February 2022

My mentor Alexis Smolensk, of The Tao of D&D, has created a marvelous system of knowledge skills for his world, through which player characters slowly gain abilities which improve their understaning of the game world, and their ability to create within the world. I use his system for my game, and the players like it very much; you can read more about it here.

On a linguistic level, Lolita is crafted as masterfully as one would expect from Nabokov. But I must say that this didn't capture me the way Pale Fire did. I'll have to return and tackle it again, finishing it this time; I am certain that the fault lies with me and not with the author.

Four factors have combined to keep me from posting on this site for six months, which feels like an eon.

• The janky setup behind this website Imposed too high an activation energy for creating new posts.
• My poor hands, though in a somewhat better state than at the beginning of 2021, are still suffering from an undiagnosed source of pain.
• I started graduate school.
• I’m busy as heck outside of school.

However, aside from my hands, things are really looking up. For the benefit of my lovely readers, here’s what I’ve been up to since the final episode of The Drongo.

Out-fucking-standing.

Fernand Braudel shows that economic historians don't have to be boring -- but they often are, and Erlichman is.