The Necronomnomicon
Today’s Worldember article is about The Cookbook of the Dead. Read at World Anvil Facebook…
QAGS 3E Overview “Podcast”
So Google Notebook LM has an option where you can generate a podcast about whatever sources you’re using. When I was looking for a Notion replacement, I fed it a bunch of “best alternatives for Notion” type articles and generated a podcast to help choose the best replacement. That worked pretty well, so I gave…
Review: Severance
So, I just finished watching the first two seasons of Severance and it was not what I thought it would be. The basic premise is that the characters work for a company that splits their work self and their outside self into two completely separate personalities. Based on that and some of the comments I’ve…
The Real Danger of AI
Last month I wrote several articles about why I don’t think AI art is the threat some people make it out to be. Today I’m going to talk about the thing that I do think is scary as hell about AI. Oddly, this doesn’t seem to be something people are too concerned about. I’ve mostly…
Understanding The Assignment: Heavy Metal’s Angry Mob
A while back, I saw a Kickstarter for the return of Heavy Metal magazine. Since I’ve always been at best a casual reader, I didn’t realize it had gone anywhere. But I feel like Heavy Metal magazine something that should exist in the world, so I backed it. I back a bunch of Kickstarters, and…
Review: Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games
Jon Peterson’s Playing to the World was one of those rare books, like Guns, Germs, and Steel or High and Mighty, that’s extremely engaging despite covering subject matter that seems like it should be boring as hell. While I’m not bothering with the multi-book “let’s see if they’ll buy it twice” reboot of Playing to…
Will AI Lead to the Enshitification of Art?
I’ve spent three articles telling you why the most common arguments used by AI opponents are stupid. Most are based on a refusal to understand how anything remotely related to AI—including the software itself, computers in general, intellectual property law, and the creative process—actually works. The rest are based on magical thinking. There is one,…
Mythologizing Creativity
A common argument against AI creativity is the belief that art requires a unique, magical force unlike any other human skill. The most simplistic arguments focus on the physical tools and processes used (paint/ink/whatever vs. pixels), echoing similar arguments about photography, Photoshop, and probably brushes (“Real artists use their fingers!”). In the 1990s, these morons…
Wiki Articles Are Wizards Play-Thru Review
I backed Ben Meadows’ Wiki Articles Are Wizards [Citation Needed] during this year’s zine quest because I like wizards and I like game-like systems for generating RPG stuff (my article about using Tarot cards and IMDB to generate campaign history is probably around here somewhere). The PDF was delivered earlier this week, so I gave it…
Let’s Talk About AI, Part 2
Last time I talked about some common reasons people give for pretending that we can keep AI from becoming a thing. Most of those involved legal or technical issues and tend to be the talking points of people who actually do creative work and are scared, but not scared enough to actually do research. I…
Let’s Talk About AI
Generative AI has become a go-to scare topic for slow news days in recent years, and it’s a frequent topic of internet yelling, usually by people with a very limited grasp of how the technology actually works. I’m not going to claim that I’m expert on the topic, but since I’ve actually used AI, I…
