Hi Everyone,
I wanted to upload an official header through Substack’s header functionality, but it says my picture has to be a minimum of 1100 pixels across and mine is only 1050 and I’m totally willing to lose those 50 pixels of fidelity, but Substack will not compromise on quality.
I know I already reccommended Death in the West podcast, but that was before I actually sat down and listened to it and now I am super reccommending. I was intially turned away because I do not like true crime as a genre. I think it often exploits tragedy and glorifies murderers and is surpisingly unquestioning of the police when it is the very genre that should be most critical. Frankly, private eye novels do better. (Actually, the inventor of the modern American detective novel, the whole sort of hard-boiled noir thing, comes up in this podcast!) I also just don’t have a taste for descriptions of violence. The only true crime podcast I can handle to is Scam Goddess by Laci Mosley, which is just about financial schemes. As we all know money is fake and she keeps it light and funny and doesn’t get into like old people scammed out of their retirement savings.
That is to say this podcast is more of a history, and they only get into the graphic details of Frank Little’s death in the first episode, although there is violence and murder and such as a matter of historical account.
I must’ve listened to the whole 10-episode season in one week and then tried to talk about it to anyone near me. I’ve certainly been emotionally fragile for the past month, but there is an epsidoe where (spoilers?? for a historical tragedy, I will be vague, but for why I don’t know) they read letters from people who know they are about to die and it’s almost cheap emotional manipulation except for the fact that it’s very real and sad.
The Demise and Potential Revival of the American Chestnut by Kate Morgan
I realized that you can trace a line of shitty actions by mining companies through the Death in the West pod to this article about the decimation of the American Chestnut.
Why Can’t I Stop Staring at My Own Face on Zoom? by Meghan O’Gieblyn
It’s because I’m so beautiful, but maybe it’s different for you
Alex, my podcast co-host (ksadjfk;jdfl;sdjfsahgkfs) recommended the game Loop Hero by Four Quarters to me. It was recently released and is completely my speed because it doesn’t require reflexes, you just prep your little knight for when they enter battle and lay out cards to determine the environs and challenges your little person faces. I’ve never played the wildly successful indie game Hades, because again, games that require that sort of combat are not my speed, despite Hades’ accessibility god-mode which allows you to progress despite technical ability, so that everyone can also see all the story elements that make the game so compelling. I appreciate that a lot, in the abstract.
Anyway, Hades, like Loop Hero, is a roguelike, a genre in which each run is proceduraly generated. Mostly with games of this genre the challenge is seeing how far you can get in each attempt, and you start completely from scratch each time. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is a classic free example of this genre. This, obviously, can get a little old. What made Hades so compelling, as I understand it, is how it subverted the genre, allowing players to accumulate weapons and plot points and other experiences and carry them across each run. Loop Hero does the same, and it makes it much more compelling to restart each loop with not just more experience as a player, but strategic advantages. You also have a hand in designing the course that you play on, which adds to the sense of control. A lot of people have made comparisons to industry management games, where you set up giant production chains and manage logistics. This article lays out the political implications of such games, and their disregard for the colonial and environmental message of finding an onoccupied world and developing machinery that strips it of its resources for a successful outcome. Oxygen Not Included is a base building game that forces you to deal with waste products and pollution. Most runs of the game end when you run out of water, which, uh, is a possibility for the real world. This article explores how Loop Hero challenges that dynamic, starting you off in an empty world that you populate with resources as you advance, even as those resources may harm or challenge you.
The new Tina Turner documentary on HBO is very good.
Happy Passover!
//gabriella