Oh to be just a lil guy Pokopia is a delight. I have feelings about the game key card but dang if the game itself isn't just a joy to play

The BBC is dying. It needs to be preserved - but doing so will require a radical reinvention. werd.io/bbc-says-irr...

KEXP is currently airing the Kermit The Frog version of Once in a Lifetime and it is healing me a little bit. (I should write in and request Blinding Lights (Rizzo's Version))

The general undercurrent of dread and anxiety I'm feeling is more sinister and noticeable today, which makes me wonder what other shoe is about to drop.

I've had problems with mice in the past. Tonight I heard something in my kitchen and when I went to check caught either a large mouse or a rat (!) skedaddling to the part of the wall where the plumber cut away drywall to replace washing machine pipes a couple years ago.

Building software is easier than ever. The real risk to your team isn't the build; it's the long tail of maintenance. I built a rubric to help teams spot hidden risks and achieve shared understanding of the complexity before they write a single line of code. werd.io/can-we-build...

Feeling paranoid about stochastic violence and weaponized media? Me too. That's why I can't stop thinking about this incredibly helpful essay by @littlewow.online in @flaminghydra.com about the idea of "reparative reading" as a corrective to the "paranoid style." flaminghydra.com/issue-511/

Just realized this stance is what I defaulted into while scrolling on my phone and had to slip into portrait mode to capture it lolol it's fine I'm fine

get weirder 🫵

Announcing Powering News: Free resources for worker-friendly newsrooms rjionline.org/news/announc...

This... is a powerful insight.

Hank Green back at it again www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MLb...

the vibes on this site for the past week

My latest for @theavclubgames.bsky.social is on the 40th anniversary of original The Legend of Zelda, and its role as a streamliner of the complicated, demanding, and burgeoning action RPG. This classic did not come out of nowhere, but was to action RPGs what Dragon Quest was for turn-based ones.

The ethics of a product or service change inevitably with its scale and ubiquity: kiesow.net/kant-wept-bu...

Good website: powering.news

How do we wrap up the 100th Black History Month? For me Black History is every day, but February is the BLACKEST history month. So I guess I wanna talk Black self-determination throughout our sojourn here. Believe or not, it starts in 1526. Sure, 1619 is the year we acknowledge but... 🧵

Research shows that when communities switch from local to national news, it measurably increases partisan voting. This is part of what's polarizing America. When newspapers close, we only see partisan labels. Split-ticket voting drops nearly 2%. www.carnegie.org/our-work/art...

"Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms." www.propublica.org/article/elec...

In Tehran, panicked residents rushed home to shelter and terrified children poured out of classrooms as U.S. air strikes hit the capitol. www.wunc.org/2026-02-28/t...

My goodness.

Anthropic has a good statement out, blending the normal "we love our warfighters uwu" ass-kissing with some "LOL what are you even doing man?" anthropic.com/news/stateme...

Anthropic gets booted from the Pentagon for not wanting to power mass surveillance or autonomous weapons, then OpenAI gets a Pentagon contract that bans mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. Someone is obviously leaving something significant out.

The second you leave this country for even a few days, you realize the place you call home is decaying at an almost exponential pace. The realization that you don't have to live like this is stark, and that nobody in power is taking tangible actions to fix it in your lifetime is even starker.

This falls squarely under: “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”

I'm being very boomer tonight about two things: SaaS/media as a service (Nintendo's "game key card" for Pokopia is pissing me off, let me just buy a complete game on a physical medium please) and connected/"smart" anything

Anthropic draws a line in the sand — stating it won't allow DoD to use its AI technology for mass domestic surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons. www.anthropic.com/news/statem...

Netflix won't counter Ellison's offer. Ladies and gentleman, the full right wing power grab is here and will now be beamed into every home on CBS, CNN, HBO, movies from Warner and Paramount. about.netflix.com/en/news/netf...

GenAI is why Kant developed the Categorical Imperative. Ask: What if everyone did this? Could the world still function? Would I accept that? And here is the best example in living color 11,000 episiodes per day of AI slop. indicator.media/p/this-ai-ge...

what if we kissed....😳👉👈

once a year the brunchlords at Semafor host a "restoring trust in news" conference where they unironically platform most of the people responsible for destroying trust in news, then lob softball questions at them this year's lineup is a real doozy (notice the complete absence of indie media)

NEW: Amazon is telling people who use its wishlists feature to switch to post office boxes or non-residential delivery addresses if they want to ensure their home addresses remain private, as part of a change in how it processes gifts bought from third-party sellers.

It depresses me that this story leads with a prominent Durham, NC example.

I like a candle, made some chamomile tea from @manyworldstavern.bsky.social, put on a chill playlist with cozy music, and punched/sorted then played the first season/session of #Mythwind as the Farmer this evening instead of that other thing that was happening.

This deep in burnout in a week that has started off with people being particularly difficult means I did not need to cry while watching reels about Alysa Liu this morning but I did it anyway

Then I played an intro game of Under Falling Skies and won at the last possible second as alien ships smashed into my base and the mother ship descended by doing a lot of frantic research in the last round and taking a lot of damage

Recently got Lost Ruins of Arnak so I played a solo game tonight and beat the level 0 bought on the easy side of the board by only 4 points 😌

one of my all-time favorite weird and wonderful shows - DON'T HUG ME I'M SCARED - is now on dropout! full web series now; TV series (which less people have seen) over the course of the next few months. big thanks to blink industries, becky, and joe for their faith in us.

Wild to contend with the fact that I'm halfway through my last real semester of grad school???

!!!

It is a failure of imagination and morality to act as though the highest and only aim of human communication were the market-based accumulation of an audience.

As someone who enjoys the sight and scent of a fresh vase of flowers, I am nonetheless concerned that the CEOs of the tulip factory owning 50% of the nation's wealth and controlling the government are signs we may be in a tulip bubble.

It would be so much easier to throw deserved scorn at Substack for this nonsense if ESPN and CNN had not already sold their souls to betting markets also. www.niemanlab.org/2026/02/poly...

Dancey and AEG are parting ways, which is nice to see having avoided playing or covering their games since he made his feelings on 'females' clear, though disappointing that it took nearly three years for the industry to finally hold him accountable.

Play is one of the oldest things we have, and I know it's hard to separate the modern hobby from the challenges of capitalism but there is so much creative expression and talent to enjoy. To proudly say that you'd sell your humanity for a dollar is clown behavior. To sell everyone else's is vile.

silver lining to the internet being busted is that I am turning to books even more than I was before, libraries rule, as does my city’s assortment of weird used bookstores

Video games and books and board games and vinyl 👁️👄👁️

@jonathanstephens.us Ssw you playing fantasy life! I've got that one on my steam deck and dumped like 50 hours into it over the holiday

I bought a switch 2 over the weekend cuz I'd been thinking about it and it felt prudent to pull the trigger. Donkey Kong Bananza is kind of great????