alex_doppelganger - Network

"Fire" by Efim VolkovStyle: RealismAccompanied by "Phantom Chapel" by William Grant Still...

"Fire" by Efim Volkov
Style: Realism
Accompanied by "Phantom Chapel" by William Grant Still [https://youtu.be/AnJ5U6aAYeg]

[“A friend of mine, the most innocuous dreamer who ever lived, once set a forest on fire to see, as he said, if it would catch as easily as people said. The first ten times the experiment was a failure; but on the eleventh it succeeded all too well.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen]

#Art #mastodonart #mastoart #fire #EfimVolkov #Realism #WilliamGrant #Beaudelaire #ParisSpleen

◀️ I've always been (at least partially) a downright sinister person. Well, not in the modern sense (I hope), but in a much, much...

◀️ I've always been (at least partially) a downright sinister person. Well, not in the modern sense (I hope), but in a much, much older one.

◀️ In everyday usage "sinister" means "that arouses feelings of fear, of horror", "suggesting or threatening harm or evil", "dangerous, lugubrious, criminal", and the first time this word appeared with a similar meaning ("false, dishonest, with ill will") was in the 15th century, in France, being taken from Old French from the 14th century ("contrary, false, unfavorable, on the left side").

💬 "PAROLLES. ... you shall find in the regiment of the Spinii one Captain Spurio, with his cicatrice, an emblem of war, here on his sinister cheek; it was this very sword entrench'd it." — William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well [Act II, Scene I] (1623) 💬

◀️ In the end, it all comes from the Latin word, also called "sinister", which means "left" or "on the left side". How did an adjective that meant "left" come to signify "evil, criminal, dangerous"? According to the Merriam Webster website, most likely the modern meaning evolved due to the predominantly right-handed population (about 10% of the population is left-handed) and probably due to the clumsiness that people have when making movements with the left side of the body.

◀️ Now, the Celts of Antiquity did not see the left as something diabolical, associating the left side with femininity and the fertile womb. But once Christianity gained momentum in Europe, the idea that "left = immorality" was also fixed.

📸 Photo: I reveal my "sinister" self in a session of Dominant Species, a board game whose action takes place at the beginning of the last ice age (in 90,000 BC). Each player represents a "genus" of animal (insects, arachnids, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) and tries to dominate various "ecological niches", adapting to various types of food. It is a eurogame-wargame-abstract, whose theme, however, is felt in all components and all game mechanics. It is a complex, strategic and extraordinary game.

#sinister #lefthanded #shakespeare #WilliamShakespeare #DominantSpecies #linguistics

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the city center park#park #photography #everydaylife #cityscape

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the city center park

#park #photography #everydaylife #cityscape

"Winter's end" by Paul GauguinStyle: Post-ImpressionismAccompanied by "Impromptu in E major (Allegro ma non troppo)"...

"Winter's end" by Paul Gauguin
Style: Post-Impressionism
Accompanied by "Impromptu in E major (Allegro ma non troppo)" by Clara Schumann [https://youtu.be/K7g-VeD2kkU?t=25m4s]

["Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush." — Doug Larson]

#art #mastodonart #PaulGauguin #gauguin #ClaraSchumann #Schumann #DougLarson #ClassicalMusic #Music #Winter #PostImpressionism

🃏 Now THIS is how you properly put to good use a pack of Tarot cards!🃏 Yesterday I had the pleasure of discovering "Battle of...

🃏 Now THIS is how you properly put to good use a pack of Tarot cards!

🃏 Yesterday I had the pleasure of discovering "Battle of Tarot", a game created by @denmanrooke@makertube.net (@denmanrooke@social.coop) which is a "combat game" in the style of Cuttle or even the more modern Magic: The Gathering (and other TCGs) and Star Realms (and other deck builders like it).

🃏 So I invited @paulexandru.bsky.social over and started to play. This game is very tactical and thoroughly enjoyed it, and I especially enjoyed the fact that the Trump Cards (Major Arcana, for all you divination people out there) are special spells each with its own effect.

