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I was really anxious when someone told me Bards (my favorite class) would use “prepared spells” instead of “known spells” in the new rule book. There’s a reason I never played “prepared” castors in 5e. The idea of changing out my spell list every rest stressed me out. What if I pick the wrong thing?

I needn’t have worried

Bards aren’t changing, we’re just using the same words to describe two entirely different mechanics. I’m sure this streamlining of language will be the cause of no confusion or strife whatsoever around our game tables.

There is a chart to solve these arguments waaay later in chapter 7:

The description of spell preparation here also just makes me sad. We’re just preparing spells “in our mind”. There’s no explanation for why this works so differently for different classes.

In 5e we were told that during a long rest the Wizard prepared by studying their spellbook, the Druid by meditating, and the Cleric by praying to their deity. These were maintenance practices that flowed naturally from their relationship to the source of their understanding and power.

It made sense that a bard, sorcerer, or warlock would learn things more slowly over time and work from a more limited pool since their relationship to magic isn’t so straightforward. They gained their understanding more slowly (or in the case of warlocks haphazardly) over time.

This book has stripped away the flavor of the classes leaving behind sterile mechanics that do little to inspire the imagination of a new player building a character.

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I don’t know if I can explain to you all how bad a read the new D&D Player’s Handbook is. This needs editing just so desperately. It’s possibly the most redundant thing I’ve ever read.

Here’s some samples from the Feats Section:

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Easter was started in 325 by the Council of Nicaea. Christians who pay attention to the boring history bits might recognize this as the council that defined what a Christian is with the advent of the Nicaean Creed.

After the first few books of the New Testament that chronicle the life and teachings of Jesus most of the rest of the new testament is about the early church differentiating itself from the practice of Judaism and a lot of trial and error in power structures and over-reach as they tried to learn to love like Christ. The Gospel was meant for every Tribe and Nation and Tongue and the very first hurdle was learning to accept gentiles and letting go of the Jewish Law from the old-testament (Note: American Evangelicals work very very hard to avoid most of the rest of the New Testament with the exception of Titus 2 and several other favored passages, instructions about the acceptable and unacceptable behavior of the church are very inconvenient to western power structures.) the long and short of it is that by the 300s the church was spread throughout the Roman Empire and really didn’t care about the Jewish calendar at all.

Most of our modern holidays commemorate specific historical events. We observe chosen anniversaries. It’s natural for us to assume that the historicity was central to the decision.

Holidays at the time were more metaphorical observations. Set aside time to reflect on a concept and honor a deity. They did it in a matter similar to many of the contemporary pegan practices; based on the solar and lunar calendars (and also badly.)

It was decided Easter would be the First Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. (This resulted in more conflict as Eastern and Western churches disagreed about how to calculate the vernal equinox)

I think people from a Christian background probably think Easter is a Jewish holiday because it's so tired to Passover in Christian tradition. According to the Christian Bible, Jesus was betrayed during a Passover sedar. So I think they probably think something like Jesus was Jewish, he was celebrating a holiday, we celebrate Easter, so Easter must be a Jewish holiday.

lemme see if I can parse this out; my brain is on standby mode rn.

Step one: jesus is jewish. Okay, got that.

Step two: he was betrayed during a passover seder. I've heard this said a lot, but I've never seen any proof? Idk I'll look it up later, people have probably given it a lot of thought.

Step three: this is where I'm getting lost. Why is easter tied to pesach? What happened on easter that people attach it to pesach?

Step four: jesus celebrated pesach (still don't get how it's tied to easter!) And that's why easter is jewish?

Huh?

I think I had someone tell me that pesach is translated in Spanish as "jewish easter" so I thought THAT was where the confusion came from.

Also all the pesach appropriation but like. Yeah.

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Not to be THAT fan, but those Ukranian scientists need a new field of research.

Probably nothing that focuses explicitly on rockets or DNA. They don’t want to draw the attention of the same people after their kid now, but they could start over in a new field that still utilizes their skill sets. Something obscure and niche.

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So here’s what gets me. Everyone has cameras in their phones. If you are selling a product online you have access to a camera.

So WHY all the bad photo-shop and ai on shopping sites?

You can just put up a real picture of the thing, you don’t have to go to all this trouble faking it poorly. It exists, you have it, you can just show it to me.

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I appreciate that there’s a montage indicating a visual medium, but we also know the air smells of acetone.

A faithful adaptation of this premise will demand the presence of a 3rd character to convey the scent to our audience. Someone who hasn’t grown numb to the fragrance with prolonged exposure.

Is it the master’s personal cook? A visiting delivery boy dropping off his weekly order of cotton swabs? The student’s unglamorous monochromatic rival?

A master to his action-hero trainee says, "Your movements are sloppy. You lack awareness of your body when you fight. Your hands move and yet you do not hold them in your mind's eye. Come. We will remedy this."

And then the master paints his trainee's fingernails and orders the trainee to complete a series of complicated tasks without smudging the nail polish.

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DC premise I don’t see enough of

Massive Villain attacks a significant public event.

JL dealing with actual threat, but Titans or YJ are stuck on crowd control, including wrangling person-of-interest Bruce Wayne’s nepo-brat.

