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nimblermortal · 4 months ago

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I'm beginning to doubt I will actually write this, due to an acute deficit of creative energy, so here are my notes in reaction to the July 1 SCOTUS nonsense. It plays out in my head as a comic.

The first part is a montage of Trump's campaign, his misdoings, and finally the Court's findings, with a panel of Sotomayor's dissent. In response to this newfound panel, in a way that is neatly foreshadowed, Biden orders SEAL Team Six to assasinate Trump, end chapter. Various pundits worry about what will happen to the country now, etc.

The next page, Biden is lying in bed. He gets up. He goes through his old man morning routine. (It is very important, throughout this, that Biden is always drawn/treated as a Little Old Man.) He sits down at the breakfast table. He tells his aide, "I have spent all my life defending the Constitution. I just don't know, in light of this SCOTUS decision, if I've done enough." There's a wordless panel of his face as he contemplates. Then he says, "Call a press conference."

At the press conference he announces that as an official act he will be killing one Republican per day until the decision is overturned.

A journalist raises his hand. He's from Fox News or similar. He says, "Don't you think that -"

Biden pulls out a gun (Bond Arms Bullpup) and shoots him. He flicks his aviators up on his face.

"I'll be back tomorrow," he announces, leaning into the microphone. And then he hobbles off stage.

The next several pages follow his next days: McConnell. Clarence Thomas. Ted Cruz. The sequence echoes Death Note (which I haven't read) rather strongly, with politicians trying to barricade themselves in ever tighter security, but no private force can stand against the amassed might of the entire United States marshaled behind its executive leader.

There's a vignette among the Secret Service as they question their own loyalty. Should they still be protecting this killer? This isn't what they signed on to do. But... it is what they thought they signed on to do. It's the coolest thing they've ever done, body checking private security out of the way so the president can get through with his [insert fancy gun here - @icryyoumercy I need another fancy gun please].

Note: Biden uses a silencer whenever possible to avoid making a racket. He's perfectly out in the open, he just doesn't believe in disturbing the peace with high decibel levels.

Cue to Biden at breakfast again. His aide is notably more cowed as Biden says, "I've spent my whole life defending the constitution. I just don't know if I've made a big enough impact. Henry..." The panel shifts. "Get me a machine gun."

This transitions to the chapter "President of the United Submachine Gun" which features the most epic action scenes: Biden framed in light as he crouches behind the Browning, clothes blowing back from him, shells scattering around, clearing rooms as he moves through the Houses of Congress.

January 6 featured a mob invading the Houses. Joe Biden will do it all by himself.

(Almost. The gun is too heavy for him to carry, so his aide has to keep moving it and setting up a support structure/turret for him to fire from. "Murrica," says Henry, bolting in the support structure for the executive Browning.)

After this we enter the epilogue and its voiceover narration. It's important that the action de-escalates lightning fast.

A few days later the Supreme Court retracted its decision and in a unanimous 3-0 vote (there being only 3 judges left on the court) declared the president is equal under the law to every other citizen.

Biden gave up his weapons peacefully and retired to prison without argument. He died five months later.

(This is over panels of him walking like a creaky old man into a prison facility, and a gravestone featuring his name, a carved pair of aviators, and the words NO REGRETS.)

In the resulting political vacuum, normalcy slowly asserted itself. Most politicians were either implicated in the rampage, or dead. On January 17, with emergency candidates dug out of obscurity, the president of [that one library that got famous for resisting censorship] was sworn into the highest office of the land.

(This section includes a panel of campaign paraphrenalia, including slogans such as Harris: Still an Option and Cruz: Holy Shit What the Fuck, with the latter crossed out and replaced with RIP.)

Her first act, to enshrine the limitations of the presidency into the Constitution, passed without contest.

#tagging for negativity #us politics #theory and chalk #to do #all of the chapter titles are puns or mis-acronyms of various branches of government #possibly including Supreme Chauchat of the United States #House of Repredeadtatives #and something about Julius Caesar/the Ides of March #unless someone would like to offer better candidates

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strangeite · 1 month ago

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OC-tober Day 4: Under-Appreciated OC

This is Cyra (sear-ah), my fire genasi light domain cleric/monk from a villain campaign. They were very much appreciated when I played them, but I've never talked about them here, and that's a shame!

They were an important figure of a cult that worshipped a phoenix deity, Ketahl the Cleansing Flame, and believed that when a society stagnated it needed to be burned and born anew from the ashes. The other PCs were a shadow sorcerer (and maybe warlock? I don't remember what her whole deal was) and a libertarian paladin lol.

At the climax of the game we temporarily descended into pvp bc Cyra thought they recieved a message from their deity leading them to go against the others and... try to release an imprisoned goddess, I think? Part way through thr pvp battle (where my partner guest-played to run some people from my cult as backup), Cyra actually spoke to their deity and realized the message before was from the goddess of lies. Cyra was not pleased, to say the least, and called truce with the others. In the end, we did something with the goddess that resulted in the whole world being remade, with Cyra and the paladin's deities now much more prominent, so it worked out :p It was crazy how it call came down to a couple of die rolls, though.

That campaign was a blast, and I had soooo much fun with Cyra. It was very freeing to play a character with absolute conviction in their beliefs. I always knew what they would do in a given situation.

Oh also, at one point I got an item called Blaze of Glory. "A heavy, simple platinum torch that will not ignite under normal circumstances. A willing creature holding this item may choose to ignite it at will. When you do, you are consumed by a brilliant white flame and you loose all of your remaining hit points, and then suffer damage equal to your maximum hit points. Up to 3 targets within 50 feet each take radiant damage equal to 1d10 damage per character level that you have, plus half of their maximum hit points, or half that amount on a successful Dexterity save (DC 17). The torch becomes mundane after this effect takes place."

I wanted to use it so so bad, but alas the opportunity never presented itself.

#bweirdoctober #OC-tober #my ocs #dnd character #dnd character art #dnd ocs #oc art #my art #cyra

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southeastasianists · 1 year ago

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Undeterred by the pouring rain, a long convoy of motorbikes carrying cheering, flag-waving supporters of Cambodia's ruling party revved their engines in preparation for their triumphant final rally in downtown Phnom Penh.

People dutifully lined the road as far as you could see, party stickers on their cheeks, the sky-blue hats and shirts they had been given to wear getting steadily wetter.

Perched on the back of a truck, Hun Manet, the 45-year-old eldest son of Prime Minister Hun Sen, greeted the crowds proclaiming that only the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) was capable of leading the country.

Indeed, his father had made sure that the CPP was the only party which could possibly win the election.

Hun Sen, 70, has run Cambodia in his trademark pugnacious style for 38 years: first in a Vietnam-installed communist regime, then under a UN-installed multi-party system, and more recently as an increasingly intolerant autocrat.

The only party now capable of challenging his rule, the Candlelight Party, was banned from the election on a technicality in May. The remaining 17 parties allowed to contest it were too small or too little-known to pose a threat.

A few hours after the polls closed, the CPP claimed the expected landslide, with a turnout of more than 80%. There were quite high levels of spoiled ballot papers in some polling stations: that was probably the only safe way voters could show their support for the opposition.

With Hun Manet expected to succeed his father within weeks of the vote, in a long-prepared transfer of power, this felt more like a coronation than an election.

"I don't think we can even call it a sham election," says Mu Sochua, an exiled former minister and member of the CNRP, another opposition party banned by the Cambodian authorities in 2017.

"We should call it a 'selection', for Hun Sen to make sure that his party will select his son as the next prime minister of Cambodia, to continue the dynasty of the Hun family."

Yet there were signs of nervousness in the CPP before the vote. New laws were hurriedly passed criminalising any encouragement of ballot-spoiling or a boycott. Several Candlelight members were arrested.

"Why was the CPP campaigning so hard, against no one in this election with no real opposition?" asks Ou Virak, founder of the Cambodian think tank Future Forum.

"They knew they would win the election - that was an easy outcome for them. But winning legitimacy is much more difficult.

