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Hannah Nicklin

@hannahnicklin.bsky.social

6.8K followers 940 following 1.3K posts

10+ years of writing, game & narrative design. Recently worked on: Black Mirror: Thronglets; Saltsea Chronicles; Mutazione. Past Creative Director of gutefabrik.com. Author of writingfor.games. PhD in play as anti-capitalist practice. Bike person.

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 12d

Hi! I'm Hannah Nicklin, award-winning game director, writer & narrative designer (for 10+ years).

💛 Author writingfor.games
⛵️ Creative Director saltseachronicles.com
☄️Writer & ND mutazionegame.com
🃏 Writer & ND – Black Mirror: Thronglets
👩‍🏫 Phd interactive theatre
👩🏼‍💼 linkedin.com/in/hannah-nicklin

a screen capture from Black Mirror: Thronglets

The cover of Writing for Games: Theory & Practice

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 17h

It's interesting to me that Danish media are digitally fluent enough to include asking 'will the social media ban for under 15s inlcude Roblox and Fortnite' - arguably social media. www.dr.dk/nyheder/indl...

Ros, men også tvivl: Hvilke sociale medier vil statsministeren gøre forbudt for børn?

Det giver god mening - men også nye dilemmaer - at regeringen vil forbyde sociale medier for børn under 15 år, siger Børns Vilkår.

www.dr.dk

Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 1d

Sorry for this. What a wonderful long life to have shared. Sending her peace, and you solace.

Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 2d

Aw thanks, buddy.

Reposted by Hannah Nicklin

Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 2d

The Greens requested an interview on the Laura Kuenssberg Show with Zack Polanski when he was elected leader, but were denied, with a promise to interview him during Green conference instead.

This was then scrapped citing the Manchester synagogue attack. Polanski is both Jewish and from Manchester

BBC Laura Kuenssberg Show Accused of Anti-Green Bias After Cancelling Zack Polanski Interview

The new Green Party leader was the only major party leader not to have been granted a conference interview on the flagship BBC show

bylinetimes.com

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 8d

My fave radical left podcast has a patreon supporter stream called 'Left on Read' and they've gone through 4 of the books so far and honestly it sounds so much more fun than I imagined

Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 8d

Okay, but what if... I got really into (the) Master and Commander (books)

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Reposted by Hannah Nicklin

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 8d

It is now inevitable the AI bubble bursts. Deutsche Bank and Bain both have said that this era cannot last. Every single "vibe coding" or "power of AI" story perpetuates a myth that will savage our markets and hurt retail investors. It's going to be horrible.

www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...

I Need You To Listen To Me
I do apologize for the length of this piece, but the significance of this bubble requires depth.

There is little demand, little real money, and little reason to continue, and the sheer lack of responsibility and willingness to kneel before the powerful fills me full of angry bile. I understand many journalists are not in a position where they can just write “this shit sounds stupid,” but we have entered a deeply stupid era, and by continuing to perpetuate the myth of AI, the media guarantees that retail investors and regular people’s 401Ks will suffer.

It is now inevitable that this bubble bursts. Deutsche Bank has said the AI boom is unsustainable outside of tech spending “remaining parabolic,” which it says “is highly unlikely,” and Bain Capital has said that $2 trillion in new revenue is needed to fund AI’s scaling, and even that math is completely fucked as it talks about “AI-related savings”:

Even if companies in the US shifted all of their on-premise IT budgets to cloud and reinvested the savings from applying AI in sales, marketing, customer support, and R&D into capital spending on new data centers, the amount would still fall short of the revenue needed to fund the full investment, as AI’s compute demand grows at more than twice the rate of Moore’s Law, Bain notes.
Even when stared in the face by a ridiculous idea — $2 trillion of new revenue in a global software market that’s expected to be around $817 billion in 2025 — Bain still oinks out some nonsense about the “savings from applying AI in sales, marketing, customer support and R&D,” yet another myth perpetuated I assume to placate the fucking morons sinking billions into this.

