slavin:

I think often about games and how they are a model for the world. When I do, I think often about luck, and how its role in games is a kind of exorcism, an effigy, for the real world.

Children’s games — including most notably the Checkered Game of Life — are almost entirely luck. It’s one of the first lessons. Chess comes later, and models a world in which merit triumphs. People like that game.

It is indeed bad manners to complain about one’s luck (or to boast of it.) But if you don’t have God to work with, you just have to come to terms with Luck, that shit bastard Luck, some day or another. Preferably a good one. 

bobulate:

Laura Brunow Miner celebrates Pictory’s first anniversary with secrets of inspiring women:

Best thing I ever learned from Scrabble: Apparently it’s considered bad manners to complain about your tiles at the National Scrabble Tournament, because everyone’s luck balances out in the long run.

Maybe that’s not always true. But the fact is, we don’t ever really know the hand someone else is playing with, or when their luck has changed for better or worse. Everyone, male or female, has a unique background of experiences and obstacles — if you want to know what they are, ask.

Advice worth repeating.