Dr. Emily Friedman

"I don't ever know where I'm going. Because one of the wonderful things about writing, which is different than working in programming, you don't need to know. You could just write and discover where you're going. And it's a great deal of fun.

~ Walter Mosley🌸🌸

One of the conversations I've been trying to have with anyone who will listen if that for unis like mine, which have big classes, this will require either shrinking class sizes drastically or significantly scaling up teaching assistance. There's no way around it.

one reason i love this is that i have developed an intense hatred of waffle. many teaching situations can devolve into me saying vague generalisms and students contributing similar. this really kept us tethered to the specific arguments and examples.

We Need To Rewild The Internet  | NOEMA The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.

Can't work because AWS?

It's a good time to read this piece if you haven't! www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-r...

Alex Kelly – Bunker Talk #154 – Manchester School of Art

Really pleased that my Bunker Talk about Playable Theatre is now up online. I talk about the crossover between boardgames, Tracker Gamebooks, #TTRPGs and my theatre making/story swapping practice, in particular my new project The Investigations.
www.art.mmu.ac.uk/bunkertalks/...

That literally almost happened to me yesterday — managed to catch it before the second side failed. Oof.

Arguably, one company should not be responsible for 33% of online services

With the AWS outage, now‘s as good a time as any to post this old strip.

'I Blow Up': Understanding TikTok Users' Reactions to Sudden Social Media Attention | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction Social media platforms are known to facilitate sudden bursts of attention on individual pieces of content and their creators — dynamics often referred to as ''going viral''. However, questions remain ...

Excited to be in Bergen for CSCW 2025! This (Monday) afternoon I’ll be presenting a study I led with a fantastic team of undergraduate and Masters students, supervised by @katestarbird.bsky.social, on sudden attention, influencers, and TikTok - more details in 🧵 1/

Another day when the assimilation of the internet into a tiny number of hands becomes obvious. AWS (Amazon web services) goes down and takes half the internet with it!

Photo of an abandoned bare shop-lot with a single photocopy machine in it.

Don't playtest alone, come join us at Playtest Zero! For our SEA-friendly session, join us next Tuesday, 21 October at 8 pm (GMT+8) over at the Session Zero Discord server to do some 1-hour playtests of TTRPGs/game bits and chat with other designers! (Image unrelated)

YouTube KidZuko clips of the first two episodes of the revival of Reading Rainbow. Both of the clips have over 400,000 views each

The first two episodes of the revival of Reading Rainbow have nearly 500,000 views each 🤯

Do you know how cool that is for literacy, for book joy?! We are all worthy of reading, we are all readers 💚

And NOW episode three is out! Take a look, it’s in a book 📚🌈🦋

youtu.be/e4VIV48ZB0M?feature=shared

That’s the other thing that baffles me about AI and creative writing, actually.

The work IS the joy for me. I don’t want to be able to snap my fingers and have a completed “product.” I want to be transformed by the process. I’m an author but I do this because I enjoy the rigor of being a writer.

I agree with much here & want to add a puzzling (to me) pattern: I asked my interdisciplinary class whether AI use should be allowed. The math/CS folk said only in socsci and humanities courses, and the SS/H folk said only in math/CS courses. This OP says yes in math/CS and no in humanities 🤔

Instead of going 'they'd be cancelled in today's sensitive times', I wonder if we could start asking whether someone would still be hounded out of the country today or whether they'd just get endless chances to make a come back and then write about how sad they are in a national newspaper?

For those who didn't know, Austen's sister burned almost all of her letters because Austen was incredibly mean about her neighbors and it would have been really embarrassing to print them.

Correct.

Y'all, the dead baby joke and shit-talking about ugly people *is in the surviving letters*

Little Fliers Everywhere

"They have embraced analog music, print magazines and film cameras in a nostalgic turn toward tactility and authenticity. Fliers seem to have become a new way to get to those feelings — though many of the most eye-catching ones of late refer back inexorably to the logic of the internet."...

I mean, you should not be citing primary sources *you have not seen* without saying "Cited in." 🗃️

It is hella annoying when people cite sources I found & translated from an archival source - while using *my translation & not mentioning me*. So I don't want my students to do that to others!

This is exactly why the “social media isn’t real life/isn’t real activism” makes me furious. Some of our most powerful disabled activists cannot protest IRL. And btw the Crips for eSIMs for Gaza have raised millions online. Suck on that the next time you critique online activism

Serge Lutens Jeux de Peau

One thing I’ve observed in recent wks: it’s important, even for public-facing political education — re: democratic process, civic institutions, etc — to *cite your sources*; citation is a political practice and it acknwldges the value of the resources your work builds upon, + which need support too!

I’ve taken to wearing the samples/smaller bottles in my perfume collection (from Smell Professor days) & it’s a nice off-road from my typical wardrobe (which has a few common themes for the different Emilys: teaching is nutty bread, beige for admin, my own bespoke scent is green blackcurrant, etc)

Political parties must shift immediately and dramatically to the left to avoid alienating these frustrated and abandoned young women. Am I doing this right?

I was also surprised to reread their first meeting — Orville’s genuinely frustrated! He’s not bitchy like Lovel but also not got horny blinkers on like Sir Clement. He’s aware she’s beautiful but is trying to figure out how her mind works & is genuinely frustrated, though he is very polite.

I’m realizing a lot this time that he has the Grandison problem on steroids: we don’t even get much direct reported speech from him as much as we get how he makes Evelina feel. As if being a Real Good Guy is somehow unrepresentatable in 18C fiction.

Game devs who understand the value of historical approaches in narrative design and writing, and academics who understand the value of the history of play are truly the best.

True experts in subjects both small and large are going to be highly demanded because it's only this level of knowledge that can distinguish the true participants in a conversation with hard-earned subject-area literacy from the soi-disant.

Donate to Family of Robert Wieland, organized by Vickie ONeill Friends of Robert Wieland have requested that we set up goFundMe page for the benefit of his f… Vickie ONeill needs your support for Family of Robert Wieland

I was at the memorial for Rob on Friday and it was pretty gutting. Every other games journalist has now moved up a spot, I guess. Here’s the link to help his family with funeral costs & medical debt.

gofund.me/1fd64f6e0