please enjoy my post featuring a bunch of tools to navigate the age of AI! 👉 because the machine must break (true empowerment in the age of AI tools) - www.nathalielawhead.com/candybox/bec... anti-AI tools, AI protection, and data pois*ning projects. there's so much! #SoloDev #IndieDev #IndieWeb

because the machine must break (true empowerment in the age of AI tools)

nathalielawhead.com

I've been bummed that our publisher ghosted us in the middle of planning our promotional campaign. But that won't stop me from repeating to the forty-seven of you who see this post that I've got a book for sale.

Bobby™@schwbby.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I'm bad at promoting my work. So, in addition to saying "buy my book!" (a chill game design textbook using Bitsy) I'll share some of my favorite writing from the book. www.amazon.com/Storytelling... link.springer.com/book/10.1007... (save 20% with code PALAUT and I earn a pittance of commission!)

The final speaker whom we will feature in Session 0 of RPG Roots is Aaron Trammell @aarontram.bsky.social, Associate Professor of Informatics with affiliations with African American Studies and Media Studies at UC Irvine. Find his website and research here: aarontrammell.com 1/

Want to support TTRPG Professors? Maybe start by subscribing (for free!) to Analog Game Studies's YouTube channel, and keep an eye on the journal (FREE TO READ!) at: @analoggamestudies.bsky.social

Analog Game Studies

The official journal of Analog Game Studies. Scholarly content about tabletop, live-action, performance, and generally awesome games. Read more at our website analogamestudies.org.

youtube.com

I recently got to talk to the brilliant art historians and media scholars @tiffanyfunk.bsky.social and Chaz Evans on the @uminnpress.bsky.social podcast! We chatted about experimental games, Fluxus, media art, and the connections to #gamestudies. Check it out! share.transistor.fm/s/47ecd5a6

George Brecht to Game Boy: A history of play and playfulness | University of Minnesota Press | Episode 143

In his study of how a new and messy set of codes about playfulness took shape in the postwar US, Peter D. McDonald illuminates how playfulness became essential for understanding cultural, technical, a...

share.transistor.fm

working on a new project for @aftermath.site: a semi-comprehensive, regularly-updated list of every game studio that refuses to use AI. if that sounds like your studio, message me with the reason(s) why as well as basic details about what you make. DMs open and email is nathan@aftermath.site

Such a beautiful game!

Die Gute Fabrik@gutefabrik.bsky.social · 3w ago

Set sail for Summer Sa(i)l(e) with Saltsea Chronicles. 50% off on Steam and Playstation. (Nintendo starts next week). Have a lovely summer everyone! store.steampowered.com/app/1419620/...

Come and join me tonight as I talk about The Impossible Reversal and the origins of game design in management training. ROMchip will be hosting me for a talk on their twitch channel with a Q&A afterwards! 7pm ET, and more info here: www.tickettailor.com/events/romch...

Select Tickets – ROMchip Presents: Peter McDonald on The Impossible Reversal: A History of How We Play – Twitch

ROMchip Presents: Peter McDonald on The Impossible Reversal: A History of How We Play – Twitch, Tue Jul 14, 2026 - **Tickets serve as calendar reminders for the event; they are not required to attend....

tickettailor.com

Upcoming July 15-16: our friends at @analoggamestudies.bsky.social are collabing with Game in Lab to host the Generation Analog 2026 conference abt tabletop games and education. The theme this year is GREEN! Online event, free and open to the public! analoggamestudies.org/generation-a...

📣 Don't forget! In less than 1 week 📆 we're hosting @pdmcdonald.bsky.social for a talk 💬 about the managerial origins 📈 of and influences on game design! More info below 😊

ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories@romchip.bsky.social · 2mo ago

📣 NEW ROMCHIP PRESENTS 📣 Peter McDonald on The Impossible Reversal: A History of How We Play 🎲 Talk Title: "The Birth of Game Design from the Spirit of Management" 📈 TUESDAY July 14 @ 7PM. LIVE on Twitch. More info here: www.tickettailor.com/events/romch...

ROMchip is hosting free, online talk about my new book The Impossible Reversal. I'm going to talk about how games came to be designed objects in the 1950s, and some early management simulation games played on IBM mainframes! Find out more at: www.tickettailor.com/events/romch...

ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories@romchip.bsky.social · 2mo ago

📣 NEW ROMCHIP PRESENTS 📣 Peter McDonald on The Impossible Reversal: A History of How We Play 🎲 Talk Title: "The Birth of Game Design from the Spirit of Management" 📈 TUESDAY July 14 @ 7PM. LIVE on Twitch. More info here: www.tickettailor.com/events/romch...

Are there any examples of people doing ttrpg AP on community radio?

Shoutout to the very senior professor in HCI who gave a talk last month about how AI can do qualitative data analysis better than people now.

