... it's the subject of the New Yorker's "Catalogues" game, which I play every morning. There's some category with 7 items and you've got to put the in some kind of order.
Seeing Mediterranean Avenue in the lowest position — low rent — on the Monopoly board motivated me to prompt Grok: "List the monopoly squares in order and make the argument that they express an opinion that is not politically correct. I'm especially interested in the racial meaning of 'Mediterranean' (which is put in a lowly position)."
Grok point me toward this 2021 Atlantic article by Mary Pilon: "The Prices on Your Monopoly Board Hold a Dark Secret/The property values of the popular game reflect a legacy of racism and inequality" (gift link). Excerpt:
Jesse Raiford, a realtor in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the early 1930s and a fan of what players then called “the monopoly game,” affixed prices to the properties on his board to reflect the actual real-estate hierarchy at the time. And in Atlantic City, as in so much of the rest of the United States, that hierarchy reflects a bitter legacy of racism and residential segregation....
Pilon has a whole book: "The Monopolists/Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game" (commission earned).
What board games have you been thinking about? Yesterday, I was thinking about chess, specifically the artwork called "Horses Running Endlessly," by Gabriel Orozco:
"Orozco's chessboard is made of four colors instead of the standard two, and the traditional eight-by-eight board has been reconfigured to be sixteen by sixteen, with 256 squares. Instead of including the usual thirty-two pieces (kings, queens, rooks, bishops, knights, and pawns), Orozco has made all the players knights. In this game knights can play on indefinitely, turning through space infinitely, unchecked by other players."
It was a miniature chessboard and all the pieces were knights... the little hooves drumming across the dwarf chessboard, the small hearts storming the small hot breasts, the tiny forelocks and fetlocks and withers bright with the dew of a small-scale dawn.... All the pieces were endlessly, gallantly, blessedly, blythesomely knights.
Posts
42 comments:
Suggested monopoly strategy is buy up Park Place and Boardwalk ASAP. The board is based on real places in Atlantic City. I'm sure it was more impressive in the 1920s, because viewing a video tour from 2025, Altlantic City looks very unimpressive.
Catan. More dynamic than Monopoly as the game board changes each game. And there are expansion packs available to the base game.
I'm a Clue man. I wish there was some online contest where I could make money playing Clue. I kick ass in Clue. You did it in the kitchen with exercise beads, Mrs. White.
Uncle Wiggily! Played the pathway board game endlessly as a child. Good times.
I play the ultimate racist board game, chess. White always moves first.
I don't see you guys rating
The kind of mate I'm contemplating
I'd let you watch, I would invite you
But the queens we use would not excite you
1. Never suspected Althouse to be a horse girl. I suspect it is within an art-school variant from afar.
2. Blythesomely. There's a word for you. I always wanted to see Blythe Danner in a production of Blithe Spirit, spelling be damned. In her case, blythesomely would be a description of beauty, for sure.
3. The war on landlords continues and expands.
The property values of (Monopoly) reflect a legacy of racism and inequality
Because literally everything is about racism and inequality. And it's your fault...!
Not a bore game, but, two couples I gave a long ride to, started playing one the games from a portal called Corrillo.
They were having fun. Reason I asked; what were they playing.
Looking at that chessboard hurts my eyes and my head. Its insanity, i tell you, insanity.
I taught my brother how to play chess. And damn if he didn't read some books on the subject and start beating me routinely. Son of a bitch! So I stopped playing chess. You can have chess, that's your thing. I'm a Clue man.
AI, by the way, dominates chess. None of the chess masters can beat the machine.
On the other hand, AI sucks at poker. AI is embarrassingly bad at poker. Nate Silver Calls AI's Stupid Bluff
I had this weird experience. When I was young, I tried to live in those beautiful Brooklyn brownstones on the border of Bed-Stuy, the massive black ghetto. If integration is the virtuous goal, I thought, blacks must want it to. Wrong. My family was chased out of Ft. Greene Park by black gangs. My kids couldn’t even walk to school without being harassed and attacked. The lesson I learned is that, despite the BS, most groups actually want to live almost entirely among their own kind.
