Ash Flanagan
@ashflanagan.bsky.social
any pronouns • classicist @ academia ➡️ Game Designer @ Pipeworks ➡️ Destiny Historian @ Bungie ➡️ Senior Narrative Designer @ Hearthstone • personal account
Uncharitable theory I have is that a lot of the hostility to trans women in sports is actually about the unsettling possibility that an amab person might NOT always beat cis women all the time forever and what guys like this think that implies
Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social · 2d agoit's interesting how many men get satisfaction out of knowing that other men can beat elite female athletes. like ok, maybe the best high school boys team in the country can beat a WNBA team, but YOU can't
Meme cut of the Odyssey where every instance of "we have violated/forgotten Zeus's Law" is replaced with "we have lost the mandate of heaven." And Odysseus leaves Ithaca with Penelope to seek out new sources of Baja Blast.
Stancil and most of his critics both seem to be taking the stance that Vimes' Boots either precisely explains how all prices work under capitalism or else it's worthless as an economic concept and personally I did not get the impression that was really the point
piggybacking: five works by bad people *that reflect the ways the people are bad* and are still good or great Yukio Mishima, TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN PAVILLION Knut Hamsun, GROWTH OF THE SOIL Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ÉMILE Lionel Shriver, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN H.P. Lovecraft, THE DUNWICH HORROR
BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · yesterdayalright let's do real discourse: five books *by bad people* that are still good or great books V.S. Naipaul, A BEND IN THE RIVER Allison Pearson, I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT Kevin Myers, WATCHING THE DOOR Yukio Mishima, CONFESSIONS OF A MASK Neil Gaiman, BRIEF LIVES.
And yet 80% of nativists will pretend not to be racists, they just want ‘law & order’ (and explicitly racist laws & executive orders)
Lupita Nihongo@otsumamiboy.blacksky.app · 17h agoFor the past five months the only refugees the USA has accepted are white South Africans fleeing equality & safety meanwhile they are disappearing or strapping ankle monitors on any Haitian they can get ahold of. It needs to be understood how thoroughly connected these two things are.
The role of ChatGPT in the accused FSU shooter’s case goes beyond providing tips, our investigation reveals. In the 12 months before his attack, he messaged with ChatGPT more than 6,600 times—including conversations revealing he was aggrieved, focused on extremist violence, and suicidal.
Inside a mass shooter’s harrowing history with ChatGPT
A year of chats reveals glaring red flags—and disturbing ChatGPT replies—from long before a rampage at Florida State University.
motherjones.com
EA officially goes private tonight, meaning: - EA will no longer trade on the NASDAQ for the first time in 36 years - All stockholders of EA (including many employees) will receive $210/share - EA will take on $18 billion (!) in debt, putting it on the hook to pay ~$1.8 billion/year in interest
"it looks like you're using an adblocker to visit our site." yep! ha ha! it rocks!
And it was canceled unjustly four seasons later, despite being one of the best series in CN history. And now, the only way to watch it is piracy, same as She-Ra.
ToonHive@toonhive.bsky.social · 19h ago7 years ago today, ‘Infinity Train: Book 1’ premiered on Cartoon Network.
there's a lot of people across the political spectrum who simply cannot process the fact that ethnicity is a social construct, that many ethnicities did not exist within the lifetime of living people, and that nevertheless ethnicity is an extremely real thing that ppl will kill or die for
Pseudotsuga@pseudotsuga86.bsky.social · 17h agoI think it's both true that Israel is a colonial project that continues to engage in colonialism and that Israeli identity is in fact a real thing. The notion that without Israel all the Israelis would embrace their true wholesome identity as Europeans or Arabs or whatever is complete lunacy
Pleased that inkle is part of the Choices Matter Festival, with a new chat with @theexaminedgame.bsky.social
Telltale@telltalegames.bsky.social · yesterdayCelebrate narrative games w/ our first-ever CHOICES MATTER FEST on Steam! AUGUST 10 - 17th: It’s stacked with... 🪧40+ Demos 🪧Behind-the-scenes content 🪧Interviews 🪧A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-type quiz 🪧Exclusive announcements 🪧TWO WORLD PREMIERES (not ours) 🪧…and discounts on 90 featured games!
We're showcasing Mandrake in the Choices Matter festival, thanks to the kindness of @telltalegames.bsky.social! Expect to see 25 minutes of narrative gameplay, including a first look at character creation. 🌱 See you there!
Telltale@telltalegames.bsky.social · yesterdayCelebrate narrative games w/ our first-ever CHOICES MATTER FEST on Steam! AUGUST 10 - 17th: It’s stacked with... 🪧40+ Demos 🪧Behind-the-scenes content 🪧Interviews 🪧A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-type quiz 🪧Exclusive announcements 🪧TWO WORLD PREMIERES (not ours) 🪧…and discounts on 90 featured games!
All respect to Terry Pratchett but if we're going to discourse about fantasy novelists understanding economics more people should talk about the 1996 Steven Brust novel that includes an accurate explanation of the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. The character who explains it is a vampire elf
this is a weird line to draw since the liberal position (correct) is that it's not reasonable to summarily execute people in international waters even if they're involved in drug trafficking and the conservative position is that you must do that even if you kill a bunch of innocent people too
CNN@cnn.com · 2d agoThe US military’s strikes on alleged drug boats have likely illegally killed “individuals who are not involved in narcotrafficking,” Sen. Tim Kaine told the White House, following “a careful review” of classified information he has seen so far.
grimly funny that in The Dark Knight, Batman’s city-wide surveillance is the moral crucible, the point at which he has clearly gone too far, while in Brand New Day it’s just something that Spider-Man does.
I love that AI companies are all like "we just have a marketing problem" when regular people are having AI experiences like this all over the place every single day
Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social · yesterdayGotta love the “or stocks” part. Like Gemini realized its first answer was nuts so it tried to wedge in a better one.
People frequently make this claim and the evidence is comparing like a Master Electrician to a typical college grad, but you don't become a Master Electrician straight out of trade school! The path to the "good" trade jobs in many markets are often highly constrained by cronyism and nepotism
atomic bog@jessicapancakes.bsky.social · yesterdayok but its also a better financial investment right now by a HUGE margin
Republicans love pushing vocational-only education instead of comprehensive-education because they want a healthy supply of low-cost servants and less competition for the professional and boss jobs they want their own kids to have.
Seth Cotlar@sethcotlar.bsky.social · yesterdayIn a college sociology class in the late 1980s I was assigned a Marxist analysis of education that argued that the US education system is designed primarily to produce efficient workers for the labor market. And now Trump’s Department of Education is just tweeting it out.
One thing I have not seen in discussions about Graham's legacy is his highly provocative stance towards North Korea. In 2018, he argued that war with the DPRK--a nuclear-armed state--would be "worth it." thehill.com/homenews/sen...
Lindsey Graham: War with North Korea would be ‘worth it’ in the long run
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said this week that a war with North Korea would be “worth it” in the long term.Graham made the comments in an interview with CNN.”All the damage that would come …
thehill.com
To this day I feel so lucky that this incredible crew made the Quadrilateral Cowboy trailer. So much talent in Jake, Derek, Chris, and Erin, planning, devising, and creating this amazing stuff 🙏🙏🙏
jake rodkin@rodkin.online · 2d agoThis is as good an excuse as any to re-share the Quadrilateral Cowboy trailer I got to help make with @derek-lieu.com @chrisremo.bsky.social and @erinyvette.bsky.social a decade ago. Still proud of it! youtu.be/S_IVvhSX2tY
I think if this happens a lot of the worst effects go away ~overnight
ae@aelkus.bsky.social · yesterdayThe tech industry needs to have its impunity taken away. it behaves the way it does, including its mystification of LLM-AIs, because it doesn’t have trial lawyers looking at it like a hungry Oguri Cap
if you buy a pet, you assume responsibility for its behaviors. your dog runs off and huts someone? the scrutiny is going to fall on you
Patrick C Miller@patrickcmiller.bsky.social · 2d agoExcuses like 'AI did it' don't exist in the eyes of the law
in the 1970's, the life expectancy for kids with cystic fibrosis was 15-20 years. today it's 65. in the 1970's, kids with acute myeloid leukemia had a 14% chance of making it 5 years. today it's 64% in 1960 the average life expectancy for kids born with Down Syndrome was 10 years. today it's 60.
Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · yesterdayEven healthcare is kind of a complicated case. In the past you were paying for treatments that didn't work, or sometimes not paying because no treatment was available. Yes, treating cancer costs a fortune... but fifty years ago, a lot of the time, the treatment plan was "wait for death"
Ellison doesn’t offer anything substantive about why he should be allowed to have the two huge networks, other than the platitudes that he plans to earn everyone’s trust. www.avclub.com/david-elliso...
David Ellison thinks people are only mad about the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger over CNN
David Ellison thinks people are only mad about the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger over CNN
avclub.com
MAHA morons being too electorally important to dismiss out of hand is actually existing glonzo and you’re going to get to enjoy it more and more as social media eats up information distribution systems
Absolutely unbelievable how solar power has taken off worldwide during the Hormuz oil crisis. You don't have to hand it to him, but Trump may have done more to finally kick off a global civilization of effete librul solar users than anyone else in the West
Well, this is going to be a death knell for the arts and humanities, not to mention social workers and clergy.
The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d agoPresident Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v
As of this morning, the itch bundle officially broke 100k. This is a lifeline to our fellow workers and proof that solidarity extends beyond borders, both literal and figurative. Never let anyone tell you that things cannot change.
United Videogame Workers-CWA@videogameworkers.bsky.social · 3d agoYou’ve helped us raise over 80k for laid off gamedevs in need so far, and we still have plenty of time left in the bundle’s drive. Everyone who organized this effort was doing so on their own time for the benefit of others. If these companies wanted to, they would. They don’t. We do. Join us. ✊
Texas and Maine have vastly different relationships with both churches and unions, yet they are both actively organizing in response to ICE’s cruelty and violence. sojo.net/articles/new...
ICE Is Moving More Quietly. Clergy Resistance Is Not
From Texas to Maine, people of faith are active on every front of resisting deportations and detainment.
sojo.net
