Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

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Age of Empires

Age of Empires

March 25, 2021 /

I was reading Nathan J. Robinson’s short article about Age of Empires the other day with more than a bit of nostalgia. Robinson enjoyed revisiting Age of Empires after 20 years. But he took us to task as a society for our obsession with conquest games over cooperative ones.

Robinson draws all the obvious connections between Age of Empires (or Risk, or a million other games) and mindless war. No, players don’t really do anything constructive in these games. They even do destructive things.

Nevertheless, I’ll admit once again that I don’t really need my cultural consumption or choices to line up with my politics. For the most part, I think it doesn’t matter. Sometimes, I think it’s fine to just enjoy something.

Perhaps this is a long-winded way of pointing out that I remember many years of enjoying Age of Empires with my friends. And, more recently, I started playing a game called O A.D. While it’s superficially different enough to have a different title, it’s basically an AoE knockoff. And you can play it for free.

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covid-19 shot

First COVID-19 Shot

March 15, 2021 /

The COVID-19 pandemic dates to late 2019. But it became a huge problem in the U.S. almost exactly one year ago. And then the world developed a vaccine (actually several) in record-breaking time. As for myself, I got my first dose of the Moderna vaccine a few days ago.

Side effects? They haven’t been too bad for me. My arm hurt for a couple of days, and I felt tired. Slightly less than a day after the vaccine, I started feeling really run down, nauseous, and a bit dizzy. I recovered the next day.

Overall, I’m just feeling…optimistic. Yes, I could still get COVID-19. Yes, that’s a concern. And yes, the world still has many cases (though far less than a couple months ago). Nevertheless, I can see the end of the pandemic. Maybe I’ll start seeing more people in person soon. Maybe I’ll even enjoy some baseball in person this summer.

It seems like something worth celebrating.

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covid-19 anniversary one year

One Year of COVID-19: A Review

March 11, 2021 /

So, there’s an anniversary coming up, and it’s one none of us are happy about. Which one? It’s been almost one year since COVID-19 became the issue in the U.S. and much of the world. I chose March 11 for this post for symbolic reasons: it’s the one-year mark since the last time I went to a movie theater.

I saw 1917 on March 11, 2020, in case anyone’s interested.

We’d all like to get past COVID-19. I’m sure almost all of us want to meet in-person more regularly. Some have handled these feelings better than others. Some – e.g., Kim Reynolds in Iowa – have tried to force it before it’s time. But everyone shares in the dissatisfaction with the COVID-19 world.

In the last year, we moved from a ‘normal’ world (for better or worse) to a scary one to a manageable one (if you have a mask) to a strange adjustment to a ‘new normal.’ Along the way, we saw lots of new terms and oddities, e.g., ‘essential worker.’ As the vaccines make their rounds (I’m getting my first shot tomorrow!), let’s reflect a bit on this.

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