I've been low-level offended for a while now at the number of unique sets of login credentials people are expected to juggle these days, and a recent "important updates to your account" reminded me that we didn't always expect people to maintain hundreds of different *accounts*.

These days, I just assume any “we’re updating our terms of service” message means a company is actively attempting to screw its users over in some novel way. My Samsung TV keeps telling me “We’ve updated our policies” like that somehow forms a binding contract. ASSHOLES.

My original D&D campaign, Curses...!, will be launching at 3pm (Pacific) on Sunday afternoons, starting as soon as 4 players are on board (currently, we're at 2). Feel free to pass this on if you know anyone who might be interested in joining: startplaying.games/adventure/cm...

I wish I had an outlet for the rage I feel when a food-delivery app slops me a meal description generated by it’s-not-fucking-AI-it’s-predictive-text: useless AND they think their customers are stupid AND vegetarians don’t deserve to know whether they’re ordering meat. ASSHOLES.

"but you can't make all of these choices matter you'll be stuck with an exponentially scaling narrative" even exponential scaling ends if you just keep writing

If it's the last thing I do, I'm gonna get my friends playing this phenomenal game. They got me to love a horror narrative; do you know how hard that is?! Masterfully involving, and I've never seen another game react to player choices so thoroughly.

Oh wow, “The Increfibles” is no longer the best Fantastic Four film ever made.

Credit card processors leaning on Steam and itch.io to censor their content - and blatantly single out content by queer creators - just feels like peak 2025 monopolistis-business behavior. Look, WE GET IT, it's a corporatist hellscape. No need to rub it in.

Riffing on platform decay and cognitive deskilling, I’m wondering whether and, if so, how closely the boom in adult ADHD diagnoses in 2020 maps to specific moments of large-platform enshittification. Obviously, everybody had additional emotional weight to deal with at the time, but still.

Until reading this and the paper Doctorow links, I hadn’t consciously thought about how I’ve ceded cognitive tasks to technology, or why I’m so nuclear-level angry at companies that’ve chosen to enshittify their platforms. I ceded some friendship-maintenance to Facebook, and since it’s now toxic…

I was super-impressed by public transit in Seattle and absolutely baffled by the absence of fare gates. THIS is a thing people are allowed to have? The slow, frequently-malfunctioning new fare gates on BART make my every commute a mildly annoying experience.

Just caught IMDB sneaking machine-generated text - which naturally includes a hallucination - into a description of a forthcoming film. This text then becomes the basis of Google’s not-labeled-AI overview when searching for the film. Sloppy.

Remember the wave of "if you... [left-right political position/vote], then unfriend me" from back before enshittification became clear? Man, that worked wonders. Now, we have no reality checking across political lines. Memes prompted us to help assholes divide and conquer the voting public.

A while ago, I did cat-sitting for a pleasant straight couple, and I briefly got a look at their Netflix page while fumbling with logging my own account in. What I saw was wild: almost nothing recognizable. Difficulty searching for genres my own account regularly suggests.

I’ve been seeing movies all week at Frameline 49. “Drive Back Home,” the film that just screened at the Herbst, is my favorite so far. The sort of quirky and kind and human I’m a sucker for.

Oh, right, we had to mostly disconnect from our in-person social relationships for a few years. Some of us tried to move those connections online, where people have historically behaved differently. I think some of us, maybe a lot of us, didn’t know when or how to go back. No wonder we’re a bit mad.

I keep imagining CD Projekt Red releasing a substantive content update for Cyberpunk 2077 in 2077 just for the lulz. This is probably just fallout from having lived through 1984, 1999, 2001, 2010, etc.

I habitually ignore the "Here's what's new in Chrome" post-update tab, but last night, I glanced at it long enough to notice that for the first time in I-don't-know-how-long, it didn't try to sell me an "AI" feature.

Of the brainy tech writers I've recently started following, Leah Reich may be my favorite, writing pieces that leave me thoughtful rather than grouchy.

Last week, the -ai Google search parameter ceased to prevent the worthless AI Overview from inserting itself between me and search results. Meaning someone at Google realized users were using the switch and decided that folks opting out of the anti-feature was a problem that needed fixing.

I haven't yet fully divorced Facebook or removed it from my default browser tabs. These days, I reflexively close the tab, but I'll sometimes glance at whatever is at the top of the page before I do. What I've noticed is that whatever I see, without fail, will make me sad or angry.

@wadjeteyegames.bsky.social Oh, hey! Is there a voice cast list for the game somewhere? The voice direction is the best I've found in an indie game.

