When I was a kid, we'd sing some Russian songs in school. We'd also sing Swedish, French, American and English songs, among other. That wasn't particularly significant as such. But context matters. With an Ukrainian student, it suddenly becomes very significant. This teacher was a fucking idiot.

I've had these experiences. It is shocking how bad some people are at understanding intent or imagining what something is supposed to look like, but doesn't yet. A little anecdote about that...

My sister’s trying to figure out Christmas presents for my nephews and subtly probed the boys for what they might want. One of them wants a toy truck. Classic. Easy enough. The other wants a ”new shirt with sausages and potatoes and kettles on it.” Highly specific. Possibly hallucinatory.

I spotted this on Mastodon and I find it horrible, not least for the speed with which this has happened.

Oh, for SURE this is going to happen. One million people will definitely leave New York over this, that is absolutely a realistic thing to say and definitely reflects their true intentions, it's not at all performative bullshit. I'm reminded of this other thing for no particular reason...

It’s a good day to buy Tactical Breach Wizards.

The unique thing about larp is that as an artform, its participatory and low-cost, meaning that it can be done even by people in adverse conditions. This has been particularly important with Palestinian childrens' larp, to give children joy in the midst of catastrophe.

Palestinian larp needs our help. During the last 15 years, a vibrant larp culture has grown in Palestine, together with the Palestinian larp organization Bait Byout. Israeli repression affects all areas of Palestinian larp, including larp. Donate if you can birthoflarp.wordpress.com/support-larp...

POSTER: In my post I invented the Don’t Misunderstand the Torment Nexus Metaphor as a cautionary tale CTO: At long last, I have misunderstood the Torment Nexus Metaphor from the classic post Don't Misunderstand The Torment Nexus Metaphor

Little hand drawn animation and banjo theme I made. It's been a year since my brother's passing, it's hard to type stuff so l'll just let the video speak for itself. Thank you for watching. Keep going, enjoy the sandwiches.

Just saw some concept art for a thing. Seeing concept art is always the coolest thing, it's genuinely like a little moment of magic in my day.

There's another thing I want to say about this in particular: it's not that it's wrong to want profits, but that whole speculator mindset is so skewed that it makes it impossible for a game studio to operate with any longevity. The demands for return on investment are just so out of proportion.

Soon we're going to have movies where the hero's montage is not them going through arcane and brutal physical training so they can win the fight, but them sitting down and scribbling their own thoughts with a pencil grasped in both hands

A lot of the business failures of the games industry are really rooted in this desire to create a product that dominates the market. The recent Amazon thing really highlights that: they wanted to create a product that outperformed Steam, but they didn't understand Steam or what the audience wanted.

It's not very surprising that Danon can't respond to the substance of her findings. The only real response he could possibly give is variations of "but we really want to murder Palestinians." Israel can say that internally (and they do, all the time), but not in a U.N. context. So witchcraft it is.

Big "the suspect was reaching for what we thought was a gun but later turned out to be a doorknob" energy.

Seeing a lot of "how could I/they/anybody possibly know that this was a Nazi symbol" talk again. Here's a handy little primer for how to deal with it for those who are genuinely confused. I mean, no one is genuinely confused by that, but hey, I'll play along. Here we go:

Jesus Christ. It’s not even that it’s the sloppiest slop that would obviously suck to play, it’s that classic ”this is the best thing ever” reaction. That complete lack of care for quality and consistency is the hallmark of the AI dumbass. That’s always there, the breathless praise for utter shit.

I just saw that Titanfall 2 is 90% off on Steam. A terrific game, and it's dirt cheap. The single-player campaign is great, and it features That One Level, of which I will say nothing but if you've played it, you will know of which I speak. Go get it! store.steampowered.com/app/1237970/...

The chain of people from those giving the orders to those pulling the trigger are all murderers. I expect most of them will never have to face any kind of justice for their actions, and so do they. This has been the norm for a long time. That enables these activities to creep closer to home.

Yet another comic from an age before terrible woke people made them all POLITICAL, from the extremely politically neutral year of 1979, featuring famously apolitical President Jimmy Carter. (Marvel Team-Up #85, written by Chris Claremont, art by Sal Buscema and Steve Leialoha.)

I guess it’s kinda good that these people are so reliably and consistently stupid, but holy shit, this is just staggering incompetence. When a prosecutor talks to a journalist for days and then after the fact declares it was all off the record, what do you even say to that? Some real amateur shit.

I am so tired of this demented motherfucker being the biggest piece of shit in the world with zero consequence regardless of how many norms and laws he breaks and how obviously unhinged he is. The absolute spinelessness in political leadership is depressing. Just kiss those bone spurs forever.

I have been stabbed in both arms. One arm is now able to fight off influenza and the other one COVID. I just have to position myself correctly; if I get turned around so influenza catches me from the right and COVID from the left, I’m cooked. Gotta keep twirling, I guess. That’s just science.

