Roy (@roypollock.bsky.social)

My first 5 RPGs, as best I can recall: 1. D&D (BECMI) 2. MERPS 3. Paranoia 4. AD&D 2cnd (Dark Sun) 5. Deadlands

The Questionable Authority@questauthority.bsky.social

My first 5 RPGs played: 1. D&D 2. MERP 3. AD&D (2d edn) 4. Cyberpunk 2020 5. Vampire (1st edn)

As soon as I watched the first scene of Below this popped into my head and got stuck: music.youtube.com/watch?v=eNgL...

My favorite joke is around the phrase " Iθάκην εὐδείελον" contrasting the sunny home of Odysseus with the notoriously cloudy college town.

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"Interests & Hobbies -- Reads fiction voraciously and systematically" Have to say Amazon has me pretty dialed in.

24 Aug

Every time I read about Cofnas I want to reply something like "Looks like he's going, going, Gand". But to the extent that works at all it requires thinking in English idiom with the French name for Gent so...

21 May

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21 May

Post your #warhammer. Wrong answers only.

28 Apr

Pretty orthogonal to what Jay is talking about but now I really want to run a game based on Patricia McKillip's "The Fellowship of the Dragon".

jay Dragon 🔜 Metatopia@jdragsky.bsky.social

normally you're a group of adventurers trying to kill a dragon. but now you're a group of women trying to reclaim your crown, and brandonsford has been recontextualized. the men in the village are willing to work for you, but at a cost — and the cost might be too much for you to bear

1 Apr

These are great books and beautiful editions.

Kingfisher & Wombat@tkingfisher.com

Hey gang, from today until April 30th, Juniper Books is gonna be donating a portion of sales of the fancy Sworn Soldier editions to Trans Lifeline!

Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer

9 Feb

I've been seeing a lot of discussion on agentic coding, expertise, gatekeeping, etc, and it's really reminding me of this essay from years ago: www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/t...

Roy reposted

@kitwhitfield.bsky.social

17 Jan

Had an intriguing editorial discussion recently: how did people in the past talk about 'minutes' when they didn't have watches or standardised times? How does that affect your thinking? Come down an Elizabethan/Jacobean rabbit hole with me. 1/

12 Jan

I always lacked the confidence in my soldering skills (for good reason) to do this repair. Great to see the machine getting back in top shape!

Carrie (prev of Alpenglow)@alpenglow.bsky.social

I had read some stuff about likely issues and found that the -100V power supply (the old plasma displays use +/-100VDC supplies!) was only outputting 24V. And it didn’t look like the electrolytic capacitors on the board had ever been replaced. So I got some parts and a recap kit and started in!

Roy reposted

Nick Horowitz

@ztiworoh.bsky.social

7 Jan

Replying to @ztiworoh.bsky.social

Related, I attended the Small Press Expo this year and picked up this great collection of fan comics set in the BotNS universe

buttondown.com"AI" is bad UXteapot from the cover of Don Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things” clumsily ‘shopped by me "AI" means bad UX There is an emergent strain of thought in...

22 Dec 2025

Really gets at the core of a lot of the issues I've seen around LLM interaction.

tweety fish oh wow like a chimera or something spoooky@sifu.tweety.fish

It's been, uh, a while, but I have a new newsletter out, based on some conversations here, about the irreconcilable experiences of LLMs that different groups have had and how that all boils down to afordances and how 'AI' is a terrible name and an even worse UX metaphor.

Roy reposted

Cat Hicks

@grimalkina.bsky.social

2 Dec 2025

I have a December gift for you all 🎁 I am finally able to open up a general call for ADVANCE READERS for my book: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOFTWARE TEAMS (coming 2026). I cannot tell you how much it means to me to share this! Indicate your interest here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

docs.google.comRequest to be an advance reader of The Psychology of Software Teams by Cat HicksThank you for your interest in being an advance reader for The Psychology of Software Teams (working title) by Cat Hicks. I am selecting some interested readers to receive a free advance copy of this ...

23 Oct 2025

This is a great opportunity if you are nearby -- it's a great film in a lot of ways and the cinematography is definitely one of them. www.imax.com/en/ca/news/s...

imax.comIMAXIMAX

Roy reposted

Ned Resnikoff

@resnikoff.bsky.social

1 Oct 2025

Replying to @resnikoff.bsky.social

The president has unlimited authority to remove noncompliant board members except when it comes to the Fed, whose independence was established in Harlan Crow's Net Worth v. Unitary Executive.

18 Aug 2025

Reminder that _ideology_ and _fecklessness_ are two different axii.

Kelsey Atherton@atherton.bsky.social

Congrats to the nominal opposition for being to the right of *Bill Kristol* on Trump assualting DC

2 July 2025

Chapter 13 reminds me of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich -- #bskybc.

Ok #bskybc, I'm late to my re-read of Left Hand of Darkness but going: I _really_ did not remember how sexist Genly was, which says nothing good about the mileu I was in 25+ years ago. (Should re-read The Dispossessed too). The writing itself is just gorgeous which I appreciate even more now.

The "permanent, a skull-word if there ever was one" part hits harder as I'm in the middle of emigrating right now.

I wonder how the Gethen synthesize vitamin D

MaryAnn Johanson (she/her)

6 June 2025

I've been enjoying #Murderbot from the first episode but it REALLY clicked in this latest one, damn. And they did right by my favorite scene from _All Systems Red_.

