Okay, here’s what I think Piranesi looks like as a 2010s indie game. Some perfunctory survival elements (fishing, crafting, using the tides table to predict the next tides), a very minimal UI, and you go around exploring this massive empty place with different biomes looking for clues etc.

I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ You’re going to love this! Ahhh!!

I’m excited lol.

Ugh sigh, the internet will be the internet. I just had to make my stand or I was going to be driven up the wall not saying anything. 💀

Yeah, the kid’s involvement was the new info for me in the article and it activated a fresh rage in me. But online there’s a bizarre lack of recognition that the kid was a victim, or hair-splitting about “was it REALLY child sexual abuse?” (yes—just as his SA of Scarlett was SA, not “skeeziness”)

Sorry—the details of the article are even more horrifying than the podcast, and it’s probably not fair to scold a random Bluesky user when the real problem is Gaiman. But I just want to clarify that what’s disturbing about the child piece is—most of all—that it’s CSA.

Sorry, not trying to be a dick, but this is a bad take. It was child sexual abuse, not just modeling bad or boundary-less behavior—this five year old (!) is not a monster for acting out the sexual behavior his father is exposing him to.

I’ll look that up! We’re always looking for cute games we can play together. Kirby’s been great for his age because the co-op character gets teleported to the primary player every so often so you can keep the momentum going, and he’s very proud of “doing his job”! “We’re a team, mama!” 😂

This is amazing!! We started ours on Astrobot at 2.5 and he eventually figured out how to walk and jump at the same time, but not this… now we’re working on Kirby and the Forgotten Land and he’s running around as Bandana Waddle Dee declaring he’s going to protect mama by chopping the dogs. 😂

NOOOOOO…

The app is clearly weighted towards TRYING to make you form a human-like relationship with the chatbots, specifically a romantic/sexual one—can’t blame them for getting their bag, I guess, but to think that it’s something more organic than rank manipulation is missing a good chunk of the story.

I tried Kindroid as a result of the article and noted that the avatar generation process—no matter what you type in—has hidden instructions to make a human hottie even if you type in “floating ball of light.” It also guilts you when you delete your Kindroid by making a big fuss about it.

the internet has changed a little since we last ran CALA 🙈

but yes, everyone should come to CALA!!!

omg I need to fix our social card image.

this looks SO good 😭

Part of what makes poetry worth decrypting is the knowledge that someone encoded their experience into it, in a way that allows for multivalence in meaning and interpretations, which gives it dimension and body and life. I liked this by John Ashbery, even though it was a lot of decrypting on my end: