racheljoi.com

Maybe not strict­ly week­ly, but here’s this week’s edi­tion of what I’ve been read­ing, play­ing, and think­ing!

The New York­er had an inter­est­ing piece last spring on police shoot­ings in Albu­querque. The vio­lence direct­ed at civil­ians by cops is far beyond what oth­er areas expe­ri­ence, and the city turned a blind eye to it over and over again. The DOJ launched an inves­ti­ga­tion and found a pat­tern of unnec­es­sar­i­ly aggres­sive respons­es to crises. The most egre­gious vio­lence has been direct­ed at peo­ple who are home­less or have a men­tal ill­ness. It is a depress­ing read, and the pro­tec­tion by the city and with­in the depart­ment makes it even worse. I could feel the hope­less­ness of the par­ents in the sto­ry.

This short opin­ion piece (cau­tion: lan­guage) on the Huff­in­g­ton Post’s refusal to pay its writ­ers got me think­ing about how I choose to spend my time and ener­gy. It’s also an ana­log to pay­ing artists, like I believe so firm­ly in with Arts­Fuse. I’m not sure I can com­plete­ly stop read­ing Huff­Po, but is it worth it to make an effort?

Games:

• Star Fluxx: This is con­sid­er­ably more chance than skill, though there is a cer­tain strat­e­gy. It’s fun when it’s the right length, but not when it is over quick­ly or takes for­ev­er. Play­ers try to place Keep­ers in front of them and alter the Goal so they win.
• Tick­et to Ride Europe: We intro­duced some friends to this game, and every­one seemed to enjoy it. Play­ers buy train routes con­nect­ing cities in Europe and get points for city-to-city con­nec­tions, longer routes, and hav­ing the longest con­tin­u­ous train. It’s a fun game, and I hope I did­n’t ruin it for the oth­ers by win­ning. 🙂
• Nations: We watched a video on how to play it just so we made sure we were doing it right. Play­ers set up their civ­i­liza­tions for mil­i­tary con­quest and sta­bil­i­ty, and they buy cards to help with that and gain ben­e­fits from event cards. It’s played over the course of eight rounds. Carl and I took dif­fer­ent strate­gies, and mine near­ly caused me to lose the game (hint: don’t spend all your gold or resources). It’s fun, and now that we know how to play bet­ter, future games will go much faster. If you’re real­ly into strat­e­gy games, this one is a great one.
• Carl and I have played more rounds of Roll for the Galaxy and Tiny Epic Galax­ies. Such good games.

No deep thoughts for this week.