Fallout creator Tim Cain unearthed the original 1997 advantage/disad list from when Black Isle planned to base Fallout on GURPS (PC Gamer): www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/fa...

Fred Astaire was born on this date in 1899. From "Holiday Inn" (1942), Astaire's brilliantly percussive tap routine to Irving Berlin's "Let's Say It With Firecrackers/Song of Freedom." Bob Fosse said Astaire in this number was "an incredible drummer": www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lxl...

Project 2025 has hit 53% complete, progress seems to be slowing a bit: www.project2025.observer/en

"The Lusty Month of May" (Lerner/Loewe), Camelot (1961) Act 1 Scene 5, sung with incomparable clarity and effervescence by Julie Andrews: youtu.be/anqaUhjo1eg

Deep explainer about ASML, the Dutch company that has become key to Europe's tech industries (Works in Progress): worksinprogress.co/issue/the-wo...

Col. Lou Zocchi at a 2008 convention talking for 20 minutes straight about why his dice are better dice: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ-A...

It came to pass in the third quarter of the fiscal year that the Federal Reserve Board did raise the rediscount rate and money was tight in the land.

"With all this in mind, the next 1-2 years look exceedingly dark, because there is not a single credible light (of growth) for the industry."

Every ambitious composer of film soundtracks should score this amazing hare-and-hounds chase (via @kottke.org): www.youtube.com/watch?v=O60x...

Yesterday's Gridogram puzzle (Sat 07 March) used my suggestion, "I'm just a mean green mother from outer space, and I'm bad." Here is the 1986 source of that quotation, "Little Shop of Horrors" (1986) in its Director's Cut version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdz1...

I chose the quotation for today's Screen Time Saturday installment (2026-03-07) of the Gridogram puzzle by @gridogram.com : www.gridogram.com

Paramount CEO David Ellison has a generic face, a template face. Describe him to a police sketch artist - "wide face, strong jaw, high forehead, thick lips" - and ten seconds after the sketch artist starts roughing in the outline, you'd say "That's him." www.imdb.com/name/nm19111...

In 1941 Irving Berlin wrote a protest song against Hitler, "When that Man is Dead and Gone," covered nicely in 2017 by Lizzy & the Triggermen: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDkh...

Why do we see this exact same story play out repeatedly? Do companies have no memory? Is learning impossible?

Countries with the best reputations in 2025, ranked (Visual Capitalist): www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-count...

The future of work is changing. And we have to evolve with it or fall behind. That's why we're proud to introduce: Serfdom dot AI. Our platform allows SERFs (solo entrepreneur revenue facilitators) to rent affordable housing that they can subsidize by picking up work with Baron, our AI assistant

"If the Algorithm Was a Person" (Foil Arms and Hog): youtu.be/tKGE6UzwdXc?...

"Dentologia: A Poem on the Diseases of the Teeth" in five cantos by Solyman Brown, A.M., with notes practical, historical, illustrative, and explanatory by Eleazar Parmly, Dentist (1840): www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77677

Stories by O. Henry's Ghost (1918): Albert Houghton Pratt (1878-1941), rare book curator at the Library of Congress, wrote a book of stories as by O. Henry, dictated via Ouija board: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77686

Project 2025 has hit 51% complete: www.project2025.observer/en

How to store a #chess position in 26 bytes using bit-level magic (ezzerieasa): ezzeriesa.notion.site/How-to-store...

This is coming from a place of love and support, but… It’s ‘shoo-in,’ not ‘shoe-in.’ It’s ‘case in point,’ not ‘case and point.’ It’s ‘moot point,’ not ‘mute point.’ It’s ‘hunger pangs,’ not ‘hunger pains.’ It’s ‘jibe with,' not 'jive with.'

2026 State of the World conference on The WELL with Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: people.well.com/conf/inkwell...

Auld English - Founts thatte fimulate the experience of reading in olden days, bye diverfe means (ie, contextual alternates): www.auldenglish.com

2025: The Bundle of Holding year in review (Beyond the Bundle blog): beyondthebundle.com/2026-01-01/2...

