As a homeowner in California, I now know why so many homeowners here have grass lawns in the middle of a drought-stricken desert Every three months a code enforcement vehicle comes by, a week later we get a threatening letter to cut down the plants or be fined thousands of $$$ +

Medieval: If You Are Weird, The Faeries Will Take You To Their Strange World [Threat] Modern: If You Are Weird, The Faeries Will Take You To Their Strange World [Desire]

Was thinking about this again and about what kind of weird pitch they're going to use to sell protein paste to MAGA that's based on mealworms or crickets, since "every accusation is a confession" and MAGA loves screaming "You won't make me eat bugs!" No more meat, but we have some cheap protein...

Kinda wild to see this administration continually ignore security with their meetings at insecure locations, their photos of secure spaces, their use of phones in public, and yet nothing ever goes wrong as a result

Does Trump change his own diapers, or do they make one of the aides do it?

Share a TV show that raised you.

I have recently gotten an uptick in "weaponized incompetence" angry posts in my social media feeds and when I see one I cannot help but remember how, as a youth, my parents would sometimes direct me to do something without explaining the goal or showing the process, then punish me for doing it wrong

So the reason Jeffries and Schumer are useless is not just that they are spineless, but also that they are pedo protectors

It's always pretty funny seeing game ads that say something like "Human, dwarf, elf, or <other thing we just made up> - which do you choose?"

One of the potentially darkly humorous outcomes of all of this disaster in hardware is a bunch of companies simultaneously screwing each other in their attempts to gouge customers, i.e. Walmart tries to roll out surge pricing but can't get enough screens to replace its price stickers... +

The destruction of cheap electronics is, uh, "interesting" because plummeting prices for consumer electronics (bigger cheaper TVs, more powerful PCs) were part of the bread and circuses. If you can't buy cheap electronics anymore, or food, or housing, or anything at all, well...

The funny thing about Roko's Basilisk is that it didn't sell when Christians told me I had to do what they said or their all-powerful invisible entity would torture me for eternity, either

USING WEATHER MINDFULLY IN RPGS Many RPGs have random weather tables, for when you're out exploring the wild, or if you're in downtown Seattle in a grungy karaoke joint waiting to hear back from your cyber-fixer (85% of the table is "rain"). But just like movies and books, you can... +

I see that the state deals on the Colorado river are about to fall apart and wind up settled at the Federal level, which naturally gives the Trump admin the perfect excuse to give the water to red states and deny it to blue states. Wonder how long 'til severe water rationing in SoCal

Ok so Elric prestige streaming series, where the Melniboneans are all Black and Elric is only white because he's albino

Reading that Trump's private paramilitary of ICE hasn't been getting paid just reminds me of Praetorian Guard

So what are the Discord alternatives that people are jumping to now that it's going full dystopian security nightmare? And don't tell me Mastodon.

The people complaining about the Bad Bunny halftime show are the ideological inheritors of the people who said that Black folks shouldn't be in movies.

I was at the bath store today and they have a Men's section for scents and fragrances that's all stuff like "Edgy Rose" and "Dark Noir" and "Dusk Stallion" (only the last two are made up) and it made me consider that it would be so easy to make millions in that market if you just... +

Just watched "South Pacific" (support local theater and arts, y'all) and it must really hit MAGA elites different these days Act 1: "Powerful white men backed by the U.S. military chase young women on a remote island paradise" Act 2: "Racism is bad y'all" +

A few days ago I wrote about the Three Great Taboos and how the Epstein list gives us a glimpse into a society of entitled elites who violate those taboos, and I figure it is worth some slightly more detailed explanation (cw: sexual assault, cannibalism, dark shit) +

I recall from anthropology class a discussion about our culture's Three Great Taboos (your mileage may vary depending on your professor): cannibalism, incest, and pedophilia. Apropos of current times. (A thread) +

Tell me five classes you took in college: Accessibility and Disability Accommodation in Computer Design Fantasy and Science Fiction Honors Economics (Macro/Micro, with bonus section on socialism) Linear Algebra Network Security and Cryptography

Every year, like clockwork, my wife and I receive a jury summons. Every year we block out a week to trek downtown and sit in a waiting room. Every year we spend a chunk of time doing our civic duty, as is our privilege, to try to keep an organized, peaceful, just society. +

Wait a minute. In RDR2 you can get locked out of content because there are too many things to do at once and there is no indication of your time gating? This game gets worse and worse.