🃏 One of the challenges when it comes to combat games that use standard packs of cards is that you have to remember or always have a list at hand with all the special abilities of all the special cards. As opposed to combat games such as Magic: The Gathering where the cards are specially created and the people creating them can list their effects on them. This is a moderate minus, but not of Battle of Tarot per se, because as stated it's a characteristic of all such combat games.

🃏 Other than that, I do still have some questions regarding some rules (I'll make a list, although the How-To-Play video provided by the designer and rules FAQ should be enough, they do a great job), but I really enjoyed this game and will definitely play it some more soon. I'm very enthusiastic about it because I love the fact that people are still looking to innovate this very old pack of cards and I hope it will soon catch up with the standard pack of cards in terms of modern games for it.

🃏 Now, Denman Rooke designed this game with a pack of Rider-Waite in mind and I think it's because of the illustrations that line up with the theme of the game. However, if you don't have a Rider-Waite pack (or a de Marseille one), I think you can safely play with a normal 78 cards Tarot deck (such as French Tarot, Tarot Nouvelle). You'll just be missing out on the eye candy.

🃏 I also enjoy the layout of the rules manual. The rules for the game are free to download from the site https://battleoftarot.com/ and I highly recommend for you guys to take a look.

#tarot #tarotcards #boardgames #cardgames #trumps #combat #combatgames
#gamestudies

💭 One of the reasons I opted to join Mastodon instead of other "fediverse"-ish services (i.e. BlueSky) is that I wanted to be...

💭 One of the reasons I opted to join Mastodon instead of other "fediverse"-ish services (i.e. BlueSky) is that I wanted to be (if possible) on a European server (at least I was on ohai.social) and also interact more with people from Europe. My Facebook feed was very silent about the massive protests in Germany for the past few weeks (as opposed to what I've been seeing and reading on Mastodon), because apparently nobody is interested on what happens next to us (I'm from Romania), which I think is kind of tragic.

💭 In these troubled times, I think it's more important than ever to have interactions with people from other European countries not necessarily about politics, but also about everyday life and hobbies. I know my nation has had a very different evolution versus, say, France, Spain, or the UK, but we're all still members of the same species, and I do view a German, or Belgian, or Croatian as a brother from another mother.

💭 I also do want to be more independent from the USA, and to be more exposed to the European culture, services and tech. Not because I have something against the American nation, but because we do need to rediscover ourselves as a group of people that live on the same (sub)continent and understand each other even more. I don't know what the situation is in other European countries, but for too long I was exposed to too much American news, too little of European news. (I'm talking about passively being exposed, the problem being that it's far easier to be passively exposed to one, than the other.)

💭 I have been holding this thought for quite a while and the bottom line and the main idea of this post is that all in all I'm greatful for the people I found here on Mastodon and that we can get a sneak peek into each other's lives in order to understand each other better.

#europe #eu #hopefulprospects #unity #europeanunion #europeanpeople #thoughts

"The Tube Train" by Cyril PowerStyle: FuturismAccompanied by "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin...

"The Tube Train" by Cyril Power
Style: Futurism
Accompanied by "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin [https://youtu.be/ynEOo28lsbc?si=s_fQgsFqkuRw2LQX]

[Exactly 101 years ago, on 12 February 1924, George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" had its premiere.]

#TubeTrain #classicalmusic #classical #jazzmusic #jazz #music #CyrilPower #GeorgeGershwin #Gershwin #Rhapsody #rhapsodyinblue #USA #America #art #futurism #futurismo #mastoart #citylife #bigcity #bigapple

I have two cats. One of them is named Ursa (Minor). You can clearly see why.#Space #constellation #UrsaMinor #cat #CatsOMastodon #cats...

I have two cats. One of them is named Ursa (Minor). You can clearly see why.

#Space #constellation #UrsaMinor #cat #CatsOMastodon #cats #catsofmastodon

⚙️ Star Trek The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, Doctor Who, The X-Files, etc. How much we love sci-fi series! I...

⚙️ Star Trek The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, Doctor Who, The X-Files, etc. How much we love sci-fi series! I don't know if we would have enjoyed them as much if the BBC hadn't gotten involved about 83 years ago, when on February 11, 1938, it broadcast the first sci-fi film in history on TV (more specifically, the first sci-fi program-film-whatever made specifically for TV).

⚙️ Initially, I wanted to call it a series, but it was simply a 35-minute adaptation of a part of the play "R.U.R." by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. "R.U.R." stands for "Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum's Universal Robots)" and was first staged in 1921. It's about humans who create robots (more closely related to the idea of "androids," "replicants" from Blade Runner, or "cylons" from Battlestar Galactica) that eventually rebel against their creators.

⚙️ The most important thing is that in "R.U.R." the term "robot" was used for the first time.

📸 Photo: a sequence from the BBC adaptation of the play "R.U.R." for the small screen (1938)

#History #Culture #TV #SciFi #Robots #Android #RUR #Czech #czechrepublic #europe #KarelCapek

"Peasants Dancing before an Inn" by Jan SteenStyle: BaroqueAccompanied by "Homo fugit velut umbra (Passacaglia della...

"Peasants Dancing before an Inn" by Jan Steen
Style: Baroque
Accompanied by "Homo fugit velut umbra (Passacaglia della vita)" by Stefano Landi [https://youtu.be/g0k3OptSyrs]

["Si more cantando, si more Sonando...
morire bisogna.
Si muore danzando, bevando mangiando...
morire bisogna."]

#Art #mastodonart #mastoart #peasants #baroque #JanSteel #StefanoLandi #Dance #inn #MementoMori

🍷 Promo photo for a Viticulture review I wrote 2 years ago. 🍷 Unfortunately for me, right now I don't play Viticulture nearly as...

🍷 Promo photo for a Viticulture review I wrote 2 years ago.

🍷 Unfortunately for me, right now I don't play Viticulture nearly as much I'd want, which is a pity because it really is a cozy, unassuming, easy to learn game with a very down-to-earth theme, which makes it perfect for beginners of this hobby that don't necessarily enjoy Spaceships & Dragons™.

🍷 I especially enjoy board games that take a more down-to-earth approach to themes, because there's so much wonder in reality as well! Almost anything can be interesting. Even if it's seldom played, Viticulture is still one of my favorite games.

#Viticulture #JameyStegmaier #stonemaiergames #Stonemaier #Wine #BoardGames #BeginnerBoardGames

🏺 In his work "The Republic" from around 380 BC, Plato compares Socrates' opponents to "weak Petteia players, who are...

🏺 In his work "The Republic" from around 380 BC, Plato compares Socrates' opponents to "weak Petteia players, who are eventually cornered and immobilized by the more intelligent ones." Aristotle said that "a citizen without a state can be compared to an isolated piece in a game of Petteia."

🏺 From the fact that they used such metaphors we can imagine that Plato and Aristotle were big fans of Petteia (a name that translates to "pebbles"). This was a strategy board game which was highly esteemed by the intellectuals of ancient Greece, because you didn't move your pieces with the help of dice (not leaving the game to the will of fate, mind you).

🏺 Petteia was quite similar to another Roman game called Latrunculi (or Ludus Latrunculorum), equally strategic. So up to this point, we understand the rules quite well, and you can read a bit about them here:

➡️ http://www.cyningstan.com/game/63/petteia ⬅️

🏺 As for its origin, Plato claimed that it came from Egypt. In fact, the game may be even older than the Trojan War (according to Kyppo Jorma, in his book "Board Games: Throughout History and Multidimensional Spaces") which, as far as we know, took place in about 1190 BC. We suspect this because we have pottery dating from 550-500 BC that depicts Achilles and Ajax playing Petteia (see image), and Homer mentions this game in his works.

#Petteia #Polis #Greece #BoardGames #BoardGameStudies #History #Culture #Plato #Aristotle #Ludus #Ludo #Games

♦️ I currently own about 200 modern board games which are, objectively, *many*. And, oh (bless their soul!) I do enjoy them, but...

♦️ I currently own about 200 modern board games which are, objectively, *many*. And, oh (bless their soul!) I do enjoy them, but sometimes nothing compares to classic and traditional card games.