#Classical ringtones - phone tunes arranged in convincing pastiches of Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, & Ravel by Josep Castanyer Alonso: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnmB...

I like hearing music on Christmas Day so I can see the little Santa hat on the VLC Media Player icon.

Ravel's Bolero performed on nine homemade 8-bit chiptune instruments (Linus Akesson): linusakesson.net/music/bolero...

1. Life is unfair, but you really don't want it to be "fair." 2. You can get pretty far in life just by showing up. 3. A lot of success just takes time. 4. Some big advantages come from negative personality traits. 5. You don't know what you want until you get it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-iL...

9,175 game industry layoffs in 2025 (so far!) (GamesIndustry): www.gamesindustry.biz/games-indust...

Works that will enter public domain in 2026 (Wiki): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_in...

Alan Moore profile (Metropolitan Review, 26 Nov 2025 - 11,500 words): www.metropolitanreview.org/p/giant-of-t...

Paraphrases (1887): Set of 40 variations on "Chopsticks" by four Russian composers for piano four hands, where a virtuoso is playing alongside a small child. Compositions by Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Liadov, & Cui, plus a prelude by Franz Liszt (!): www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x--...

Coping with burnout by learning ancient Sumerian (Mind the Nerd) - attn @jessnevins.bsky.social : mindthenerd.com/why-im-learn...

Never heard anything like Verse 2 of OJ the Alien's 2023 space-gangsta-rap-comedy track "Wiseguys on Mars": www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgIA...

"How I View the US After 13 Years Living in Europe" (Evan Edinger, 06 Oct 2025): www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1Qv... /1.7M views, 13.6K comments, all supportive

"It feels incredible to return to [Montreal] where my career began in 1999, back when the gaming industry was just taking off.” Ah yes, that primordial epoch of 1999, the misty glimmering dawn of computer games. (Variety): variety.com/2025/gaming/...

The supermarket music system started playing "Never Gonna Give You Up," and reflexively I looked around, checking to see if I'd been pranked into visiting the wrong store.

On Tues 23 Sept I'm doing a Reddit r/rpg AMA about my 28-year freelance career, the Bundle of Holding, and my new D&D sourcebook "Manse Magnificent": www.reddit.com/r/rpg/commen...

Mark Rein-Hagen did well enough at White Wolf to buy a painted-lady landmark house in San Francisco. Of course he was both designer and publisher. Can't think of any RPG just-designers who made serious bank off a game published by others.

Not to add to the discourse, but… It’s ‘toe the line,’ not ‘tow the line.’ It’s ‘free rein,’ and not ‘free reign.’ It’s ‘eke out,’ not ‘eek out.’ It’s ‘sleight of hand,’ not ‘slight of hand.’ It's ‘Anchors aweigh,’ and not ‘Anchor's away!’

"In 1994 Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti suggested people have always endured commutes of 1 hour/day, 1/2 hour each way, on avg. Improvements in urban planning and transport haven’t shortened travel time; they’ve just permitted us to live further afield." www.futilitycloset.com/2025/07/31/m...

The other day I drew a subway-style map for The Hobbit, and it was very well received. Some of you asked if I could do one for LoTR, so I have! Forgive the eel watermark; I'm working on making these something you can buy, if you like.

Just updating the data fueling my games industry layoff tracker dashboard and noticing we just hit another grim milestone. I now know of as many layoff waves happening in 2025 so far as I know of from 2023 in its entirety. It is currently July 8. Tell me again who said this was getting better?

95 untold cases Sherlock Holmes or Watson allude to without explanation (Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia - via Futility Closet): www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Ca...

Dutch weather forecaster accuses Belgian wind farms of stealing Dutch wind (Brussels Times): www.brusselstimes.com/1595046/belg...

Patrick Stewart, the actor, canonically exists in the Star Trek future, and Jean-Luc Picard is aware of him (Ironic Sans): ironicsans.ghost.io/proof-that-p... /via Jason Kottke

"People who actually left the US, are you happy?" (Reddit r/AmerExit, 28 April): www.reddit.com/r/AmerExit/c...