Vosh the Stampede

Good morning!☀ And Sisters have something important to say:

So let me get this straight, in Monopoly if you give one player more money to start out it’s “unfair” but if you do it in real life it’s “capitalism”? 

You know what, I’m going to tell you guys a story.

In my Sociology class a few semesters ago, our prof had us break off into groups and, much to our naive joy, began distributing Monopoly boards! We had no idea what was going on but yay! Games! Of course, once our group, and a number of others, got the board we began to work at setting up and distributing the money…

until suddenly our prof told us to put the money down and pick up the dice.

“Roll the dice and sort yourselves from highest to lowest,” our teacher commanded.  "Now, the highest number is the upper class. The next one is upper middle class.  The next two or three are middle class. The last person is in poverty.“

Well, as the person who rolled a two this was startling and not wholly welcome news.

From that point the game changed entirely. We had to hand out the money so that the “upper class” had this fucking mountain, and then less for upper middle, even less for middle, and I didn’t get any triple digit bills. We would all collect different amounts from passing go as well.

The biggest change though? Going to jail. Upper class didn’t. Period. Upper middle class could go but they only had to stay for one turn or they could immediately pay their way out. Middle class had some pretty easy guidelines for when they could pay to get out. As lower class, it was really easy for me to wind up in jail and REALLY hard to get out. But since I was working with so little money when everyone else had so much I was in jail all the time because there was no “game over”.  If I couldn’t pay I had to go to jail for a certain period of time. I had to take out loans with interest I could never pay back just to get out only to wind up back in it again, rolling dice turn after turn hoping to be able to get out.

It was simultaneously the most enlightening and most awful game I had ever played. I was bored and frustrated and a little terrified about it all. And it wasn’t only me. I would never win, I sort of accepted this, but it was amazing how the middle classes reacted as well.  They were stressed. Because they were always that close to either being able to one-up the upper class or from crashing into poverty with me. They had to fight constantly just to stay in the middle.

(I should also mention that the upper class player in one group felt so bad for the lower income players that they ended up overhauling their entire game and creating a “socialist” society instead. I’m not sure how our teacher felt about that one.)

Worth stressing this is entirely in the spirit of the original designer’s aims for Monopoly. 

Monopoly’s  original form of The Landlord Game which was explicitly designed to teach people about the unfairness of rent systems. To quote from the wikipedia entry, just as it’s the easiest source to hand…

When the usual suspects start making “don’t bring politics into games” noises, I roll my eyes pretty hard. They have no idea of the history of the form.

WOW.. THIS IS CRUCIAL! Thank you for that!!! 👏👏

I read a study where they had people play Monopoly and gave one person twice as much money as the others but didn’t announce this. In all the test groups the person with more money won quickly and bragged throughout the game about how well they were doing and that they were better at the game than the others were. None of them noticed that they had more money or considered that starting capitol may have been a factor in their winning

Rich people like to believe we all have equal opportunities and they’re just better at playing the game

upgrade 

I can’t wait till this is on my dash again on December 24th tbh.

google search Beautiful rocks near me

you are like a poet of some sort

Throwing up some fanart of my favorite little demon gremlin from killsixbilliondemons, Cio!

wheres seasons greasons

its that time of year again

It doesn’t have to be

its not optional

One of my favorite scenes in Words of Radiance

prints

reblog if its friday and you made it

There are those who want to be with her...

And those who want to *be* her...

Hey runners (and walkers)! Thought this might be helpful :)

Shoelace Voodoo

The heel slipping one is awesome if you have to wear orthotics because it stops them from slipping round inside your shoe

Oh! I’ll have to try this

oh my god. oh, oh my god. the wide forefoot one… oh my god bless you you beautiful hero

Ian’s Shoelace Site – https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ – is the page for all these lacing patterns and more.

He’s got specific lacing advice for skates and tall boots and there are decorative patterns and I recently relaced my skate shoes for both a wide forefoot and less friction on the laces so it’s easier to tighten and loosen them but he also has lace-locking patterns so that shoes stay exactly as tight as you laced them the first time and it is just a VERY GOOD website.

Like. I’ve been buying shoes the wrong size because it’s often hard to find wide shoes but the lacing pattern for a wide forefoot means that my big hobbit feet actually fit into the previously too-tight running shoes and sneakers I had.

PUNK IS WHATEVER MAKES YOU HAPPY THAT IRRITATES PEOPLE WHO ARE USED TO HAVING TOTAL CONTROL. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