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liam liwanag burke

@thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social
233 followers 367 following 234 posts

Author of Dog Eat Dog. Filipino-American. Doctoral student at UH Mānoa. Your favorite game designer’s favorite game designer. He/him

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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
this makes me think about a conversation I had with a friend where I asked them why they drank Soylent and they said “well it gives all the nutrients I need, quickly and in one drink.” this is no doubt true and for some even important but it is 100% not how I think about eating or meal preparation.
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Central Michigan University Press @cmichpress.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
We LOVE the way the covers of Dog Eat Dog and Princess with a Cursed Sword flash in the sunshine, so we took the manufacturing prototypes for a walk. Stay tuned for shipping updates! #dogeatdogrpg #princesswithacursedswordgame #liamliwanagburke #samuelarayaart #annaanthropy #evlynmoreau
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
House MD
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
the elephant in the room is that we were already told the only thing that actually matters is winning in 2020, and we delivered that, and it turned out that it didn’t actually produce the desired outcome. it shouldn’t be surprising that people generally now want a different approach
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Black, queer, radical, female, femme people & orgs literally diagnosed the problem so well that "them goons are coming" became accepted wisdom and so now everyone thinks THEY had the idea and don't need to acknowledge the work that so-called Woke Movement damn near killed themselves to teach you.
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
A small business owner’s family complicates her tax audit.
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I was just thinking this recently! Television ads have entered the Dadaist short form video era. It’s hard for me to explain to my kid that advertisements used to contain (semi)information about why the product might interest me. The attention economy has pushed out information, Gresham’s law style
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
probably also unavoidable to recognize that a big part of alternate names for RPGs is being able to tell people what you’re working on without them saying “oh dungeons and dragons” (and then, especially at that time, walking away)
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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Grete Hermann (1901-1984), brilliant philosopher of maths and quantum mechanics and first student of Emily Noether. Hermann was co-founder of the journal Ratio, and turned to political philosophy later in her career, writing in 1947:
Whoever lives in the Third Reich or otherwise comes to terms with it, but isolates themselves from the political events around them in order to occupy themselves with other, in themselves beautiful and worthy subjects, is lending their name and their work to this system. There is no neutrality towards the legal and cultural decline in public life. Whoever does not oppose it is complicit in it. Whatever beautiful and good things they may create otherwise are devalued by this participation in the social injustice with which it is burdened.
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
the imputed habitus of iPhone autocorrect
A hilarious autocorrect text mishap.
A: I just finished teaching!
B: How did it go?
A: Aw it went really well
A: I like teaching upper class mentors
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Paragraphs should begin with thesis statements and end with the repetition of their thesis statements.
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RPG Roots @rpgroots.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Another of our guests for RPG Roots Season 1, “Narratives of Oppression and Resistance,” is @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social, a doctoral student in sociology at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the author of the incredible “Dog Eat Dog” - currently being republished by @cmichpress.bsky.social
This is a poster for a guest of the podcast, Liam Liwanag Burke, showing a picture of Liam and the cover of the new edition of the game "Dog Eat Dog" against a gray background.
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
“Making a suboptimal economic decision for psychological comfort” is one economic understanding of voting, but people do like to do that even though there is no real argument that it is economically beneficial to do it!
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
I really appreciate and agree with this framing of what games are
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jay Dragon 🔜 Metatopia @jdragsky.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
SEVEN-PART PACT, my fantastical ornate TTRPG about powerful wizards, asymmetrical board games, and the pressures of masculinity is now launching on kickstarter! www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjg...
kickstarter.com
Seven-Part Pact
A fantastical, ornate TTRPG from Possum Creek about the might and folly of powerful wizards bound by a venerable Pact.
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Evan Torner @guyintheblackhat.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
The cover of Julia Bond Ellingboe's Steal Away Jordan: Stories from America's Peculiar Institution.
The photo is of a group of Black Americans in the 19th Century, presumably slaves or former slaves.
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Hi James! Sorry, DED isn’t available at this moment; I took it down from DTRPG in preparation for the CMUP edition. It won’t be available again until it shows up on the CMUP store. Sorry for the inconvenience! I’d love to hear the podcast when it comes out.
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
maybe I’m misreading you, but for me I don’t see firefly as an attempt to render liberalism at all. the Wild West is pre-liberal as a fundamental conceit! But nobody on the Serenity is Ransom Stoddard
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Also I gotta say I don’t fully agree with this diagram but I love it, it is a much more insightful model of play than some I have seen
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Until you posted the actual diagram I 100% thought you were doing a bit
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
video games are better without self
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
yes I consistently think “woke 2” is a very revealing term for people to use
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Morgan Finnsiö ⤦⤦⤦ @morganfinnsio.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
In two paragraphs, a perfect snapshot of the willful refusal of some security officials – in this case, predictably, in Trump's FBI; but this also happens in Europe – to see and name racist and far-right terror for what it is. It is not "indiscriminate" hatred, or "nihilism"; it is modern nazism.
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Dr. Mike Sellraiser III: Sell on Earth @profmikesell.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
I've been teaching Twine storygame design in middle and high schools for over a decade. Every time I do, I hear from my teacher-partners about a student who is never engaged, never asks questions, never shares their writing doing exactly that. The design mindset revolutionizes the writing classroom.
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
he’s thinking “man I hope the guy comes back soon”
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
who testified for SFFA in SFFA v harvard
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kat @katbamkapow.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
heard a guy say "you have to access it through the portal" and i was momentarily struck by how sad it is that what he said is so boring :( "accessing it via the portal" should be wonderful. we deserve that at least. it should be cool to access it via the portal and instead it sucks shit
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Twitter was exactly as important as people thought it was when it was left-dominated because they thought it was unimportant. It didn’t go from “not real life” to “the American public square” in elite discourse until the right wing took it over!
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
this seems to assume that if leftists were on X then the site’s rightward pull would be mitigated by diversity of visible opinion. If X’s reactionary impact is structural to the platform then having the leftists on X would just make them move right too, making the mean even more right wing
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
"Most people won't benefit from education." This used to be a more explicitly held view among elites! Now it is more implied.
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
I remember a large proportion of discussion of simulationism on story games consisted of efforts to identify games that we would agree were simulationist. Since none of the posters claimed to be simulationists or even to think being one would be good, there was difficulty finding agreement.
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Neil Lewis, Jr. @neillewisjr.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
One of the most clarifying passages I've ever read on what "polarization" actually means in the U.S."
Excerpt from the book How Democracies Die. 

