Dan Thurot

@danthurot

I'm just some dude. A cardboard cowboy. I also write Space-Biff!, the world's first and only board game review site.

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Bluesky

¿Es tu perfil?Reclámalo y danthurot.dirty.social es tuyo.Reclamar perfil

Dan Thurot@danthurot· 22d

Whew! It was a packed week. But a nice one. What did you get to the table?

board games: Chess Joker, Blorp!, Agent Avenue, Sealed Monstas, Barbecubes, Blancat, Tag Team: Arthur's Legacy, Realm of Reckoning, Brumble Quest, Master of Coin, Deep Regrets, Gruntz, Dawn of the Zeds, The Witches of Willowspur

Dan Thurot@danthurot· 24d

Nuh uh. That's how you get eaten by your id dressed as a pirate.

A door in a massive hotel. There is a plaque next to the door that reads "THE BACKDOOR"

Dan Thurot@danthurot· 29d

Now that's a week! What did you get to the table?

board games: Wingspan Pocket, Scribbly Gum, Blorp!, The Guerrilla Generation, Playthings, Formosa Formosa, Out of Sorts, Revolutions, Realm of Reckoning, Star Trek Captain's Chair, Dawn of the Zeds

Dan Thurot@danthurot· Jul 7

Here's a shot for comparison.

My DVC games collection next to Wingspan Pocket for comparison.

Dan Thurot@danthurot· Jul 6

I had a busy week! What did you get to the table?

board games: 52 Realms: Adventures, Politik, Compile, The Guerrilla Generation, Blorp!, Personal Demons, Wingspan Pocket, Deep Regrets, Ruins, Movie Night, Book Club, Formosa Formosa, The Witches of Willowspur, Gruntz, Tag Team

Dan Thurot@danthurot· Jul 4

I think it's lovely.

Dan Thurot@danthurot· Jun 30

The bumper sticker I got for Summer's bike is an inside joke limited to the Wasatch Front, but even just on its inaugural ride tonight we earned multiple shout-outs from people on the street.

A bumper sticker on my wife's bike that shows an incredibly infirm old woman. "Julia Reagan discovered the Great Salt Lake," it says.

Dan Thurot@danthurot· Jun 29

Had some lovely plays this past week! What did you get to the table?

board games: Rolling Deep, Sumidagawa Red Town, Fractal Tricks, Wingspan, Playthings, Politik, Personal Demons, Houdini's Last Act, Movie Night, Book Club, 52 Realms: Adventures

Dan Thurot@danthurot· Jun 26

Looking through old pictures, I stumbled across that time I made Boomer Monopoly for a gag.

Monopoly, but with Boomer stuff in it. Like "pretending to be from the Greatest Generation," plain toast, and phonebooks.

Dan Thurot@danthurot· Jun 22

Had a lovely week. What did you get to the table?

board games: Spots, Crossbows & Catapults, Wyrmspan, Magical Athlete, Agent Avenue, Solar Titans, Rising Cultures, Zenith, Dune: Imperium, Wingspan, Fractal Tricks, Personal Demons, Witchcraft!, Rolling Deep

Dan Thurot@danthurot· Jun 20

For Summer's birthday, we're taking the girls to Honor Among Thieves in concert. Ten minutes to start! Everyone's getting excited.

A view of the screen and orchestra stage from the second tier of Abravanel Hall.

Dan Thurot@danthurot· Jun 15

It was a nice week. What did you get to the table?

board games: Eureka!, 52 Realms: Adventures, Agent Avenue, Fractal Tricks, Rising Cultures, Zenith, Personal Demons, Wingspan, Playthings, Politik, Out of Sorts, Rolling Deep, Swords Against

Dan Thurot@danthurot· Jun 10

Agent Avenue with the 12yo. We're currently tied 1-1, so things are tense!

