The Academic Work Tracker spreadsheet is now updated with 2026 dates! If you don't already, 2026 is a great time to start treating your academic work like the wage job where you are paid to work a certain amount of hours that it actually is: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

I've said it before but one of the most revelatory things about reading Marxist theory is seeing just how much genAI automation is just the same old business-as-usual capitalism. Here's Ernest Mandel's Late Capitalism in 1972.

Anyway, donate to charities if you can. I support quite a few. But really, every charity is just a govt failure, especially in a world where we give the richest 10% $18bn a year in tax breaks for capital gains thepoint.com.au/off-the-char...

Ahead of Day 3 of the "pink test" In 2022-23 the McGrath foundation spent about $8.8m on “foundation-funded breast care nurses”, but more than $9.1m on fundraising and marketing, and a further $2.2m on administration." www.thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2024...

DiGRA Australia's annual conference is next month at University of the Sunshine Coast. Free and hybrid, but in-person rego deadline is end of this week. Program and rego links: digraa.org/post/digraa-...

Given everything happening right now, I updated this article with options for weather apps, web forms, and translation services — along with some tweaks to existing categories. I hope it helps your transition off US tech!

"Is Isabelle Curvy Enough?" - the greatest thread in the history of BlueSky, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,

There’s really no reason for anyone to still have a Twitter account. You don’t need it for engagement, you don’t need it to keep up with the news, you don‘t need it to encounter annoying reply guys or to be beholden to weird tech bro overlords. Just delete it!

this is your mission. our pedophile president needs you to jump out of a helicopter to kidnap a head of state and his wife so some oil ceos can make a lot of money. we’ll be watching from a resort in florida that still serves wedge salad and checking how many retweets we get. good luck soldier

Sometimes the timeline just lays it up for ya

What kind of loser politician do you have to be to not be able to stand up to someone whose Official Serious War Leadership photos look like this

A lot of people are going to preface tu-tutting tweets with variants on the theme of "Maduro was no angel" and it's very important to have the moral clarity to understand that these people are the lowest form of coward imaginable

If a military power suddenly decides to bolster and distract from its own excesses with cavalier declarations that some foreigners are enemies, then abducts leaders from their homes, isn't it the duty of every peace-loving citizen of the world to resist that state-sponsored intimidation and terror?

The question and struggle of capitulating to or resisting the Trump administration's constant, authoritarian overreach now expands from US institutions to the international community. Terms like "rogue state" and "war crimes" should certainly be on the table.

Let's all be clear. To all appearances, the United States has embarked on an illegal and unprovoked war of aggression and kidnapped a foreign leader, all without Congressional authorization but using fabricated justifications that contradict the prior analysis of its intelligence agencies.

An administration driven by greed, cruelty, and frankly a sort of empty-hearted boredom. The death of innocents so they can beat their chests and line their already fat wallets. Whatever comes next has to at least look like justice. We cannot just turn the page for the sake of one party’s comfort.

Such a great movie in desperate need of a remake!! 🤪

"Amazing! American politician's first executive order is to undo all of the previous politician's executive orders!" Absurd country.

Thank you all for your patience! Without further ado, it's This Year In Videogame Blogging 2025, complete with a bonus This Week In Videogame Blogging, December 28, 2025! critical-distance.com/2026/01/01/t...

Overall I had a pretty chill 2025 and hopefully will also have a pretty chill 2026

The Academic Work Tracker spreadsheet is now updated with 2026 dates! If you don't already, 2026 is a great time to start treating your academic work like the wage job where you are paid to work a certain amount of hours that it actually is: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

In 2025 I read about 20 Warhammer 40K books and about 6 Marxist economic theory books and I reckon the best game was Baby Steps and the good song was Genesis Owusu’s Death Cult Zombie.

I'm starting to write more reviews of smaller titles on Steam. 1. Reviews are very helpful for developers and players alike. 2. It's a nice way to cap off a fun time with a game. So not only do I recommend Babushka's Glitch Dungeon, but I also recommend writing reviews of indie games you enjoyed!

illustration, personal computing, magazine (1979) archive.org/details/Pers...

