https://archive.ph/Z81ga

Humming away in offices on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon and in the White House is a technology that represents the pragmatism, efficiency and unsentimental nature of American bureaucracy: the autopen. It is a device that stores a person’s signature, replicating it as needed using a mechanical arm that holds a real pen.

Like many technologies, this rudimentary robotic signature-maker has always provoked ambivalence. We invest signatures with meaning, particularly when the signer is well known. During the George W Bush administration, the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, generated a small wave of outrage when reporters revealed that he had been using an autopen for his signature on the condolence letters that he sent to the families of fallen soldiers.

Fans of singer Bob Dylan expressed ire when they discovered that the limited edition of his book The Philosophy of Modern Song, which cost nearly $600 and came with an official certificate “attesting to its having been individually signed by Dylan”, in fact had made unlimited use of an autopen. Dylan took the unusual step of issuing a statement on his Facebook page: “With contractual deadlines looming,” Dylan wrote, “the idea of using an autopen was suggested to me, along with the assurance that this kind of thing is done ‘all the time’ in the art and literary worlds.” He also acknowledged that: “Using a machine was an error in judgment and I want to rectify it immediately.”

Our mixed feelings about machine-made signatures make plain our broader relationship to handwriting: it offers a glimpse of individuality. Any time spent doing archival research is a humbling lesson in the challenges and rewards of deciphering the handwritten word. You come to know your long-dead subjects through the quirks of their handwriting; one man’s script becomes spidery and small when he writes something emotionally charged, while another’s pristine pages suggest the diligence of a medieval monk. The calligraphist Bernard Maisner argues that calligraphy, and handwriting more broadly, is “not meant to reproduce something over and over again. It’s meant to show the humanity, the responsiveness and variation within.”

Courtesy of u/shelfclutter

Tags:

• * - Added Late
• #bg - Board Game
• #cg - Card Game
• #e - Expansion
• #wg - War Game (or similar)
• #rpg - RPG
• #rw - Roll & Write (or similar)
• #pg - Party Game
• #dg - Dexterity Game
• #d - Dice
• #c - Component
• #o - Other

Courtesy of u/Perkelton

What is this?

This is a weekly roundup of board game crowdfunding projects, featuring new launches from the past week and campaigns ending in the coming week. The information is sourced from Kickstarter, Gamefound, and Backerkit.

The list is curated through a combination of automated data collection and manual review, so occasional errors or omissions may occur. If you notice a missing project, feel free to mention it in the comments. Only projects meeting the selection criteria outlined below are included.

Other channels

You can also find this list on the following platforms:

• Google Docs
• Mastodon
• Bluesky

Selection Criteria

Projects must meet the following conditions to be included:

1. Timing: The project was either launched in the last week or will end in the coming week.
2. Relevance: The project is directly related to board games.
   • Excludes: Accessories not strongly related to board games, furniture, RPGs (e.g., D&D, Pathfinder), video games, STLs, painting tools, events, podcasts, and magazines.
   • Exception: Projects offering promos or similar content for board games are eligible.
3. Backers: The project is expected to reach at least 100 backers by the end of the campaign.
4. Funding Status:
   • The project is expected to reach at least 90% of its funding goal.
   • The project has already achieved at least 20% of its funding goal.

In addition to the main lists, I include a separate section for noteworthy projects that don’t strictly qualify as board games. These projects are included based on a single criterion:

1. Backers: The project currently has more than 1,000 backers.

Crowdfunding is not a store

Crowdfunding is not a guarantee. Projects may face delays, incur additional shipping costs, or fail to deliver entirely. Creators are not obligated to fulfill their promises. While many excellent games are funded this way, the risks are real—only back projects with money you can afford to lose.

Be wary of creators who use FoMO (Fear of Missing Out) tactics to drive pledges. Don’t let the pressure get to you. If you miss a campaign, there will always be others. There's no shortage of excellent board games to enjoy.

