Pokémon and the merits of vague aspirations

I recently defeated the Pokémon League in Brilliant Diamond and I was thinking about how the Pokémon franchise characterizes end goals for Pokémon trainers. Most obvious is the Pokémon League championship: this is essentially the “main quest” of the mainline games. It is upon becoming champion that the credits roll. There is also the secondary…

Stories in the history of written language (Part 2)

In Part 1, we looked at the early development of writing, the spread of different scripts, and the historical example of ancient Egyptian. In Part 2, we’ll look at a modern example of written language, some scripts that were invented in unusual ways, and how writing has been used as an art form. The history…