Reading Time: 4 minutes In the new season of Neil Gaiman’s comedic fantasy, an angel and a devil have to save humanity, again—and sort out their own complicated relationship along the way.
pop culture
Posted inArt
A ‘City’ in the Nevada desert shows the glorious human-ness of art for its own sake
Reading Time: 6 minutes A colossal work of art called City recently opened for viewing in Nevada. Over a mile long and a quarter-mile wide, taking 50 years to complete, this installation makes a huge splash even when seen from high overhead. It’s a statement that speaks to one of the most human things about us: our desire to […]
Posted inGaming
Holiday gifts for the gamers on your list
Reading Time: 8 minutes From the video game player to the one who prefers offbeat indie card games and more, we’ve got you covered!
Posted inFilm/TV
Candace Cameron Bure’s ‘traditional marriage’ movies are doomed to fail
Reading Time: 5 minutes Candace Cameron Bure, the actress best known for her role in Full House (and, more recently, Fuller House), is leaving her cushy gigs with the Hallmark Channel for a “more sweeping role” at a conservative alternative called Great American Family, where “traditional marriage” will take center stage. She told the Wall Street Journal that the […]
Posted inReligion
‘He Gets Us’ can’t possibly clean up Christians’ tainted brand
Reading Time: 11 minutes Recent stories indicate that the evangelical-backed He Gets Us campaign is still going strong. But the evangelicals responding to it have missed an important point that destroys whatever goodwill they might be fostering through their endless billboards and carefully-placed ads: their god does not have a brand, but his followers certainly do—and this tragically misguided […]
Posted inGaming
Gaming through the fear of failure
Reading Time: 12 minutes It’s not your imagination: games really have gotten easier over the years. The reason has everything to do with my generation’s fear of failure, and our need to get payoffs we can’t get in real life.
Posted inSocial Media
Musk’s free speech claim on Twitter backfires within a week
Reading Time: 3 minutes In April, the richest person in the world made an outrageous offer to buy a popular and complex social media site. What appeared at first to be a disgruntled billionaire throwing a tantrum because he couldn’t tweet what he wanted has somehow snowballed into Elon Musk actually owning Twitter. The self-described “free speech absolutist” believes […]
Posted inGaming
The heartbreak of nerfing
Reading Time: 8 minutes Excessive nerfing can lead to an erosion of trust in the playerbase. It hits at the heart of our sense of fairness. And perhaps more than anything else, gamers want games to be fair—or at least skewed in their favor.
Posted inSocial Media
The bizarre history of the ‘Norm of the North’ Twitter account
Reading Time: 2 minutes Corporate twitter handles are usually grotesque, cringey mouthpieces that try to pass off unfettered capitalism as “companies are people just like you.” Whether it’s KFC tweeting that it’s “Morbin’ Time!” or Greyhound tweeting “Spoiler Alert: The Best Seat is Every Seat” between responding to furious customers asking why rain is coming through the roof of […]
Posted inGaming
Does not game well with others: The art of the kick
Reading Time: 12 minutes In gaming as in real life, teamwork skills matter. When one player didn’t get the memo, the game master makes the kick.