"They need to keep weakening the opposition, but at the same time, they also need to satisfy the people, so there is no repeat of previous setbacks and disruptions, like street protests."

Hun Sen is one of Asia's great survivors, a wily, street-smart politician who has time and again outmanoeuvred his opponents. He has skilfully played off China, by far the biggest foreign investor these days, against the US and Europe, which are trying to claw back lost influence in the region.

But he has come close to losing elections in the past. He is still vulnerable, to rival factions in his own ruling party, and to any sudden downturn in the Cambodian economy which could sour public opinion against him. So as he prepares for a once-in-a-generation leadership change, he is trying to cement his legacy.

A short drive north of the capital, a 33m-high concrete-and-marble monolith was built recently, which he calls the Win-Win memorial.

Its massive base is covered in carved stone reliefs, echoing Cambodia's greatest historic monument, Angkor Wat.

They depict Hun Sen's flight from Khmer Rouge-ruled Cambodia to Vietnam in 1977, his triumphant return with the invading Vietnamese army in 1979, and his eventual deal with the last of the Khmer Rouge leaders in 1998 that ended the long civil war - his win-win for the Cambodian people.

Delivering peace and prosperity has long been Hun Sen's main claim to legitimacy. Since 1998, Cambodia has had one of the world's fastest-growing economies, albeit from a very low base.

But it is a model of growth which has concentrated wealth in the hands of a few families - the number of ultra-luxury cars on the roads of such a low-income country is jarring. It has encouraged rapacious exploitation of Cambodia's natural resources and it has left many ordinary people feeling that they are not winning under Mr Sen.

Prak Sopheap lives with her family at the back of an engine repair shop, squeezed between the main road and one of the many shallow lakes in the low-lying land outside Phnom Penh. They have been there for 25 years, fishing and cultivating vegetables on the lake.

Today, though, much of the lake has been filled with rubble by a property developer and Ms Sopheap's family have been ordered to leave.

She showed me a document from the local council, confirming how long she had lived there, and another document, a summons to court on a charge of illegally occupying state land. She feels powerless and angry - and she is not alone.

Land disputes are among the most incendiary grievances in Cambodia. All property deeds were destroyed in the Khmer Rouge revolution.

Since the end of the civil war, millions of hectares have been allocated for commercial development, a lucrative arrangement which has made many politicians and businesses allied to Hun Sen very rich.

The courts very rarely rule against these powerful interests. Transparency International ranks Cambodia as 150th out of 180 countries for corruption: in the Asia-Pacific region, only Myanmar and North Korea rank lower.

"Hun Sen always talks about his 'win-win policy'", says Ms Sopheap. "But we feel it is he alone who wins. We cannot feel at peace, as we now face eviction. We, the real Cambodian people, who live on this land, are suffering in the name of development."

Those who have tried to campaign against land grabs and evictions have been harassed, beaten and jailed, as have trade unionists and supporters of opposition parties. I asked Ms Sopheap how she would vote in this election. "Who can I choose?" she asked. "Who can protect me?"

Half of those eligible to vote are under 35 years old. The CPP has tried attracting them by having Hun Manet and other younger party leaders run this year's campaign, with a slick social media strategy.

But as most Cambodians have no memory of war or the Khmer Rouge, Ly Chandravuth, a 23-year-old law graduate and environmental activist, says the old CPP campaign points are no longer persuasive.

"Hun Manet's biggest challenge will be that my generation is very different from previous ones, who were traumatised by the Khmer Rouge," he says.

"Since I was a child, I have watched the ruling party reminding us of that tragedy, telling us that as they brought peace, we should support them. But that argument is less and less effective. Every time the ruling party brings it up, the young generation mocks them, because they have been repeating it for 30 years."

Can Hun Manet modify the rough-house, sometimes thuggish leadership style of his father to a softer and more subtle kind of rule? Despite his Western education, his years heading the army and his long apprenticeship, he has never yet held a top political office.

With him, other "princeling" sons of Hun Sen's contemporaries, such as Defence Minister Tea Banh and Interior Minister Sar Keng, are also expected to replace their fathers in the cabinet - a dynastic shift which keeps the levers of power with the same families, but in less experienced hands. The next few years could be a delicate, even dangerous time for Cambodia.

#Southeast Asia #Cambodia #Politics #General Elections #PM Hun Sen

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thevalleyisjolly · 1 year ago

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Dimension 20/ 1, 8, 9 & 25

Ey, thanks anon!

1 - the character everyone gets wrong

It's admittedly very hard to get on Murph's level and balance the right amount of awful shithead with the right amount of earnest caring, but I can't remember the last time I saw a good take on Cody that really understood his personality and characterization. It's not any one thing in specific, I just don't often encounter takes on Cody that make me go "Yes, this is the character Murph played, he would 100% say this/do that."

8 - common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

The Ravening War is actually really good. I understand if you don't like Matt or his style of DM-ing and don't want to watch the season because of that. As someone who did watch it though, the cast were absolutely impeccable, the season really deepened and explored so much of the lore about Calorum, and I'd say that from a narrative standpoint, even considering that it's necessarily tighter in format as a 6-episode season as opposed to a 17-episode season, it's slightly better story-wise than ACOC. No pressure or obligation to watch it, everyone makes their own decisions about their media consumption, I just think it's really good despite all the pre-season flack it got.

9 - worst part of canon

This isn't about a specific canon event, but I think in general, seasons are stronger when they have clearer rails and narrative beats. The limited-run format of the show as a whole does not lend well to an open-world sandbox approach, and all of their strongest seasons have been ones where the story structure is evident and the players work within and around that structure. Sidequests like ACOFAF and Coffin Run were really great because they had clear goals that everyone at the table understood (navigating the social dynamics of the Bloom to achieve your own goals, getting Dracula's body back to the castle). Likewise, the strongest seasons narratively were FH:SY, TUC, and TUC II. And in all of these seasons, the players still had a ton of room to improvise and make their character decisions. Railroading is negative when it prevents the table from having fun, but having rails is not a bad thing in and of itself, and I wish seasons would go back to having a little more structure and narrative guidance.

25 - common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

It's not a complaint, but I don't think we really need Fantasy High: Senior Year. I wouldn't complain if that does end up being a future season, but I think there's also value in letting a story and its characters rest. Going back to Elmville in, like, a one-shot or in a campaign focused on other characters (i.e. The Seven) is great, but I like the arcs that the original PCs had across Fantasy High and Sophomore Year, and while I'm sure they could always come up with more stories to tell, I'm satisfied with where they concluded in Sophomore Year.

#thanks anon!

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mareastrorum · 1 year ago

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TF&TS Meta: Cree Deeproots's Character Sheet

Since I am posting another chapter later this week, no WIP Wednesday excerpt today! However, I usually throw out a meta post before each chapter to tide people over.

I will post a little late this week! Unfortunately, work has been crazy, and this week continued that trend. I am hoping to update by Sunday evening.

Edit: Unfortunately, I have had to bump my planned posting date for Chapter 8 back to 11/24 due to work going haywire. I am still writing, and I'll post another WIP for the next chapter this Wednesday, as well as another meta post the following Wednesday. I'll hopefully have some reprieve by then and intend to get back to a regular 2-week posting schedule after that.

This post discusses how I developed the character sheet for Cree.

See the directory for other meta posts.

The story itself will get into Cree’s backstory and characterization, so this is going to focus primarily on mechanics and items. Here is her character sheet.

As mentioned in a prior post, Cree was at least level 13 when the Nein first encountered her in Eiselcross because she used Firestorm against Gelidon in 123, then at least 15 in 133 because she used Earthquake. Her holy symbol was the gold/crystal pendant with Lucien’s blood that the Nein first saw in 117. She also had the Cape of the Mountebank, first spotted in the same episode and then used in 133.

Like the rest, Cree is starting at level 14. Unlike the others, I did not roll Cree’s stats. I tried to come up with what made sense narratively. Another wrinkle was that Wizards released an update to Tabaxi in 2022, but I opted to go with the racial features from Volo’s because that’s what Matt would have used at the time of the campaign.

