The Penny Post - 15/02/20
(I think rule of thumb going forward should be to expect these any time other than Saturdays at 7pm)
This week is a good demonstration of the variability I plan to have for this newsletter. I spent most of last week planning a games night so most of the stuff here will be related to that. Another thing; the text heavy notes I’ve been doing on most links aren’t sustainable so I’m gonna back off on them some. I want to do enough to give each thing I talk about its due but I’m being more selective in what that’ll be.
If you have any passing musings or serious thoughts on anything here I’d love to hear them. @matthewdavis130 on Twitter for public discussion, reply to this email if you want a higher character count.
Happy reading :)
-----
If you haven’t figured out yet I’m trying to start with an episode of this podcast every week. I only listened to some patron exclusive episodes this week though and after a brief look through their recent publicly available stuff I didn’t see anything I recall as being particularly outstanding so I decided to link to this. It’s a biggie so don’t listen to it lightly. This is one of the patron exclusive multi-hour deep dives which aren’t usually available for free so consider this a preview before subscribing.
This episode is about Schema Therapy which is a not very popular form of therapy with a very good framework behind it. I love this episode for a couple reasons but primarily for the extremely specific framework that it lays out for personality development. The DSM-5, the manual that lists all of the legally valid mental disorders within the United States, is bad in many ways but is particularly awful at how it categorizes personality disorders. I won’t go into too much detail but because it categorizes them individually rather than spectrally people, including a lot of clinicians I’ve heard talk, use them as the ten spectrums on which personality exists. They often do this without realizing it because it’s the only universally known framework that exists for categorizing personality. Because of its popularity the system has also impacted how mental health is represented on the internet these days. So many communities exist under the shakey banners provided by this system and there’s a ton of misunderstanding around the boundaries of where one ends and another begins because each disorder is often seen as an absolute with a single presentation or a small number of recurring presentations. Personality is significantly more complicated than this. Combined with the questions of diagnostic validity because of how shakily some of the disorders line up with statistics, the whole system is deeply flawed. The committee that makes the DSM almost ended up putting a spectral system into the latest edition but did not, which I see as particularly devastating because this edition is what the mental health awareness boom of the last couple years has had to run on. I don’t know what online discussion or resources for mental health will look like in the near future but I hope we get some popular default resources better than what we currently have.
All of that to say, the system outlined in this episode for personality functioning is really good. It tries to break personality down into its most component parts, list those parts, then leave you to combine them however you want. I think this is even better than a spectrum approach based on personality traits (say O.C.E.A.N) because it’s about a person’s core emotional needs and the internalized beliefs that have formed around them. I see this is as much more specific and personally useful than just knowing traits. Note that the list isn’t perfect. There are a couple follow up episodes to this where the host edits it more than they already have, but it is still a very good list. Also, note that this list is just about disordered aspects of internalized beliefs rather than all possible internalized beliefs.
-----
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html
The Daily - The End of Privacy as We Know It? - 10 February
An interesting episode on advanced facial recognition being used to link you to your publicly available online data. Things like this are the reason I set everything private and try to keep personal information offline. The episode is a nice ride so I don’t want to spoil too much but the extreme naivety of the interviewee at the end and their incompetence in anything outside their area of expertise is just mind blowing. So much so it makes me wonder whether we know the whole truth here. I may be in need of Hanlon’s razor though.
I haven’t read the article but the podcast episode is very radio drama-y so if you just want the information you’d probably be better with reading.
-----
Games Night
Alright. So I helped host a games night for about twenty people last week and will here share the results of my research into how to have fun without spending any money.
Mao (card game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game)
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/508651/base-rules
1000 blank white cards
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4550/1000-blank-white-cards
I love this theme in the last two of playing around with the nature of rules. I would adore a non-card game where the majority of what you’re doing is just discovering rulesets (imagine Werewolf but you’re told nothing). These definitely aren’t for everyone though.
