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Mike Cook

@mtrc.bsky.social

3.5K followers 400 following 2.7K posts

AI, creativity and procedural generation researcher. No, not that kind of AI. I write and make games and take photographs of cities. Senior Lecturer at King's College London. A prototype for a much larger system http://www.possibilityspace.org | he/they

www.possibilityspace.org

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 18d

New Game: Blank Page Boogie-Woogie.

A game-designing game for making quick and silly games with your friends. All you need to get started is a pen, some paper and some willing co-designers.

illomens.itch.io/blank-page-b...

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 1h

should we all write a petition or something maybe? would that work?

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 1h

well. i mean now that you mention it.

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 1h

every ten years you should get to re-enter the character creator and just adjust things a bit

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 1h

I'll check in with the medicine folks when I get to the uni today.

Reposted by Mike Cook

Andy Robertson 🔜 London ComicCon @geekdadgamer.bsky.social · 4h

I'm working on a Roblox story for a national outlet and keen to talk to parents of older teens (12-16) who play Roblox games:
✅ Which games do they play?
✅ Why play that rather than a console game?
✅ How do they find new Roblox games?

Shares appreciated #JournoRequest

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 3h

they should make a kind of body that is functional, imo

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Reposted by Mike Cook

innes @innes.bsky.social · 10h

love the latest part of this knit typography project: a beginner friendly pixel font for knitting

knithello.com

Knit Hello – Typeknitting

Knit Hello is a typeface for typographic knitting.

knithello.com

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Reposted by Mike Cook

Berrak @berrak.bsky.social · 21h

friends trying to raise a final 500 Euros so I can finally rest maybe a week or two without having to think about how to buy food and recover from my burnout a small amount

we just need 500 more and everything counts, including reposts!!

❤️❤️

Berrak @berrak.bsky.social · 6d

friends, unfortunately I am in need of some help again to keep a roof over my head

we are moving out of this flat on the 17th (in 10 days) we got for the month, and nowhere to go with very little funds so far

I am trying to raise about 1500 Euros while I am interviewing and applying to grants

Pay Berrak Nil Boya using PayPal.Me

Go to paypal.me/berrakn and type in the amount. Since it’s PayPal, it's easy and secure. Don’t have a PayPal account? No worries.

paypal.me

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 13h

Very short and sweet demo for Next Fest: A Case Of Fraud. It's inspired by The Roottrees are Dead but I found myself *really* liking how it hid clues and distributed knowledge in the demo. The extra irrelevant documents added a lot imo, vs other info games. store.steampowered.com/app/3036350/...

A Case of Fraud on Steam

A short non-linear detective adventure where every clue is hidden in plain sight. Carefully read and cross-reference documents to unravel a CEO’s disappearance and expose a case of fraud.

store.steampowered.com

Reposted by Mike Cook

Dan Pearce @gamedesigndan.bsky.social · 20h

go fuck yourself

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 19h

Oooh I hadn’t seen that

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 20h

Yeah, I find their criteria a bit vague (I’d ideally want to know whether the probability of succeeding at the task continues to rise past 50% or not) but I think it’s an interesting metric to think in terms of.

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 20h

Ah god this has gotten me good

Reposted by Mike Cook

Meredith Martin @mmvty.bsky.social · 21h

📣 New preprint! We know humans are biased against AI-creativity. But what about LLMs, now often judging creativity in various contexts? Do they replicate, transform, or amplify this bias? We tested it. Turns out: AI is 2.5X more biased against its own work than humans. arxiv.org/pdf/2510.08831 🧵

arxiv.org

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 20h

Ah I didn't know that, that is good. Was reading this the other day about the sorry state of benchmarks generally in the space: arxiv.org/abs/2502.06559

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 22h

Bit hard to use it as a yardstick for general industry slowdown if it's only showing a handful of tasks they've picked for a specific trendline, though.

Reposted by Mike Cook

Tom Betts @tomnullpointer.bsky.social · 1d

As an example of the sort of stuff on there, one of the articles is a short writeup of a prototype I mentioned on bluesky a year or so back. An approach to generating a top down city map.

www.nullpointer.co.uk/generating-c...

Generating City Maps

This post explains how I coded a city map generator for a…

www.nullpointer.co.uk

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 1d

that's all i got

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 1d

hmm

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 1d

So, we have a glitchless category now

Heather Flowers @hthrflwrs.bsky.social · 1d

TERRIFYING THINGS ARE HAPPENING IN THE UNFAIR FLIPS SPEEDRUNNING COMMUNITY

Speedrun World Records @speedrunwr.bluesky.bot · 1d

Unfair Flips - Any% [Unrestricted] in 0:52 by Seolfer

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 1d

The most unrealistic thing about the videogame Eliza, ostensibly a dystopian science fiction game about AI therapists and megalomaniac billionaires, is that it predicted there would actually be quite comprehensive legislation and regulation that tech companies had to find loopholes around.

Rest of World @restofworld.org · 1d

“Imagine having a therapist available 24/7, who never judges you and is completely free.”

What could go wrong?
https://restofworld.org/2025/young-people-in-china-are-embracing-ai-therapy/

Young people in China are embracing AI therapy

Cheap, accessible, and friendly AI tools can augment scarce professional help, but there are risks to overreliance on the technology.

restofworld.org

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 1d

I couldn’t bring myself to click it and I’m now glad I didn’t, god alive

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 2d

It sounds like it's less explicitly guiding in Cat's case and more of a general aesthetic, but in my use of it I try to pick a range of examples that will force me to think about the level of generalisation I need, or challenge assumptions I had about the generator's structure.

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 2d

Yes! It originally comes from Graeme Ritchie's iconic 2007 paper which formed the basis for a lot of computational creativity thinking: homepages.abdn.ac.uk/g.ritchie/pa...

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 3d

god this is amazing. i know literally two things about this company now and they're both terrible. amazing PR.