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Being an adult means telling the kid your babysitting 7:00pm is too late for a caffeinated soda, and then when they leave at 9:30 cracking open a Dr. Pepper, because I can fuck up my own sleep schedule if I want, but God help me if I fuck up yours.

#babysitting #aunt life

Saw this Dale Lee Cosplayer take advantage the perfect lighting at the Seattle Quangle Quest Show

#dimension 20 #quangle quest #live show

whichcouldmeanothing

these guys haven't seen goncharov

eosofspades

i didn't have "i'm broken" teenage asexual angst i had "i'm literally being the only reasonable one about this concept and the rest of you are behaving like fucking freaks" perception issues

sweetlikesunflowersandhoney

Please watch Game Changer

theaceofarrows

Put more aces the government. They won't be swayed by sex scandals, only the power to invade Denmark

thenoblestofdonnas

Why are we invading Denmark? What did I miss? I know some Danish, so that might be of help, tho.

theindefinitearticle

scientia-rex

Me: Exercise does not cause weight loss. This is a fact that has been demonstrated so robustly in research that even doctors, who hate and fear evidence, are grudgingly starting to admit this.

Someone reading that post: Cool, but have you considered that exercise leads to weight loss?

Me: I am going to eat you

scientia-rex

lololol "does too"

does it? not for women after childbirth

does it? not if you want to see an effect size of greater than 1 kilo (2.2lbs)

does it? not if you'd like to see a maintained loss greater than 3.3% of your body weight

does it? not for people with type 2 diabetes

does it? not for people exercising for their non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

Interactive computer-based reminders to diet and exercise are useless.

I mean, I literally went to Cochrane Reviews, one of the best-respected sources for massive meta-analyses, and I just input the keywords "weight loss" and "exercise," and I'm tooling through the results. Every one of the damn things shows that we do not have high-quality research indicating that exercise leads to weight loss. So no. I'm right, and you need to adjust your worldview--ask yourself, if not for weight loss, then why? Re-read those sources: exercise improved muscle density, insulin sensitivity, and cholesterol. It's good for your blood vessels, it's good for your strength, it's good for your brain.

But it won't make you thin. Maybe two pounds, maybe five, but that's about it. If you're looking at short-term, like a year, sure, you can lose weight--but the effort will almost always result in your body going "oh shit, we're living in a famine" and you will regain it, and now, with your body at a new set-point, losing it will be harder. Regaining will be easier. Welcome to the life-destroying yo-yo.

scientia-rex

#then what the fuck are we supposed to do?

Exercise and eat lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains because those things will keep you healthier longer, regardless of how much you weigh, and pick up your pick-axe in the ongoing horribly slow and frustrating fight of chipping away at the idea that being fat is a bad thing that means you’re a bad person. I recommend the book Fat Talk for a good place to start.

scientia-rex

Lotta people going “the authors say different things about their data than you do!” Yep. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Means the authors have an axe to grind and they’re ignoring the implications of their own data. Back when I worked as, you know, a coordinator for an Institutional Review Board for an R-1 institution, checking that was my job. So you need to be able to look at data and understand things like confidence intervals and effect sizes. It’s not enough to let researchers tell you what their data mean; they may have lots of reasons to come to conclusions their data don’t actually support.

scientia-rex

This is, by the way, one of the most frustrating parts of experimental psychology, which was my background before medicine. People like to believe that they would change their mind based on evidence, but in practice, once you make someone pick a position, they’ll defend it long past the point at which it would make sense to switch. This is why it’s important to repeat and repeat and repeat things: I didn’t believe that exercise doesn’t cause weight loss the first, oh, probably half a dozen times I heard it. I had to get to a point where I was in medical school watching a professor talk about all the data on weight loss and slowly feel it dawn on me that he was saying one thing when he was explaining the data, and then saying THE EXACT OPPOSITE THING when he was drawing conclusions. It was so clear to me that what he had just said was “there is no widely scalable weight loss program that works” and then he said “but we should still be encouraging patients to exercise and eat less to lose weight” as if those weren’t DIRECTLY CONFLICTING.

