Joshua Kronengold

People like to paint the Big Sites as criminally indifferent to the harms they cause (or worse, deliberately engaging in them) when every bit of "proof" that's been produced was PART OF AN ATTEMPT AT HARM REDUCTION.

The "Facebook knew their product was causing body image issues in teen girls and did it deliberately" narrative is taking the ACTUAL RESEARCH Facebook did entirely out of context! They commissioned that internal research to SEE HOW THEY COULD STOP IT HAPPENING.

Got a first....almost play (we played through one round! It took 3.5 hours!) of Trickereon.

It definately won't take nearly this long the next time, but:

1. I really love this game. Will see if this survives my first actual play of it, but honestly probably especially with the right expansions […]

Just a quick update from the Twin Cities. (Please forgive the unsolicited message). THINGS ARE NOT BETTER IN MINNEAPOLIS. The media is mostly moving on, Trump is focused on other stuff, BUT NOTHING HAS CHANGED ON THE GROUND. More than 2,000 DHS thugs continue to roam the streets, abducting people 24/7, assaulting legal observers with impunity, and routinely denying 1st, 4th, and 5th amendment rights. Drones and helicopters are overhead every day. Hundreds and hundreds of terrified families have not left their homes since mid-December ... relying on the community to bring them food and help with rent and other necessities. (Those people are NOT violent drug cartel sex offending murderers, as DHS would tell you. Most are legal residents or citizens.) If anything, things have just become more stressful and intractable (think trench warfare as a suitable metaphor): The resistance is better organized and numerous, but DHS has become more clever and better at disguise... and the county sheriff's office is increasingly supporting them . Do not let anyone tell you that Homans (the new person in charge of the occupation) is making anything better. Do not let anyone tell you that 700 ICE agents leaving the city has made much of a difference; the remaining force (again, ~2,000) is still larger than the entire city's police force (which is legally unable to do anything). Please call your congressional reps ... especially if there is any chance the administration might listen to them.

A desperate plea sent to me by a Minneapolis resident who's been on the front lines since the beginning of the ICE occupation:

Trying not to get drafted for a second World War (that this avoided getting murdered in a genocide was a nice, but not anticipated bonus.

The other side of the family I don't know about, but I'm going to have to guess it includes "to stop getting pogrommed" because it's a good bet.

Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place. Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: "Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?" "A republic, if you can keep it." With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike, It is so ORDERED. SIGNED this 31st day of February, 2026. 7um Jing FRED BIERY UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE Credit: Bystander Matthew 19:14 John 11:35 There is also the photo of the boy from the viral stories included.

Federal judge has ordered the release of Liam Ramos (the bunny hat boy) and his father. A brief and rather remarkable order. Clearly written to be shared widely, so please do. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Maurice is pretty deep into the Discworld (side line and all) and PTerry had long-since hit his stride by then. Early on, it felt like he was very much trying to do with fantasy what Adams had done with Science Fiction--which was all well and good, but it got better.

I mean, yeles. But if one wants to come up with an in-world explanation without narrative time travel, Watt-evans (who wasn't that obscure in 80s fantasy!) is right there.

I mean, Watt Evans' series had distinct wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks and basically invented/preceeded the distinctions used in 3e by 15 years.

I mean, sorcerers as natural spellcasters dates back to the 80s if not earlier (as does sorcerers as other kinds of casters, because fantasy is pretty inconsistent, but in places where they made the distinction it fits). So does homebrew like spell point systems.

So it's out of place but also not.

Blades! We've been doing a scum & Villainy campaign (Blades in Space!); scheduling is a problem but we make it work! Meanwhile, I need to buckle down and do some more work on our Good Society hack, Dangerous Refuge! (playable, but we'd like people to be able to play it without owning the original!)

Had? I still have it! And in the course of my participation in Alarums & Excursions (and Ever & Anon, a sequel APA with a lot of the same contributors including some long awaited returns) I find myself consulting it roughly monthly, not to play from, but to check how things were written back then.

