Joshua Foust 🪖🎮
@joshuafoust.com
Made the CommSky Starter Pack https://go.bsky.app/QkcgePD
Assistant Professor at Syracuse. I study public relations, military esports, video games, and gender theory. Happily 🏳️🌈.
Assistant Professor at Syracuse. I study public relations, military esports, video games, and gender theory. Happily 🏳️🌈.
Pinned
Joshua Foust 🪖🎮
@joshuafoust.com
· Oct 13
New Research: Masculinity as an Affect, and What It Means for Video Games
I contributed a chapter in a new volume, The Handbook on Gender and Digital Media, about how we can start to use affect theory to better understand how men behave the way they do with video games. …
joshuafoust.com
Recently had a chapter published in the Handbook of Gender and Digital Media, where I develop a theory of “affective masculinity” to try to better understand what masculine genders are doing in video games. It tries to answer the question: what work do feelings do for men who play games? 1/9
The nice thing about sitting at the end of a bar minding your business is that you overhear the most incredible complaints about spouses and families
wendy williams is sitting in a chair drinking a cup of tea and saying the tea is exceptionally good today
ALT: wendy williams is sitting in a chair drinking a cup of tea and saying the tea is exceptionally good today
media.tenor.com
November 26, 2025 at 9:29 PM
The nice thing about sitting at the end of a bar minding your business is that you overhear the most incredible complaints about spouses and families
I just think this is neat
The fifth and final drilling campaign of the Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice project has just begun in Antarctica, at the remote field site of Little Dome C, 3,200 metres above sea level.
An international team of 15 will drill the bedrock beneath the Antarctic ice sheet and take duplicate ice samples.
An international team of 15 will drill the bedrock beneath the Antarctic ice sheet and take duplicate ice samples.
November 26, 2025 at 9:15 PM
I just think this is neat
Turns out, surf rock from West Java is outstanding
Tatalu by LAIR on Apple Music
Song · 2024 · Duration 2:56
music.apple.com
November 26, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Turns out, surf rock from West Java is outstanding
“Some parents have ‘gone wild with boundaries’” is a completely unhinged thing to say about children not wanting an adult to touch them
Yep this sounds like someone who would speak to a representative sample of grandparents
November 26, 2025 at 5:21 PM
“Some parents have ‘gone wild with boundaries’” is a completely unhinged thing to say about children not wanting an adult to touch them
Whole lotta Gender going on with this discourse
So many men go through life like that. You can play poker because it's right-coded, you can't enjoy fruity alcoholic drinks because they're women-coded, you can't lick an ice cream cone because it's gay-coded. All day, every day, choosing and judging things based on coding for narrow norms.
November 26, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Whole lotta Gender going on with this discourse
Canva and Grammarly have sucked all the life and interestingness out of submitted work. It all looks the same: flat templates that simulate professional feel with nothing spontaneous in the mix. This same-ifying technology has prioritized speed and scale so much it made everything feel drab.
November 26, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Canva and Grammarly have sucked all the life and interestingness out of submitted work. It all looks the same: flat templates that simulate professional feel with nothing spontaneous in the mix. This same-ifying technology has prioritized speed and scale so much it made everything feel drab.
Reposted by Joshua Foust 🪖🎮
Grateful for folks going to Neurips to present research on biases in generative AI. Also thinking about Toni Morrison's timeless quote that the function of racism is distraction.
Tired of technologists putting the burden of proof on scientists to prove predictable harms.
Tired of technologists putting the burden of proof on scientists to prove predictable harms.
November 26, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Grateful for folks going to Neurips to present research on biases in generative AI. Also thinking about Toni Morrison's timeless quote that the function of racism is distraction.
Tired of technologists putting the burden of proof on scientists to prove predictable harms.
Tired of technologists putting the burden of proof on scientists to prove predictable harms.
In a lot of ways, generative AI is the perfect technology for the era of know-nothing politics
Ironically, it seems I’m running into more and more AI boosters who think they can solve problems without the tiniest bit of subject matter expertise, geohazards in my case, because, you know, the AI has the expertise. Do we now have vibe subject matter experts, too?
November 26, 2025 at 1:55 PM
In a lot of ways, generative AI is the perfect technology for the era of know-nothing politics
Reposted by Joshua Foust 🪖🎮
"Fractured Facts: How Generative AI Fuels Anti-Immigrant Misinformation" socialmedialab.ca/2025/11/25/f...
Fractured Facts: How Generative AI Fuels Anti-Immigrant Misinformation - Social Media Lab
Most conversations about AI focus on convenience, like how it drafts emails or speeds up everyday tasks, but the real story runs deeper. As Philip Mai shared at the Pathways to Prosperity Conference i...
socialmedialab.ca
November 26, 2025 at 1:33 PM
"Fractured Facts: How Generative AI Fuels Anti-Immigrant Misinformation" socialmedialab.ca/2025/11/25/f...
Reposted by Joshua Foust 🪖🎮
1 Can't emphasize this enough. EU is home to multiple "second-tier" great powers — who are only "second-tier" because they chose not to make large investments in military capabilities — and is itself an economic & diplomatic great power. NATO is the most powerful security confederation in history.
It sure seems like Vance leads a faction that is enamored of 🇷🇺's cultivated cultural conservative "soft power", reflexively anti-Atlanticist, and stupid enough to think that wedging 🇷🇺-🇨🇳 is a) realistic and b) worth trashing our relationship with the world's third largest economy.
November 26, 2025 at 12:22 PM
1 Can't emphasize this enough. EU is home to multiple "second-tier" great powers — who are only "second-tier" because they chose not to make large investments in military capabilities — and is itself an economic & diplomatic great power. NATO is the most powerful security confederation in history.
Reposted by Joshua Foust 🪖🎮
I reject the AI booster insistence that you must understand any and everything about the tech to make even the tiniest critique, if they can be vibe coders I can be a vibe hater
November 26, 2025 at 12:33 PM
I reject the AI booster insistence that you must understand any and everything about the tech to make even the tiniest critique, if they can be vibe coders I can be a vibe hater
“AI bot winning a MOBA” is so cutting edge it was happening before GPTs were on the market — this was from 2019.
November 26, 2025 at 11:54 AM
“AI bot winning a MOBA” is so cutting edge it was happening before GPTs were on the market — this was from 2019.
Reposted by Joshua Foust 🪖🎮
i think tech and ai positive people are going to be in for a big shock when anti tech and anti ai sentiment becomes a major part of leftwing politics going forward especially as datacenters continue to destroy communities and raise electricity bills
Is this platform still massively against AI or has it moved more towards acceptance?
November 26, 2025 at 5:34 AM
i think tech and ai positive people are going to be in for a big shock when anti tech and anti ai sentiment becomes a major part of leftwing politics going forward especially as datacenters continue to destroy communities and raise electricity bills
See, this is why we read the Takes — establishing credibility is important
playing the OG metroid prime way back when is a top gaming memory for me
November 25, 2025 at 11:08 PM
See, this is why we read the Takes — establishing credibility is important
Reposted by Joshua Foust 🪖🎮
That’s the second empirical study I’ve seen this week that does an excellent job w/ right-wing radicalizing discourse. The other is this study on anti-immigration in France which is fantastic (and I’m not only saying that b/c they cited my and @dkreiss.bsky.social’s work on “defensive publics”)
Flooding the Feed: The Politics of Social Media Sharing Among Defensive Publics
What political significance do widely-shared sources on social media carry? Efforts at documenting media content have produced useful insights about political phenomena, including right-wing populi...
www.tandfonline.com
November 25, 2025 at 10:12 PM
That’s the second empirical study I’ve seen this week that does an excellent job w/ right-wing radicalizing discourse. The other is this study on anti-immigration in France which is fantastic (and I’m not only saying that b/c they cited my and @dkreiss.bsky.social’s work on “defensive publics”)
Reposted by Joshua Foust 🪖🎮
Nvidia’s ‘I’m Not Enron’ memo has people asking a lot of questions already answered by that memo
Nvidia’s ‘I’m Not Enron’ memo has people asking a lot of questions already answered by that memo
The Streisand Effect strikes again
buff.ly
November 24, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Nvidia’s ‘I’m Not Enron’ memo has people asking a lot of questions already answered by that memo
This would be a massive, historic crime even if no one died — a rich guy is not permitted to arbitrarily close a government agency in a law-based society — but the massive body count turns it into an atrocity, the kind of thing we put people on trial for at The Hague.
The numbers vary from study to study but hundreds of thousands of people have died because of Elon Musk and Marco Rubio illegally disbanding USAID — a body count on par with the first eight years of the Syrian civil war — In just seven months. It’s mass death that is simply unfathomable in scale.
USAID shutdown has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, accord...
hsph.harvard.edu
November 25, 2025 at 2:07 PM
This would be a massive, historic crime even if no one died — a rich guy is not permitted to arbitrarily close a government agency in a law-based society — but the massive body count turns it into an atrocity, the kind of thing we put people on trial for at The Hague.
The numbers vary from study to study but hundreds of thousands of people have died because of Elon Musk and Marco Rubio illegally disbanding USAID — a body count on par with the first eight years of the Syrian civil war — In just seven months. It’s mass death that is simply unfathomable in scale.
USAID shutdown has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, accord...
hsph.harvard.edu
November 25, 2025 at 2:05 PM
The numbers vary from study to study but hundreds of thousands of people have died because of Elon Musk and Marco Rubio illegally disbanding USAID — a body count on par with the first eight years of the Syrian civil war — In just seven months. It’s mass death that is simply unfathomable in scale.
Reposted by Joshua Foust 🪖🎮
The African American History Behind American Mac and Cheese
(And Thomas Jefferson and more of some deeply troubled history)
www.epicurious.com/ingredients/...
tntribune.com/the-african-...
(And Thomas Jefferson and more of some deeply troubled history)
www.epicurious.com/ingredients/...
tntribune.com/the-african-...
November 25, 2025 at 1:39 PM
The African American History Behind American Mac and Cheese
(And Thomas Jefferson and more of some deeply troubled history)
www.epicurious.com/ingredients/...
tntribune.com/the-african-...
(And Thomas Jefferson and more of some deeply troubled history)
www.epicurious.com/ingredients/...
tntribune.com/the-african-...
Why do so many democrats, academics, and journalists angrily refuse to ditch this platform? I don’t get its utility anymore, to say nothing of its appeal.
"Potentially fake accounts crying at other potentially fake accounts that they aren’t real, all while refusing to acknowledge that they themselves aren’t who they say they are—a Russian nesting doll of bullshit." www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
Elon Musk’s Worthless, Poisoned Hall of Mirrors
How X blew up its own platform with a new location feature
www.theatlantic.com
November 25, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Why do so many democrats, academics, and journalists angrily refuse to ditch this platform? I don’t get its utility anymore, to say nothing of its appeal.
Jesus. Appalling decision.
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
November 25, 2025 at 12:51 PM
Jesus. Appalling decision.
“The committee reviewed all three reasons Texas A&M gave for firing McCoul…and unanimously rejected each one. It also found the university failed to investigate, did not follow its own policies and never proved the allegations used to justify her dismissal.”
This is meaningful to get on the record.
This is meaningful to get on the record.
November 25, 2025 at 12:15 PM
“The committee reviewed all three reasons Texas A&M gave for firing McCoul…and unanimously rejected each one. It also found the university failed to investigate, did not follow its own policies and never proved the allegations used to justify her dismissal.”
This is meaningful to get on the record.
This is meaningful to get on the record.
Reposted by Joshua Foust 🪖🎮
This article is fucked up in a ton of ways, several of which are ably dismantled in this thread. But it also creates this utopian idea that there was ever a time that childhood wasn't determined by adult wants and needs, entirely separate from child labor (an extremely valid point in and of itself!)
I don't think I've ever disagreed and agreed more strongly with a piece, seesawing from one paragraph to the next.
Will come back to dissect.
#GiftLink #GiftArticle
Will come back to dissect.
#GiftLink #GiftArticle
America’s Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem?
www.nytimes.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:13 AM
This article is fucked up in a ton of ways, several of which are ably dismantled in this thread. But it also creates this utopian idea that there was ever a time that childhood wasn't determined by adult wants and needs, entirely separate from child labor (an extremely valid point in and of itself!)
James Carville is, in a lot of (but not all) ways, responsible for the current state of US politics. He has no business advising any liberal candidate or party interested in winning. So, of course, he gets a “get off my lawn” essay in the paper of wrecker to keep making us lose.
Did, uh, anyone notice that when Carville claims in his NYT piece that “defund the police” was bad that the link takes you to an Appeal story about why ”fund the police“ was bad? Any editors, perhaps?
November 25, 2025 at 11:53 AM
James Carville is, in a lot of (but not all) ways, responsible for the current state of US politics. He has no business advising any liberal candidate or party interested in winning. So, of course, he gets a “get off my lawn” essay in the paper of wrecker to keep making us lose.