A Test of Island Courage

So I've been playing StarTropics, a game I remember with some fondness. It has its problems, but it's still fun, and whatever else you can say about it, the committment to the tropical setting makes for an interesting game--much more so, for me, than the sequel, which blasts you through a bunch of historical periods in quick succession and as a result never really develops any of them. If that game had chosen one, any one, of its settings and stuck to it, it would've been a lot better. I think.

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WHY WON'T I SHUT UP ABOUT POLITICS?!?

You know, you may not like Biden, I don't like Biden, but I will say this: if you're thinking, I'm not going to vote for him! Democrats need to learn that they can't win if they keep nominating crappy candidates!--if you're thinking that...tell me, how's that going for you? If you made that calculation in 2016, were you hoping that the result of T**** getting elected would be Biden as the candidate in 2020? It seems unlikely!

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Oh god, not more politics

There is nothing more condescending than people online going "sorry your candidate lost, Bernie fans. Now, all aboard the Biden train! Toot toot!" People who say this seem to not understand that Sanders supporters have, like, an actual ideology that goes beyond "go team!" Has there been some cultish behavior around Sanders? Sure, of course. It's inevitable. But fundamentally, it's really not about Sanders as a person; it's about wanting actual substantive left change in this stupid fucking cruel and horrible country. And to just blithely glide over people's concern that a real moment has been lost: you're treating politics like sports, is what you're doing. Your candidate lost! Too bad for you, but that's just the rough-and-tumble nature of politics! Time to get with the winner!

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John O'Hara, Appointment in Samarra (1934)

There was a paperback copy of this in the house when I was small, and I always found it kind of intriguing and spooky: there's a man with a happy life. Three days later, he'll be dead. This is how the back-cover copy represented it to me, and, I mean, just look at the title--that's obviously what it's suggesting, isn't it? You can run away from death, but you just further seal your own doom. But I never read it, so I've remained vaguely curious about it until now.

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