To clarify, I don't have children, but I am a stoic father when the bit demands it.

For @flagconithaca.bsky.social I updated the Lasers & Feelings hack @coastalkat.bsky.social & I wrote in 2020—We had a blast telling how the ghosts of a caveman, beatnik, bootlegger, and knight dealt w/ paranormal investigators in a haunted coworking space errantcanadian.itch.io/hearts-haunts #ttrpg

Many of you fine folks might have heard about Cosmopolitan Fantasy Games Sig: Manual of the Primes and Sig: City of Blades. Did you know that they are available in an affordable bundle with some extra goodies over on DriveThruRPG? www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

THIS Monday!! T minus 2!!! Whaaaa!

New from 404 Media: libraries are scrambling for books after a giant distributor shut down. This is a huge disruption to public libraries across the country, some of which are warning their communities the shut down will limit their ability to lend books. www.404media.co/libraries-sc...

📣THREAD: It’s surprising to me that so many people were surprised to learn that Signal runs partly on AWS (something we can do because we use encryption to make sure no one but you–not AWS, not Signal, not anyone–can access your comms). It’s also concerning. 1/

Someone: Thank goodness we millennials grew up before online brainrot! Me, at random intervals for the last 20 years: "Toons! Games! Eeeee-mail!"

More pdfs up on my itch today! this time a PWYW sketchbook of character designs: sorcererscatalogue.itch.io/adventurers

#Promptober is here! This time I included two free spaces, for people to make whatever they want (or to even take that day to rest). As usual, please use the #promptober or #ttrpgpromptober tags when you post! please also don't feel shy about tagging me in them so I can reskeet.

At a book talk this afternoon Laurent Dubreuil said something that's going to stay with me for a while. Paraphrasing, it was like this: Social media has made communication so unpleasant that the mediocrity of what ChatGPT is capable of seems impressive—but we should strive for better than mediocrity

LLMs learned about em dashes from their master--me! And now people want me to use them less so as to not resemble the plagiarism machine? I say thee NAY!

Last week, Reuters published two articles by journalist Jeff Horwitz reporting concerning details about Meta's AI chatbot policies and products and how they affect children and vulnerable adults. Tech Policy Press invited experts to submit reactions to the reports—here are their responses:

Our history weeks are over, which means today is the final day you can get 6 months of Rascal for 25% off with the code DJNAY. Get access to hundreds of articles and directly support independent journalism

Worth a watch: Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

Today! Register here to watch @ashleyshoo.bsky.social's lecture via Zoom at 5:00 PM Eastern: cornell.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

The 2025 Bovay Lecture on the History & Ethics of Engineering will be given by Dr. Ashley Shew @ashleyshoo.bsky.social on May 9 at 5:00 PM. The lecture will be broadcast live via Zoom (registration required). Info here: bit.ly/BovayLecture25 #philsky #sts #philtech #histtech #disability #academicsky

Thanks to everyone who has filled this out so far in 2025 — I’m hoping to reach as many folks as I can, so please consider sharing to your Discords, in newsletters, etc.

Really enjoyed this succinct defence of the value of humanistic education and why generative AI is not compatible. I particularly love the conclusion that we should focus on process, not product. This is, I think, the fundamental ideological difference between genAI devs and humanities scholars.

How I have always loved the Moon; As a child, I’d linger just a bit longer, simply to greet her and wish her a peaceful orbit. I think, the Moon is Women. I wrote this essay with a poetic and heavy heart, and I intend to write more like it because it is cleansing. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Taking a "peer review" process and having an LLM do that review removes it from being a peer review process given the technology cannot think, feel, or communicate with intention. If people want to play around with AI feedback, go nuts, but don't call it peer review, because it's not.

Ghibli-style is NOT about pastoral rural aesthetics. It's an aesthetic about contrast, specifically the contrast of the darker aspects of human nature and how we relate to both one another and the environment around us. People really fail to grasp this, even though The Boy and the Heron is explicit!

