Thomas Most

@thomasmost

writer, software developer in Brooklyn ~ technopagan is the term ~ play D&D & support your local mutual aid profile pic by @tiahnan.bsky.social ⚡

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Thomas Most@thomasmost· 12d

what is he fucking doing in there

musicology duck pic of construction by the whitehouse

Thomas Most@thomasmost· 20d

Abdul El-Sayed with based glowing red laser eyes ready to destroy the cronyist kleptocracy

Thomas Most@thomasmost· Jul 25

very normal people in the replies to my criticism of DSA's foreign policy

from "@wifestroker.bsky.social"

"No you’re just a submental idiot that can’t read and only supports USAID because you’re a Cold War lead poisoning baby who can’t hold a single thought for more than five seconds"

"You’re perfectly fine with USAID being used to train right wing terror squads and dismantle democracy overseas when it helps Coca Cola get you cheap poison faster because you’re a bloodless freak parasite"

Thomas Most@thomasmost· Jul 11

meanwhile on their own front page: "there is no way to tell if this is good or bad!"

Times Journalists Are Subpoenaed as Trump Escalates Pressure on Media

The Justice Department is seeking to compel testimony from reporters who wrote about the new Air Force One. The Times called the move a “brazen act.”

Thomas Most@thomasmost· Jun 20

Voting is awesome actually

A guy in a red bike helmet and tinted riding goggles. He's wearing an NY early voting sticker and throwing up a classic *thumbs up* and looks fucking cool

Thomas Most@thomasmost· Jun 6

dudes rock

Thomas Most@thomasmost· Jun 1

“I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less,” Trump told CNBC’s Eamon Javers in a phone interview, saying he thought the protracted talks “started to get very boring.”

Tim Robinson saying, "I'm not worried about it"

Thomas Most@thomasmost· Jun 1

"Donald Trump this week became the most unpopular president since our poll started in 2009. His net approval rating is -24. The war in Iran has hurt Mr Trump’s standing: his net approval rating for foreign policy is -20. But it is his handling of the economy that is really dragging him down. Three-quarters of Americans think that its condition is “fair” or “poor”, and 63% think that it is getting worse. If that doesn’t change it will hurt the Republican Party in November’s midterm elections. Our forecasting model says that the Democrats have a nine-in-ten chance of winning control of the House of Representatives. The Senate is a toss-up."

Thomas Most@thomasmost· Jun 1

DNR

screenshot from The Economist's presidential approval aggregator:
"497 days into Donald Trump's term
The president's net approval rating is -24,
down 1.9 points since last week.
34% approve, 58% disapprove, 6% not sure"

Thomas Most@thomasmost· Jun 1

Twitter crash-out stats never get old for me and we're getting some JUICY ones in the SpaceX filing

SpaceX said that the AI unit containing X and xAI generated only $818 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2026. By way of comparison, Twitter alone made $1.2 billion in the first quarter of 2022, or about 30 percent more, before Musk bought it. A remarkable business mind, truly.

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 16

Posting updates daily was always going to be a recipe for disappointment, but here at the end of Week 3 I've finally started rendering my hexes as hexes! I've also been experimenting with LOD and simulation "culling" outside of the player's region to improve performance..... that's been tricky lol

Oikomene screenshot, this time with a hex grid actually rendered as hexes!

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 16

Or this one... "That tension between emotional experience and factual truth is particularly visible around climate change." ...oh?? Why is that??? The author never says!

That tension between emotional experience and factual truth is particularly visible around climate change. Climate activist Xiye Bastida, one of the most visible Gen Z voices in the global climate movement, has argued that social media allows younger users to experience climate change through human stories and firsthand accounts, creating an emotional understanding of the crisis that feels very different from reading scientific reports alone.

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 16

This excerpt is horribly written—at risk of chatvestigating, it really reads as AI generated at times. Take this section for example... the author "brings us back to the polar bear" from the lede, but then doesn't actually say anything novel or make a new insight about the polar bear video!

The distinction matters because social media collapses journalism, entertainment, activism, advertising, and personal confession into the same visual and emotional language. A climate report, a meme, a war video, a conspiracy theory, and a personal trauma story can appear seconds apart, all competing equally for attention and belief.

Which brings us back to the polar bear.

When it comes to issues like climate change, young people are often forced to process the scientific reality of the crisis alongside the emotional weight of inheriting it. “The planet is suffering, and we don't have the luxury of time anymore,” Bastida said in her 2020 TED Talk. “I truly feel that if all of us took care of the Earth as a practice, as a culture, none of us would have to be full-time climate activists.”

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 12

Day 12: Villagers walk to and from their daily 'activities', including going home to their shacks to sleep at night. However I have some suspicion that I've introduced a bug with how villages cluster...

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 10

Day 11: Working on improved villager AI, including villager 'activities' that will allow villagers to fell trees and plant farms near their shacks.

Oikomene screenshot of a village with plots of farmland near the shacks

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 10

Day 10: mages exist now if Arcana is your best combat stat, you get a staff and MP that drains when you cast lightning bolts at things - shows MP in the HUD

Oikomene screenshot of character creation with a magic 'staff' as your starting weapon

Oikomene screenshot of player being chased by a panther and a wolf: I've only got so much mana to go around... 😬

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 10

Day 9: Added a "How to Play"

Oikomene screenshot: How to Play
Oikoménē — the inhabited world

You are an adventurer in a world that lives without you. Hunt creatures, fell trees, find ruins, trade with settlers, and watch villages grow into cities — or burn to the ground. The world remembers what you do.

Movement
The world is a hex grid; you move in six directions. Numpad is always available: 4 west, 6 east, 7 NW, 9 NE, 1 SW, 3 SE. The keyboard preset is configurable in Settings (Hex / Cardinal / Arrows).
Each step has a short cooldown. Hold a direction to walk continuously.

Acting on the world
F (Numpad 5) interacts with the tile you face — fell a tree, talk to a settler, open a vendor. Space (Numpad 0) attacks an adjacent creature. T trades with a vendor on your tile. C takes cover (only on a Building, Wall, Gate, Bridge, or Ruin).

Skill checks
Some interactions trigger a 2d6 + Attribute + Skill roll against a difficulty class. The world keeps running while the dialog is open. Failing a check costs Stamina — the cost depends on the check type (chop / ford / scramble).

HP, Stamina, and death
Damage absorbs into Stamina first; a hit that would zero Stamina costs exactly 1 HP regardless of overflow. Stamina recovers +1 about three seconds after the last damage or failed check. HP recovers +1 every Morning. If you die, you respawn at the origin.
Default-stat starting characters ship with HP=2 and Stamina=2 — invest in Hull (HP) and Resilience (Stamina) at character creation if you want a thicker buffer.

Weather and cover
Weather is per-region and shifts over time. Sunny and Overcast permit normal Stamina recovery. Raining suppresses recovery entirely. Storming drains Stamina by 1 per recovery window — the storm alone won't drop you below 1, but combat on top of it can.
Press C while standing on a structure tile to take cover. While covered, weather effects on Stamina are suppressed. Moving breaks cover automatically.

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 10

Day 8: Improved pathing logic for animals and most monsters - they now plot a path to you if one exists instead of getting stuck behind cliffs and rivers - also rain and storms affect your stamina, but you can take 'cover' under any man-made structure

Oikomene screenshot of two blood chasers following me across a ford: "wtf, these guys can swim now?!?"

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 10

Day 7: fog of war remembers what structures you last saw Now when you leave an explored area, the game remembers what structures were built — you'll see a snapshot of buildings and bridges from your last visit, even after they've changed. Returning to a ruin or a city may now be a surprise!

Oikomene screenshot: coming home to find a ruin where your shack should be

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 10

Day 6: when villages upgrade to cities they get walls with a single passable gate Also: - combat wakes sleeping creatures - added support for ranged attacks

Oikomene screenshot: Character creation now gives you a slingshot if Marksmanship is your best combat skill

Oikomene screenshot of the player hanging out inside a city's walls: hey this place is starting to feel kinda civilized!

