Matt!

Headline: Debating Dickheads doesn’t ‘expose’ them, it empowers them. Thumbnail: Mehdi Hasan debating a fascist on Jubilee, and The Feed posting a video called “Men Debate ‘Body Count’”

Wrote an article for @theshot.net.au about ‘debate content’, how it’s terrible for society and why we need to stop indulging in it.

“Ultimately, if debating dickheads worked, we wouldn’t be in a situation where dickheads are making the world a worse place.”

theshot.net.au/uncategorize...

Writers should internalize Lao Tzu's lesson about how the emptiness at the center of a wheel is what makes it useful, and how a pot is valuable because of where the clay *isn't*. Corporate geek culture has warped us into thinking that negative spaces are flaws that need to be fixed.

horrifying, but it does explain why I occasionally run into people who get very mad at me over things they think i said instead of things i actually said

www.apmreports.org/episode/2019...

"There are three kinds of magic," said Wizzler, handing us each a balloon. "You can control tigers, you can shoot tornadoes from your fingers, or you can fly by holding your breath. The color of confetti inside your balloon will reveal which kind of power you have." I felt the panic rising in me. What if my confetti turned yellow, indicating that I was a Tiger-Talker? My family, a long line of proud Tornado-Fingers, would disown me. Could I ever return home, bearing such shame? I tried to calm myself as I readied the ceremonial safety pin. Green, I thought, willing my hopes into reality. Please be green. I popped the balloon, involuntarily shutting my eyes. When I opened them, would I see the green I hoped for? The yellow I feared? What if, gods forbid, the confetti were blue? I opened my eyes, seeing shock on the faces of my classmates. Wizzler himself stared at me, wide-eye. Looking down, I saw myself covered in confetti... purple confetti.

“I don’t understand,” I growled, my body trembling with pain. “I combined eighty percent Earth-elemental mana with twenty percent Fire-elemental mana (Type B), focused through a twenty-four-sided icositetragon made of yellow topaz. This, in conjunction with my blood type, star sign, sense of humor, and nickname, should have produced a blazing column of lightning to vaporize my enemies. Instead, it made a big bubble that smells like fresh laundry. Why?” Skullgrumbler began to laugh. “You fool! You don’t even realize…” he squealed. “You’re facing east!”

“It’s whatever you want,” explained Magemaster Grampledog. “Magic is just whatever you want.” I knew he was speaking in riddles, but I couldn’t grasp his hidden meaning. “So the rules are…” Grampledog lit a sliver of smokereed. “No rules. You say some words and you wave a stick and whatever you want just happens. You don’t even need the stick.” His wisdom still eluded me. I stared into his face, trying to decipher what he was really saying. “No, listen.” Grampledog snapped his fingers and his desk turned into a pile of chicken nuggets. “I didn’t even know that would happen.” His hat then came alive and began to yodel. “It’s pandemonium,” he explained. “It’s complete nonsense.”

In my experience there are three kinds of fantasy magic novels:

'Background use only': How Labor justifies its silence on Gaza to the media Labor's response yesterday to mass starvation in Gaza was to condemn a Greens senator for mentioning it. Then it tried to spin itself as the victim.

Tells you everything about the ALP:

"Curiously enough, the actions of Pauline Hanson and her three senators in turning their backs on a Welcome to Country ceremony on Tuesday went entirely unrebuked by the government."
www.crikey.com.au/2025/07/24/l...

There's something about the way men use LLMs that feel like those men at the strip club who believe that the dancers like them for their personality and wit.

They just want a toy that makes them feel good.

I've swapped modern live service games for a browser game that's been running since 2009 I’ve found my new favourite book, only it’s interactive and I choose where it goes, if the constables will let me.

This is a beautiful article on Fallen London. The FL team put out some of the best writing in games *every single month*, and it’s wonderful to see that recognised.

(Got quite emotional to see shroom-hopping mentioned, too: one of my first pieces of work for games.)

www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/iv...

