Eddie Clark

a thing historians will marvel about when they study this era is the extent to which the "war is a thing that happens to poorer, browner people" class went about systematically dismantling every aspect of the global political order that confined the costs of war to poorer and browner people

Ardenfall Demo on Steam Ardenfall is a first-person RPG inspired by Morrowind and is set in a world of intricate politics and ancient cultures. Explore windy plains, alien coasts, and forgotten dungeons. Meet countless inter...

Haven't yet got to it and it seems a long way from release but this morrowind pastiche also looks quite fun.

I love that they literally just lopped two vs off the front of vvardenfell 🤣

and yes I enjoyed replaced too, and I loved the devs of the BSG games very similar Crying Suns, so I'm gonna pick that up without the benefit of demo, heh.

I bounced off silksong 2 hours in because the difficulty gates of the bosses was too punishing for me. A me thing, not an it thing. And this one felt like a fairer challenge for my approaching middle age reflexes while not being too too easy.

Further to this, played a few more across the weekend. In addition to Esoteric Ebb, Fallen Tear: The Ascension stood out. *really* polished and enjoyable metroidvania.

When I first moved to Australia, I felt weird about the "no tipping" culture here. Now, after 4 years, I've done a full 180. It feels weird when I go home and am asked to "optionally" subsidize low wages and pretend it's a form of enticement for better service (even if there isn't any service).

I want to look at sports scores and the weather on my mobile browser without being nagged EVERY SINGLE TIME to download their app and at the same time you will have to force me at gunpoint to use web Word on desktop.

My firmly held elder Millennial RETVRN view is that more stuff on desktop should be in standalone clients and much, much less stuff on mobile should be in apps.

I enjoyed it but I do think Avowed is the better of the two games.

Yeah and the patch they bundled in with the PS release ironed out some of the QoL annoyances. Honestly both it at Outer Worlds 2 were great; sadly neither sold hugely well. Apparently Obsidian are done with the OW universe, but they ARE persisting with Eora.

(also hilarious to me that game review grade inflation is so bad you need to get NINETY to get overwhelmingly favourable classification)

Oh wow that is a GREAT teamup!

Wellington Pride Festival A free, low key, lower sensory event. Come meet people, play board games, have fun.

Hey all, Wellington Pride are running some board game events if people are keen. www.wellingtonpridefestival.com/events/bored...

Feels like the next election is extremely movable object meets very stoppable force. We just don't do one term governments (the last one almost certainly wouldn't have happened if Kirk hadn't died), but also PMs this poor don't tend to win elections. Who knows what happens in November.

Think your assessment of him remains correct though. He is PM - and continues to be PM - because he's the person best placed in senior National ranks to eat endless shit from NZF and ACT with seeming equanimity. Pity about the other skills one might hope a PM would have.

the investor class loves ai because it is EXPENSIVE

and they can make it as expensive as they want

moar parametars

synthetic datas

so expensive the only way to access it is to rent it

(and in the process, feed it more training data for free)

it took me like two decades of widespread and intense reading to survey the field of human misery, and the cyclical horrors and joys of existence in the preserved record. my critique isn’t “things can’t be bad”, it’s “narrowing pessimism can only become self-fulfilling disappointments.”

cynical pessimists are so BORING, man. grow up, you adolescent dorks.

Today's Sun Sword posting. Again reminiscent of nothing so much as Tolkien at his best. Portentious isn't necessarily a negative if you have control of your tone.

(The Uncrowned King, Ch 4...)

"“Who are you, Kiriel?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “Choice waiting for consequence to occur.”"

Dicey argument, that.

Media Do International Acquires Seven Seas Entertainment Media Do highlights its LLM AI-based translation system in announcing US$80 million acquisition

Well shit. Seven Seas, one of the bigger English-language manga & light novel distributors, bought by a company proudly touting its AI slop translation software. Not good.

www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2026-03...

I think bluesky would be roughly 300% better if people here were capable of reading “this is an assessment of the empirical reality of a situation” without assuming it comes with an implicit “and therefore I endorse the reality of that situation”

I'm not starting up an award ...but I am testing a hypothesis and spotlighting some great queer SFF

Still not starting an award, but I *do* have my inaugural Queersar Not An Award honour list ready to go and be posted this time next week!

Underappreciated middle books! Top quality YA! Spreadsheets! Idiosyncratic space opera! Science Fantasy! Terrible Gays! Standalone stunners!

Banger of a list.

Literally, at work this morning:

Clinician: Patient should stop medication A, but must keep taking medication B.

AI VR transcription of this: Patient should stop taking medication B.

Seriously NEVER LET A DOCTOR USE AI FOR YOUR APPOINTMENTS. NEVER. UNDER ANY FUCKING CIRCUMSTANCES.

Feel free to try to guess the 2020 books based on the above vagueposting lol.

To make things extra fun some of the descriptions apply to multiple books. *and* there's an 11th Hall of Already Famous bonus book; the only one that was nominated for & won both queer & mainstream SFF awards that year

I'm not starting up an award ...but I am testing a hypothesis and spotlighting some great queer SFF

Still not starting an award, but I *do* have my inaugural Queersar Not An Award honour list ready to go and be posted this time next week!

Underappreciated middle books! Top quality YA! Spreadsheets! Idiosyncratic space opera! Science Fantasy! Terrible Gays! Standalone stunners!

Banger of a list.

(This is not "incredulous at you" it's "incredulous at publishers")

That seems utterly bizarre. The prospect of having to reread a 600 page tome before starting the next one released 2 years later is MUCH more likely to cause me to stop with the series. They seriously think people will start at book 3 and just use the recap for the previous 2??

Do take the time to nominate for this! Have a look at the citation, think about what you read last year that was great and fits those criteria (note the requirement for a 2025 *US* edition; some newer non-US books might not be eligible, some older ones with new US editions might be). It's easy!