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 10

Day 5: villages and cities are no longer single tiles. They're **multi-tile clusters** now — a main trade building surrounded by shacks. Also: - passive perception checks reveal hiding creatures - added a bunch more monsters and animals with distinct placeholder markers to identify them

Oikomene screenshot: Killed by a Panther

Oikomene screenshot: singin' in the rain

Oikomene screenshot: discovered a village!

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 10

Day 4: the world was too small. Tripled the size (~22k → ~67k tiles), rewrote river generation as a BFS-from-ocean distance field (flowing downhill from mountains), NPCs build bridges automatically near new villages, and surfaced a Safety rating with the region's top concern (predators vs monsters)

Screenshot of Oikomene in its state EOD May 1st... rivers now flow from mountains to the ocean on the outside edge of the map; each region gets a 'Safety' grade based on the presence of predators and monsters

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 10

Day 3 was a monster. Added: 🐺 wolves, deer, rabbits — with specific AI dispositions 🗡️ items, loot, equipped weapons, an inventory ⛰️ cliffs and rivers (impassable terrain markers) 🌅 day/night cycle 🌧️ per-region weather (sun, rain, lightning) on a Markov chain

A screenshot of Oikomene with visible biomes, varying terrains, and new species of animals

Another screenshot from Oikomene: "it's raining everywhere but here!" (Shows a bug where you can see weather effects even in unexplored regions of the map)

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 10

Day 2: Claude says it implemented settler AI but mostly what we did was fix movement controls and make the character creation screen usable

Screenshot of janky character creation screen for Oikomene

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 10

Here's what it looked like on Day 1:

A screenshot of Oikomene v0.0.01 (just a bunch of brown squares representing warthogs and a bunch of green squares representing trees in a great slate gray void)

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 10

I'm starting with the 'small' version, which is (sensibly) single-player for now. Here's an excerpt from the "Bible" I wrote up for it last week It's worth noting that I've also been working on designing my own TTRPG system and I've drawn some mechanics from that

Vision
Oikoménē (οἰκουμένη — "the inhabited world") is a real-time, hex-grid RPG with the long-term ambition of becoming an MMORPG. Its distinctive design idea: ecology and civilization are emergent from probabilistic simulation rather than hand-authored zones. Player actions ripple through living populations, shifting biomes, and emerging civilizations. Hunt all the warthogs in an area → they go locally extinct. Cut down all the trees → forest becomes desert. Clear monsters from a habitable area → settlers arrive → village → city. Raze a city → it becomes a mass grave on the map.

The world remembers. Every tile carries history.

Pillars
Probabilistic ecology and civilization. No hand-authored zones; everything emergent from simulation.
Real-time presence with narrative beats. Move and fight in real time; pause for skill checks and narrative interactions (Disco-Elysium-style 2d6+mod).
Long-running consequence. Effects play out over real-time hours/days; the world evolves whether you act or not.
Single-player → MMORPG arc. Single-player demonstrates the simulation. Multiplayer is the eventual home of the moral/social loop (Hero/Villain Halo, bounty hunting, settlement politics).
Inspirations
Disco Elysium — narrative skill checks, 2d6+mod resolution, attribute-and-skills character system
Civilization — hex world, biomes, civilizational time scale
No Man's Sky — procedural world feel

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 7

interesting

A partial screenshot of my terminal reading:
"> gcloud iam service-accounts get-iam-policy...
etag: ACAB"

Thomas Most@thomasmost· May 4

For the past singular week, I've been building a computer game in Rust / Bevy with Claude and it's some of the most fun I've had with computers since I first got into coding

A screenshot from the current development version of Oikomene

Thomas Most@thomasmost· Apr 8

Always Sunny title card that reads "The Gang Tries Regional Hegemony"

Thomas Most@thomasmost· Mar 31

There's the nosedive I've been looking for