paulnewoman

greenteaandtattoos

Critical Role Ask Game

satyr: how did you discover critical role

dragonborn: when did you start watching

human: what is your favorite main campaign

elf: what is your favorite side campaign

dwarf: what is your favorite one-shot

tiefling: who is your favorite female player

gnome: who is your favorite male player

halfling: who is your favorite dm

half-elf: who is your favorite guest player

goliath: who is your favorite campaign 1 character

changeling: who is your favorite campaign 2 character

genasi: who is your favorite campaign 3 character (so far)

goblin: who is your favorite non-main campaign character

aasimar: what is your favorite location in exandria (or out of it)

eisfuura: who is your favorite npc

wizard: what is your favorite party name

paladin: what is your favorite friendship

monk: what is your favorite canon relationship

druid: what is your favorite non-canon ship

bard: what is your favorite “how do you want to do this?”

rogue: what was a moment that made you cry

fighter: what was your favorite funny moment

paladin: what was your favorite badass moment

cleric: what is your favorite battle

barbarian: who is your favorite villain

ranger: who is your favorite animal companion

warlock: what is your favorite critical role merch

sorcerer: what is your favorite sam commercial skit

obeetlebeetle

when is honor not honorable? when it is prescribed by a system of nobility that perpetuates itself through the destruction of its subjects.

rue watched hob sit there bleeding, arrows in his back, waiting until they nearly pierced his lung to remove them – all for the honor of the goblin court. for the courts. for the system that stole rue as a child and twisted them into a pleasing shape, a desired doll. for the system that has used hob’s body on the field of battle and rue’s body in the field of politics to the benefit of the system, not the bodies being used.

rue spent every interaction with hob this episode saying, Are you okay? Are you hurt? Does anything about your life of service actually make you happy? Are you ever happy? Will you ever let yourself be happy? I hope you will. I hope you find happiness. I wish it was with me.

and then at the very end hob goes, I was miserable until you held me.

hes finally able to say it but the issue is, rue never needed to be told that hob loves them. they clocked it. they know he wants them. so finally learning how hob feels, that doesn’t change anything. what they were really saying is, Can you admit that service makes you unhappy? Are you capable of prioritizing desire? I am offering you devotion.

as long as hob pursues honor as prescribed by the court system, as long as he plays the political game, he can never love anyone. least of all rue; rue who has been so damaged by their obligation to the court of wonder for so long. rue who has chosen to use all their power to dissolve political bonds and facilitate emotional ones, at the hope of destabilizing the system. rue who has finally revealed themselves as both a monster and a dissident, prompted by their love for hob, in a show of force – they are finally rebelling, openly, against the court and the system that tried to cannibalize them. and they’re watching as hob commits himself more deeply to the goblin court, putting his body in their hands for both battle and marriage.

rue tries tirelessly to get hob to answer this question. You are unhappy; what is it for? Tell me so I can understand. and hob’s response is, I choose to be unhappy because otherwise I would be wrong.

his defense of the court system is that it tells him what to do. he believes himself to be so fundamentally incorrect that his wants, desires, and instincts cannot guide him – the only way to be a good man is to serve something greater than himself. this belief, as we can see in his conversations with boil and blemish, has been reinforced by through scorn and humiliation.

hob says, I choose this unhappy life because it is right to serve. I know that it is right to serve because those in power tell me what is right. I know I am wrong because they tell me I am wrong.

upon learning that rue dissolved the marriage between apollo and grabalba, the thing that hurts him the most is the feeling of being used by rue. of being taken for a fool and manipulated in a political game, of falling in love with someone that doesn’t care about him. but even as this misinterpretation wounds him, he tries to defend his service to the goblin court.

and all rue ever wanted was to show him that his life of service is just a matter of being used, being taken, loving those who do not love you but only what you do for them. they wanted him to see that the pain he feels at the perception of being manipulated by rue is a pain he has felt at the hands of the court system for far longer than they have known each other.

hob’s real answer can be found in both what he has said and what he’s unwilling to say. For what? Nothing. Not even love. so rue offers hob what the court system has always denied him.