Fun phrase coined today: "You are incorrect in both the polarity and the plurality of your statement".

Coined when @drcpunk.bsky.social said the oncoming subway train was not going our way.

FWIW, I only realized that I had a distant cousin who as a New Yorker cover artist in the early 20th a year or so ago, after @drcpunk.bsky.social and I stumbled over a cover exhibit in Grand Central en passant and they had a whole bunch of his covers!

My dad was also an "Adolph" before he emigrated

Distant relative, I think, but would have had to come over well before my dad and grandparents did!

All of these except for an AOL address because I am literally too old -- I go on the internet in 1991 from school, so naturally my internet path was school => independent dialup ISP => broadband and I never had nor wanted an AOL address. If they'd written "AOL CD" I'd have hit that one too.

We did a quiet Thanksgiving day in. Dinner was a turkey leg, which I stuck into a a dutch oven with carrots, mushrooms, garlic, spices, consome powder (2 tbsp), half a challah torn into shreds, slow cooked for a few hours, then baked for 15 minutes.

Not quite what I'd intended, but...turkey stew!

Breaking Down the 2025 NYC Ballot Proposals

advocate.nyc.gov/blog/nyc-bal... This is a great breakdown on the NY/NYC ballot proposals by @advocate.nyc.gov, and...I wish it had gone up earlier than the 3rd. Early voting started in late October, and it's important that everyone have a chance to weigh and take in knowledgable opinions like this!

In Phoenix Command, throwing a sandwich would first roll for wind speed and elevation. On hit, you'd roll for sandwitch fragmentation and whether you hit an exposed orifice.

After the basics, you'd then roll for sandwich curvature, allergies, and, of course, spontaneous combustion.

Donald Trump deleted this from the government website.

Let's be clear: there's funding available to cover SNAP benefits next month. Trump is stopping SNAP benefits because he wants to. He is forcing mommas and babies to go hungry.

Now, that in this case it's deployed on a very conservative "poor kids should starve" eugenical result.

But it's hard to change minds (and many conservatives have convinced themselves that cutting snap won't actually kill poor people). So...the math/economics deployed here is -also- terrible.

I mean, clearly not. But making economic arguments that appeal only to a confident grade-schooler are both core to their brand and a key way in which they underestimate the American populace (or, sadly, don't).

That it's motivated reasoning and therefore only applies when they want is, well.

This isn't the first time I've seen post-conservative radicals trying to coast on a gradeschooler's knowledge of economics.

In their minds, as long as it's convenient, spending=costs go up, every time. Same for their logic on inflation, where they try to shoehorn everything into the money supply.

Doing way too much work here is "which obviously will drive up the cost".

-If- the production/distribution of food was constant and inelastic, this would be true.

But it isn't. More spent on food means more food gets produced (and more people don't starve).

SNAP keeps food costs stable and low.

Daybreak (it's clearly a night thing), but which one? Beginning of dawn? Or when the sun finally clears the horizon?

What if you fed a mogwai food at 11:59pm, but it got stuck between their teeth and they only swallowed it after the clock chimed?

#importantquestions #gremlins #genx

Archive October 25, 2025
Connections Puzzle #867
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Really didn't enjoy this one. Blue was fine, but one of the purples was a better yellow than the underwear, so I took the mistake even though I'd sorted purple by that point even though I didn't know what it was.

TJ! Still in fandom, btw, and with kids who -also- like SF.

YES! i have been complaining about this since this puzzle came out.

I've gotten into Astoria Seafood without a long wait, but that was for early dinner. And of course people wait, because it's amazing. But, yes, not a tourist place; it looks way worse than it is.

The pile of neurons is still (for now) substantially better than the spreadsheet at looking at a set of pixels and deciding whether they contain "a cat." Since the spreadsheets are designed foremost at math, it stands to reason that they make math errors infrequently.