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hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
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@hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
180 followers 120 following 300 posts
alleged narrative designer. i make educational games about books & ecology & whatever.

hope to hear from you soon,
— d.h. (from Brooklyn)
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hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
signs & wonders
in the street between two parked cars, a cylinder of clear resin sits. there is a circular object encased by the resin. The same cylinder of resin, up close. It is now obvious that the object encased in the resin is an everything bagel.
November 12, 2025 at 4:40 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
🤔
July 25, 2025 at 1:26 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
haven't seen a page like this in a long time. glad to see we're sticking to tradition even in this automated age
July 18, 2025 at 4:54 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
oh good thing my favorite lebanese restaurant is now serving Lhicken Shicup, meade wih love.
A poster hung in the window of a restaurant. It has clearly been made using generative AI. It has several places where the words have turned into indistinguishable blobs, or words have just been spelled wrong. Notably, the poster says “Lhicken Shicup” is for sale for $6. No such item exists on the menu of this restaurant.
May 16, 2025 at 9:40 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
oops

(this was published in 1964)
A photo of a page from the introduction to a book. It says: “The proletarians had originally been the poverty stricken masses of ancient Rome, who had no property save their children (proles). The Roman poor had nothing whatsoever to do with factories, but Marx took over the term for modern factory workers because he liked its grand Romantic historical sweep. In spite of his formal economic definitions, Marx usually included all the urban poor in the proletarians, whether they worked in factories or not. He was convinced that with the evolution of industrial society, almost everybody would become proletarian. The peasants would be drawn into the cities by economic necessity, and most of the bourgeoisie would become bankrupt by capitalist com-petition, and would sink into the proletariat. This has never happened; it was one of Marx's most famous wrong predictions. As industry advances the working classes grow, but the middle classes grow more rapidly still. There has never been a country in which the industrial workers were a majority.”
May 10, 2025 at 5:25 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
working
A screenshot of some text I'm writing for a Choose Your Own Adventure game. It reads: So it was all the more stunning to Buck that this fish, a vision of beauty so rare & wet, had appeared to him of all dogs. He fell-- with no recourse, no remedy, & no regard for the logistical challenges of terrestrial-aquatic relationships-- in love.

 IF BUCK TRIES TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE SALMON, GO TO XX 
IF BUCK TRIES TO GO MEET THE SALMON, GO TO YY
May 8, 2025 at 4:50 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
re:polygon layoffs— there we go, the thesis of big media. to provide unmatched value to advertisers ($$$), too bad about the workers.

the statement also puzzlingly claims the audience (whose value is being extracted by ads) will also enjoy the riches of this conversion.

