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playleft.bsky.social
Playleft
@playleft.bsky.social
290 followers 570 following 230 posts
actor playwright theater ttrpg husband dad Evanston Chicago
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playleft.bsky.social
Sure, the world is horrible and Bovine is back in Chicago, but least you can go to cutting-edge live theater events like (checks notes) a simulation of jury duty.
Screenshot of a sponsored instagram reel by thejuryexperience showing a stage set depicting a courtroom with the supertitle, "your vote in court." Some sillhouetted audience members are visible in the foreground.
December 18, 2025 at 1:00 AM
playleft.bsky.social
Lighting the menorah for tonight's first night of Hanukkah, but wishing that the dreidel game had better narrative theming?

Play the second edition of Maccabees & Menorahs: a Hanukkah microRPG. 2025.adventproject.org
December 14, 2025 at 7:19 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Rightfully the Sun-Times article on Bovino is getting a lot of traction, but I haven't seen anyone post this non-Bovino detail that hit me hard. chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdog...
Screenshot text from Sun-Times article: Bovino’s wilderness photo op About 30 miles west of El Centro, 81-year-old widow Edie Harmon lives in what she calls the first house north of the border, frequently bumping into Border Patrol agents on long walks in the Yuha Desert, sometimes strolling on the concrete road alongside the 5-year-old border fence. Agents in El Centro had warned journalists of “bandits” in that area, but Harmon scoffs at the notion there’s danger lurking. She walks around the desert wearing the multicolored shoelaces she finds near the border. Arresting agents make migrants leave the laces, she said, so they can’t use them to hang themselves while in custody.
December 14, 2025 at 5:05 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Buy PRINCIPAL PRINCIPLE for the angry teacher in your life. www.dramaticpublishing.com/principal-pr...
The original cast of Principal Principle by Joe Zarrow -- 5 women educators of various races and ages standing in a cluttered office in a public high school.
November 27, 2025 at 2:31 AM
playleft.bsky.social
Step 1 for Student Success: remember never to refer to the school by its acronym.
Screenshot of LinkedIn Job ad: Program Manager Student Success Universal Technical Institute 3.6 3.6/5 rating United States $90,000 - $100,000 a year Easily apply
November 22, 2025 at 2:56 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Weird that they're rebooting the Zelda film franchise when an amazing adaptation of Breath of the Wild came out just last year.
Promo poster for the animated film FLOW, depicting a curious black cat sitting on the prow of a boat, sailing towards mysterious distant ruins. Blurry birds and pull quotes, as it's a low-res image. The color scheme and exploratory vibe of FLOW reminded me a lot of BREATH OF THE WILD, is all I'm saying.
November 17, 2025 at 7:29 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Caught a bit of the dire and derivative MOANA 2 on mute while I was at the laundromat.

I am convinced that in 10 years we will be remem(e)bering Maui's face the same way we remember Shrek's -- as an eldritch cgi animated horror, mayor of the uncanny valley.
Maui's hideous computer generated rictus from Moana 2.
November 14, 2025 at 3:07 AM
playleft.bsky.social
Tom Hayden with some Evanston-specific frustrations to ICE response. www.foiagras.com/p/weekend-op...
Screenshot of Tom Hayden Foia Gras newsletter: The local PTA is patrolling outside of the school. Why are the Evanston Police always last to the scene? Then it lists 4 examples of EPD sluggishness from 9/10 to 10/31.
November 1, 2025 at 1:33 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Who I was trying to dress up as:

