George Powell

Working on a (daily) poem writing challenge / website

applying for jobs again

Announcing RimWorld update 1.7! It moves the game from Unity to Waylith, our in-house engine, and runs 2-4x faster in our tests. Try it now on the unstable beta. Oh, and RimWorld isn’t the only game on Waylith... Read on Steam: store.steampowered.com/news/app/294100/view/672882362547178633

The 8th immaculate inning in Red Sox history!

AN IMMACULATE 1ST.

make bad art

THERE ARE NO WORDS.

People are pining for old technologies—CD players, VCRs, Walkmans. What’s behind our longing for inconvenience? www.newyorker.com/culture/essa...

People don't long for "inconvenience." They long for permanence. And though streaming services may be convenient, people are waking up to the fact that we are paying rent-seeking middle men month after month for things we will never actually own.

sometimes, if you’re up early enough, you can hear them turn the birds on

When you have an audience or a business you have to ensure that you always provide a lot more value to people than you extract from them. If you don't then, long term, it all breaks down. Young people I talk to today...they feel like the whole entire world has broken this contract with them.

Making a custom share menu doubled the amount of people who clicked from 17% to 30%... I love that I can channel my care and joy and whimsy and it makes such a concrete difference in how people interact 🥹 #buildinpublic #ux

Possibly the best to ever do it

@chase.caster.quest lingule is cool! i was thinking of making a -dle where you get 10 seconds of a spoken language and have to guess what language it is. "langdle"? "eavesdropdle"?

There needs to be high-quality, attention grabbing content that delivers value and has an allegiance to the truth. We have LOTS of ideas for how to deliver more value and we think this is the best way to enable that work.

ni spelar väl det dagliga bibelgissar-spelet bibdle? jag tänker inte säga mer än 300 gånger pga vill göra en grej av det bibdle.com

“WAGMI” — we're all gonna make it — was crypto's 2021 rallying cry. But those with wealth and power knew it was a lie, and that “all” just meant them. My latest traces the last five years from hype to technoligarchy — and why they're not all gonna make it either.

Some interesting product-centric "Reflections on the social web" from John O'Nolan, CEO of Ghost: john.onolan.org/reflections-...

my god, just look at that changelog. looks like it's upgrade day for me! ghost.org/changelog/6/

sniped a monarch butterfly today

here is a leopard slug i found today, since people loved my snail post so much

Here is a snail I saw today

@andersnoren.bsky.social Do you have a wordpress host that you use for your website, or do you self-host? What advice or recommendations do you have?

Every time a self-published thing reaches as many people, or more people, than a journal published by a big university or some other fancy institution, an angel gets a new long-reach stapler.

Zines are back. AI can't steal your words if you only write them in a zine.

i created a website for listening to byzantine chanting! orthodox.cafe

“The true solution, perhaps, is more solidarity and more sincerity.”

@marc-fischer.bsky.social Did you write for Tropic? Dave Barry mentions you in his memoir Class Clown!

“What AI is is an ideology—a system of ideas that has swept up not only the tech industry but huge parts of government on both sides of the aisle, a supermajority of everyone with assets in the millions and up, and a … growing sector of the journalism class.” aworkinglibrary.com/writing/tool...

for new #rss people coming in: you can follow any #bluesky profile in your feed reader, just tack on "/rss" to the end of the profile url e.g. bsky.app/profile/john...

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

there is no plan(et) b.

This is why I still think that the internet, not the issues, are the root cause of this culture war. People (including journalists…who are people) imagine the loudest, angriest positions as default positions because those are the ones that get eyeballs in an ultra-competitive attention economy.

I mostly hated the movie but Hank is right. The experience of being in that theater was well worth the price of admission for as long as I can remember, except for like Avengers Endgame. (I wasn't alive for the original star wars trilogy.)

It struck a chord because it's true. As I write in More Than Words, the chief benefit of LLMs to writing (and teaching writing) is it forces us to examine what we value in writing. We should be building statues of the students who remain proud to be themselves & encourage others to join them.

💪 Training programs for digital community stewards 🏛️ Platform designs that enable collective governance 🫂 Alternative business models prioritizing community 🧑‍💻 Decentralized technical infrastructure Let’s move from algorithm-driven shouting matches into vibrant civic forums.

taking a nap