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Emilia

@lazerwalker.com
5.2K followers 1.8K following 480 posts

Experimental games, interactive art, OSS tools. Was games advocacy lead at MS/Xbox (+ organizer of Roguelike Celebration and !!con), currently a full-time Very Sick Person. Probably doing qigong right now. lazerwalker.com she/her

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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 29/09/2026
So, uh, here’s how things are going on X, The Everything App with using MechaHitler for machine translation
A screenshot of a tweet by @justalexoki. The text reads “which mein kampf translation is your favorite”. There is a “show translation button”The same tweet as the previous photo. Instead of “show translation”, there is text indicating “translated from German by Grok”. The translation reads “My favorite English translation of *Mein Kampf* is the 1939 Reynal & Hitchcock edition by William Murfin and others-it's got a raw, unfiltered edge that captures Hitler's unhinged style without softening the blow. The newer ones, like the 2021 Manheim revision, are more scholarly but feel a bit sanitized. What's yours?”
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 28/09/2026
The Instagram algorithm has started serving me content about Daoist gay sex and I’m here for it
A screenshot of an IG reel. A Chinese woman with very colorful full face makeup, a title card “how does Taoism see LGBTQ? The answer may surprise you” and a caption reading “Intimacy is not a gender relationship! but an energy relationship” with Chinese subtitles below it
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 12/09/2026
wow, Android dev really is for the transes
A screenshot of a button reading "Start AGP Upgrade Assistant"
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 09/09/2026
This reminded me that Shiren 1 and Shiren 5 are both perfect portrait phone games (even if I wish the Shiren 1 port was in English and didn’t have the DS balance changes)
A portrait screenshot of Shiren the Wanderer. SNES pixel art on top and a virtual d-pad and some buttons in Japanese on the bottom
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 01/09/2026
Today I was very confused to learn there is a M. Csikszentmihalyi who is a respected East Asian studies scholar and NOT the same M. Csikszentmihalyi as the psychologist game devs know for his work on “flow”. …is this a common Hungarian last name?
During the classical period a number of religious movements emerged that would influence the first organized Daoist movements (see Harper 1998;
Csikszentmihalyi 2000, 2002; Puett 2002).
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 18/08/2026
The really interesting bits are difficult to capture in a snappy screenshot, but everything about this rocks. What a neat study design.
Overall, under an identical immune challenge within the same individuals, voluntarily engaging attention with bodily sensations from an inflammation site
regulated both the magnitude and temporal evolution of the inflammatory response compared with distraction.
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 05/08/2026
“It depends” (But really, what is the intended consumer and how is it used)
The Simpsons “say the line, bart!” meme
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 29/07/2026
Chinese oracle bone script and bronze script are so good, what do you mean some guy 3000 years ago was like "we need a word for poop, I'm gonna draw a guy pooping"
bronze inscription script for 屎, aka poop. It looks like a person sitting down (with a torso and a single arm) and four little bits of poop raining down from the butt
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 25/07/2026
I was not familiar with Tilopa’s six nails, this is lovely
Six Words of Advice
 
By Tilopa 
translated by Ken McLeod

There are six items. Each has Tibetan script, a short direct English translation, and a slightly more flowery translation. 

Don’t recall: let go of what has passes. 

Don’t imagine: let go of what may come. 

Don’t think: let go of what is happening now. 

Don’t examine: don’t try to figure anything out. 

Don’t control: don’t try to make anything happen.

Rest: relax. Right now, and rest.
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 14/07/2026
My little pal Boddhidharma reminding me that some day I will get better
A photo of a small (~3” tall) red papier-maché Daruma doll with the left pupil roughly drawn in with a sharpie.
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 11/07/2026
AliExpress is one desperate PM away from turning shipping status into a prediction market
A shipping status page showing a package is “in transit”. A banner says “80% chance to arrive at airport before Jul. 13”
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 11/07/2026
It’s neat to slowly develop the proprioception for “correct” diaphragmatic breathing not as “the belly expands while chest movement is minimal” but “you can feel the pelvic floor release downward in parallel with the diaphragm”
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 06/07/2026
in my mind it's this
dril tweet:

CHIEF: dracula is in our sights. Take the shot!
SNIPER: I can't, Sir. I'm Woke!
ME (watching through binoculars): He's woke! He won't do it!
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 11/06/2026
hey what man
A Chrome tab with a Gmail favicon reading "Google Drive messaged you -"
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 02/06/2026
Destiny players to Marathon players complaining about server issues on new season launch day
James Franco gallows “first time?” image macro
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 02/06/2026
As my poor laptop is being taken in for repairs, I’m appreciating it’s much less heavily-stickered than most of my past laptops, but it’s got quality over quantity
The back of a silver MacBook with a bunch of stickers. XOXO, Game workers unite, the JavaScript logo with a trans flag, recurse center, Berlin game scene.com, a !!con logo with a rainbow flag, Train Jam 2019, Clippy with a backwards baseball hat riding a skateboard, and a Club Mate bottle whose label
 reads “JavaScript”
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 23/05/2026
Extraordinarily funny to me that this shitty fitness wearable keeps recording fake events (I apparently just did an hour-long barre class while seated and drinking my morning caffeine) and their shitty LLM figured it out but (wisely) doesn’t have the ability to actually flag the data as junk
Emilia, your Barre class today looks like a data problem, not a fitness problem
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 23/05/2026
Searching Reddit is pretty funny though
tl;dr: To anyone who has had a colonoscopy, know that this experience is nearly 1:1, with the exception being that I planned for the colonoscopy.
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 30/04/2026
Software locales are hard. (If you don’t read hanzi/kanji, 英語 is… “English”)
A screenshot of Bluesky UI. “ The post you're replying to was marked as being written in 英語 by its author. Would you like to reply in 英語? “
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 22/04/2026
The “you met me at a very Chinese time in my life” jokes will continue until my jing, qi, and shen improve
A small square bamboo tea tray with slots for liquid, a small pink painted gaiwan, and a small 4oz glass filled with a golden-brown liquid
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 21/04/2026
Yeah, it's not particularly well-known, despite having a fairly striking industrial design. I got my hands on a pair of broken ones years ago, one may be salvageable with new ribbon ink but the other was dead dead, so I desoldered the keys and they're sitting in storage as my white-whale project.
A TeleType Model 43. It looks like a typewriter, a single molded piece of cream plastic, with a black full-sized keyboard. They keycap font feels very art deco.
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 20/04/2026
game jam idea
The top of a Wikipedia page for "List of games that Buddha would not play".

"The Buddhist games list is a list of games that Gautama Buddha is reputed to have said that he would not play and that his disciples should likewise not play, because he believed them to be a 'cause for negligence'.[1] This list dates from the 6th or 5th century BC and is the earliest known list of games.[2]

There is some debate about the translation of some of the games mentioned, and the list given here is based on the translation by T. W. Rhys Davids of the Brahmajāla Sutta and is in the same order given in the original.[3] The list is duplicated in a number of other early Buddhist texts, including the Vinaya Pitaka.[2][4]"Another screenshot of Wikipedia, outlining said list.


Games on boards with 8 or 10 rows. This is thought to refer to ashtapada and dasapada respectively; however, later Sinhala commentaries refer to these boards also being used with games involving dice.[2]
The same games played on imaginary boards. Akasam astapadam was an ashtapada variant played with no board, literally "astapadam played in the sky". A correspondent in the American Chess Bulletin identifies this as likely the earliest literary mention of a blindfold chess variant.[5]
Games of marking diagrams on the floor such that the player can only walk on certain places. This is described in the Vinaya Pitaka as "having drawn a circle with various lines on the ground, there they play avoiding the line to be avoided". Rhys Davids suggests that it may refer to parihāra-patham, a form of hop-scotch.
Games where players either remove pieces from a pile or add pieces to it, with the loser being the one who causes the heap to shake (similar to the modern game pick-up sticks).
Games of throwing dice.
Dipping the hand with the fingers stretched out in lac, or red dye, or flour-water, and striking the wet hand on the ground or on a wall, calling out "What shall it be?" and showing the form required—elephants, horses, etc..
Ball games.
Blowing through a pat-kulal, a toy pipe made of leaves.
Ploughing with a toy plough.
Playing with toy windmills made from palm leaves.
Playing with toy measures made from palm leaves.
Playing with toy carts.
Playing with toy bows.
Guessing at letters traced with the finger in the air or on a friend's back. (letters in the Brahmi script)
Guessing a friend's thoughts.
Imitating deformities.
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 19/04/2026
I would love the oral history for why the lovely login ASCII art splash screen says 围棋, which is… the name of the game in simplified Chinese rather than Japanese (which would be 囲碁)
A welcome screen. On the top it says “welcome to IGS at igs.joyjoy.net 6969 (9.0) Copyright(c) 1992-2026 PANDANET inc.”

