Well-animated floofy ponytails

Hi! Many things are bad you can still have a great day. Try to plan something fun offline like a walk outside, picking up a favorite pastry, going to a local farmer's market or a nap. You still deserve joy and time to rest and recover.

Just finished In Waves and War on Netflix and wow, what a great documentary. 2 hours of veteran Navy Seals confronting their own trauma from PTSD and toxic masculinity, healing through psychedelics. Incredibly moving. "Would we even have a military if we didn't abuse children— makes you wonder"

It has taken me AGES to get a new healthcare provider post-move and my appointment is finally only a couple of weeks away and I cannot overstate how excited I am to get back on my regular ADHD meds soon 😭

i owe so many video game designers an apology

Eminently reasonable proposed principles for professors’ use of AI, from a student refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/08/29/a...

friends in the US, here’s a great website that lists food assistance sites and services near you. if you need it, take it. it’s given with love and goodwill to you from your community for those with resources to spare—please consider donating to your local 💖 foodsearch.net

The people yearn for (democratic) socialism (this one will make you cry)

📣 IF YOU HAVE A LITTLE FREE LIBRARY TURN IT INTO A COMMUNITY PANTRY ASAP IF YOU ARE ABLE

Honestly QA might be the hardest of ALL dev jobs to replace with AI. The entire goal of QA is to notice when things are falling outside of expected parameters.

The 10th Roguelike Celebration is now LIVE! Pick up a ticket, pay what you can, and join us for a full weekend of amazing talks! We have a whole online chat space that's bustling and full of secrets, we have breakout rooms to chat with speakers, please come say hi! ti.to/roguelike-ce...

Branching narrative class got cancelled, so I'm doing the thing I probably should have done in the first place and rereading @stcymsn.bsky.social 's dissertation.

A good reminder for all the indie game devs out there. What we do is very difficult. It doesn't always work out the way we might hope. But you created something from nothing and put it out into the world. That matters. You matter.

Good article by @im.giovanh.com about a "cozy" airport security game. Wholesome games tend to reimagine labor -and reality as a whole- as we'd like it to be: beautiful, tidy, meaningful, social... but why would there be terrorist threats in this utopia? blog.giovanh.com/blog/2025/10...

Relatedly, here’s a reminder about the 7 different types of rest. ideas.ted.com/the-7-types-...

When I first got a puppy (years ago) they said that if you want to wear out all that puppy energy, the best thing is to give them brain puzzles. Today, I’m the puppy—learning a ton at once, but totally exhausted by end of day. (Here’s puppy tax from when Pharah was about 10 mo and mentally done)

Parents, please check your kids’ candy this Halloween. I’ve just found an ancient metal whistle with the inscription “QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT" inside a Snickers bar. I blew it and heard a note of infinite distance, and now I’m haunted by a figure in pale, fluttering draperies. Be safe.

I'm okay with this ONLY if it's like 6 hrs of people asking "Sheep for Stone?"

Tapping the sign.

As promised, if you’re inspired by the march today but don’t know how else to get involved, how to sustainably fight fascism, that can look a few different ways. Here’s a thread of thoughts, short of nationwide withholding of labor / sustained protest:

😍 Boston, you are beautiful. #NoKings

$20,000 of royalty free commercial use video game music. Available now until October 22 for only $10 on: moonanagames.itch.io/80-songs-pack Is it worth it? Don't take my word for it, just look at what the ppl have said instead. #gamedev 🎮 #ttrpg #vtuber

Put a banner on every closed hospital, farm, small business & nursing home: “TRUMP SAVED ARGENTINA INSTEAD”

Reminder (mostly to myself): the goal of a todo list is not to create a list of obstacles between you and rest when “done”. The goal of a todo list is to get more done *than you would without the list*. Don’t measure against an arbitrary “done”; measure against what you’d accomplish with no list.

Student Success | The Library Wants to Know if You ‘Got Rejected’ The @ucsantacruz.bsky.social invited students to share their stories of rejection or failure to normalize the experience and create community. https://bit.ly/3IIBanX

Post-ship quick sync

The OTHER project at CDPR's Boston studio is hiring a Lead Writer. (FT, onsite preferred) Come work with a very chill and creative team on Project Sirius ✨️ jobs.smartrecruiters.com/CDPROJEKTRED...

it is insane to me that you could basically get two narrative designers who can basically solve any problem within scope constraints. it’s like having people parachute in to rescue whatever you need fixing far beyond what you thought you could get

These kinds of stories are so important to tell

Going to be so tired at work tomorrow but there are so many small musical flourishes I’m obsessed with and can’t stop listening.

