dormouse1953

This is a repeated offer of Good Society from Storybrewers Roleplaying.It's inspired by Jane Austen and similar authors, and TV shows like Bridgerton, Downton Abbey, and Upstairs, Downstairs. The supplements include rules for magic, an adventure involving vampires, and LARP rules (Live Action Role Playing):

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/2026GoodSociety

Last time I said:

The closest I've come to this is the Regency add-on for Fiasco, which I played at Continuum last year, but that wasn't a fully-fledged RPG.

I really like the idea of this, especially if it proves possible to adapt it to e.g. Master and Commander and other adventure material with this setting - the Scarlet Pimpernel-inspired Sense, Sensibility, and Swordsmanship might be a good starting point for that - and the price is pretty good. It's lavishly illustrated and looks like a lot of fun. Unless you hate Austen I think it's definitely worth taking a look.

We still don't have a Master and Commander supplement, or anything Sharpe-like, but apart from that I don't think there's anything I want to change here. It's a fun bundle and worth a look, especially if you like the source material.

ffutures

Something I didn't expect to see when I was walking down Harley Street on Saturday afternoon (having accidentally stayed on a bus a couple of stops past my destination, since I wouldn't normally have been there)...

Didn't seem at all worried by humans, just wandered along the road and stopped to scratch a bit while I was taking the photo. I'm guessing it came from Regent's Park, which is just the other side of Marylebone Road. Harley Street was very quiet, with very little traffic and few pedestrians, which may help to explain it. Couldn't stop to take more since I was headed for a bus stop and the Transport for London phone app said the bus I wanted would be there in a couple of minutes (which it was).

Full-sized version here

https://www.flickr.com/photos/150868539@N02/55114619271/in/dateposted-public/

ffutures

This is a bundle of material for Mists of Akuna, a "campaign setting of Eastern fantasy noir steampunk from Storm Bunny Studios for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition." Basically, slightly apocalyptic fantasy steampunk with Ninjas and oriental monsters and magic.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/MistsOfAkuma

This is another setting that doesn't interest me much - I'm not a fan of 5E and I've never really got into the oriental background much, and piling so many elements together would probably be a steep learning curve if I tried to pick it all up now. Presentation is good, with a lot of the illustrations having an anime look, and it looks like you get a lot for your money.

ffutures

I've signed a good few online petitions over the years - but there are some I won't sign because there's only a very brief summary of the text and a "sign this petition" button. I've now set up a petition asking for it to be compulsory for all sites with online petitions to link to the full text of petitions without having to click a "sign this petition" button.

Needless to say the link they have sent me DOESN'T say that it's a link to the text, rather than making you sign, but I've checked and it does just link to the petition page.

Want to be the second to sign? Press the link below if you dare... And yes, I know that there's a missing "to" in the title of the petition, I noticed too late and can't change it...

Press Me

ffutures

This is another fantasy bundle described as an "old-school hexcrawl campaign," in which the characters are given a ship and a dead master, and have to make the best of things: "You were thralls. Now your master lies dead in the bottom of a raiding vessel, equipped for adventure. You are free."

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/WolvesCoast

This probably isn't for me - I've more or less given up on fantasy games completely, and if I was to come back to them I'd probably be looking for something more exotic. I'm also trying very hard not to laugh at one of the three islands that are the heart of the campaign, which for some reason is named Ruislip - for those outside the UK, ours is a suburb of London just to the north of Heathrow airport...

Having said that, this looks playable if you like this sort of thing, it's just not my cup of tea.

ffutures

Underground and aerial fantasy adventures from Aaron A. Reed, the second edition of Downcrawl (going downwards) adding Skycrawl, for the upwardly mobile.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Downcrawl

I'm probably not going to find this useful, but if you run fantasy adventures it may be worth a look - it's cheap and seems to have some fun ideas.

history_monk

The idea is to use their smart glasses products to record facial biometrics for everyone seen by the glasses, while they're being worn by people foolish enough to buy the glasses. Since Facebook is well aware this would be opposed by many people, they're considering launching the feature:

“during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”

This seems to mean "We'll take advantage of political turmoil created by the Trump Administration to sneak out something that people have good reasons to oppose but we think can make us money, hoping that people won't notice."

That's pretty much a confession of "We can make more money by being evil." Nick Cleg is no longer head of PR for Facebook, he took the money and ran a year ago. The current head is Joel Kaplan, notable for having argued against closing Facebook groups circulating fake news, because doing so would disproportionately affect conservative groups. Again, a confession of being evil for profit.

So, these smart glasses compromise all confidentiality and security within sight and hearing range of any wearer, which means they'll have to be banned everywhere from the Pentagon to women's shelters, which is quite a range. Wearing them will be viewed as hostile in a lot more places, and, of course, some people will fail to distinguish them from ordinary glasses.

I don't think this product is going to be nearly as profitable for Facebook (aka Meta) as they hope.

www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/02/seven-billion-reasons-facebook-abandon-its-face-recognition-plans

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of Facebook.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: Mum's flat

ffutures

Yesterday I was wondering if I should sell on my USB Zip drive and remaining disks (100 and 250 megabyte capacity) because they're too small and unreliable to be useful and I last needed to recover data from one about a decade ago. But I decided against it for the same reason I always do - if I ever need it it would cost a small fortune to get a replacement.

And as if by magic, today's

daily_illuminator_feed has a link to someone's project to build a USB drive based on bubble memory with a staggering 128 bits of memory. For comparison, the first three words of this post, with spaces and the space after the third word, are 16 characters = 128 bits, the whole capacity of the drive... which looks larger than the main board of most computers!

The Illuminator post is here - https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/2026-02-12

The project is here - https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/02/a-128-byte-core-memory-module-as-a-flash-drive-raspberry_pi/

Reading

Another Repeat Bundle - Good Society

Slightly Foxed

Another Fantasy Bundle - Mists of Akuna

A small petition

Another Fantasy Bundle - Wolves Upon the Coast

Another Fantasy Bundle - Downcrawl-Skycrawl

Facebook wants to book ALL our faces

A Little on the Small Side

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September 2025

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