One great way to see how the far right is built out of the modern choose-your-own-reality media environment is how MAGA types will argue with Grok for hours about basic facts trying to produce some thin excuse to keep believing what they’re already predisposed to believe

"watermarking someone else's work and branding it as co-authored is a step too far"

LEGO® Island - Online Web Port Play the classic 1997 PC game LEGO® Island directly in your web browser!

"Lego Island" has a web port now!
isle.pizza

Man do I have some news about traditional country music.

Screenshot of RPG merchant screen. Highlighted is the Food-item "Pickles" on sale for the cost of $5.71 The description reads: "Warted fruits are set as islands in an ocean of brine and jarred in a world glass. They rot at salt's pace now."

Behold: Both the most esoteric and verbose description of pickled vegetables that I've encountered so far in my current atomic configuration.

#Qud
#LiveAndDrink

Read this over the weekend, people are saying it's fun and good

oh is this just a distraction? is that it? a distraction? for rubes? are you the smartest little birthday boy in the whole applebees? is that it? are you three steps ahead? with your mind chess? in your little birthday boy suit? do you have it all figured out? are you mommy’s special buddy?

We're making all your websites shitty and evil. What are you gonna do, log off and spend time with your family

in the 1990s videogame magazines had ads like this but it was literally exactly like this complete with the food and jeans leaving you trying to figure out what game it was advertising, then at the bottom in fine print it'd say aero the acrobat and something jarringly sexist for absolutely no reason

That little window of time during the 6th gen of game consoles where we were getting 50s horror/sci-fi sends ups....we didn't realize how good we had it.

If this is the lesson the greens take from the election then the party is doomed

Anzac Day booing stunt an attempt to boost right-wing recruitment Outrage sparked by the latest neo-Nazi stunt is all part of a political program to get signatures.

Some good analysis by @tomtanuki.bsky.social of the neo-nazis heckling Australian ANZAC parades lat week. The RNZ, Stuff, Guardian and 1News reports missed much of the context around it.
independentaustralia.net/politics/pol...

Capitalism has already eaten democracy anyway - The Shot If left unsupervised, capitalism will always eat democracy. And we are further on this arc than many of us want to believe.

Here's me. 'Capitalism has already eaten democracy anyway'

A screenshot of the Wikipedia article for The Judgment of Solomon, as follows: The Judgement of Solomon is a story from the Old Testament in which Solomon ruled between two women who both claimed to be the mother of a child. Solomon ordered the baby be cut in half, with each woman to receive one half. The first woman accepted the compromise as fair, but the second begged Solomon to give the baby to her rival, preferring the baby to live, even without her.

Man, the “Judgement of Solomon” really glosses over how one of those people was perfectly happy to be getting a sawn-in-half baby.

Old videogames don't need to be 'remastered'. They just need to be available on modern systems.

When Clive Barker was working on the MUMMY remake for Universal in the early '90s, he had a trans character in the script, and when the studio vetoed it, he basically said "I really can't stress how much I don't need to fucking make THE MUMMY" and left.

screenshot from Thief featuring a black Buick Regal parked in a narrow alley at night, backlit by a green glowing light. at the bottom of the screenshot, it reads 'Music by TANGERINE DREAM' in blue letters

the four words every girl longs to hear

My favourite thing in this genre is the DVDs from the original Dead Rising, which until about a year ago were somehow completely undocumented online

CSS Clicker a pure-CSS idle game where you build your own website

hey if you followed me because of my css puzzle box, PLEASE take a look at this full clicker game made by rebane2001 entirely in CSS/HTML!! lyra.horse/css-clicker/

So ridiculous! Serendipity has always been the fun and magic of these city-sprawling events.

Bong Joon Ho just used his Q&A before John Carpenter’s The Thing at the @AcademyMuseum to ask him to score his next next film — a horror flick — and Carpenter said yes!

Magical evening at the movies!

The great @alidogood.bsky.social once said of Death in Brunswick: “oh, a thirty-something year old chef chasing after a teenager - they nailed it!” or something to that effect. Cacked myself.