Such a fun part of corgi space. Sub 4 is totally possible. 🧛‍♂️

Happy belated birthday! 🎉

Welp that was a November I guess.

I hope everyone knows that it's very easy for any social content platform, including Bluesky, to be a misery machine and that if you aren't intentional about it, they will absolutely decrease the positive impact you have on the world while making you less happy.

SIMPS, a brand new play by yours truly.

Live now on twitch for a very special broadcast
twitch.tv/adef

A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die.

Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.

a stegosaurus toy holding a full set of dice between the spikes on its back

"Misunderstanding of probability may be the greatest of all general impediments to scientific literacy." - Stephen Jay Gould (1995, Dinosaur in a Haystack) 🧪

Good luck! You've got this!

A screenshot from Wilmot Works It Out showing the main character Wilmot sat in his living room and on his sofa with his dog. There are a variety of colourful pictures framed and hung on the wall behind him

A screenshot from the videogame Hohokum showing the player character, a colourful snake flying past a bearded old man. The old man is called the Eye Monk and is standing amidst lots of statues of eyes, he is waving at the player.

A screenshot from the videogame Flock showing the player character flying with a large flock of colourful creatures through a forest full of giant mushrooms. There is another player character in the distance with their own flock of strange and wonderful creatures.

A screenshot from the videogame I Am Dead showing a meadow full of colourful flowers, there beehives dotted around the meadow and one of the beehives is being inspected by the beekeeper who is standing holding a honeycomb frame. In the distance an allotment and various old fishing sheds can be seen.

All of our games are on sale as part of Steam's Spring Sale.

Wilmot Works It Out! Flock! Hohokum! Loot Rascals! I Am Dead! Wilmot's Warehouse!

Up to 60% off! Grab yourself a bargain!

store.steampowered.com/developer/ho...

What a fun run to watch - thanks for it!

So deserved - all of you that work on the pod do such great work and produce such an awesome show. 🎉

I like it! Thanks for sharing!

It's Bandcamp Friday. To anyone that makes music that is seeing this, let me know what you've got out there. I'd love to check it out!

SPOTIFY SUCKS and how you can better support your favorite artists Lineal by Frank Adebiaye, with the contribution of Anton Moglia, Ariel Martín Pérez. Distributed by velvetyne.fr. Karrik by Jean-Baptiste Morizot, Lucas Le Bihan. Distributed by velvetyne.fr. SOURCES: Herstand, Ari. “Takedown Fails: Artists Are Seeing Their Music Removed From DSPs for Streaming Fraud They Didn’t Commit.” Variety, 12 Apr. 2024. Krukowski, Damon. “Solidarity.” Dada Drummer Almanach, 3 Oct. 2023, Krukowski, Damon. ”Spotify made £56m profit, but has decided not to pay smaller artists like me.” The Gaurdian, 30 Nov 2023. Lopatto, Elizabeth. “Not Even Spotify Is Safe From AI Slop.” The Verge, 14 Nov. 2024 Maddaus, Gene. “Variety.” Variety, 4 Sept. 2024. Omarji, Sophia. “I Was Laid off From Spotify After Moving to Sweden for the Job. I Had to Leave the Entire Life I Built Behind and Am Still Looking for Work.” Business Insider, 31 Jan. 2025 Pelly, Liz. “The Ghosts in the Machine.” Harper’s Magazine. Starvos, Jennifer . “How Spotify Is Quietly Supporting the Military-Industrial Complex.” In These Times, 10 Mar. 2022. Willings, Sam. “Daniel Ek Earned More From Spotify in the Past 12 Months Than Any Artist Has Ever Earned on the Platform.” MusicTech, 5 Aug. 2024

SPOTIFY PAYS VERY LITTLE (if at all) Spotify pays a measly $0.003 per stream! You’d need 406,000 plays/month just to make the national minimum wage—assuming you publish your own music and don’t have a record label to do that for you, because labels typically take 50-90% of your royalties! Besides, minimum wage is still TOO LOW to live comfortably! For smaller artists, any music that does not achieve 1,000 streams in a year will not receive any royalties at all (Krukowski). FAKE ARTISTS Most Spotify users rely on Spotify’s curated mood playlists (e.g.“Ambient Relaxation” and “Bossa Nova Dinner”) as background music. So Spotify figured users wouldn’t notice if they replaced the REAL music by REAL musicians in those playlists with FILLER music under FAKE artists’ profiles, so they don’t have to pay royalties to the real artists. This filler music, called “Perfect Fit Content,” consists of mass-produced stock music commissioned from a handful of anonymous musicians that Spotify completely owns and profits off of. These tracks receive millions of plays that could have gone to real, working musicians (Pelly).

