iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 8h

There are more manners of engagement in the warp and the materium, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 9h

I suspect "natural immunity" does not always function exactly the way you think it does

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 9h

But it's worth asking: given that this murder victim gets dragged in part because of long records of domestic abuse on his family, and now transphobes are seizing on the fact that he's trans, when SHOULD his trans status be mentioned? As the headline? In the first graph? Or is it not as central?

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 9h

Reactions were baffled since there aren't many "immigrant grandparent murders." The mutual abuse allegations raised the question of whether the victim was at fault somehow. THEN the NY Times dug up his trans status in court filings, and the narrative polarized even more.

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 9h

This is an incredibly sad and upsetting story that I followed since it first broke, since I have former students at NYT Games. Initially none of the reporting included the fact that the murder victim was trans; it seems even his own employer might not have been aware (why would they?)

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Reposted by Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美

New York Games Week @nygamesweek.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

As part of New York Games Week, independent video game and internet culture website @aftermath.site will host their first-ever live podcast at Town Hall in NYC, with special guests @halfrobot.com and @mrsambarlow.bsky.social

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Reposted by Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美

will jobst @willjobst.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

a universal feature of the game designer working on a long project is that their next game wells up inside of them until it is physically painful

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 28/09/2026

I read the late Peggy Sanday's work over 30 years ago. A harrowing assignment, but among those that convinced me to study anthropology. At the time, I naively believed that though much of this book is about how power & privilege protect rapists, surely the lid was blown off NOW? Not even close.

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Reposted by Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美

Aftermath @aftermath.site · 25/09/2026

Exciting news! As part of New York Games Week, we’re going to be hosting our first-ever live podcast at Town Hall in NYC on Oct 8 with special guests @halfrobot.com and @mrsambarlow.bsky.social. RSVP (for free) here: www.eventbrite.com/e/aftermath-...

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Reposted by Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美

Patrick @vectorpark.com · 22/09/2026

Among other things, this post does a great job of disentangling the classic notion of "AI" — how can we use computers to solve problems in smarter and more efficient ways? — from what LLMs are, and do

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 21/09/2026

All the maneuverings seem extremely data-driven, unsurprisingly. So that means the defector-brinksmanship works to the extent that the extant group of allies genuinely cares about perceived harms and would stand by a targeted group. Sadly I just wouldn't bet a WHOLE lot on that; lost in the noise.

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 20/09/2026

I've been through multiple rounds of this kind of sacrificial scapegoating on various fronts (gay marriage was a big one) and I'm pretty sure cynical powermongers do it because they think it works! So whatever the talking points, be prepared for worse weather

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 20/09/2026

I mean, what's actually more terrifying and plausible: the idea that people either hate your guts or have your back? Or the idea that there are SO many peple who're wishy-washily ambivalent about you that bartering over your fate, throwing you under vs. keeping you on the bus IS a viable tactic?

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 20/09/2026

At some point I start to wonder whether "you're either with us or against us" political strategy is the kind of comforting security-blanket fiction that's fuzzy on the inside and armored on the outside, but still basically a fear-binky?

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Reposted by Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美

anka @valkalyne.net · 17/09/2026

i think every game should have at least a liiittle bit of bullshit that pisses the player off

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Reposted by Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美

Aysha U. Farah @ayshaufarah.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Once again I am asking why this happens to indie games and not big blockbusters where you can fuck the bear or go to strip clubs. And once again I know the answer

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 11/09/2026

I ended up making sandwiches at a deli, then wandered off to a bar north of Canal street that was open and serving free drinks. A bus evacuated me. Very foolish, especially given what I probably inhaled, but at least the experience made me stop smoking.

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 11/09/2026

Quarter-century ago: I was not thinking clearly, so I tried to get to work "to help out" and ended up within a mile of the World Trade Center. Not knowing what to do, I started taking photos: falling ash, cars covered with particulate, empty streets. I sometimes wonder what happened to that camera.

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 11/09/2026

Know that it is the year 86700 A.H. Each of the 32 MUPPETS is a POSTSAPIENT ARCHETYPE representing the collective unconscious of billions of EARTHLORN SOULS, locked forever in drama and conflict on the virtual stage of THE MUPPET THEATER. Only one MUPPET is a reincarnation of a single wom--[gunshot]

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 10/09/2026

To be real: Geoff Keighley being the relatively-uninvolved source of a % of grant funding is not even in the top 50 risks involved in receiving $1-5 hundred grand to work on a game. So I was thumbs-up to our students applying. For more eloquent thoughts on this, I'm quoted a bunch in the piece below

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Reposted by Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美

Vivacious Vixen (Croí) ☭ ⚢ ☿ @croifox.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

abolishing The Female Sex as a social class rendered legible by its objectified and subordinated position is exactly what liberating women *means,* yet it is exactly what today's "defenders of sex-based rights"-- who believe they are the inheritors of just this kind of genteel white middle class

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 09/09/2026

Union contracts can rarely do much to shield whole units from the effects of layoffs, but the recall rights in the contract negotiated by the Blizzard union are fairly groundbreaking for games (read about it). Especially significant in boom-and-bust business models aftermath.site/blizzard-uni...

aftermath.site

After Years Of Company Stalling, Blizzard Workers Win Mega-Contract That Applies To All Unionized Teams

"Really strong" layoff protections are just the tip of the iceberg for a contract that covers 1,900 workers