kotaku.com/polygon-sold...
A screenshot of one paragraph in the linked article. It reads: Valnet is based in Montreal and operates Screen Rant, Game Rant, Comic Book Resources, and other mass aggregators. The company is run by Hassan Youssef, who got his start in digital media with online porn websites. "The addition of Polygon not only strengthens our editorial muscle but also amplifies our ability to deliver unmatched value to both audiences and advertisers," Youssef said in a press release today.
May 1, 2025 at 8:49 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
i've decided that i'm going to run for an office, any office. that way it's election interference if anyone attempts to hold me accountable for any crime ever
a screenshot from a newsweek article about the New York mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo. i have not provided the title or URL of the article. the screenshot says the following: Cuomo, the son of former New York governor Mario Cuomo, served as 56th governor of New York from 2011 until he resigned in 2021 following a slew of sexual harassment allegations, although he denies the claims and has avoided criminal charges. He still faces a potential battle on another legal front, however, with House Oversight Chair James Comer requesting that the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate and potentially prosecute him for allegedly lying to Congress about New York State's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in nursing homes. Cuomo's spokesperson Rich Azzopardi told Politico the claims were "nonsense," adding: "As the DOJ constantly reminds people, this kind of transparent attempt at election interference and law-fare violates their own policies."
April 24, 2025 at 3:14 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
trying something
April 20, 2025 at 9:40 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
(cw suicide mention)
the first paragraph of the wikipedia article for the court case “United States v. Swartz.” It reads as follows: In United States of America v. Aaron Swartz, 945 F. Supp. 2d 216 (D. Mass. 2013), Aaron Swartz, an American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist, was prosecuted for multiple violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA), after downloading academic journal articles through the MIT computer network from a source (JSTOR) for which he had an account as a Harvard research fellow. In September 2012, federal prosecutors charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, charges carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines plus 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution and supervised release. Facing trial and the possibility of imprisonment, Swartz died by suicide in January 2013, and the case was consequently dismissed.
April 17, 2025 at 6:43 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
this little thing is incapable of knowing & also knows everything of substance
April 9, 2025 at 10:40 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
i made the digital whiteboard app evaluate poetry
March 21, 2025 at 7:38 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
a photo of a large sign hung on a brick wall. The sign says “Welcome! GOD IS LOVE. Cathedral of.” there is clearly a word missing at the end of the sign.
March 16, 2025 at 2:14 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
i’m participating in the boycott thing, but also:
A screenshot of the wikipedia page for “Safety Valve Institutions.” The body of the article reads: Safety-valve organization or safety-valve institution is a term used in sociology to describe social organizations which serve to allow discontented individuals to act out their opposition to elements of society without coming into direct contact with the elements, analogically "letting off steam". Another screenshot of the wikipedia page for “Safety Valve Institutions.” The body of the article reads: Safety-valve organizations reduce tensions; in the structural-functionalist perspective, it can be said to have a tension-reducing latent function. Safety-valve organizations are outlets for behavior that is considered deviant but cannot be eradicated from society, and such organizations prevent tensions from accumulating; thus tolerance of some deviant behavior in various safety-valve organizations prevents more serious problems.
February 28, 2025 at 7:41 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
online.hbs.edu/blog/post/br...
A screenshot of the linked page, which says the following. Let's look again at Toys "R" Us. They have two big glaring problems - one, their Net Margin is negative, they are losing money. This is the effect of competition and the toy-market squeeze mentioned earlier. Second, they have an incredibly high debt load - an equity multiplier of 5.35. This is a consequence of Bain Capital's purchase and sale of them in the early 2000s - private equity often adds a high amount of debt to companies in order to generate returns for its investors. Often, the companies are selected based on their reliable, stable returns - in other words, they can often pay this debt load without trouble, and Toys "R" Us in 2005 likely seemed to be such a company. A screenshot of the linked article which says the following: This analysis suggests that the debt alone wasn't enough to destroy the company. The debt just multiplies whatever is happening with the other two values. That meant, when things went wrong, they went really wrong. A combination of both competitive pressure and high debt load was required to bring about the end of Toys "R" Us.
February 27, 2025 at 5:58 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
that's so cool, & i can totally see it now that you've pointed it out-- though i guess i should have already suspected! i've been loving the comic, & i'm very excited to try out the game.
February 11, 2025 at 8:35 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
child = nft
A screenshot of a job posting on linkedin. The job title is "Game Designer, CryptoKitties," and the company is called "Dapper Labs."
January 30, 2025 at 2:24 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
January 24, 2025 at 1:33 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
lately i'm feeling very seen by writing from the 60s, bleak as it sometimes is. here's an excerpt from Vonnegut. the relationship Americans have with their wealthy has existed for at least 60 years. the conflation of wealth with personal merit is a perpetually suppressing shame.
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, “It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.” It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” There will also be an American ag no larger than a child’s hand—glued to a lollipop stick and ying from the cash register. The author of the monograph, a native of Schenectady, New York, was said by some to have had the highest I.Q. of all the war criminals who were made to face a death by hanging. So it goes. Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignied poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
January 21, 2025 at 4:00 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
this is where it all started
November 20, 2024 at 11:48 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
demonstrating how to recreate choice-based narrative structures in a digital whiteboard. it functions, those blue things are buttons that move the viewport to the corresponding stickynote. i'll post links when i can
A screenshot of a digital whiteboard. Seven sticky notes are laid out in a flow chart. Each sticky note has buttons on it, & the buttons have arrows pointing to another sticky note. Upon pressing the button, the viewer's screen will automatically navigate to the indicated sticky note.
November 13, 2024 at 10:44 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
a screenshot of an Kobayashi Issa poem, along with the translator's gloss: "masse matsudai demo sakura sakura kana a corrupt world in its latter days... but cherry blossoms! The term masse refers, in Pure Land Buddhism, to these "latter days" of corruption. The beauty of the blossoms (almost?) makes up for the depravity of the world. Issa adds emphasis by repeating: "cherry blossoms! cherry blossoms!" (sakura sakura). This repetition doesn't work as well in English. Shinji Ogawa notes that Issa's repetition, sakura sakura kana, connotes the fact that many people are crazy for cherry blossom viewing. The word, demo ("although," "still" or "despite"), suggests that Issa may be saying, "Although it's a corrupt world in its latter days, people still have the heart to appreciate the beauty of cherry blossoms--or they are merry with the blossom viewing." "
November 6, 2024 at 3:19 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
Thoreau could have written this, but it’s actually an excerpt from Frankenstein (published the year after old Henry’s birth). Shelley was writing a parable in opposition to the ideal of inexhaustible, enlightenment-flavored progress (including colonialism, in her off hand).
a screenshot from the novel “Frankenstein.” it reads: > If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.
October 29, 2024 at 5:01 AM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
my personal favorite of the screenshots for this game
May 23, 2024 at 6:45 PM
hotlocalwizards.bsky.social
i know what this means in corpo-speak, but also this does make it look like the company that handles my job-contract offers some wet & wild benefits
March 20, 2024 at 4:44 PM