I just came up with a really inconvenient, possibly unplayable four-player game: The Evil Advisor
All you need is a completely normal chess board and a deck of cards that you can somehow divide into an even amount of cards that mean "yes" or "no". Out of the four players, only two need to know how to play chess - those play the role of advisor. The other two play as rulers. At the start of the game, both advisors pull a random card from the deck, which dictates whether their goal is to win the game, or lose it. They keep their respective card, showing it to nobody else.
The rulers, who ultimately choose where to move the pieces, always aim to win the chess game, and also know that the advisor may or may not be on their side, and don't know whether to trust the advisor or not.
If the ruler wins the chess game, they win the whole game. An advisor only wins if they reach their own goal - if an advisor's goal was to lose, but the ruler wins, the advisor loses, and vice versa.
you should add a set of randomized bonus rules on top of chess that only the advisors know about, so even if everyone knows how to play chess the rulers still feel beholden to their advisors, and the advisors want to say only enough that the rulers can play without knowing so much that the advisors become redundant
the thing they dont tell you about learning to "trust the process" is that you forget and relearn it every single time you make a new piece of art. unfortunately there is no cure either
This tapestry is my depiction of the Artemis II mission as a traditional US American colonial coverlet. In each corner, four diamonds (astronauts) surround a circle (the moon). Semi-circles (earthrise) make up the borders, and the dark circles (the moon's dark side) in the center are repeated in a 9 by 9 grid (nine days in space).
By designing artemis ii in the style of a traditional coverlet, I wanted to make it explicit that our colonial history - and the immense harm therein - is intrinsically woven with our modern success. The weave structure (our history & our ongoing harm) is the foundation that makes the design (our successes) possible.
-- read more --
This project started as an obsession with finding the origin of a popular late-1800's coverlet draft named Lee's Surrender. Given its name and its age, I really wanted to know more about who designed it and why. The assumption is that it's named for the surrender of confederate general robert e. lee, but is the name celebratory or mournful? If I make this, would I be displaying a confederate dogwhistle in my home? Etc, etc.
After lots of searching and no well-sourced answers, the final nail in my research coffin was Eliza Calvert Hall's 1912 "A Book of Handwoven Coverlets." She lists, for an entire page, the questions that plague her about coverlet names. And among them:
If we've been asking this same question for over a century, then it might not be possible to know. The knowledge is likely lost to time.
However, in my research, I found one theory I thought was interesting - that Lee's Surrender wasn't named as a manner of opinion, but rather as an impartial description. Many coverlets from this era are named after what they depict. The squares in the center might be soldiers lined up in formation, walled in by the surrounding borders; the corners, explosions from muskets or cannons.
Even if that's true, even if somehow its creator named it with complete indifference (which I doubt), it is still an act of creation and therefore still has inherent political meaning.
And as I thought about all this, I also watched live as astronauts approached the moon. I listened with intense interest as they described the greens and browns visible on the surface. I waited in horror for the nuclear destruction promised by my government back on Earth. I held my breath during reentry. Finally, the US military airlifted the astronauts from their capsule to safety. The same US military murdered thousands of Iranians in air strikes that same week.
artemis ii is a modified version of Snowballs (A Handweaver's Pattern Book by M. P. Davison, p. 181). I hope I've done enough to justify giving this version its own name.
It simultaneously represents my celebration of our scientific achievements - of the good that comes from space exploration, and my condemnation of the violent legacy needed to get here.
If, 100 years from now, someone finds themselves asking if artemis ii was named in sorrow or in triumph, here is the answer:
This tapestry is my depiction of the Artemis II mission as a traditional US American colonial coverlet. In each corner, four diamonds (astronauts) surround a circle (the moon). Semi-circles (earthrise) make up the borders, and the dark circles (the moon's dark side) in the center are repeated in a 9 by 9 grid (nine days in space).
By designing artemis ii in the style of a traditional coverlet, I wanted to make it explicit that our colonial history - and the immense harm therein - is intrinsically woven with our modern success. The weave structure (our history & our ongoing harm) is the foundation that makes the design (our successes) possible.
-- read more --
This project started as an obsession with finding the origin of a popular late-1800's coverlet draft named Lee's Surrender. Given its name and its age, I really wanted to know more about who designed it and why. The assumption is that it's named for the surrender of confederate general robert e. lee, but is the name celebratory or mournful? If I make this, would I be displaying a confederate dogwhistle in my home? Etc, etc.
After lots of searching and no well-sourced answers, the final nail in my research coffin was Eliza Calvert Hall's 1912 "A Book of Handwoven Coverlets." She lists, for an entire page, the questions that plague her about coverlet names. And among them:
If we've been asking this same question for over a century, then it might not be possible to know. The knowledge is likely lost to time.
However, in my research, I found one theory I thought was interesting - that Lee's Surrender wasn't named as a manner of opinion, but rather as an impartial description. Many coverlets from this era are named after what they depict. The squares in the center might be soldiers lined up in formation, walled in by the surrounding borders; the corners, explosions from muskets or cannons.
Even if that's true, even if somehow its creator named it with complete indifference (which I doubt), it is still an act of creation and therefore still has inherent political meaning.
And as I thought about all this, I also watched live as astronauts approached the moon. I listened with intense interest as they described the greens and browns visible on the surface. I waited in horror for the nuclear destruction promised by my government back on Earth. I held my breath during reentry. Finally, the US military airlifted the astronauts from their capsule to safety. The same US military murdered thousands of Iranians in air strikes that same week.
artemis ii is a modified version of Snowballs (A Handweaver's Pattern Book by M. P. Davison, p. 181). I hope I've done enough to justify giving this version its own name.
It simultaneously represents my celebration of our scientific achievements - of the good that comes from space exploration, and my condemnation of the violent legacy needed to get here.
If, 100 years from now, someone finds themselves asking if artemis ii was named in sorrow or in triumph, here is the answer:
also I need everyone to know that I made this out of leftover scrap yarn. donāt do this. it is roughly 80 picks per inch and I had to pause every 2-3 picks to attach new yarn. and then weave in thousands of ends to make it reversible. learn from my mistakes.
