Adam Waldron-Blain
@adamwb.bsky.social
Used to be an artist, now I only complain. https://adamwb.net
I was annoyed at the *discourse* and wrote some rapid fire notes on Steinem www.patreon.com/posts/168891...
Eight theses on Gloria Steinem, because goddamn | Sophie Lewis
I think the phrase we’re looking for is social-democratic anticommunism. She was a metonym of the 20th century, which is currently dying. Sh
patreon.com
Didn’t submit to this bc my data isn’t very good quality, but one player’s records puts us close to the 1:5 “meatgrinder” ratio at 43 deaths in around 200 sessions But I’m watching the qb video linked here and the interview with the op is a window into a wildly foreign world to me, fascinating
Valeria Loves@valerialoves.bsky.social · 2d agoI surveyed 200 players and learned that most OSR games fall into two tiers of lethality - Meatgrinder and Picaresque. Table culture determines lethality more than system or campaign length. valerialoves.com/how-deadly-i...
I will not play grand theft auto because it perpetuates car culture :/
At long last, we have created the insane robot swarm with delusions of grandeur that is prone to bouts of mass hysteria from classic sci-fi novel don’t create the insane robot swarm with delusions of grandeur that is prone to bouts of mass hysteria
Various cautionary tales and prophesies tell us that such a machine will end the earth and they believe that too but in the mean time you could charge a lot for such a thing
It took eight years to investigate this for some reason before the crown decided to do nothing?
Jonny Wakefield@jonnywakefield.bsky.social · 2w agoA Calgary police officer who broke a 12-year-old autistic boy’s skull won’t be prosecuted. Alberta’s police watchdog believed the officer may have committed a crime, but the Crown refused to take up the case calgaryherald.com/news/calgary...
Remember how every time we build an LRT line the numpties emerge to demand we tunnel it so construction doesn't interfere with traffic?
My belated #yegdt hot take is that it actually isn't that bad. It has problems, but they're long-running ones that go back decades. Claims that it's broken are very overwrought, and worth a side-eye; it's generally been getting better. And no, it's not because of the hockey thingy. 1/lots w/ maps!
Sounds like the promise of a bike lane in BD that admin made to me when I brought up concerns with the city under-delivering on street calming is about to be broken. Well done to all involved.
Ok, #yeg pride not being transparent about their board and mandate last week when the cop news dropped was a red flag, but it looks like it’s somehow way worse than I could have imagined? openletter.earth/open-letter-...
OPEN LETTER TO EDMONTON PRIDEFEST ASSOCIATION
openletter.earth
researching lance usage on bicycles and coming up extremely short
Students: if you are reaching out to a professional to ask questions please for the love of god actually include your questions, do not just send “would it be okay for me to ask you some questions?”
"you probably mean this, a different thing than what you were searching for. here's more information on it" how dare you speak to me as if you were a creature of divine flesh. i curse thee, machine pretender
I understand “bullying” as a meme etc etc but people really taking the idea that shame works seriously is just embarrassing. Look if you are trying to tell anyone shame works while also pointing to Lorenz or whoever doing main character shit idk what to tell you, it clearly doesn’t!
thinking through this very carefully, since 2012 I would guess we've had somewhere in the ballpark of 1000 sessions but i do not know how to estimate the number of characters who have died (a lot)
Valeria Loves@valerialoves.bsky.social · 3w agoCollecting data for a future blog post! I will never escape samsara. forms.gle/PV6woQ1pAAk9...
honestly the best way to tell if an image online is fake is to introspect about whether looking at reinforces a sense of superiority over some group towards which you already feel contempt
in fact shame is well-studied by psychologists who have demonstrated that it is pretty bad at motivating people to better behaviour and is much more likely to be part of a repressive social structure that keeps us paralyzed and exploited, you might be thinking of guilt or just part of that structure
More to the point, the shame about the use of the big tech platforms isn't _useful_. Everybody has an instagram account and feels bad about it while Zuck profits off of them. What the fuck good does that do anybody? All those Substack writers are ashamed but still on there. It means nothing.
It doesn’t accomplish anything, just as you feeling ashamed about having an Instagram account while Zuckerberg profits from it doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s a way of making some people feel morally superior about a thing while not actually causing any accountability or change to the real harms.
Philosophers often bring up the "principle of charity": a willingness to assume good faith in an interlocutor and treat them accordingly. It's good to do in many circumstances. But it is worth formulating a principle of not being a fucking mark. If not during the rise of fascism, then when? 12/
yes, one of the notable problems with moral panics as systems to use for social change is that they are functionally agnostic about whether their targets have done what they are being accused of
sephirAmy@sephiramy.bsky.social · 3w agoseeing real artists and writers constantly hit with accusations of AI cuz the damn thing was trained on real artists and writers, knowing the lil jobs that used to make ends meet are now outsourced to a shittier version of you that doesn't have bills, doesn't have a life some days I just get so MAD
Lmao not only did #yeg pride put out an announcement about how they are welcoming increased police presence that everyone is pissed at but they used ai graphics to illustrate it, incredible symbolic overlap
The more I think about river valley co’s silly little campaign about supporting downtown businesses the more mad about it I get lmao. You just had to close cloverdale coffee why are you giving money to other failed businesses
Official city policy coming in on August 26 is that existing parking and care lanes is more important than safety. #yegbike A few loud reactionaries are more important than your safety
this sucks man www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Ontario appeal court says Ford can rip out Toronto bike lanes | CBC News
Premier Doug Ford’s government can rip out 19 kilometres of protected bike lanes in Toronto, the Court of Appeal for Ontario has ruled in a decision released Friday, reversing a lower court decision m...
cbc.ca
THREAD. Contrary to what you are being told, 40 years of polling have established that shifting money away from police/prisons toward social services is one of the most popular public policies among *all* political demographics. But it's not just that, it goes way deeper.
A common tactic--including in the pages of Jacobin magazine--is to pretend to complain about the "slogan" of "defund" and to use that complaint to avoid conversation about common sense and popular policies like transferring $$$ from cops to health, education, and housing.
alec karakatsanis@equalityalec.bsky.social · 4w agoTHREAD. Contrary to what you are being told, 40 years of polling have established that shifting money away from police/prisons toward social services is one of the most popular public policies among *all* political demographics. But it's not just that, it goes way deeper.