iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nicole Clark @nicoleclark.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

experiencing intense whiplash between physical mexico's adoration for women making it far in the competition, and physical italy's men openly treating women as disadvantages in team challenges

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gita “the formalist” jackson @xoxogossipgita.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

if you are a person of color and want to pitch to aftermath, i encourage you to do so. if you haven't pitched before or want to talk through an idea before you send it to the pitch email, give me a shout via email gita @ aftermath.site

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Nicole Clark @nicoleclark.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

so i hadn't played tiny bookshop because i assumed it wouldn't be real books (no clue where i even got this idea). unsurprisingly i loved it, it took me back to my best memories of being a bookseller. in many ways it fulfilled the fantasy of the body i used to have, and what that body could do

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Ethan M. Aldridge @ethanmaldridge.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Menswear Menagerie: Clothes I'm wearing this summer.

Ink and watercolor. A fluffy borzoi wearing an orange linen and rayon shirt with a camp collar, tan linen trousers, a braided belt, and huaraches.

Ink and watercolor. A heron wearing a black tank top, green shorts, and a white waffle-knit cotton overshirt

Ink and watercolor. A cat wearing a Keith Haring tee, blue work jacket, olive green cotton/linen trousers, and cordovan penny loafers

Ink and watercolor. A hare wearing a blue patterned rayon shirt, cotton/linen chore jacket, brick-red shorts. And blue and orange slip-on Vans.

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Nicole Clark @nicoleclark.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

i had not heard good things about tia but yikes lapublicpress.org/2026/07/la-t...

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Pete Volk @petevolk.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

A year ago, I took a chance and moved PV Guide from Substack to Ghost. To celebrate (+ pay the bill), I'm running a 20% off sale on all subscriptions! If you want more work like this, start a paid subscription today! Annual: pvguide.ghost.io/the-big-ghos... Monthly: pvguide.ghost.io/ghost-renewa...

pvguide.ghost.io

PV Guide

Ditch the algorithm with movie and TV recommendations, interviews, and reviews from Pete Volk, Polygon's former senior curation editor

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Chris Person @papapishu.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Sick. Awesome. Thanks for that. Really preferred this to funding a Blade game by the Dishonored people or people at Obsidian having jobs.

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Nicole Clark @nicoleclark.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

that vice quote the trailer opens with is the headline to a piece I wrote in 2018! never thought I'd see it again, whoa

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Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 30/06/2026

The trans sports ban are almost completely an invention of the media, conservative and mainstream. it has been years of lies, of shoddy fact checking on just completely false conservative claims, years of phony concern trolling.

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

5-4 for what it explicitly says in the constitution is incredible. They were this close to undoing the civil war entirely. bsky.app/profile/mjsd...

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Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

This birthright ruling is why I just refuse to tolerate all the Democrat garment rending over NY voters choosing progressive candidates. They are incapable of governing in this moment. The politics of appeasement and centrism gets us to a 5-4 decision on the constitutional question.

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Nicole Clark @nicoleclark.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

i visited yacht school games' studio in LA and talked to the devs about mina the hollower, my fav game this year. i asked them why there wasn't a detailed map and also why is klumpy dee Like That www.mothership.blog/maps-mice-an...

mothership.blog

Maps, mice, and moody hues: The making of Mina the Hollower

On a studio visit to Yacht Club Games, Nicole Clark learned about the origins of our new favorite mouse hero.

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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

It was never just about sports. It sure as hell was never about protecting women. It’s about trying to erase trans people, which will never happen, and it’s also about restricting bodily autonomy.

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Maddy Myers 🏳️‍🌈 @midimyers.com · 30/06/2026

the one and only @nicoleclark.bsky.social visited the yacht club games studio and found out so many wonderful little details about Mina the Hollower!!! like, say, that her namesake is actually mina harker from dracula (so obvious now that i think about it...) www.mothership.blog/maps-mice-an...

mothership.blog

Maps, mice, and moody hues: The making of Mina the Hollower

On a studio visit to Yacht Club Games, Nicole Clark learned about the origins of our new favorite mouse hero.

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Nathan Grayson @nathangrayson.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

if you’ve been impacted by layoffs at bungie or xbox and want to securely and privately discuss it—especially in terms of what this terrible loss of talent means for workers and studios—feel free to reach out: aftermathdotsite@proton.me or nathangrayson.666 on signal

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Josh Gondelman @joshgondelman.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I know this is not the biggest concern going these days, but it stresses me out that basically every artist/writer/critic is now expected to create their own tiny empire instead of getting paid by any existing entity to perform a job they've worked to get good at!!!!

