Frank Elavsky ⌁

Crocs* God, autocorrect

I was putting on my cross yesterday and remembered the white dude whose feet speared through his, and I chuckled. The universe was reminding me of the anniversary lmao.

Lmfao publishing "research" is so easy for people who literally don't care about research.

Been thinking about this post lately

Hehehe my secret all along has been to use academia to get tenure and then make ttrpgs.

If more academics started thinking like this, the world would be so much better off. This is what academia *should* be!

Even though academia has too many hot dog stand merchants, we can still choose to operate as a borderless, free-sharing, collaborative social ecosystem.

2.1 Lenses, Not Boxes I wondered whether this section was necessary, but games discourse seems to repeatedly find itself adrift in questions of whether _ counts as a _. We have seen the question repeatedly: Do games count as art? Do games without goals count as games? Is The Sims a game? Are hypertexts interactive fiction? Are Twine pieces literature? In fairness to the researchers cited here, all of whom I respect immensely, many of these sources pose or imply the question rhetorically. Still, the necessity of such a framing frustrates me. "Is _ a _?" is, in my opinion, a fruitless question. The question can never be answered to anyone's satisfaction, and it often serves as either a provocation to espouse politics or as a cover to institute gatekeeping. Its agenda is usually opaque to onlookers and bewildering to those trying to advance the field from across disciplines. We should be thinking in lenses, not boxes. It is always more interesting to ask "If we think of _ through the lens of _, what do we learn?" We know it is more interesting to ask "What do we learn by considering Tom Stoppard through the lens of poststructuralism?" than to ask "Is Stoppard's work poststructuralist?" And while some works may be more or less fruitful when examined through different lenses, sometimes the most unlikely pairings of lenses and objects are the most rewarding. Certainly any of the questions above would be much better served by reframing them in this way.

Wow we’re having “games are art” discourse again! Just gonna leave this here.

From my dissertation:

there's also a cumulative effect. how do you even learn what a good issue description is if a nontrivial amount of issues and PR you've seen are slop. if you grow up surrounded by uncanny valley, do you even see slop? what is it like to be slop-native?

On top it says: tips to stay safe when air quality is bad Tips: Wear a kn95 or other high quality mask when going outside Keep windows and doors closed Utilize inhalers and other prescribed devices es that support healthy breathing Help immunocompromised people in your community to make sure their needs can be met safely Use an air purifier in your home Try to avoid being outdoors especially for long periods of time or if you are part of a vulnerable group health wise.

Chi Public Health doesn’t post much advice but the Little Village Environmental Justice
Organization (LVEJO) has this great infographic about how to protect yourself during this poor air quality. We are among the worst in the world rn.

"When the first of August came round, the Professor realized he had pleasantly trifled away nearly two months at a task which should have taken little more than a week."

--Willa Cather, 1925 and timeless

ripperoni to that guy but loving your wife is sick as hell

Highly appropriate. It'll probably always feel weird though. I can imagine it must be hard to be one of the most accomplished practitioners in our field and have to speak truth to that without sounding too conceited, heh.

I was thinking about how little data we have which suggests that "AI" and automation is replacing jobs to the degree that Altman+Amodei suggest, and that it would be hard to isolate the causal effect of "automation" and AI hype.

Firing the person in charge of BLS stats is going to make this harder.

I kept it for a loooong time but eventually returned it to the ecosystem from whence it came (a local thrift store)... wish I could wear it again just to compare the fit tho lol

A skinny teenage creature, surprisingly with blonde hair (I was naturally blonde as a kid and it darkened with age). My hair is mid-length and straight, just to my shoulders, I have a huge smile and I am wearing small, oval yellow-tinted glasses. I am wearing a two piece purple suit that is too large for me, with a pink button-up shirt underneath.

lmao hell yeah

in high school people literally said I was a cartoon character because I wore the same 1-2 outfits every day and always had the same haircut!! the only time i ever changed outfits, I would wear thrifted, colorful, oversized suits (see fig a).

Anyway, decided to finally update my image across socials too. Someone told me that my profile pic made me look older than I am (lmao no problem with that, to be honest). But a refresh is good every few years anyway.

Academics have a habit of using one photo for 20+ years, which I'd like to avoid.

I loathe going places to get my hair cut. It's truly the stuff of nightmares for me. I'd rather go to the dentist.

Last time I tried to self-cut my hair, I didn't do the best job (my labmates pointed out how garbage the back looked). But now I've got a little method figured out.

I've cut my own hair at home, quite proud of it actually. Downside? I've returned to my haircut circa 2014-2018. No way around this and I'm stuck with it for a while. I'm too lazy to experiment with my hair these days though, so I might lock in here or just deviate a little bit.

"ChatGPT is great for brainstorming!"

Actually we have a tool for that already! It's called thinking. We use our brain. It's called brainstorming! Clue is in the name.

Lmao I love math, what a mess

It's 2 and 1/8th, there is no operation happening in the top one. Took me a second to figure out.

ICE GOONS draw guns on humanitarian aid workers

The idea that the papers you write in graduate school are the aim, rather than forming the person who has something worth saying and worth learning from, is among other things a crisis of confidence and imagination. We used to worry about impostor syndrome - this is just impostor manufacture.

Who knows? Maybe the next generation will completely eclipse our ability to make accessible technology. (That's the hope, anyway!)

(Oh and yes: our course materials, slides, and so on will be posted eventually! I'll share once they're up.)

And for most lecturers, it makes sense to invite someone like me for a lecture specific to accessibility!

But Dominik and I have a chance to do something pretty cool with our combined expertise.

I'm so excited for this. I have been a guest lecturer for many courses where accessibility is treated as a separate day, standalone, and often as an "advanced" or niche topic of visualization.

I am co-teaching Data Visualization this Fall with @domoritz.de and we just outlined our rough draft of topics.

We will be teaching accessibility as an integrated (not separate!) topic, with deep dives in the existing lectures on:
Ethics in Visualization
Interactivity
Designing for Perception

YouTube video by Data Visualization Society Frank Elavsky—Re-imagining Data Visualizations as Malleable Interfaces (Outlier 2025)

My talk from #Outlier2025, for the @datavizsociety.bsky.social is now public! It's on a new topic: towards malleable, personalizable data visualizations.

This is something that I am really passionate about and (hopefully) will be something our whole field becomes more involved in.

Gandalf reading primary sources in the library of Minas Tirith for 17 years until he discovers a secret that can identify the One Ring.

Saruman being told to "just trust me bro" by a disembodied malevolent entity.

Actually learning stuff vs "I asked ChatGPT"

University professors: As the fall nears, how are you thinking about using, or defending against the use of, AI in your courses? We're a few years in now, what seems different? I want to talk to you for a story at @theatlantic.com. DM, email ibogost@theatlantic.com, or signal @ibogost.47.