There’s a plethora of problems regarding AI and Fraud on Spotify: Fake AI-generated albums are put under real artists’ profiles, which fraudsters profit off of. The real artists can do little to stop this. (Lopatto) Many artists have been the victims of unwanted artificial plays, including many artists I know: artists’ music is mysteriously flagged for artificial plays, and the artist is forced to remove the song/album or face a fine or even be banned from the platform (Herstand). There’s also nothing stopping people from just uploading AI-generated music (made from huge libraries of copyrighted music) and profiting off it. AI itself has way more problems to unpack, which could be its very own zine… SPOTIFY SUPPORTS THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX Prima Materia, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s investment company, had invested €100 million ($114 million USD) in Helsing, a German defence tech company that has developed military drones and AI software to aid in military operations. (Starvos).

WHAT YOU CAN DO It’s clear that Spotify does not actually care about the livelihoods of musicians. CEO Daniel Ek infamously tweeted that “the cost of creating content” (i.e. music) is “close to zero.” Sure, I guess the hours, experience, equipment, etc. to make music is worth nothing! Meanwhile, Ek made 345 million dollars last year (Willings), while laying off 17% of their workers in 2023 (Omarji). Support your favorite artists more directly by buying their music on services like Bandcamp and iTunes. Digital albums typically cost $5-10, and your purchase will have a bigger impact than your streams ever will. And can listen to them FOREVER! At $12/mo., if you only use Spotify to stream the same few albums, you’ll save money in the long run if you just buy the albums. Buy CDs, vinyls, and other merch! Support your local music stores! Switch to a better streaming platform like Tidal or Apple Music. Tidal pays the highest, paying an average of $0.013/stream—that’s over 4 times more than Spotify’s average. They can pay up to $0.05/stream ! Apple music falls just behind, paying $0.007-$0.01/stream on average. Musicians cannot strike or organize a boycott on Spotify without being sued under antitrust laws, since the musicians are considered independent contractors, while Spotify is the “customer” (Krukowski). Tell your representatives to support the Protect Working Musicians Act, which would allow independent musicians to organize and fight back! Join/Donate to the United Musicians and Allied Workers who are fighting to regulate streaming, restrict AI, eliminate Ticketmaster and Live Nation, and more!

hey i made an zine about spotify's sins, inspired by @glasse.bsky.social's spotify bio

if you want to print some, DM and i'll send you the file!

Eli Rainsberry composer, musician, sound designer, guitarist, relentless noise person they/them/their

and if you can believe it………it’s a (Bandcamp) Friday once again

I’ve been bad at sharing about this sort of thing - and generally being online - as of late but I finally caught today while its early so! grab an OST from me today if you’d like:

elirainsberry.bandcamp.com

EARTHBLADE ~ Across the Bounds of Fate, by Lena Raine 9 track album

EARTHBLADE ~ Across the Bounds of Fate

✨now live for bandcamp friday✨

radicaldreamland.bandcamp.com/album/earthb...

Any good resources/tutorials you found to get started on it?

One of the random things I did in 2024 was to knit a hat for every day of the year. Yes, that's as wacky as it sounds. Anyway, now that it's over (and has been for a bit I guess) feel free to look at what a year's worth of energy, randomly focused, can do: www.instagram.com/threehundred...

Keep making cool fun different games that make us think about games in different ways. Wilmot Works it Out is an absolute joy, and I can't wait to see what all of you do next. 🙂

Thanks so much to @rickyhaggett.bsky.social and Richard Hogg for making it, along with @taloketo.bsky.social and @elirainsberry.com on programming and sound (did I mention the sound is amazing?), and @finjico.bsky.social for publishing it. Works it Out was so refreshing in the modern game landscape.

And that game is absolutely wonderful. It's a perfect mix of peaceful and challenging and aha moments that is kind of hard to get right when making games. It's just...fun.

If you are within the sound of my voice and you haven't played it, go check it out. If it's at all interesting, pick it up.

You're a cube, you join a puzzle club, you make puzzles, you never leave your house. There are no timers, no scores, no leaderboards, no collectables, no secret ending (that I know of), no fetch quests, no microtransactions, no loot boxes, no battle passes, no anti-cheat software, etc. Just a game.

A few weeks late, but wanted to shout out one of my two favorite games of 2024, the absolutely wonderful 'Wilmot Works it Out'. A semi-sequel to the also great 2019 'Wilmot's Warehouse'

Unlike Warehouse, which was fun in a super stressful sort of way, Works it Out is fun in the complete opposite.

Sery bot is one of my favorite things about twitch - thanks for making it!

Just finished Pale Light and loved it! Great set of characters, great world building, and great premise for a story. Thanks for writing it, and thanks for telling me to read it. 🙂

Step 1: Make a list
Step 2: Add lots of things to the list
Step 3: Do everything on the list except the things that are the most important/necessary
Step 4: Make a new list

Oh Duo, if only it were so easy.

Also - I've always wondered - which method of buying (e.g., local bookstore, bookshop dot org, amazon)which version (e.g., paperback, hardcover, kindle) gets you the most money in your pocket as an author? Is there also a balance of that with sales numbers and ranks on different platforms?

Okay, your books sound absolutely great. Would you suggest 'A Pale Light in the Black' as the place to start, or since they're stand alone would 'and the mighty will fall' be a good place to hop in?

Reminder: you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it, you don’t have to get better at it, you don’t have to monetize it, and it doesn’t have to be useful.