Some links you might like 7

New week new links! This one is a bit late since I was busy all weekend, but all my links are from Friday or earlier!

Bruno Dias: A Compleat History of the Magic: the Gathering Metagame, Supplemental: Commander's Road to Hell

I never really got Commander. I had a brief period where I lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan because I ran away from home, and the person I was staying with there was a huge magic fan. He would offer to pay me to sort his cards for him, which I never really succeeded at. During this time he tried to get me to play Commander with him at his local game store, and I didn't really get what was fun about it? To be fair, I didn't know Magic cards well enough to know what was going on. (I still don't.) But I also didn't vibe with the social aspect of it. I got into card games through Hearthstone, and my favorite part of Hearthstone was carefully sequencing your actions to maximize the amount of value you could get out of a turn. This could be social if you played with a friend, but the game took a backseat to the conversation as opposed to being the vehicle that facilitates the social interaction.

I tend to treat Netrunner—my current main card game—similarly. Netrunner tends to be more of a social engine (as in, the mode of social interaction is facilitated by the game) than Hearthstone, but the fun isn't negotiating with the table politics or anything of the sort. Maybe I'm wrong about how people play Commander, but that's how it feels to me.

Anyways, this is a good piece. It's interesting to see a different angle of how Magic is slowly killing itself to make those sweet sweet quarterly earnings.

Retro Heart: STRICTLY IMPERSONAL

I think the other side of it all is systems that don't want you to connect with others, at least not in a meaningful way. It wants to keep you at arms length while putting themselves in between, because you're only a benefit to platforms if your money goes right back into the systems that keep you just a bit distant from others and never fully satisfied to begin with.

Speaking of quarterly earnings, Twitch is becoming worse. Thankfully, this piece is great. I wish I had more to say about the financialization of community but man it's so bleak that everything is becoming a gig. All of this is swirling around in my head with other things like the "You too can flip assets" valorization of speculation, the giggification of everything, and how our whole world is now just a big slot machine that we're not meant to win. Like, it all sucks. We know it all sucks. We're no longer at the stage where the companies are ripping the copper out of the walls. We're at the point where we're being encouraged in all facets of life to rip the copper out of the walls of our own social life so we can pay our rent.

Jenna Frank: we love 4

"I'm an anxious patient," I said to Rob then.

"Good," he said. "I think that just means you're grounded in reality. Things happen all the time." We shook hands. The nurse returned with a sheath of instructions and a bag with two bath mitts and a bottle of frothy hibiclens.

A post about pain and pain tolerance.

Laura Michet: Blaugust...?

New week new Laura Michet post going in the link hole. I hope to god everyone who follows me now follows her. Like genuinely. She puts out so many bangers. This is just her blog writing process. Still a banger.

Colin Cornaby: In the Future All Food Will Be Cooked in a Microwave, and if You Can’t Deal With That Then You Need to Get Out of the Kitchen

Chefs have fragile egos and they all seem to enjoy cooking (???) so it’s obvious they’re just too attached to the food.

A nice little joke to end off on.