The Fall of Avalon Hill | Naked Meeple
It began with a short notice posted on the Avalon Hill web site on August 4, 1998 by some just fired employees. The announcement stated simply that Monarch Avalon had sold its Avalon Hill Game Company division to Hasbro for $6 million, and that Monarch had terminated the AH game design people. Though the notice would be pulled almost immediately by AH management, it stayed up long enough for word to spread across the Internet faster than a Clinton scandal report. Confirmation from Hasbro, Monarch Avalon, and various financial sources soon followed, leaving wargamers facing the awful reality that Avalon Hill, which began and nourished the wargame hobby, and The General, which shaped it, were dead.
Russian government posts April Fools’ Day prank offering “election interference” – CBS News
On Saturday, the ministry posted on its Facebook page an audio file of the purported new automated telephone switchboard message for Russian embassies. “To arrange a call from a Russian diplomat to your political opponent, press 1,” the recording begins, in Russian and English. Press 2 “to use the services of Russian hackers,” and 3 “to request election interference.”
How the Like Button Ruined the Internet – The Atlantic
THIS. SO MUCH THIS: "Newspapers and magazines used to have a rather coarse model of their audience. It used to be that they couldn’t be sure how many people read each of their articles; they couldn’t see on a dashboard how much social traction one piece got as against the others. They were more free to experiment, because it was never clear ex-ante what kind of article was likely to fail. This could, of course, lead to deeply indulgent work that no one would read; but it could also lead to unexpected magic. Is it any coincidence that the race to the bottom in media—toward clickbait headlines, toward the vulgar and prurient and dumb, toward provocative but often exaggerated takes—has accelerated in lock-step with the development of new technologies for measuring engagement?"
Not in my name | ericvanrompuy.be
Go Eric. "In Vlaanderen schijnt N-VA nog onaantastbaar maar ook hier zal de slijtageslag van hun onvervulde beloften beginnen te wegen. De BRA(cke)XIT was een eerste signaal. Wie voortdurend de anderen de les spelt, krijgt dit vroeg of laat als een boemerang in zijn gezicht. Uiteindelijk zal de bevolking oordelen op realisaties en niet op perceptie. Dat moet Trump nu ook ervaren. Populisten gaan ten onder aan hun eigen slogans eens ze die moeten waarmaken. Dat zal in Vlaanderen niet anders zijn."
BBC – Culture – Whatever happened to Generation X?
Once we go, there’ll be no living memory of the analogue era.
Why Straight Rural Men Have Gay ‘Bud-Sex’ With Each Other — Science of Us
A lot of men have sex with other men but don’t identify as gay or bisexual. A subset of these men who have sex with men, or MSM, live lives that are, in all respects other than their occasional homosexual encounters, quite straight and traditionally masculine — they have wives and families, they embrace various masculine norms, and so on. They are able to, in effect, compartmentalize an aspect of their sex lives in a way that prevents it from blurring into or complicating their more public identities. Sociologists are quite interested in this phenomenon because it can tell us a lot about how humans interpret thorny questions of identity and sexual desire and cultural expectations.