Cree cast slow on the Nein as they escaped in 123, and Fjord successfully made a wisdom save with 19. The highest failure was 14, so spell save DC is 15-19. The DC is 8 plus proficiency bonus plus wisdom modifier, and at level 15, her PB would be +5, while it rises to +6 at level 17. So, assuming she was level 15, her wisdom modifier would need to be at least +2 and no more than +6. If she had been level 17, her modifier had to be at least +1 and no more than +5. Either way, that doesn’t tell us much about her wisdom score, especially if she had an item that could have factored in. Any reasonable cleric would pick wisdom for their highest stat, so unless she rolled shit and never took an ASI, I would expect her modifier to be at least +4. However, since she was an end game mini-boss, I thought +5 seemed reasonable. Thus, Cree’s wisdom score is 20 because it maxed out at some point, and considering that cleric is SAD compared to blood hunters, I think she would have prioritized it. Thus, assuming she got at least one good roll to assign to Wisdom, I chose 18 base, and one ASI was used to raise the 18 to a 20.

Logistically, Cree’s Con score only mattered as an antagonist for determining her Con saves because Matt usually needed to buff health pools against the large party. So, for all we knew, it was 6 and he gave her a ton of HP. However, if we were constructing her sheet as if she was a PC, her next highest priorities were constitution, then dexterity. Blood clerics have some BH-like abilities to sacrifice HP for benefits, so she needed a decent health pool. Considering her self-sacrificial behavior, I felt that a player would have strategized for that, and it made sense narratively if she managed to survive as an orphan in the Run and eat “muster” all the time while out adventuring. Since I gave her 18 for Wisdom, I chose 16 for Con.

Dex was next. Higher initiative and AC were also important. Cree’s AC in her final fight was 19. AC is usually armor mod + dex mod + shield(?) + enchantment/item mods, so that could be all sorts of combinations. Matt didn’t mention she had a shield, but we know her armor was enchanted because he mentioned all the Tombtakers’ armor glowed during a detect magic in 117. Clerics are proficient with Medium armor, but not Heavy armor, and while she could have taken a feat, Matt didn’t mention that she had anything more than heavy leathers and furs—no chain or plate. Medium armor also caps the dex mod at +2, and heavy armor doesn’t add dex mod at all. Thus, she probably had studded leather armor, which is 12 + dex mod + enchantments. If she had +3 armor (possible, but very expensive), then her dex mod had to be +4. If she had a shield (which Matt didn’t mention), then maybe she had +2 armor (reasonable for level 15) and +3 dex. Finally, in the last fight against the Nein, Matt mentioned that Cree rolled a super low initiative, but the lowest the Nein got was a 12. Initiative is normally just the roll plus dexterity modifier, so that doesn’t really tell us anything about her Dex score. Realistically, that meant Cree’s dex modifier was probably around 3-4 and she had items or enchantments to add another 3-4, totaling +7 to her AC. Probably not an additional cloak, a spell caster staff, or a shield because Matt didn’t mention her using them and the Nein only looted the necklace and the Cape of the Mountebank. (Or maybe her holy symbol gave AC?) Tabaxi get a +2 to Dex, so I opted to give Cree a 14 that was then raised to 16.

Strength could have really gone anywhere. There’s no D&D mechanic reason for her to have high/low Str according to what we saw in the stream. Her weapon was a war pick, not a finesse weapon, so it would have been her melee attack stat, and therefore it’s a safe assumption that the mod was at least 0 (not <10). However, she never actually used that weapon. So we just have ~vibes~. Because of how Matt played her (immediately firing off her biggest spells at Gelidon), I decided I would use this as a vanity stat rather than something meant to used regularly in combat. I got the impression that she leaves the melee combat to the rest of the Tombtakers and she stays the hell away from it. Considering her time in the Run meant she would be pretty athletic and I already have her +3 to Dex, I gave her 16 strength to match. That makes her excellent at climbing and jumping even without proficiency in the Athletics skill, which I felt was appropriate for the one tabaxi in the group.

Int and Cha are Cree’s dump stats. Strategically, neither is important for a cleric. Narratively, she’s an uneducated orphan, and Lucien no doubt did most of the talking. Based on how Cree spoke, I don’t expect she had much of a Cha stat, though I doubt it was a negative modifier. She was polite and courteous to the Nein until Lucien was back, and then she was rather jealous/envious. So, she can get along, if she wants to, but I figured her Cha wasn’t higher than Lucien’s. Thus, I gave Int 8 and Cha 9, which received a +1 to 10. The only reason I didn’t give her lower Int was that she would have received some education at the Orders. Most of the things she would have learned with the Nightback Clan were wisdom skills, and she’d have relied upon those in the Run as well, and whatever she didn’t know about the town itself, Lucien did, so there wasn’t much pressure to expand her specialty.

If you think I’m being overly generous about Cree’s stats, maybe take a look at Jester’s level 2 stats. That’s right. Level 2.

Cree’s background was relatively easy to choose, though I had considered Urchin. Her experience as an acolyte at the Claret Orders was far more relevant to her skills and character than her time as an orphan in Shadycreek Run. It also made sense that Religion was the one Int stat she’d be good at.

Feats were interesting. War Caster was an obvious choice for D&D strategy, and it made perfect sense for how she would have been trained at the Orders and her experiences with the Tombtakers. The Vital Sacrifice feat was not available at the time of C2, but the flavor fit her very well. Matt had also let her exceed the mileage limit of her Crimson Bond ability (10 miles), or characters flagrantly and repeatedly lied about her ability to track blood further than that and she used some other spell (Commune?) to hunt people down on the Gentleman's behalf considering Crimson Bond is limited to 2 uses per day. (I exceeded that in this chapter.) The narrative reason is she just has a knack for hemocraft, so she figured out how to tap her own vitality to fuck with people.

Items were a challenge. They had to be sensible for her level and not push her into high-level enemy territory. The most pertinent decision was whether she had anything she'd had in Aeor. The first times we saw Cree with her holy symbol necklace, the Cape of the Montebank, and a scroll of Control Weather were after the Nein caught up to the Tombtakers in Eiselcross. However, as a cleric, she wouldn’t have needed the scroll because she could do that at level 15 (which she also needed to be for Earthquake). And if Cree went so far as to criticize the Nein for being rich kids because of the tower, she wouldn’t have spent the coin on buying the scroll when she could just do it herself. Maybe the explanation was she hit level 15 after that, but then there’s the question of why was she so much lower than Lucien’s level and how did Matt expect Lucien (level 17) to be enough to balance the rest of the Tombtakers against a larger group. Maybe Matt gave her the scroll as a clue that the Tombtakers expected this to be a one way trip, but there were other ways of doing that.

Instead, what made sense to me was that Lucien looted the cape and scroll from DeRogna. Think about it. I don’t know if Cree would have just clung to a rare magic item for the 2 years that Lucien was dead, especially one that wasn’t useful and we had no indication it had sentimental value. Neither the cape nor the scroll made sense for that. But Matt also mentioned that DeRogna’s room had already been tossed and looted when the Nein found her body, so Lucien robbed her on top of taking his book back. What would he steal if his plan was a one way trip to the Astral Sea to become a god? Magic items! But the Tombtakers certainly would have already brought weapons and armor, and DeRogna wouldn’t have bothered, so it had to be other items—like a teleportation cape to avoid danger and a scroll to conserve spell slots. Like a rich person would stock for a trip where bodyguards handle all the monsters. Thus, Cree doesn’t have either of those in TF&TS.