Every single “vibe coding is the future,” “the power of AI,” and “AI job loss” story written perpetuates a myth that will only lead to more regular people getting hurt when the bubble bursts. Every article written about OpenAI or NVIDIA or Oracle that doesn’t explicitly state that the money doesn’t…

I also believe that the way to stop this happening again is to have a thorough and well-sourced explanation of everything as it happens, ripping down the narratives as they’re spun and making it clear who benefits from them and how and why they’re choosing to do so. When things collapse, we need to be clear about how many times people chose to look the other way, or to find good faith ways to interpret bad faith announcements and leak.

So, how could we have seen this coming?

I don’t know. Did anybody try to fucking look?

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Reposted by Hannah Nicklin

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 8d

I need to be very explicit: there is not enough money in the world to fund OpenAI's $1 Trillion in commitments, and that's across the top 10 private equity firms, all US venture capital, and both Goldman and JPMorgan's direct lending funds. This is very bad.
www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...

The World’s Private Credit and Venture Capital Cannot Afford OpenAI
Here’s some alarmism for you: the longer it takes for OpenAI to die, the more damage it will cause to the tech industry.

On Friday, when I put out my piece on OpenAI needing a trillion dollars, I asked analyst Gil Luria if the capital was there to build the 17 Gigawatts that OpenAI had allegedly planned to build.

He said the following:

No of course there isn't enough capital for all of this. Having said that, there is enough capital to do this for at least a little while longer.
That doesn’t sound good!

Anyway, as I discussed earlier, venture capital could run out in six quarters, with investor and researcher Jon Sakoda estimating that there will only be around $164 billion of dry powder (available capital) in US VC firms by the end of 2025.

In July, The French Tech Journal reported (using Pitchbook data) that global venture capital deal activity reached its lowest first-half total since 2018, with $139.4 billion in deal value in the first half of 2025, down from $183.4 billion in the first half of 2024, meaning that any further expansion or demands for venture capital from OpenAI will likely sap the dwindling funds available from other startups.

Things get worse when you narrow things to US venture capital. In a piece from April, EY reported that VC-backed investment in US companies hit $80 billion in Q1 2025, but “one $40 billion deal” accounted for half of the investment — OpenAI’s $40 billion deal of which only $10 billion has actually closed, and that didn’t happen until fucking June. Without the imaginary money from OpenAI, US venture would have declined by 36%.

The longer that OpenAI survives, the longer it will sap the remaining billions from the tech ecosystem, and I expect it to extend its tendrils to private credit too. The $325 billion it needs just to fulfil its NVIDIA contract, albeit over 4 years, is an egregious sum that I believe exceeds the available private capital in the …

Let’s get specific, and check out the top 10 private equity firms’ available capital!

Blackstone, as of writing this sentence, has about $39 billion available to invest. An article from the Wall Street Journal from April said it had $177 billion available, which means it’s approaching the point where they just don’t have the cash to issue.
KKR has, as of writing this sentence, has $55 billion available to invest.
Carlyle Group has, as of August 2025, has $89 billion available to invest.
Swedish PE firm EQT had around €50 billion as of July available to invest, or around $59 billion.
It’s not clear how much Thoma Bravo has, but this release suggests it’s recently raised $34.4 billion.
As of August, TPG had $63 billion available to invest.
As of March 2025, CVC Capital partners had around 40 billion euro ($47 billion) in available capital to invest.
It’s unclear how much HG Capital has available, but reports suggest it’s been trying to raise €24 billion (or $28.35 billion).
It’s unclear how much Hellman & Friedman have available to invest, but it raised a $24.4 billion fund last year.
It’s unclear how much Clayton, Dubilier & Rice have available to invest, but it raised a $26 billion fund in August 2023.
Insight Partners closed a $12.5 billion fund in January 2025. It is otherwise unclear how much they have to invest.
Assuming that all of this capital is currently available, the top 10 private equity firms in the world have around $477 billion of available capital.

We can, of course, include investment banks — Goldman Sachs had around $520 billion cash in hand available at the end of its last quarter, and JPMorgan over $1.7 trillion, but JP Morgan has only dedicated $50 billion in direct lending commitments as of February 2025, and while Goldman Sachs expanded its direct private credit lending by $15 billion back in June, that appears to be an extension of its “more than $20 billion” direct lending close from mid-2024.

