Doug Hanke saw a yard gnome once

Doug Hanke saw a yard gnome once

@dougmakingstuff.com

Full-stack developer living in Portland. Avid reader, coffee drinker, Pikmin wrangler. I watch a lot of MST3K and Columbo.

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The NaNo communities in cities were fun gatherings of people talking about their creative projects, and people posting fun bits from their current work. Now it's just raw feedstock for Liar Clippy in the new incarnation. Though honestly cover letters could use long omegaverse detours. Go for it.

Lili Saintcrow@lilithsaintcrow.com

So, wait, has NaNoWriMo rebranded as "Novel November", paid for by ProWritingAid, which used to be a spell/grammar checker but now is (you guessed it) an "'AI' grammar checker"--in short, yet another way for a griftslop machine to grab human-written text? Do I have that right?

Between this and the news that Cat Valente was on the writing staff, this is like my new Jodorowsky's Dune. This sample is SO good, you can't ever be mad enough about private equity ruining everything.

Austin Wintory@awintory.bsky.social

Mass Effect was my ultimate white whale, my all-time dream project. For the last couple years I'd been in discussion w/ BioWare & EA to take on the project & as part of that I wrote close to 20 minutes of music to explore where the franchise can go next, may as well share it!

Doug Hanke saw a yard gnome once reposted

My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today. Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man.

Either these people's brains are severely cooked, or this reporter thought this would be a cute anecdote to add color. Either way, if I were 10 and my parents had to ask Liar Clippy what makes me special, I would really start wondering about that relationship.

David Gura@davidgura.bsky.social

cool, cool

Celsius has a "winter edition" version of their energy drink that comes as a Sparkling Shirley Temple. It's great, though I think of that as more of a "I'm at a party" beverage. Perhaps my gym has a Winter Soireé that I don't know about, have one as a little prelude to deadlifts.

Doug Hanke saw a yard gnome once reposted

i don't care how jk rowling is justifying her murderous bigotry today actually. over 600 transgender ppl have died in the uk in the last 18 months bcos of policies she demanded the british government implement. she is a monster. i don't care how much you like harry potter.

Every politician who texts and emails me multiple times a day how they need more money can go float. You'd have a lot more if you stopped paying so many consultants.

Jake Grumbach@jakemgrumbach.bsky.social

We found that as of right now 73% of your campaign donation goes back to the consultants and vendors (!!!), four times more than just 20 years ago. Only 13% to ads. Even I was shocked.

This trailer is a heartbreaker. Liara as the Shadow Broker still? Some fun-looking biotics? Awesome nightclubs? This looks promising.

Jason Schreier@jasonschreier.bsky.social

Can confirm that this is a real trailer of the Mass Effect game that BioWare was developing up until its closure yesterday www.reddit.com/r/masseffect...

Doug Hanke saw a yard gnome once reposted

Doug Hanke saw a yard gnome once reposted

the idea phase is the easiest and least valuable part of professional creativity. read the first draft of the first Star Wars if you doubt me Great art is made in the grinding, often miserable collision between the ethereal substance of an idea and the mud and blood and friction of reality

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Doug Hanke saw a yard gnome once reposted

Replying to @pkgw.bsky.social

If nothing else, two fun facts you might not already know: (1) The Tragedy of The Commons is a specific, essentially wrong paper by a guy who turns out to suck, and (2) exploitative scholarly publishing is basically traceable to one guy, Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine.

It was such a blow to read this—knowing her work, it is an absolute metaphysical certitude that a new Mass Effect that she contributed to would have had a heck of a story. I'm just imagining what N7 Day would have been with that bombshell of an announcement. This stings.

Catherynne M. Valente@catvalente.bsky.social

All those times I said I was working on a Secret Project? It was always #MassEffect, darlings. My favorite game. The dream. THE dream. “I would be so good at writing this huge franchise they should call me.” And they did! It happened! And then it didn’t. There is a hole. And always will be.

Doug Hanke saw a yard gnome once reposted

They are destroying the administrative state & throwing all of us to the wolves. Doesn't matter if you voted for them or not, MAGA/MAHA are driving us into a chaotic, deadly, pre-20th century wilderness of no aid for states devastated by disasters; no regulation... share.google/0kdXsvm8ER8q...

share.googleFEMA tells states to handle disasters on their ownThe Trump administration plans to cut disaster aid in as few as six months and shift responsibility to states, FEMA's administrator said in remarks obtained by POLITICO.

Doug Hanke saw a yard gnome once reposted

it cannot actually be ignored or danced around that the closure of BioWare came so soon after the Saudi and Jared Kushner acquisition of EA. they absolutely did take the studio making EA’s broadly queerest games out back and shoot it old yeller style. do not let yourself or colleagues ignore that

Doug Hanke saw a yard gnome once reposted

Unnerving to think about that no matter what else happens in the next several decades, we are all going to be spending the rest of our lives, to some degree dealing with the background radiation of people constantly screaming in rage because they were told they couldn't go to the mall in 2020

A career ago when I was a technical writer, the Society of Technical Communicators had their own in-house magazine. For a while the CSS Zen Garden and CSS Tricks were my front-end journals of a sort. Not sure that Substacks and LinkedIn posts hit the same.

Having a morning in the backyard with the dog and my brain has decided that it's Flaming Moe's theme song time.  🎶 Where liquor in a mug, can warm you like a hug / Happiness is just a Flaming Moe away 🎶 OK, I'll take it, I guess?

Who can we call about the lich Carville? I am not sure if he falls under the bailiwick of the Ghostbusters, John Constantine, or Doctor Strange. Maybe the Invisibles or the Doom Patrol. Apply the Painting that Ate Paris immediately.