announcing ILÚVATAR, my multi-billion dollar company which will specialize in the dismantling of all other idiotically tolkien-named entities, that they shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite

A beautiful rumination on one of my favorite illustrations from Dominaria

Yes, the Grink was there. I'm getting to that. He was on that island with me. And I wouldn't be alive to tell my story without him.

Watching the livestream of the Artemis II lunar flyby, and one of the astronauts was just being an absolute Moon Nerd talking about which craters they can currently see and all the fascinating albedo variations, and I just love it www.youtube.com/live/z-j1uxB...

“Well done. Here come the test results: You are a horrible person. I'm serious, that's what it says: A horrible person. We weren't even testing for that.”

Today I want to tell you a story about a little game I played early on in my time on Riftbound—a game called “Monch or Gromp?” (Thread)

Notice how there’s not even a fig leaf here—not even an attempt to appear as though this helps anyone or keeps anyone safe. This is pure persecution, and it’s what all this anti-trans shit has always been about. Protect trans vs people any way you can, folks.

We literally know now that anti-trans legislation was pushed by a pedophile ring to allow a pedophile ring to serve a pedophile ring’s interests, and legislators have decided the best course of action is to keep doing what the pedophile ring wants.

I really hate anti-trans politicians, and I especially hate it because it was a culture war issue where we were clearly winning and then a bunch of nominally liberal people at the Times and the Atlantic decided to reverse that and they did.

Timeless humour! A 2,000 year-old Roman souvenir pen with a joke inscription roughly equivalent to: “I went to Rome and all I got you was this cheap pen!" 😂 Dated circa 70 AD, this iron stylus pen was recovered in London during excavations by MOLA. 📷 Juan Jose Fuldain/MOLA #Archaeology

perennial reminder that this typographic thing: * * * is called a "dinkus" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinkus

Unironically yes, LOWER DECKS is about how the response to the disappointments of the post-Cold War era and the complexity of the modern world should not be despair or cynicism but instead a recommitment to the original ideals of liberalism, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Incredibly special bit of Magic history here, up for auction to benefit a great cause

"The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone."

hey I like that we're all posting thru it but I also wanted to say, in case anybody else is feeling it, that I'm pretty scared and genuinely think that we've passed a real rubicon in the past week or so and that being at the mercy of a handful of dumbfuck lunatics really does a number on your soul.

I think this is right. Both that the Trump-MAGA effort at power consolidation is failing and also that its failure isn't the end of the matter. Beyond it there is a need to come up with a new political formulation which provides folks with an attractive vision of how we can move forward.

Just gonna say this again for games sphere cus we get the same question: Networking doesn't mean schmoozing up to famous people, it means making friends with your peers. Then in 10 years, 20, one of you might be famous? And sure you're still helping each other cus well yeah friends. Make. Friends.

Apparently the guy who got assigned as Editor to Patrick O Brien's first Master and Commander novel had that book as his first real assignment and was horrified to find that in 384 pages there was no critique to be made and exactly one typo which Patrick rebutted as a valid spelling for the period.

How the nyt used the Cass report to restart its anti-trans propaganda campaign in the US: Coverage of the report was initially assigned to a nyt UK correspondent, usual practice for a UK report. The story being prepared cited critics who called Cass a shoddy, political document that defied science

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality. And trans lives are grounded in reality. We see y'all. No matter what. www.popsci.com/science/tran...

It's a bad sign that current conservative infighting is centered on whether to be Nazis or just regular bigots, but I do like it when they fight

This article slaps. And it prominently features Ashes of the Sun, the Magic novel that had by far the most influence on me. Politics! Heresy! Minotaur fingers!

The main thing I have had hammered home by the past ten years in politics is that we really need pretty much every government office to be run by boring and anonymous nerds who you will never once hear about in the news

Three D's defected to vote for this disgusting bill. If they hadn't, it wouldn't have moved forward. *Don't come into my mentions to "explain" to me that "this will fail in the Senate." Spend that time calling your reps, donating to causes, and doing literally anything for trans folks.