“If radicalism be defined as perception of need for radical change,” John Dewey argued in his 1935 study Liberalism and Social Action, “then today any liberalism which is not also radicalism is irrelevant and doomed.” @prorogers.bsky.social on Dewey’s enduring legacy in democratic crisis:

A WIRED must-read today on Boeing by @laurensmiley.bsky.social:

|| New Publication (Nature Communications) Psychological Booster Shots Targeting Memory​ Increase Long-Term Resistance Against Misinformation doi.org/10.1038/s414... Press Release www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-03... Key Findings * Inoculation works * Effects dissipate * Booster shots remedy this (1/10)

One of the most brilliant things about software is how it's like a tool that just changes on you. Like a tape measure that, overnight, decides it won't measure in metric anymore.

#comic #animalart #joy

Today's Ethics Untangled episode features Trystan Goetze (@errantcanadian.com) talking about whether AI art is stealing artists' labour: www.buzzsprout.com/2113237/epis...

sorry, but I will never shut up about this.

Just discovered an old satirical lecture by Langdon Winner about the technological automation of education. This version is 14 years old, but it dates to the late 1990s. It's a timeless, funny, and skewering critique. Part 1: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYOZ... Part 2: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHnE...

This is an important talk, a powerful piece of forensics and political media analysis.

"Silicon Valley seems hellbent on creating machines which can do our thinking for us. Why should any of us want that?"

Here is a resource for scientists that I will do my best to keep up to date. Please share! docs.google.com/document/d/1... /end

If you played TTRPGs between 1970-2004, PhD Candidate Geoffrey Ramirez (Binghamton U) is seeking participants for “Character Creation: The Tabletop Role-Players Oral History Project” as part of his dissertation. Interviews will be archived at the Strong Museum of Play (can be time-locked, etc)

Thank you so much to everyone who has so far bought the bundle! It's such a relief. It means I can go get a refresh on my necessary medicines for my chronic illnesses. ;w; it means so much to me!

Inspired by an ongoing game of #MonsterOfTheWeek, I wrote a playbook for playing two very closely bonded characters, called The Double Threat. Download it on Itch if that sounds interesting to you: errantcanadian.itch.io/double-threa... #ttrpg #pbta #gameDesign

"The Equitably Resilient City" has been awarded the Urban Affairs Association's 2025 Best Book in Urban Affairs Award! Congratulations to authors Zachary Lamb & Lawrence Vale: mitpress.mit.edu/978026254986...

So one of the things that I think is lost on AI proponents is what I call the card catalog effect, a thing I shouldn’t call it because a lot of people probably have no experience with a card catalog.

Also, and Imma be real about this quote: "There is finally a tool that allows those without access to an advanced education to self learn, anywhere , anytime. To get answers to questions, (even if sometimes wrong) , that they would otherwise never have access to" Youre describing a Library.

Inspired by an ongoing game of #MonsterOfTheWeek, I wrote a playbook for playing two very closely bonded characters, called The Double Threat. Download it on Itch if that sounds interesting to you: errantcanadian.itch.io/double-threa... #ttrpg #pbta #gameDesign

I don't need more books. But the one thing I would encourage *everyone* to do, to the extent that you are able, is to acquire *hard copies* of books, journals, long-form articles, government reports, and other extant texts meaningful to you. Digital access, digital content can be undone with a click

How does Meta Horizon still look like Second Life did 15+ years ago? It would be embarrassing, but when you consider that this has cost tens of billions of dollars that could have gone to so many better uses, it’s megayacht levels of disgustingly flagrant waste.

Just based on the abstract I like this, reading it now and adding it to my noheroes list (sootyempiric.blogspot.com/p/no-heroes-...). philpapers.org/rec/SVOWTG?r...

Useful!

The frequency and severity of significant problems cited in the BBC report are enough to suggest once again that you can't simply rely on LLMs to deliver accurate information.

love to log on after a couple of hours and check if any brand new world-shattering crises have happened since the last time I checked or if we’re still freaking out about the last batch

Thanks to the generosity of the family of the late Professor Loh Shiu-Chang (Leeds PhD, 1957), a prototype of the first Chinese computer keyboard is now part of our Museum collections. Read more here: hpsleeds.wordpress.com/2025/02/13/t... #histsci #histtech #histSTM #Chinese #language #computer