Good thread altogether but the end is the most important part imo - a boycott needs an *end point*. If you are not gettable, if nothing they do will ever get you to shop there, then they have no reason to change practices in response to the boycott!

the Mountain Goats@themountaingoats.bsky.social · 4d ago

and after the union wins? you go back and you tip hard and you show the company it was the workers who made them their money, and that they're nothing without the workers! super simple equation! Solidarity with Starbucks Workers United, 12,000 strong and growing!

it's called "dukkhamaxxing". kids are cultivating attachment at unheard of levels on the streets to experience whole new levels of suffering

"fairness in women's sports" is literally just "ethics in games journalism" like this is the same thing this is part of the same playbook dawg

“I got your ‘eat shit’ loud and clear” is, unfortunately, an objectively very funny statement. Point: AI

when conservatives say “facts don’t care about your feelings” you need to understand that it is not meant to say they are committed to facts but that they are committed to creating a form of epistemological dictatorship where no one is able to disagree with their obvious lies.

Sarah J. Jackson@sjjphd.bsky.social · 2w ago

The U.S. described updating world maps to show the *correct* size of Africa (and everything else) as a “radical ideological project”

News: I'm very excited to support the new critical journal of TTRPGs, Playtest Material, as guest editor of Issue 2: Histories playtestmaterial.org/issue-two-hi... @playtestmaterial.bsky.social @laurieoc.bsky.social

Issue Two: Histories

It’s my great honour as guest editor to introduce the second issue of Playtest Material, “Histories.” The call for submissions for this issue will open to the public September 15 and close October 15....

playtestmaterial.org

Pop Syllabus.

"Tiny Tim, who DESERVED to die,"

The A.V. Club@avclub.com · 2w ago

The film, which stars Johnny Depp, will try to find the "gray area" in A Christmas Carol. www.avclub.com/scrooge-gray...

“Why didn’t scientists warn us?”

Impossible to add up all Avery's done for the medium. But easy to say how much her work helped me come to understand how to play, facilitate, and design games. Also, they're fun as hell, you should buy them!

Avery Alder, Buried Without Ceremony@lackingceremony.bsky.social · 3w ago

Do you love any of the games that I have created? Whether it's Monsterhearts, Dream Askew, The Quiet Year, Going For Broke, or a deeper cut, now would be a great time to hit quote-tweet and tell your friends about it! It's been a slow month. 💕✨ store.buriedwithoutceremony.com

Recent TTRPG mini-discourse lodged in my head has me thinking about the value of Thomas and Sharp's "Fun, Taste, and Games," which IIRC has an entire chapter patiently explaining that, yes, many people do enjoy Monopoly. Because most people don't play games like game designers and scholars do.

As someone who took his student newspaper editors to task over email because they changed "zany" in my lede to "ribald," yeah, you really should not let an LLM just tweak your language either.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 3w ago

I think what I find really depressing about AI in higher education is how so many people didn't even wait for the evidence/research before we decided on telling students "how to use AI responsibly" which often includes things like checking grammar, and obviously, we shouldn't have been

I feel like I’m living In a dystopian novel written in 1993 that was rejected by dozens of publishers because it was incredibly stupid.

They have whiplash. Is A.I. the future or is it the end of jobs? It can't be both (they took 1900 hours of AP classes so they know they can figure that out for themselves). Where are all the professors and why are they all in a seminar about A.I. instead of inspiring them or telling them what to do?

My son starts college in two weeks, and his decision really boiled down to finding a place where he thought faculty and students did learning old-school: small seminar discussions, field work, etc. He wants a tech-proof degree. Many of the colleges made no attempt to sell this to him!

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 3w ago

From their perspective, if A.I. isn't going to get them a good job (and the A.I. narrative is boasting about eliminating good jobs) then college should at least match their idea of what it used to be -- personal, inspiring, chats on the quad, experiences. Then their class is all about tech.

