Tom Dillon's Blog

There are going to be some changes around here. Soon (next week, I hope) I’ll be switching this site over to a static site. The main difference is that the layout will change and there will be a transition period where not all of the content has been migrated over, but there could also be a disruption to the RSS feed (I think that I can avoid that, but who knows).

I’ll put up another notice before I do that, and should be able to keep this version of the site around as an archive until I get everything moved over.

Thanks to the global pandemic and general collapse of society, I have been able to watch more movies than usual. Here’s what I watched last month:

Spies in Disguise – Rewatch, saw it in theaters and it is still awesome. It can feel a bit preachy at times, but not excessively so, in my opinion.

Forks Over Knives – My doctor suggested that I watch this, and damnit I don’t want to stop eating meat, but I may have to. This is problematic. The documentary could have been better put together, however. I think that it would have been better if they went through a piece of science completely then did a case study moving on to another piece of science, but instead it felt like things were unnecessarily drawn out, with a piece of information introduced then not actually dealt with until a bunch of other stuff had happened. Even so, it was compelling.

Jumanji 2: The Next Level – Watching The Rock do a Danny Devito impression was surprisingly fun, which is an apt metaphor for my feelings about the movie as a whole. I enjoyed it more than I felt I should.

The Game Changers – Okay, another movie about eating plants. This one was better put together, both in terms of production value (higher quality video) and presentation (it felt like they did a better job of presenting science, showing an example, then drawing conclusions than in Forks Over Knives). It was compelling and enjoyable, but I didn’t really care for the appeal to traditional masculinity (though I can totally see why that choice was made). This movie ended up moving me even farther into the plant based diet category.

Angry Birds 2 – This was second or third time watching this. Not as good as the original, but still fun.

The BFG – Fun, but it didn’t quite live up to my memories of enjoying the book 30-ish years ago.

Ford v. Ferrari – Fun, and deeper than expected, but I didn’t love it as much as I expected to. Full Review.

I wasn’t able to catch Ford v. Ferrari in theaters, but I did manage to see it while sheltering at home from COVID-19 this last weekend. Although the movie had some issues (notably a one-dimensional antagonist and lack of female characters – Keith Law has a good write-up if you want a review from a competent reviewer), I had a lot of fun watching it. I do have a couple of things to say about it, though.

Namely, the title Ford v. Ford would have been more apt (although not better). While the movie was nominally about Ford wanting to build a car to beat Ferrari, the latter automaker has a remarkably small role in the movie. All of the real conflict was about Ford getting it its own way.

This got me to thinking about when I was practicing Kendo. During that time, one of the pivotal moments for me was when I realized that winning a match had a lot more to do with me overcoming my own limitations than with what my opponent was doing. I won’t go into this idea too much here, but it is tied into the stoic idea of dichotomy of control (of which I was unaware at the time), which basically states that we shouldn’t place much weight on things which are outside of our control. In a competition, our opponent’s actions are not in our control, so really the only thing that we should care about is not whether we win or lose, but whether we did our best under the circumstances.

The movie deals with this in a couple of ways, mainly with the ways in which Ford got in the way of Shelby and Miles, but also with Miles’ attitude towards attempting to one day drive the perfect lap, where every element is perfectly executed and harmoniously connected. Unfortunately the movie spent a lot more time on the former when I wish it had spent more time on the latter (I would have liked to see more of him hashing it out with his wife, and the scene where he talked about it with his son could have used some more support). I also think that this would have led the movie to end on a better note.

This idea of competing with oneself makes a sort of intuitive sense, we can all probably think of times when we have gotten in our own way. Winning that internal competition is difficult and to me, it has a lot to do with being in harmony with oneself. Practicing Kendo was an exercise in getting my mind and body on the same page (see Ki Ken Tai Ichi). But how does internal harmony work when you scale it up to a team? A company? A government? A society?

The movie in no way answers these questions, which isn’t a flaw in my books, since those answers aren’t easy to come by and are riddled with complexity (At what point does unity turn toxic, as in Fascism? How does unity balance with diversity, which provides its own sort of strength?). For a movie that I expected to be fun but shallow, even raising these questions is a win. If you haven’t watched it yet, you should.