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 09/09/2026

These neologisms are horrible and even people being interviewed admit it. Now that I see the word "quapa" in print I am even more horrified. I move to replace this word with the term "keanu" instead. Now if you will excuse me I have to go tell my kid that she is a keanu, and then show her Bill & Ted

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 09/09/2026

[ forced to tap the sign again ] as penance, please go read about reification and race

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 08/09/2026

I also want to say, since Islamophobes are trying to use Hizzoner's counsel Ramzi Kassem as an excuse for why "it's not about Muslims": Ramzi was motivated by this kind of racism to defend prisoners held at Guantanamo who had nobody else; he's now constantly called a "terror lawyer" for that service

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 08/09/2026

The open-worldness of Cosmology of Kyoto was seemingly why it was one of the only video games Roger Ebert ever praised!

my possessions. The disc comes packaged with a large fold-out map showing the streets and principal buildings of Kyoto - circa 900, when, as Heiankyo, it was the capital of Japan. I begin to wander the streets.

The richness is almost overwhelming; there is the sense that the resources of this game are limitless and that no two players would have the same experience. I have been exploring the ancient city in spare moments for two weeks now, and doubt that I have even begun to scratch the surface. This is the most beguiling computer game I have encountered, a seamless blend of information, adventure, humor, and imagination - the gruesome side-by-side with the divine.

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 08/09/2026

Unreal not as popular among indies as at larger studios, where Godot has zero share; Unreal still much bigger overall IIRC

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 08/09/2026

The question is whether the floor has lowered even further -- Zach's examples make a decent case that it has although it's with would-be devs and goals that for whatever reason SEEMED out of reach with existing tools. People self-intimidate or mis-scope all sorts of ways

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 08/09/2026

Godot rapidly eating precious unity share, much quicker than I would have anticipated. Caught up with Unreal (which of course is on one of the other ends of unity)

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 08/09/2026

Have you seen the shift in engine use among indies in the GDC survey though

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 08/09/2026

I'm sure the music analogy has plenty of imperfect edges but alsoas just thinking it has rather different design implications if we were entirely in a 1CM idea-guy mechanic phase or totally subsumed by vibes-based games etc

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 07/09/2026

Psst if you want to get to the more nuanced thorough helvetica-thoughts, read far enough into that thread to think about complexity and depth of creative reach; this is the realm where experience helps, and traditions/schools arise, and there is very little extant training data

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 07/09/2026

Zach's broad point is insightful... and also an extension of the gradual disappearance of technical barriers for the past ~20 years. Lower floor of entry means the water level rises for everyone! So the ability to rise out of the flood has more to do with detailed meaning than overcoming technology.

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 07/09/2026

Familiarity is not quite the right word for the feeling, I think? It's more like understanding a non-fiction work or a scientific paper better because of a Chapter 1 overview of the material or an abstract, but for the pleasure of fiction. I like both varieties of "first-ever experience" personally.

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 07/09/2026

UCSD write-up of this research (about ten years ago, on a small variety of short stories) and some conclusions from researcher on why people appreciated reading the stories more if given a summary in advance, in case you are curious: www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/spoiler...

universityofcalifornia.edu

Spoiler alert: spoilers make you enjoy stories more

Did someone spoil the next episode of "Game of Thrones"? They might have done you a favor.

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 07/09/2026

"No plot survives first contact with the page," to paraphrase von Moltke the Elder

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 07/09/2026

I have come to the conclusion that plot is to storytelling as "interesting choices / player agency" is to gameplay; satisficing, tending towards over-engineered, considered mandatory therefore supremely important, often unrelated to artistic qualities

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 07/09/2026

taps the sign that says "on average, getting spoilers beforehand increase audiences' ratings of their own pleasure in experiencing a story"

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 05/09/2026

Anyway what with the feds suing Kansas City schools for (check notes) writing down students' preferred pronouns as a FERPA violation, I look forward to the outrage over how LLMs are secretly trained yo brainwash kids into transitioning and used as the only counseling alternative etc etc

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 05/09/2026

This piece has a therapist worrying about unrealistically-positive transition affirmation from chatbots (which ofc trained on tons of forums). Wild diffusion model glow-ups mentioned too. Well. Guess that explains the uptick in "reality isnt my perfect self" doom-boymoders slate.com/life/2026/09...

slate.com

A Controversial New Technology Is Transforming Users’ Lives in a Profound Way. Should It Be Trusted?

A simple prompt could change everything.

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 05/09/2026

That's why I said it's a definition thing. Some people might sa cultural biases, unconscious feelings, influences from genres could be "unintentional" or even arising from beyond the author. Intentionalists just say "no, the way we see it, that's all a kind of authorial intent, not really "unintent"

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 05/09/2026

My understanding, at least of intentionalism in general, is it's more or less definitional: since all these things are categorized as SOME kind of intention, every word in a text is thus the product of the writer's intention. It all passes through the author; there is nothing "from elsewhere"

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Reposted by Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美

Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 05/09/2026

finally got a chance to read this, def worth your time

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 03/09/2026

Good day to memoriam with the first issue of Ms and a classic, 54-year-old version of "you mean pop culture is political?!"

Cover of Ms. volume 1 issue 1 with the headline "WONDER WOMAN FOR PRESIDENT" and a giant wonder woman striding the landscape divided between American town and bombed war landscape

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Naomi Clark (@metasynthie) 暗悪直美 @halfrobot.com · 03/09/2026

Related: as a Games Person I must also apologize in advance for inadvertently teaching my kid that overly derivative works are called "clones"

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