I’ve posted about celebrated author Kurt Vonnegut a couple times this year, most recently relating to Banned Books Week, so perhaps the Internet algorithms were primed to show me this but, per Charlie Hall for Polygon, he dabbled in game design before his writing career took off and created an abstract wargame called GHQ. The article itself delves a bit more into the game, including images of the original rules and notes. You can also…
Now’s the time of year where many of us muse about what we’d do when entering a darkened room, basement, or forest, especially if there’s creepy background music playing. But what to do about the very real world, very freaky possibility of being in a vehicle that’s sinking into a body of water. Whether it’s been caused by a man wearing the face of Captain Kirk or not, if you find yourself in this situation,…
It could be all the games of Civ and SimCity, but I find the real-life construction of dedicated national capitals to be fascinating, from BrasÃlia to Canberra to, oh, yeah, Washington, DC in my neck of the woods. Well, there’s a new kid on the purpose-built capital block, and its name is Nusantara. After over 70 years of Jakarta being Indonesia’s de facto and then de jure capital, the government made its first concrete steps…
There’s a meme going around that generations should now be divided by “Too old to know Homestar Runner/at the right age to know and love Homestar Runner/too young to know Homestar Runner.” Admittedly, this is rather prejudiced towards knowing Homestar Runner, but seeing as I do (and seriously Stwong Bad, he’s the bee’s knees!), I don’t find this a problem. In part, because I think anyone at any age can discover the sparkling majesty of…
SimCity was a delightful timesink for me throughout the 90s, so I’ve always kind of wondered how actual city designers tackle problems, seeing that they can’t drag and drop things with ease. In another of Wired’s [TOPIC] Support series, urban designer Alexandros Washburn covers a cost of city planning questions you didn’t know you have.
Not being from, or not having any occasion to pass through, St. Louis, I’ll admit I haven’t thought much about the Gateway Arch to the extent that I had no idea who designed it, who built it, and when (I mean, besides the reasonable premise that it was post-WWII and probably before Tom Hanks played Forrest Gump). So I found myself captivated by this roughly 15-minute animation by Jared Owen that explains how the Arch…
It’s October 9th, which means it’s Leif Erikson Day here in the United States, which you’ll be forgiven for not knowing exists, unless you, say, grew up in a household full of history buffs with Scandinavian heritage. Then, you bite your thumb, sir, at Columbus Day. It’s a Viking thing. But is it, really? Enter Cat Jarman to give us all some much needed Viking Support:
I’ve been a fan of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver pretty much since it’s inception, as my regular readers may have guessed. Last Week Tonight is funny, insightful, enraging, and understands that sight gags, especially those involving mascots, are comedy gold. Like Jon Stewart and The Daily Show before him, Oliver pushes back at the label of “journalist,” even as he delivers information that might otherwise be called news. (Considering Oliver started as a…
I never got to all the Origin of Everything series when it first debuted, but the algorithm serves up videos from time to time, but I enjoy how they cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. Case in point: this dub-seven minute piece on middle names that covers their use from multiple cultures across many time periods.
Okay, so I’ve been posting daily during this Banned Books Week, but perhaps you’re reading this and feeling guilty that you haven’t dived into some banned book. You shouldn’t. The only people who should feel guilty should be people who are say, trying to burn books they haven’t read in a school’s furnace. Bear in mind: Enter Emily Temple compiling a list of 43 of the most iconic and engaging short stories in the English…