Jan 26A Detailed Guide to Collecting Nintendo 64 Games in JapanSo, you’ve decided to take your totally-healthy Nintendo 64 collecting addiction international. If you’ve been collecting for a while, you’re likely feeling two things: First, fatigue at the absurd run up in prices for US games over the past few years. (The upside is that my collection continues to outperform…Retro Gaming10 min readRetro Gaming10 min read
Apr 11, 2021Remembering Jim PagelsOn the evening of Saturday, April 10, 2021, we lost Jim Pagels. To preserve his memory, I’d like to scribble down a fraction of the man that I remember, before time cruelly takes that away too. Maybe this isn’t the Jim you knew; to others, he was a son…13 min read13 min read
Mar 20, 2020Member-onlyThe Capitalist Joys of Animal CrossingUrban legend has it that Isaac Newton invented calculus while working remotely from home as the black plague ripped through Cambridge. In a nod to this tradition, I have spent much of my downtime amid the COVID-19 quarantine thinking about Animal Crossing, a life simulation game released for the…Animal Crossing4 min readAnimal Crossing4 min read
Apr 7, 2019Planners for SB 50: Sign Our Open Letter!Are you… …a practicing city planner? …a member of the American Planning Association? …a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners? Do you support SB 50? If so, please consider signing our open letter to the California Chapter of the American Planning Association, which has wrongly decided to oppose…Housing3 min readHousing3 min read
Published inGEN·Feb 25, 2019Member-onlyThe United City-States of America, MappedAn experiment in redividing the country — From ancient Greece to Renaissance Italy to the Four Asian Tigers, city-states have always punched above their weight. They’ve driven culture forward, facilitated global commerce, and charged ahead of their nation-bound peers. Indeed, cities — and the metropolitan regions that orbit around them — make sense as a political and…Politics6 min readPolitics6 min read
Nov 5, 2018What To Read While Playing Red Dead Redemption IIVideo games are often characterized as a kind of interactive movie. This is superficially true of all video games and perhaps substantially true of many short, highly visual games like Ico and Journey. But in my estimation, video games are much more like books. Like books, video games are a…Videogames4 min readVideogames4 min read
Sep 12, 2018How to Fix Runescape’s Dead CitiesMany of Oldschool Runescape’s towns and cities, from Port Phasmatys to Lleyta, are dead. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem in many other MMORPGs, where towns and cities merely act as hubs for adventures in the countryside. But in OSRS, towns and cities really matter to core gameplay. With its…Osrs11 min readOsrs11 min read
Aug 29, 2017Cities of the World Where You Don’t Need AC or Heat, Mapped.Where in the world is the temperature perfect year round? Growing up in a place like Lexington, Kentucky, you get used to cold, icy winters and hot, humid summers. When those delicious few weeks of perfect weather arrive in the spring and fall, the city briefly bursts to life with…Climate8 min readClimate8 min read
Sep 14, 2016Am I Wasting My Vote? A Quick and Dirty Guide.“You’re wasting your vote!” If you’ve considered not supporting Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, you’ve probably heard this line. “Voting for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein is a wasted vote! They will never win,” the reasoning goes. As a matter of fact, “wasted vote” actually has a technical definition that…2016 Election6 min read2016 Election6 min read
