Joshua Foust 🪖🎮

@joshuafoust.com

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Assistant Professor at Syracuse. I study video games, public relations, military esports, gender theory, and where they intersect. Happily 🏳️‍🌈. Recovering PR flack, national security journalist, think tanker and NGO exec.

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I’m rewatching one of the Ferengi episodes of DS9 and those little entrepreneur aliens gave us both Wallace Shawn and Andrea Louise Martin with janky teeth and huge ears squealing their lines, visibly having a blast through their makeup. This show was an absolute TREASURE.

The neat thing about fireworks I always think about. As a kid my dad explained to me how light and sound move at different speeds, and he taught my innumerate ass how to count the time between flash and boom so I could figure out how far away the explosions are. 35 years later and I never forgot.

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Hi everyone, kindly consider supporting the Kickstarter for Spacefunk! A collection of science fiction stories and poems by authors of African/African Diaspora Descent. Edited by Milton Davis Space is the place. #BlackScifi www.kickstarter.com/projects/mvm...

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I wrote about the election and the American project. www.ositanwanevu.com/will-america...

Still weird this very plain spoken call to mass violence isn’t dominating coverage!

Who's actually pushing violence? It's Trump, writes @maggieastor.bsky.social in this great NYT takedown of Kevin Roberts' "second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”" www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/u...

Heritage Foundation Head Refers to ‘Second American Revolution’www.nytimes.com Kevin Roberts, president of the group that has coordinated the Project 2025 policy plan, said it could be “bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

I think an enterprising journalist should name the donors who are willing to throw the country into fascism because they didn’t get their ego massaged on their birthday.

Step down for the birthday boys

In the first week of Disability Pride month we get the folks who endorsed the Tories during Brexit daring to talk about someone else’s election with such disrespect. British media somehow always finds a way to be worse than ours.

IMO this is a straight-up ageist and ableist image, no?

A friend just compared the press freak out over Biden to “reading a quant paper and realizing there’s no method” and that’s sticking with me more than it maybe should

You people tried this with Obama and it was stupid then too

The teleprompter is a common device for politicians. But President Biden’s use of it even in small settings has prompted frustration by some listeners.

Biden’s omnipresent accessory, even in your living room: A teleprompterwapo.st The teleprompter is a common device for politicians. But Biden’s use of it even in small settings has prompted frustration by some listeners.

I think @mtsw.bsky.social said, "don't print lies in the newspaper" is an infallible moral heuristic, and he's right, and it is one that the New York Times opinion page manages to fail on an almost-weekly basis.

he voted in 2020 and 2022 voteref.com/voters/MI/vi...

Voter Referencevoteref.com VoteRef.com is dedicated to ensuring transparent, accurate and fair elections in the United States of America.

Many reasons why Nintendo games are expensive, but among them is that they don’t take lazy shortcuts (which is why they’re so consistently high quality).

Nintendo says it will not use generative-AI, preferring to create stuff that is "unique to" them and to avoid copyrighted material used by gen-AI: gameworldobserver.com/2024/07/03/n...

I'd suggest that if they really believe different opinions should be represented then they should publish different opinions. Fascists get a fair shake as contributors. Do socialists? Trans folks? The problem isn't airing different views, but rather the opposite.

Times Opinion would argue different viewpoints should be represented. I’m fine with that (though the choice of opinions to publish defines what the paper is.) But NYT *MUST* disclose agenda and context if it wants its readers to fully evaluate a writer’s points. 2/3 bsky.app/profile/greg...

So hey, I know one candidate is old, but has the other guy done anything lately, like promising to imprison or kill his opponents, hold politicized military tribunals, exile people for their skin color, deny them healthcare or the right to marry? Anything like that? Sure would be nice to know!

Not just ugly. Textbook misogynoir. Yascha Mounk is mirroring Ilya Shapiro’s bald-faced racism. He is saying Harris’ skin color makes her illegitimate. Her gender is a problem because of… reasons (zero evidence for this in his writing). Pure bigotry filtered through overly-labored writing.

I agree that Harris has significant weaknesses as a politician but this is an incredibly ugly way to put it. Also: A centrist candidate choosing another centrist as his running mate — still not the left's fault! Leftists hate Harris, that's actually one of her weaknesses.

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Getting in with fascists because a sitting president doesn't do what you want.

I’m not saying the paper of record is trying to hound the president from office out of a fit of pique because he won’t sit down for an interview, but if it were, how different would things look? www.politico.com/news/2024/04...

NYT blasts Biden for avoiding interviewswww.politico.com The Times in a statement called it “troubling” that Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

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A day later the NYT continues its wall-to-wall coverage on Biden's candidacy. Still waiting for the "Trump should bow out" coverage. On the day we celebrate our independence from a king, and 4 days from when SCOTUS sets up the possibility of a king, this is what our media is focused on.

