Mike Ferdinando

quick reminder: if someone refers to people as "illegals," they're probably incredibly racist

I hate to be pedantic, but London, UK is farther north than Seattle!

Farthest points in each direction that I've been from my home of Ithaca, NY, USA:

North: Oxford, UK
South: Kingstown, St. Vincent & the Grenadines
West: Port Orford, OR, USA
East: Barcelona, Spain

Fuck Harry Potter.

Go read The Worst Witch!

Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk say human population not nearly big enough: ‘If we had a trillion humans, we would have at any given time a thousand Mozarts’ “I think in a lot of these endeavors we're very like-minded,” Bezos said of himself and Musk regarding getting humans into space.

I don’t know why this incenses me as much as it does, but it does:

we very likely have a thousand plus Mozarts *right now*. But they make non-Western art in economically destitute conditions so they have to do other work to pay bills; if you cared, UBI’d be more important to you than going to space

Another reason for-profit health care is a crime against humanity: It's far more profitable to treat people suffering from communicable diseases than it is to prevent them from catching the disease in the first place.

I can think of two examples of advanced countries deliberately sabotaging its scientific establishment because the science contradicted the ruling party's political agenda...

1. Germany under Hitler.

2. The USSR under Stalin.

I couldn't attend the Tuesday session of our ongoing #2d20 System game of Dune: Adventures in the Imperium because of a family event.

Thursday: Isle Beyond the Mist #PbtA

It's 1721 and our pirate ship The Hunter's Revenge sailed into a supernatural fog bank. Ghosts of the ship's previous crew walked among us... as did a spectral British Navy frigate that re-fought a battle against our ship it lost 50 years ago!

4/🧵

Wednesday: The Between #PbtA

Our group of Victorian monster-hunters deduced that Lord Mumford had committed the string of supernatural murders, and confronted him over a card game. But this time, a revolver trumps a magic spell, as my character Rose (the American) was quickest to draw.

3/🧵

Monday: The Ultraviolet Grasslands #OSR

As winter sets in, our caravan returned to Behemoth Shell from pressing business at the Last Serai, and we continued exploring the nearby abandoned biomancy lab... and discovered an insane autofac churning out useless consumer-grade magitech goods.

2/🧵

I'm not at GenCon, and this was my #TTRPG week...

Sunday: Ex-Capes, the #PbtA game of retired superheroes. It's the endgame, as Captain Neutron, Tachyon, Clarion, and The Scarab deduced the plan of evil billionaire Max Malcom and his corp Advanced Dynamics Systems: De-power all metahumans!

1/🧵

I played a one-shot of Daggerheart that was GMed by @filamena.bsky.social and had a BALL with it! I ordered a copy of the game the following day.

Worth a read if you are using Substack and also if you want to move elsewhere or just want to understand why people are leaving it.

Personally, I've moved to Buttondown and finding it does all I need it to, but there are some great alternatives out there.

leavesubstack.com

My grandmother's eldest brother was killed in the 1919 Great Molasses Flood. To her dying day, she would never buy or cook with molasses.

IT'S A BIT SPOOKY IN AMITYVILLE

#MildHorror

Superstars: Racing Icons by Tristan B Willis a racing ttrpg for 3-6 players using the Firebrands Framework: winners get champagne, legends last forever

Superstars: Racing Icons by Tristan Willis.

It's more about the lives of motorsports athletes than the actual races, but there are rules for racing. The game uses the Firebrands Framework as its ruleset.

feelingfickle.itch.io/superstars-r...

Oh, your student was totally going to that PDF through ChatGPT to have it spit out a one-page high-level summary... which would only have been about 70% correct.

In the same week we have a storied news bureau agreeing to the installation of a government commissar and an Ivy league university taking dictation from the White House. A decade ago I'd have laughed out loud at the suggestion our core institutions could be this weak & unprincipled.

Why Did National Geographic Disappear Its Own Documentary About A Queer Climate Scientist? | Defector If you’re not a particular kind of mountain sports nerd, you might not be familiar with the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival World Tour. But for people who live their lives in the overlapping circl...

Last fall, I attended the premiere of a film that meant a lot to me. In late January, all of its hundreds of planned screenings were canceled without explanation. For @defector.com, I went digging:

I was one of them! It was a blast!

Twitter is a safety hazard. Delete it if you can. I bet you can!

Also, abolish "A.i." as much as you can from every aspect of your life and community/

In case you were wondering why I won't even click on your fucking substack.

That interaction really confirms my thesis that most New Yorkers are fundamentally kind, but not necessarily nice.

They'll totally go out of their way to help a stranger in need and be fucking pissed off about it the whole time!

Wish I could, but I'm in New York!

Israel's own genocidal actions along with the worldwide protest movement are responsible.

The scam is to conflate everything that computers do (or ever have done) with the current "AI" craze, so that the AI scam tech that nobody wants feels inevitable, rather than a tech bubble run by villains, that needs to crash immediately.

Every blue-haired they/them liberal arts grad living in NYC is tougher than this sad little bitch.

I'll just say that you would NEVER have that kind of interaction with somebody in LA.

After three or four minutes, I confirmed we'd gotten everything. He just grunted, "Good," and climbed back onto the platform. I followed. I thanked him, and extended my hand. He just put up both of his hands up and said, "Whatever. Just hang onto your shit on the fuckin' platform, okay?"

FIN