If a person isn't comfortable with the idea that people aren't simple - that the world isn't simple - it must make living in the too-much-information age terrifying. The appeal of the Orange Asshole would be his claims that he can make complex things simple. That lie must look a lot like safety.

My cat is getting oral surgery today. My return home after dropping him off was spooky: the apartment was empty for the first time in years. I'll pick the Little Man up later, but I didn't think "no napping fuzzy presence sharing space with me" would feel as loud as it does.

The "AI Overview" is 'fetch'. Google is Gretchen. Just... just stop. You're embarrassing yourself.

Over the course of a couple of decades, mutual validation as a proxy for deeper friendship got normalized via social media. Bad actors figured out how to weaponize the validation-of-worldview part of that to neatly divide the U.S.A. into Reality A and Reality B, neutering democracy

Just read about South Korea peacefully removing their erratically-behaving president. I hope somebody over here is taking notes.

Using the phrase "We are updating our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy" should be a felony.

Oh please oh please oh please be the messiest divorce possible.

It's pretty extraordinary that we have a President who's prioritized ELIMINATING AMERICAN JOBS and I've seen exactly nobody in the news media making use of this framing.

AI entirely aside, I'm finding the argument that tech has effectively turned on its users to be persuasive. Related: I'm trying to figure out if it's a Trump 2016-2020 side effect that companies no longer feel the need to pretend they're not trying to take unfair advantage of their customers.

I can't recall any prior President driving up the national unemployment rate on purpose.

So far, this has pretty much felt like what I imagine the experience of being a Twitter user was back in 2006, only with fewer assholes. (I was not; I'm a forever-late-adopter.) I'm still skittish, having burned my hand on the stove of enshittification about 10 too many times. But hi.

I reluctantly joined Facebook 20(!) years ago because I'd been told a friend had posted a picture of me. There weren't many of those in existence back then. I vividly remembered the years when it was a useful social coordination tool. I wish I'd noticed when it turned bad. (Data download: started.)

The memory of calling the operator from a Boston pay phone and hearing something other than the familiar Ma Bell tone. Not quite catching the new provider's name. Recalling having learned about AT&T's breakup. I took for granted that we'd keep trying to remedy monopolies in the future.

I was trying to find a good, specific example of enshittification, and then @filmandseries.bsky.social did me the favor of e-mailing me this little nugget of the-reverse-of-joy:

The memory of paying a dollar for a genuinely enjoyable game on my brand-new iPhone. It didn't try to advertise anything or get me to buy anything else. Briefly, its only purpose was to provide enjoyment. Later, ads would be patched in, followed by microtransactions.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about technology has changed over the past 15+ years, and how many formerly, seemingly good things have been enshittified since. I can't quite untangle whether there's something of value to be salvaged from social media, it's so Pandora's-boxy.

The Internet before people learned to make money off it. Search results that included no "promoted content." Sites that were just flat-out useful, ad-free.

Something got me thinking of the brief period when always keeping software/apps updated was a good idea, and then the moments when that ended: the moment when an iOS update bricked my first iPad. The moment when I allowed NCSoft's video editing software to update, then told me I had to buy it again.

I keep thinking about how America got manipulated into its current sorry state, effectively gaslighting the population into diametrically-opposed camps. They've tried to convince us we're enemies. It speaks to how afraid of democracy the culprits are.

Currently reading James Acker's terrific "Teenage Dirtbags" and well, hell, I guess he's now got two entries in my top-five favorite YA books. Good GOD I wish I'd had books like this available when I was a teenager.

Is it normal for a cat to regularly smell your breath? Asking for a me.

A repair person is working in my bathroom, and my cat is NOT having it. Had to relocate his litterbox while the work is being done, and he's hiding under the bed like it's the end of the world. Or like it's the fourth of July. Poor little dude.

Woo, the new Baldur's Gate 3 patch is out...! ...and it doesn't fix the blocker that's been holding up my playthrough for weeks. The weird thing is I'm not even salty. I'm pretty confident Larian will get to it. I'm not quite used to having this much faith in a developer.

I was initially a little reluctant to try Black Tabby's new game, Slay the Princess. Horror isn't often my jam. I absolutely love the way the game leans into philosophy. Just finished it last night and, yep, had a bunch of feels. Great, great game.

So reportedly, COVID eventually ends, yes...?

I never would have guessed I'd have this much fun writing a pre-written campaign. I want to say it's because The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a great adventure, but honestly, it's pretty much that I've got the best player group ever.

Also, I know it's supposed to be "bluesky" as in the-sky-is-blue-and-look-at-all-the-tweeting-birds, but every time I pronounce it in my head, it rhymes with pesky, husky, and dusky.