Just a reminder that this was 10 years before “Hamilton” hit Broadway, and the line “You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we’re dropping Hamiltons” was not in any sense a pop-culture reference. It was obscure! I felt a little clever for getting it!

Recently my wife and I were talking about modern Sherlock Holmes adaptations and how to keep him from being superhuman. We floated “make him as knowledgeable about any given topic as someone who’s autistically hyperfixated on it” This tweet changed my mind, there’s no way Holmes would know this one

Dukat actor Marc Alaimo--and even at times the writers!--genuinely believed he was redeemable. Actually redeeming him would have been (imo) a narrative disaster, but holding open the possibility made him such a rich character. Easier to do by accident than on purpose, in a weird way.

Really enjoyed Rhystic Studies' look at Fallen Empires, a set very dear to me. Sam speculates that Homarid Explorer in Dominaria may have been inspired by a puzzle sent to R&D by @loreleywrites.bsky.social, though notes that Loreley dismisses this theory. I can shed some light! (🧵)

This made me realize I never saw the end of season 3 of Enterprise. The Xindi Arc's "Global War on Terror in space" was unpleasant while living through the actual GWoT, and I gave up. (Also it was on at a particular time and sometimes I just missed it!) Might have to give it another chance...

Oh, do we think Rogue One is bad now? I can’t keep up

I’m (almost) at PAX U! I’ll be at the @riftbound.riotgames.com booth today 10-2 and hanging around after that. Come say hi, or let me know if you’re here exhibiting!

#3157 A helpful tutorial

If there was interesting Jace discourse I would welcome it, but so often it's just the same warmed-over attitudes and ideas about him from 15 years ago. They never had much to do with the character who appeared in actual narrative, and inasmuch as they ever did, they're hopelessly out of date.

It's a great cosmic joke that neurodivergence both runs in families and gets diagnosed based on parent reports. I was diagnosed at 30 because a man who has eaten potatoes every day for 57 years and a woman who collects loose buttons decided I was a perfectly normal child.

friday soapbox: as a designer, if you want something to be a skillful action for players, and you want growth in this skill to be very deep/meaningful, then you need to also let players be bad at it. sometimes horrendously bad. players hate this pain, and designers often want to mitigate it away.

Saw this bumper sticker in traffic the other day and laughed so hard I nearly crashed (Available here, from a person who seems at a cursory glance to be the originator: www.etsy.com/listing/6119... )

How about we shut down the government for this very popular and specific goal and then, hear me out, we hold out for like a month and a half and then, ok this part is important, after a watershed election where we ran the table, ONLY THEN, fold and don't get the one thing we said we wanted.

My fellow game devs and I are going to stream a savage competition of placing Magic the Gathering events* in order: Time Line! We'll go live in a little over 4 hours from now, at 2:45 PM PST, at twitch.tv/magic. We're raising money for Extra Life, benefiting Seattle Children's Hospital. 1/3

ron wyden looking straight at the camera and saying “taxation is the compromise”

Reposting because, and I say this with love, some of you are going to see this and go “oh shit, I need to check my bottle” and then immediately forget about it so if this could affect you, go check right now before you even scroll to the next post, I mean it.

Basically going about as well as progressives/Democrats could possibly hope.

The thing about baseball and twitter/bsky is that baseball is the only sport that moves at the exact speed of posting

It’s basically Deep Space Nine.

Our 249-year-old system -- two-party presidentialism -- has sometimes worked in spite of itself due to favorable conditions, un-codified norms, & a few periodic fixes. That run is clearly over. I argue below that we need a multiparty democracy with the legislature supreme and a limited executive.

Fascinating thread!

The Jays and Dodgers will break for Christmas Eve to share a drink in no man’s land, show each other photos of the family they left back home, before heading back to their respective trenches.