There’s also the issue of Cree’s holy symbol. As I’ve mentioned before, it doesn’t make sense for her to currently have a necklace with Lucien’s blood for her to be a cleric of the Nonagon. He’s undead, and while she is tremendously faithful, it’s a whole extra step beyond worshipping a childhood friend to worship a dead one, and then another step to worship an undead one. I had to be able to reconcile it with the facts that she went to Zadash and never once checked on his grave, then let “Lucien” (Molly) go off by himself with strangers and not checking on his blood vial even once to see if he was okay. She believed the Nein the first time when they returned to Zadash and claimed Lucien had parted ways; if she suspected he was dead, she would not have been so calm or courteous. So she trusts him enough to do as he asks, but with him dying “twice” (though once was actually Molly), I don’t think she would have actually worshiped Lucien as a god by that point in time. There’s also the fact that Lucien’s body is in someone else’s control right now, so there’s a disconnect between undead Lucien and his blood. For the premise to make sense, his blood couldn’t be part of Cree’s holy symbol, and the timeline of events suggests that she didn’t start worshiping him as a god until after he came back to life.

The Raven Queen absolutely would not have worked as Cree’s goddess in this plot either. The Matron hates the undead, so even if Cree had remained faithful to her, that likely would have had perilous consequences for trying to cast any spells while Cree helped Lucien. Any attempt to bring him back as undead would have been an issue too. (Yes, I know that clerics have tons of necromancy spells, especially Blood Clerics, and there’s no mechanic prohibiting it, but this story has to have some logic to it.)

Thus, the Somnovem were Cree’s gods. I couldn’t think of a single reason why a gold/crystal necklace with someone’s blood would be suitable for the Somnovem, so I had to make up a holy symbol. That’s excellent for story purposes because the new one is packed with symbolism. It’s an eye carved into a silver coin with a ruby chip embedded as the iris. It’s obvious to anyone seeing it that Cree had to improvise, that she made it herself, and that she didn’t go overboard with making it especially pretty or ornate. Easy to carry, hide, and hold. Practical and without excess.

Then, where’s the gold/crystal necklace? And why was that one so fancy compared to the coin? Hmmm.

I figured she would keep her Raven Queen symbol, though it likely cracked due to her broken faith. She’s sentimental, and even if she stopped worshiping the Matron, that would have been a huge part of her life. It remains to be seen whether her background feature would still work.

I decided to make the coin a Guardian Emblem because Cree didn’t use her actions to defend/heal the Tombtakers in combat except for one Cure Wounds on Lucien. She plays offense like Jester does, but even more aggressively because she threw out her highest level spells as attacks in her first two turns against Gelidon, leaving her with fewer options when the Tombtakers absconded that night with the bag of holding. Thus, having a reaction to significantly reduce damage taken would be a good option for her so she can still focus on attacks.

Coming up with a second item was such a pain. What would she have kept for so long without adventuring? What would she have bought? Probably nothing, but surely she wouldn’t sell off everything she ever had when trying to hide from DeRogna. Eventually, I felt a Ring of Protection made sense because it’s something that would be useful in the event that anything ever went sour with the Gentleman, or if DeRogna tracked her down, and it would lean into the “stop dying so I can kill stuff” mentality. Plus that gives her some AC.

Cree doesn’t have armor, but she has a shield. Why would she have armor? She’d have sold that for sure, and finding something suitable for a tabaxi in the Empire probably isn’t easy. It would be easier to pick up a shield, or for any of the others to buy for her, on the way out of Zadash than find armor that would fit. Plus there’s the strategy of it: anyone starting a fight in the Evening Nip is going to focus on the bouncers and bodyguards in armor, not the blood lady in a robe and costume jewelry—until she blights them. (She needs to buy some armor.)

Cree had a war pick in Eiselcross, and it’s not the type of weapon someone would choose unless they really liked the feel of it. It has no benefits. There’s numerous other 1d8 weapons that are versatile, finesse, or have other special features that make them better options. No, that was a character choice. Listen, Cree is a blood cleric that formerly worshiped a death god and recently brought her best friend back as an undead because she had nightmares and a madness inducing vision about it. Gouging people with a glorified mining pick is probably the most normal thing about her.

Lastly, Cree has a lot of money. Have you never met a person who suddenly started making obscene amounts of money after growing up poor? If they didn’t start spending it like an idiot, they hoarded it for What-Ifs out of paranoia, at least until the shock of having money wore off. Considering Cree’s behavior, it takes her a good while to get over things, and she absolutely seems like the kind of person to hoard her savings. Thus she’s barely spent any coin other than what was necessary for reagents, like diamonds, diamond dust, silver dust, etc. (You want holy water? It costs how much? We have holy water at home.)

#TF&TS #TF&TS meta #cree deeproots

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dovesndecay · 2 years ago

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Tell us more about your amnesiac aasamir? :)

[img: A HeroForge mini of a masc-presenting person in thick, brown furs with purple accents. He has medium brown skin, short, spiky white hair, and light brown eyes. He is holding a staff in his left hand and a ball of flame in his right. One white brow has a slit, and both ears have hoops. His expression is somewhat confused or disdainful, lips curled and brow lifted. At his feet are fallen leaves and a small campfire. /end]

Level 4 | 13 STR | 14 DEX | 17 CON | 14 INT | 16 WIS | 18 CHA

Kelric Ashling has been in Ten Towns since just before the eternal winter began. He was found in the woods with the beginning of hypothermia and already frostbitten, losing his left ring and pinkie fingers. He was found by Ulrich Frostborn, played by @chaosqueer, a half-orc barbarian living outside of Brynn Shander. The two of them are basically besties, though Kelric would be confused by that. Ulrich, meanwhile, would be terribly hurt that Kelric didn't think they were besties. After all, Ulrich carved him prosthetics for his hand!

He has no memory of his life prior to arriving in Ten Towns, and so, after getting patched up, he stayed. It's been nearly three years of simply existing in this bullshit cold-as-a-witch's-rectum hellscape, but he doesn't have much else to do, so he stays and he does odd jobs in exchange for room and board, and funds to stock away for rainy days. He can do some fire magic, but has no idea how he knows how to do it, and lately it's been a bit ... out of control.

Since some of the settlements in Ten Towns have human sacrifice lotteries, he and Ulrich -- the two of them are often referred to as "The Ricks", although never to Kelric's face -- travel around to mitigate the risk of ending up on the lottery and getting sacrificed to the Auril, The Frost Maiden.

At the beginning of our campaign, Heliodora Arleccina, played by @natalieironside, a goth jester Drow bard, showed up in town, presumably for shits and giggles, and joined our little band of job-doers. She seems to be mostly inclined towards making money and enjoying shenanigans, and she's good at both, so Kelric is cool with her tagging along. A bard is always useful.

One of the ways I've been playing with his amnesia is that I'll roll a d20 to see how he reacts to certain things. He doesn't know all the spells he knows, so when Heliodora tries to Message him to work out a plan during a job, in front of the target, in public -- who we are meant to kill, subtly and without getting caught -- Kelric freaks out and accidentally ends up in a fight with the town guard in the middle of the market. During the fight, he also accidentally sets an inn very on fire, and lets one of their enemies go to try and save the people while the party flees the town.

I'm waiting to see how that one comes back to bite us later.

There's a massive Bumble problem -- abominable snowmen, which we've taken to calling Bumbles -- throughout the area, and the party has been running into them every time we leave town.

The Eternal Winter Bullshit has drawn a newly graduated ... *squints* druid??? maybe?? I don't remember, tbh. Her name is Danikka, but we've taken to calling her The Nerd. When she arrived in town, he felt a flicker of recognition at her robes, but couldn't place them. He may have unnerved her slightly when he approached, sat down, and stared at her as if he could will himself to remember something. Ulrich's gentle intervention was necessary as a third party to ease the awkward encounter.

Every so often, he knows or uses a spell he didn't know he had -- the scene below was because he used Druidcraft without even realizing it. The Nerd is helping him "learn" magic -- and he's gathering materials for her to cast a spell to hopefully restore his memory. Our last job was to retrieve an gem trader's inventory, and our reward was one diamond specifically because The Nerd needs it for the spell.