Roy reposted

@maryannjohanson.bsky.social

20 May 2025

#Sinners is wildly primal, big and bold, fueled by pain and rage, by community and family, throbbing with love and sex and joy, infused with magic. A sumptuously textured, unmissable howl of a passion project. My 🟢 review: www.flickfilosopher.com/2025/05/sinn... #Sinners [cinemas US/UK] 📽️

flickfilosopher.comSinners movie review: bootleg vampires - FlickFilosopher.comWildly primal, big and bold, fueled by pain and rage, by community and family, throbbing with love and sex and joy, infused with magic. A sumptuously textured, unmissable howl of a passion project.

14 May 2025

So #bskybc I've continued to meander my way through Gravity's Rainbow. The paranoia / conspiracy thread hits _really_ differently for me now than when I read Crying of Lot 49 back in the 90s. Not sure I'd even read Hofstadter then, much less seen the paranoid style utterly triumph.

14 May 2025

I was reading a lot of similar stuff at the time -- the Illuminatus Trilogy, GURPS Illuminati, Foucault's Pendulum. TBF in non-fiction I was reading some counter narratives.

14 May 2025

Still, in retrospect I feel I was flirting with a brain poison in much the same way as my college drinking. It worked out OK for me but the same exposure for other people ended up being a lasting problem.

amultiverse.comPope-O-MatPopes! There’s never one around when you need one. Hey! You! Would you be a dear and purchase something from the SFAM store today? Your purchase goes towards feeding and clothing me. And you …

8 May 2025

The great @jonrosenberg.bsky.social summarized today's pope discourse 12 years ago: amultiverse.com/comic/2013/0...

7 May 2025

Bringing it back around this is why Stephen doing sock knitting as a hobby works so well in Paladin's Grace.

Anise K. Strong@anisekstrong.bsky.social

I tell all my World History students every year that the most ubiquitous letter home from soldiers, in any century, any region, whether ancient Roman legionaries or U.S. Civil War troops or Chinese Communists, are requests for new socks. Ignore "socks are boring presents" folks; socks save lives.

6 May 2025

Great series for these trying times.

DAW Books@dawbooks.bsky.social

Ghostdrift by Hugo Award-winner @zanzjan.bsky.social , is out in paperback today! Read the final book to the The Finder Chronicles that is a hopepunk sci-fi caper described as Macgyver meets Firefly. buff.ly/aCsqNYd

29 Apr 2025

I shared this thread with all my Hoplology friends just to add a little spice to their mornings.

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux@bretdevereaux.bsky.social

Alright, @sarahebond.bsky.social in her cruelty has made me aware of this remarkably incompetent talk Malcolm Gladwell gave and so I am going to inflict it on all of you by going through all of the mistakes he makes here in the hope that none of you will ever take him seriously again. 1/

Ok #bskybc, I have been much better about _reading_ the book than posting about it. Let me do a quick thread of chapter reactions.

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Chapter 3 -- introduces the broader plot. Jaunt background could have replaced the intro. Makes it clear Foyle is the protagonist but not a hero. The scene of his attack on Vorga is compelling and another example of his current animal nature -- biting the stick instead of the person wielding it.

Chapter 4 -- the Nightmare Theater reminds me of "Nightmare Brother" by Alan E Nourse. The Mega Mood is also pretty good -- a little careless not to use makeup to hide his face though.

Ok #bskybc, I have been much better about _reading_ the book than posting about it. Let me do a quick thread of chapter reactions.

Chapter 2 -- The Scientific People are a classic. The funniest part of the book, a little capsule take on generation ship narratives. The swipe at Maori would never fly today and we'd be better for it. Sure his and moko both designate origin but could have just stuck with tiger stripes / devil mask

Ok #bskybc, I have been much better about _reading_ the book than posting about it. Let me do a quick thread of chapter reactions.

Chapter 1 -- incredible hook. A good example of why 'show don't tell' is general advice, not an unbreakable maxim. "Too easy for trouble, too slow for fun, too empty for friendship, too lazy for love." The image of the tank roulette is haunting. Note "the stars my destination" scans into the rhyme

17 Apr 2025

Ok #bskybc, thoughts on The Stars My Destination prologue: Strong opening couple of paragraphs, probably deliberately evoking A Tale of Two Cities. Then we get some background on a key McGuffin, OK. Then it goes very, very 50s with an utter text wall of unnecessary detail. (1/2)

17 Apr 2025

I did not need to know what employment applications looked like. Honestly, having read several chapters in, I feel the whole jaunt rules are also explained organically in the text as it comes out and it looks like the prologue was bolted on in editing.

14 Apr 2025

So #bskybc and #pinball collide as I finish Chapter 2 of Gravity's Rainbow and end up really fixating on how it describes the sound of pinball "flippers" which didn't first appear for another two years.

10 Apr 2025

Ok #bskybc, any theories on why Pynchon switched from a stream of (multi) consciousness style to a straight narrative in the second part?

11 Apr 2025

I award myself the "fooled again" award

11 Apr 2025

Ok so it's back to mostly something that's recognizably a narrative. Though I did NOT need to know the details of why Pointsman was so confident about the funding.

31 Mar 2025

After getting through some more sentences/pages of _Gravity's Rainbow_, #bskybc, it's a relief to go back to some easier reading.

27 Mar 2025

Sometimes the Discovery feed delivers.

17 Mar 2025

Art Appreciation Sunday: The Execution of the Doge.

12 Mar 2025

Generally I really like the Bluesky block feature. However, it does mean when you find a thread of people spouting transphobic nonsense you have to block from the inside out.

2 Mar 2025

I fell pretty behind on my #bskybc reading and just started the Borges stories when I really should be getting going on Gravity's Rainbow. "The Garden of Forking Paths" was worth it. It took me a bit to see the structure of the outer story mirrors the inner if the meeting in the study is a fulcrum.