Dan Thurot@danthurot· Jun 8

Went out of town over the weekend, but still managed to get in some really nice plays. What did you get to the table this past week?

board games: Scribbly Gum, Witch Hunt 1649, Koala Rescue Club, A Gentle Rain, Swords Against, Fractal Tricks, Colossi, Eureka!, Zenith, The Man Who Was Thursday, Playthings, Rolling Deep

Dan Thurot@danthurot· Jun 1

Played something every day this week. What did you get to the table?

board games: Battle Card, Dead Channels, Scales of Fate, Euphoria: Essential Edition, Zenith, Toy Battle, John Company, The Man Who Was Thursday, Organism, Colossi, Galactic Cruise

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 25

It was a lighter week for a host of reasons. What did you get to the table?

board games: Waypoints, Battle Card, The Man Who Was Thursday, Witch Hunt 1649, Flip Voyage, Fliptown

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 23

Seen at the mall: watches for mutants.

An advertisement banner at the mall, showing a plasticy woman wearing a watch. She has six fingers. The effect is unsettling even at a glance, like she has a deformed caterpillaresque alien sprouting from her forelimb.

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 21

Loved Angel Down, despite four clusters of 4-6 pages being in random orders. The book shop was kind enough to do an exchange. We glanced at their inventory... and about half of their copies also had disordered pages. Someone made an oopsie. But yeah! Loved the book!

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 21

Space-Biff!'s new header tagline: "Don't worry, this will make sense eventually."

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 21

Now, there's some debate over whether these portions of the New Testament are evident in the earliest theoretical sources, or whether they represent further developments inserted as later interpolations into the texts. Either way, the coming centuries see Christian theologians reinterpreting earlier texts to match their newer cosmological model. The Serpent of Genesis (who was literally a mean snake; it's a fable) and the Accuser of Job (the ha-satan) are two of the figures reinterpreted over these centuries. Similarly, much of modern Christianity's cosmology is not derived from these texts, but from Dante's Inferno (15th century) and Milton's Paradise Lost (17th century).

But the New Testament is very much populated by spiritual beings that influence, afflict, and possess human agents. As in many origin stories, these tales serve a purpose; in this case, they explain the reasons behind the suffering that people encounter in their daily lives, often by assigning moral responsibility to the victim. In some cases, Jesus even pushes back on these simplistic explanations, such as in the Gospel of John when he heals a blind man after insisting that his blindness was not caused by either personal or hereditary sin. "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" This question reveals the worldview of the first century, where one's misfortunes were surely a divine response to personal action, as well as Jesus's willingness to rebut the cultural assumptions of his day.

I want to be clear that I'm not trying to defend the perspective that demonic possession is a reasonable worldview. [b]It may have been in ancient times, when people were searching for answers to hidden injuries, but it is not a reasonable perspective today.[/b] Demonic possession in Christian scripture is almost certainly a stand-in for epilepsy, depression, strokes, deep trauma, queer identity, or any number of other factors that were not understood by ancient peoples. Furthermore, the treatment of those factors as "demonic" has led to shocking quantities of suffering. I have spent years working with young people whose struggles or gender identities were dismissed as demonic in some fashion, and who were therefore subjected to neglect, abuse, and in some cases literal torture. I have sat in hospital rooms with youngsters who attempted suicide when their parents tried to exorcise their demons. Not long ago, my state made national news after a woman tied her children to bedframes for days at a time because she believed they were being influenced by evil spirits. In all cases, the real abuse came from human hands, not demonic visages. These forms of religious abuse should be faced and denounced clearly and openly.

Chad, since you're apparently reading these messages, I want to tell you directly that you have been misled. There are no demons possessing people. Even among Christians, this is a fringe perspective. What appear to you to be demonic possessions are in fact human conditions, some of them illnesses and others markers of a person's natural identity, and they deserve to be treated as such by clinical professionals. When you pretend to be an exorcist, you are harming yourself and those you believe yourself to be treating. These acts, which you believe to be acts of love, are acts of abuse and pride. I sincerely hope you will search for opinions and perspectives outside of this bubble you have created for yourself.

