Golden.

forever angry about haldir

[naarisz]

Shiny princes :)

[peanutsgifs]

[mortalityplays]

there a lot of details of american macroculture that have caused what I'd describe as a reality fracturing mental reset when I learned about them. one was learning that children do literally swear their allegiance to the american flag every morning before school and that's not a quaint comedic exaggeration left over from the 1950s like rabbit ears on a TV. one was learning that Americans have to pay for ambulance transportation. one was learning that Americans are taught the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were tough brave necessities that made the world safer and not horrific war crimes on a footing with the nazi holocaust.

and one was learning that the cultural cachet of veggietales is completely unironic and a lot of you watched the parables of God from the bible and his son jesus christ the cgi vegetable for real real and thought it was good, no goofing, not a bit

[mortalityplays]

thank you small americans in my phone for correcting me: beloved cgi bible show did not portray the son of god as a vegetable, because that would have been sacrilegious

[thetalee]

I was gonna put this in the tags, but it became an entire rant. SO

Do you know how many people would've died on both sides during an attempted invasion of the Japanese home islands?

Millions.

Do you know how many Japanese civilians committed suicide en masse in fear of American occupation?

It was 1000 just for the Battle of Saipan¹. 1 0 0 0. Not 1000 civilians that died as unfortunate collateral damage. 1000 civilians that killed themselves because they were convinced by Japanese propaganda that they'd be raped and tortured and mutilated if the US captured them alive. Hundreds of civilians threw themselves off a cliff.

Nuclear bombs are awful and horrible and never should've been invented, much less dropped. But the US military's estimated casuality number from invading the home islands was millions. That's only for the US military. Add in the Japanese military and civilians, and you get millions more. ²,³

Conversely, the high end estimate for both bombs is less than a quarter million.⁴,⁵ That includes the deaths from the effects of radiation, including cancer, decades later.

The trolley problem is a running joke on this website. But this was the trolley problem, and it wasn't a joke.

(Also, the estimated number of dead from the Holocaust for just Jews is 6,000,000.⁶ So, um. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not on footing with it. Not at all. But the land invasion of Japan would've been.)

Astroth, Alexander (2019). Mass Suicides on Saipan and Tinian, 1944: An Examination of the Civilian Deaths in Historical Context.

Mosley, Leonard (1982). Marshall: Hero for Our Times.

Frank, Richard B. (1999). Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire.

The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

United States Holocust Memorial Museum

[mortalityplays]

progress pride flag in my pfp to defend US war crimes because it's priiiiiiiiiiiide moooooonth 💅

[kawuli]

random PSA, I know a lot of people use duckduckgo as a Google alternative search engine, but it always kind of annoyed me when I was using it because it felt like No Name Brand Google

I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

also private, European based, least annoying search I've used lately (RIP old "don't be evil" Google)

[yomikoreadsbooks]

Keeping a list of Google alternatives just in case…

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

i have one of those, scraped from multiple different rec posts:

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.https://cosine.club/ is an electronic music similarity search engine

[petrichara]

Love, grief, and magic in the mundane

1- @Bluewmist on Twitter / 2- Roly Poly is Taken on Twitter / 3- About Time (2012) by Richard Curtis, image from Mita Park on Unsplash / 4- Sherri Turner on Twitter / 5- Cold Solace by Anna Belle Kaufman / 6- The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

[dubiousculturalartifact]

The new Odyssey adaptation has inevitably gotten people talking about a Muppet version of it, and they’re frequently suggesting Kermit as Odysseus, Miss Piggy as Penelope.

I’m sorry but that’s thinking way too small, hear me out:

We need to have Miss Piggy as Odysseus, and Kermit as Penelope.

Think about it… who’s the more fickle, prideful, warlike one in that relationship? Who is absolutely ready to go ham, at a moment’s notice?

It ain’t Kermit

[anyroads]

Miss Piggy tied to the mast while Statler and Waldorf heckle her from the sea

[mindovermuses]

But who is the single human cast member in this tale? Who gets to put in an Oscar-worthy performance alongside the Muppets and what role are they to play?

[muffinflarp69]

There’s no single human, everyone is a Muppet except for one scene. Circe, played by Janice, turns Odysseus’s crew into humans who still behave animalistic and are all played by Academy Award winning actors.