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Ash Parrish, Kotaku's LeBron James @adashtra.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

SO! We have ~*news*~ I officially have a job again! My old one! After a great run elsewhere I have returned to the place that started it all to deliver some championship reporting for Kotaku making me the LeBron James of Video Game Journalism which is fitting considering I live in Akron, lol

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Jay Castello 🌻 @jaymcastello.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

for the best part of this year, I've been speaking to former Maxis developers to put together this: a near-6000 word oral history of Spore 🦠 www.designroom.site/spore-an-ora...

designroom.site

Spore: An oral history

A wild bet in development for the better part of a decade, Spore reached for the stars — and, at times, got there. We recently spoke to eight team members, including chief designer Will Wright, to loo...

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JP @jpbrammer.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

the phrase "lipstick on a pig" has always inspired a deep sadness in me. I think of the pig, looking forward to her big night out, and I bring myself to the verge of tears.

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Nicole Clark @nicoleclark.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

it's terrifying. my husband thought his pericarditis (similar condition but affecting the pericardium) was a muscle cramp, because it flared and subsided for weeks, and our doctors were not concerned. eventually we had to rush to the ER where he had life saving surgery. that was 2 years ago

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rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

‘dear rax, my middle class parents are ashamed that i clean houses for a living’ www.patreon.com/posts/160262...

You have nothing to be ashamed of, though. You're doing good, necessary work, and it's not your fault the work has been so thoroughly devalued as to make you an object of other people's shame. That shame isn't about you, by the way. It's not about wishing you were an architect or an oral surgeon, though that's the externalized shape it may take. Your parents are ashamed because their kid cleans houses, which
forces them to recognize that there's no difference between them and the people who clean houses. A house cleaner is no longer an unfortunate to be pitied, an uneducated bum whose crappy life plays out across a thank-God-unbridgeable divide. They share their
DNA with one. No difference at all.
In a just civilization that understood its humanity a little better, parents would be ashamed to admit their kids were tech CEOs or finance titans. If that sounds polemical, then I guess a rational evaluation of evidence must be polemical. What did a house cleaner ever do to any of us, except try to make our environments a little sweeter? Versus what do the tech CEOs do? The finance bros? Some people are made important by their work while others are made untouchable by theirs, and boy do most of us get it backwards on which is which.

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Joshua Rivera @jmrivera.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Also live today: one of my editors at Vanity Fair suggested I take a look at the fatFIRE subreddit for kicks and I kind of lost my mind: a community of people hyper focused on retiring early and rich, believing they can will a broken system to work, just for them www.vanityfair.com/story/fatfir...

vanityfair.com

The FatFIRE Subreddit Is the Internet’s Best Sideshow

It’s all too easy to get drawn into this seductive financial subculture, where seemingly normal people are risking everything to retire early—once they save a measly few million dollars.

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Grant Stoner @supercrip1994.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

With SGF this week, I wanted to explore the impact of no remote events, especially as a disabled reporter. This industry thrives on in person events for making connections, but what does that look like for me? Read my first byline for @mothership.blog here: www.mothership.blog/as-a-disable...

mothership.blog

As a disabled games reporter, I've only been able to attend one in-person event

The impact on my career and relationships with other journalists is tangible

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Nicole Clark @nicoleclark.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

maybe my fav part of mina the hallower (and a very "soulsy" touch) is all the strange characters and philanderers you meet. you can run away from random field bosses, sometimes quest givers are real pieces of shit. sometimes they're just weeeeeeird

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Nicole Clark @nicoleclark.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

i love mina but i do think being frustrated is fair. imo more people should be comparing mina to frogger. i keep hearing souls-like and zelda-like but there are whole ass frogger sections where you will eat shit falling into a hole or some water like over and over. it can be a real pain!!

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Nicole Carpenter @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

i wrote about motion capture, animation, and bodies in games for TEEN VOGUE! it's very excited to have a byline at a magazine that i've been reading since i was teen✨ www.teenvogue.com/story/why-ar...

teenvogue.com

Why Are Thin Bodies the Default in Games?

Motion capture has the ability to capture fat bodies. So why don't we see more plus-size characters in games?

