I've been learning Spanish, and tonight I hit kind of a mini-milestone. I typed out a whole-ass sentence en Español and then checked it against two different translation apps and my Spanish was SPOT ON. I'm pretty proud of this!
Brian Ambrozy
Dad, gamer, atheist, polyamorous, bass player, writer, photographer, Detroiter 🏳️🌈
I write about grief, fatherhood, relationships, politics, sex work, technology, food, and video games.
CW: I sometimes write about the murder of my 20 year old son.
Happy 2nd birthday to this little ragamuffin kitty boy who just walked right up to me and into my life in 2023. He has grown up into a delightful, playful young lad with a great personality. My little panther man, Chicken! 😍 #cats
@Taffer @codinghorror thank you! I really appreciate it
After four good interviews, six weeks of waiting, a bunch of string-along emails along with "the team loves you!" I got an email on Friday at 5pm that the role had been "put on hold".
But hey! They love me! They'll keep my information on file!
I need a job. I'm a community-building expert. I am technical and have an impressive resume. I specialize in developer and other niche technical community building.
If you know of anything that might be a fit: https://linkedin.com/in/bambrozy
Please share
@PsySal many years ago, I wrote all about it ❤️ https://icrontic.com/article/the-guardian-legend-nes
@PsySal I'd recognize the hero from The Guardian Legend anywhere
Nothing excites me more in gaming than deep, detailed, lovingly crafted world-building, and Compulsion Games' South of Midnight looks to be absolutely dripping with it. The kind of rich, lose-yourself narrative, the same feeling you get from a truly beloved novel or movie.
It is increasingly clear that the dev team behind this game cares so, so much about getting it right. This is utterly fantastic.
@jake4480 Thank you, I appreciate that :) I put a lot of effort into food photography so this is a nice thing to hear.
"What is your favorite restaurant?" - sometimes a bit of a childish question in many ways, but one that definitely makes you think.
Something I wrote during the pandemic on restaurants that were under threat of disappearing during the lockdown in 2020:
https://delightfullyweird.blog/2020/03/27/hygrade-deli-detroit/
@swade Thank you ❤️
@sparkes sadly I have also seen this.
As a community manager in the game dev world for the last six years, this makes me so sad. #gamedev is a small world. We're all just 1-2 degrees of separation from each other.
It hurts that there are people that I may actually know who engage in this evil.
@benthroop This, to me, is the single biggest thing that keeps average non-technical users away from this platform and why Bluesky is growing leaps and bounds. Mastodon is great but is only usable if you have a high degree of tech literacy. There's NO WAY my dad would bother with this, or my non-techie sister, for example.
Brian Ambrozy boosted:
My wife and many of her friends are sociologists. She forwarded me this text that one of her friends found. Apparently it was also written by a sociologist. I found it helpful. Maybe you will too.
"As a sociologist, I need to tell you that your being overwhelmed is the goal.
1/ The flood of 200+ executive orders in Trump's first days exemplifies Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" - using chaos and crisis to push through radical changes while people are too disoriented to effectively resist. This isn't just politics as usual - it's a strategic exploitation of cognitive limits.
2/ Media theorist McLuhan predicted this: When humans face information overload, they become passive and disengaged. The rapid-fire executive orders create a cognitive bottleneck, making it nearly impossible for citizens and media to thoroughly analyze any single policy.
3/ Agenda-setting theory explains the strategy: When multiple major policies compete for attention simultaneously, it fragments public discourse. Traditional media can't keep up with the pace, leading to superficial coverage.
The result? Weakened democratic oversight and reduced public engagement.
What now?
1/ Set boundaries: Pick 2-3 key issues you deeply care about and focus your attention there. You can't track everything - that's by design. Impact comes from sustained focus, not scattered awareness.
2/ Use aggregators & experts: Find trusted analysts who do the heavy lifting of synthesis. Look for those explaining patterns, not just events.
3/ Remember: Feeling overwhelmed is the point. When you recognize this, you regain some power. Take breaks. Process. This is a marathon.
4/ Practice going slow: Wait 48hrs before reacting to new policies. The urgent clouds the important. Initial reporting often misses context
5/ Build community: Share the cognitive load. Different people track different issues. Network intelligence beats individual overload.
Remember: They want you scattered. Your focus is resistance.”
UPDATE: it seems that this Threads post is the origin of the above sentiment: https://www.threads.net/@itsjenniferwalter/post/DFIu3Q2q-5P
While I don't love linking to Threads, I think it's important to give credit where credit is due.
If I wanted to stream a cozy stream about playing video games with your dad, what is the platform for that these days? I want to avoid Twitch (fuck amazon) and youtube (fuck google). What are some of the alternatives? Is Steam streaming viable? Is Discord?
@blindcoder thank you very much for these kind words. I'm so glad your video game journey with your kids is just beginning. What a tremendous joy.
Spoiler: my older son is 27 and we game together just about every night. We just wrapped up Borderlands together. We play and have a video chat going every night along with his best friend who is like another son to me. These nights spent gaming with them are an absolute treasure.
@jake4480 thank you so much for saying this. It means the world to me.
I wrote a retrospective of my time playing Eternal Sonata with my sons when they were young, and about how my own son's death happened while he was listening to music. I take a lot of solace in that knowledge. Music, and video games, are so important.
@embr maybe Feeld? It's more kink focused but there are a lot of queer folks on it
@blakespot the game. I was obsessed with the ST when I was still rocking my 130XE. As a kid from a pretty poor family the ST was inconceivably expensive and unattainable, so I just pored over every Antic magazine article about the ST I could find. Read them over and over until the pages came out of the binding. The review of Time Bandit was almost mythical status to me. The graphics were so incredible to me, I just couldn't believe it was real.
Client Info
Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.04
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst