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Aaron Helton

@aaronhelton.com

100 followers 260 following 650 posts

He/Him Library systems dev @ UN Library en/es TTRPGs, ♾️ DM Reader. Writer. Digital Humanist in training @ CUNY GC. William Blake stan. Queens, NY www.aaronhelton.com and blog.hilltown.studio Likes/Reposts ≠ endorsements.

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Aaron Helton @aaronhelton.com · Jun 27

At the beginning of the year I made myself a goal of publishing a TTRPG adventure, which I've never done before. After making a last push on writing, then learning layout and making my own art, here's the result!

Dead I Am the Rat: Play as rat zombies to defeat the cat lord!

#mausritter #osr

Dead I Am the Rat by hilltown

A Mausritter adventure about defeating the cat lord.

hilltown.itch.io

Reposted by Aaron Helton

Gretchen Felker-Martin 🍉 @scumbelievable.bsky.social · 2h

I don't like him personally, but David Simon on AI is the final word on the subject.

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Reposted by Aaron Helton

dorian @doriantaylor.com · 2h

tribble with a butthole

Mark Hurst @markhurst.bsky.social · 2h

I'll see your creepy robot-hugging pillow and raise you a surveillance tribble.

"Moflin: always by your side." A young woman takes a selfie while holding a furry surveillance device. "Your Smart AI companion: A calming presence. A quiet reassurance."

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Aaron Helton @aaronhelton.com · 9h

That might be fair. It does seem curious though that she would spend time talking about looking back to look forward, then sort of fail to look back at the more recent history of capitalist accumulation. But that's why it reads like a particular kind of breathless tech-optimism.

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Aaron Helton @aaronhelton.com · 9h

*Michel Houellebecq has entered the chat*

Aaron Helton @aaronhelton.com · 10h

Yeah, basically. But the political context into which this lands *now* codes at least vaguely right wing, especially when the result of some of that gamification ends up looking like a weaponization of Poe's Law.

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Aaron Helton @aaronhelton.com · 10h

Even if we in some way accept McGonigal's diagnosis, it's really hard to square the prescription with the lived reality of the last 14 years. We've *had* more gaming applied to real life, and let's just say the path from there to here has not been politically neutral.

Aaron Helton @aaronhelton.com · 10h

Fortunately I just have to read the intro and one chapter.

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Aaron Helton @aaronhelton.com · 11h

I hadn’t read Jane McGonigal before but the intro to Reality is Broken (2011) reads like techbro pablum. Is that just me?

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The Scholarly Kitchen @scholarlykitchen.bsky.social · 12h

Guest Post — Rethinking Disciplinary Data Regimes scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/10/08/g...

Guest Post - Rethinking Disciplinary Data Regimes - The Scholarly Kitchen

Between a political policy environment focused on defunding and deleting data collections – an environment in which little can be trusted – and an onslaught of new AI tools that feed indiscriminately ...

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org

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Aaron Helton @aaronhelton.com · 21h

I assuredly will not be home before 10. Still gotta catch a bus.

Aaron Helton @aaronhelton.com · 21h

Me: This F train might actually get me home before 10.

F Train: lol. *Stalls three stops away*

Reposted by Aaron Helton

Asa Donald | Backwards Tabletop @backwardsttrpg.bsky.social · 1d

Part of my writing process for SPINE was to write exploratory essays and conduct interviews on ideas that informed the project.

The first interview in this series is with @jdragsky.bsky.social on playing with books, what ttrpgs can learn from fiction, and being a “slut for physical books”!

Jay Dragon on Bookplay

An interview with Jay Dragon about how ttrpgs play with books

www.backwardstabletop.com

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Reposted by Aaron Helton

Lorde Stan Account @knightattheopera.bsky.social · 1d

My friend Directsun is on a mission to get more people creating Zelda-style puzzle dungeons. Give his blog a read and let him talk you into it:

puzzledungeon.com/puzzle-dunge...

Puzzle Dungeon Design: Themes & Gimmicks

Here are a couple of formalized steps for crafting puzzle dungeons that feel at home at the table—and are actually fun.

puzzledungeon.com

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𝕍∃, Cyber closed shell syndrome relief fund coordinator @vortexegg.com · 1d

I’ve been airing an idea to do a disaster comms on atproto project, based on known issues in the disaster response space about disaster comms being stuck on centralized tech platforms (cf @faineg.bsky.social‘s recent post on this). However based on recent events I’m coming to question the merits.

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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 1d

I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections

After Dinner Conversation® @afterdinnerconversation.com · 2d

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Reposted by Aaron Helton

Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 2d

favorite genre of film noob post is "why do my film photos look like film photos?"

