when they tell you to go back to writing about gadgets www.theverge.com/policy/86857...
29.01.2026 15:29
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when they tell you to go back to writing about gadgets www.theverge.com/policy/86857...
I really don't like anything about D&D's alignment system, but I appreciate its power as a shorthand, and I'd love to do something that could work similarly, and this is a swing at that.
walkingmind.evilhat.com/2025/11/23/o...
An epic and mind-blowing expansion of the Area X story by way of a hidden metal box full of secret images and documents purporting to be the last report of the Central agent Karen Hargraves. Spanning the 30 years of Southern Reach expeditions, reaching into the past and the future, this full-color book will satisfy Area X completists while adding to the narrative begun with the first four novels, to Michael Sand at Abrams, in an exclusive submission, by Joseph Veltre at Gersh Agency and attorney Alex Kohner (world).
SOUTHERN REACH READERS and weirdlings in general, here's a call for lighthouse photo submissions if you want a chance to be in the forthcoming Area X: The Southern Reach Files book. Starts Nov. 1, ends Jan 21. PLEASE read thoroughly. Questions, weirdos?
www.jeffvandermeer.com/lighthouseph...
Are you or someone you know skipping GDC (or considering doing so) because of worries about coming to the US/San Francisco in the current environment?
If so, I want to hear from you for a piece. DM me here or kyle DOT orland AT arstechnica DOT com.
Please spread the word
Were you 20 or older during the height of the Satanic Panic? I'm researching that period for a game *and* novel, and I'd like to interview you about your firsthand experiences if you'd like to share them! (1/2)
Alright, my dearies. Here we go. Join us for the ride?
www.kickstarter.com/projects/lum...
From an uptick in comms from wildlife rescue places lately: don't use glue traps, they're so cruel; do not spray paint wildlife, including birds and turtles; do not pick any animal by the tail or you can severely injure their spine. This includes opossums, for whom it can be life threatening.
Me when I'm reading D&D: Planescape influenced my spirituality. Dark Sun does amazing things with halflings. I love the really weird parts of Forgotten Realms. I'm so glad I grew up with this.
Me whenever anyone tries to talk to me about D&D: ew D&D
Four lessons I've learned making #ttrpgs:
1. Never spend more than two years honing/developing a game if the play experience doesn't feel fun in the ways you want it to be in the first two iterations. It's extremely unlikely you'll manage to make it fun how you want to if it's not early on.
In every possible way the vile detention camp in the Everglades is destructive and anti-life. www.tampabay.com/news/environ...
I work as an elder and hospice caregiver, which I am oddly passionate about. I can love on them shamelessly and no one complains about my codependence. It's a win-win situation. Many of my caregiving colleagues complain about the repetitive questions and, sometimes reactions, of the elderly, especially when those patients happen to read the newspaper, especially with the current downward spiral of our country — as if these people haven't lived through enough horror... I love my dementia peeps, but sometimes wonder if there's a Guinness Book World Record for how many times an hour a dementia patient can repeat the same question — it's got to be in the hundreds. At least with small children, they ask different questions. Dementia patients will get stuck on one short question and ask it until you can interrupt their train(carousel) of thought and successfully redirect their attention. That carousel is pretty manic sometimes. A couple days ago, I picked up my mail from the post office and drove over to the nursing home to take (let's call her "Miss Daisy") Miss Daisy out for a drive. Before we took off on our road trip, to the end of The Road and back, in our landlocked little town (Juneau, Alaska), I set my copy of The Onion down in front of her. Over our two-hour excursion, tiny Miss Daisy read that front page at least a dozen times and each time she would snicker, giggle, and guffaw, then put it down on the dash board and, a minute later, discover it anew. I think it was the best afternoon of my life. We don't often hear them laugh and when they do, it's the sweetest thing you've ever heard. ... Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the really important work all of you do. You make the world a better place.
I got permission to share this, and I'm extremely grateful for that.
The Onion got this letter from one of our subscribers in Alaska. She works with dementia patients and decided to leave a copy in the car for each one.
This email made my year. Read it and you'll see what I mean. People are good.
Mockup of the book cover for Mausworn, showing a mouse warrior kneeling with a sword over a spiral of fire
Ok, nobody asked for this, it is completely unannounced, but I was possessed by this idea so here we go:
Mausworn—what if Mausritter, but... Ironsworn?
I started the draft, drew the cover art, and have a vision to combine my favorite bits of these two awesome games into a standalone project.
1/3
Nosferatu
Nosfera2
Nosf3ratu
Nosfer4tu
NosferatV
Community survey! What rules and tools do you use in your Ironsworn/Starforged campaigns?
forms.gle/eh7WngZMpgmb...
The survey is a bit inside baseball, so probably not the best for casual fans. However, results thus far are interesting and will help me focus my development energy on what matters.
I’ve seen articles recently about how decline in church membership = the death of communities, and while that’s not *TOTALLY* untrue, I don’t think you can honestly talk about the death of community w/o mentioning the housing crisis
I just did a reread of @scalzi.com’s Interdependency series. Doing this the same week that the GOP votes on the Murderous MAGA Budget Bill was utterly surreal. One of the characters makes the point that in the end times the only people worth saving are the wealthy. She isn’t exactly the hero.
🧵
This is the first image of an aurora taken from the surface of Mars, or indeed the surface of any world other than our own.
"But wait!" I hear you say. "I thought Mars didn't have a magnetosphere. How can it have an aurora?"
A short 🔭🧵.
physicsworld.com/a/this-is-wh...
The light was poor and I was at a fast shutter speed so these shots are soft in detail, but I'd like to share this moment. A few days ago, a Canada Goose started swimming close to a Sandhill Crane nest. Dad Crane was sitting on the nest when suddenly Mama Crane flew in and drop kicked the goose.
PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081
Every use case I see people bring up for LLMs (large language models) is actually SLMs (small language models, being trained on very specific data for a very specific use). Aside from maybe „it helps my emails sound less mean“ and as a German let me tell you, just sound mean babe. It’s totally ok.
I had a friend tell me about going to a swap meet once and there was a guy selling a bunch of knives and switchblades. My friend asked him if that was even legal, and the guy replied "Florida's wild, bud."
so excited for this, the artwork looks amazing!
Very glad to see @nellraban.com featured today on Rappler Gaming to discuss her experiences and contributions to the latest installment of Sid Meier's Civilization! I'm a dyed in the wool series fan so when I learned she was on the dev team, I was very excited to suggest our editor talk to her.
Fie on goodness, fie!
I read The Once and Future King last year, and amidst the melodrama of Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot was a despairing political tract from WWII's wake on people who grow tired of doing good.
The countdown for XENO's Kickstarter campaign has just begun!
www.backerkit.com/call_to_acti...
Join, become an alien, atone for your sins.
XENO will be available in both Spanish and English!
Share, let the invasion reach everyone.
There used to be a man who published a very influential fanzine, a reviewzine, and he always gave me very bad reviews. The thing that he really hated about my work was that it was different from other works and it wasn’t the kind of thing that he was used to reading. He really resented that. I would write him and say, ‘There are thousands of books of the kind that you want, which are simple straightforward stories along story-lines that you have explored often before. The shelves in every bookstore in the world are groaning under these books. There are tons of them. Why does everything have to fit that?’ He wouldn’t tell me, but eventually I realised that as long as there was one book that didn’t fit, he felt threatened by that. Not all books were familiar comfortable things. There were these strange pseudo-books that might leap out at you and bite and suddenly make you think of things that you had never thought of before, regret a missed opportunity from thirty years ago, or whatever. He was very disturbed by that and very angry at me because I try and write that kind of book. PW: It seems strange that anyone would object to novels that challenge both conventions and the reader. GW: Well, it seemed to me strange at that time but I learned that it does happen and the fact that you tell people you shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t feel this way, doesn’t have any effect. They continue to o it and they continue to feel as they feel.
Thinking about Gene Wolfe on bad reviews again
A very ruffled Tricolored Heron standing in water
Common Grackle perch on top of a shrub showing their iridescent coloring
Neotropic Cormorant perching on dead branch looking into the bluesky
Carolina Wren sitting on a branch with mouth open.
Work was not my favorite and wiped me out today but someone virtually twisted my arm so here I am :p. The first is more of a self portrait after work.
Canon 5DmkIV EF100-400 II - 1.4TC
#birds #photography #nature #wildlife
A top-down view of the front half of a striped snake, resting on green leaves and stems of grass. The snake's body enters the frame at the top center and curves to the left, and the head is near the bottom of the image. The body pattern is composed of stripes - a white stripe down the middle of the back, flanked on either side by two thin black stripes, which are in turn flanked by two stripes of reddish orange, then two more thin black stripes, and finally two white stripes on the sides of the body. The top of the head is a solid reddish orange.
I'm a lifelong thamnophile, and to spend 35 minutes just watching this snake foraging in vegetation was a top-tier experience. A young adult San Francisco Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia), one of the most beautiful garter snakes. #ThamnophisThursday #herps #snakes #NaturePhotography 🌿
If you ever encounter a singular explanation for the ongoing success of D&D, it's worth treating with skepticism. If you name a thing that D&D does well, you can usually find several games that do it better. Size & recognition matter, of course, but the brand's been through rough times.