It's pretty disheartening to see the most influential news org push a narrative that, while important, is by no means the most important story right now. A week after a poor performance, the top 4 stories on the NYT homepage is about Biden's mental facilities. Meanwhile democracy dies in the open.

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I’ve been skeptical about the idea that there is an actual rightward turn underway at the NYT, and assumed their recent baffling editorial decisions were a result of the usual tepid liberal both sides-ism. Today I’m canceling my subscription.

All that talk about how this election is more about voter demobilization that voter turn out has some legs to it. Kathleen Kingsbury has decided to conceal the partisan affiliation of an anti-democracy activist on July 4 to convince liberals to stay home. Really unethical behavior.

Pay attention to this over the next few days: you will be able to see the goalposts move in real time because they have acceded to a set to demands that can literally never be met.

Besides the incoherent writing (“His critics have been shaken by his relative inaction?” What?), bear in mind that a test with no established success conditions can never be passed, just conceptually. It’s still all vibes. The Democrats decided to vibe their way out of defeating fascism. Incredible.

It’s weird that US political journalists don’t seem to think the President Trump being accused of multiple sex crimes against minors is worth covering as much as Joe Biden being old, right?

Breaking news: President Biden and his senior team said they accepted the grim ultimatum they’ve been hearing from almost all quarters of the Democratic Party — to demonstrate his fitness for office or face a significant effort to force him to step aside.

Biden and aides concede he needs to quickly demonstrate his fitness for officewww.washingtonpost.com Critics have been shaken by his relative inaction to directly address the panic ignited by his halting debate performance last Thursday.

Good on Vimeo for taking a first stab at this.

Vimeo's position on AIvimeo.com A message from our CEO on Vimeo's use of AI.

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Too many US reporters are too bone-ass stupid to realize that they’re going to be among the first thrown to the lions by an unleashed Trump regime, on *principal*.

Going to the coliseum in ancient Rome probably had a different feel if you were sitting in the stands vs. down in the dirt. I feel like right now democracy is down in the dirt and most journalists are just sitting in the stands eating snacks and hoping for a good show.

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The ghouls are wasting no time on this

The Biden administration cannot enforce new anti-discrimination rules in health care for transgender Americans, a Mississippi federal judge ruled, citing a recent landmark Supreme Court ruling that weakened the power of federal agencies.

Judge cites new Supreme Court ruling in blocking health care anti-discrimination protections for transgender Americans | CNN Politicswww.cnn.com The Biden administration cannot enforce new anti-discrimination rules in health care for transgender Americans, a federal judge in Mississippi ruled Wednesday, citing a recent landmark Supreme Court r...

IHE is doing more skeptical, strong reporting on the right wing ecosystem of nonprofits assaulting higher education than any mainstream media outlet. Here, a pressure group based out of a former gubernatorial candidate's home is paying him $200k and he won't disclose his donors.

Group says colleges spend big on DEI. Is it overstating?www.insidehighered.com American Transparency publishes spending investigations under the moniker OpenTheBooks but doesn’t say where it gets its own money. Its definitions of DEI positions are way too broad, says one targete...

Look, I'm just saying, after reading the way the mainstream press has "covered" the debate these past two weeks I am really not surprised that a financial reporter got scammed out of $50,000.

I really don’t get why reporters think right wing apparatchiks who have announced their intention to spill blood if they don’t get their way are being honest when they give statements to reporters about an election they have already cheated to try to win. It’s so guileless, the passivity.

“Publicly, Trump and his allies have dismissed suggestions that Biden could withdraw from the race, insisting that it is too late for Democrats to change course. Privately, they… feel it could be harder to beat another Democrat who is not Biden or Harris.” www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Trump advisers hope Biden stays in race, as they eye alternate scenarioswww.washingtonpost.com After dismissing suggestions the president could withdraw, the Trump campaign is beginning to consider having to reboot the campaign.

Cops want free access to OnlyFans, but totally not why you'd expect, it's for the children, you see, the children are why the cops need free access to OnlyFans.

Millions of OnlyFans paywalls make it hard to detect child sex abuse, cops sayarstechnica.com Cops want more access to OnlyFans to detect more child sex abuse, report says.

"Federalist 69" .... nice. But also, Hamilton says here that the president "is to be re-eligible as often as the people of the United States shall think him worthy of their confidence," aka no term limits, so I don't think we HAVE to take his writing as some kind of gospel. Still, though, 69

if only Federalist 69 were just, in its entirely, Hamilton saying super clearly “sure, this constitution has one executive leader, but I can’t stress enough that it’s different from a king because a President is accountable, including to criminal law” avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century...

The Avalon Project : Federalist No 69avalon.law.yale.edu

I just counted home page stories. The Daily Caller has five anti-Biden and six pro-Trump stories. The New York Times has seven anti-Biden stories and three that give this style of both-sides treatment to Trump. The Times really is sprinting off a cliff to satisfy their nepo-publisher’s vendetta.