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 21

Preserving for posterity, because that whole thread might get nuked from orbit. I just felt that, as somebody who's actually earned a degree in the development of Jewish and Christian belief, and who has done volunteer work with those accused of demonic affliction, this needed to be said.

I apologize, but this is a long one.

First, I want to talk a little bit about some of the textual origins that people are getting hung up on. Don't worry, this will make sense eventually.

If we're examining the topic from a purely originalist perspective — ignoring the many receptions of the text over the millennia — then it's certainly the case that no "Devil," in the modern understanding of the word, can be found in the Hebrew Bible. Most scholars would agree that the ha-satan was a position in the divine court, effectively a prosecutor working for Hashem in a complementary role rather than an adversarial one. In this line of interpretation, other textual appearances of this opposition are likely representative of this courtier, sometimes in a distinct but parallel form (because the texts are not univocal), or, when absent the prefixing "ha-," may sometimes be understood to refer to non-divine opposition.

But this critique is limited to the Hebrew Bible — what Christians call the Old Testament. By the time of the authorship of the Synoptic Gospels, Judaism's contact with Zoroastrianism had morphed some understandings of the ha-satan to mirror that religion's Angra Mainyu, the destructive spirit opposed to Ahura Mazda. Angra Mainyu was the oppositional force of wrath, greed, and envy, who commanded a horde of demons that embodied these various negative qualities. Certain intertestamental texts, such as the Book of Jubilees, describe Hashem investing a similar opposing angel with leadership over fallen angels. In the Synoptic texts, then, Satan has undergone a transformation from his earlier courtly identity. There he tempts Jesus in the wilderness, is described as being responsible for various illnesses, possesses human beings with legions of spirits, and so forth.

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 20

When you visit Space-Biff!, this little dude will exorcise all your demons, and not even lecture you about healing powers or scary movies. It's my 100% guarantee that after visiting Space-Biff!, you will not have any extraplanar demons in your soul.

Wee Aquinas, the mascot of Space-Biff! and very good at making sure you don't got demons in you. (You don't.)

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 19

Reading Angel Down, I was super confused by a portion of its run-on sentence, but I figured, hey, dislocation is its author's technique... ...except I've now realized a ton of the pages are out of order in my copy.

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 18

That's more like it. What did you get to the table this week?

board games: Cysmic, The Guerrilla Generation, Rattlesnake, Waypoints, Citizens of the Spark, Return to Dark Tower, Zenith, Flip Voyage, A Gentle Rain, Rising Cultures, Colossi, Compile, Tidal Blades 2, Euphoria

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 17

Getting in some Compile with the 12yo. Wish me luck.

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 14

You bastard!

a snippet from an in-progress article in which the author made substantively the same joke as Martin here, which is making the author feel like a real hack

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 13

Even as a kid, it wasn’t the most exciting game. Mostly it served as a perilous obstacle for my other toys. But it also cracked the portal to the netherworld. Bit by bit, the demons came through. Now I play a dozen or so board games a week.

a third image of FORBIDDEN BRIDGE, with one adventurer hanging precipitously to the rotten planks as they nearly fall into the river far below

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 13

I brought it up at dinner every night. I begged for it. My list to Santa Claus had one line item repeated over and over. And so, to shut me up, my parents relented. No harm in letting a demon’s pinkie finger through the portal, they figured.

another image of FORBIDDEN BRIDGE, this time with two hapless explorers crossing the tilted bridge

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 13

I didn’t have many board games as a kid, owing to a family that halfway believed there were demons trying to claw their way into the human realm through children’s entertainment. But the moment the commercial for Forbidden Bridge flickered onto the television set, I knew I had to have it.

FORBIDDEN BRIDGE, a game with a shaking bridge.

Dan Thurot@danthurot· May 12

My kiddos have been taking cooking and sewing classes, and the best part is that I get to reap the benefits. Such as this shirt my 12yo made from the old Corvids mat from @dvcgames.bsky.social. They insist I wear it to today's school function. I do so proudly.