sinopiasaur

The Barbarian and the Seer are the first two characters we’ve shown in the 52 Realms: Adventure campaign but we’ve got more planned!

Unbelievable. The good news is, you can find First Monday in October yourself instead of waiting for a Facebook ad. Spread some love for this meaty historical tug-of-war game by my friend Talia! www.kickstarter.com/projects/for...

people say “you need to start living in the real world” but they forget that the real world includes lupines and lightning bugs and ginger beer and starlight and sea coasts and Renoir paintings and Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos and fog banks and foxes playing in snow.

Dear Imaginary Therapist: It would be so easy to just post cool science facts and do it better than all of the shitty scrapers and everyone would just like me, but the problem is I care about more than one thing and that really fucks my brand.

⚠️ cc @safety.bsky.app

On November 20th, Rep. Nancy Mace introduced a federal trans bathroom ban under the title of the "Protecting Women's Private Spaces Act." While this began as an attempt to bar newly-elected Representative Sarah McBride of Delaware from using the women's restroom in her own place of work as a legislator - which is unacceptable on its own merits - it will not end there. Speaker Johnson's decree in support of Mace's proposal reiterated the same argument: that this is an act designed to protect women, to keep us safe, because "women deserve women's only spaces." To introduce this legislation on the International Transgender Day of Remembrance - a day commemorating trans people worldwide who have died due to hate and violence - is appalling. To pretend Mike Johnson and the House GOP care about the safety of women, given the candidate they just elected and the Cabinet nominations he continues to make, is beyond naive.

Over the past several years, as trans bathroom bans have been enacted in communities across the country, we have seen firsthand the cascading negative effects. No one is made safer by this. Certainly trans youth are not, as we saw firsthand from the shocking, violent death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary youth in Oklahoma who complied with exactly such a bathroom restriction and was brutally beaten by classmates in February of this year. But even the women and girls these bills purport to protect are at increased risk; this legislation empowers individuals with narrow definitions of gender presentation to appoint themselves bathroom cops, and harass anyone they do not believe is publicly performing the role of womanhood correctly.

Lesbians and butch women, women who are unusually tall, women who have short hair, women who wear baggy or "masculine" clothes, women of color in professional sports whose bodies are critiqued for their strength, even simply women who wear baseballs caps: all of this is sufficient evidence for increased harassment. This is not even a new phenomenon; there are news stories of exactly these cases going back to the bathroom bans of 2016. It will not just be Rep. McBride who suffers for this; it will be your own congressional staff - anyone who is queer, trans, nonbinary, gender-nonconforming, or simply does not fit the stereotype of female physical appearance - whose workplace harassment you would be enabling if Mace's proposal is allowed to pass.

The people who make women's restrooms unsafe are people like Nancy Mace, who are banking on the silent complicity of other cisgender women to support the lie that the majority of us feel safer and more comfortable with trans people pushed out of our spaces. The end goal of trans bathroom bans is not limited to who uses which bathroom; it is a way to test the public's compliance with eradicating trans and nonbinary people from public spaces altogether. In the wake of the recent presidential election loss, it seems clear that it is also a test of the moral backbone of the Democratic Party, and whether we will choose to abandon our progressive values for the sake of expedience and permit more Nex Benedicts to suffer.

boosting the Cisgender Women Against Bathroom Bans petition again, please sign and share if you missed it the first time around! It’s at a little under 8,500 signatures now and we would love to try to get it to 10,000 by the weekend!

actionnetwork.org/petitions/no...

Yep. Please note: this is not “Wrapped, for Bluesky.” This website is not affiliated with Bluesky. You are allowing some rando to scrape and analyze your whole timeline because “it might be funny.”

let me be very clear that if you’re making the “the democrats should distance themselves from trans issues” argument now, you would have been on the side of “maybe AIDS is simply what gay people deserve” in the 1980s and 1990s

4 panel comic Panel 1: little pink blob character is drawing at its desk. They say “gosh” Panel 2: they look at their piece of paper and say “this is fine work” Panel 3: they now framed the picture and reaches to hang it on a nail on the wall. Text reads “let’s put it up” Panel 4: we see now that the picture is a very simple drawing of a tree. In the bottom corner our little blob character is looking at it satisfied and says “so I can look at you and smile”

The purpose of art

Well, my art, anyway

it is so delightful that the first trace of this account that i saw on bluesky was the news of their suspension

Three red circles of different sizes. The smallest circle is inside the medium-sized circle. The medium-sized circle is inside the biggest circle. In the smallest red circle are a few notes: "Intimate idea testing (with designers and players that you trust)." A box with an arrow points at the smallest circle. In the box, the text says: "I feel vulnerable as a designer. Ideas are fragile and the wrong environment would kill an idea. Graphics is rudimentary and rough. Both rules and graphics will be altered during the playthroughs" In the medium-sized circle there are other notes: "Design test (with players that like playtesting and other designers)" A box with an arrow points at the medium-sized circle. In the box, the text says: "I feel pretty confident as a designer. Ideas are quite mature and I know what main mechanism I want to use. Graphics is in a constant flux of change and is being changed as input is given during playthroughs" In the biggest circle there are other notes: "Public playtesting (with strangers and players)" A box with an arrow points at the medium-sized circle. In the box, the text says: "I feel confident as a designer. I know what kind of game I am building and that the game probably can be made to work. Graphics is tested and worked through."

