Beautiful and Terrible as the Cheesecake Factory

this machine makes forks in a really weird way Another rat leaving the Twitter boat. Indie RPG designer, former podcaster, full-time technical writer, one-time journalist. Once was too poor to join a cult. he/they. Games at https://understory.itch.io/

[sacred-portal]

[sugar-petals]

hot take in a roundabout way i think that's also why so many of us opt out of becoming parents ourselves

[theinstagrahame]

I mean, I can think of some parents who also want their adult children to be pliable and obedient.

[mollyjames]

It's never too late to escape from the secret underground government facility you were raised and go on a telekinetic rampage across the city before mysteriously disappearing into the woods

[thememedaddy]

[dinomoder]

This is the best ad for Project Hail Mary I have ever seen. Like if I was on the fence about watching or reading it, this would convince me to do so.

[gay-mooshrooms]

[theinstagrahame]

I genuinely can't imagine watching PHM and thinking "well he's never gonna have sex, huh?"

I know I'm not the target audience for that review by a long shot, but I feel like this guy missed the point so hard he'd be unrealistic as even a straw man.

[yournonbinarypal]

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. For everything else, there's Mastercard."

[theinstagrahame]

Except porn. MasterCard doesn't like it when you buy porn.

[theonion]

Apologizing to his tenant for circumstances that were beyond his control, local landlord Eddie Turley was reportedly forced Monday to raise the rent due to thinking of a bigger number. “You can re-sign your lease, but I have to raise it by $250 a month because I realized there was a bigger number your rent could be,” Turley informed his tenant of six years, attributing the rent increase to a need to keep up with the rising numbers he could envision.

Full Story

[wilwheaton]

“Donald Trump staged a hostile takeover of the US’s 250th anniversary celebration to enrich political allies, harvest voter data and promote Christian nationalist ideology, according to a congressional investigation released on Thursday. The interim report, “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday”, outlines a web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes orchestrated through a shadow corporation embedded within the National Park Foundation (NPF). The document was produced by Democratic staff of the House of Representatives’ natural resources committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee. It has not been officially adopted by the committee. “Under President Donald Trump, this anniversary has been hijacked and perverted into a hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment,” it states, contending that the machinery built for a national commemoration was converted “into an apparatus for raising and spending money in service of the President’s ego, political ideology, and pet projects.””

—

Trump hijacked US’s 250 anniversary to serve ‘political ideology and pet projects’, congressional report says

He will wriggle away from this, of course, but all the scumbags who did this for him can and should be held criminally accountable.

[mini-wrants]

Outdoor in sun perfec t place for president to do speech! Outdoor very warm very soft put old man on green lawn under sun. Put old man in warm sun. no problem ever in warm sun because good view and audience can see long speech. Nice podium outdoor sunny perfect place for old president can trust warm sun to give nice view to President good luck to President. friend sun.

[stitchposts]

Hey if you're coming to Washington DC for the Fourth of July: don't

We're having our turn in the heat wave and reports from the National Mall are brutal already this week. That screenshot is today's forecast (courtesy of the Capital Weather Gang) and tomorrow and Saturday are confidently going to be worse than this is.

The national Mall has no shade on the grass and you will be exposed to the sun constantly while also experiencing extremely high humidity. You will not be allowed a bag over a certain size to enter the mall and it has to be clear. You cannot have an insulated water bottle, it has to be clear. Reports are that there are two entrances to the area so you'll have to wait in line to even get in. I cannot find a number on how many cooling stations there are, except that it's "few" to "none" depending on what accounts I read online. Vendors are allegedly charging more than the posted prices and seem to be unprepared for actual crowds - these are the official vendors not the scam food trucks that park all around the edges of the mall. And that's the extent of the planning done because it was not a priority to make sure attendees don't pass out.

My local friends and I have reached a consensus that tourists are going to get extremely sick and none of us know what the EMT response or planning is on the mall this year. People are going to die.

Please stay out of this. It's not worth your health. Get your relatives and family to stop. I can give you recs for so many DC museums and things to do if you want to make the most of your trip. Any other local can too.

[theinstagrahame]

I hope Trump still gets to stand outside in the intense heat and deliver his extremely long speech. He's been working so hard, he deserves a little heat stroke as a treat

[dramatic-dolphin]

i love declining birth rates 🥰 "what a horrible problem! society will collapse!" oopsie it looks like you're gonna have to make having children worth it 😊 teehee you're gonna have to improve society in order to fix this problem, or it will all collapse. oh noooooo. how horrible. :3c

[weirdthingifoundonline]

[theinstagrahame]

Idk seems like we have enough people already.