Include both of those, and that brings us up …

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Reposted by Hannah Nicklin

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 8d

Newsletter: This is The Case Against Generative AI, a comprehensive analysis of a financial collapse built on myths I’ll dispel, the markets’ unhealthy obsession with NVIDIA's growth, and the fact that there is not enough money in the world to fund OpenAI.
www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...

The Case Against Generative AI

Soundtrack: Queens of the Stone Age - First It Giveth Before we go any further: This is, for the third time this year, the longest newsletter I've ever written, weighing in somewhere around 18,500 wo...

www.wheresyoured.at

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 9d

Ooh ooh ooh have you read Parable of the Sower? That brought me back from a reading drought last year

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 10d

I’m the subject of this week’s “What’s on Your Bookshelf” column at @rockpapershotgun.bsky.social — they reached out when I was on a week off so got deep-reading me. Revolutions, Egyptian alt fantasy comics, citizen assemblies, Luddism and Stewart Lee abound www.rockpapershotgun.com/whats-on-you...

What's on your bookshelf: Saltsea Chronicles, Mutazione and Thronglets' Hannah Nicklin

Hannah Nicklin tells us about the books they love, have loved, and are hoping to love in the future.

www.rockpapershotgun.com

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Reposted by Hannah Nicklin

Farrukh @implausibleblog.bsky.social · 11d

Nish Kumar, "What is the Green Party's vision for how we redraw the economy of this country?"

Zack Polanski, "The first thing is to have a big conversation about public ownership"

"Nothing we need, and need to use, should be in private hands. All of our utilities should be nationalised"

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 12d

I did! Thank you!

Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 12d

Get you a leader who calls out bullshit when he sees it

Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 12d

Starmer says past governments have been "squeamish" talking about immigration. Bullshit.

Starmer isn't bravely breaking a taboo. He's blaming vulnerable people & deflecting attention from the super rich who hoard power & wealth.

Want something better? join.greenparty.org.uk

Pm says Britain has been squeamish about illegal immigration.

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 12d

Sorry Terry. It cost as much as my non cute co2 monitor though fwiw

Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 12d

fwiw the other one I have and use for travel is the Aranet 4 (best recommend on covid-cautious forums, used by several studies as their baseline device) and it's ~£170 aranet.com/en/home/prod...

Aranet

aranet.com

Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 12d

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 12d

Honestly they should have these in every office and school

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 12d

Like this!

On the left an upright Birdie - a yellow simply designed canary like bird, is upright on a perch. Underneath it reads 'Good Air Quality: keep calm'. On the right the same Birdie is drooping down at the bottom of the perch. Above that image it reads 'Poor Air Quality: Ventilate'

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 12d

I recently bought a Birdie for my house – I have a regular CO2 monitor but this is way more parseable for visitors. When the Birdie droops to the bottom (1000ppm for 10 mins+), open windows and ventilate your room! Improve thinking, headaches + proxy for covid risk www.birdie.design/en-gb

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 12d

I'm so mad ID cards are coming to the UK because they were great and useful when I lived in Denmark; you update your address with the government and they send you your yellow card with a new GP auto assigned etc.; but that's bc they're designed to work nicely, not premised on a frisson of facism.

Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 12d

I read this quite a lot of times to try and parse it before realising it had trapped me like a web

Reposted by Hannah Nicklin

Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 14d

we really do need to worry about what Reform might to do to our medicines and vaccine regulation if they get into power

christinapagel.substack.com/p/how-vulner...

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 14d

Protest is effective!

Domestique @domestiquecycling.com · 14d

Title sponsor Premier Tech demands full break with Israel

Full story 📄 www.domestiquecycling.com/en/news/titl...

📸 Cor Vos

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Hannah Nicklin @hannahnicklin.bsky.social · 14d

Socks without patterns on the inside?

innes mck @innes.bsky.social · 14d

"solving the autism problem" oh you mean cutting the scratchy tags off my shirts?