You already had several good reasons to boycott Starbucks, but here's another one

Truthout@truthout.org · 3w ago

In a first, Starbucks Workers United and its 12,000 members are calling for a boycott of the coffee chain, after spending nearly 5 years pressuring the company to negotiate a first contract since the first location unionized in 2021.

Monsterhearts and Dream Askew are both delightful games! Great for an evening with friends. The Quiet Year is fascinating. But Brave Sparrow, anthologized in "Variations on Your Body," changed my brain chemistry. And the essay "We've Been Stranger Things" in the same collection is stellar!

Avery Alder, Buried Without Ceremony@lackingceremony.bsky.social · 3w ago

Do you love any of the games that I have created? Whether it's Monsterhearts, Dream Askew, The Quiet Year, Going For Broke, or a deeper cut, now would be a great time to hit quote-tweet and tell your friends about it! It's been a slow month. 💕✨ store.buriedwithoutceremony.com

Do you love any of the games that I have created? Whether it's Monsterhearts, Dream Askew, The Quiet Year, Going For Broke, or a deeper cut, now would be a great time to hit quote-tweet and tell your friends about it! It's been a slow month. 💕✨ store.buriedwithoutceremony.com

Buried Without Ceremony

My name is Avery Alder, and for the past eighteen years I’ve been designing tabletop roleplaying games. These are games about community, relationships, doubt, queerness, and the collapse of civilizati...

store.buriedwithoutceremony.com

Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris performing “Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow” on The Dolly Parton Show (1976)

Let me get this straight. Sometimes a famous person dies and everyone is nice about it? Merely because of their deeds during life?

“This isn’t a problem that started with the storm. We are a predominately Black city that tends to get ignored,” says Grammy award-winning rapper Freddie Gibbs as his hometown of Gary, Indiana remains without power after two weeks.

‘IGNORED’: Rapper Freddie Gibbs SPEAKS OUT on Gary, Indiana’s power crisis 

YouTube video by MS NOW

youtube.com

I will add, long before this became federal, red state legislatures have been working hard to destroy academic freedoms about what faculty can even say. In Oklahoma, we were told that we could be fined and/or jailed if we provided "material support that led to a student getting an abortion."...

Ian Boudreau@ianboudreau.com · 4w ago

I guess it's kind of hard to view the dismissal of one grublike phrenologist as a major hit to free speech after major American universities have in the past year banned the use of words and eliminated entire departments in the hopes of pleasing the senile president

This isn't a "surprising message of support for trans adults". This is a bigot whose arm is being twisted into doing public relations damage control by the media network that invested billions into a franchise she's been poisoning with hate for the last decade.

Transgender World@transgenderreport.com · 4w ago

JK Rowling issues surprising message of support for trans adults www.lgbtqnation.com/... #transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA

WSJ giving Cofnas a platform to insist that he's just a brave truth teller but also a small bean birthday boy. People should lose their jobs over this.

him: license and registration please me: *hands them over* him: *eats license and registration* me: now wait a min- him: *burps* insurance card please

Archival work is both time and resource intensive but if you can swing it, nothing beats looking at primary sources. I’m a big believer that everyone should visit their local archives and just start digging. You will feel more connected and be better informed for the effort.

Ancillary Review of Books@ancillaryreviewofbooks.org · last mo.

The Robber Time: @ckunzelman.bsky.social on Joanna Russ in the Archives

So there was a racist mass media smear campaign that got repeated louder and louder and louder until people assumed there had to be at least *some* truth to it just based on the sheer volume of allegations? This is flooding the zone with shit. This is Bannonism.

Wait a damn minute. The things Arday did, like the marathons, had been previously covered, with first hand primary sources, by English news orgs, contemporaneously?!?! And yet the Telegraph and others just kept repeating that he'd lied about them, despite tons of documentation they happened?! 🤬🤬🤬

Jason Arday's marathon challenge and football claims found to be true after his death

Claims the late academic made which were widely derided as false in media and online discourse this month appear to be true, an MEE analysis has found

middleeasteye.net

Democratic Socialism: Myth Vs. Fact https://theonion.com/democratic-socialism-myth-vs-fact/