Tags

Each project is tagged with one or more of the following categories:

• 🌱 Creator's First Project
• 🌳 Creator with more than 5 projects
• 🌟 Featured Project (e.g. Kickstarter "Staff Pick")
• 💰 Fully funded
• 🔥 More than 200 daily backers
• 🤝 Offers refunds (e.g. Stable Pledge)

Ending Soon (8)

New Projects (19)

Noteworthy filtered projects (14)

The plane slowed and leveled out about a mile aboveground. Up ahead, the Viennese castle glowed like a fairy tale palace. When the pilot gave the thumbs-up, Gerald Blanchard looked down, checked his parachute straps, and jumped into the darkness. He plummeted for a second, then pulled his cord, slowing to a nice descent toward the tiled roof.

Let’s be honest. Most of us in the hobby buy games that we play once or twice or in rare cases, three or four times. In fact, the term “shelf of shame” is a thing, describing games that people have bought but not yet played. The thing is, these games sit there unplayed for months on end and may never see the welcome sight of a table, let alone a board game table. So in this article, I want to look at this a bit further and investigate why we don’t play the same games more than a handful of times.

In a post a couple days ago in this comm where I asked for book suggestions, Eon was one of the most often recommended ones. As a result, I went into it with pretty high expectations. To my surprise, I didn't like it all that much. I'm bad at putting my feelings down on ~~paper~~ electrons(?), but I'll try to kickstart the discussion.

Please remember, this is my personal opinion and is no more valid than how you feel about the book. If you loved it, more power to you! I'm not here to bash it, rather I'd like to find out what others liked about the book that I might have missed.

What I loved:

• The scale and setting of it. BDOs have had a soft spot in my heart since the days of Ringworld. Imagining an O'Neill cylinder that stretched forever, with links to worlds every several hundred km, was a treat to my imagination.

What missed the mark for me:

• Characterisation. I never really felt connected to any of the characters. None of them were really memorable to me. Considering how much of the story was focused on political happenings and human drama, that was a bit of a turn off.
• Exploration of the technologies / artifacts. Almost everything was introduced with little to no investigation. The exploration of Thistledown (both the city and the asteroid) was done offscreen, and all we see is one character's reaction to being carefully introduced to it all. A lot of stuff was told, not shown.
• Mysticism. The weird sudden focus at the end on ~~souls~~ Mystery, magical divining rods that only obey their master to open portals to new worlds, etc.
• Visualisation. This is probably a 'me' problem, but I just found it impossible to visualise / understand Greg's descriptions of most of the structures.
• Little to no exploration of the future civ (other than some pretty incomprehensible political exchanges) or any of the numerous other alien civs humanity has partnered with.
• Contrived situations. Why did humans have to evacuate Thistledown to move into the Way? Why, after centuries (millenia?) is there only a single city of humans? There's no shortage of resources or space. There's no reason Thistledown and the entire length between it and Axis city couldn't have been occupied, especially given travel speeds. Why is it this very moment where the Jart finally decide to get off their asses and nuke the Way? Why haven't the Naderites already colonised a thousand planets in alternate universes, given their religious beliefs?

Anyway, I'm interested in hearing other viewpoints about the book, now that you don't have to hold back about spoilers. What did you love or hate about it?

OC of @danielpervan, I take no credit except for reposting.

What is this?

Other channels

Selection Criteria

Crowdfunding is not a store

Tags

Each project is tagged with one or more of the following categories:

• 🌱 Creator's First Project
• 🌳 Creator with more than 5 projects
• 🌟 Featured Project (e.g. Kickstarter "Staff Pick")
• 💰 Fully funded
• 🔥 More than 200 daily backers
• 🤝 Offers refunds (e.g. Stable Pledge)

Ending Soon (8)

New Projects (17)

Noteworthy filtered projects (9)

For something that's satire, I have to say the numbers are surprisingly low. Though maybe that says more about my tastes than anything else 🤔.

As an example, I love the Martian, and I think a lot of older books from authors like Asimov are heavily into engineering / competence porn. Other favs in this category include the standalone novel Rendezvous with Rama to leave you wishing for more, most of the Culture series for happy utopian vibes, Schlock Mercenary for humor, Dahak series for fun mindless popcorn.

Edit: I'm so happy to have found a replacement for r/books and the rest of them.

I'd just kick them ALL out of game night.

Source: Existential Comics

A little old, but newly relevant