It’s long been said that the best work in the field of technology is done by gifted 10x engineers: contributors who work harder, smarter, faster. Some object to this idea, saying it’s unfair to the many workers who slog through unglamorous tasks and free up the 10x’ers to do their…

Let’s take a moment to talk about the “I sexually identify as an attack helicopter” meme, what it says about those who use it, and some useful ways of responding. For those unfamiliar with the genre, it derives from a 4chan copypasta story satirizing someone coming to grips with their gender identity. A guy dreams he’s a helicopter and announces his friends are “heliophobic” if they don’t call him “Apache” and let him kill people.

# Markdown Won’t Solve Your Content Problems Every few weeks I hear from a colleague who’s dealing with the tangles of editorial tools on a web CMS project. Inevitably, someone on their team suggests that things will be easier if users can’t enter HTML at all. “We’ll use *Markdown*,” they…

The Christian Right sold its moral birthright for the pottage of political power, returning for a new bowl each election. The bill is due. For me the breaking point came when I realized compassion for the poor had been sacrificed for party orthodoxy, empathy mocked, suspect. A new generation of…

Lessons learned from my first Eclipse Phase campaign — This weekend, my gaming group finished up its first full-length Eclipse Phase campaign. It was chaotic, but a ton of fun, and it seemed like a good time to record some thoughts and lessons learned.

Corruption in gaming isn’t about freelancers fraternizing with indies, it’s about the economics and psychology of covering big-budget entertainment. So, there’s a big social media campaign called #gamergate that’s been burning up the Twitters for a couple of weeks. Depending on who you listen to, it’s either a barrage of…

I know how scared you are of what you might become. The bad news is that it happens: All the hypotheticals that turned your heart to ice and dropped you to your knees, praying for grace and strength? They’re true and the slippery slope is just as steep as everyone…

February 4th, 2003 I consider Jack Chick my philosophical arch nemesis. At the very least, one of the roster of evil henchmen I had to defeat en route to the castle. He makes tracts. Really, really terribly bad tracts with pictures of Satan pointing and laughing and saying, “Har! Har…

There is no punch line. — Occasionally, when friends or colleagues play the Six Degrees game, I’ll pull out a fun trivia tidbit. I’m only three degrees away from Mobutu Sese Seko, the former dictator of Zaire. Via none other than Pat Robertson. It’s good for a chuckle — albeit a nervous one — but it’s…