♦️   Over the past couple of years I really learned to appreciate them, since the set-up time is always very low, a game doesn't take too much time, they're hella' fun and most of their rules are simpler than most of my other board games. As they should be, since they've been playtested by millions of people in the span of at least a Century. So yesterday evening the four of us gathered around the table and played a game of Rummy 500 and, boy, did we enjoy it! And I just started to learn it a few days ago, so there's plenty more to play before I get bored. 

🟢 Fun fact: if you ask any Romanian "hey, want to play some Rummy (Remi)?", don't expect them to reach for a pack of cards. Instead, they will reach for a box of Rummikub tiles! Yes, in our country, Rummy didn't catch on very much after World War 2 (although it's more convenient), but, boy, do we love our Rummikub! It's a fact so well known, that John McCleod (owner of Pagat.com) said: 

💬 “In fact, I met players from Romania who told me that until travelling abroad, they never realized that people from other countries play Rummy with playing cards." 💬

📝 Oh, by the way: I wrote more about it on my website (which is in Romanian, but has a very useful translator in English, which does a pretty good job.)

➡️ http://alexdoppelganger.com/jocuri-recente/ ⬅️

#PlayingCards #CardGames #Culture #BoardGames #Rummy #Rummy500 #Rummikub #Romania

"Ray Embarkment in Basel in the Rain" by Alexandre BenoisStyle: Post-ImpressionismAccompanied by "Jardins sous la pluie -...

"Ray Embarkment in Basel in the Rain" by Alexandre Benois
Style: Post-Impressionism
Accompanied by "Jardins sous la pluie - Estampes" by Claude Debussy [http://youtu.be/w-1ERRRUM-c]

[“The rain to the wind said,
'You push and I'll pelt.'
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged--though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.” - Robert Frost]

#AlexandreBenois #Painting #Art #PostImpressionism #Rain #Wind #RainyDay #Pluie #Jardins #Estampes #ClaudeDebussy #Debussy #RobertFrost

Hello! My name is Alex Doppelgänger and I'm passionate about #science, #culture, #history and #boardgames. In my spare time I write on...

Hello!

My name is Alex Doppelgänger and I'm passionate about #science, #culture, #history and #boardgames.
In my spare time I write on my personal website and on Substack (in Romanian) about board games and their role in the development of culture, history and society. I also dabbled in popularizing science in my home country and fighting #pseudoscience as well.

[I'm posting this again, since I changed servers. So sorry for the spam, for my current followers.]

Pleased to meet you!

#Introduction #BoardGames #BoardGameStudy

🇷🇴 A little late, I know, but here's an interesting piece of Romanian folklore.🇷🇴 On the 2nd of February, Romanians...

🇷🇴 A little late, I know, but here's an interesting piece of Romanian folklore.

🇷🇴 On the 2nd of February, Romanians traditionally celebrated Întâmpinarea Domnului (Greeting God) or Stretenia. [LE: this is a traditional celebration, so nowadays nobody celebrates it in everyday life.] On this day it is said that summer meets winter, and winter starts to leave. The Sun rises up everyday a bit more.

🇷🇴 It is also the day of the bear. On this day, he gets out of his burrow where he hibernated and starts dancing, circling the entrance of the burrow. If it's a cloudy, rainy, or snowy day and the bear doesn't see his own shadow, he returns to the burrow where he will stay for 6 more weeks, because winter is not over. However, if he does see his shadow, then he stays outside because winter is gone.

🇷🇴 The source for this is "Romanian Mythology" by Marcel Olinescu. And although it does have a resemblance to the American Groundhog Day, Stretenia is much much older, possibly dating since the Roman conquest of Dacia, as it is the case with lots of things from the Romanian folklore. It is of note that the bear is an important figure in Romanian mythology. Some other animals that are as important are the fox, the hare, the wolf.

#Folklore #Mythology #Romania #Culture #RomanianFolklore #RomanianMythology #History #Europe #Tradition #Traditions #EasternEurope

🚀 I just love love LOOOOOVE when a board game embraces its nature of a cultural object and it references real life. Such as this project...

🚀 I just love love LOOOOOVE when a board game embraces its nature of a cultural object and it references real life. Such as this project card from the board game Terraforming Mars. Can you guess what reference is made here?

