The moment, 11 generations into Terraforming Mars, when you realize you have only put one tile on the actual planet you are supposed to be actually terraforming
04.03.2026 04:31
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The moment, 11 generations into Terraforming Mars, when you realize you have only put one tile on the actual planet you are supposed to be actually terraforming
In the style of an industrial warning sign — WARNING Cognitohazard: Do not think about it
I kept needing this, so I finally made it.
"I asked Chat GPT and -" ok, I asked the exhumed corpse of Pope Formosus during the Cadaver Synod and he went "... ... ..." and then his jaw fell off and it was still a better answer
After 12 years and editing close to a thousand different writers, I've learned there are two edits that will transform a perfectly pleasant human into a nearly homicidal figure:
- Suggesting that a non-grammatical comma used as a pause could be cut.
- Changing an American's use of "grey" to "gray."
Aw hell yisss
It’s very easy for people to assume that metrics, social media or otherwise, are self-explanatory. They very rarely are. You have to contextualize them (relative rates of engagement, actual views / reach vs theoretical) for them to be useful.
It’s very easy for people to assume that metrics, social media or otherwise, are self-explanatory. They very rarely are. You have to contextualize them (relative rates of engagement, actual views / reach vs theoretical) for them to be useful.
Any serious discussion of audience “loss” derived from leaving Twitter can’t take total follower counts at face value. It needs to try to account for the ratio of bots & lapsed accounts, plus the algorithm hiding posts from people.
image is a redesign of xkcd comic 2501. ponytail says "monstrous children of narcissistic parents are second nature to us wizards vs lesbians fans, so it's easy to forget that the average person only knows Orion lake, Gideon Nav, and Marceline." cueball adds "and fetter, of course," and ponytail agrees, "of course."
me talking about the latest queer sff with my friends like
Much like drivers will 'consume' the added safety provided by safety features in a car by driving faster (on average), soldiers will 'consume' some of the added protection of armor by fighting more aggressively.
This effect has actually been observed with modern body armor, by the by.
Insurance companies have a lot of money invested in maintaining the separation between our realm and the realms of faerie, and they will never allow the Wolf Prince to incarnate in the mortal realm to spread his hellvine palace as long as their lobbyists have the ear of both parties
That “three megabytes of hot RAM” line from Neuromancer is in grave danger of becoming vindicated
This is the thread on Aragorn's tax policy that you didn't know you needed until you read it.
The wild turkeys in the Oakland hills will *fuck you up* without remorse.
Truth.
Speaking as someone who designed, revised, and managed one of the most vilified (and monetarily successful) systems in a major mobile game, and then watched a successor system which incorporated the social media feedback we got absolutely crash and burn… this article is worth your attention.
This is literally the best article on this topic I've ever read. It is something that many game devs can tell you straight to your face, and something SO many people simply don't believe.
*getting burnt as a Cathar by the church in the Albigensian crusade* this is capitalism's fault
To digress, a difference between current oligarchs and the robber barons is that these guys can easily look up their relative wealth rankings and don’t need to build museums and foundations to compete with one another
tl:dr we've automated "crit burn," the known tendency of over-workshopped stories to have all voice and character smoothed away.
h/t @johnchu.bsky.social
Counterpoint: if the Prince of Darkness rises from a fiery portal at the Iowa Caucus and declares his opposition to Donald Trump, I will ride to battle with the host of Hell
"In any given dynasty," Mu Bai reminds these wannabe political cos-players, "your ancestors would have been too lowly to even haul around the Emperor’s shit-bucket on a shoulder-pole.”
Rose/House is a super fun haunted house story + procedural! Highly recommended.
In the unlikely event that you follow me and have never read this, fix that right away.
"There are some flaws with the idea of pseudo-randomly killing baseball players, and I'll be the first to admit that." - Parker MacMillain III
tired: sexy murder bureaucrats vs. basically pleasant poets
wired: basically pleasant bureaucrats vs. sexy murder poets
Fond of “I am on fire, keep clear of me”, myself.
A team without Molyneux will have a fighting chance to actually prioritize and scope appropriately without him promising ten impossible things before breakfast. So that checks out.