[natalieironside]

Pro gamer tip: Think thrice before submitting your writing to a non-paying publication and Never Ever Ever Under Any Circumstances submit to a publication that charges submission fees.

If you're paying a submission fee, you are being scammed. Hundred percent of the time. It's the same as paying your employer for permission to clock in. Literary journals that do this crap are a millstone around the neck of our profession.

[loveridden1999]

[longseasons]

[gwydionmisha]

Bonus: If I buy a book I get to keep it! The publisher can't turn up at my house at random and confiscate all the books I bought.

[initiala]

As much as I think it would be fun to have emotive anthropomorphic ears, I also recognize I can barely control my facial expressions. Like hell can I keep from Angry Ears-ing during meetings

[initiala]

This is who you’re having a meeting with, by the way.

[beemovieerotica]

there are people on this site who genuinely believe that there isn't an insane amount of hype around the harry potter hbo series because "i haven't seen ANYONE talking about it!" in their bubble of the internet...and they're also the people who believe that hogwarts legacy flopped and didn't make $1 billion as one of the best selling games of all time...we need a recalibration here, like it doesn't serve anyone to insist upon this other reality where harry potter isn't still the cultural juggernaut that it is.

[machine-unlearning]

god I'm such a slut for Chinese eggplant in garlic sauce *decides it’s inaccurate to refer to myself as a slut in light of my minimal sexual activity* if The Enemy discovered my ardor for Chinese eggplant in garlic sauce, they would gain a significant strategic advantage

[taurielsilvan]

happy birthday @captainaragorn ♥

And what would a Ranger know of this matter? - This is no mere Ranger. He is Aragorn, son of Arathorn. You owe him your allegiance.

[o-craven-canto]

Alternate timeline in which all Greek and Latin roots are swapped:

catastrophe -> contraverse cephalopod -> capitoped chlorophyll -> viridofolia democracy -> populimpery homicide -> anthropoctony homosexual -> equigamic kilometer -> millimensure interregnum -> mesarchy magnanimous -> megapsychic manuscript -> chirography motorcycle -> ergatorote microscope -> parvovisor oxygen -> acidofex polyamory -> multierasty television -> remotoscopy universe -> monostrophe

[grimeclown]

Putting all tabletop players into a college level ethics class and forcing them to turn in a paper on moral philosophy before buying a new book

[grimeclown]

This is…. An interesting thing to say… on this post in particular….

[grimeclown]

I think a lot of people reblogging this from @probablybadrpgideas are interpreting this as “this would be such a funny wacky way to make the table soooo complicated” but I mean this as a complaint about the way that so many tabletop players seem to just. completely lack an understanding of ethics. what it actually means to behave ethically and treat others ethically. and i dont mean this as "why do people want to be mean and play as villains? :(" i mean "why are there so many tabletop players that sympathize with outright fascist factions to the point of wondering why theyre listed as 'Lawful Evil' in the book"

[grimeclown]

can you talk me through why this was a particularly bad or challenging thing for your party to have done

[wizard-of-soup]

Goblins were in fact, for me, a turning point on this concept. I had a player who wanted to be a goblin, and I forgot about this fact up to the point that the party got a quest to kill goblins. As soon as I was announcing the quest I realized it would be a problem, though I didn't have anything else ready so I went with it. And it was! The players immediately questioned why the mayor was paying mercenaries to kill goblins, and then further questioned his justifications, at which point I realized it would be a better story if the goblins were a scapegoat and not an actual villain. This turned into a terse interrogation where the mayor threatened to put them in jail once their questions got pointed enough that he would have to either field accusations or lie; they then went CSI on the situation and drilled through his political cabinet to get answers. I had to improv pretty much all of it and I don't remember the actual ending (I know they sided with the goblins and the mayor was guilty), but this helped me realize that the Gary Gygax writing style of "certain races are just BAD and that's why they hang out in dungeons" was very short-sighted.

D&D writing, by and large, encourages a lack of questions. The surface runs deep. "Go into a cave and chop up goblins." Why are we doing this? "Goblins are bad." All goblins? "Yes."

