Next week, @unwinnable.com's 200th issue comes out, so I put together a gallery of all 202 covers of Unwinnable, dating all they way back to 1872. Er, I mean 2014. unwinnable.com/2026/06/19/2...

Thought Pauline Kael called Woody Allen “mid” for a second

I remember when I had a Jared Polis sticker on my file cabinet. I don’t know where that file cabinet is now

Inventing ELIZA owes a debt of gratitude to two Noahs: Noah Wardrip-Fruin who inspired and encouraged the hunt for the ELIZA code and Noah Springer who shepherded the book along to completion. Many thanks for believing in this project! @n-w-f.bsky.social @noahspringer.com @mitpress.bsky.social

In order to get rid of $1 trillion in a single year, you’d have to spend $2.74 billion daily, roughly Nintendo’s profit from last year, a day, every day, for a year

Yeah, I’m thinking it’s #WidowsBay season

Yeah, I’m thinking it’s #WidowsBay season

More @shirachess.bsky.social It's ShiraMania today! "Conjuring a Magical Medium; or, How to Rip a Hole in the Fabric of Reality" & R.U. Sirius Reality Hackers Mondo 2000 for the assist "This is most resonantly seen in Reality Hackers magazine... become Mondo 2000... R. U. Sirius explains..." i do

"Like Pomni and her cohort, we find ourselves on daily digital 'adventures' that are increasingly unpleasant and obligatory." @shirachess.bsky.social explains why The Amazing Digital Circus resonates so much with our current experiences:

Cyberpunk goggles if I’ve ever seen them

You're in her DMs but I'm in the acknowledgements section with about 50 other names we are not the same (I joke, but it's SUCH a green flag when an author takes the time to name every person at the press who worked on their book and not just the editor)

I have some exciting news. I have signed a contract with the MIT Press to release a book on the history of #Warhammer. Titled THE FORGING OF WORLDS, it draws on over 15 years of research and tells the story of the creation of #WFB, #WFRP and #WH40K. More in the link below....

I do generally think POD gets a bad name and has outright made survival possible for some presses not just because of printing but STORAGE costs. Print a lot, store a lot. This is all part of the infrastructure that gets overlooked.

Three signs that bookclub email you just got is probably a scam 🚩 1) Generic gmail (or similar) address 2) The book club, award, or organization doesn’t exist when you look it up 3) The email is overly long, vague, and full of excessive praise (often AI-written)

If you ever wanted a taste of my book about monsters in games, here's a neat new excerpt on the @mitpress.bsky.social Reader about the melancholy of the monster killer and about who's the real monster in video games. The book is now 3 years old and it was nice to revisit it.

Shit, me too, except with Jason Mantzoukas

Touch Of Evil should be higher though

Prolly woulda died at 29 when I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes

Trying to teach the 4 year old Donkey Kong Country, but all he wants to do is go back in the cave in the first level and beat his chest. Relatable tbh

Friends, the Final Fantasy x Politics theme issue (including spicy Final Romantasy fanfic) is out now. It was a year in the making, I didn't want to do it, we did it anyway and now we all have to live with the burden. Buy it now! unwinnable.bigcartel.com/product/unwi...

A project nearly a year in the making: This month's theme issue of Unwinnable Monthly covers Final Fantasy and politics. Features from @aguaspoints.bsky.social, @gracemachine.bsky.social, @solfleet.bsky.social and @nukelassic.bsky.social. Buy: buff.ly/AEMj6rD Subscribe: buff.ly/0hFvFne

GUYS, IT’S REAL smallscreen.ordoliberal.com huge shout out to @standard.bsky.social for creating this and the Venture Bros and KotH ones, absolutely phenomenal!!!!

Wondering what is going on in those Backrooms trailers? Some thought on the creepypasta, the web series, the film, and the emerging aesthetic of Institutional Gothic via @mitpress.bsky.social thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/backrooms-an...

You’ll only be able to find my opinions about bone temples and their various audiovisual ephemera in Exploits. Subscribe today!

Next up at #scms26 is L10, a fantastic looking roundtable on Institutions of Game Histories with @lainenooney.bsky.social, @noahspringer.com, Jeremy Saucier, and special guest @aarontram.bsky.social, moderated by @liebenwalde.bsky.social. Should be a great conversation!

On a more self-promotional note, stop by session L10 at 2:15 on Saturday and you can hear me and host of other brilliant folks talk about the various important institutions of Game Histories. It’s going to be a blast!

And the signing starts!

And, as always, I don’t want to take any of these books home. If you come by on Saturday, you can put your name in a book and walk away with it for free on Sunday!

Surprise surprise, @mitpress.bsky.social is back for #SCMS26, and we’re bringing the books and the signings!

Panel E1 at #scms2026: Sorry I didn't live-post this! Really amazing conversation about game history. I'm going to post some notes to self about some big take-aways.

Two hours to go! Come get your books signed. 6:15, session E1 in the Regal room

Hey #SCMS26 - think magazine research is boring? Then you clearly haven’t met my panel. 2:15 today … it will get messy.

I’m not at #PaxEast but a ton of books I’ve published are. Stop by the @mitpress.bsky.social booth and pick some up!

But wait, there’s more! While there, you can also get a signed copy of Carlin Wing’s new history of how things Bounce! mitpress.mit.edu/978026255321...

Nancy Fraser: “On the colonisation of the lifeworld, I felt that, in essentialising the system/lifeworld distinction, Habermas masked historically specific forms of male domination and missed the transformative potential of feminist movements.”

If you are at #SCMS26 you should come get a free signed copy of my new book, THE UNSEEN INTERNET. Counterculture icon @rusirius.bsky.social endorses that reading it is like tripping on robitussin! (This is probably not true.)

Surprise surprise, @mitpress.bsky.social is back for #SCMS26, and we’re bringing the books and the signings!

In “Hot Connections,” Jenny Sundén, Susanna Paasonen, and Katrin Tiidenberg rethink “the social” in social media. Available #OpenAccess: mitpress.mit.edu/978026205206...

Wait, you’re telling me Cliff wrote the notes?

In honor of Habermas, a meme I made

Which is to say, I’m unbelievably thrilled to say this morning I’ve signed a contract with @mitpress.bsky.social for the trade publication of my next book, an exploration of the first two decades of TTRPG Actual Play.

Been a sec since we've run one of these threads: Hey there, we're Unwinnable! We've been publishing 100% independent pop culture criticism since 2010. Since we mainly count on reader funding, our writers write what's on their minds -- not what's best for the algorithm or investors.

Oliver Stone is one of the worst directors of all time to have acquired any sort of status. His best movies are a 6/10 at best, and all of his work has unforgivable flaws

Friends! On Friday March 13th, at 14:00, the Center for Digital Play is hosting a talk by Victor Navarro-Remesal, on The Making of Zen and Slow Games. You can read more about the talk here: digitalplay.itu.dk/event/victor...

The counterculture spent the 90s trying to destroy consensus reality. It worked. We just didn't have a plan for what came next. Stream and subscribe my conversation with @shirachess.bsky.social: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWOp...

Great convo between @shirachess.bsky.social & @rushkoff.com :))) www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWOp...

My "US not veering into a new, endless war" t-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my t-shirt

A thread that demonstrates the neoliberal consolidation of ownership of media industries over the last 100 years in like, 5 posts, all from different accounts