Where The Work Happens I have been reading Michael J. White’s Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012 and while I initially approached it as a book to be reviewed, its structure makes that diff…

Glad to see people taking games theory seriously
tasker.land/2026/04/21/w...

The Bittersweet Temporality of Love | Los Angeles Review of Books On the 50th anniversary of his death, it’s a perfect time to unearth the forgotten fantasies of Thomas Burnett Swann.

"Swann’s fantasies spoke to the feminist, gay-rights, and environmental movements. His intense focus on 'civilization' processed the growing sense of cultural malaise."

Sean Guynes on Thomas Burnett Swann: lareviewofbooks.org/article/thomas-burnett-s...

cf. at a certain point the fact that the openly authoritarian party and the controlled opposition party that is way more comfortable with authoritarian policy and debating "is it ok the authoritarian controlled opposition sometimes runs people who are openly evil?" vs "what is to be done"

I mean... post media consolidation the infotainment industry really has just been a slurry of talking points to churn low information thinkpieces and run various elements of opposition research

PR management by flooding the zone with disinformation regarding the actual conspiracy? run by the guy who famously was in the conspiracy to maintain hold on power for the Military Industrial Complex?

so i have a personal hobby in infohazards but i have a thread from every president of my lifetime and the infamous college dropout who got a job teaching at a private school before his handler picked him up and honed his predatory instincts like a skinner box & think he's the tip of a network

i don't make anything for "public consumption" i sell some of my work and i do work i think is interesting and i troubleshoot for the fact that i live in a country where a perpetual adolescence seems to be most people's goal, considering the public is for people with mediocre ambitions

i would hone my occult skills to a degree that this world is not ready for

to the goddamn shoulder

the people who think punk rock means "i have no responsibility to others, an unpleasant personality and limited, if any, social skills" and the thinks anarchy means "having the responsibilities of a baby with no limits on the exercise of personal power" venn diagram

The most bad-ass rebuttal from Tite Kubo, the author of Bleach.

like active back and forth for institutional access to documents is both a lot of fucking work and something really hard to work into a sizzle reel or job recruiting (sorry sometimes i think i'm a comedian)

especially if like a journalist or researcher or similar thing there is a lot of broken up time involved in a bunch of cumulative minor tasks that makes work look "inactive"

could you conceivably teach a specialist class on the topic? unless it is for the aid of ideals charge $65-150 at least

In fact, we are convinced, for most of us, the mythic beast 'audience' is simply an assortment of 'creators' one tier lower than oneself on the 'attention' pyramid.

i am unqualified to be a public servant as i am amoral, unelectable by multiple demographics and affiliations, hold opinions that oscillate between contradictory extremisms and call myself an evil wizard; easiest fix to cities is dismantle car infrastructure for housing & parks

it does sometimes feel, walking around PVD (a city that i love), that fixing a lot of the problems with the city are basically Urbanism 101 questions you would put in a midterm and watching Smiley routinely try to dismantle bike infrastructure has been embarassing

are you going to watch the 90s PVD Mafia film Federal Hill while enjoying some of our infamous mayor's pasta sauce to really set the scene?

one of the reasons i don't really bother to include my personal politics in certain forms in things i write is i think the most boring thing i could do is preach to you, frequently things more aligned with my viewpoint are presented in a grotesque form or as failing, utopias lack conflict

which i think gets to one of the more complex issues in games which is: conflict is the driver for anything interesting happening, if we accept games are play and play is what happens at the table all rules can be is a framing for the conflicts that define the action for the table

that is in a vanished social media (Twitter) i shitposted through the idea of doing a Cattle Raiding Culture as XP where you only gain XP in large amounts via stealing cattle from others and holding and reproducing cattle (eg level caps are probably some degree of herd value)

i know this may be wild as a thought experiment but, given gold = xp seems to cause people to explode into incandescent rage sometimes have we considered: gold is a (currently) near universal symbol for value and conversion is as simple as creating an xp economy if that is a central problem

There's a man who investigates the darkest of thickets

also resigning over the allegations rather than fighting them is principled(?) but like also something that if the party did esp re: insider trading and etc. it would decapitate itself

i feel like Lies & the Lying Liars was 1) a pretty simplistic version of the US political system and 2) viscerally satisfying as a young adult with conservative family and 3) really is the DNA for a lot of JStew & co style Late Night (focus on hypocrisy and silly beliefs) ignore "making a program"

and playing games via popular suggestion and debate lead to some inherently funny results (Boatmurdered, intentionally nightmare Princess Maker 2 runs that probably lead to Doki Doki Literature Club and Pretty Streamer Overload) which are probably at the base of podcast/streaming/AP culture

it is kinda hard to ignore: people really like participating in big projects and they want people to appreciate the outcome (you don't even need to take psych or sociology classes to master this knowing, at some point you have been in a decaying or growing institution)

i mean sour grapes since he is probably retired now and i am decidedly not but at least he did tip me more than 200% for being polite about telling him when he was trying to send drinks to obviously married women

he showed me charts, apparently the adaptation to use is onset to lifecycle (since almost every company he had worked for was basically "here is how to host pirated media, CCTV footage and nightmare content" and was shut down by lawsuits or fiat)