"Son of a bitch" is not an insult that works on your brother. If you think about it.
Fischer came up with a variation of the regular chess that is now popular. You randomly switch the backrow piece position at the start of the game. Fischer thought "regular chess" was getting too boring, since opening theory is well established. Of course, you might think that when you're a Grandmaster, but for the average chess player that's not a problem.
We cant remember "opening theory" - except in the most general manner. While Magnus Carlson knows the first 10 moves of any opening, and can make all correct moves in his sleep, we cant remember more than 5. Sometimes great ability is a bad thing.
Frankly, i'm tired of talking about black people and old-timey racism. Its 2026, and white people have been the victims of affirmative action and quotas for 50 years - at least.
"Jesse Raiford, a realtor in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the early 1930s and a fan of what players then called “the monopoly game,” affixed prices to the properties on his board to reflect the actual real-estate hierarchy at the time. And in Atlantic City, as in so much of the rest of the United States, that hierarchy reflects a bitter legacy of racism and residential segregation...."
So the street names reflected reality and were therefore racist. Got it.
One thing I love about The Equalizer 3 (Denzel's best movie!) is how all the bad guys call him "the American."
It's up for free on youtube.
I bet Nate Silver is pretty good at poker. He's been bullshitting people for years.
There's a great murder mystery that takes place at a chess tournament. Nero Wolfe Gambit
bb,
yes, yes he is good at that
People get mad at Nate because he's a Democrat. I'm used to Democrats, I used to be one. I'm a fan because the man loves baseball.
Of course I give him no money. My people are from Scotland.
The oranges are the best properties in Monopoly. Low cost of entry and high hit rate from people leaving jail.
Btw. According to this video, early AI used a grid/board like game to figure out more than just guess what comes next. "All on it's own", apparently.
(I say apparently because falling for one AI slop too many got me banned from r/AnimalsDoingStuff)
YouTube: Is It Just a Fancy Dictionary, or Is Something Emerging?
In 2024, a left-of-center relative of ours vented her ire on the Sinclair Group for requiring its affiliates to air a certain editorial, as stated by Wikipedia:
“In June 2024, dozens of Sinclair local newscast anchors delivered an identical or nearly identical introduction to a recorded story by a Sinclair national correspondent. The story related to a recent Wall Street Journal article that called into question the mental acuity of Democratic president and reelection candidate Joe Biden. The Sinclair report did not mention that the Journal story had been criticized by prominent media critics for alleged lack of balance in its sourcing, including its heavy reliance on anonymous Republican sources.”
She called Sinclair a “monopoly” and was bent out of shape because it required the affiliates to air it verbatim (not true, based on the Wikipedia blurb above). I pointed out that besides Nexstar with 265 affiliates compared to Sinclair's 195, Sinclair pales in comparison to the Alphabet networks, most of the cable outlets, and most print news. So, not a monopoly.
I know this is a tenuous connection to the Monopoly game and the pearl clutching about its racist/classist motivations, but the monopoly that is held by people of a certain political stripe should concern all of us.
That video I linked to above, is best if watched from the beginning. Thanks.
On a regulation chessboard, it's possible to move a knight a minimum of 63 times and touch each square on the board once and only once. Try it! Not as easy as you might think.
The only reason one can dominate and prevail in Monopoly is based on its limits as a closed system. Closed systems are easy to rig for a lucky operator. IRL achieving anything near a monopoly is quite difficult and impossible to maintain over time. Socialist countries are the closest thing to a closed system the modern world has, which is why the party in our system dependent on rigging would really prefer to socialize our relatively open system to make it easier for them to rig.
How can anyone still believe that racism is the reason that certain racial groups are more affluent than others? It's such a stale canard.
Racism: Always where you least expect it, and yet it's everywhere you look.
