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@theetceteras.bsky.social
271 followers 862 following 2.5K posts

Books ; Philosophy ; Games Business and History. DiScOuRsE They/them. Reposts usually mean "take a look at this."

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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The PhysInt thing is kind of a perfect illustration of the problems with Microsoft thinking it's a console platform instead of a game publisher for PC and PS5. They're going to lose money on that deal for the sake of console wars at a time when they supposedly need to improve margins - for what?
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Like, I don't know, but I feel like there should be a more thoughtful leftist perspective on this stuff than denialism. There's kind of a lot going on...
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Doll @dollspace.gay · 28/09/2026
A left that could say “the future could be magnificent, and you deserve a share of it” was offering something people could want. Losing that voice to endless fights over whether wanting the future was itself morally suspect was a hell of a loss.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
We all complain about the media’s failures but organizations like @propublica.org and @texastribune.org are doing the work and deserve our financial support
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
So far my biggest problem with Control Resonant (which I mostly love) is how random success or failure in the big open world encounters can feel. The game spawns tons of dangerous enemies mid-fight and depending on positioning and timing this can be devastating or manageable.
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Filippo Valsorda @filippo.abyssdomain.expert · 28/09/2026
The thing that worries me most lately is that many people who know that “fascism is bad, actually” have also convinced themselves that AI tools must be eschewed as fake or impure. In a self-reinforcing loop, there is relatively little AI tooling and infra by “fascism is bad” folks.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I've been running a bit of a bake-off with Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2, but so far I'm loving both of them for different reasons. GW2 is so much more colorful it wins on the "wandering around" aspect, while ESO has a more quest-centric structure that I also enjoy despite the grey palette.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Control Resonant has been good fun so far, still learning the combat but I think it has potential. And it is so visually stunning, with such strong design. I'm playing with all the ray tracing bells and whistles and feeling like it's worth it for once - it's taken my breath away a couple times.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Leaving Jensen to the side (good CEO but I don't think he knows how to speak to normies) the idea that AI leads to some loss of capacity is just bizarre from my experience. I picked up Rust to experiment with Claude output! They are actually quite good at helping you learn, with the right skills.
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John Bistline @bistline.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Every hexagon = 500 MW of data center capacity. Line them up on a grid intensity map and you get a pretty clear picture of where America’s AI buildout is landing on dirty power, and where it isn't.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
AGI is a distraction IMV - but you are not thinking big enough about what collections of AI agents can do. No one is.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I have extremely high expectations for the (intelligent) use of LLMs in education, really glad to see some literature appearing on the topic. If you haven't tried using a really good model to help you learn something, you should.
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Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
🔥 HOT OFF THE PRESS For the first time ever, @iea.org has published a dedicated Electrification Report. An absolute treasure trove of data. Here are the key takeaways that stood out to me when I peer-reviewed it. 🧵
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
A crucial skill for posting is recognizing what someone is doing in a conversation. Oftentimes folks just want to say what they think, they definitely don't want to learn more about it or even really think about it meaningfully. This isn't necessarily trolling, but it can be frustrating.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Great news, Destiny and Marathon are some of the best fun you can have in videogames and I hope this means Sony is willing to invest in them.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
My understanding is that the way you get the English public to vote to make themselves poorer is to wrap the project in racism and a fig leaf of marketing about "Singapore on Thames".
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Played Silent Hill 2 remake and then Silent Hill F, and the new game was better than I expected while the remake was not. SH2R changed the length of the game in a way that really works against the tight, tense horror aspects, while F keeps the progression and exploration tighter and has a real story
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The back half of Spiritual Sound is extraordinary, some of the best new music since Chat Piles first LP youtu.be/s-jnvETbL0Q?...
youtu.be
AGRICULTURE - Live @ HELLFEST 2025
YouTube video by Hellfest Open Air Festival
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I'm pretty bullish on AI capabilities but deeply interested in the discussions around "reasoning" much less AGI. The plain fact is that we don't start such a conversation from a shared understanding of what thinking is - and as a result it's like talking about whether ghosts are real.
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MinmiTheDino @minmi.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026
There is actually something really beautiful to me about the conversation emerging around AI and the reminder that the tasks we set for ourselves are not for their own sake, but for our own human growth, learning, understanding and flourishing.
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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 11/09/2026
I would earnestly advise anyone remotely in a position to do it to consider an EV. still plenty of used ones on the market! www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sal...
