPOH towering to the sky: proof that humanity had endured. "What does the name mean?" he asked. "Oh it's an acronym for the ruins we found here when we came. It means This Is Not A Place of Honour."

its always nice to step away from the pundit-space where everything is SOOO COMPLICATED and takes have to be edgy and realise that actually, in lots of cases, we know what's wrong and what's right, and it's hard but not mysterious.

if there is titterpig discourse, I will avoid it, because discourse is the problem to begin with.

What strikes me about these Epstein materials - there are really no surprises. The 1000+ victims have already named all these men. Even Bill Gates. His wife publicly said she divorced him because of his relationship with Epstein. We just don't believe women, systemically.

A lot of conservatives are going to try to walk away from this bed that they made.

Those new to Bsky need to be made aware of one of the greatest skeets ever, deleted long before its time.

As usual, the problem isn't whether Stancil is right or wrong, but that he's just really fucking terrible at saying anything clearly.

i wish it were more satisfying to watch Ben Shapiro get eaten alive by the monsters he made his bed with, but unfortunately we have to live with the fuckers too.

Saw #WakeUpDeadMan, loved it, and came out with another idea for another Blanc novel, so again, I shoot my shot: Please, @rianjohnson.bsky.social, let me write the Benoit Blanc novels. I already wrote one! archiveofourown.org/works/639417...

"they don't know how to express the idea" here's rian johnson's storyboard for knives out pick up a pencil and a napkin

Waaay back in the 1980s they took manual arts and regular arts out of the curriculum, because kinesthetic skills were for poor people like mechanics and plumbers. Pretty much straight away we noticed the problem: learning how to make a visual thing is a big part of being a successful human.

this is the first version of the facehugger you just need to draw like, actually draw

i feel like this is an empirical question you could answer with good research design.

As @joshtpm.bsky.social recently noted, there are enough issues with AI that someone can find something to oppose.

Things are going great over at X, The Everything App

I feel like this is missing the point: the choice is like your character's outfit. It's not a game mechanic, it's to suit your style.

I spoke to a dozen professional concept artists working in games about whether generative AI image tools have made their jobs easier, even if it's just used in "very early ideation stages." Zero said "yes." Most said it made their job harder. I learnt a lot about concept artists. You should too!

People have been explaining since the moment "Popularism" became a thing that it is based on a fatally flawed understanding of how public opinion actually works and I long ago concluded that it's simply too profitable for them, personally, to keep repeating it for anyone to care that it's wrong.

For me, the tightness of the system, esp in 2e, is the biggest draw for Warhammer. It's perfect. But if you want a different system... cubicle7games.com/warhammer-th...

We've completely fucked up the pre-launch. We'll have more news on un-fucking this next year. www.tinstargames.com/2025/12/18/a...

I agree more needs to be done but there are stories out there like this.

You CAN condemn what happened to the Bondi Jewish community and you CAN oppose the genocide and you CAN oppose Oct 7 and you CAN condemn the oppression Gazans faced before that, without it justifying anything that came next. You can and you must. You have to want it *all* to stop.

They are mad about a true story.

He lied about refugees throwing children overboard. Going back through his entire career, he built his every step up by playing the race card. The man is a living breathing hate crime. For him to talk about social cohesion is insane, and we should decry it.

He has said he has always been uncomfortable with multiculturalism, and had called for Asian migration to stop. He disagrees with people who say racism is a problem in Australia because that hasn’t been his experience. Why would anyone listen to him about social cohesion?!

John Howard pushed for the invasion of Iraq, which was one of the dominoes which created the conditions for ISIS and caused untold human misery we are still dealing with today. He refused to acknowledge racism was a main driver of the Cronulla riots.

I've famously told this story on podcasts a number of times, but I met Gil Gerard as a kid at a celebrity tennis tournament and he tried to pick up my mom right in front of me. Was I mad? No. Buck Rogers tried to fuck my mom, which is the most Buck Rogers thing he could do. Lived up to the legend.

Door knocking is the inverse of social media hazing, really: door knocking has a low hit rate for connection, but a HUGE hit rate for conversion. Social media can get more easily seen, but is far less persuasive. Both vectors matter.