Kelric looked across the bar to where Danikka sat at a table, the Chwinga resting on the beehive she'd wrestled her hair into. "Hey, nerd!" Danikka looked up, blinking wide eyes. "Yes?" Kelric immediately groaned. "Don't answer to that, kid!"

Kelric is a very gruff, no-nonsense sort of guy. He's not a chatter. He fails to ask follow-up questions, and walks away from conversations the moment he feels he's done with them -- regardless of whether the other person feels the same way.

And then he walks back in when he remembers that he needs more information, like, where the fuck he's supposed to be going.

Honestly, thank gods for Ulrich, because Kelric would walk off without his head 90% of the time if it weren't attached.

He also doesn't know he's an Aasimar -- pretty much everyone assumes he's a genasi or a half-elf or something, thanks to the slightly pointed ears and the scales -- so when he never "sleeps" for more than four hours, he thinks he has insomnia. Ulrich makes him various teas to try and help, which Kelric drinks despite having Zukoesque ideas about tea.

He always takes last watch. He's a brandy man. Green is his favorite color. He's very impatient -- nearly barging into the rooms of inn guests in order to follow up on a flyer they left on the Craigsboard -- but thankfully, Ulrich is there to rein him in most days.

Mostly.

Oh, and if the Northlook Inn ever burns down, he'll save Ol' Bitey before anybody else.

[img: A red fish with a wide, bold forehead, a number of scars, and a white belly, mounted on a piece of wood like real world singing fish products. Beneath the fish, there is a name plaque that reads, "OL' BITEY". /end]

#askbox #dungeons and dumbasses #dnd

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racheljsk · 2 years ago

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Week 4 Tumblr Case Study

Blogging My Feelings Away

It’s the year 2014. Every teenager is blasting Halsey’s ‘Badlands’ album while scrolling through Tumblr. The aesthetic pictures, the dark yet pretty poems that expressed how a heartbroken teenager felt, everyone loved to blog their feelings away during that era.

"But wait, what is blogging?"

A blog is like a digital diary, instead of writing it on paper, we would write it on blogging platforms such as Tumblr. Besides yourself, anyone can participate in making entries in your blog or even just read them, so I guess you can say that it is not really a diary (because most of the time, diaries are a secret you know). Now back to teens on Tumblr, technically they know more about Tumblr so naturally, it makes them good at digital strategy. For example, user Pizza hit 100, 000 followers on Tumblr after more than 2 years on the blogging platform. From posting party outfits pictures to funny one-liners, she had a whopping 90,000 followers, earning her fame in her circle. That all happened at the end of 2012, the same year she turned 15 years old.

Speaking of Tumblr, it was officially launched in February 2007 and gained over 75 000 users in 2 weeks. After 2 months after Tumblr launched its first major brand advertising campaign with Adidas, which launched an official soccer Tumblr blog and bought placements on the user dashboard, Tumblr announced that it would be moving towards paid advertising on its site.

Phew, that was a lot of history, now moving on to what you can do on this platform (think of this post as an intro to Tumblr). Of course, we can blog anonymously, that is. Unlike Facebook or Instagram, we don’t have to put our real names, therefore creating a safe space for many marginalised groups. (You can talk about how much you like Levi Ackerman and not get judged because no one knows who you really are, people only know you as that one Levi Tumblr account).

Tumblr is a relatively public place to blog your feelings away as users do not need to follow each other to see their contents and users cannot tell when someone is online as the date and time stamps are not prioritised. Lastly, did you know that Tumblr was one of the first social media sites to use hashtags as a community building tool? (I didn’t either until I read the module).

Speaking of building a community, there are 5 stages of building a community on a blog. The first stage is simply you. The way you write your blogs and express yourself in a way that is relatable and can make you gain readers. This leads to stage 2 which is readers engaging with you. This is when your readers share their feedback, by leaving comments and you as the blogger, need to take the initiative to respond to them hence engaging with your readers. Not only do your readers engage with you but they can also engage with one another, which brings us to stage 3. At this stage, this means that you have a much deeper level of community engagement than you did when you were the central point of contact for everyone. Moving on to stage 4, when you see your readers engaging with one another, they like the things that you wrote and decided to tell other people about it. The more followers you have, the bigger your blog will become and soon your loyal followers will become moderators for the discussion forums in your blog. Lastly, stage 5, is engagement. This is when you as the blogger are still there, but interactions and relationships go on.

In conclusion, Tumblr is a place where people blog their feelings away.

References

Misman, N 2023, ‘MDA 20009 Digital Communities Week 4 Digital Community and Blogging: Tumblr Case Study’, MDA20009 Digital Communities, Learning materials via Canvas, Swinburne University of Technology, 13 April, viewed 2 May 2023.

Reeve, E 2016, ‘The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens’, The New Republic, 17 February, viewed 2 May, <https://newrepublic.com/article/129002/secret-lives-tumblr-teens>.

#mda20009 #tumblraesthetic #tumblr 2014 #week 4 #university #halsey badlands #levi ackerman #tumblrcasestudy

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some-zer0 · 5 days ago

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It took me half a year and two relistens but I finally finished timestamping this! I've also added some annotations cause this took up a decent chunk of my life and I think I deserve to give my little comments as a treat (and also cause I found some fun stuff in the transcripts while looking for these). Outtakes aren't in the transcripts, so all of those were a special little hell for me to find.

Episode names with a * next to them mean that they're from that episode's outtakes.

Start-00:22 (RQG 81 - Breakfast with Dessert)

This soundclip lowkey drove me insane. I knew that it was from the group's journey across Newton's office, but Hamid's "I don't recognize this, which opera's it from?" is miswritten in the transcript so cntrl-f couldn't find it and everyone's singing is literally written out as "do do do do do" so cntrl-f was useless for that too. I ended up just listening to those couple of episodes on 2x speed until I found this clip...

00:22-00:26 (RQG 214 - Guivres)

00:26-00:39 (RQG 41 - Chariots and Catacombs)

00:39-00:43 (RQG 34 - Le Gai Paris!)

00:43-00:57 (RQG 106 - Special Delivery)

00:57-01:03 (RQG 211 - The Writer's Tale)

01:03-01:05 (RQG 136 - Trouble at the Top*)

They're talking about fanart someone did of Grizzop where they 1) made him sexy (of course) and 2) gave him Ben's hair (why). I'm not sure if this is the exact fanart they were referencing here, but it is indeed cursed

01:05-01:12 (RQG 35 - The Exposition Box)

01:12-01:18 (RQG 38 - Brutor Is...)

01:18-01:20 (RQG 110 - Cracking Up)

01:20-01:27 (RQG Into the Wilds pt. 2)

They're talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger

01:27-01:44 (RQG 41 - Chariots and Catacombs)

01:44-01:46 (RQG 74 - Upstairs Downstairs)

01:46-01:48 (RQG 137 - Lightning Round*)

Ben uses his Elias voice for crimes

01:48-02:11 (RQG 153 - The Chatter Box)

02:11-02:16 (RQG 93 - The Curse!!!)

Ben's "A what?" sounded so much like his Zolf voice that I kept going through the Paris arc trying to find this clip, only to realize during a relisten that it was an entirely different arc that didn't even have Zolf in it. Also, the number of exclamation marks in the title is different between the episode listing on Spotify and the transcript header

02:16-02:21 (RQG 34 - Le Gai Paris!)

02:21-02:23 (RQG 136 - Trouble at the Top)

02:23-02:45 (RQG 48 - Ctrl Alt Destroy!*)

02:45-03:00 (RQG 110 - Cracking Up)

In between this clip and the previous pump hole one, Alex mentions that Ben's been saying "pump hole" a lot outside of recording. Why we'll never know. Also, here's the full pump hole bit from that episode

03:00-03:15 (RQG 211- The Writer's Tale)

03:15-03:19 (RQG 74 - Upstairs Downstairs)

03:19-03:27 (RQG 100 - Disappearing Act)

03:27-03:33 (RQG 214 - Guivres)

I forgot how funny the finale was

03:33-03:42 (RQG 93 - The Curse!!!)