Subversive Sci-Fi -- essays by some of gaming's luminaries on futuristic films that broke the rules! Please check out the campaign and consider chipping in! www.kickstarter.com/projects/gho... Just check out this line-up: 1/?

Who could have foreseen that their consistent behavior would continue to be consistent regardless of what promises they make?

This seems incredibly authentic. The body language, the free-floating insanity, the complete lack of chill, it's all exactly where it needs to be.

Sadly, my contract with Blizzard ended in September. That means I'm looking for fulltime or contract work as a senior writer or narrative designer. If you need someone who can write sharp characters, poetic prose, and emotional stories, I'm available! www.hazelmonforton.com

Mindlessly scrolling earlier, I saw a video which contained the sentence "all culture war is a deliberate distraction from class war". Possibly the most succinct expression of the times we live in, and the problems we're facing.

The government shutting down the way it does semi-regularly in the US is a bizarre phenomenon. The idea that vital systems that keep the country functioning just roll to a stop while a bunch of people who're supposed to be in charge see who can hold their breath the longest is nuts.

I guess when you let an obnoxious idiot lie to you about everything all the time without any meaningful criticism, let alone consequence, you end up in a situation where he can say insane shit like ”the capital of our country is more dangerous than Afghanistan ever was” and still retain credibility.

Absolute all-timer sentence in today's @nytimes.com

Today is my last day at Blizzard! Working with the World of Warcraft team has been such a fun, positive experience. I can't wait for players to see what we made together. Now I'm looking for my next role in games, full time or contract, indie or AAA. You can check out my portfolio on my website! 🖤

My friend Heidi is in one of those truly dark stretches of life where the bottom just drops out from under you. If you can help at all, it would make a real, substantial difference to somebody going through something very difficult and fundamentally life-changing. www.gofundme.com/f/ease-the-t...

I have had the same e-mail address since 1997, so it’s now 28 years old. I’ve been getting spam in it for longer than many of ny co-workers have been alive. I don’t know that I can do a lot with this perspective.

There’s now an entire generation out there whose only context for Danny DeVito may be Frank Reynolds in It’s Always Sunny. Feels kinda wild to me. That’s not a tragedy; DeVito’s commitment to the bit and his note-perfect performance would just by themselves be a hell of a legacy. Still, though…

I don't know which is more depressing, people believing that the Rapture will happen (and it will definitely happen to them), or that it will definitely happen on this Tuesday because some rando said so. It's like making a choice between being fervently delusional or just plain fucking stupid.

Hell yes, fuck those kids, I hope they all get real sick and die. Hearing me say that might be upsetting. So it should be _really_ upsetting when these people say that, because unlike me, they actually have the power to make that happen.

Given that antifa doesn't exist as an organized group, it's a movement with no structure or leaders beyond "Debbie and Gary have been messaging folks" level activism, sounds to me like they're just gonna continue to declare whoever they don't like "antifa." Except now it's a crime to be antifa.

”We just might murder you if you go boating in the Gulf of Mexico” is a fucking wild thing to say. Just straight up low-rent Lex Luthor shit, except without any of the genius or ambition or vision. Just the indiscriminate killing of some brown people, that’s enough to make this guy’s day.

I haven’t looked at this yet, but I’m immediately excited. Eclipse Phase is an extremely cool and smart game, and the idea of playing a board game based on that sounds awesome.

Gamers! In other massive news for the Marvel Multiverse RPG, the books are now finally available as PDFs! This is probably the #1 request we've had for the game since day one, and it's finally happening! Head to DriveThruRPG to grab them! www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher...

Update: Civil War cancelled due to shooter being demographically uncooperative

Heartfelt!

I swear like 75% of Twitter at this point is just various bigotries competing with each other for supremacy. The remaining 25% is spambots. I know there's other stuff too, but that's just a rounding error at this point.

a key point re: Kirk, and unsympathetic 'jokes' about it (highlighting hypocrisy is not the same as 'joking' imo) is that Kirk famously said over and over that unrestricted gun access was worth people dying. If he didn't mean him, he just meant it was ok with him if *your* kids died.

Amazing how those democratic lawmakers who were hunted down in their homes in the middle of the night in Minnesota weren’t a watershed moment of political violence, huh?

This Mattie Lubchansky comic seems topical again.

This has been a morning of extreme confusion and misunderstanding, leading to panic and possibly a minor heart attack for my co-worker when for a moment it looked like our schedule was kinda wrecked. So, y'know, a pretty standard day in game dev. (Turned out I just got confused about some names.)

I genuinely don't know what you can do to fix this level of stupid. When people are this deep in delusional thinking, what argument could you possibly present to make them reconsider their views? Clearly, "rabies is absolutely not a thing you want to fuck with, here's why" is entirely ineffective.