Avonelle

Avonelle

@avonelle.bsky.social

DEXCON, DREAMATION, METATOPIA, and the First Exposure Playtest Hall at Gen Con. *Double Exposure, Inc.* Operations Manager for the Center for Transformational Play at Carnegie Mellon University

547 Followers 708 Following 199 Posts Joined Aug 2023
3 days ago
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Every hospital in England has been urged to disobey an NHS directive to use software operated by controversial US analytics software company Palantir
www.bmj.com/content/392/...

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3 days ago

This is awful.

Now imagine a reassortment event in the avian influenza virus triggering human-to-human spread.

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2 weeks ago
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Newsweek: ICE Fatally Shot a U.S. Citizen Nearly a Year Before Killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti A 23-year-old U.S. citizen was fatally shot by an ICE agent in south Texas nearly a year before federal immigration officers killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as part of Trump’s immigra...

www.democracynow.org/2026/2/23/he...

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3 weeks ago

This is the eighth death in ICE custody in the last seven weeks.

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3 weeks ago

the only place this should happen is academic conferences

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3 weeks ago

That’s a bummer. It’s also too bad KS isn’t doing right by their people. I’m sorry y’all are dealing with nonsense.

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3 weeks ago

Union busting is unacceptable.
Have any alternate platforms come out as being pro-union yet?

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3 weeks ago
Reinstate our teammates now!
Kickstarter is retaliating against our union members for our legally-protected strike action in October 2025.
Four union members have been laid off or forced to leave our union by leadership, despite clear business needs for these members' roles.
Email Kickstarter's CEO and tell him this is illegal and unacceptable!
e@kickstarter.com

Despite being back at work, Kickstarter is retaliating against our teammates for our legally-protected strike action from last year. Tell Kickstarter’s CEO this is both ILLEGAL and UNACCEPTABLE

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3 weeks ago
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Surprise ICE warehouse could house up to 10,000 detainees for months at a time, new documents show After weeks of speculation about what the 400,000-square-foot warehouse in Surprise might be used for, the documents confirm it will be retrofitted as an ICE detention center, potentially housing 7,00...

We must stop every single proposed concentration camp. www.kjzz.org/the-show/202...

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3 weeks ago

Reminder: under no circumstance should you give discord your ID.

It is gonna -suck- trying to set up alternatives, and this whole fiasco is going to damage communities, but you CANNOT give them your info

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3 weeks ago
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Tabletop Diversity Foundation iTDF

Applications are open for the IGDN 2026 Diversity Scholarship by the iTDF: itdf.games

We have 4 spots for marginalized and underrepresented designers to receive mentorship plus $1000 USD no-strings-attached scholarship!

Apply before March 17th, 2026: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

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3 months ago

Thank you for talking about this, so I know it happened. If I can do anything to make this better for you directly, please let me know.

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3 months ago

Whining that a playtest isn't "fully ready" doesn't live up to METATOPIA's intention. I'll ponder what was can do to reinforce the expectation setting we do. And to reiterate that we expect people to treat each others' vulnerability with appropriate compassion.

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3 months ago

If someone's acting outside the spirit of the event, and is demonstrating that they don't understand the social contract, I encourage people to let me know.
I would treat it with the same discretion as a code of conduct report - confidential unless you ask me to take action.

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3 months ago

Whoa. Not cool!

I'm really sorry - that isn't the spirit of the event at all.

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3 months ago

who possibly could have seen this coming - a mass-disabling event costs more than just cooling our damned jets for a bit and figuring this shit out?
being disabled is more expensive than masking and air filters? WHO KNEW?

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3 months ago

🧵 Thread: The Economic Cost of Long Covid – new 2025 study in Nature

1/ A new paper has modelled the economic burden of Long Covid in the U.S. and globally. Spoiler: it’s massive. Here’s a breakdown. 👇

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4 months ago

More info about Marta Leiva, the woman I witnessed being assaulted by plainclothed men in the SLC airport last week. She has a work permit legal through 2029, mom of 4 with sick kids: www.ksl.com/article/5139...

You can donate to her gofundme for legal expenses: www.gofundme.com/f/apoya-madr...

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4 months ago

I don't really wish $1m kickstarters on anyone - they're rife with chaos and hidden costs (emotional, operational, cash). In this case, if this gets anywhere near 100x funded, I will personally hop in to help Meg and Vincent fulfill, in whatever for the help needs to take.

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4 months ago
Stretch Goals

We're running a mean & stripped down campaign here, a PDF and a paperback, a couple of PDF add-ons, nothing to give ourselves headaches or grief. We do have room for just a few cool stretch goals, though:
$28,000: Bonuses for Annika Sturmer

Annika's the animator who made our video! For every $10,000 we go over our goal, we'll cut her a bonus check. She deserves it and you can be part of it.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/lum... THANK YOU for already putting us past a stretch goal that will mean we give the animator for our KS video more money for her art! Annika Sturmer is a graduate of MassArt and a dear friend. You can check out her work here: www.youtube.com/@annie_thepi...

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4 months ago

Most of the games we've published in the last 10 years (ie Monster of the Week, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Blades in the Dark) either use the Powered by the Apocalypse engine or are hugely influenced by it.
Happy to back this latest incarnation from the Bakers.
Strongly recommend you check it out:

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4 months ago

there are so few circumstances in where I'm likely to cheer for this. most of them on this timeline.

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4 months ago

Oh, I 100% was addressing the experience of folks in the US/Canada currently. In other places, there are other "safety nets" - ones that aren't invisible, like formal support for "the arts", universal healthcare, etc.

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4 months ago

for any of our conventions, if a membership and a place to sleep are someone's biggest barriers, connect us. I can almost always help.

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4 months ago

but even if we didn't have that support, I can almost always trade a membership for help actually pulling this improbable thing together - helping set up the tech, making sure panel recordings are happening properly, etc.

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4 months ago

METATOPIA, in particular, has a silent donor who covers a small handful of memberships for designers who wouldn't otherwise be able to attend, in addition to the IGDN sponsorships.

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4 months ago

please reach out to me next year. I'll find a spot for you.

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4 months ago

Though.I might challenge the original framing. I don't know many people any more who work any job full-time that is their only gig, and not rely on other folks to make ends meet - financially or practically. Everyone is a dual (or more) income household, whether or not they're in a creative field.

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4 months ago

wow, this sure sounds like a bombshell that should have been reported in a timely fashion so that--i'm sorry, i'm being told that it was destined for something far more important than the fate of democracy: a journalist's *book*

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4 months ago

I spend SO MUCH TIME telling new people trying to hop into games publishing that they aren't going to support themselves (much less multiple people) quickly, if ever. Even with crowd-funding, without being setup to run a business makes it a shaky proposition at best.

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