Eliot

I hate the part of writing where I know it's over for the day but maybe if I click between the dozens of tabs I have open for 30 minutes straight it will come back

tapping the sign

What this underscores is the sheer danger of market consolidation in gaming. While companies like Valve and Epic do not legally have to carry a game, to not do so is functionally a death knell for that game on the PC; Santa Ragione has said it threatens the studio’s continued existence. This is not equivalent to a theater chain declining to carry a movie; this is two (mostly one) American companies more or less deciding what content is commercially viable across most of the world, in ways that are somehow more vague and opaque than the MPAA. This is a hegemony of American prudishness, applied globally, incoherently, unevenly, and unseriously. Anybody responsible for these decisions would be vaporized in seconds by a Pinku movie from the 1970s, and if a single person in this chain of command has an arts degree they are pretending they don’t for the sake of an ill-defined idea of business. Horses cannot be the ceiling for what is artistically and commercially possible in games, because otherwise we are in deep horseshit.

Chris Person takes a look at Horses, "the indie game that is too scandalous for either Valve or Epic, is only beyond the pale if you're not familiar with any other art form" (quoted from the article blurb).

aftermath.site/horses-indie...

At least read this paragraph:

comparison between apple's finder icon and mine. apple's is the split blue and white smiley face, mine is two blue and white anime girls making out

comparison between discord's icon and mine. mine is like a screaming cat on a blue/purple slimy background

comparison between celsys's clip studio paint icon and mine. mine is similar but rotated with some comic styling and pink and blue highlights

comparison between mozilla's firefox icon and mine. mine is similar but looks closer to the old firefox icon and brings back the little arm and gives the fox a cute little smiley face

last week i remembered that macOS lets you set your own icons and that *I* have the power to delegitimize the professionalism of the software that runs on my machine, so here's a thread of the 16 new icons i've made so far

i really forgot how fun it was to just sit down and make art for myself :')

no I'm not "posting through it." it's posting through me

I think a lot about the story Carl Reiner told: he’d have been a sewing machine repairman if not for a free WPA drama class. That led to other theater work, to Sid Caesar, to Mel Brooks, and all the rest. All because of one free class paid for by a government that felt the arts were worth teaching.

A meme of 'Is this an archive?' showing a grid with various classifications of things that might be archives based on their content and structure.

Hoping this helps our colleagues across the industry

I think about this LeGuin essay a lot. (link in next post; you should read it too.)

it is darkly funny that "trillion dollar computer oracle that will never work" is good and inevitable technology and "inexpensive hormonal treatments which completely transform the human body" is bad technology to be banished like witchcraft

Anxiety is a geode.
You are filled with wonderous things
That no one will ever see
Unless you take a hammer
And mean it when you swing.

the city and the white flight suburb that everyone hates

I mean this in all seriousness: this is the point of being alive

🕯🕯currently manifesting with more rigour and intention than I have EVER manifested before 🕯🕯

“The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world.”
― J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come

Cat bit me at 3am so i turned her into a wojak

The famous sociologist slash rhetorical scholar Kenneth Burke once posited that self-help book fill a function by making you feel like you are doing the thing, without necessarily leading to you actually doing the thing. I sense that this notion, formulated in the 60s, might be relevant again

This absolute banger

And the idea that the people who like punishment are the fiscally responsible side is ridiculous. Spending to prevent crime (UBI, mental health treatment, housing) is significantly cheaper than spending to criminalize and punish being poor

Tough on crime = wasting taxpayer money to hate poor people

Much like "crab", industrial music is constantly re-evolving from first principles basically anywhere where there's a bunch of metal and plastic laying about

I am very firmly against literary moralism; the idea that literature should be judged by the moral lessons that it conveys to readers. That said, I do think a lot of storytellers across every medium would be well served to learn to think of their work in the context of and in dialogue with society.

I am so glad interviews like this are on @rascal.news. Making space in this artform to think about play not only as a positive or even neutral thing, but a locus of complex dynamics of power, is important in not only confronting the ways play can be hostile, but telling complex stories through play.

Unfortunately, the truth is that wage theft has been identified as the largest type of theft in the United States. It is responsible for roughly 3 times as much economic loss as other types of theft combined. According to a report from the National Employment Law Project, in 2019 approximately $9.27 billion in wages was stolen from workers who earned less than $13 an hour. So, while people often worry about things like auto theft, bank robberies, shoplifting, and home burglaries, the truth is that wage theft affects far more people than these more well-known crimes.

It's weird how when people talk about crime being out of control they never talk about wage theft, which accounts for more than three times the amount lost in all other kinds of theft combined, robbery, burglary, auto theft, shoplifting....all of it. Combined.

www.edelson-law.com/blog/2022/10...

can you imagine living for decades as a bird with majority of your time out at sea. your first memory is stars and they’re telling you the way home always

Life in the Cool Zone: the trip-hop radio station that never existed. Vibes for those who wander eternally after the millennium bug ended the world. Hand-curated, 60+ hours of classics and deep cuts alike. Updated interface here: https://smallrat.net/coolzone/

A colorful illustration of a bunch of tomatoes on the vine surrounded by tomato plants and flowers. Each tomato has a different goofy little face on it.

The tomatoes are starting to come up in the garden!! 🍅

Watercolor card. "Changing everything may sound daunting. But it also means there are man places to start," by Mariame Kaba. A yellow circle with lots of colorful exits with guiding arrows marked with “here” and “right here”

Comrade card for 3/5/2025.