Wonderful writing from Kate Wagner, on Primož Roglič, and cycling, and the arcs of careers, and change.

"… believing, Elbow says, is a separate muscle entirely, a willed and practiced capacity to assume some idea in a text, or some possible technical choice, or some inkling held before a group, is worth considering as if it were full of truth, for a set amount of time. It’s not just the “yes, and” approach that improv-style brainstorming is famous for. Believing is granting some interpretation of what’s at hand a provisional but deep sense of rightness. For a set amount of time. For that time—for the length of the believing game—your whole self is devoted to this idea, to see if the space and breathing room you give it helps you to see it in its full possibility."

Sara Hendren on the Beliving and Doubting games; reminds me a bit of critical reading, where – for the duration of an essay – you work to believe it as truth, and only outside the bounds of it do you then start to interrogate it.

"In their wisdom Sega had connected the console’s power board to the console with six wibbly-wobbly pins and made the disc tray’s lid switch from wishes. Dummying data to the edge of the CD was the least you could do for the asthmatic old dear’s clunking and whining laser." Wonderful piece from Five Players on Dreamcast piracy – and how the pirate community kept life in an undersupported piece of magic.

Jonathan Blow's game prototypes; some interesting stuff here, especially in the READMEs.

"Please don’t believe any of this. Go instead to the data and have a look for yourself." Which is, for this audience, a very good way of putting it.