Who everybody thought I was:
Grainy video still of a white man (better known as "Sandwich Bro") in a pink polo shirt, backwards hat, and khaki shorts winding up to throw a subway sandwich at several ICE officers on a city street. Jared Fogle, disgraced sandwich pitchman, standing in front of a yellow-white-green Subway logo and wearing a Subway-branded under armor top. (I will let you figure out why he was disgraced, if you don't already know.)
October 27, 2025 at 8:12 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Hey theater companies: don't do this. (From @bcmerchant.bsky.social 's newsletter Blood in the Machine www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/artists-ar...)
Screen shotted newsletter text: ostume designs have been replaced with AI output that can’t be made by people who actually know how clothes work. I work in the field of constructing costumes for live entertainment: theater, film/TV, ballet/opera, touring performers, etc. Budget and scale is all over the map, from low-budget storefront theater in which one person designs and secures costumes for a production, up to a big-budget Broadway spectacular, which can have a dozen people on the design team alone and literally hundreds of makers creating the costumes from designs developed by the design team. I’m seeing this happen typically on the low-budget to midrange end—community theater/high school theater, independent film, etc.: Producers and directors eliminating the position of costume designer in favor of AI image generation. It comes up often in professional forums in the field, someone will share the AI generated costume. “designs” and they will be literally impossible to construct for an actual human with materials available in the actual world— gravity-defying materials on pornographically cartoon bodies, etc. -Rachel E. Pollock
September 27, 2025 at 1:29 PM
playleft.bsky.social
In his newsletter, @bcmerchant.bsky.social has started discussing AI usage in terms of addiction, which sure sounds right to me.
Brian Merchant newsletter screenshot: "It’s clear that AGI is a construct to be waved away by tech CEOs when convenient, to serve as a trojan horse for the growing droves of hooked users. It's clear that there is a cohort of boosters, influencers, and backers who will promote OpenAI’s products no matter the reality on the ground. It’s clearer than ever that, like so many well-capitalized tech ventures, OpenAI’s aim is simply to create a product that is either addictive to users to maximize engagement or to dully automate a set of work tasks, or both. It’s clear that it is succeeding, to some extent, in each endeavor. And it’s unclear if even a dramatically fumbled launch can turn the tide, even as we stand on the brink of what is almost surely an enormous bubble. "
August 12, 2025 at 12:54 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Is that the author of the op-ed, or is it part of the title?
Washington Post screencap op-ed: Rahm Emmanuel, What's really depressing America's young men
August 10, 2025 at 2:14 PM
playleft.bsky.social
It's Friday, or as we call it at our house, hate-read-the-responses-to-a-pedantic-George-Will-column-searching-for-subject-verb-agreement-errors-o'clock.
A reader notes that "quantum" is a frequently misused word. I highlight the text "Other examples of its [sic] misuse is in the James Bond movie title "Quantum of Solace."
August 8, 2025 at 8:35 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Today in dystopian job titles: "Classroom Security Paraprofessional"
Linked-In Screenshot: THE MENTA EDUCATION GROUP (logo is a turquoise lightbulb wearing a black graduation cap and emblazoned with a cursive "M") Classroom Security Paraprofessional Hillside, IL. Posted 15 Hours Ago. Zero people clicked apply.
July 30, 2025 at 7:29 PM
playleft.bsky.social
"AI Evangelist" is quite a title.
June 21, 2025 at 2:13 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Almost thought the arboretum was announcing a mascot named NIMBY, which would be odd.
June 4, 2025 at 5:57 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Note to self: it's more fruitful to search for #sagaftra than #sag on here
A screenshot of my Bluesky feed. First post from my #SAG search links to an article about SAG-AFTRA filing charges against Epic Games over use of an AI Darth Vader voice. Second post from a user named "samyyysagger" has the text "Sagging at work" with a winky emoji and a photo of his butt with his jeans pulled down, revealing an alluring pair of turquoise new balance boxer briefs. Samyyy has many such posts.
May 21, 2025 at 3:18 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Artistic Director: So, marketing, who are you hiring to do the poster for the next show?
Marketing: You're never gonna believe this....
Poster with AI-generated image of 3 art deco style robot heads. Text: Bo List's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), Freely Adapted form the play by Karel Capek, World Premiere, Directed by Brian Pastor, May 2 - June 15, 2025. Previews May 2-10. City Lit: Literate Theater.
April 25, 2025 at 8:47 PM
playleft.bsky.social
I was going to say elephant for never forgetting, but that animal unfortunately has R*publican associations. I did love those elephant disc logos back in the 80s.
A 5 1/4" floppy disc and its packaging, labeled "Elephant Memory Systems - Single Sided Double Density Soft Sector - Apple, Atari, Kaypro, Osborn, Radio Shack. The logo is an elephant's head facing the viewer.
April 15, 2025 at 2:34 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Overly disappointed that the American Theater April Fools post features AI art.

It's a joke for a lark on a dumb holiday on a dumber internet. Just doodle it in crayon or do it as plain text, jesus.
American Theater article for April Fool's Day reading "Ionesco's 'Rhinoceros' to be Staged as Nationwide Immersive Spectacle." AI-generated picture of a rhinoceros with an extra ear standing in a big box supermarket.
April 3, 2025 at 12:08 AM
playleft.bsky.social
In addition to the good Wisconsin news, something local and good for Evanston: Boarini's brief political career hopefully over. evanstonnow.com/boarini-back...
Vote chart showing Daniel Biss defeating Jeff Boarini for mayor of Evanston by approximately a 3:2 margin as of this posting. Boarini arrived moments ago,and is shaking hands and hugging his backers. He told Evanston Now he’ll hold off on any comments for the moment, but added with a smile, “I’m glad that it’s over.” Boarini hoped to build an anti-Biss coalition of voters unhappy with the mayor’s handling of issues such as the Ryan Field vote, the lease of 909 Davis Street , and the handling of the long-range Envision Evanston plan, but it wasn’t enough to block Biss from a second term. Meantime, at Boarini HQ, a bluegrass band provided the tunes. “We’re the Smiletones,” announced one band member. “But tonight, were the Jeff Heads.”
April 2, 2025 at 2:36 AM
playleft.bsky.social
Seems like this audition posting is for "beloved" character R*nald McD*nald.
auditions.leagueofchicagotheatres.org/audition/tsm...
text from link text from link screenshot from TSMGI website listing client logos, including the McDonald's "M".
February 25, 2025 at 1:21 AM
playleft.bsky.social
When a cable news anchor reposts me and gives me a big drink of the attention economy.
Film still from DUNE 2 showing an ornate bottle holding the water of life / blue sandworm juice.
February 23, 2025 at 2:16 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Are you in academia? Are you stressed the heck out? Check out my spouse's March 1st workshop, "Managing Anxiety When Academia is in Crisis."

www.maryleighton.com/workshops
Flyer text appearing on an peaceful, colorful, abstract background: "Mary Leighton, LPC An Online Wellness Workshop for Academics Managing Anxiety When Academia is in Crisis For more information and to register visit: maryleighton.com/workshops Everyone working in and around higher education was already over-stretched before January. But threats to federal funding, the attack on "DEI", and the general atmosphere of uncertainty and fear are pushing colleges and universities into an existential crisis. Led by a licensed mental health counselor who specializes in working with academics, in this workshop we explore how to manage stress, fear, and anxiety while staying true to your values. Issues to be addressed will include: I want to do SOMETHING but I was already overcommitted to start with. Privilege and guilt. Balancing staying sane with staying informed. Is my fear getting out of proportion? Living according to your moral compass. Practical things you can do right now to protect your boundaries. Saturday, March 1 11am - 12pm CST"
February 21, 2025 at 2:19 PM
playleft.bsky.social
Truly, a lot going on, but I would love to never see a profile of these particular abusive asshats ever again.
February 4, 2025 at 5:14 PM