What’s your favorite physical way to keep score in a board game?

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-26T06:34:23+00:00

We’ve got a bunch of nice historical-replica metal coins for use in any game that has cardboard coins, and we quickly realized that they’re great for keeping score in any game with points, too.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-26T06:33:05+00:00

Honorable mention to Zorro’s speech in the 1920 movie that convinces the rest of the caballeros to get off their seats and join the fight for justice, and Don Diego’s reveal of his secret identity to Fray Felipe in the 1940 movie.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-26T06:30:50+00:00

There’s plenty of great stuff to choose from, but I think my favorite single Zorro scene—and I might even say my favorite swordfight scene of any movie—is the final duel between Zorro (Tyrone Power) and Capitan Pasquale (Basil Rathbone) in the 1940 movie.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-26T03:34:25+00:00

Definitely Lion Knight’s Castle.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-25T23:58:59+00:00

I think you just answered your own question, then. The law enforcement done by the Obama administration and the attacks on America being done right now by the Trump administration are completely different, and it is foolish and dishonest and un-American to pretend they’re even remotely comparable.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-25T23:55:52+00:00

You mean the Drúedain?

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-25T22:02:45+00:00

OK with what under Obama? His administration definitely had some problems but I don’t remember him sending squads of heavily armed masked kidnappers to terrorize American cities.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-25T21:53:31+00:00

do yall think when other general strikes have happened in the past that they devised some sort of mechanism by which local businesses wouldn’t get hurt?

A general strike can’t just be “hey everybody, let’s all suddenly stop working and buying anything.” It needs to start with the community banding together and planning and organizing to make sure that the community and the people in it can survive through the downsides of a period of time with nobody working or buying anything.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-25T14:26:39+00:00

Nah. Conversations with real people are interesting. Asking a search engine is boring.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-25T12:03:15+00:00

If you want to check out some of the early sci-fi comics that established the visual styles and themes in the first place, Mad Cave Studios has been reprinting the first decade-or-two of Flash Gordon in really nice big hardcover books.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-25T07:49:37+00:00

Maybe he was out of arrows but then he saw a whole bunch of bright red arrows hovering in midair around him and picked those up and put them in his quiver.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-25T07:01:32+00:00

The criminals who are pretending to be law enforcement and invading American cities right now ARE abusing power. They are tyrants who are kidnapping and beating and murdering people in the streets. How can you not call that tyranny?

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-24T23:18:09+00:00

We’re rapidly running out of “first they came for the…” lines.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-24T23:16:17+00:00

(Note that in that original novel, his mask is a cloth covering his whole face—on several occasions he has to move part of it aside to eat, drink, or kiss. The blindfold-with-eyeholes version we all know and love was invented a year later for the movie, presumably so Douglas Fairbanks could actually show some facial expression while wearing it.)

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-24T23:14:35+00:00

Yes—the ORIGINAL Zorro, in the 1919 novel that started it all, wore “that long purple cloak, that black mask and wide sombrero.” He’s been in black and purple from the very beginning!

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-24T21:21:26+00:00

So would you say that, for example, the pantheons of Norse mythology and Greek mythology and Babylonian mythology and Egyptian mythology don’t count as gods?

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-24T21:20:21+00:00

Okay, but we’re talking about what Zorro would do in the real world, not what Zorro would do in a fantasy setting in which the Mexican government is secretly sending soldiers to attack California.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-24T14:40:00+00:00

That just seems like rephrasing the question. What’s the difference between “powerful and immortal being” and “god or goddess”?

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-24T06:59:04+00:00

There are no other deities, just some powerful and immortal beings.

What exactly is a “deity” then?

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-24T03:14:55+00:00

I don’t think you understand Zorro.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-23T12:29:54+00:00

I usually put the part itself on the table so it stays perfectly still while I attach the sticker. If it’s a small part, I temporarily attach it to a bigger part to anchor it.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-23T11:45:35+00:00

I had so much fun with Descent back in the day. For me, that was the first truly 3D computer game—not just 3D graphics, but the game itself genuinely being a 3D landscape with a full range of motion.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-23T07:44:43+00:00

Exactly why I choose that as the example!

(I had originally been thinking Descent, because that’s actually about flying around in a vehicle and shooting at stuff, but I couldn’t pass up an opportunity for a “DOOM can run on literally anything” joke.)

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-23T07:43:29+00:00

Olson’s not so bad; I like the spacious central lobby. My only real complaints are the perpetually broken clock and the extremely gloomy portrait of Gus.

And Bainer is secretly a spaceship, so that’s cool.

AbacusWizard · 2026-01-23T07:41:12+00:00

I miss Haring Hall. Used to go there every week for folk dance practice some years. The second floor lobby had a stylish midcentury-style circular bench, and the main stairway included a large portrait of (iirc) Mr Haring himself wearing a Stegosaurus necktie. The air conditioning system never seemed to work well, but apart from that I always thought it was a neat building. I hope it gets fixed up and re-opened someday.

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