03:42-03:45 (RQG Post-Campaign Q&A pt. 1)

This is about Grizzop

03:45-04:08 (RQG Into the Wilds pt. 3)

04:08-04:14 (RQG 41 - Chariots and Catacombs)

04:14-04:17 (RQG 93 - The Curse!!!)

04:17-04:26 (RQG 110 - Cracking Up)

This is another clip that took me absolutely forever to find. I literally ctrl-f'd "erotic" and "sexy" for every single episode and still couldn't find this until a relisten. Also, it's from a section where they're discussing what new stuff they got from leveling up, and is immediately preceded by Ben telling Bryn, "Oh, sorry - shh, shut up, it's still Ben Time!"

04:26-04:34 (RQG 106 - Special Delivery)

04:34-04:41 (RQG 46 - Theseus' Ship)

After listening to the show so many times I honestly forgot how ridiculous Mr. Ceiling's name was at first

04:41-04:44 (RQG 61 - Skyships and Harlequins)

Fun fact: Bryn's "No!" is so high-pitched that it's misattributed to Lydia in the transcripts

04:44-05:15 (RQG 110 - Cracking Up)

05:15-05:20 (RQG 212 - Final Rest)

05:20-05:41 (RQG 40 - Wheels Within Wheels)

05:41-05:54 (RQG 91 - Can't We All Just Get Along*)

05:54-06:00 (RQG 217 - Last Stand)

06:00-06:17 (RQG 123 - Plane and Simple)

06:17-06:24 (Metacast 7: Longplay)

Helen's cut-off line at the end there is, "Let's not go there because remember that time he shaved it off and we were all like, 'UGHAHUHAHUUU!'"

06:24-06:29 (RQG 28 - Not So Hard Time)

06:29-06:34 (RQG 93 - The Curse!!!)

06:34-06:38 (RQG 48 - Ctrl Alt Destroy!*)

06:38-06:50 (RQG 106 - Special Delivery)

06:50-06:57 (RQG 212 - Final Rest)

06:57-07:07 (RQG 36 - Contracts and Calculators)

07:07-07:13 (RQG 139 - Blobs, Spikes, Spiders, & Booms)

This was the last clip I found. The surprisingly high number of encounters with oozes and goos and the fact that Bryn's line doesn't really have any words that are easy for me to ctrl-f efficiently meant I just had to catch this on a relisten. Also, this is, of course, about Zolf's nudity

07:13-07:41 (RQG 141 - All the Way Down)

Here's the full clip for this (really, it just includes Bryn saying, "I bless the rains down in Africa," in his best Elias impersonation)

07:41-07:47 (RQG 110 - Cracking Up)

07:47-07:57 (RQG 209 - Shades of Red)

07:57-08:03 (RQG 218 - Erasing the Line)

08:03-08:14 (RQG 217 - Last Stand)

Helen calling Ben and Alex by their full names when she's upset with them is one of my favorite bits

08:14-End (RQG 110 - Cracking Up*)

a serious podcast.

#rqg #rusty quill gaming #sound clip

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marketingprofitmedia · 4 months ago

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WAzap Review – GeminiAI WhatsApp Autoresponder & Store Builder

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WAzap — GeminiAI WhatsApp Autoresponder is a powerful tool that can transform how businesses communicate with their customers. By leveraging AI technology, WAzap offers enhanced engagement, increased efficiency, and cost-effective solutions for businesses of all sizes. While there are some challenges to consider, the benefits of using WAzap far outweigh the potential drawbacks, making it a valuable addition to any business’s communication strategy. Incorporating WAzap into your business can lead to improved customer satisfaction, higher productivity, and greater profitability. As businesses continue to embrace digital transformation, tools like WAzap will play a crucial role in shaping the future of customer communication and engagement.

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Check Out My Previous Reviews: Aero App Review, BlogNinja Review, MailerMonster Review, MusicBuddy AI Review, AI Face Fusion Review, DFY Ai Review, AI Rider Review, GraphicX Ai Review, ProfitWPH Review, DomainLab AI Review, & Tube Targeter Review.

Thank for reading my WAzap Review till the end. Hope it will help you to make purchase decision perfectly.

Disclaimer:

This review is based on publicly available information and is not intended as an endorsement or promotion of WAzap. Users should conduct their own research and due diligence before making any purchasing decisions.

Note: This is a paid software, but the one-time fee is $17 for lifetime

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btsfangirling · 1 year ago

Text

BTS and ARMY for BLM and More

I think many people are familiar with BTS and the dedication of their fans. What some people may not be aware of is the depth of BTS's philanthropic endeavors nor just how crucial ARMY's role is in BTS's transmedia and transcultural success. Combined, they have a rather incredible impact on the world that is unmatched by any other fandom. One of the most well known examples is when, during the peak of the BLM protests, BTS made a $1 million donation to BLM organizations and it was easily matched by BTS fans from around the world in just around 24 hours.

As one can imagine, there were certainly some people who tried to argue that BTS's donation was just a big publicity stunt. Of course, however, there were many more people who were ready to come to BTS's defense. As a group that heavily takes inspiration from Black American hip-hop and pop music, this donation is not just a lazy gesture but a conscious one that holds historical significance. It also shows that BTS is making genuine efforts to center Black voices and experiences in an attempt to to bridge the gap between races (Cho "BTS for BLM").

In general, one million dollars may also not be much for big name artists like BTS, but it is still not an insignificant number in terms of a donation. And you can't discredit the level of dedication and organization it took for their fans to match that number in a single day. The amount of effort that is put in behind the scenes by BTS fans is truly unlike any we see elsewhere and it has been stated that this highly organized structure of ARMY is "driven by a desire to see the seven members of BTS leave theirmark in territories previously uncharted by any other pop act from South Korea" (Moon).

BTS as a group and as individual members have been and have continued to donate millions of dollars to charities around the world including those that help children in Africa and children undergoing cancer treatments, on top of several various local South Korean charities.

Beyond these donations, BTS also launched their Love Myself campaign which aimed to end violence and promote the protection of young people. This was a global campaign that was in partnership with UNICEF and was trending with hundreds of thousands of BTS fans and others alike posting self-loving pictures with hashtags like #ENDviolence and $BTSLoveMyself. This campaign and partnership would ultimately bring them to the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly where the leader of BTS, RM, would give. a speech talking about his journey of learning to love himself and the purpose of the Love Myself campaign.

It's difficult to deny the positive impacts of BTS's philanthropic endeavors and the genuineness behind these actions is certainly one of the many reasons why fans love and care for the group as much as they do. These donations and campaign and BTS's consistent message of love and connection definitely speak for themselves, but I think the level of dedication and support that BTS receives from their fans across the world and their transmedial approach (use of several different platforms) is truly what sets them apart from other artists and what has led to their transnational and transcultural success.

Sources:

Acharya, Avani. “8 Times BTS Donated to Causes They Care About.” Www.sportskeeda.com, 17 Dec. 2022, www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/8-times-bts-donated-causes-care.

Cho, Michelle. “BTS for BLM: K-Pop, Race, and Transcultural Fandom.” Celebrity Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, Apr. 2022, pp. 1–10, https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2063974.

Moon, Kat. “Inside the BTS ARMY, the Devoted Fandom with an Unrivaled Level of Organization.” Time Magazine, Nov. 2020.

#by kai

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 2 years ago

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“Man Equal Of Machine,” Border Cities Star. February 17, 1933. Page 15. ---- Tory M. L. A. Says He Should Be, But Is So Treated ---- Cites Depreciation ---- H. I. Price in His Maiden Speech, Urge Job Insurance ---- By Staff Reporter TORONTO. Feb. 17. Men who work in factories are entitled to as much consideration from their employers as the machines they operate, but they are not getting it, Harry I. Price, Conservative member for West York, complained in his maiden speech yesterday afternoon in the Legislature.

FAVORS JOB INSURANCE "AN economic system which allows that condition to exist is wrong,” charged the new member, urging the House to go on record for federal contributory unemployment insurance.