Something I’ve been reflecting on while playing Vice City is how whether the game’s camera was good or bad was something we used to discuss but now games are mostly just like ‘ah deal with it yourself’

Twenty years on and I still think this is the most breathtaking sequence ever put in a videogame. Testament to the fact that scale and awe are not virtues of graphical horsepower alone

[Calendrier de l’Avent PnT | Jour #15] 🎄 C'est après avoir lu The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist que @d4ndy-san.pointnthink.fr s'est lancé dans cette première partie d'un dossier retraçant l'hégémonie de l'industrie du JV et son aspect très mercantile. 👉 www.pointnthink.fr/fr/hegemonie...

So the NSW gov's response to the Bondi mass shooting seems to be banning mass protests that have no connection to the shooting, and to reduce the maximum number of guns an individual can own to a number higher than the number of guns that were present per shooter. Cool www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12...

Early this year I replayed GTA3 and was struck by how well it held up, especially in terms of the general atmosphere. Now I'm replaying Vice City and equally struck by how well it captures a radically different atmosphere, coming out only 12 months after GTA3.

Charles Wentworth Dilke, 1821. As Marx paraphrases: "Truly wealthy a nation, when the working day is 6 rather than 12 hours. Wealth is not command over surplus labour time ... but rather, disposable time outside that needed in direct production, for every individual and the whole society."

Really sad news. The Infinity Ward CoDs and the two Titanfalls are all tremendous games. www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/v...

Titanfall 2: Deluxe Edition / PlayStation 4 / Respawn Entertainment / 2016

I think the two most disappointing but least surprising things from the last week are the Coalition's willingness to exploit a tragedy for their personal gain, and Albanese and Labour's complete inability to provide any serious alternative model of actual leadership for the nation.

"The far-right Israeli government does not speak for Jewish people in Australia and is not interested in our safety." bsky.app/profile/jewi...

This makes me so angry. I'm disgusted that the premier is claiming that the 300,000 empathetic people who marched over the bridge because they were sick of babies being bombed (with our help!) are in any way responsible for the terrorist attack in Bondi.

I think people should be just as embarrassed to use genAI for that stuff as for the creative practices.

The funny thing is, the more these people double down, the more the mask comes off. You don’t want to do the work. Just be honest about it, no one has time for this.

What do people think academics do?? like this is the job???

I think this post nails the actual problem, for researchers at least—AI hallucinations would simply not be a problem in academic work if we’d not normalized citation-as-signaling rather than actual engagement—you can only cite a fake paper if you’re not in the habit of reading the papers you cite

Never forget it took less than a day for the right-wing conservative forces in Australia politics and media to turn the Bondi massacre into their own political grandstanding in order to sew division. Contemptible.

The idea that changing a definition to include criticism of Israel as being anti-Semitic and cracking down even further on anti-genocide protests would have in any way made anyone safer is madness. That the Coalition have so comprehensively jumped to blame here is insanity. Who is this speaking to?

And so it begins. Minns tries to distract from a security failure in the face of terrorist attack: by suppressing the right to protest. If he was really concerned about "community disharmony", he would stop sucking up to the Israel lobby. #nswpol www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Sifter’s annual list of every Australian made videogame is out. These are a crucial resource and I’m so glad they do it every year.

When you've got less than a decade before you cark it and you still need to undo the one good thing anyone might remember you for

What I find so infuriating about all this is that those who want to pretend to act on antisemitism just to deteriorate the rights of those who have long stood against ALL fascist violence are the ones doing the most damage since they end up doing nothing to combat real antisemitism.

ANNOUNCEMENT: for the last year, I somehow resisted the temptation to begin a new life-consuming #gamedev project and instead... made 30+ minigames and demos! you're invited to the TwoPM 2025 Demo Disc, today: biscuits.twopm.studio/demo-disc

Bosses: 🥺 Lay off CEOs 🥺 Workers: 😈 Lay off CEOs 😈

It's reaching that time of year again where I update the Academic Workload Tracker so people can use it in 2026. If you used it in 2025, please let me know any bugs you encountered, things you wanted that weren't there, or just nice things about how valuable it was. docs.google.com/spreadsheets...