autotrader.com
Autotrader - page unavailable
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Not sure how I would feel, if I was a small, relatively efficient development house that just got axed by XBox, about them throwing hundreds of millions at Kojima productions for basically prestige reasons. And I don't know how the math makes sense if XBox needs better margins.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
We need a genre category for open world games that are focused on creating an immersive world you want to explore for intrinsic reasons, as opposed to the map-marker driven stuff. CP2077 and Bethesda stuff is the former category, Ubisoft and Sucker Punch are the latter.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I think it was Erik Loomis who always used to argue against UBI on the basis that people and especially Americans get meaning from work and won't give that up. I think that this is true but also profoundly wrongheaded as an approach to life. "The work" isn't gathering firewood, it's making warmth.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Truly remarkable what a garbage fire the management of games production has been, this generation. 100s of millions of dollars set on fire in overly drawn out productions, half built games that never had a clear vision, and on and on. All while the talent and technology is better than ever.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Playing Outer Worlds and then Starfield made me interested in futuristic cities in games, which led me back to Cyberpunk. Playing Phantom Liberty for the first time and boy, what an amazing job they did with Dogtown - building on the foundation of Night City, it's just gorgeous.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I am trying not to become the joker over the whole "physical distribution" thing but it seems like people really don't understand that Nintendo "cartridges" don't have the games on them anymore? It's literally just a way to waste some oil distributing a license key.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I'm interested in the back story for the (dumb) XBOX cloud limits decision. If it's profit, then things are really dire over there, but my guess is they're being pressured to give up GPU resources to the cloud LLM services. Either way it seems that XBOX has no institutional support within MSFT.
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Philip Obaji Jr. @philipobaji.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Russian paramilitaries slaughtered at least 50 villagers in Koki, CAR, just to seize a gold mine. I interviewed 16 witnesses who all said the same thing: ordinary people were killed for resources. These horrors in Africa fuel instability that reaches Europe. We cannot look away.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
My strongest conviction about Starfield is that they tried to cram too many systems into it. The whole crafting system is useless for most of the game because it's both locked behind a ton of skill upgrades and the encumbrance system barely lets you carry around the endless rocks it requires.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I don't know why I find it hilarious every time bsky safety posts one of these and every one immediately runs to the replies to yell "mods! Mods! He was touching me". Stay 12, bluesky.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Shmuplations is such a great site and an amazing resource for gaming history. Also play Xevious, it's just fun.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
It's a whole party full of those guys who were like "what's the harm in humoring him" in 2020. Except now they are humoring him about whether we can just steal territory from our allies because he feels like it.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Next year is going to be a huge challenge for Ds if they do take the House, they need to find ways to exercise power. That will mean finding allies in this chaotic clown car of an administration, all of whom will suck. But the job isn't to be mad at Trump, that's what bsky is for.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
The past is another country www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDc2...
youtube.com
3-2-1 Contact! [VBZ Mixtape Vol. 8]
YouTube video by Vic Berger
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
While I agree WRT the quick fix, we should see the post Trump crisis as a Reconstruction-style opportunity. Many reforms that would have been decades-long lifts are possible because of the scope of the rubble. Look at how opinion on Israel has changed, or the courts. Rebuild better.
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Edmond Tran @edmondtran.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
If you and two friends become paid supporters of @thisweekinvideogames.com then I can commission another 1500 word piece on some obscure videogame thing you would probably never read about on a commercial website thisweekinvideogames.com/sign-up/
thisweekinvideogames.com
Sign Up - Support This Week in Videogames - TWIV
Become a paid supporter of TWIV and get access to award-winning feature articles, comments, a community Discord, and much more.
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GarabonciusVagabond @garaboncious89.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
"if someone tells you you don't need a union, you 100% need a union"
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Really pleased to see GeForce Now adding support for more GOG games - for all the bleating about discs, buying DRM free on GOG is the best way to get actually preservable games, but I'm almost completely converted to streaming for day to day gaming. This gives me the best of both worlds.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
"If MIT did not have grades, most of the incentives around AI cheating would disappear." Perfect illustration - AI in education isn't inherently a problem - it's an opportunity that we need to adapt to.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Gotta be really careful about reading intentionality into this stuff but I highly recommend reading the summary of what happened here.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Some of the most successful applications for both robotics and LLMs are in providing assistance to the disabled, and folks are gonna talk themselves into some pretty ugly ideas and statements if they take their anti-tech paranoia to the level of normalizing slurs.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
"The autochthons say that their cattle can speak but do not, knowing that to speak is to call up demons, all our words being only curses in the tongue of the empyrean." - Gene Wolfe, Urth of the New Sun
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Like I keep saying, it's a huge problem that the left broadly has no new ideas on global trade. We have an economy that's the envy of the entire world and it isn't because of fucking manufacturing.
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YTSL @ytsl.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Today (August 24th, 2026) is Gwyneth Ho's 36th birthday. So yeah, she was not yet 29 years old on July 21st, 2019. She has been behind bars since February 2021 and is serving a 7 year sentence for having taken part in democratic primaries. She remains a Hong Kong heroine to me.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
I want to call out the soundtrack for Starfield as an element that really works, both as music in and of itself and integrated with the overall aesthetic of the game. Hard to express precisely without getting into everything Starfield is doing, but it "feels" like the rest of the game.
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Jordan Kay @jnatc.im · 20/08/2026
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
The reason it bothers me that the left is developing bad dogmas on everything around "AI" because I think that leaving on AI is our best chance to have a knowledge centric sustainable economy with enough wealth for UBI, and refusing to engage with it will leave the field to the asshole VCs.
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disregarded stars @theetceteras.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Uber is a good example of what I mean - it's a garbage company that got to where they are by brazenly breaking the law and abusing their employees. But no one who tried to use the old taxi system in the US would willingly go back. Burrito taxis didn't even exist twenty years ago!
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Yeah, this is I think the sad thing that few people ever get, one of the US's killer apps is just 'really good local state universities'.
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