Hmmmmm so errrrr Jo is still soaking in European culture, and Madeleine is apparently still having a lie-down after successfully completing exactly one (1) link roundup so you’ve been left in the dubious hands of Flood’s biggest failson.
I spent my day excited about the 4.0.0 balance patch of Smash Bros Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch (tl;dr Ivysaur’s most obnoxious hit boxes have been nerfed and some major Charizard buffs so maybe Pokemon Trainer is gonna be more well rounded, cautiously optimistic about Isabelle’s fishing rod fix) so ummmm, yeah feeling good about this…..
Do you guys want 3000 words on a 100 year old board game about Suffragettes fighting cops? Is that how this works? Beyond the appeal of shoe-horning in some games into this leftist rag, my fascination with this is less the game itself (basically just a clever re-imagining of checkers) but that it was created by the Women’s Social and Political Union as a purposeful piece of propaganda.
“The WSPU’s creation of games about civil disobedience and political violence is, in itself, a fascinating reflection of the scope of their activism.”
Get organised, learn to fight, punch a cop, win was the radical message of the Suffragettes (I mean probably, I’m not a historian) and so they created a game where for a brief moment on the street the cops and the Suffragettes are on equal footing. There are nods to the brutal asymmetry of broader situation in clever language choices—captured cops go to hospital and captured Suffragettes go to prison—within the framing of the otherwise symmetrical rules.
Right, my attempt to convert Flood into a games website is now completely exhausted, time to rummage around in the group chat for ideas.
Madeleine has reemerged after going deep on the lymestyles of the rich and the famous:
While I was initially drawn to this piece to gawk at the tragicomic car crash that is the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills getting fleeced by scammy Lyme-literate MDs and the monetising their #lymewarrior instas, I ended up fascinated by what it had to say about patient advocacy, the history of women's pain being discounted, the ways the trappings of scientific objectivity are wielded by alternative medicine, and the never-ending quest to prove that your pain exists outside your own head. If you're hungry for more, I also recommend this piece by a doctor searching for a compassionate way to treat patients with the kind of suffering we can't explain biologically.
Flood and friends also recommend:
Nayuka Gorrie has a helluva piece on anger and revenge and who’s allowed to be a hot psycho in White Psycho Dream Girls.
Some good news from South America after striking Walmart workers in Chile win a pay raise.
Some, eerrrr, bad news from South America with the Intercept reporting on leaks that expose the extent of ‘Operation Car Wash’ designed to discredit former President Lula in order to pave the way for Bolsanaro.
A beautiful, very intense look at prison life.
An interview with the founder of the Copwatch program, with advice for mob and allies about filming the police and what to do with the footage. If you’re in Brisbane, they’re got a training event coming up in August.
And finally some deep cut philosophy shit 🤷♀️.
Photo public domain