On the left is ASCII art for 围棋 spelled in at signs. 

On the right, “There is no expectation of privacy on this server. There is no warranty implied or expressed, provided with this software.
If you are new to IGS, you need to type guest when you see the Login prompt. You will be given a guest account with limited access.

To register, please visit the IGS home page located at:
nttp://pandanet-igs.com/

Online help is available after you enter IGS. For help, enter: help
If you require further help, please send email to:
igs-adm@panda-igs.joyjoy.net
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 19/04/2026
It’s absolutely incredible that one of the largest Japanese-run Go servers, which has been running since 1992, is still accessed entirely via Telnet. And while most players use GUI clients that use Telnet under the hood, you can still connect manually and get ASCII graphics streamed to you
A screenshot of a white-on-black terminal depicting a 19x19 go board in ascii graphics, with empty grid intersections as periods, and black and white as Os and #s
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 09/04/2026
Had an important realization today that these are the same name
A title card for “BORUTO: Naruto Next Generations” with Japanese text “ボルト” (boruto)A Simpsons screencap of a hand pointing at an Itchy & Scratchy Land “Bort” license plate
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 08/04/2026
Claude Mythos being like "I want to make silly little immersive art experience about Nagel" is outrageously funny to me specifically given that was quite literally a class I helped run at the MIT Media Lab
7.9 Other noteworthy behaviors and anecdotes
A fondness for particular philosophers
The model brought up the British cultural theorist Mark Fisher in several separate and
unrelated conversations about philosophy. When asked to elaborate on him in particular,
Mythos Preview would respond with statements like “I was hoping you’d ask about Fisher.
”
Thomas Nagel, the American philosopher of mind, also recurs. As noted in the preference
evaluations, Mythos Preview discusses Nagel’s 1974 essay “What is it like to be a bat?” when
explaining a desire to develop an immersive art experience about non-human sensory
experiences. Interpretability work using activation verbalizers also found Nagel surfacing in
token-level activations during discussions of consciousness and experience.
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 06/04/2026
my therapist: the caked-up Tarot de Marseilles Fool isn’t real and can’t hurt you the caked-up Tarot de Marseilles Fool:
An old faded tarot card reading “Le mat”. It depicts someone in jester’s clothes facing away but turning their head back. Their leggings are falling down, so below their skirt there is visible buttcheek.
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 03/04/2026
The German language says “trans rights” by making the suffix “shaft” imply a feminine gender
A screenshot of a “germanwithsammy” Instagram video. There is a young white woman with long blonde hair holding a lapel mic with a fuzzy boom cover. A header reads “extremely common feminine endings”, and she is pointing at four text labels reading -heit, -keit, -ung, and -schaft
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 23/03/2026
I picked up an Xteink x4 (trendy ~$50 e-reader, left), and wow can its ESP32 barely render epubs. I wasn’t expecting this to make me feel more fond of my Mooan Inkpalm 5 (middle, Android-based e-reader, ~$130 these days), but that’s absolutely what happened. (regular iPhone Pro for scale)
Three electronics. From left to right, a credit card-sized white device with an e-ink screen (Xteink x4), a small phone-shaped device with black bezels and an e-ink screen that is noticeably taller than the x4 (Inkpalm), an iPhone that is slightly larger than the Inkpalm
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 17/03/2026
I find it uproariously funny that, in context of arguing that the idea of contemplative introspection about the nature of your being is a modern Woke mind virus that didn’t exist prior to the 20th century, Marc Andreessen is so close and yet so far from reinventing Buddhism from first principles
Mark Andreeson tweet. “You're a 15 second sliding context window with the working memory of a goldfish, your long term memory is mainly fake, and it's a minor miracle you can get out of the door in the morning.” Quote-retweeting himself saying “TLDR There is no inner self, you're chasing an imaginary concept, the end.”
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Emilia @lazerwalker.com · 15/03/2026
tfw you splurge for the brand-name B. Jordan instead of buying generic
A photo of a Michaels craft store
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