Nor were these the only bombshells. "Direct relief, in my opinion, is wrong." he said, "but it is unavoidable. But if we had had a few more pessimists a few years ago If we had faced conditions three or four years ago, the giving of direct relief would not be necessary today."

Praising Attorney-General Price's campaign against Communism. Mr. Price - he is not a relative of the attorney-general - said:

"The attorney-general has steered a wise and moderate course in these times, when strange and dangerous doctrines gain adherents." He referred to Col. Price as being on guard "against the insidious doctrine of Communism: against the desire to force on other people a system of semi-slavery.

"There is ample place within our laws, the Attorney-General has maintained, for those who wish to criticize, but there is no place for those who wish merely to destroy.

"It has been said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.' Men who love liberty will thank the Attorney-General for keeping a watchful eye on this element."

DEPRECIATION RESERVES Of unemployment he said: "Men are entitled to the same consideration from the employer of labor as he gives to the machines in his plant. All plants each year write off a certain percentage for depreciation.

"In those same industries we find the employe, after giving perhaps the best years of his life, being told by his employer, who is forced to the step by competition: 'I am sorry, but you can no longer hold up your end, so I will have to dispense with you'."

He said he was confident the Dominion Government would treat this important problem as it had given attention to other social legislation "fairly and adequately."

"This is a matter of federal Jurisdiction, but I think this House should go on record in favor cf unemployment insurance," he said. He praised Premier Henry's efforts to secure the inauguration of unemployment insurance at the recent provincial-federal conference at Ottawa.

"This problem can't be dealt with by the individual provinces." said Mr. Price, "and it must be on a contributory basis."

GOLD PRODUCTION Lauding in turn the government departments. Mr. Price referred to Ontario's gold production of $53,000,000 last year as compared with $40,000,000 the year before, and gave much of the credit for this showing to Hon. Charles McCrea. Minister of Mines.

Defending the retention of the public welfare department, which has been subjected to criticism, he stated that at the end of the last fiscal year, October 31. 1932. benefits under the Mothers Allowance Act were being given 24.372 persons at a cost of $2,713.633.50 per year. Pensioners numbered 41.658, and these aged persons were receiving average pensions of $13.32 monthly for an aggregate of $3,212,741.

Citing year-by-year totals, rates and costs to the government since 1920 of provincial bond issues, he declared: "No criticism can be levelled at the government for its 1932 financing. Ontario borrowed money consider be lower than any province borrowing at or about the same time."

SCHOOL SPORTS Speaking as a member of the Ontario Athletic Commission he defended i sports in schools as Improving school and student morale and told the i House schools well in the van of athletic prowess were also usually known for high academic standards. The five percent tax on all professional sport is used to assist amateur sports of all kinds. None of the members of the commission has ever received any payment.

#west york #member of parliament #york county #legislative assembly of ontario #public speech #conservative party of canada #unemployment insurance #direct relief #anti-communism #attorney general of ontario #conservative politics #ontario politics #great depression in canada #politics of chaos

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tressasinterlude · 3 years ago

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𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐓 #𝟑: Female Public Figures Dating Men with Questionable Views That Contradict Their Image & Alleged Politics

𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗖𝗟𝗔𝗜𝗠𝗘𝗥: These rant blog posts are really just reflective of my thoughts at the time that I make them and are posted here because I need an outlet to release all of this shit I have going on my busy ass mind. That’s it and that’s all. Now let’s get into it..

This rant was greatly inspired by none other than Ms. Robyn Rihanna “Tell Your Faves To Pull Up [in regards to social injustices directly affecting black people]” Fenty and her openly colorist boyfriend, A$AP Rocky. Aside from the fact that Rihanna tends to slip under the radar and is never held accountable for her problematic ways due to her conventional beauty (i.e. Her heavy usage of anti-Asian slurs, particularly targeted towards Chris Brown’s ex gf, Karrueche), it’s very alarming that a woman who has an entire makeup brand with a campaign based around the inclusivity of ALL black women is publicly flaunting a beau who once said that DSBW do not look good with red lipstick.

And yes, I’m very much aware that Rakim said this tasteless comment over 8 years ago but from the looks of it, not much has really changed with him. Don’t @ me about it neither because I don’t care.

Also peep how he compares a hypothetical darkskinned woman to a man (Wesley Snipes) while trying to explain how his antiblackness isn’t wrong because he said something about white women as well. Gaslighting at its finest. Don’t you just love it! 😀

Furthermore, you would think that somebody of Rihanna’s level of stature would know not to associate themselves with someone as messy as A$AP Rocky but... Stupid is what stupid does, I guess! I can’t even begin to place the blame on him anymore because he’s revealed his true colors and we all have made the deliberate choice to either accept it or don’t and have discontinued all support for him. Unfortunately, misogynoir is never the dealbreaker for most people and the hatred for [dark-skinned] black women is so engrained in society that it’s frowned upon when we publicly speak out against it. Very ass backwards if you ask me but that’s society for you. Now, enough about that. Let’s focus back on Ms. Vita La Coco.

As a woman who claims to be a girl’s girl and is always presenting herself to be someone who is the epitome of a pro-black feminist bad ass, it just makes her alleged activism come off so disingenuous when she’s also laying down with the same man that actively attacks the demographic she’s supposed to be standing in solidarity with. It’s “Black Lives Matter” on the IG posts but your vagina is getting moist for a man who openly stated he doesn’t relate to what goes on in Ferguson because he lives in Soho & Beverly Hills. Ferguson being the exact place where a 17-year-old black boy’s lifeless corpse laid on the hot concrete for FOUR hours after he was murdered by a police officer. He couldn’t 'relate' to the fate of so many black men, women, and children who are murdered or seriously injured from state-sanctioned violence because they’re poor and he is not or so he thought.

But then again, what can I really expect from a woman who identified as being “biracial” until as recent as roughly 6 years ago? What can I really expect from a woman who called Rachel Dolezal a ‘hero’ for cosplaying as a black woman? I’d be lying if I said my expectations for her were high in this regard because sis has always shown us she was lacking in this department. And just for the record, this is not a personal attack on Rihanna at all for the die-hard Navy stans in the back. I admire her latest fashions and bop my head to her music just like the next person but she’s getting the side-eye from me on this one.

Trust and believe me though, she’s not the only woman who I can call out for being a hypocrite. Of course not! This stone can be cast at a few others. So without further ado, why don’t we bring Ms. Kehlani Parrish to the front of the congregation? Prior to Kehlani’s recent declaration of identifying as a lesbian, her last public relationship with a man was with YG. Yes, the same YG who felt it was necessary to say him & Nipsey had ‘pretty light-skinned’ daughters to raise in the middle of his deceased friend’s memorial. By the way, Nipsey’s daughter is not even light (or at least not in my book anyways.) She’s a very deep caramel tone just like her father which makes what he said even more moronic. Yes, the same YG who thought it was clever idea to use slavery as an aesthetic for a music video to a diss track about 6ix9ine. And yes, also the same YG who has derogatory lyrics targeted at bisexual women. Just to end up sweating the red carpets with one. I swear the jokes just continue to write themselves.

This raises the question once more; How high of a pedestal can I really put a multiracial woman who has a song titled ‘N*ggas’ and when received backlash for the song in question, she used the ultimate ‘I’m mixed’ copout while not having a visibly black parent in sight?

It’s also kind of suspicious to me that many were not privy to Kehlani’s secret romance with Victoria Monét (pictured bottom right) until Victoria did an interview with Gay Times revealing she fell in love with a girl but they subsequently broke up because Victoria had a boyfriend and that girl was pregnant in a polyamorous relationship. Fans began to speculate because both Victoria & Kehlani previously candidly spoke about their sexual orientations, Kehlani had just had Adeya and they both were seemingly close. Their short-lived fling would later be confirmed when Victoria released the song ‘Touch Me’ on her last project and Kehlani hopped on the remix. Meanwhile, Kehlani’s relationship with Shaina (pictured bottom left) was very overt and all over her Instagram feed from my recollection. And as you can see, Shaina looks absolutely nothing like Victoria. They look like the complete opposite of eachother in every aspect which is kind of alarming(?) to say the least because why is it that the women she proudly claims as her partners tend to have a very racially ambiguous look such as herself but her ‘sneaky links’ on the other hand are undoubtedly black women? Again, it could just be me jumping conclusions. You know, I’m kinda good for that however something tells me I’m not. Y’all be the judge of the material though.