As the pandemic strengthens its grip on the country, like many of you I’ve been at home. Although homeschooling my child has taken up a lot of my time, I have still found some time to be glued to my smartphone, where I’ve been reading about what is happening. Here’s some stuff that I have found interesting:

Food Safety and the Coronavirus by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. This is an excellent guide that will answer your questions about how to eat safely during the pandemic. While you’re there, check out the rest of Serious Eats, which is definitely my favorite food site on the internet. After all, even if you don’t usually cook much, there’s a good chance you have some time on your hands right now, so I can’t think of a better time to try it.Interview with Max Brooks on COVID-19. Part of the reason why World War Z was so good was that it was very well researched, and it shows in this interview. Brooks has spent a lot of time talking with experts about pandemics and provides a lot of insight in this interview, especially in regards to the Defense Production Act (which I admit I didn’t really understand until reading this). The highlights cover a lot of the important stuff that was discussed, but listening to the whole thing is definitely worth it. Also, if you haven’t yet you should read World War Z, which is my personal favorite zombie book, the audiobook version was also excellent, sounding like an NPR retrospective special on the zombie apocalypse.Lowering Speed Limits Will Help Stop COVID-19. Okay, I know it sounds ridiculous, but since limited hospital capacity is the gun whose barrel we are currently staring down, we should do everything in our power to reduce the number of people going to the hospital for preventable causes, such as traffic collisions (which, honestly, we should be doing anyway). In any case, regardless of your reaction to the article’s title, you should give it a read.An article about how Social Distancing is slowing the spread of other viruses, too. I wonder how much of this is due to us doing the stuff that we should have been doing during flu season all along.How The Pandemic Will End. A pretty good rundown of how we got here and what things might look like going forward.Despite what your government has told you, masks are a good idea. This is just a summary of a study done about influenza, but what it comes down to is that if you want to stop the spread of a disease like influenza or COVID-19, impeding the path of droplets from people is a good idea, even if you have to do it with homemade cloth masks. Also, since we don’t know who is sick and who isn’t (even if testing were in place), it only works if most people do it. I hope that this changes the culture around wearing masks in public. Even if COVID-19 doesn’t become a seasonal illness, the benefits for preventing deaths from the flu are totally worth it.

Of course, there’s a lot more going on, and a lot more that I’m thinking about, but haven’t spent much time reading up on (will a work-from-home culture emerge from this and if so, how will it affect things like family budgeting and transportation emissions; will this result in public education being properly funded; will workers be able to leverage their demonstrated utility in the face of executive waste). If I have time, I’ll try to do another of these in a few weeks and maybe answer some of those questions.

No matter what, we are in for an . . . interesting time in this country. Please stay home and stay safe.

Despite the complete lack of activity on here for the past couple of years, I’m not dead! Here’s a brief overview of what I’ve been up to:

I’ve been following that goal I set for myself a few years back of going easier on myself. Unfortunately, a big part of that has been making a conscious effort not to overextend myself, hence my silence here. That being said, things have been going pretty well in life offline but I won’t bore you with the details.I spent the last year-and-a-half playing Magic: The Gathering. I played in high school, then gave it up and got rid of all my cards. After randomly picking up a copy of Generation Decks at the library last year, I got back into it. However, I’m a bit burned out on Magic again (though this time I won’t be getting rid of my cards).Currently I’ve been playing Android: Netrunner, which is also a card game, but this one no longer supported by its publisher. This may sound like a downside, but I’m actually thinking that it may be a positive for me since the fan community has taken it over and I think what was annoying me about Magic was the decisions that resulted from the profit motive. Last week I wrote an Android: Netrunner New Player Guide.I haven’t been doing any writing recently, but I have a couple of ideas for projects to work on next year. In the next week or two, I plan on making There Are No Words into a proper story page on the site.I updated the site’s theme to something a bit more modern with better mobile support. It looks like it may have broken some of my formatting though (particularly in lists), so sorry about that. I’ll continue to work on it.

