Etienne de Martel
@piment.gay
🖤🩶🤍💜 | https://piment.gay | (he/they) Principal programmer at Eidos Montreal, specializing in making others fitter, happier and more productive. I think you should care about other people. Trans rights are human rights.
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If there's one empirical insight I'd want everyone to understand about American politics, it's this:
America's problems are solved problems. Just not here.
What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵
America's problems are solved problems. Just not here.
What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵
January 12, 2026 at 9:36 PM
If there's one empirical insight I'd want everyone to understand about American politics, it's this:
America's problems are solved problems. Just not here.
What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵
America's problems are solved problems. Just not here.
What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵
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Latin American Coups promoted by the United States
January 3, 2026 at 10:38 AM
Latin American Coups promoted by the United States
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The way the press is treating chatbots, like they have agency and they “know” things all of a sudden, crossed the line recently from dumb and obsequious to something else entirely. Treating them as alive and making conscious decisions is an almost religious belief. It won’t age well.
January 3, 2026 at 2:52 AM
The way the press is treating chatbots, like they have agency and they “know” things all of a sudden, crossed the line recently from dumb and obsequious to something else entirely. Treating them as alive and making conscious decisions is an almost religious belief. It won’t age well.
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Sora is one of the worst experiences I have ever had online. So much so that I felt obligated to dissect its various failings. Unsurprisingly, they all come back to the fact that it's an AI product pretending to be a social media platform.
Sora: Improv for the Creatively Bankrupt
Note: Due to its subject matter, parts of this post contain AI generated content. Not the text — that’s all hand written prose full of…
medium.com
December 31, 2025 at 8:31 PM
Sora is one of the worst experiences I have ever had online. So much so that I felt obligated to dissect its various failings. Unsurprisingly, they all come back to the fact that it's an AI product pretending to be a social media platform.
Barely made it to the finish line in time, but I managed to hit my arbitrary goal of reading 52 books this year! That's one per week on average.
I don't know if I'll be able to keep that up next year, but still, already got several more books lined up on the pile.
I don't know if I'll be able to keep that up next year, but still, already got several more books lined up on the pile.
December 31, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Barely made it to the finish line in time, but I managed to hit my arbitrary goal of reading 52 books this year! That's one per week on average.
I don't know if I'll be able to keep that up next year, but still, already got several more books lined up on the pile.
I don't know if I'll be able to keep that up next year, but still, already got several more books lined up on the pile.
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I’ve been in game dev for 26 years and I can’t remember any other time where a specific tech was being insistently and persistently pushed on devs as a group in the public sphere.
Why would it? Cui bono? Why would any given dev have an interest in other devs using tech they don’t have a stake in?
Why would it? Cui bono? Why would any given dev have an interest in other devs using tech they don’t have a stake in?
My conspiracy theory about genAI in games blowing up more and more by big companies is that they’ve all got a ton of investors insisting they use genAI tools otherwise they(investors) won’t be able to bankroll em anymore
December 22, 2025 at 2:42 PM
I’ve been in game dev for 26 years and I can’t remember any other time where a specific tech was being insistently and persistently pushed on devs as a group in the public sphere.
Why would it? Cui bono? Why would any given dev have an interest in other devs using tech they don’t have a stake in?
Why would it? Cui bono? Why would any given dev have an interest in other devs using tech they don’t have a stake in?
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Honestly I just don't know if its even ethical to play AAA games anymore
December 19, 2025 at 3:23 AM
Honestly I just don't know if its even ethical to play AAA games anymore
This year I played like 10 games but I read 49 books, so you know, that's something.
December 16, 2025 at 11:00 PM
This year I played like 10 games but I read 49 books, so you know, that's something.
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one thing to note about award ceremonies, in a system is a purpose way, they exist to establish the award-giver as a kingmaker, trendsetter, or authority, and as a side effect, recognize those who help them achieve that goal
is this about time magazine? the game awards? who can tell
is this about time magazine? the game awards? who can tell
December 12, 2025 at 1:14 AM
one thing to note about award ceremonies, in a system is a purpose way, they exist to establish the award-giver as a kingmaker, trendsetter, or authority, and as a side effect, recognize those who help them achieve that goal
is this about time magazine? the game awards? who can tell
is this about time magazine? the game awards? who can tell
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Two things can be true: 1.) The Game Awards are meaningless and we shouldn't take them all that seriously. 2.) Award shows of its scale DO rewrite the mainstream history of the art form, whether they deserve to or not, and its okay to care that it's so thoughtless despite having that responsibility.
