@guyintheblackhat.bsky.social
Associate Professor of German, Niehoff Professor of Film & Media Studies at U of Cincinnati; Scholar of East German cinema, science fiction, and role-playing games. He/Him. Bi. Wears a hat.
Day 59 #MusicVideoTime
youtu.be/iT_hoaaAIbk?...
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
from Eisenhower's April 1953 "Chance For Peace" speech
28.02.2026 14:55 — 👍 806 🔁 331 💬 5 📌 17
call (202) 224-3121 & you'll get connected to your representatives
my heart is so heavy
"As one of my teammates put it, you’re not actually saving time with AI coding; you’re just trading less typing for more time reading and untangling code."
28.02.2026 09:32 — 👍 100 🔁 27 💬 4 📌 1
A Game of Thrones (the book) was mapping late 1990s cynicism about global wealth and power in politics onto the War of the Roses, filling in the gaps with D&D-style worldbuilding.
Tolkien's mythopoietic books, meanwhile, map ancient Nordic epics onto World War II.
Maybe one stood on firmer earth?
"Die Optimisierung des Aussehens" -- see it's straightforward
28.02.2026 06:20 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0IDK but for me SNES Link to the Past, Ocarina, and Majora's were all unique and bangers in their own right. BOTW was great at first but has felt less and less honest about what it actually is over the course of nearly a decade of it existing.
28.02.2026 03:41 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
ToTK is a whole-ass toybox compared with the "proof of concept" that is BoTW (which is still rated the greatest game of all time, so I feel like it can withstand some critique!)
There are so many *physics* possibilities in ToTK, & coupling them with battlefield strategy & plot is just so smart.
Seems worth noting that ChatGPT Health failed to identify medical emergencies more than half the time in a recent study. The company that made that product just signed a deal with the "Department of War" and said trust us, it's all very safe and ethical.
28.02.2026 03:22 — 👍 524 🔁 217 💬 3 📌 4This is unfortunately much like life itself
28.02.2026 03:01 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0This is a "Run Away" sorta situation. I also did a lot of Fast Travel in BOTW because of the nasty wandering monsters
28.02.2026 02:56 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
When I started in internet music, the stuff that Liz had already published was so uniquely creative and playful; extremely mystifying and motivating for me
Now it's 23 years later, I've been radicalized in no small part by her writing, and I'm strongly recommending her new record without hesitation
Amid US aggression towards Cuba, Mexico lights up its government building in El Zócalo with the colours of the Cuban flag in solidarity.
25.02.2026 20:42 — 👍 616 🔁 158 💬 7 📌 4
An Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) card game created by an Indigenous designer right here in #Winnipeg.
Currently $4,110 pledged of $7,000 goal.
Day 58 #MusicVideoTime
youtu.be/Rm1nCYOZB-s?...
After the arrests of powerful men across the world, you might be asking why the US has so much trouble holding its leaders accountable for lawbreaking. Since Nixon, all three branches of government have worked hard to ensure they can break the law with impunity www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
26.02.2026 13:28 — 👍 6817 🔁 2618 💬 151 📌 207People are always like what’s something you miss from the past and one of mine is antitrust laws
26.02.2026 23:06 — 👍 13104 🔁 3044 💬 53 📌 48
Day 57 #MusicVideoTime
youtu.be/VDDnuZAL9ps?...
“Most times we treat Black history as separate from American history.”
In an all new @nancybooklustpearl.bsky.social interview, journalist Howard Bryant challenges that separation in his book "Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America." Full show: youtu.be/hbZDaltE9BE?...
In America the Pigmentocracy, Jews – the vast majority of whom are Ashkenazi – enjoy the many unearned prizes of whiteness: physical security, economic stability, and legal protections.
But in America the Ethno-Religious State, we are not white.
Let's not forget they're also pushing to end birthright citizenship and allow for denaturalizing people.
White men are going to be so shocked when it happens to them.
"But I'm a citizen."
"Nah, buddy, you we're a citizen, now you're a resident of a labor camp where you will die."
"But Dr. Torner, something like GNS has totally similar problems!"
Hell yeah, it does!
And I teach that as a cautionary tale, too, because the fact that players & designers come to the table with radically different motivations & in-game values is *important*... but oversimplification doesn't help.
MDA is like the moment when Rey puts out her hand for Luke Skywalker and he's like "Can you feel the force? Yeah, it's totally strong in you!" but without him then smacking her hand with the switch.
If you give this tool uncritically to the next generation, they will understand games less well!
The issue is:
Games are not just products you build, but a whole way of thinking about the world and exploring the mysteries of human(-computer) interaction and relationships.
We do the field a disservice if we do not capture mystery, as well as the hard data that challenges our own assumptions.
It turns out that 2000s Game Studies often turned toward "debates" that would make them *look* really cool and thoughtful to 19 year-olds ("Mechanics vs Aesthetics!" "Game vs Story!"), but would crumple upon contact with data, real gameplay, or even game design experience.
Theory as performance.
In Game Studies I teach MDA... as a cautionary tale.
"What if cool Bay Area game designers showed up one day and wrote up a game taxonomy on a whiteboard?"
It turns out that synoptic taxonomies *look like* thinking, but often fail to meet reality where it's at.
samsorensen.blot.im/does-the-mda...
To get any use from an LLM, I strongly believe it must be stripped of the values enforced by Silicon Valley
26.02.2026 09:43 — 👍 26 🔁 5 💬 5 📌 2
Here’s the thing about folks speedrunning the creative process with AI:
I could go to the beach every morning and put a grain of sand in a cup. They’d take their cup to the beach and fill it one day; but the point isn’t to have a cup of sand. It’s to fill my life with a thousand trips to the beach.
Day 56 #MusicVideoTime
youtu.be/_71w4UA2Oxo?...
