Impounded scooters. (Pic from the WBUR article)
Bird Refuses To Back Down, As Somerville Seizes Electric Scooters
This is probably the most Boston story I’ve read in a while, containing both local government steadfastly refusing to alleviate the problems of overburdened public transit, and entitled tech bros turning up to DISRUPT!!! without communicating. No one looks good in this story, man.
I went to a screening of Crazy Rich Asians last night. It was so fun, so gorgeous, and although it was quite different from the books, it kept most of the beats and the reveals of the novel, in a very condensed form. Basically, the books are OTT manners novels with romcom elements, the movie is an OTT romcom with hints of a manners novel.
Some of my favorite characters, scenes, and subplots were cut, probably because it would have been a 4-hour movie. (Actually, that would have been fine by me.) I was a little disappointed that the movie abbreviated the new rich-old money contrast between the Gohs and the Young-Shang-Tsiens. I sort of saw Auntie Neenah as a Singaporean Beetelle Fabrikant, but in the movie the Gohs are all very much comic relief. I didn’t love every change but making Rachel a game theory teacher was an A+ decision.
Also, this song, 我要你的爱, has things I like in my dad’s big band kinda music and things I like in mandopop songs, and somehow the combination makes it pretty much impossible not to sing.
So, I have one more session before I can graduate — Did you think I was finished? ME TOO! Turns out my adviser was mistaken! Turns out I have one more class to take!
You guys, I can’t describe how done I am with the whole program. I was already burning out on spending every weekend working for a Sunday deadline, and I was already tired of not writing anything for myself. Being told I had completed everything and then discovering my advisor gave me incorrect information has deeply changed how I feel about my program and my school. But let’s save that conversation for some place with beer. Let’s just talk about how done I am with my last class.
In every previous session, there’s been an obligatory student intro, where students are asked about their favorite book. This seems to be a gross misunderstanding of readers and the reading life — just ONE favorite book? — but pretty much every professor has opened their class this way, so probably I’m the weirdo.
So, the first assignment of every single class has been to write about your favorite book. The second week is usually to react to an essay about The Craft of Writing (I discovered, during this MFA, that I’m not particularly interested reading navel-gazing essays about one’s writing process, and when assigned to talk about my own, I bore myself). The final week of class writing a reflection on what one has learned over the course. So, 3 of the 12 weeks are the repetitive performance of learning that makes people hate formal education. But the other 9 weeks are usually pretty good.
There’s an annoying subtext on the obligatory intros: Sometimes there’s a contest to see who can claim the most obscure or famously difficult authors as their favorites, and while I’ve read plenty of showoff titles, I always say I like to read Candace Bushnell and Maeve Binchy. Because I do, and also, because that’s a stupid contest.
This favorite-book intro has been due on the first Thursday of the first week, every session. This final class is no exception. Except, the obligatory student intro was due yesterday, not tomorrow. Having it due earlier is definitely a better system for grading and attendance, but at the same time, seriously?!?!? There was probably a mention of this change in the avalanche of student spam that I skipped because I wasn’t expecting to be enrolled this session. Because I was specifically told I was graduating.
I’m very done with everything.
I’ve been confusing 香菜 and 香草 since 2007, so I’m always worried that I’m asking for a cilantro latte or extra vanilla on my cool noodles.
The other day, a Chinese student asked me in Mandarin how to say No Cilantro because he keeps screwing up the English.
We’re now selling enough Takeout that we’re moving from print-on-demand to a traditional printer. (Don’t get too excited, we’re still using our living room as the shipping and distribution center.) Harold found a print shop that could do small, high-quality print runs, and it happens to be in Yangzhou, China, right in the neighborhood where I taught in 2015. So my new game decks are being printed just a couple blocks away from an expat bar where I spent quite a few nights drinking and telling the Yangzhou lone wolves why I was giving up on game design.
I’m really glad I didn’t.
My 9-year-old student, after telling me all the things she’s read about Christopher Columbus and native Americans: Miss Meg, did you learn that Columbus was a good guy or a bad guy?
Me: When I was your age, we learned that he was a brave adventurer, but now most people know his actions were theft.
9-year-old: People didn’t know that when you were little?
Me: I think some people did, but school kids like me didn’t.
9-year-old, thinking carefully: That means you’re part of the older generation.
Today we’re looking at Takeout, a fun little gem by Meg Stivison of Small Monster Games. In Takeout, players take on the role of foreigners visiting China. You and your companions are hungry for some local eats, but none of you know the language. You decide to try your luck anyways, and piece together a tasty meal with nothing but your Chinese phrase book and your appetite.
Takeout is packaged in a clever card box that looks suspiciously like Chinese take out. Aside from instructions, the box contains “food cards” and “action cards”. Food cards will display one (or two) of the five flavors of Chinese cuisine – Bitter, Sweet, Sour, Spicy, and Salty, or Cold, for a drink. Action cards will let players perform a variety of actions, most of which involve stealing food from other people. The goal of the game is to get all five flavors and a cold drink into your meal before anybody else manages to do the same.
via bestdadna
This semester, I submitted a short story that is so “inspired” by the end of of a certain game company startup that it barely qualifies as fiction. The main workshop feedback I got on it was:
I usually check the interlibrary loan for my textbooks before I buy them. This time, I feel like the local public library knows me just a little too well.
No, I didn’t. But, now that you mention it…
I’m really enjoying this book overall, and of the most interesting parts of The Taste of Empire is about tea. The book explains that in the mid to late 1700s, poor British workers often spent a tenth of their annual income on tea and on sugar for that tea. Upperclass would-be reformers were shocked to discover this. Surely the uneducated poor just needed to be told that wasting money on luxuries like tea and sugar was the reason they stay poor! If only some well-meaning reformer could teach those uneducated masses about health and budgeting!
It’s the same conversation we keep hearing now. Surely, the uneducated rural poor just need to be told that they’re wasting money on soda. If only some well-meaning reformer could teach these uneducated poor about health and budgeting! Surely, the young, working poor need to be told that buying coffee or avocado toast is the reason they stay poor. (Never mind that the fresh veg and whole grains of avocado toast are exactly what the rural poor are supposed to be buying.) Now, as then, certain reformers are sure that poor people just make bad spending decisions and would immediately change their habits if only they knew better.
Shocked reformers of 1767 failed to realize that poor British workers no longer had access to common grazing land after the Enclosures, so they could no longer keep cows or sheep. City life meant little to no space for a vegetable garden or chickens, especially for those who’d come to the city seeking work and stayed in temporary lodgings. No woods meant no foraging for firewood, which meant a hit meal was more expensive. With no access to meat, eggs, dairy, or vegetables, many workers lived on bread. Even that was difficult to get, as the price of grain rose much faster than wages. The warmth, sweetness and calorie boost from a cup of tea was a great addition to an unvaried, not particularly nutritious diet.
Drinking tea reflected working long hours on a poor diet, with little access to nourishing meals or other comforts. This was a sign of the extreme poverty in the working classes, not a sign of the reckless spending.
Anyway, just something to think about when the next thinkpiece about those wasteful poors buying soda and coffee comes out.