Hot pocket (cookie pocket variant)
In the base game everyone has 12 cookies and is wearing a coat. The goal is to sneak a cookie into another person’s coat and when they find it there they have to eat it. Sounds trivial but when you’ve eaten six cookies in a row it gets nauseating. The version that I wanted to use (that was unfortunately vetoed) was to have each person have 5 cards with their name written on them in their front pocket. You as the player try to get rid of your cards by secretly slipping them into other people’s coat pockets. If the person whose pocket you’re putting the card into notices you doing so they call you out and you have to put your card in a pile on a table in the middle of the room with the cards of other people who have been noticed. Successfully putting a card into a person’s pocket gets you one point. Having a card in the “noticed” pile subtracts a point. Having your own cards left in your pocket at the end of the game does nothing directly to your points. Having another person’s card in your pocket subtracts a point from you (I’m not fully sure about this rule though). Person with the most points is the winner. The key though, is that you play this game while other things are happening. I wanted people to play it while dinner was being served but the social distress it likely would have caused is why it was vetoed. The other option I had is that it would be played over the course of the entire night and the points tallied at the end. This was vetoed because it would’ve been too hot to have people wearing coats the whole time. You could technically do this game with just pants pockets but it would be harder. I think this game would be really fun and I really hope to play it someday.
Two rooms and a boom
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/134352/two-rooms-and-boom
A proper board game that you can print and play for free.
Eat poop you cat (variant)
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30618/eat-poop-you-cat
I couldn’t figure out how to make this into a good winnable game but if you can I think it would be really really fun.
Celebrities
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22303/celebrities
Nice variation on charades. The three rounds and the familiarity with the possible cards in the last is key.
Waggy tag
It’s tag mashed with rock, paper, scissors (though don’t tell this to people playing as it will confuse them). You can have your arms in three different positions; your left arm straight out to the side, either one of your arms pointing straight up, or your right arm straight out to the side. A person with their left arm out can tag a person with either of their arms up to get them out of the game. A person with either of their arms up can tag a person with their right arm out to get them out of the game. A person with their right arm out can tag a person with their left arm out to get them out of the game. Because right and left are reversed when facing another person you have to keep a mental model of both of you facing the same way to make sense of this. If it seems like there’s confusion about who’s tagged, players not playing (though thinking about it, maybe players as well) can yell freeze to make everyone (or maybe just the group in question? unsure) freeze (maybe it’d work better with no freeze rule). We didn’t get to play this one but I really like it and hope I get to play it soon. (one of my concerns is that it’s too hard to keep track of what position your hand is in relative to another person’s while also playing. If that turns out to be the case I’ll try to come up with some other system for indicating which “rock, paper, scissor state” you’re in.)
Vegetable off
I learned this one in theatre school. I may actually do a follow up to this because there are a bunch of great ones I learned there that I haven’t listed. 2-3 people stand back to back. The facilitator counts down from 3. With each number, the people take a step forward. After 3 the facilitator says the name of a vegetable. The players have to immediately give a short, repeating movement and sound that represents the vegetable. For example, the facilitator says pineapple and one of the players starts jumping up and down over and over with their arms like one of those blow-up flailing noodle men, repeating “crabapatapa.” Everyone not playing then walks to the representation they like most to vote on it. This is usually used as a decider for games that don’t result in a single winner.
Werewolf variations
https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/BGG_Werewolf#
https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/BGG_Werewolf_PBF_Role_List#
https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/BGG_Werewolf:_Role_Sets
Werewolf is a well-known game that is often played by game designers because there isn’t really a consensus normal version and because it allows for a lot of personal design decisions to be thrown in. Be wary of the links above as they’re for playing Werewolf online. The role list and role sets are a good source of inspiration for person to person play though.
Here’s the set that I played with (roles without rules are the same as they appear in the link above):
TEAM GOOD
Villager (x)
Doctor (1)
Seer (1)
Each night the Seer chooses one other player. The alignment (whether that player is good or bad) is revealed to the Seer.
Cursed seer (1)
The cursed Seer is not allowed to speak at any point in the game. They are allowed to use non-verbal communication though; such as grunts, pointing, waving their arms etc.
