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John du Bois (He/Him)

@johndubois.bsky.social
618 followers 247 following 1.9K posts

Brain injured game designer who pays bills as an SLP. Avatar of Cheese Masculinity. Board games, sewing, LEGO, books. This Machine Helps People Use Their Voice. I'd like a hard boiled egg. sites.google.com/view/johndubois/ho…

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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 6h
The point of making stories about these systems - and games are a kind of story - is that they can be fixed or changed if enough people want to badly enough, and all the story does is say either that this can happen or what might happen if it doesn’t. It’s literally what speculative fiction *is*.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The problem with Being Healthy Specifically cutting out all forms of alcohol and added sugars When I used to occasionally (like once every month or two, not in an addictive way) consume those things on an Exceptionally Bad Day Is that now I don’t know what to do on an Exceptionally Bad Day
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, and Agents of SHIELD are the best examples I can think of Firefly was saved from being this by being cancelled after one season To stay positive, the opposite of this - a show that stuck the landing so hard it made the beginning shine brighter - was The Good Place
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I wonder if we’re going to get a Democratic Presidential candidate who has the guts to say, “I believe in healing and forgiveness, but that requires admitting guilt. We can’t come together as a nation until the Republicans - Democrats- who backed Trump’s agenda admit they hurt the American people”
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Abdul El-Sayed releasing an ad comparing Mike Rogers to the Hot Dog Suit Guy from I Think You Should Leave is very well crafted to appeal to a very specific and limited kind of audience* *It’s me, I’m a very specific and limited kind of audience
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Okay look I don’t know why Tommy Tuberville is targeting furries, or why it’s on my timeline But people just need to remember that properly framed, anything you do can look Weird
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Professionally Nosy @professionallynosy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
My Rage Against the Machine/Les Mis mashup is complete. This is my interpretation of the quilt guild’s summer challenge “quilt with your interpretation and/or feelings towards our current ‘democracy’” all hand stitched.
Quilt hanging on a card catalog. Neutral background with navy cursive appliqué “Do you hear thr people sing?” The background is embroidered in red starting light and getting bolder the lyrics to “killing in the name” the quilting effect is a focused sunburst from the center.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Look if we’re speculating on the ways AI Is going to kill us all in our lifetimes, I personally think we’re under-considering the “99 Luftbalons” scenario: LLM hallucinates threat, military launches pre-emptive strike against innocents, war ensues
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
The glory of having kids who game: I am layout out my *daughter’s* handmade leather dice bag before I see if I have enough scrap to make one for *me*.
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The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv) @theserfstv.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
This is the most masculine video on the internet right now
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Things like this SCOTUS stay about the mail in ballots, when you think hard enough about them, really show that the only reason a government for 350 million people fucking works is because enough people want it to And that is either beautiful or scary depending on how you look at it
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Part of the problem with what happened with Charlie Kirk is that many firings were essentially “we care less about our employee than we care about Kirk stans shutting the fuck up and getting off the phone/e-mail” Except 1. Those employees sued 2. Kirk stans didn’t shut the fuck up
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Micah @rincewind.run · 07/09/2026
Discworld QOTD, from Men at Arms
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars.
Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
So IDK if this counts but technically I turned a profit from it There was a time where, if you DMed at the right conventions, you could collect the swag given to DMs and flip it for cash It wasn’t a living or anything, but it was a way to make a few extra bucks from something I was enjoying anyway
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Eliza Jumel, Aaron Burr’s second wife, hired Alexander Hamilton Jr. as her divorce attorney.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I can tell I’m getting into a @seananmcguire.bsky.social book when I start mentally yelling at characters This time, it’s “No! Your father was *at* the War of the Spark, that’s *clearly* what this woman is referencing, were you not paying attention or did his bull-headed ass just not tell you?”
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Daniel Solis @danielsolis.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Wile E. Coyote holding and pointing to a sign that reads "We cannot judge our worth on the work of others."
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
I’m reading these quoted El-Sayed posts, and I can’t recall a single thing that any elected official at the time said that was smarter and more compassionate. These are *good* posts, and we *should* be doing what he says in the posts instead of… what we did and are doing.
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The Beaverton @thebeaverton.com · 26/08/2026
Report: Tim Curry's death to be investigated by suspicious group of eccentrics gathering at his house
thebeaverton.com
Report: Tim Curry's death to be investigated by suspicious group of eccentrics gathering at his house
LOS ANGELES - Following the death of beloved 80-year-old British actor Tim Curry, observers have noted a coterie of anonymous upper crust suspects arriving at his mansion in order to investigate the m...
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
It takes a long and persistent effort to do good that you shine so bright that so many people from so many backgrounds share your light after your passing.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
“Abdul El-Sayed needs to comment on the thing Hasan Piker said” Look I’m not gonna defend Piker But if we’re gonna play this game (which, frankly, helps nobody but Piker) we’re also gonna need to have all the Israel ride-or-dies comment on the worst bullshit Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir say
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
There’s an op-ed in the fact that Minneapolis was allowed to treat Jake Lang like the shitstain he is, but Dearborn had to let him go to the city council meeting and spew hate Because if he’d gotten punched by Dearborn Spidey, we’d get weeks of Muslim hate in the press and a lost Senate seat
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
The more I hear from El-Sayed, the more I feel like he just has the sauce.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
optimist: the glass is half full pessimist: the glass is half empty ADHDer: <looks around empty room> where the fuck did I put my glass
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