I think the question of "why are there players comfortable siding with fascist factions and wondering why they're called 'lawful evil'" is pretty easily answered with... because D&D itself is inherently kind of fascist. And it's the most insidious kind of fascist, too- its villains are fascists, so how could you point fingers at the book?

Fire Giants are dwarf slavers. Drow are a megalomaniacal theocracy who hate men. Orcs are violent tribes of marauding killers. Illithids want to destroy all life and keep an entire civilization to scrub their floors. But these narratives still push the idea that "evil" is a racial trait. The players are not only justified in their campaign to destroy these cultures, they're encouraged to do it.

They let the cat out of the bag by making these playable races; because now, they're not cut-and-dry villanous societies. They're people. There are Drow accountants whose lives are about balancing taxes, not worshipping Lolth. There are Yuan-Ti who don't sacrifice babies on altars, and much prefer playing the lute or sewing blankets. Yet we're still expected to read "Chaotic Evil" under the Monster Manual entry for a bugbear and take it seriously.

[quantumcartography]

Reblogging again to add a quick take: as a DM introducing ethics makes your game so much better.

I had an intro to my campaign that involved a mad scientist kidnapping someone and turning them into a wererat. I didn't think much of it and I spent way more time fleshing out the other NPCs, I just wanted to use that wererat as a boss fight.

Once the party encountered him though they immediately saw what I totally missed: the guy who became the wererat was absolutely the victim of this story. I did my best at thinking on my feet and made the wererat this defeated guy who only followed the mad scientist because he felt like his life was ruined. So they, through good rolls, convinced him to help them fight the mad scientist and it made for such a better story.

The moral I'm trying to convey is that you need to treat every NPC in your game as a world within themselves. And I mean EVERY NPC. Why are the wolves attacking people? Are they desperately hungry? Mind controlled? Territorial due to poachers? Why are the goblins working for the wizard? Extortion? Promise of riches? If the bandits see that everyone is in armor, why wouldn't they just let the party pass and wait for easier prey? If one of the bandits die, why wouldn't the rest of them run for the hills?

[dunmertitty]

here’s a couple of articles on the history of racism + xenophobia in tolkien & how that influenced dnd

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror — James Mendez Hodes

This is the first installment of a two-article series about the racist origins, nature, and ramifications of orcs, a malevolent humanoid spe

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part II: They're Not Human — James Mendez Hodes

This is the complement to my previous article , “Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror.” In t

anyone interested in the subject should definitely also check out the whole Three Black Halflings podcast, which talks about being black in nerdy spaces. a lot of times they’ll have on guests talking about their intersections and experiences in nerdy spaces. they have an episode with the author of the articles above.

they’ve also played a ttrpg based on african mythologies rather than mostly european ones like most mainstream fantasy.

highly recommend!!

[liothediabolus]

[Image descriptions:

A Tumblr comment from "smudge-goblin" that reads: "Why not a political theory class. I wanna war crime accurately".

2. Tumblr tags from "grad-school-fool" that read: "do you know how hard it is to DM a party with MORALS"; "their first dungeon they unionized the goblins"; "because thats what happens when you treat sentient species as sentient". /End ID]

[mousidy]

very strange cottage industry on youtube of giving exhaustive "critiques" of harry potter that amount to things like "the magic school is dangerous and that's bad!!!" and treating that with equal severity as the fatphobia or the slavery apologia, then patting themselves on the back as if this amounts to some kind of praxis

cinemasins is not praxis lol. how about materially supporting and protecting trans people from joanne and forgetting about her wizard books

[mousidy]

I loved harry potter growing up. it made me feel seen as an abused and closeted kid. I idolized and looked up to joanne, wanting to become an author like her

then she started funnelling all her wizard book money into destroying the rights of my people and I resolved not to give her any more of my money

I didn't have to reevaluate the quality of her writing to do this. whether she's good at keeping her worldbuilding consistent or whatever has nothing to do with my decision to boycott her work. who cares how good or bad her writing is. she's killing trans people

[jayalaw]

OP, you get it. This is exactly the problem.

[venusish]

123movies & putlocker provide more for the people of this country than the army has ever

[kittenisajerk]

At least the army doesn’t take the money creators could have made. And is also not stealing anyone’s content. ^^

[uiruu]

they kill people