Each night they choose two players. Whether or not those players are on the same team is revealed to the cursed seer.
TEAM BAD
Werewolf (3)
Sorcerer (1)
The sorcerer chooses a player each night. That player’s role is revealed to them.
Sorceress (1)
The sorceress chooses one player each night. This player’s action is blocked for the night. The sorceress cannot choose the same player two nights in a row.
And I played with role reveals on death (though I’m questioning this), and team bad did not know who the other members of team bad were. The other version of this game that’s popular is called Mafia. It’s exactly the same but with different story context. I’m thinking that I like it more because the announcer gets to be more creative with their death announcements. Next game night I think I’m going to do a variant set in Renaissance Italy where a guild of assassins is using a small-town population to train their new recruits.
-----
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92538NJ0lbE
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a wonderful show (with an intentionally problematic title), about someone who gives up a high paying New York lawyer job to live in West Covina. It’s a musical comedy/sitcom and there are many that put it amongst the best shows ever made, including myself. I highly recommend you watch it if you haven’t but the main reason I’m bringing it up is because I had a realization about the premise/the clip above. The joke of that clip is that Rebecca, the main character, saw an old Summer camp fling walking down the street, instantly fell in love with him again, and decided to move to where he lives (West Covina) as a result. She’s in denial of this the whole time though, adamant that she moved there just because she wanted a change. Her love, however, is in line with her character as she often becomes obsessively interested in people beyond what’s typical and makes rash decisions as a result. What I realized is that this sequence (and subsequently the show’s premise) runs a lot deeper than I thought it did.
Right before this clip, Rebecca, who has just taken her daily meds which apparently consist of seven pills, is about to get the promotion she’s been waiting for her whole career. After saying that this is, objectively, the best thing that could happen for her, she leaves her office building and almost has a panic attack on the street. It’s here that she sees Josh (her new love interest) appear on a crosswalk out of nowhere. Now, while a person with her character traits may fall in love with someone instantly for no apparent reason, it’s very unlikely and here it didn’t come for no apparent reason.
The show plays her falling in love the way she subconsciously sees it; something to be deeply deeply ashamed of. She leaves this feeling unexamined, one; because a person like her is very unaware of their feelings and leaves almost all of them unexamined, and two; because she’s so ashamed of it that she buries it immediately, even from herself. What happens is that she feels feelings for someone, because of internalized shame immediately assumes the worst, buries those feelings, then comes up with a cover for how to act on those feelings without them being revealed.
What I realized is that she didn’t fall in love with Josh out of nowhere. She fell in love with Josh because her whole self, conscious and subconscious, was in a state of panic about the rest of her future spent in a life she hated. On seeing Josh her subconscious did what even a person without her personality traits would do and had feelings for him. Another person may have, without realizing it, looked to him as a rescuer rather than falling in love with him but this was still her personality, as disordered as it was, healthfully identifying her real feelings and what needed to change then calling out for that change as loud as it could. And to put the cherry on top the reason she didn’t realize this, that she didn’t examine her feelings and instead deeply suppressed them, is because she immediately assumed due to internalized sexism that she had fallen into the crazy ex-girlfriend role.
The show is brilliant, I highly recommend you watch it.
-----
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22320114
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200212111440.htm
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200210091157.htm
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22319383
I really like this idea, I think I’ll do it. I didn’t read far enough to see whether the person designed an add-on though.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200213160126.htm
-----
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vib1-V8ArzM
In more Adam Savage news, this video series of him building his childhood dream armour with the person who originally built it is wonderful.
-----
Music this week:
Some Crazy Ex-Girlfriend songs with minimal spoilers. If you’re already going to watch the show though I recommend not watching these, they spoil how some character relationships develop.
Ended up being another text heavy newsletter. Next week will likely be shorter but we’ll see.
Thanks for reading The Penny Post. I hope you got something out of it. If you think you know anyone that would find it valuable feel free to share it with them using this link: https://buttondown.email/thepennypost
Until next week.
Matthew