Welcome to Speedrunning Towards Bethlehem, a newsletter exploring gaming, technology, culture, history, and trying to make sense of what is going on. The title is a reference to The Second Coming, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and speedrunning in video games.
Speedrunning Towards Bethlehem is written by Brian Shih. I have been making games at Pocket Gems since 2011, including running live casual games, infrastructure, and new IP development. Prior to that I was a product manager at Google, where I worked on Google Reader (RIP), and Google Finance. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada.
I'm passionate about gaming of all kinds — PC, console, mobile, and tabletop — and believe that gaming is eating culture. I also love history, science fiction & fantasy, finance, note-taking & todo-list software, crypto, mechanical keyboards, and Dr Pepper.
You can reach me at @bshih on Twitter or theclash (at) gmail (dot) com.
Some other fragments of my existence on the internet include:
Lamenting the death of Google Reader and talking about the Game Developers Conference
Discussing the future of gaming and web3
A few older DJ mixes on Mixcloud
A small part in bringing fnnch’s honeybears.io NFT project to life
Investments on Angel.co (personally and via our Olin College syndicate Parcel B)
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