Will the new Monopoly have MLK Blvd? Where will it be placed? Or will it just revert the the norm: Maple, Elm, Crabapple Street?
Diversity.
Obamacares and other monopolistic regimes. Rabid Diversity?
I have a custom Snap-on Tools themed Monopoly game from a limited run Parker Bros made. They were given away by the company executives a few years back and I received one. Never opened it. Haven’t played any board game in years.
Saint Croix said...
One thing I love about The Equalizer 3 (Denzel's best movie!) is how all the bad guys call him "the American."
I beg to differ -- his best movie IMO is Training Day, a performance really out of character for him, but very well done.
“"List the monopoly squares in order and make the argument that they express an opinion that is not politically correct. I'm especially interested in the racial meaning of 'Mediterranean' (which is put in a lowly position)."
So is Baltic, which doesn’t really fit that narrative. As Freud famously said, “Sometimes a square is just a square.” Or something like that.
“AI, by the way, dominates chess. None of the chess masters can beat the machine.”
You’re thinking of chess engines, computers specifically programmed to play chess. No human has been able to beat them for many years. A.I.s, on the other hand, are hilariously bad at chess; many examples are posted online.
Why ChatGPT Struggles With Chess
• Next-token prediction: ChatGPT is a large language model designed to predict the next word or token in a sequence, not to calculate game-tree logic, track spatial coordinates, or evaluate board states.
• Lack of hardcoded rules: The rules of chess are not hardcoded into the AI; instead, it tries to "guess" valid moves based on patterns scraped from text and game notation on the internet.
• Illegal moves and hallucinations: It regularly tries to make illegal moves (such as moving pieces through occupied squares), forgets where pieces are located, misinterprets board notations like FEN, or "hallucinates" phantom pieces that do not exist.
• Defeated by basic tech: Even a 1970s Atari 2600 chess cartridge can easily beat standard ChatGPT models because purpose-built chess engines use proper algorithmic calculation.
"R C Belaire said...
On a regulation chessboard, it's possible to move a knight a minimum of 63 times and touch each square on the board once and only once. Try it! Not as easy as you might "think.
"..Belgian-American chess master George Koltanowski and his famous blindfold Knight’s Tour memory exhibition. In this signature stage performance, he navigated a lone knight across every square of a chessboard without looking, reciting random cities, names, and numbers written on each square by the audience."
Saw him do it in Saratoga Ca. decades ago.
Almost beat him in exhibition in Macy's San Francisco when I was a teen.. Got caught up in excitement and blundered 2 moves away from a queen.
Of course, he was playing 9 other guys, but I was last to concede.
It's no secret that Monopoly was originally an "anti-monopoly" game. It's also no secret that the board reflects Atlantic City, which was the Las Vegas of its day and had a large and repressed servant class. Anyway, I look forward to HBO buying up the book and giving us "Boardgame Empire."
White goes first in Go, too; and pieces surrounding other pieces capture them, like in Slavery Times. Sure, the black pieces capture white pieces, too, but we all know white slaves don’t count.
The idea came out years ago that there were different kinds of human intelligence. Now it seems that there are different kinds of machine intelligence? Have we been wrong in thinking that AI only applies to LLMs? Are the tech wizards working on combining different types of machine learning to produce a more general artificial intelligence?
𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘶𝘱 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨, "𝘞𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢," 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵, 𝘈𝘯𝘯𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯:
𝘐𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘣𝘰𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘬𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴... 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘥𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘧 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘣𝘰𝘢𝘳𝘥, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘤𝘬𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘦𝘵𝘭𝘰𝘤𝘬𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭-𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘸𝘯.... 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘭𝘺, 𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺, 𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥𝘭𝘺, 𝘣𝘭𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘬𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴.
Itsy bitsy spiders climbing up and down endless waterspouts.
Tonstant Weader Fwowed up,
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
"I have a custom Snap-on Tools..."
For a second there I thought you said "strap-on tools." That's a very different game.
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