Monkey’s Paw: It is, and we’re already there

If they aren’t already, those summaries will soon just be ads of their own

Oh yeah, like being an adult is easy

I’ve been considering leaving this community anyway because the mods have been dragging their feet on this issue. But it’s a new mod team finding their feet, and a considered approach takes time, so I give the benefit of the doubt.

Encouraging someone to leave the community for expressing dissatisfaction that the community allows a nazi to use the platform might be a bigger nazi problem than banning nazis would be.

I woke up this morning and there’s three Stonetosses back to back in my feed.

If we could go ahead and throw them on the ban list, that would be pretty groovy

On the wings of a dream so far beyond reality

All alone in desperation, now the time is gone

Lost inside you’ll never find

Lost within my own mind

Day after day this misery must go on

So far away we wait for the day

For the lives all so wasted and gone

We feel the pain of a lifetime lost in a thousand days

Through the fire and flames we carry on

Through the Fire and Flames, Dragonforce. Most people know it for having five guitar solos, but the lyrics speak to me

The action wasn’t evil, just the laughter. Kind of like the comic we’re discussing.

Hm, I don’t know that I like dictating what kind of underwear others should wear, but I do approve of their stance on blowing up Earth

I’ve run a couple games in D&D 5e with mutating cultists. The party fought a bunch of cultists, and most of them had pretty pathetic stat blocks, but sometimes after the party killed one I’d change it out for a tougher monster’s stat block and describe how it violently mutated.

Behind the curtain, this is pretty useful because you can always decide when an encounter needs more oomph. The players can never be sure if a weak enemy is really a weak enemy or if they’ll become more powerful as a result of trauma. Just like Resident Evil. It’s also a technique that’s broadly applicable to any RPG system.

I lean on Resident Evil a fair bit when I’m designing games. They’ve got a lot to teach about dungeon design, like how to use backtracking instead of simply branching paths. I also like how puzzles aren’t too clever for the average player, or how they signal that locked doors might be opened not by a key but a key item.

Yesterday I watched a goose slowly walk across the busiest road in town, holding up traffic as it meandered. As soon as it got to the other side, it turned around and slowly headed back.

I like to imagine it was doing an evil laugh of its own

Opinions will vary here, but I like when the reminiscing comes after the request. If we catch up after talking to each other out of the blue, then you ask me for a favour, I tend to think that we only caught up because you felt obliged to do so to butter me up. It could be viewed as manipulative.

Bonus points if you ask me for a favour and I say I can’t right now, but you still take the time to catch up. That’s a pretty strong signal that you view the relationship as more than transactional. It also means I’m more likely to change my mind about doing that favour.

If you get some place you can see the starry sky, sometimes you can pick out satellites. It might look like a small bright star moving across the sky in a straight line.

Sometimes they’re just aircraft. I’m not really up on my astronomy, so I’m sure some of them could be other celestial bodies. But I’m pretty sure a satellite appears to move faster than a planet and slower than a shooting star

I thought it would be the ruptured appendix, but it turned out to be the dental abscess that made me wish for death.

Life has a way of surprising you. Take care of your teeth

Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you

I also find it degrading, but honesty costs me something here. That’s why I’m looking for ways to deflect instead of pretending

“Not great but I don’t want to expand on it” is pretty much exactly the kind of response I’m looking for

Thank you for teaching me some new words

I use this a lot. It makes me think of that old poster with the cat hanging from the tree. Something cute to think of when I’m fighting for my life

I’m also a fan of “feels like Monday” through the rest of the week

I’m a big fan of doing my best. My best happens to be shit a lot of the time, but it’s still my best. As long as you’re doing your best, and not trying to kill yourself by doing more than your best, I think there’s honour in that

Around here it’s definitely more of a greeting. I wish it was more of a genuine interest because then I wouldn’t feel so weird about answering truthfully when things aren’t great.

The context can make a big difference here. Friends and family are more likely to actually care. With coworkers and customers it’s often better to keep them at arms’ length because a negative response can get you labelled as not a team player, or receive customer complaints.

Some days I worry I’ll be too candid with my employer and I’ll lose my job as a result. That one is probably my own biased perception, but shit, it’s happened before.