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.

Leo looks like he’s gonna papam this guy right in the habemus

Riftbound is here and we sat down to Shuffle Up & Play against @scarraa.bsky.social! Can CovertGoBlue and @amytheamazonian.bsky.social team up with Prof to take down the very legend of leagues himself at @riftbound.riotgames.com? Watch here: youtu.be/jRwbe7PazUY #riftbound

As someone with ADHD who has learned through long experience to manage and prep for certain things, the result is like being watched over by a benevolent gnome. Whoa, you packed a little bag for me to put my receipts in on this business trip? What a clever lil guy!

Whenever people complain about the number of folks relying on food stamps, it is worth reminding them that SNAP is, by too large of a degree, a subsidy for corporations that refuse to pay a living wage and their political allies who reject public policy prescriptions to reduce income inequality.

“oh so you think the east wing being demolished is worse than-“ it’s a synecdoche, man. a visual metaphor. there’s a reason the aliens in Independence Day don’t aim a huge laser at SNAP benefits

Really think the biggest win today aside from just numbers is negatively polarizing the regime of 12-year-olds into fully adopting #YESKINGS as their official stance.

Remember folks. The original bluesky ethos by us bluesky elders (apparently I count?) is block and move on. Don't quote dunk, don't pick fights. Block, and move on. This is what made this site unpalatable to the right early on, and we can continue to make it unpalatable to them.

Women don’t like the vehicle

the whole point of mass protest is to demonstrate overwhelming opposition to the political direction, at a scale that can't be cracked down on dress comfortably and stay away from anyone inciting violence, but don't let clout chasers scare you into losing sight of how the basic concept works

Someone in the crowd: “Go Cubs!” Pope Leo XIV: “Han perdido! They lost!”

Nothing is inevitable, but almost everything is caused.

Those names aren’t placeholders