People have already mentioned how Peter became Hegemon in Ender’s Game, but I also want to point out that we never really learned *how* Big Brother took control in 1984. There’s a lot of spec fic that deals with outcomes without talking about methods, and social media fits in many of those spaces.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
IDK why late diagnosis is showing up in my feed, but I'm just going to point out that I work in a disability-related field, I'm in my 40s, and I got diagnosed with ADD, autism and executive functioning disorder *this month* because I finally got enough overwork to throw me into long-term burnout.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
There are stories I could tell, but they don't provide the reason, which is "guilt by association" - either assuming that because I associate with or vote for person X, I agree with and endorse everything they say or do, or that by thinking X, I must also think Y.
December 2, 2023 post from gabb @BaseballGabb: what's the dumbest reason someone on the internet got mad at you?
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Heading Forward is the outcome of a lot of deep thought, reading, and listening about what games can be. And while I may find more commercial success with later designs, I find it hard to imagine making a game more personally impactful to me than this one.
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Amabel Holland @amabel.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Time for another thread! To celebrate a decade of Hollandspiele being in business, we presently have a game from each calendar year on sale. The 2022 game is one of the games I'm proudest to have published - Heading Forward by @johndubois.bsky.social .
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I feel the same way about the current attacks on Ossoff that I feel about the anti-Benson ads involving the SPLC - if the guns you’re bringing to the fight are water pistols, should you be showing up?
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
A conversation my wife and I had is causing me to ask questions about whether Medicare for All is *sufficient* to address the problems facing health care in the United States for a couple reasons (thread):
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Today I visited Sitdowners Memorial Park in Flint for purely self-indulgent reasons - to get a picture of myself at the monument commemorating the strikers with a copy of Striking Flint. But that wasn’t all I took away from the trip.
Game designer John du Bois holding a copy of his game Striking Flint while seated in front of a monument to the 1936-37 Flint Sit-Down Strike.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
I’ve got pictures and a thread to follow, but I visited Sitdowners Memorial Park in Flint today to take some pictures, and I was struck (ha) by the central feature of the park being dedicated to women who were not members but contributed to organized labor in general.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Since the Tim Horton’s promotion has brought it up again, here’s my list of recommended alternatives to the Scarred Boy Wizard books: 1. The Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett 2. The Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan 3. Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin 4. Animorphs by K A Applegate
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Among other excellent games, this is a great time to pick up a copy of Heading Forward!
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I know that on here we like to talk about The Internet Was A Mistake But seriously y’all I have saved *so* much time and money just by using YouTube to figure out how to do shit for my car and home appliances myself instead of calling a professional
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Even if Nessel was right here (she’s not - she’s both factually incorrect and tone policing), she’d still be wrong. This should be an internal discussion, not a media interview. Saying this shit openly just gives Rogers ammunition, and it’s not like Nessel can’t reach El-Sayed privately.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Is the elevator pitch for El-Sayed really as simple as: 1. He wants our tax dollars spent on life instead of death 2. Read and listen to what he says in full context, not pull quotes
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Trying to find productive ways not to doomscroll - anyone know any good free iOS crossword apps (that aren’t NYT)?
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
In 2022, the US House District I live in featured a primary between two incumbents because of redistricting - Haley Stevens and Andy Levin. Despite Levin being Jewish and active in his synagogue, AIPAC backed Stevens in the primary because they felt she was more supportive of Israel.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Ugh. The mixed feelings of getting the candidate wins in your district you most wanted, but losing the school village you *really* wanted.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
I have a *guaranteed* analysis of today’s primary results, everybody Here it is: They will be the same at 8 AM tomorrow regardless of whether you go to sleep now and check at 8 AM tomorrow or whether you stay up all night to watch returns come in live And you will still have to go to work
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
I’m just gonna put this out there: I’m seeing a lot of liberals who have been mad that conservatives inaccurately brand them as socialist claiming, repeatedly, that El-Sayed is DSA when he’s repeatedly stated, quite explicitly, not only that he’s a capitalist rather than a socialist but also *why*.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Heck yeah I’ll do this one
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Not to dredge up the really old shit, but Ken Jennings never even claimed to have the permission of a disabled person to make his shitty "hot person in a wheelchair" joke.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Well shit, WotC might have finally found a way to force me into making a paper Commander deck.
Rare Magic: the Gathering card from the new Mystery Booster Commander set:

Feroz, Ulgrotha’s Warden   3GWU

Legendary Planeswalker - Feroz

Starting loyalty 5

+2: Create two 1/1 blue Bird creature tokens with flying.
0: Draw a card. You may put a permanent card with mana value 4 or less from your hand onto the battlefield.
-7: Create a Feroz’s Ban token.

Feroz, Ulgrotha’s Warden can be your commander.
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John du Bois (He/Him) @johndubois.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
I wonder what the poll numbers are on “Do you know who James Carville is” and “Do you know who Hasan Piker is” I bet they’re pretty low
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Micah @rincewind.run · 01/08/2026
Discworld QOTD, from I Shall Wear Midnight
What was it that Granny Weatherwax had said once? "Evil starts when you begin to treat people as things". And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together you had a thing called a happy family.
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Leon [the] English [are already scary enough] @leonenglish.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Stevens saying El-Sayed wants to blame all of his problems on American Jews is racist in two ways First and most obviously, it equates AIPAC, which he has strongly and continuously criticized, with “American Jews” Second, it plays into racist stereotypes about Arab and Muslim views on Judaism
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