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By: Paul Connell, Thomas Forth, Luke StrangeLocal Government is the OG "Test & Learn" Delivery Organisation Open Innovations has always been a massive fan of fiercely independent, capable places that are connected by data. Connections allow us to get things done. We are also big fans of doing things locally so that the people doing stuff care about the outcomes. We believe in sharing work openly and widely so that …

This Week’s Tracks Of The Week: Social Media Dilemmas, Sims Visualisers, and Shit Haircuts From biting social commentary to men with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets, here’s what’s caught our ears this week: HotWax – “One More Reason” The ferocious grunge trio HotWax unleashed “One More Reason,” a fiery single that captures their raucous live energy. It’s a track they worked on with Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa. …

Welcome to Glimpse of Google, a blog series written by a former Google software engineer, offering a firsthand look into the inner workings of one of the most transformative companies of our time. This series will uncover how Google operates from an engineering standpoint and explore the broader company culture, guiding principles, and unique approaches that make it a powerhouse in technology. Whether you're an engineer, a tech enthusiast, or …

I will not be seeking out or reading that article that came out today, because I’m sure I’d find it too triggering. Besides, some revelations already came out months ago, and I read those, and I’m gonna assume the latest ones are more of the same (maybe worse). Look, I was also abused by a self-proclaimed “male feminist” when I was younger, and the audacity of these men makes me …

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The Game Hanamikoji is a 2013 game, so it's no longer a new game. I've heard many positive reviews, but only managed to give it a go recently. It is indeed a wonderful design. Succinct and clever. Hanamikoji is a 2-player card game in which you compete to win the favour of seven geishas by presenting them gifts. The seven geishas have different point values, from 2 to

What’s going on, Internet? The Blog Question Challenge has been an exciting meta blog challenge that’s been doing the rounds the past couple weeks. As far as I can tell it started over on Ava’s blog as the Bear Blog Question Challenge but has evolved as everyone outside of the Bear Blog and across the Fediverse and Indie Web community. Nobody tagged me, but I’m going to jump in anyway. …

What do you do when you've got a big 4x8 table of urban terrain setup after a mini-convention? You play Mech Attack on it, which four of us did recently. We usually play Mech Attack at the club using 10mm Scale rebased Mechwarrior Clix miniatures. However, we do have a stock for 28mm mechs for convention games... They are made from a variety of model kits, toys, and wargame models: …

Occasionally The Economist publishes nice graphs capturing social and economic trends. Here is one.It is part of a nice articleAcademic writing is getting harder to read—the humanities most of allThe downward trend in the humanities and social sciences is dramatic and perhaps not surprising.I was surprised that in the natural sciences the trend wasn't worse. The Flesch reading ease score goes from about 26 around 1960 to about 18 today. …

A budding photographer! (click to enlarge)Last year, my 11-year old (at that time) granddaughter, Emilie, came to me and told me that as a part of her school's Beta Club activities, she needed to make and submit a photograph. There was no specifics as far as subject matter but she knew the date her photo had to be submitted. In short, we spent some time talking about which subject she …

When you’re working on a key for a dungeon or other location, it can be difficult to come up with all the concepts you need to round the place out. One trick I’ve learned to cut this in half is to write rooms in pairs. So the idea is that you maybe have a shitty or boring list of rooms like so: 1d6 goblins. Treasure chest with some gold. Empty …

I wrote recently about the “vibe shift” that’s currently underway, and how we might build out way out of it. Joan Westenberg hits on a similar theme, and makes a powerful call for “pragmatic meliorism” – that is, neither deluded optimism nor destructive cynicism, but rather a pragmatic belief that “things are broken, AND they can be fixed; people are flawed AND capable of growth; systems are complex AND can …

I’ve been writing these solo gaming reports since March of 2020… but my solo gaming started a lot farther back than that – being a wargamer in the 1970s/80s meant that a lot of your collection only saw table time if … Continue reading →

– A couple of years ago, Mr. Money Mustache lost some credibility among the faithful when he wrote this blog post about actually trying to spend a bit more money, while buying a Tesla as the first step in that program. “Look at me!”, I thought to myself at the time, “I’m such an enlightened middle-aged Badass, adjusting habits and realigning myself at the snap of my fingers. Onward to …