This past weekend I attended my second GameStorm convention, GameStorm 19. If you are unfamiliar with it, it is a Portland area gaming convention that runs for four days.

Last year I had a good time but didn’t get a chance to play some of the stuff that I had brought with me and really wanted to (this was partially due to the venue, which the convention had outgrown). This year, the convention was in a bigger venue (which was also closer to where we were staying in Portland) which helped a lot, and I signed up to run three games: Mines of Zavandor, Panamax, and Edo. This helped immensely, as it provided a bit of structure to my convention experience (signing up for games that others were running isn’t quite the same, in my experience). If you are planning on going, I would recommend bringing your favorite game and signing up to run it, you are guaranteed a spot at the table, finding players is easier (and they will have a chance to prepare), and you will get to share a possibly obscure game that might not otherwise see the table (I didn’t see or hear about another session of Panamax, and I only met one person who had even heard of Mines of Zavandor).

In any case, you probably aren’t here for gaming convention advice, so here’s what I played:

Mines of Zavandor
Harbour
Mint Works (x2)
Panamax
Eridu (prototype)
Take the Gold
Wreck-A-Mecha (x2)
Quantum (x2 with three then two players)
Nocturnal
Tongiaki: Journey into the Unknown
Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King
Hanamikoji
Armageddon (recent Queen Games version)
Yedo
Keyflower
Edo

 

Highlights:

Wreck-A-Mecha – This is the second game from Black Table Games (makers of the excellent Inglorious Space), and was probably my favorite game of the convention. It is simple and fast (with a playtime of 10-20 minutes), has great theme, great art, and was just a ton of fun. They are planning on launching it on Kickstarter in June, and I will definitely be backing it (and probably mentioning it here, too). My only complaint is that it isn’t on BGG yet, so I can’t log it.
Nocturnal – This is currently on Kickstarter (ending tomorrow), and though it looks like the kickstarter may not succeed (currently at 45% with 38 hours to go), I would recommend backing it to get a notice when the designer relaunches (though I will try to make a point of mentioning it here when it does). To me, the game has a vampire hunting theme plus some Carl Chudyk elements (Innovation, Glory to Rome, Mottainai, etc), minus the steep learning curve of Chudyk games. It teaches and plays fast, has good theme integration (the game reminded me a lot of John Steakly’s Vampire$, which I haven’t read in too long and now want to see if it stands the test of time).
Quantum – I had been hearing about this game for quite a while and now I’m working on how I can trade for it. It is a fast-playing spaceship game with an innovative use of dice and the perfect amount of player interaction (for me, at least). Combined with fully customizable maps and you have what feels to me like a near-perfect game.
Edo – Somehow, I always manage to forget how much I like Edo between plays. I had heard it negatively compared to Yedo, but after playing that for the first time I can’t really agree. There are some similarities between the two (they are both about the historical city of Edo, for one), but they are very different games, with Yedo feeling like a heavy version of Lords of Waterdeep (mostly due to the missions) and Edo feeling like a heavy version of Robo Rally (due to the action programming aspect). Personally I prefer Edo, but had fun with Yedo and would happily play it again even if I don’t feel there’s a home for it in my collection.

 

The other thing I did differently this year was to attend panels, and they definitely enriched the convention for me:

Golden Guidelines of Game Design – Dave Howell presented his Golden Guidelines, which was a list of things that suck the fun out of games and why. Even as someone who isn’t into game design (though I would be surprised if I didn’t eventually try my hand at it), the panel was an excellent examination of why some games don’t work. It helped me to put some of the things that bother me into words, and will probably increase the quality of my feedback to game designers when I playtest.
A Gamer’s Guide to the Resistance – This was a panel presented by Mike Selinker, Rebecca Meiers, Sara Waffle, George Kennedy, and Adrian Hayes about how gamers with a progressive mindset can work towards positive change in our current political and social climate. This panel was only an hour, and I feel that it really could have used double that time. I was most interested in Sarah Waffle’s story about how she ran for, and won, a local political office using the skills that she had developed as a gamer. I hope to write more about this panel in the next week or so.

