Reviews of Things
Tonight on GeekNights we review a variety of things. Coppertone SPORT, Ultimate Ears WONDERBOOM 2, Presonus E4.5 2-Way Near Field Studio Monitors, Candycare Packs, DIYMAG 40x20mm Super Strong Neodymium Disc Magnet, Rollerblade Casters for Office Chairs, and TROND Power Strip with 3 USB Ports, and Opalpix. No, we haven't sold out =P
In the news, the NHL may have its playoffs, and Twitter adds a feature.
Rolling Stock (2011)
Tonight on GeekNights, we review Rolling Stock (2011). A Björn Rabenstein tabletop game that's adjacent to 18xx games like 1846: The Race for the Midwest, 1889: History of Shikoku Railways, or 2038: Tycoons of the Asteroid Belt, we've been playing it asynchronously online!
In the news, Smash Brothers' online mode isn't suitable for Evo Online 2020, Amazon's Crucible experiment is actually coming out, Gen Con is (rightly) canceled this year, and the Doom Eternal updates has a hot helping of malware.
Katie Cook's "Nothing Special"
Tonight on GeekNights, we review Katie Cook's Nothing Special. It's on webtoons.com, which is a great place to find a ton of similarly good webcomics. In the news, it's easy to stream recent hot anime movies like Promare or The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, Miyazaki's next Ghibli film's production is continuing, the 23rd Pokémon movie is delayed, Sweet Tooth is getting a Netflix series, and Sazae-san is airing reruns for the first time in 45 years.
Kitchen Appliances
Tonight on GeekNights, because we are in our late 30s, we talk about kitchen appliances. Stoves, cooktops, refrigerators, and dishwashers. In the news, Windows 10's May update has some stuff in it, twitter plans to fail to stop misinformation from spreading with their same old tricks, Apple is reported to use 12-core 5nm ARM in their coming Macs (we'll see how that goes), and cable TV is dying even faster without sports. We don't talk about washing machines or dryers or the like because we did a show on laundry a while back.
Black Lives Matter
Black lives matter. George Floyd was murdered by the police, as countless others have been. It would be hollow for us to do the show tonight while so many risk their safety to fight this racist injustice.
You can listen to two white guys talk about games some other night.
Tonight, consider a donation to any or all of these worthy causes:
- Black Lives Matter Global Network
- Reclaim the Block
- National Bail Out
- Black Visions Collective
- NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
- The National Police Accountability Project
- Color of Change Education Fund
- Unicorn Riot
- Campaign Zero
- Advancement Project
- The Marshall Project
Take your #@*$ Turn!
PAX Unplugged 2019
We’ve all played the "30-60 minute" board game that seems to always take exactly four hours. Your definition of "a quick game" always seems to be far from what your friends think. But it doesn’t have to be this way! Join us for a lively discussion of what factors, from game design decisions to players’ interactions, cause games to take too long. We’ll then teach you, in detail, how to take your #@*$ turn!
Book Club - The Tale of Genji
What better selection for the book club than the first novel of all time? And of course, we have to read the best possible unabridged translation. No baby mode here at GeekNights
The plot revolves around Genji, who is the son of the Emperor and a low ranking concubine. Genji is removed from the line of succession, and proceeds to go on an epic journey. The journey involves tons of romance and court drama. Spicy!
Despite being older than any other novel, The Tale of Genji has a tremendous amount of relevance to the geeks of the 21st century. The influence of Japan on nerds around the world is undeniable, and a surprising amount of things we see in pop culture are present here in a book from the 11th century. I'm quite confident after reading it how we will notice how many newer stories have been making references to this tale without us realizing it.
Also, I feel the need to point out that this first novel ever written was written by a woman. For all these reasons and so many more, this is more than worthy of book club selection.