[eroscestlavie]

normally I would not just screenshot myself and post it here but it’s Friday and I’m feeling lazy

[finnglas]

There’s an episode of Sesame Street (on Netflix! you can watch it easily!) where Elmo attends a toy-swap, where you offer up old toys you don’t play with anymore and receive someone else’s toys that are new to you. Cute!

But Elmo, after cheerfully surrendering his old toys, sees that the children who swapped toys with him are playing with his toys “wrong”! They’re imagining entirely different make believe scenarios! They’re pretending the football is a dinosaur egg instead of a rocket ship! Aaahhhhh!!!! And this is so distressing to poor Elmo that he does the unthinkable: He does swapsies-backsies and takes all his toys back!

This being Sesame Street, he learns that you can’t control how other people play pretend, but you can join in if you want to! And if you don’t want to, that’s ok, you can just play pretend your own way by yourself or with someone else who wants to play that way too. You can still be friends with people who play pretend differently than you (and aren’t being mean/harmful/etc, do not bad-faith-read this 🤨).

Anyway this is a post about fandom.

[json-derulo]

for sale: Baby Shoes Stylish Infant Boy Girl Unisex First Walker Shoes Toddler Walking Crib Shoes Lightweight Non-Slip Sneakers For 6 9 12 18 24 Months Baby Shoes New With Tags New In Box Excellent Condition Never Worn

[kyrianne]

[ribstongrowback]

The reason I'm not really a DnD hater is the fact that it requires me to still think about DnD when I could think about games that inspire me instead, both in good and bad ways.

I genuinely don't think there's anything interesting left to say about DnD that isn't part of a broader discussion on consumerism and the marketing of art.

[ribstongrowback]

like recently i've been really excited when thinking about games and what their material realities are. i've been thinking about final fantasy crystal chronicles for the game cube for example, the genuine joy i felt when emulating this game which i legally own but which required so much hardware that even at its release it was incredibly hard to play it as intended.

i've been thinking about pangya, an animesque golf game from the early boom of online gaming which was kind of an early gacha game, now playable thanks to the pangya reborn project, which does away with all the nonsense that a lot of live service games put to slow your progression to a crawl and gives you the relaxing golf sandbox experience you deserve.

i've been thinking about my friend @txttletale's proxies, as well as that one bot the name of which I can't recall which generates random cards, and what makes them really different from "playable" mtg cards, what decisions go into balancing cards and what that game says about its universe through slates of cardboard.

i've been thinking about @jdragsky's zeeb, about the physical object that a ttrpg book is, and the tools we rely on for games, the relationship they have to the actual game we play. somewhere, someone has printed out the rules for a random game she thought up with her friends, and i'm thinking of the underlined text, of the things she crossed out, and the stickers her friends gave her to add to the zine. somewhere, someone has a copy of dark heresy's core book absolutely lousy with scrawled notes about ways to make its combat less of a chore, and snide commentaries on later editions of the FFG franchise. i've been thinking about all these books and the way that they change, the way people enter conversations with them through time. the way they defy the book, yet keep it close to their heart always.

there's just something to the material limitations of gaming, the canvas offered by that restriction. there's so much out there. doesn't that light up your day?

[neurotoxinsonline]

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

[ralfmaximus]

The note inside a bullet.

B-17 bomber is riddled with German anti-aircraft fire but miraculously survives. Later they discover the explosive shells were all inert; sabotaged by Nazi slaves working in armament factories.

Inside one empty shell is a written note: it's all we can do for you now.

[gothlovingoth]

The most important part of all this is that these small acts of bravery and noncompliance cannot be known as long as the enemy still stands, and might never be known. Just because it doesn’t seem like anyone is doing anything doesn’t mean it’s true. The best malicious compliance or subtle sabotage is the one that’s never detected, but makes ravages nonetheless.

[anarchistmemedistro]

Blessed is the Flame

Serafinski Blessed is the Flame An introduction to concentration camp resistance and anarcho-nihilism 2016 Taken from the original book: Run

Audible Anarchism

Philosophy Podcast · Updated weekly · A podcast broadcasting Anarchist texts and audiobooks

[anarchistmemedistro]

[bigdykethanergy]

"there comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to throw your bodies upon the wheels and upon the gears. Upon the levers. Upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop!"

~Mario Savio