Dr. Emily Friedman

I’m now also: - Liles Prof of English - 26-27 @folger.edu Public Humanities Fellow - under contract with @mitpress.bsky.social for my next book on the history & making of Actual Play (performance of TTRPGs) - work ahead on why/how we play, tied to ideas about community, story, fame, & friendship

I'm going to try to do this cleanly. Today's right wing governments are networked to each other. Those networks are well-documented. You can read about them in books. Following the elections in one node of that network is good practice for understanding the U.S. node.

1/ Holy shit, this woman who earns less than $50K is spending her nights and weekends finding furniture for NYC public housing residents, aka God's work www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

This is such a fantastic photo: "The Witches' Tea Party" but I want to use it to explain the origin of the tall, pointy witches hat. The real story of this photo: These are residents at the Hospital of the Holy & Undivided Trinity: an almshouse in Castle Rising, Norfolk, England established 1610.

There is something demoralizing in listening to a fan podcast that misses the point entirely. There’s something a little reassuring when you realize only a few dozen people have probably heard it. There’s something re-demoralizing when you consider that’s still several classrooms’ worth of people.

My friend Joe Chevalier (owner of Yellow Dog) put Melissa Albert’s THE CHILDREN into my hands & said it would be of interest. He was right, & I may never forgive him. WHEW.

Let’s be so clear: this is the work that gets us a little further down the road towards preservation. Combined with Anne’s savvy with metadata, it promises to make a MEANINGFUL database for Actual Play.

We resent universities as proof that a touch‘o’socialism is good actually so we blame them for all of capitalism’s externalities.

Oh, it’s THEE litmus test for misogynoir and it works across genders. Another trusty test: people who say “females.”

little bit of a tangent: i once had a department chair who physically threatened me because the graduate student he was having an affair with was struggling in my class. i ended up resigning a few months later. so dating a student can have far-reaching consequences beyond the abuse of the student.

Since it’s come up, I’ll be at Metatopia doing some panels, & quietly at PAXU. In January will be speaking in UK at @bsecs.bsky.social Still doing calendar Tetris for spring & figuring out Folger events but looks like I’ll be speaking in Midwest & East Coast. Will be at CircleDC & (maybe?) GAMA.

New reading list in the comments.

The self-help hustle influencers trying to find a commodifiable niche on AI is sincerely the bleakest stuff I’ve seen on socials.

Very interesting new video from @cozyrpgreviews.bsky.social where he tries to learn how to play Orbital Blues by ONLY playing the solo supplement The Wanderer by @moreblueberries.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmMK...

Random question for @ecfriedman.com or anyone else who knows: how would I find a good history book on the enclosure acts of the 18th century? I'm finding it hard: lots of sweeping histories on the history of the landscape or the concept of enclosure generally, not much that's specific.

This issue is one of the most important to me, personally. I had to sacrifice a lot to work at Wizards. I wrote a really funny twine game last year and had several more in the works. I stopped work on all of them when I became a D&D game designer. I lost a creative outlet that was important to me.

This whole thread up and down is FASCINATING about the politics of dissertation depositories (and databases more generally)

Meet the baby I’ve been cooking up for the last year. Out next summer. Pre-orders soon!

Think of a video game from your childhood. Maybe the one you didn’t have the hardware to play. You could seamlessly be playing it for free ten minutes from now if you want

Currently, Hasbro’s guidelines keep us from having total ownership over the work we make in our free time. Our union aims to change that and ensure we own what we make in our free time. actionnetwork.org/forms/uwotcp...

Thanks so much to student journalist Brendan Fijol, who allowed what was supposed to be a fluff piece on a new faculty book to instead highlight the catastrophic state of academic labor at GU & beyond, and the coordinated attacks on thought since 2020. + @devingarofalo.bsky.social

This article is incredible: it’s so rare to see any media cover a new book in the humanities not just as new knowledge 😮 but as a contribution to an urgent public debate about the material conditions of knowledge 😮😮

My mind is just collapsing at the "we have far-right entryist groups offering themselves as middle-men to hook you up with professional hitmen, but our big priority is covering up pride pins" of the present BBC.