Colin

How the Hype Index Got Smarter | Kineticist The Hype Index has been rebuilt from the ground up — new scoring, era-based nostalgia modeling, and your vote finally affects the rankings.

not pushing myself into a 6-month burnout cycle with the twipys this year means I get to spend time working on building cool things again www.kineticist.com/post/how-the...

The energy I think I want to channel more of this year is “fuck you I’m gonna do it anyway”

hi bird

I covered this story extensively for @kineticist.com—six pieces from Nov 13-Jan 23. Disappointed as an indie journalist who covers the pinball community to see @nbcnews.com frame it as an exclusive with no credit.

kineticist.com/post/ifpa-obx-fall-flippers-event

Hi! I covered this story extensively for @kineticist.com. Why is @nbcnews.com framing this as an exclusive? I've done at least six pieces on it from Nov 13th-Jan 23rd. A little disappointing as an independent journalist who specializes in covering pinball.

www.kineticist.com/post/ifpa-ob...

Hi! I covered this story extensively for @kineticist.com. Why is @nbcnews.com framing this as an exclusive? I've done at least six pieces on it from Nov 13th-Jan 23rd. A little disappointing as an independent journalist who specializes in covering pinball.

www.kineticist.com/post/ifpa-ob...

@nbcnews.com reporting this as an exclusive when my outlet has been covering it for months. cool.

David Bowie's 'Blackstar' Turns 10 When I awoke that Sunday morning, I was so confused. My wife, not much of a music fan, mentioned she’d just read some news about David Bowie. I replied something along the lines of, “Yeah, he just rel...

10 years since Bowies’s final masterpiece. One of my favorite albums.

Nothing’s been right since he left us.

also a pin!

@massago.bsky.social @massgovernor.bsky.social
Know the plates are full. Can this be replicated in Massachusetts. Check it out. CA has a state portal that provides a single free form that you can demand deletion of personal data of over 500 registered data brokers

2026 Ins, Outs and Predictions jester's privilege

open.substack.com/pub/brendonh...

the new epstein drop is wild

I don’t know the context of this but wolf parade is awesome! the album that song is from got so many plays from me in college 🤘

absolutely

They have since credited me but yeah, always a bit frustrating when it happens. Usually I’m good with these things if asked and provided credit

sorted, was apparently in some shared marketing assets folder and they didn’t look closely before using

Thanks! Didn’t think of that

I don't always know what to do with this stuff other than be mildly frustrated by it but here's a major pinball distributor taking my work (I took the photo, it's even watermarked) and using it for their own promotional materials w/o permission, explicit credit, or compensation.

Journalism realizes it has a business talent problem

www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/jour...

depends on the person! I've always found most video tutorials to be hard to follow, I'd rather read it, which is one of the reasons we led with written pinball tutorials on the site.

This life gives you nothing Your attention is all you have. Wasting it is annihilating. Blackbird Spyplane saves literacy in a monumental Year-End Essay.

"Your attention is all you have"

www.blackbirdspyplane.com/p/this-life-...

As someone who much prefers writing boy do I need to hear this sometimes

Statement on the Brown University shooting.

fat zuck

how much game companies spend for ads

first daycare induced sickness of the season knocked me out for the week, but in good news I was able to binge all 12 hours of the american revolution

"We make for ourselves the world we write, and we can only write the world we imagine."

screenshot of a subscription appeal email from defector: Too often these days I find myself “choosing” between Bad and Worse. This week’s indignity: Should I want Larry Ellison’s poreless son or a gluttonous, $400 billion company to secure the right to enrich the vile David Zaslav? For all the complaints about how “we don’t make things in America anymore,” the country produces plenty of opportunities to debase yourself by rooting for the merely Bad. Immiserated by a steady stream of these false choices, it’s easy to forget that Something Else is possible. Defector is Something Else. From our blogs and podcasts to the company’s cooperative structure, everything we do reflects the sensibilities shared by our staff and subscribers. We have no access to preserve, no investors to please, and no gambling partner to feed. This lets us see things clearly, say things straightforwardly, and offer refuge from this inhumane moment. We chose Something Else. You can, too:

loath to be too precious about this stuff but I want one lesson of defector to be "you can choose to not do stuff that sucks" even if "doing stuff that sucks" is the default

Bob Iger: Disney’s OpenAI Deal “Does Not In Any Way” Threaten Creatives The CEO suggested that Disney would prefer Paramount to prevail in the battle for Warner Bros. Discovery, citing Netflix's streaming dominance and the perilous state of movie theaters.

can I sell non-licensed open ai generated creative work featuring disney characters too? www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...

The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026 Modern trends and history lessons—across culture, politics, AI, economics, science, and the long story of progress. But first: an announcement!

www.derekthompson.org/p/the-26-mos...