This entitled squirt does not seem to care that they’re here to protect him. He keeps trying to give them the slip.

Mostly they just wish Robin was here because he’d know how to Deal with this conniving little hellion.

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I want this more than I want daylight savings time ended

From NPR this morning:

President Biden called for term limits and an enforceable ethics code for Supreme Court justices yesterday. The White House said that the proposal would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service to the Supreme Court. He also called on Congress to pass binding, enforceable conduct and ethics rules that require high court justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and remove themselves from cases if they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. The president also called for a constitutional amendment that would limit the broad immunity presidents now enjoy due to a recent Supreme Court decision.

...Yes please.

Le source: Up First briefing: Trump shooter update; Crypto and the 2024 election

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Reading Recommendations Pls

My new job is holding a reading challenge for the month of August.

1. A book with a knife on the cover

2. A book turned into a movie

3. A book recommended by a friend

4. A book that’s been on your TBR (to be read list)

5. A book set in the Pacific Northwest

6. A Rom-Com or A Beach Read

7. A Graphic Novel

8. A book that “everyone” but you has read

9. A book set in a different culture

10. A book whose author has passed away

Note: I don’t need graphic novel recommendations unless they also meet one of the other criteria, I purchased the first four issues of Witch Hat Atelier yesterday and am already head over heels for the series. That slot will fill itself.

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Mailboxes should all have a flap where firefighters can check how many residents live at an address.

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Golden Tags:

#So I'm good enough to witness your wedding but not where you hid the body? #WHY DO YOU THINK I EVEN WENT TO LAW SCHOOL? #Less worry over how long l've been planning this for more signing my retainer #Yeah and initial there #FANTASTIC now let's paint each other's nails and you can tell me all the murder deets

This lawyer went through law school just to get to the Tea, the whole Tea, and nothing but the Tea.

Star of the new and improved:

Ace Attourney

The legal drama we’ve all been waiting for where nobody is sleeping with anybody. They were all worried about the gay agenda when they should have been worried about the Ace Agenda. Those not distracted by carnal lust have more time and attention to devote to plotting.

Your legally married spouse is the one person in the world that you get to choose, who doesn't have to witness against you in court. So if you're thinking of marrying someone, consider these two questions:

Do I trust that this person would 100% help me hide a body, no questions asked?

Do I trust this person enough that if they asked for my help to hide a body, I wouldn't hesitate?

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Our nation is burning because Boomers refuse to respect anyone younger than them.

They don’t pay livable wages to younger people, so we’re all in debt or living paycheck to paycheck, and don’t have enough money to contribute to campaigns. They won’t contribute to campaigns of anyone younger than them. Neither party has put forth a Gen-Xer since Obama (and born in 61 he’s barely Gen-X.) Does anyone else remember the articles about Obama being the first of a new Generation of leaders? That hasn’t happened.

List I made organizing Presidents by Birth Year:

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Alfred is NOT going in! He’s hacking the courts, getting himself on that jury, and using the power of down time and packed lunches to win over the hearts of every other juror in the room. When it’s time to decide it won’t take more than a few raised eyebrows and pursed lips to have the whole box singing reasonable doubt.

Alfred while Bruce is overseas training

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Also called the inaccessible recess

What in the world is this configuration?

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Sometimes the second child is just driven to achieve.

Delightful news! Baby who does down dog unprompted now crawls over to our weights and picks up a set of two pounders

As these are a significant amount of baby's body weight, it is so so hard and she is so so determined

Then she works Very Hard to lift and/or cuddle them

Smiling so big the whole time

You did it baby you're doing a rep

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Yes and no. 0.2 percent is still 1 in every 500 people, but away from outlying statistics like New York you can google “synagogues in (your state)” and get a better idea of the population distribution near you. Every state has synagogues, which means every state has a population of practicing Jews. (Except perhaps Montana, when I googled it looked like their only one closed.)

Beyond that, you may not know if someone you know is Jewish. It doesn’t always come up. I didn’t know one of my close friends in middle/high school was Jewish for several years.

But yes, you’re probably exposed to antisemitism far FAR more frequently than you’re aware of jewish people in your life. Because people don’t declare or label themselves the way hate does. Hate has to name a target.

Jews are such a small percentage of the world population (0.2%). Half of that population lives in Israel (7.2 million). The US has the second largest Jewish population (6.3 million). In the US, New York City alone has 1.6 million Jews (which is 18% of NYC's total population). After the US, the next largest county is France with only 440,000 Jews.

And just. I know others have said this before but it just keeps hitting me the number of people out there who have never met a Jew in their life and probably never will. So many people out there whose only idea of Judaism is through antisemitic conspiracy theories or caricatures on TV.

I think that's part of why it's so easy for organizations like the Dyke March to throw us aside. Because we're not real to them. Even in NYC where I am sure they have all seen Jews, I wonder how many of them actually know any.

To so many, we are not real people. Just an idea. Just a history. Just a tool. Something that can be cast aside.

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Responding to the tags:

It’s not really a car name. The word Subaru means unite, and is the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster, hence the logo. So really it’s more akin to a virtue name or an astronomy name.

I started watching My Rommate is a Cat because reviews online say it's hurt/comfort which I need right now, but I had to stop 30 seconds in... the main character's name... is subaru...