optional.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Who gets to punch Nazis in a video game?

submitted 17 hours ago • 4 comments

There should be an international boycott of the 2028 LA Olympics: 'the president directed the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to deny visas to “**** attempting to fraudulently enter the United States while identifying themselves as women athletes” during the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles'

submitted 18 hours ago • 0 comments

GayCityNews [Feb 25] -- My piece with Denise Norris on the sudden and unexpected resurgence of the trans street action group, Transexual Menace, 30 years after its founding. [@rikiwilchins.bsky.social‬]

submitted 20 hours ago • 2 comments

I've given the latest Franz Ferdinand a couple listens and, man, my mind just slips off it. Can't hold my attention. I think it's just too thoroughly what I expect, so little stands out. The closest I've gotten is with "Cats." #optionallistening

submitted 19 hours ago • 0 comments

"Union del Barrio activists were already on the scene, prepared to intervene. They reported seeing five ICE agent vehicles. The activists, known for their community patrols, quickly mobilized to the scene, using loudspeakers to demand the agents' departure." #LosAngeles www.foxla.com/news/ice-rai...

submitted 20 hours ago • 8 comments

Mixed feelings about Kele's latest, but I think the album as a whole more interesting and arresting than his previous solo efforts. Nice reverb and delay, but the lyrics are... too plainly stated? Not a lot of subtlety. Sometimes, though, I think that works, like on this track: #optionallistening

submitted 20 hours ago • 0 comments

submitted 16 days ago • 7 comments

Looking for a different career path after another brutal season on the academic job market? I've been there. So, for @chronicle.com, I compiled some alternative paths where grad students can excel, along with concrete steps to start down them. www.chronicle.com/article/5-go...

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

Roberta Flack was one of the 20th century's greatest artists. So much more than the songs that crossed over and became universal, though those songs alone earned her immortality. RIP to a woman who changed the sonic landscape. Here is my long essay on her genius www.npr.org/2020/02/10/8...

submitted 1 day ago • 22 comments

Took my time getting around to it, but the Terry stuff in World Tour is fun fan stuff. Check out the off-brand KoF gang! #optionalplaying Mai is next, ofc.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Resumed playing Super Grid Runner and it’s got that severley tasteful @stinkyox.bsky.social flavor. #optionalplaying

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Ayyyyyyyy www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fkso...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

This is a great poem by Gwendolyn Brooks and deserves the spotlight. Credit to the format of the linked version, too. #optionalreading

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965 at the age of 39.

submitted 4 days ago • 6 comments

Double #optionalplaying and #optionallistening involves Symphony of the Night. The Colosseum music rips. Genres smashing in pop beats and Spanish guitar. Other thoughts on the game later, but it sure has the jams.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

"Released on 1st January 1994, Robert Hood’s ‘Minimal Nation’ saw the pioneering Detroit producer distill techno’s futuristic intent, creating a stripped-back, raw, and percussive record that became a defining work of the minimal techno sound." How ‘Minimal Nation’ defined minimal techno:

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Horkheimer and Adorno (1947) Lamar (2017):

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

It's still the season for love! Maybe it's always the season for love in Undertale? Read all about its big star (no, not that skeleton, not that one, either) in @srtrzinski.bsky.social's piece on Mettaton in our Love & Robots series!

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Game 12 was Tetris DX. A fun time, but marathon is nowhere near the challenge of the original GB game. I do like the versus CPU mode, though. #optionalplaying

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Haven’t sent one this tough for a little while. Slight curve to the wall, holds are more shallow and wider, so grip has to be more open.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Game 11 was Arkanoid: Eternal Battle. I stuck with this one for a few hours, playing different modes, because I remember Arkanoid and various clones fondly. I doubt I'll remember this one in the same way. #optionalplaying

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Had some luck at the record store

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

Watching The Gorge. As with a lot of things I've watched lately, I think videogames are to blame for a lot of this. But at least this time, that's in a fun way.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Can’t stop won’t stop @chenbot.bsky.social Playing Tetris DX after 200k on original GB felt like I had been training on high gravity, DBZ style.

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

At the stonewall monument rn

submitted 11 days ago • 50 comments

Game 10 for 2025 was Tetris (GB, NSO emulator). #optionalplaying

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

#optionallistening

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

If you understand that apartheid was an economic system first, and a brutally violent system of social segregation second, you'll understand how Elon Musk is trying to update the principles from his homeland, and bring about a neo-apartheid system in the US. My latest in @thenation.com

submitted 12 days ago • 128 comments

Incoming!

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Yasmin Williams is up to try and cool things down. Good tapping abounds on her album, Acadia. Somewhere between Kaki King (feat. on one track) and the Flecktones. I’m surprised no Wootens were involved with “Nectar.” But with those sure fingers, I guess Williams didn’t need ‘em. #optionallistening

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Folks are shocked that their institutions, after professing commitments to climate justice and DEI, are now caving to Trump and scrubbing all references. It's brutal. And it's the smallest taste of what our students felt when their universities called in the cops b/c they protested a genocide.

submitted 14 days ago • 26 comments

Just spending an early part of my day downloading Access files of collected US Dept of Ed data from the NCES in anticipation of it being taken down.

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

They’ll put Alan Wake into anything these days.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Next on 2024 listening was the fall album The Smile put out, Cutouts. I like it a lot better than Wall of Eyes for some reason. Probably worth investigating. I like the digital slink Yorke, Greenwood, and Skinner got up to on this track that carries into the next: #optionallistening

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Listened to DRUG CHURCH earlier. Fun hardcore album, I’d put it somewhere between recent Fucked Up and Turnstile in sound. The album is short and hard and I don’t think there’s a bad song on it, judging from my first listen. #optionallistening

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments