Rob Donoghue

I say this, and I am now going to be haunted by dreams of Bob the Builder being appointed as Infrastructure Czar.

Can I blame Bob the Builder? Did he warp the minds of an entire generation inti thinking that any infrastructure problem can be fixed in an afternoon with a few big yellow vehicles and a can do attitude?

Probably not. But I’m considering trying.

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TODAY at Unpub Festival
📅 Thu, March 12
🕓 4-5pm
🪩 Ballroom C

My standing theory that vaccine aversion is just a symptom of a larger wave of “problems that I was shielded from aren’t really problems” thinking is reinforced in about 90% of discussions about infrastructure, especially those that begin with “why don’t we just…”

We're delighted to open up pre-orders for @evilhat.bsky.social's upcoming supplement for Blades in the Dark, Blades '68. Available here: leisuregames.com/collections/...

So, with two departures, it is a pleasant turn to be back in a city, even if the story will almost certainly spin beyond it as it goes. I’m excited to watch it unfold.

(It also helped that the cast is well enough established to maintain investment, but that alone would not have sufficed, as any amount of floppy fiction with well loved characters can attest.)

Wicked Problems is not so rooted. It’s a lot of cast and a lot of threads, but no shared backdrop. No city. That absence could have made the whole framework sag, and I think that’s a big part of WHY it had such unrelenting momentum. It had to keep moving to stay upright.

It’s one reason Dead Country was such a striking departure: it completely flipped the script, zooming down from sprawling casts and diverse cities into a single character in a single small town. Super good trick.

This is also, at least for the moment, a return to a pattern. The books of the Craft Sequence are city books. They have a shared location and a wide cast, so the stories have many moving parts which intersect in interesting ways. It’s almost a signature.

As happy as I have been with my supply of Caleb and Temoc and Elayne (whose turn in Wicked Problems was so supremely badass that I literally whooped), I have found that I very much miss the crew from Ruin of Angels, more than I anticipated.

I do admit to the fan instinct of feeling, as perspective characters appear, a tiny raised fist in my heart, shaking at the absence of my personal favorites, but I have faith.

That said, if we don’t EVENTUALLY see Gal and Raymet after that HORRIBLE TEASE early on, I may get a bit stroppy.

So pausing to slow down and cast a bigger net helps ground the story in the world, and I’m pretty sure this will pay dividends once things inevitably start escalating. If anything, is suspect I will feel that moment will come too soon, as I’m really enjoying the city stories.

Bringing in more threads and people in the third act is not an uncommon pattern, but it has a risk of bogging things down. Thankfully, Gladstone has a light touch - one of his greatest strengths is in what he DOESN’T write, after all.

The tendency of fiction to stay focused on the hero’s party (so to speak) when the world is as stake is understandable - they’re who we’re here for, after all - but it tends to thin the world a bit, pushing it to the sidelines, and by extension, diminishing the sense of stakes.

And that space is being well used. Many interesting small things are happening, and we’re getting introduced to many new side characters with their own arcs. It was a surprise, especially coming STRAIGHT into it from the excitement of book 2, but I think it kind of grounds things.

It’s an abrupt change of tempo. Books one starts sedately, but is rocketing towards climax by the end. #2 is non-stop forward momentum. The early parts of #3 have let their foot off the gas, and there’s some space to breathe.

Finished up Wicked Problems and am on to Dead Hand Rule. It was originally supposed to be the final book of the Craft Wars, but it turns out it got too long and is now #3 of 4. I was impatient about this, but now that I’ve started it, I am much more on board.

can claude turn an all night existential crisis into a morning epiphany and the produce a semester's worth of work within a weekend?

And as with most things where out brains betray us, that moment of pause is often all we need to see what’s happening.

Curb cutting shows up in the darndest places.

I hope it is clear, I am as subject to this as anyone, but I have accidentally found a sort of inoculation: I genuinely believe that alt-text is important, so every time I have an instinct to reshare some screenshot, I need to check if I need to add alt text, and that gives me a moment’s pause.

I don’t need to unpack the whole pile of theory here, just to note that a dunk is a boost, and those looking to soil the commons rely on our instinct to join in.

I see an image shared from X or somewhere of someone being publicly very stupid. I find it funny. It makes me feel better. I desire to share these feeling, and reach for the reshare button.

Then I mentally smack my knuckles and remind myself that this is what being manipulated feels like.

Laurence pretty much nails my own thoughts on this. Shocking lack of communication on both sides, but ultimately it was a problem that should never have happened.

Biggest red flag: "1000+ pages of material".

I'm constantly surprised people think saying this is impressive, its quite the opposite. If you're producing many times more draft pages than you will actually need, that's extremely inefficient workflow.

There's no inherent virtue in volume of work.

Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them Utilities are convincing lawmakers around the U.S. to delay bills that would allow people to buy solar panels, plug them into an outlet and begin generating electricity.

Utilities are convincing lawmakers around the U.S. to delay bills that would allow people to buy solar panels, plug them into an outlet and begin generating electricity. n.pr/4ul3y2p

*chefs kiss*

The final 24 hours for the Blades '68 campaign!

To celebrate, a couple of new pieces:

oh ho? :makes a note:

It made me incredibly sad to discover that generating Shivs was not technically drawing cards.