I've been thinking a bit about playtesting in board game design🎲✂️.

I tend to see playtests as three-layered, where each layer serves a certain purpose for me; the intimate idea testing, the design test, and the public test.

snowflake moray watercolour head popping up out of an abstract circle of corals - all pastel colours

finished my snowflake moray 🎄 #SundayFishSketch

Hi! I’m new here. I’m leaving my X and want to introduce myself to BlueSky.

I’m a board game designer who’s sold over 4.5 million games. I started a company called North Star Games in 2003 that grew to 30 employees. We had 6 games on the shelf at Target before everything started to unravel.

The fact that I'm getting info about what happened in S. Korea via BlueSky is encouraging to me. I did appreciate the real-time info that mainstream channels didn't necessarily carry that I'd see on Twitter.

Seeing Bsky used to distribute global on-the-ground news is huge.

Americans (and others) should pay attention to S. Korea. The shitty fascist ideals are a global issue... we need to be aware, alert, and learn and support the people fighting against this kind of corruption worldwide.

screenshot from NJ handbook - which adapts the Right To Be's 5Ds. Distract Take an indirect approach to de-escalate the situation. Start a conversation with the target or find another way to draw attention away from the negative behavior. Ask them for directions or the time, or drop something. “Excuse me, do you know what the next stop is?” “Hey Elena, can you help me with something over here?” Delegate Get help from someone else. Find someone in a position of authority – like a bus driver, flight attendant, security, teacher or manager—and ask them for help. Also, check in with the person being harassed. ask them if they want you to call the police. “Excuse me! This person is being harassed. Can you help?” Report the incident to a supervisor. Document It can be helpful for the target to have a video of the incident. Laws about recording in public vary, so check local laws first. Only document if it’s safe. Tips: • Keep a safe distance. • Film street signs or other landmarks that help identify the location. • Say the day and time. ALWAYS ask the target what they want to do with the footage. NEVER post it online or use it without their permission. Keep your attention on the person being harassed – make sure anything you do is focused on supporting them. “Is anyone helping the person being harassed?” If not, use one of the other 4 Ds to help them. Keep track of comments or behaviors to report in the future Delay After the incident is over, check in with the person who was harassed. Ask: “Can I sit with you? Can I accompany you somewhere? What do you need?” “Are you okay?” “I saw and heard what happened and that was not okay.” Direct If safe, confront the aggressor more directly. Assess your safety first. Then speak up about the harassment. Be firm and clear. Also, talk to the target about what’s going on. Ask: “Are you okay? Should I get help? Should we get out of here?” “That’s inappropriate. Leave them alone.” “What do you mean by that?”

The 5Ds of Bystander Training are great for folks who want to be able to help if/when they witness someone being harassed.

Distract
Delegate
Document
Delay
Direct

@righttobe.bsky.social has short videos for each D:

righttobe.org/guides/bysta...

this.

Good Store - Care Package for Domestic Violence Survivors We all have at least one person on the gifting list who doesn't want a physical gift, but that doesn't mean you don't have to get them anything at all. The Care Package in Your Honor is a way to gift ...

Happy Giving Tuesday! We're doing a new thing at Good.Store where you can buy a care package for a person in a domestic violence shelter.

We've been working with shelters in Montana for a while and we're super excited about this: good.store/products/car...

A year after being bought by a private equity firm, Acrylicos Vallejo’s employees are on strike 98% of workers at the Spanish paint manufacturer are holding a work stoppage

The men and women who make the paint your hobby runs on need your help.

Ooh, @hankgreen.bsky.social effectively articulates the frustration I have with Twitter and Threads downranking anything that would take a user off their site.

Bluesky and Mastodon don’t do that and I’m so happy they don’t.

Look, a link! 😱😉 youtu.be/D4ghgVq9z4M

people think that Ai generated results come from some magical computer spirit that they are too dumb to understand. no, tech bros are exploiting people.

I've said @marcelineleiman.bsky.social is an electrifying new designer. Not hyberbole. REAL.

Comment I found about her work for us:

"The combination of how satisfying this is for how really simple it is to operate might be unparalleled in the over 200 different games I have owned and played."

🙏

Holidays are rough for a lot of folks.

Do me a favour and check in on your friends

Especially those without family, friends or immediate visible support network

Especially those who have gone quiet

If you’d like to dip your toe in solo gaming, try ExoShip, my 18-card game about running a resistance movement against an authoritarian government in space! It’s a fun puzzle that’s easy to get to the table, with a tactility you can’t get from a mobile game www.thegamecrafter.com/games/exoship

WOO!!!!

I sense a pattern 🤔

I look forwards to anything Adam works on in the future in any case. ^-^