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Reposted by Aaron Helton

🎃 🧟 Prof. Dr Beth Singler 👻 🎃 @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 2d

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𝕍∃, Cyber closed shell syndrome relief fund coordinator @vortexegg.com · 3d

The AI aspect of it aside (but also included too), this quote is a great summation of the thesis of our modern epistemic culture of make-believe: The imagination, unmoored from any reciprocal responsibility to the real (be that material reality or the humanity of other people) is a gaping abyss

Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 3d

"any philosophy of technology that is severed from the material impacts of the technology is interesting, but limited in utility: a thought exercise....A great deal of suffering arises when we act on our solitary imaginations of the world, rather than working toward clarity through dialogue."

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 3d

Wrote more about Benjamin Bratton's paranoid imagination of a media studies cabal holding back AI progress in Europe. mail.cyberneticforests.com/is-the-media...

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Aaron Helton @aaronhelton.com · 3d

Otra vez en español

KOKOTÖNA Pre-launch LIVE 📌|E💀C @elchupalabras.itch.io · 3d

#KOKOTÖNA es un #TTRPG basado en el sistema de #MÖRKBORG e inspirado en los mitos, naciones y leyendas de la mesoamerica precolonial.

Chequen el trailer y síganos en Kickstarter!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/elc...

#RPGLatAm #rolentuidioma #lodelrol #juegosderol #SelfPromoSunday

KOKOTÖNA - Tráiler de Kickstarter (Español)

YouTube video by El Chupalabras

m.youtube.com

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Aaron Helton @aaronhelton.com · 3d

I had forgotten about this in the Too Much Everything since.

Reposted by Aaron Helton

Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 3d

Really, the only people with the skills and stamina to deal with people who think the plagiarism machine is their friend, are parents of toddlers.

They're used to dealing with people who can't read, think weird things, and keep desperately trying to do stupid and dangerous things.

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Rakesh Khanna @blaftrakesh.bsky.social · 3d

When I was researching my book Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India, I learned of a 1000-year-old myth about Roman tech being used to build killer robots to guard the Buddha's remains in Pataliputra, and a Hungarian folklorist read my book & got excited about it, & she managed to dig up a🧵(1/3)

Romanised Pali manuscript of the Lokapannati

Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India
p. 60
Bhoota Vahana Yanta
Bhoota Vahana Yanta means “spirit movement machine.” The term is used
for several varieties of robot drone assassins and sword-wielding machine-
men mentioned in the Lokapannati, a Pali-language text written between
1000 and 1200 CE by Saddhammaghosa of Thaton, but concerning
events that took place much earlier, around 500 to 200 BCE.
According to the story, robots were first invented by engineers of the
early Roman Republic. These robots were used for commerce, in agriculture,
as a police force, and as executioners. The secret of how to build these
spirit-engines was fiercely protected. If any engineer dared to take the designs
out of the city, one of his own executioner robots would come after
him and kill him.
At that time, in Pataliputra (then in the kingdom of Magadha, now
Patna in the state of Bihar), there lived a young man who had heard of the
Romans’ magical androids. He became so determined to learn the secrets
of their manufacture and share them with the people of Magadha that he
arranged his own death. Then, on his deathbed, he vowed to be reincarnated
as a Roman.
This indeed took place. In his new life, the man grew up to join the
Roman guild of engineers. He even married the daughter of the Master
Robot-Maker, and had a son by her.
Once he learned the secrets of the Bhoota Vahana Yanta, the man resolved
to transfer the information back to Pataliputra. But he was well
aware that now, since he was a member of the guild, he would be killed as
soon as he left. So he cut a gash in his thigh, inserted the plans in his flesh,
and sewed the wound back up.

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Anise K. Strong @anisekstrong.bsky.social · 3d

This is the most amazing bit of cross-cultural mythmaking ever. I wonder if this was inspired by myths of Talos? Anyhow, I am very sorry that the secretive guild of ancient Roman robot engineers never existed, though pleased they were appropriately unionized.

Rakesh Khanna @blaftrakesh.bsky.social · 3d

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 3d

Something I've noticed in AI generated essays that replicates a habit I've tried forever to get my students out of is the tendency to compliment a text rather than analyze it. So many "the text does an excellent job" or "the text makes a robust argument that", but these claims don't *claim* anything

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Aaron Helton @aaronhelton.com · 3d

Framing "AI" this way removes all human accountability when, in fact, it's the humans that will use the technology against us. Whatever else it is, product or collection of technologies, etc., "AI" is a political project.

Rose Schmits @roseschmits.bsky.social · 3d

Let’s fucking go we better respect the robots before “they use us“

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