Dr. Bridget Blodgett

Cover of The AI Con by Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna. Cover line reads: ‘How To Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want’

New on the Eye blog, review of The AI Con by @johnlw
‘The ouroboros of hype’,
www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/th...

A new Blizzard union, workers and lawmakers alike question the EA buyout and horror game design continues to evolve - Patch Notes #27 EA's big buyout continues to send shockwaves through the industry, more game workers are unionizing, and a new game journalism site is born.

A new Blizzard union, workers and lawmakers alike question the EA buyout and horror game design continues to evolve - Patch Notes #27

Dear #AdultGame devs:

For the upcoming episode of our podcast "Random Encounters", we're looking for developers who'd like to share their perspectives on depictions of sexualised violence in interactive fiction.

We'd need your answers, either in writing or as voice recordings, until October 31.

Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble developers unionize to combat 'instability and unfair conditions' 'The pressures we face are making it harder to create the high-quality work we care about.'

Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble developers unionize to combat 'instability and unfair conditions'

We turned our pain into a research paper… documenting how our collaborative research team (which included researchers at a public university) navigated a slew of public records requests (by some of the same folks who have since turned their attention towards attacking academia more broadly).

Screenshot of a course learning module featuring two links to episodes of the sawbones podcast. One from 2024 and one from 2025 on the topics of Antimony and Tylenol respectively, both for the same week of the class.

Apparently there's something about week 6 of the research methods course that just makes me think about the Sawbones podcast.

Apropos of this thread, @lackingceremony.bsky.social is writing a book about game design and you should look for it in about a year!

Also Avery Alder advocated in this talk that designerd writing loose materials WRITE IN A LAYOUT PROGRAM and I feel profanely seen, this is utter filth (that I do)

A lot of people are (understandably) focused on the Saudi Arabia and Kushner part of this, but the far bigger immediate impact will come from the new private EA being on the hook for $20 billion in debt. That could mean mass layoffs, more aggressive monetization, and other big cost-cutting measures

Digital labor turn: the impact of assetization in digital games Labor practices in digital games have been conceptualized as playbor, highlighting their exploited yet voluntary nature. As digital play increasingly converges with assetization, it is becoming mor...

This looks like an interesting new paper on #assetization in #videogames || www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Would you prefer the cicadas scream you the song of their people?

F.D.A. Poised to Restrict Access to Covid Vaccines Agency leaders said there was evidence to justify approval only for older people and those with medical conditions. Many others may not be able to get the shots.

Under its new leadership — who spread misinformation throughout the pandemic — the FDA announced it will limit all Covid vaccines to adults over 65 and those with certain medical conditions.

Covid continues to spread and cause harm. This an anti-science move that will kill more Americans.

#cwcon Jason Tham takes a balanced view of AI use in teaching writing but ultimately asks whose time has been saved by AI efficiency (if any has been saved at all) - and notes AI’s erasure of labor. Writing takes time (and should), and reducing time reduces quality.

#cwcon Tham: timescapes of writing with AI: compression of drafting time; expansion of evaluation time; elimination of incubation time; fragmentation of writing time

Really looking forward to this talk next week!

disastrous

This work by @ashstokoe.bsky.social and I highlights the importance of administrative records - and ways they are scrutinised and policed - on trans people’s participation in public life. It’s a topic that feels increasingly relevant in the UK 🎓🌈

Hello friends, I’ll be back in the UK next week and am very excited to be presenting a public lecture in Oxford on Thursday 15th May about doing creative queer legal work. Come along if you’re around/interested!

RSVP here: url.uk.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/AEOUCpRYOh...

🌈🎓

‘If your game is good, it will do well, it’s a meritocracy’

‘How does the algo know it’s good?’

‘If people engage with it’

‘What brings people to engage with it?’

‘The algo’

Not In Our Name: Feminist Academics and Educators Speak Out Against Transphobia We call on all trans-inclusive feminist academics and educators to sign this statement: ‘Not In Our Name’ We are non-trans feminist academics and educators. We write in support of trans rights, tran...

A UK-wide academic initiative was launched yesterday by non-trans feminist academics and educators (allies) who oppose the recent anti-trans Supreme Court ruling & the concerning EHRC attitude to it called 'Not In Our Name'.

To co-sign: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

🌈🎓 #AcademicSky

Congrats!

The funniest part of this is that they showed off Overwatch, a large part of that "tip" economy would be coming directly from content creators as neither games journalism or game guides have kept up with addressing how to play a live service game in the way the demo fantasized

Useful chart to understand AI agents (by @mmitchell.bsky.social) www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/24/1...

These 5 words have killed millions in grants and advanced Trump’s agenda Five words in an obscure regulation are being deployed by Trump’s appointees to kill grants unilaterally across the government.

"Grants are getting killed “without any scientific input anywhere. It is purely political,” said a member of a senior NIH leadership team. “The science in this country is going to be destroyed if you can change what the priorities are going to be every four years. You can’t do science that way.”"

"Everything Americans do to pig is wrong... and I speak as someone whose PM fucked one." - This is what the good coffee gets me apparently.

"Corseting the scrambled remains of the unborn is a crime" @demiurgent.bsky.social

Call for papers: "Tech Oligarchy" Forum by @sciasculture.bsky.social

#bigtech #sts #oligarchy #Trump #ElonMusk

think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issu...

They're dismantling the agency that can, if it did robust enforcement, fill the deficit. For every $1 it spends on enforcement it generates $5-$9 in revenue. We lose ~1 trillion dollars each year to tax fraud, mostly from the rich. Musk paid no income tax in 2021 www.propublica.org/article/the-...

little pieces of language are ours

slogans, taglines, chants, flyers, memes, stickers, posters, zines

“We went to the AAAS meeting to see what practicing scientists think about gutting the nation’s science and technology infrastructure, and here’s what Trump’s acting NSF director and head of OSTP told us” is some fine motherfucking reporting, NYTimes.

i'm featured in this article about AI in the context of social media recommendations and content moderation www.forbes.com/sites/peters...