Hey folks! I’m a concept artist with over 10 years of experience looking for my next opportunity! Whether it be full time or freelance, teams big or small, I’d love to help on your project belgianbooleancg.com You can also support me with tips to help pay bills ko-fi.com/belgianboolean Cheers!

I’ve been gone awhile because things have been very hard at home. I find myself at an unfathomable point, and my heart is absolutely broken. If you’re able to donate and share, my gratitude is deep. I never wanted to get here. Thank you for your consideration and assistance. gofund.me/0b0592ad0

The all-cash deal values EA at $55 billion, a massive premium, as Saudi Arabia and others take it private. Wilson will stay on as CEO for now and the deal still has to be approved. kotaku.com/ea-sale-saud...

Even though swapping A and B buttons is the first thing I do every time I get a new Nintendo console and I'm desperately grateful they eventually added that feature, I kind of love Nintendo's refusal to swap their A & B buttons as a matter of course. They're like "fool, we invented A and B buttons"

If any single techbro pushing genAI had 1% of the incredible artists (incl writers, film-makers, game devs, etc) in their life that I do, they'd never ever put their talents and energy towards making machines that steal from them to spit out soulless garbage facsimiles of creativity.

🦥 HIRING 🦥 We're looking for a Senior 2D Animator for something new! 🖌️ Temporary, full-time role (12-18 months) 🖌️ Remote 🖌️ 3+ years exp of 2D Flash-style animation 🖌️ Proficienct with Adobe Animate Apps close Oct 10. Apply now! innersloth.bamboohr.com/careers/33

@unraveledpress.com literally got me being shot — I'm crouched behind the van holding the back of my head where I'd already been hit. Then it pans to the right where the ICE is pointing right at us. I get hit in the face & you see the man who was with me rush past as he takes me to the medic

Dr. Friedman’s mentoring advice (passed down from my mentors): while love often fuels the start of a project, stubbornness gets you through. I keep thinking lately of the question my sister asked her future husband: “what are you going to do on the day you wake up & you don’t love me anymore?”

Readjusting to the small reverse-culture-shocks of returning from SF to Boston: - finally starting to let go of my emotional support layers and trust that the weather is the weather and it will not randomly be 20° colder because I have traveled 1 mile towards water - getting good at small talk again

I was just saying to friends that I dress down to go to work (and most game events). I’m actually writing a post about hoodies as armor & the gamedev uniform (though I’ve prev written about how I bought new clothes & shoes at my first GDC in 2014 so that people on the floor would talk to me)

Are you or someone you know skipping GDC (or considering doing so) because of worries about coming to the US/San Francisco in the current environment? If so, I want to hear from you for a piece. DM me here or kyle DOT orland AT arstechnica DOT com. Please spread the word

Sometimes the most unexpected lenses yield the most fascinating insights

management are also often subject to The Shareholders who cannot imagine a world more creative than the ‘current successes’. remember that before BG3 and disco came out, selecting unvoiced branching dialogue options was considered ‘old fashioned’ and ‘not what the kids want these days’. then whoops

If you insist on changing both your profile pic, display name and handle at the same time, you have become a stranger to me and I will always wonder who you once were and why I was following you 😅

Hey! I have no idea how to do this, I’ve never made a List or Starter Pack before, but: ⭐️ If you’re a Games Writer/Narrative Designer looking for work, and you’d like to be added to my Starter Pack, lmk! ⭐️ If you’re looking to hire a Games Writer/Narrative Designer, check out this Starter Pack!

This touches on a principle I embrace- lenses, not boxes. Putting things in boxes means defining hard boundaries, losing nuance, and resigning ourselves to only benefiting from one framing. Using lenses instead of boxes means we can use more of them, and see what we learn from new perspectives. 1/2

Credit to @stcymsn.bsky.social for putting words to this principle in their dissertation! It's a principle I had seen elsewhere in more words, and had been trying to follow myself, but the clear framing here helped so much in my efforts to communicate how I was approaching conversations.

Just don't post. Don't feel the need to weigh in on every issue all the time. Sometimes other people have said it better. Don't force yourself to chase trends, news, events, drama, and definitely don't feel like you have to be involved in everything that happens.

Happy 40th birthday Super Mario Bros

Deeply impressed that the BIPOC Game Studies Conference at The Strong Museum hasn't happened yet--it's in 2 days--but the Proceedings are already available: playstorypress.org/books/procee... (@analoggamestudies.bsky.social has an entry, Aaron Trammell & I have a brief essay...) #playstorypress