"America's democratic norms, then, were born in a context of exclusion. As long as the political community was restricted largely to whites, Democrats and Republicans had much in common. Neither party was likely to view the other as an existential threat. The process of racial inclusion that began after World War II and culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act would, at long last, fully democratization the United States. But it would also polarized it, posing the greatest challenge to established forms of mutual tolerating and forbearance since Reconstruction."
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Quinn murphy @gamefiend.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Something I found myself talking about a bit at Somercon that might be a useful lens for folks: A brilliant fact about TTRPGs is that they can incorporate ANYTHING in them. RL actions, environmental elements, other games. All you need is narrative input and output.
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
I think fascism is about the triumph of the id over reason, and you can see that here in her invocation of “passion” and being “fed up.” she’s angry about her life. voting Trump was a way to express that anger. his obvious incompetence is the selling point.
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Hakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception” (w/ Lauren Davenport & @hrendleman.bsky.social), has been conditionally accepted at Perspectives on Politics! Sharing abstract below. Long time coming, but we are really proud of this paper. More soon!
Title page of our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception,” with Lauren Davenport (Stanford) and Hunter Rendleman (UC Berkeley), dated April 14, 2026.

Abstract: What makes someone Black in American society today? From Donald Trump questioning Kamala Harris’s racial identity to Joe Biden’s claim that hesitant Black voters “ain’t Black,” American politics frequently brings questions of racial authenticity and belonging to the surface. Yet political science often approaches race as a fixed attribute rather than a social construction. Here, we seek to understand how Americans define blackness in social and political life. Using a conjoint experiment with a racially diverse sample that includes Black, white, and mixed race Black-white respondents, we evaluate how ascribed and acquired traits influence perceptions of blackness. The results show that inherited characteristics—particularly parentage and skin tone, which are the strongest determinants of racial classification—play a central role, while sociopolitical cues such as partisanship, neighborhood context, and spousal race also influence racial classification. Using a continuous measure, we also show that respondents make graded assessments of blackness rather than purely binary classifications, with some individuals perceived as more Black than others. Black respondents are more likely than white respondents to classify a broader set of profiles as Black, consistent with a more inclusive understanding of racial membership, yet they also place greater emphasis on shared political identity. These findings clarify how racial categories are socially constructed and why that construction carries real political and social consequences.
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
TTRPG with old-school "you can die in character creation" mechanics, except most terminal events are stuff like "reached adulthood with no major traumas" or "found a love of carpentry", so your goal is to make enough bad life choices that your character is a big enough loser to become an adventurer.
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Nandita Sharma @nsharma101.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
More deaths in US immigration camps this fiscal year than over the past 2 decades!!! #NoBorders
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
It is also an interesting connection with Player of Games, where Gurgeh seems to be viewed with awe even though he pretty obviously has an unhealthy relationship with games and competition.
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
That’s a good point, and to be honest, I think it reflects the views of the Pentagon regarding what they think is really unacceptable (American troops being deployed in dumb ways, losing) and what they think is not that big a deal (bombing anybody ever).
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
But the cabinet has much less to offer. All they can tell us is that Trump is bloodthirsty and mercurial, which we already know because he keeps posting saying so.
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
I am not sure I agree with your analysis here. The Pentagon media leaks office has been working nights and weekends telling us about the various ground invasion plans they’ve been asked to prepare and be ready for, probably partly because leaking them makes them less likely to happen.
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
bonus trivia question: into how many congressional districts is the average city in Hawai’i divided?
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
live by the slate pitch, die by the slate pitch
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Sheryl Weikal says Prosecute ICE @leftistlawyer.com · 04/04/2026
Actually we should just give citizenship to every undocumented person in the United States who wants it. Walking over an imaginary line isn't some great moral atrocity. Making people live in the shadows as a permanent underclass absolutely IS.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
you may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like
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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
Let's do this one time in good faith: Wealthy private universities in blue states should be bastions of humanistic education (including basic science), fully protected from the anti-education laws being passed in red states that afflict private and public schools alike. But instead .... /1
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
although there is certainly something very American about the legitimation ritual being an intentional disavowal of previously agreed parliamentary procedure without bothering to change the procedure. america: fuck it, we'll do it live
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
there is a sense in which having to stand up and say "motion to overrule the parliamentarian's finding" at the end of every session is not really that different from having to stand up and say "le roy le vult" at the end of every session...
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liam liwanag burke @thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
there is an even better plausible future version of this where eventually every law passes by including it in a reconciliation bill and then ritually overruling the parliamentarian saying none of these laws belong in the reconciliation bill
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