April 19th Welcome back readers. Kept you waiting, huh? It’s taken me an extra day to do the work, but we’ve got 23 new-and-interesting picks ready to go this week, so pull up a chair and grab a b…

This Week: Unfair Flips, River Kings, Wrestling Monopolies, and a whole lot more:

critical-distance.com/2026/04/20/a...

let's make a cultural value judgment: palantir are a bunch of execrable fascist shitheads and their ideas go against the basis of every civilized country on earth, from which they should be extirpated like the intellectual cancer they are

the tech fascists think they are so clever and smart but their entire worldview is just a bunch of stale apologetics for race hatred and fascism

Record profits are unpaid wages and unpaid taxes.

This needs to be taken seriously. Along with underfunding, Doug Ford is destroying the university system. And yes, this latest move is 100% in line with what we've seen happening by state-level MAGA-hats in the US.

How is “viewpoint diversity” not just affirmative action for people with bad ideas

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit

Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here

Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse

Media and universities: AI is here to stay

A group of students in matching theme outfits stand on a stage holding an award.

A group of students wearing various costumes, some dressed like maids, stand together in various poses smiling at the camera.

Two people sit in front of a large, colourful screen playing a video game.

A group of students in matching theme outfits stand on a stage holding an award.

Congrats to #BrockU’s GAME students for earning the People’s Choice award at the Level up Showcase for four consecutive years in a row 👏
Learn more ➡️ https://loom.ly/f2FhtBk

My college is hiring a full time game design faculty, with a strong union! please share around, link in reply.

$85k-100k Salary
Benefits and retirement matching
Design, Programming or Art disciplines
Seattle Area

Congrats to our GAME and IADM students for a great Level Up showing and bringing home more hardware!

brocku.ca/brock-news/2...

Did games really get more costly to make? By how much, since when, and for whom? We have the receipts.

"Dev costs have skyrocketed." What does that actually mean? By how much? Since when?

The bigger the scope, the higher the rise: x2.5 for solodevs, x3 for AAA in 10 years ($100M ➡️ $300M).

@hushcrasher.bsky.social full analysis: newsletter.hushcrasher.com/p/did-games-...

F-ing depraved. The IDF edited a photo of the journalist they assassinated and made it look like he was wearing a Hezbollah uniform. They explicitly state that it is legal in Israel to murder journalists. The entire Israeli state is a criminal enterprise.

Where It Ends Answering the enabler's constant question, and contemplating the depraved depths of the billionaire mindset.

At a certain point of wealth, what is being pursued seems not to be wealth, but the ability to make other people suffer. What's being pursued is immunity from human decency; the ability and even the right to be depraved with impunity. They get off on the suffering. www.the-reframe.com/where-it-ends/

Friends!
New book announcement!
It’s finally out!
Bo Kampmann Walther and me have written The Laws of the Game: A Game Studies Book About Soccer, and now you can buy it: www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1...

And this beautiful game on grief is out now! If you want to support Arab-made work about the Arab world, history, arts, and culture -especially in a time of destruction and erasure towards our people- I cannot recommend this game more.

store.steampowered.com/app/3451680/...

what a glorious time capsule of this broken moment we are in

Americans suffer from a desperate need to believe in the inherent goodness of the American electorate--the idea that a voter in 2024--after nearly a decade of unfiltered, widely broadcast, deeply fascist rhetoric from Donald Trump--was simply "tricked" by a Facebook algorithm or a Fox News segment.

Level Up Showcase - Level Up Showcase Level Up Showcase 2026 is taking place at the Sheraton Centre Toronto on April 7.

Best of luck to everyone participating in Level Up today! Special shout out to all of the Brock capstone teams who always do us proud levelupshowcase.com

Doctoral Researcher in Historical Game Studies

Sharing this posting which could be a dream PhD for many: www.uni.lu/en/jobs/doct...

fromsoft game narrative discourse often misses how the words are very good. item descriptions blah blah yeah sure. but "all things flourish, whether graceful or malign" is very good words

Will Nintendo Solve Its Princess Problem in ‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie?’ As the company releases the sequel “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” the need for narrative has meant a new focus on its sparse cast of female characters.

I was quoted in the New York Times talking about Rosalina, my favourite Mario character (a galactic mother star goddess, what's not to love?)! Check it out here:

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/03/arts/nintendo-mario-galaxy-movie-rosalina-princesses.html

It's impolite to call Musk a genocidal white nationalist because "civility" in American discourse functions not as a neutral procedural norm but as an asymmetric weapon to shield the powerful from accurate moral characterization while policing the tone of those who object.

Realis A new tabletop roleplaying game by Austin Walker

REALIS, the science fantasy TTRPG I’ve been working on for the last five years, is now live on Kickstarter!

55 Player Classes
150+ NPC Classes
29 Factions
20 Example Moons of Realis
GMing and Prep Guidance
Over 100 incredible illustrations from 17 artists!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/cru...

if a leftist says he's anti-zionist because of the war crimes of a sovereign nation the times will suggest he is an anti-semite.

if a conservative says that he is "j-pilled" the times will say it's about foreign policy.

The pundit and columnist class meltdown from folks who have never supported the NDP honestly suggests to me that the NDP is doing something significant that’s worth paying attention to.

Those who defend power tend to screech the loudest when power is genuinely threatened.

And, if you are Canadian and study games, you too can be on this list! I'm pretty generous in my definitions of both those categories too.

You can safely ignore all pundits and pollsters who are already saying that Avi Lewis needs to run to the centre and be pro-oil, anti-immigration, etc. -- basically, Liberal/Conservative Lite -- or else he can't win. No, he needs to live up to being a real progressive and you'll see what happens.

This is it and anyone who tries to ascribe some deeper strategy is a mark

The Ghosts of Al-Shifa Hospital Months into a supposed ceasefire in Gaza, doctors still have to smuggle in basic medical supplies—and treat new casualties of war.

I’ve been a journalist for 27 years. I’ve reported major stories about mass surveillance, torture, war, the military-industrial complex, police black sites, etc.

But this is the most important story I’ve ever had the horror/honor to work on. For it is a story about the current phase of a genocide.

Guess what. You should hate fascists for the way they hurt people and you can do that without being homophobic or ableist or fatphobic or transphobic.

Related, no politician deserves your trust if they’re doing any of this or if they’re throwing vulnerable people under the bus.