David Lumb

If Jeff Bezos could afford to spend $75 million on the Melania movie & $500 million for a yacht to sail off to his $55 million wedding to give his wife a $5 million ring, please don't tell me he needed to fire one-third of the Washington Post staff.

Democracy dies in oligarchy.

AI Became a Bogeyman to Gamers in 2025, but Developers Are Mixed on Its Potential The spread of generative AI has become background radiation, pitting players against studios and leaving its role uncertain.

Kicking off 2026 with a look at the gaming landscape and how generative AI has ensured gamers can't trust that the games they play are completely made by humans

www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/...

The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.

The Game Needs to Change: Towards Sustainable Game Design This book shows how games can play their part in addressing climate change and how we can sustainably make games for sustainability. Based on both industry practice and research, the chapters within t...

If you want to learn more about how game developers & the games industry are engaging with climate change and sustainability, preorder The Game Needs to Change, due out in 2026 (Lente graciously submitted quotes for my chapter):

www.routledge.com/The-Game-Nee...

In this and other stories (including some I wrote), Lente explains she didn’t set out to make a game about sustainability, but the themes are intrinsic to her game, Spilled! It’s one of many ways game devs are incorporating caring for the world + the impact of climate change in gameplay.

Love this story from @jacksonwryan.com about Lente, a game designer who developed a game about cleaning up waterways on a boat while, yes, she was living on a boat. More lovely stories about the people behind games by talented writers, please!!

I Went Hands-On With the OnePlus 15's Camera and You Need to See the Results What better first test run than taking it on a neighborhood photo safari?

CNET’s @outonalumb.bsky.social took the #OnePlus15‘s cameras for a spin around LA. This is OnePlus’ first phone since its partnership with Hasselblad ended. Take a look at David’s photos to see what OnePlus is doing without the iconic Swedish camera maker
www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/...

I’ve written about sustainability in the games industry and this book will be a great comprehensive overview — perfect for folks wondering how games will clash with climate change. I’ve even got a chapter in it covering games media’s role!

give greta thunberg a gundam

I should’ve been more specific: high end for max battery life/efficiency (aka laptops) formats

Qualcomm's Big Compute Play: An 18-Core Chip Capable of 80 TOPS for AI Power The Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme are a pair of PC chips aimed at the performance laptop market.

Qualcomm's also got a pair of new PC chips: the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme (high end) and the Snapdragon X2 Elite (slightly less high end). Aside from performance/efficiency upgrades, it's powering up Agentic AI:
www.cnet.com/tech/computi...

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Chip Will Boost AI in 2026's Most Powerful Phones The next mobile chip boosts efficiency, performance and AI neural processing.

Qualcomm debuted the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip with performance & effiicency upgrades plus extras, like a new video codec that lets you pull still images at photo quality from footage. (Also a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 coming later, presumably slightly less premium.)
www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/...

In Maui, I’m at the #snapdragonsummit2025 keynote with @katiecollins.bsky.social hearing about what Qualcomm’s got in store for next year’s phones and PCs via their chips

It should be needless to say, but it is perhaps at this moment worth saying, that transgender individuals have the same right as anyone else to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

A Star Wars AR Game Got Me Playing With Virtual Action Figures Like I Was 6 Years Old It's not every day that an AR game has me reliving childhood, but the upcoming Star Wars: Beyond Victory is a nostalgic experience.

Very excited to try the new Star Wars mixed reality playset experience - my colleague @outonalumb.bsky.social checked it out in LA, and I’m envious www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/...

If only so many of the writers we need right now hadn't lost their jobs
aftermath.site/tyler-robinson...

Adjusted for inflation Spirited Away cost $22 million to make. The Triplets of Belleville cost $16.5 million, Cartoon Saloon's Wolfwalkers cost $14.28 million, and Oscar winner Flow cost only $4 million. These critically acclaimed, made by real people films, cost less than this pile of actual vomit.

ZDCG demands accountability for continued attacks on media workers in Gaza:

Happy birthday Manda! Plants, nurturing, growth for next year — all the good metaphors for 39 🙌

This sucks so much, you and everyone at IGN deserve better, Amelia 💪

The NewsGuild-CWA and National Writers Union condemn Israel’s targeted killing of five Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza | The NewsGuild - TNG-CWA The NewsGuild-CWA and National Writers Union join press freedom advocates around the world in condemning the targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza.

NEW: Israel targeted and killed five @aljazeera.com journalists in Gaza.

They risked everything to document atrocities so we could know the truth. Killing them is an attack on journalism itself.

With @nwu.org, we demand accountability:

newsguild.org/the-newsguil...

Screenshot of a vox media union logo over the Eater logo. The heading reads, "Eater isn't essential without journalism."

Screenshot (condensed for Bluesky word limit): On August 8, without warning, Vox Media laid off 15 members of Eater, Punch, and Thrillist, the award-winning food, drink, and travel news and recommendation sites, while management celebrated Eater’s 20th anniversary. The cuts decimated local coverage, including Chicago, the country’s third-largest market. This is the second restructuring at Eater in less than 10 months. The cuts come not only one month after the Vox Media Union ratified its new collective bargaining agreement, but also two months after the James Beard Awards, where Eater and Punch earned four nominations and two wins. The firings came a week after Jim Bankoff claimed in an interview there would be no imminent layoffs. Eater says farewell to a cohort of award-winning and dedicated journalists who fought tooth and nail to keep the wall between editorial and advertising intact. We sound like a broken record, but we are once again grateful to have bargained for industry-leading severance language in our latest contract. This GoFundMe is organized by members of the Vox Media Union. All funds raised will directly benefit union members impacted by the August 7 layoffs, and will be distributed in equal shares to those who opt-in to receive funds. The organizers will be reaching out to those impacted in the coming days with details. Our union is committed to supporting our colleagues who were laid off, and will hold management accountable for how these layoffs were conducted. With these funds, we hope to ease the financial burden that these layoffs have placed on our colleagues some of who face mounting medical bills and are charged with being their family's primary caretakers. The Vox Media Union layoff fund is being overseen by a committee of Vox Media Union members, including Ashok Selvam, Jaya Saxena, and Amy McCarthy. The fund will operate transparently, with full accounting of all donations that are received and distributed.

Our Eater GoFundMe is up! We all know this has been a difficult year for Vox, but the folks at Eater have been extremely dedicated in their support for each of their colleagues, past and present. Let's support them now!!! #unionstrong #voxunion #1u

gofund.me/04932462

❤️❤️❤️🔥🔥🔥

Absolute garbage.

Ahh congrats! Millennial journalists making it 🎉🎉🎉

Hulk Hogan ratted out other wrestlers attempting to unionize to save his own position and paycheck above anyone else's & gladly accepted funding from Peter Thiel for his Gawker court case that paved frequently abused legal precedents for the rich to shut down any media outlets that embarrass them.

Flight Manifests Reveal Dozens of Previously Unknown People on Three Deportation Flights to El Salvador Hacked data obtained by 404 Media reveals dozens more people on deportation flights to El Salvador who are unaccounted for. “We have not heard from these people’s families, so I think perhaps even they don’t know," one lawyer said.

"flight manifests for 3 legally contested deportation flights from Texas to El Salvador contain dozens of additional, unaccounted for passengers than a previously published Department of Homeland Security (DHS) list of people deported from the United States on those flights, 404 Media has learned."

ICE is out of control. This is not law enforcement. It is state violence.

There is no city, state or federal district where it is legal to terrorize and detain people for being brown and working in agriculture. These raids must stop immediately. 8/