🚀 Terraforming Mars is a very appreciated game thanks to its game mechanisms, but also its theme. It manages so well to capture the zeitgeist of de mid-2010s (when this game appeared) and the renewed optimism we had not only towards space exploration (I think we still have that), but also towards the corporations doing said exploration.

🚀 That's because no board game is ever just an island entire of itself. Every little component, every small game mechanism or rule, is influenced by the culture and society that created the game and can also influence the culture and society of another country that adopted it, given enough time.

🚀 I wrote about all of the ways this game captures that decade's zetigeist and I managed to learn a lot of stuff:

➡️ https://alexdoppelganger.com/terraformarea-planetei-marte/ ⬅️

(P.S. Although the post is in Romanian, I also have a translate button which I think it does a pretty good job.)

#TerraformingMars #SpaceX #SpaceExploration #Space #Cosmos #boardgames #zeitgeist #Luna #moon #JulesVerne #culture #science

📖 Linguistics & Board Games 📖🟢 Back in 2016, the publisher Feuerland Spiele released one of Uwe Rosenberg’s most acclaimed...

📖 Linguistics & Board Games 📖

🟢 Back in 2016, the publisher Feuerland Spiele released one of Uwe Rosenberg’s most acclaimed board games to date: A Feast for Odin, a somewhat complex game about a Viking community that hunts, farms, crafts weapons and tools, and explores. A saga in board game form and an extraordinary game, a pleasure to play.

🟢 And although it’s just (?!?) a board game, I’ve learned a lot of interesting things from it—like the following. In the picture, you see a player board where they collect resources and other bits and pieces. Those blue wooden pieces near the tree are the blue player’s “workers,” which they use to perform actions in the game. The photo was most likely taken at the beginning of a round, when players gather all their workers in that spot on the board, called in the game a "Thing Square".

🟢 So what’s up with that? The workers being in a THING. Although it may seem so at first, this word "thing" isn’t the result of an indecisive designer who couldn’t think of a simple name for a meeting place for some game pieces… In fact, it’s the most accurate name for that gathering: THING.

🟢 Before playing A Feast for Odin, I had no idea about this, but as I later found out, while today the word "thing" means “object, stuff, matter,” in the Middle Ages, when the theme of the game is set, it actually meant “council, assembly, gathering.” So yes… the Vikings are in a THING, they are in the Thing Square—that is, they are in a medieval council, in the square where assemblies are held.

🟢 It turns out that this word "þing" or "thing" appears (among others) in Old English, Old Norse, Old Saxon, and Old Dutch. The term meaning “council, assembly, gathering” was used by the English as early as 685–686 AD. The place where a thing was held was called a "thingstead" or "thingstow". However, by the year 1300, it had already lost this meaning, shifting in Middle English to refer to personal possessions, eventually evolving into the modern sense of “object.”

🟢 Even in modern Icelandic, Norwegian, and Danish, the term still carries its original meaning in official names, such as Folketing (“People’s Thing,” or “People’s Assembly”) in Denmark, Storting (“Great Thing,” or “Great Assembly”) in Norway, or Alþingi (“General Thing,” or “General Assembly”) in Iceland.

#AFeastForOdin #BoardGames #History #linguistics #vikings #Meeple #UweRosenberg #thing #language #LearnSomethingNewEveryday

🟢 Welp! After last night's High Frontier 4 All session (we finished it at 03:00!), some simpler board/card games were in order today,...

🟢 Welp! After last night's High Frontier 4 All session (we finished it at 03:00!), some simpler board/card games were in order today, for a palate cleanse.

🟢 That's why today we resorted to the classics! Cribbage is very well known in the UK (I think also in the USA), but largely unknown in Romania. Thus, I had the pleasure of also teaching it to my friends. It first appeared in England in the XVIIth Century and the oldest rules we have for it date from 1662.

🟢 Even though I have a large collection of modern board games and card games, I can't deny that traditional card games still hold up and are incredibly fun. And I don't need to do any lengthy set-up: just pull out a pack of cards and hours of fun guaranteed! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to convince them to also play some French Tarot.

#Cribbage #cardgames #BoardGames #culture #playingcards