Voluntary Kompromat: a blog on law, tech, games and culture.
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Alan Wake Wrote About Me!?
Y’all, I’m concerned. I was out walking with my kid today and I found a typewritten page lying in the sand on the playground. I picked it up and it looks like Alan Wake was writing about me? In the Alan Wake games, one of the core concepts is that people find typewritten pages written…
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I’m Obnoxiously Positive about the Obnoxiously Positive Threads
Facebook’s Twitter-killer is here, and it’s one big, algorithmic feed. Until trained, the algorithm will show you an inordinate amount brands, influencers, and low-effort question prompts from people with blue checks that you’ve never heard of. Even with a couple days of training, the drop-off in feed quality when it runs out of stuff from…
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I Won’t Be Romantic About Baseball
In 1992, the San Francisco Giants signed a deal which would have had the team move to Tampa Bay. Supposedly, ownership chose to make the move due to their frustration with the inability to move out of the old and inconvenient dual-use stadium Candlestick Park which they shared with the 49ers. They simply weren’t able…
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The Structural Stupidity of the Blue Check Transition
Pretend Elon Musk is the only human being in the world that is actually somehow politically and culturally neutral, and has successfully incorporated that neutrality into Twitter’s moderation. The current iteration of Twitter Blue would still be an incredibly stupid idea, made even moreso by the history and selling of the transition. Let’s pretend there…
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The Top Ten Members of Pentiment’s Village of Tassing
Pentiment is a special game. The game’s central mystery and how it plays out is cool, but not what makes it special. What makes it special is that the story’s periphery is filled with dozens of fully realized characters that make the tiny town of Tassing feel like a very real place. By the end…
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The Boring Case for NFTs
I want NFTs1 to become a normal and boring thing. But right now, depending on who you ask, NFTs are either the future of media or a hellish scam. Most widely publicized NFT projects have been get-rich-quick schemes and corporate cash grabs, and that’s just the ones that weren’t actual fraud. But the core function…