Hi! I wrote a long debrief about this year’s season of Pocket Pals: how I ended up basically writing a Zoom clone, how I cast and format the show, and how there’s something not quite right with my brain.

The Great Pocket Pals 2026 Debrief

What went right, what went wrong, and why 80% isn't good enough.

open.substack.com

ⁿᵉʷ ᵍᵃᵐᵉˢ 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝙣𝙚𝙬 𝙜𝙖𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙉𝙀𝙒 𝙂𝘼𝙈𝙀𝙎

Back Pocket@backpocket.gg · 7mo ago

POCKET PALS 2026 finishes THIS THURSDAY! @swifty.wtf's TEAM SYNTH (ft. Phoenix O'Lion & Avexia) and @adeliebird.bsky.social's TEAM SPIRIT (ft. Rith & @theCoastalCity.bsky.social) ARE UP FIRST! JANUARY 22ND | 7:15PM AEDT | twitch.tv/back_pocket

this year's Pocket Pals hosted by the beautiful brainiac @nickbelling.com kicks off THIS WEEK! TEAM SYNTH ( @pierreth.bsky.social @rubyinnes.bsky.social @swifty.wtf) & TEAM SPIRIT (Gus, McKenzee @adeliebird.bsky.social) go head2head in a battle of gamer brains with their community team members!

If the phrase "On his way to speak to God on the Spirit of Tasmania as it travels to Melbourne, Doctor Who walks past someone credited as 'enthusiastic handjob man'" doesn't convince you to watch HBO's The Leftovers then I don't know what to tell you. No word of that is a lie.

did you miss last week's show with itskwoli and @nickbelling.com? well, don't you worry, because you can watch the whole thing on youtube! youtu.be/2GyM3H4Yj_w

TWO guests?! we're so spoiled!!! joining us on the show this week is aussie twitch streamer @kwoli.bsky.social and bestie of the show @nickbelling.com!!! NOVEMBER 6TH | 7:00PM AEDT | twitch.tv/back_pocket

#silksong

maybe the worst experience of my life: after already being on edge after being unexpectedly told by my dermatologist to strip down to my underwear for a skin check, she points to my underwear and says “oh, those are fun!”

gotta hand it to the pokemon company, depicting octillery giving cthulhu a blowjob is a hell of a way to distract from the plagiarism allegations

I need you to understand that you should do this over-the-phone experience. www.candlehousecollective.com/tickets/claws

CLAWS - Candle House Collective

candlehousecollective.com

In one ep of The Genius a favourite to win loses an elimination match. They show a full 2 min exit package for him. Then he makes another (invalid) move, confuses his opponent so much she thinks she misunderstood the game, and they REWIND his exit package and play hers instead.

broke: i asked chatgpt woke: i communed with the great robot in the sky

I couldn't remember my Pokemon account username for the Twitch drops thing and was pretty shocked to discover upon recovering my username that it was a username I last used in Year 8, making my account *more than twenty three years old*, what the fuck (I deleted it immediately)

If you clone yourself, is your clone able to vote, or is that election fraud?

just saw a woman with a giant “FTP” tattoo across her neck and thought “man, surely rsync or even plain HTTPS is better these days” before I realised she probably wasn’t professing her love for the File Transfer Protocol

the adhd experience: chore I have been putting off for 5 months took 17 minutes

This week I finished Lennox Mutual, an immersive experience that took me 14 months and 30+ phone calls. It ran the gamut of making me laugh to breaking my heart, but most importantly it never stopped surprising me. Anyone can do it (and you should). All you need is your phone.

Hello! Are you a dev interested in how I did any of the interactive elements in Pocket Pals, including the new custom buzzer system? Well, I've made the Pocket Pals Director source code public, so you can take a look!

GitHub - nickbelling/PocketPalsDirector

Contribute to nickbelling/PocketPalsDirector development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

I couldn't be more excited for this season's brand-new cast for @backpocketvids.bsky.social’s Pocket Pals. None of these Pocketeers have been on the show before - who's gonna take it? Dusk or Dawn? Or, for the first time in the show's history ... the potential for a tie?

So I just spent two weeks feeling like absolute dogshit followed by a night where I couldn’t breathe and had to drive myself to the ER where I subsequently spent a week in hospital on a breathing machine because the stupid bitch at the hairdresser didn’t wear a mask. Pneumonia, do not recommend.

was it worth it? no did i have fun though? also no but hey, i sure did gotta caught ‘em all

Days with ADHD meds: Me: [solving a difficult programming problem] Me, 1 hour later: problem solved Days without ADHD meds: Me: [solving a difficult programming problem] Me, 1 hour later: okay but a u-shaped toothbrush could clean all of my teeth in a fraction of the time

just because they're in an aged care facility doesn't mean they can't have the occasional