Lana Sinapayen@sinalana.eurosky.social · 3mo ago

If you use LLMs to do your data analysis, or if you listen to people who do, you should read this kucharski.substack.com/p/real-signa...

New paper in Nature. The more a government controls its domestic media, the more it dominates AI training data, the more pro-regime outputs we get from AI. By scraping the open web, LLMs are unwittingly laundering state-coordinated narratives into seemingly objective answers.

Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking. It is the weights for Gemini Nano, Google's on-device LLM. Chrome did not ask. Chrome does not surface it. If the user deletes it, Chrome re-downloads it. www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-...

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — That Privacy Guy!

Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user del...

thatprivacyguy.com

Today's free newsletter is about four signs that the AI bubble is bursting: Anthropic's services and economics are decaying, AI demand is inflated, more than 50% of data centers under construction are for two companies, and NVIDIA is warehousing $150bn+ of GPUs. www.wheresyoured.at/four-horseme...

Four Horsemen of the AIpocalypse

If you liked this piece, please subscribe to my premium newsletter. It’s $70 a year, or $7 a month, and in return you get a weekly newsletter that’s usually anywhere from 5,000 to 18,000 words, includ...

wheresyoured.at

I recently got to chat with Ruldof Inderst about The Impossible Reversal. We get into many of the big theoretical stakes of the project, and what it means to think historically about playfulness. The interview is up at New Books Network: newbooksnetwork.com/the-impossib...

That makes The Impossible Reversal like $20! Lots of great stuff at the press table this year

Leah Pennywark@lpennywark.bsky.social · 4mo ago

SCMS may be over, but you can still get 30% off film and media studies books! Use code MNSCMS26 through May 1st: www.upress.umn.edu/scms/ #SCMS26

You can block this AI thing bsky.app/profile/atti...

As local leaders in Las Cruces make that final decision on Project Jupiter, consider if you want summer temperatures to increase 9 degrees Celsius 🔥

AI data centres can warm surrounding areas by up to 9.1°C

Hundreds of millions of people live close enough to data centres used to power AI to feel warmer average temperatures in their local area

newscientist.com

If anyone's at #SCMS you can come to the Optical Play panel tomorrow at 11am to play with my version of Shigeko Kubota's video chess (and see many other cool optical toys from Amanda Shubert and Meredith Bak)

"This study provides crucial empirical evidence that, without proper safeguards, the harm caused by AI-generated falsehoods in this population and task is more potent and robust than the benefit derived from correct guidance."

Timothy Caulfield@caulfieldtim.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Impact of AI #misinformation on diagnostic accuracy in novice medical students Sum: not good. Harms > benefits. www.nature.com/articles/s41... "...misleading AI explanations significantly degraded diagnostic accuracy, while correct explanations offered no significant improvement..."

At SCMS I'll be talking about some work on Shigeko Kubota's Video Chess, from work related to The Impossible Reversal. To help understand it in a deeper way I built a piece inspired by it (and will be carting it to Chicago). If you're there come and play!

15% cuts across faculty and staff at The New School 😢

cass@cassiusa.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The New School announces a faculty and staff bloodbath

Ooh, my book has been spotted at GDC (in excellent game studies company)

@designermonicat.bsky.social is a rad designer, can't wait to listen.

Aaron Makes Video Games (and a podcast)@nemo10.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Part two of my interview with @designermonicat.bsky.social is OUT NOW! We talked about the importance of consuming entertainment media outside of your comfort zone, short vs. long-term thinking, and the importance of unconventional protagonists and loving yourself. www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com

The best time to stop using Grammarly was years ago. The second best time is right now

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 5mo ago

“Now, Grammarly has finally addressed the backlash — but not by apologizing, and not by walking the feature back. For now, it will graciously give us the chance to opt-out of something we didn’t know it was doing to begin with.”

People tell me that AI code is fine, because you can run automatic tests. But tests can only tell you if code is doing the thing you want it to do. To know what it SHOULD do, we used to have requirements. But now requirements are themselves vibe-coded slopotypes. The result: waste and risk.

Checking an LLM's work is a systemic, not an individual, problem.

Only a culture of design critique can prevent sloppy AI-generated problem definitions.

productpicnic.beehiiv.com

The deadline for Play Make Learn 2026 is just around the corner! It brings together educators, museum and library folks, game designers, and researchers on playful learning together in Madison, WI. It's a lovely event and this year's theme is "Scrappiness"! So submit something: playmakelearn.org

Callers to Washington state’s driver’s license agency who select automated service in Spanish are instead hearing an AI voice speaking English with a strong Spanish accent.

Callers to Washington state hotline press 2 for Spanish and get accented AI English instead

Callers to Washington state’s driver’s license agency who select automated service in Spanish are instead hearing an AI voice speaking English with a strong Spanish accent.

bit.ly