honor, service, obligation, duty – everything hob has hinged his identity on and everything he ever believed to be good, to make him good – are tools, not ideals. the court system designed fealty so that it would be easier to exploit people like hob and rue, people that feel like monsters, people who are empty and need to be filled. rue sees that hob believes himself to be a monster, and they aren’t asking him to change that. they know that monsters will always know themselves to be monsters. instead, they are trying to convince hob that being good is not what he thinks it is, when it’s being defined by the court system.

when is a monster not a monster? when you love it. when what is monstrous is worth loving. in their last attempt to wrest hob from the court system, rue tells him they love him, and in the same breath they tell him that love and honor are not the same. rue tells him that they are a monster. that in seeing him, they finally realized that being monstrous isn’t being damaged; the damage comes from elsewhere. so they ask him to see them outside the moral structure that has been imposed on him and that he imposes on all others. they ask him to see the ways in which that structure and the system that created it have wounded them for being monstrous.

in doing so, hob would have to acknowledge his own wounds. he would have to acknowledge that he has been wounded for a very long time. that is what he has been resisting; if at any point he had acknowledged his wounds, he would have needed to care for them, and hob is not equipped to care for himself. care is not something afforded via lines of support in the court system; care was never part of the conversation. but when rue speaks of love, and divests it of honor, they offer, instead, care.

this is a love story.

jinxknight

The world is so much more beautiful in all the shades of colors.

+Bonus

dinah-lance

I walk over to Jester… and I just wrap my arms around her.

Ok, so. I was rewatching the end of episode 140 for the *mumble*th time, trying to pinpoint the exact moment Taliesin decided to cast divine intervention. And I don’t know if I found it, but I think I found when Caduceus started to consider it. It was when Fjord started talking to Essek about how death isn’t the end, just the next part of the trip. Taliesin looked so impressed with Travis. I think that moment really exemplified how much the M9 had grown in Caduceus’ eyes.

When Caduceus met the Nein, they were desperate. They were searching for a way to bring Molly back. But Caduceus’ faith is all about respecting death and not trying to subvert it. He saw their broken hearts and realized he could shepherd them through their grief until they accepted it. And he did. He travelled with them saw how their grief pushed them forward. Drove them to leave every thing better. Saw them return to where Molly was buried months later to gather information, and he saw they still were considering resurrection. They had not yet accepted that he was gone and never coming back. And now that ‘Lucien’ was up and walking their desperation returned. They chased after the Tomb Takers, desperate to find their friend. Throughout their journey in Eiselcross they were debating how much of Molly within Lucien, and if they could draw him out. Even in the final fight they were calling to Molly, to try and connect with that part of Lucien. And after defeating Lucien, they tried one final time to bring Molly back.

But it failed. The odds were not on their side. Either there was no part of Molly left, or he had already passed on and could not be recovered. But in the end, they were left with nothing but the body of their friend. And everyone accepts it. Everyone except Essek. Essek didn’t know Molly, he hasn’t been with the Nein for long. He is not as far along his path of growth as the rest of them. He still wants to bend the world to his will, bend fate and chance. And he doesn’t believe that this is fair. And Fjord assures him it’s not fair. But he and the others have accepted that the world isn’t fair. That sometimes you get the shit end of things. But he also recognizes that they are but one small part of the world. And it wouldn’t be fair for the world to bend around them. He sees that death is a part of life, and when it comes its not the end but just a change. A change to a great unknown that is natural and beautiful. And that’s when Caduceus sees that, he knows the Nein have changed. They are no longer trying to fight the current but accept where it will take them. They start to plan Molly’s burial; they discuss what Molly will turn into now that he’s gone. And Caduceus thinks they’ve earned a little bit of unfairness.

I am a strong believer that those who seek power should not hold it. That the desire for power makes even the most well-intentioned people unfit to wield it. And Caduceus saw that the Mighty Nein no longer were seeking to subvert death. They had finally reached the acceptance stage of their grief. And they had done so by literally fighting and killing the man who looked like their friend, because that’s what had to be done to protect the natural cycle of life. That is how they earned it, not by thinking it was due to them. But by using their grief to do good. And just imagine the good they could do with the joy of resurrection.