November 17, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Two things can be true: 1.) The Game Awards are meaningless and we shouldn't take them all that seriously. 2.) Award shows of its scale DO rewrite the mainstream history of the art form, whether they deserve to or not, and its okay to care that it's so thoughtless despite having that responsibility.
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This survey is an absolute joke on every level. The survey design was bad, their methodology is haphazard, their sample is completely unrepresentative, and the results are worthless
November 14, 2025 at 5:52 PM
This survey is an absolute joke on every level. The survey design was bad, their methodology is haphazard, their sample is completely unrepresentative, and the results are worthless
At this point, if a game about time travel has a new game plus feature in it, I fully expect the twist that the story is a time loop, and the new game plus is explained in the narrative as an iteration of that loop. I think it's a law now.
November 13, 2025 at 7:55 PM
At this point, if a game about time travel has a new game plus feature in it, I fully expect the twist that the story is a time loop, and the new game plus is explained in the narrative as an iteration of that loop. I think it's a law now.
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"World's first potential trillionaire has killed 600,000 people, including 400,000 children" is the only headline that anyone should ever read about Elon Musk
One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc
The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands
The short documentary “Rovina’s Choice” tells the story of what goes when aid goes.
newyorkermag.visitlink.me
November 7, 2025 at 1:33 AM
"World's first potential trillionaire has killed 600,000 people, including 400,000 children" is the only headline that anyone should ever read about Elon Musk
I don't know why they call him the "sandwich guy", what he chucked was sold at Subway, that's not a sandwich.
November 6, 2025 at 8:53 PM
I don't know why they call him the "sandwich guy", what he chucked was sold at Subway, that's not a sandwich.
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May all terrible people be sad tonight.
November 5, 2025 at 2:17 AM
May all terrible people be sad tonight.
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Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
June 19, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
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What To Know About Data Centers https://theonion.com/what-to-know-about-data-centers/
October 24, 2025 at 9:00 PM
What To Know About Data Centers https://theonion.com/what-to-know-about-data-centers/
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"normies do not care about this thing and so it is no use raising a stink" is imho just an excuse for not doing politics, which is the job of making normies care about something
October 24, 2025 at 2:47 AM
"normies do not care about this thing and so it is no use raising a stink" is imho just an excuse for not doing politics, which is the job of making normies care about something
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It’s 2050 and a teen girl is torrenting a .tar.gz file of all the consciousnesses of all the tech bros who uploaded themselves into the cloud in a bid for immortality and modding them into The Sims 4
August 14, 2025 at 4:24 PM
It’s 2050 and a teen girl is torrenting a .tar.gz file of all the consciousnesses of all the tech bros who uploaded themselves into the cloud in a bid for immortality and modding them into The Sims 4
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First the basics: The vast bulk of physical and sexual violence in our society is *not* perpetrated by strangers, but by people who know each other. Obscuring this fact is a critical feature of copaganda in the news. People are shocked to hear it. Why?
October 12, 2025 at 4:56 PM
First the basics: The vast bulk of physical and sexual violence in our society is *not* perpetrated by strangers, but by people who know each other. Obscuring this fact is a critical feature of copaganda in the news. People are shocked to hear it. Why?
The bad news will continue until morale improves.
October 10, 2025 at 11:14 PM
The bad news will continue until morale improves.
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i created a social media platform to solve tech problems. but now i also have to deal with people problems? what the fuck
October 3, 2025 at 5:47 PM
i created a social media platform to solve tech problems. but now i also have to deal with people problems? what the fuck
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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...
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
September 29, 2025 at 5:37 PM
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...
www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...
Reposted by Etienne de Martel
Oh shit oh fuck it's gonna pop
September 30, 2025 at 1:45 AM
Oh shit oh fuck it's gonna pop
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this hits harder with every fuckin year
September 27, 2025 at 5:08 PM
this hits harder with every fuckin year