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Nicole Carpenter @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

looking for a few more folks to talk to for a story i'm working on about tamagotchi. has tamagotchi influenced your games or art, even going beyond the creature care genre? hit me up here or nicolecarpenterwrites@gmail.com ✨

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Nicole Clark @nicoleclark.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

why did they put mr beast in survivor. return to sender please

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Nicole Clark @nicoleclark.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

recovering from PRP and i ended up reading all manga volumes of witch hat atelier and frieren. they've been a wonderful form of escapism while healing - what else do people love? i also have loved spy x family, dungeon meshi, and hunter x hunter

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Wallace @exalclaw.com · 25/04/2026

I wrote about how Titanium Court abstracts communication and starts conversations about what we give power, paired with some funny anecdotes and insightful takes from my interview w/ @apthomson.bsky.social. Game rules hard. Give it a read, maybe share if you like it! exalclaw.com/titanium-cou...

exalclaw.com

Titanium Court Makes You Reckon With Your Own Magic

AP Thomson's surreal strategy game creates the space for players to examine their ability to give things power.

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Nicole Carpenter @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

it felt trivial at times to be writing about video games at rikers, which is so notoriously dangerous for incarcerated people. still, play and, specifically, video games are a meaningful piece of the lives of the ~12 young men i met and played with at rikers. read: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/a...

nytimes.com

A Virtual Escape for Rikers Inmates

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madeline! @mads.haus · 27/04/2026

I wrote about the “vagina doors” in Metroid Prime 4 - and what they say about Samus’ relationship to the planet. v grateful to be at Mothership!

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

absolutely incredible example of AI making up problems to solve that aren’t real problems nobody needs “inspiration” on how they like their coffee??????? are you serious????? I’m asking ChatGPT to tell me what tastes good??? “computer, what do I want for breakfast?” this is dystopian actually

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Mia Sato @miasato.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

New: 150 unionized ProPublica workers are on strike TODAY over AI, layoff protections, wages, and more. They're asking readers to not visit ProPublica or engage with content on other platforms. It's the first work stoppage of its kind at the newsroom. www.theverge.com/news/908401/...

theverge.com

Unionized ProPublica staff are on strike over AI, layoffs, and wages

A key issue is protections against layoffs from AI

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Jaya Saxena @jayasaxena.com · 06/04/2026

Today, my fellow founding worker-owners and I are launching a subscription drive to @feedravenous.bsky.social. We are a group of experienced and award-winning food journalists here to publish thoughtful writing and incisive reporting from around the food world. www.weareravenous.com

weareravenous.com

Ravenous Is a New Worker-Owned Food Culture Media Company

For too long, food media has felt toothless. Help us take a bite out of it.

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Chris Plante @plante.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Happy World Autism Day. Being the parent of an autistic kid rocks in ways you can’t imagine unless you live it. My son woke me up this morning and explained the order of Hollywood studio acquisitions between Columbia, Tristar, and Sony Pictures — while eating ube ice cream. It was 5am.

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Nicole Clark @nicoleclark.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

this makes me so angry - in what world is any of this appropriate or justifiable? and even with "disclaimers" everything else about the piece looks like a typical interview. it's the equivalent of using ad space to publish misinformation, or the tiny disclaimer or side effect print in pharma ads

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Nicole Clark @nicoleclark.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

the handbasket continues to be one of my favorite sources of independent journalism

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Cass @cassmarshall.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

i don't know what a cozy game is anymore and i don't think you do either www.rogue.site/editorials/g...

rogue.site

We gotta tackle the big cozy question in gaming

Some of your picks for your favorite "cozy" games are absolutely bananas

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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Newsletter bundle alert—me, @marisakabas.bsky.social, and @katelynburns.com are offering a 1-month trial for 50% off our usual subscription prices! It's a one-time payment, no strings attached. With so many newsletters out there, we wanted to try something new! trustfnd.com/kattenbarge/...

trustfnd.com

Trustfnd | Indie Media Bundle

Three creators collaborating.

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Nicole Carpenter @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

i wrote about my rainbow pencil and getting back into art

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Mia Sato @miasato.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

this is completely insane: since when is it acceptable for a tech company to rewrite news outlets' headlines without their consent? especially at a time when audiences are sensitive to how stories are framed in headlines? (ie Israel/Palestine, the Trump admin, ICE) www.theverge.com/tech/896490/...

theverge.com

Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines

Let us know if you see more.

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