In summary, I had a great time and am looking forward to GameStorm 20.

Earlier this week, Quartz published a piece about how philosophy has failed in its essential role of helping us to make sense of our world by focusing on academic navel-gazing. My initial reaction was that, yeah, they should be doing a better job. My second reaction was that as someone who values and studies philosophy, there is no “they”, it is my job as much as anyone else’s to rectify the situation. Without further ado, here is my first attempt at that rectification.

If you are anything like most of the people I know, you are reeling from last night’s election results. I won’t go into much detail about what I think happened except to say that I don’t see it as an endorsement of bigotry by the majority of the country (although there is definitely a strong bigot contingent). Instead, I see it as the reaction of people for whom our economy (our whole country, even) simply has not been working for quite a while now. In particular I am talking about people in rural areas who have been seeing their jobs, communities, and way of life steadily deteriorating for decades and for whom a vote of more of the same was simply not an option. I am not trying to condone their choice, only to point out that it would be both wrong and counterproductive to write them off as simply ignorant rednecks. The people who voted for Trump are just as American as I am and this election is a statement that they feel something is very broken with a large part of our country.

That being said, what about all of the progressive urbanites who are in a state of collective shock right now? I believe that stoicism can be of some help here.

First of all, let me start by saying that if you base your understanding of the word stoic on how it is commonly used, you may need to add a second line to that definition. Stoicism as a philosophy is not about ignoring or enduring unpleasantness. Instead, it is about recognizing that unpleasantness is inevitable and finding ways of having a joyful and fulfilling life in spite of it.

The first tenet of stoicism is that one can view the world as being comprised of things which are in your control and things which are not. When put this way, it quickly becomes clear that it isn’t  a good idea to allow your happiness to be determined by those things which are outside of your control (since they will eventually turn against you). Furthermore, if you think about it, there is really very little that you actually have any control over, really just your actions and your judgments. That means that just about everything else in the world is outside of your control, including the weather, what other people think about your actions, and literally everything that has happened up until this moment. So what does that mean for last night’s election? That it is outside of your control. Whether or not you voted and who you may have voted for are irrelevant now. The vote happened and the results have been accepted by the candidates. Whatever you did or did not do, we now live in a world in which Trump is president elect.

So what now, progressive urbanite?

Grieving, obviously.

The election results are not good news and it is neither my job nor my desire to sugarcoat that fact. However, I would encourage you to grieve fully and quickly. Get it over with. If you’re still stuck in a pit of despair in two years when the midterms come around you’re not going to be of any use to the ideals which you hold so dear. (I could also suggest that you practice some negative visualization prior to last night, but that would violate tenet number 1, above.)

Okay, with that out of the way (hope you’re feeling better), what’s next? Let’s look at the things which are in our control. Fortunately, it is a short list:

Our actions. If you are unhappy with the election results, then you need to organize. For example, you could:


Build organizations and communities to mitigate the effects of what you fear Trump might do, whether by providing support for those who his policies might hurt (such as security for minorities or ensuring access to women’s health services, whatever the law may say in a year) or by denying him a political mandate (protest, talk to your representatives, do not be silent and therefore tacitly complicit).
Prepare for the midterm elections. Trump isn’t nearly as frightening as Trump+House+Senate. In two years you have the possibility of restoring some of those checks and balances, but to do so you need to start organizing now (hence why it is so important to get the grieving out of the way).
There are, of course, many other options, ranging from trying to get rid of the electoral college to secession. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but if you are upset, you should do something.


Our judgments. This may seem to be much less important than our actions, but I would disagree. Whether or not you agree with my bit above about the reason for the election I hope that you realize that Trump is a symptom, not a cause, and that unless that cause is addressed, we have little to no hope of making any real or lasting progress. If you believe that what happened is the result of bigotry, then you should attempt to alleviate that bigotry (a difficult task, no doubt, but bigotry often stems from fear of the unknown, so it can be addressed). If you agree with me that there is a significant contingent of people for whom our system is not working, you can work on that. Or you can work on the ~50% of registered voters who did not vote this election. In any case, you might be asking why this is listed under judgements. This is listed under judgements because in order for you to make any progress on the above issues, you aren’t going to have much success if what you think is the problem and what is actually the problem aren’t the same thing. Writing off everyone who voted for Trump as a bigot or everyone who didn’t vote as apathetic is not going to make it easier to change their minds, much less influence their actions. So the best course is probably to let go of your judgements, and to build new ones on better foundations.

I realize that this may not seem particularly comforting or helpful to you, but it’s what I have to give. I believe that this is going to be a difficult time for all of us, but that it is something that we can get through, collectively.

If you are looking for a good introduction to stoicism, I would suggest William Irving’s A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy.

Also, it is worth noting that this post didn’t follow my normal process, which usually involves letting it sit for a day before revising and posting. As such, it likely has more errors than usual, which I may or may not correct in the future.

Have a tranquil day.

Tom Dillon

9 November 2016

Last weekend I was at GameStorm 18, Portland’s regional board game convention. I had a great time, and got to play a bunch of stuff:

Steam
Splendor (x2)
Favor of the Pharaoh (x2)
Raiders of the North Sea
The King is Dead
Traders of Osaka
Dice City
One Zero One
Krosmaster: Arena (x2)
Skull King
Lifeboat (with the Cannibalism expansion)
Shipwrights of the North Sea (with Townsfolk Expansion)
Isle of Trains
Fleet (with all the expansions)
Ca$h ‘n Guns (second edition)
Swinging Jivecat Voodoo Lounge
Eurorails
Medina
Inglorious Space

Overall, I had a great time. I didn’t run into any annoying people, and nothing I played fell flat (although a couple weren’t as fun as I expected). Here are some of the highlights:

Eurorails – This is something that I have been wanting to play for literally years (rather, I’ve been wanting to play any Crayon Rails game), but the weight of the game and long play time has been problematic. I definitely want to play more Crayon Rails games, and will probably buy/trade for Nippon Rails at some point.

Raiders of the North Sea – This game was just awesome, probably the best Kickstarter I’ve backed. In some ways it reminds me of Tzolk’in, but is a bit lighter and the rules are much more intuitive. I’m not sure if I had as much fun playing it as I did with Eurorails, but it will be much easier to get to the table. (Shipwrights was also great, the expansion really brings a lot to the game without adding much complexity.)

Inglorious Space – This game came as a complete surprise to me, given that I had never heard of it before playing it (not surprising since it is only a few days into its Kickstarter campaign), but I loved it. Based on classic space shooters like Galaga, it is a multiplayer with a semi-co-op mechanic. I had been excited about The Battle at Kemble’s Cascade, but after looking into it more, it just sounded tedious. Inglorious Space, on the other hand, plays quick, light, and fun, but has enough depth to keep it interesting. I’m definitely looking forward to playing it more.

Isle of Trains – Another game that I had never heard of. This is a tiny (52 card?) game about building a train and fulfilling contracts. It had some depth, interesting decisions, and good interaction. For $10, I can’t think of a good reason not to buy it.

All in all, a great weekend. Looking forward to GameStorm 19.

 

The most recent post on what is rapidly becoming one of my favorite blogs, thestonemind (which I would recommend even to non-climbers), talks about goals and some of the pushback that the author has gotten in regards to his advice to let go of them. Towards the end, he adds a bit of nuance, saying:

But does that mean I have no attachments, or propose that you should have none? Definitely not. I’m a realist, not an absolutist. But I do feel there’s a fine line between valuing things and clinging to them. To work assiduously and in earnest, but not be overly concerned with results—here’s the thing that I couldn’t quite express to my dad over dinner. I guess you could say my personal philosophy is more about the means than the ends. It’s not unlike the school of climbing that places style above all else. If you cut corners or do something in bad style, if you focus on just getting to the top or getting there faster and ignore the how of it, you’ll end up missing the whole damn point. An attachment to outcome that’s too strong can pull us out of alignment with the most meaningful things in life.