I saw someone commenting that the militarized oppression of today is in part due to the promotion of military adventurism promoted by games like Call of Duty (since one of the ICE agents at the latest shooting said "It's like Call of Duty") and this is backward. I'll 'splain. +

Between RDR2, CP2077, and AC: Odyssey, looks like some middle-aged gamedevs were thinking a lot about dying

I see that some folx haven't yet realized that the regime doesn't have to "cancel elections," all they have to do is send ICE agents with tear gas to the polling places and claim they're "protecting the vote from illegals." 21st century poll exams: You can win any election if you choose who votes.

Got my car back from the shop and crossed paths with a bumper sticker "Democrats are Communists" which really summarizes how the typical U.S. person is so propagandized and poisoned that they don't know anything beyond "These are two words I don't like"

Ppl think a modern civil war in the U.S. looks like lifted trucks with gun-toting rednecks in back rolling through streets fighting anarchists in masks with molotovs, but it actually looks like gravy seals cosplayers with guns kidnapping and shooting brown and queer ppl with no consequences.

John Carpenter really needs to stop faffing around with expensive CGI and get back to what he excels at: body horror and fighting cops

AD&D dungeon module I3, "Pharaoh," from 1982, includes the mystic guardian shown below. "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" debuted in 1975, meaning this is probably one of the earliest published Holy Grail gags in #DnD. (I haven't found an earlier one in publication yet.)

Perhaps some day ppl will realize that when the U.S. bombs Palestinians, bombs Venezuelans, bombs Somali, that those bombs will one day drop on them, too. There is no "they deserved it" or "it's a third-world shithole." There are just powerful people bombing poor people.

Apropos of nothing, suddenly remembering the time a dude in an organized Vampire game said "well this should go like such-and-such, and I would know because I wrote the Tremere clan book" and buddy, the odds of that bluff being called were low but that was just not your night

I'm about ten hours into RDR2 and this game has some of the worst tutorialization I've ever experienced.

A #Ravenloft domain that is a quaint English village with a surprising number of murders and the Darklord is an older English woman who "solves" them

Finally got RDR2, tried to play it, game broke right after the tutorial. Hard progression block.

I've been catching up on a lot of last-century movies lately and I finally got a chance to watch "Blacula" (1972), the foundation of Blaxploitation horror. This movie gets a bad rap. I actually found its choices quite interesting. +

Feels like the only time I post on FB now is to write a eulogy

I dunno about you, but it sure feels to me like this domestic militarization is so that the elites can keep their riches by killing off the masses of desperate and starving people once the use of the U.S. dollar as global reserve currency ends and BRICS moves in.

During his short hang, @mattcolville.bsky.social mentioned bifurcation of the RPG hobby, citing both that it's happened in the past (and will happen again) and the shift in 2023 toward streamers and streamed games. +

Why does the #Ravenloft setting call this central continental jigsaw "the Core" when "heartland" was RIGHT THERE

Now old enough to have seen the discourse go from "Playing Vampire gives you brain damage" to "Playing D&D gives you brain damage"

Bela Lugosi's "Dracula" came out only 34 years after the book

Still on my Ravenloft swerve: A little about domains. Domains are a pretty cool facet of Ravenloft. The land and the lord are one, y'know. ...wait, what's John Boorman's "Excalibur" doing here? +

I've seen like a million people repost this article with variations on "every time we try UBI it works, yet we keep running experiment after experiment, why??" and I do not understand how people do not get that the goal is NOT to fix things, it's to make it HARDER so you must SPEND MORE MONEY or DIE

Some additional thoughts regarding my Ravenloft ruminations. (Ah-ah-ah.) There's a word I used in the prior thread that informs the kinds of ideation I use with Darklords: affront. This ties into the Gothic sensibility of "crimes against nature and/or God." +

Ravenloft is such a funky setting for D&D. Take a game with roots in fantasy wargames from 13th & 14th century western Europe, use it to tell 18th & 19th century styled Gothic horror stories, and set it in a mashup of locales stitched together across centuries and cultures. +

Introduce yourself with five concerts you've seen: • Beastie Boys • Clannad • Wagakki Band • Nine Inch Nails • uh... does Phantom of the Opera count?