To me, what he is talking about is the difference between internal and external goals. I define internal goals as goals where I have control over the outcome and external goals as goals in which I don’t. What does this even mean?

Well, to say that I want to ride my bike as fast as I can is an internal goal, since even if I have a flat tire which slows me down, what counts is the effort I put in, not the result. On the other hand, if I say that I want to be the fastest person on the trail, that is an external goal. If a professional cyclist happens to be riding that day, I’m just not in the sort of physical condition where I can do more than keep up for a short period of time. Likewise, if I have a flat tire, my goal is dead in the water. As you may have guessed, I view the first sort of goal as good and the second as counterproductive.

So does that mean that I should pay no attention to how fast everyone else is riding? No. When I get passed by someone, I do my best to catch up with them, even if I have no expectation of passing them. What’s more, I’m thankful for their presence, since without them it is unlikely that I would have pushed myself as hard.

Another example comes from Kendo. It doesn’t matter how good your opponent is, you are only in charge of how well you fight. All your opponent is doing is keeping you honest, really. Well . . . not really. Every opponent, whether they are more or less skilled than you, has something to teach you, and the only real way to lose is to fail to pay attention to the lesson (unless you are in an actual duel, in which case dying would count as loss, too). I would argue that the same can be said of any climbing route, bike ride, or board game. They all offer you the chance to get to know yourself better.

Unless you get hung up on external goals, that is, too invested in how the other person is doing to have a chance at success yourself.

 

2015 was a rough year. I started in a new position at work in December of 2014, and although I knew that it was going to be rough since my boss had been out for much of the previous year on medical leave, I was unprepared for just how bad it would be. I had thought that the situation surely couldn’t last another six months. It went on for the entire year. In 2015, work took over my life.

Predictably, I feet terrible about what the situation has done to my family (I was not able to give them the attention and time they deserved) and, to a lesser extent, to my writing (it slowed to a crawl), but it was exacerbated by how I felt about work. I was not able to cover both my and my boss’s responsibilities anywhere near my expectations and as a result I felt like I was failing at every aspect of my life which I valued (family, writing, work). I felt like I was killing myself for my work (and to some extent, I was, I gained 25 pounds and started to experience physical symptoms of stress) and hurting my family in the process, all in the name of a job which I wasn’t doing to anywhere near my expectations.

As if that weren’t bad enough, somewhere along the line I picked up an expectation that I should be appreciated at work. Sure, I received an Excellence in Service award in addition to the rest of my department, and people thanked me on a regular basis (without everyone’s support, I would have quit months ago), but part of me was hoping that I would receive something on the anniversary of my starting in my new position. Even at the time I realized this was unrealistic, and that I was setting myself up for failure, but it still hurt nonetheless when the day came and went (compounded by the fact that I dropped the ball on my wife’s birthday).

In short, 2015 sucked.

But while the suckage was due to external factors, the suffering that resulted was almost entirely my fault. I had  impossible expectations for myself and when I didn’t meet those I thought praise would make up for it. It didn’t.

In truth, the only expectations that make any sense are for me to do the best that I can given the circumstances. Everything else is out of my control. Likewise, there is no such thing as enough praise (and beyond doing my best I have no real control over how much of it people choose to give to me anyway). I did get praise. A lot of it, actually, from just about everyone. And yet it wasn’t enough, I wanted people to remember a date (as if they weren’t busy enough themselves) that is pretty arbitrary anyway (I chose my starting date to make life easier for the Payroll department rather than any numerical significance, and what’s so important about 365 days?).

So, in 2016 I have a single resolution: I want to go easier on myself. That doesn’t mean letting myself off the hook completely, but it does mean being realistic about my expectations and not letting myself get worked up by praise or lack thereof. I imagine that this will be both very simple and very hard and that I’ll probably have to apply my resolution recursively (I’ll have to give myself a pass on failing to give myself a pass).

I should also point out that I have plenty of goals (finishing the story I’m working on, finishing another section on my climbing wall, blogging more, etc.), but they are things I want to do this is something about myself that I want to change.

Anyway, enough whining, back to work.