Last but not least, I’d like to touch on Ms. Raven Tracy very briefly. I was very weary about even including in this segment and if I should just put her in a entirely separate blog post with other women who openly date abusers despite their checkered past (alongside Nicki Minaj & her r*pist murderer of a husband, India Love & Sheck Wes etc.) being this particular blog post was based around the theme of lightskinned/mixed women dating men with extremely problematic views about DSBW. Raven obviously isn’t lightskinned or mixed however I refused to ignore how contradictory her [former] relationship with an alleged (I used this word very loosely and mainly for legality purposes.) serial r*pist while promoting a brand that is all about feminism & body positivity. This also traces back to A$AP Rocky by default being that Ian Connor is his very close friend and he came to Connor’s defense when several women came forward detailing accounts of Connor allegedly s*xually assaulting them. (I wish I could place the actual video of what A$AP Rocky said verbatim but Tumblr only allows one video per blog post. 🙄)

Back in June of this year, Ian & Raven had a back & forth on Twitter after Ian tweeted about Raven “fucking everybody” behind his back. I can only assume that he was alluding to Tori Brixx posting a video of her ex, Rich the Kid & Raven kissing on her story. Disgusted is not even the word to describe my feeling when she admitted she stuck by Ian despite of his many allegations of s*xual abuse because she loved him and her being a empath causes her to want to help everybody. Imagine aiding and abetting a predator and even paying for his bail & legal fees just to turn around and expect sympathy because this same individual cheated on you and exploited you all over Twitter for the public to see. The same man that you would get back with not even a WEEK after the fact & turn off your IG comments because it isn’t our “business” after making it our business...

That being said, I just genuinely want to know: Why do these women completely go against what they stand for in regards to these men? Maybe it was never genuine from jump street and if that’s the case, why jump on the bandwagon of performative activism? Is it because it’s profitable right now? Is it because disrespecting black women is not an immediate death sentence to your careers and more often than not actually helps you advance even further? I guess that’s the billion dollar question that’ll never truly be answered. I just want the world to stop using black women as their stepping stool to get to where they need to go and then discarding of us when we’re no longer beneficial. Support us all the way or don’t support us at all. We deal with enough disrespect as is so we’d appreciate if y’all would stop straddling the fence and partake in your misogynoir out loud if that’s what you choose to do. We have no use for fake allyship and quite frankly, it’s doing more harm for us than good. Please and thank you!

Sincerely,

- 𝙼𝙸𝚂𝚂 𝙴𝙳𝙶𝙰𝚁 𝙰𝙻𝙻𝙴𝙽 𝙷𝙾𝙴. 💋

#i’m finally done after having this sitting in the drafts for about a good month... or two. 🥴🥴#abuse apologists #pro black #activism #feminism #body posititivity #colorism #raven tracy #kehlani #rihanna #yg #asap rocky #rant #my uploads.

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dmsden · 3 years ago

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Monster of the Month: Dragon Turtle

Hullo, Gentle Readers. We come to March, roaring in like a lion...or, rather...a Dragon Turtle! Yes, the dragon turtle is our March Monster of the Month, and we're going to give this iconic critter a little love and attention. As always, a huge shout out and thanks to our good friend, Scott Fabianek, for the awesome original artwork.

Dragon turtles are originally from Chinese mythology, but they joined D&D in the very earliest days of the game. Since then, they haven't gotten a ton of love, but they recently got some excellent fleshing out in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. This book gives dragon turtles the full dragon treatment, complete with different sizes/ages, lair information, role-playing hooks, and the like.

I have to be honest...I've only recently come to have affection for dragon turtles. In my earliest games, I never thought much of them, usually because they were simply too high level for my players to fight. Even as my games became more nuanced, I dismissed them as a aquatic menace that I might use for a powerful encounter at some point, but that was about it. I think I was conflating them, in my mind, to the zaratan, a mythological turtle that was sometimes mistaken for an island, because it was so vast. That sounded cool, but I didn't see how I could make a meaningful encounter out of it. I have to admit that I was suffering from a lack of imagination...something of a blindspot for me.

It was actually Aremag, the dragon turtle that haunts the waters outside Port Nyanzaru, that started my interest in these nifty creatures. His propensity for extorting ships versus simply starting combat amused me, and then I realized how fun DTs could be in role-playing encounters. They're not evil, after all...they're simply neutral, and, therefore, could be anything. They could be guarding a region of waters due to an ancient pact. They could be leading a fleet of pirates or a swarm of sahuagin. They could be mercenaries that the PCs could pay to aid them...of that the villains could pay to cause havoc. Suddenly, they had a ton of potential I hadn't seen before.

Dragon turtles carry a hefty CR of 17, so, if you intend the PCs to actually fight one, they'll probably be a later addition to your campaign. Until then, though, they can form any sort of role-playing encounter you like. I could easily imagine a city that bribes a dragon turtle to lair nearby, donating gold to the DT's hoard in exchange for its aid against pirates. The PCs might need a treasure from the DT's lair, and they need to either steal it (unwise) or maybe bargain for it. The DT could even end up as a quest giver. "I do have the Trident of Aremenios, but it is dear to me. Still, I might be persuaded to part with it if you do a little task for me..."

When that combat finally does come, the DT should be as terrifying as a normal dragon is. Its steam breath is every bit as devastating as a dragon's breath. It's resistant to fire, eliminating a common resource for spellcasters. It has a strong multiattack. And, like other dragons, it moves in three dimensions with a speed the PCs will likely have to use magic to match. And speaking of magic, they have a spellcasting option. A DT can use fog cloud to mask their approach, and their use of control water could be absolutely terrifying, controlling currents to send someone too far to attack them, swamping a ship, or creating whirlpools to make the PCs' lives difficult. If I were going to tweak those spells, I'd be tempted to give them dispel magic to use against non-water breathing adventurers. That will ruin someone's day.

Just to make players' lives even more interesting (in the Chinese sense), you can pair the DT with other aquatic beasties. They might have a gang of sahuagin who travel with them, or travel with sharks that know the DT is often a source of good meals when it sinks a ship. A DT might have a long-standing relationship with a bronze dragon who lairs nearish by, or it might be the servant of a kraken's cult. The Monster Manual mentions that DTs sometimes become mounts for marids, who strap gigantic jewelled thrones to their shells to ride...which sounds amazing. That makes me want to write an encounter right there.

I hope this article has shown you what I've come to realize about Dragon Turtles - that they are interesting creatures in their own right and not just a sack of hit points. I hope one swims into your campaign soon. Until next time, may all your 20s be natural.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years ago

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The future is symmetrical

When Mitch Kapor articulated the principle that “architecture is politics” at the founding of EFF, he was charging technologists with the moral duty to contemplate the kinds of social interactions their technological decisions would facilitate — and prohibit.

At question was nothing less than the character of the networked society. Would the vast, pluripotent, general purpose, interconnected network serve as a glorified video-on-demand service, the world’s greatest pornography distribution system, a giant high-tech mall?

Or could it be a public square, and if so, who would have the loudest voices in that square, who would be excluded from it, who will set its rules, and how will they be enforced?

As with its technical architecture, the political architecture of the net is a stack, encompassing everything from antitrust enforcement to spectrum allocation, protocol design to search-and-seizure laws, standards to top-level domain governance.

Among those many considerations is the absolutely vital question of service delivery itself. What kinds of wires or radio waves will carry your packets, who will own them, and how will they be configured?

For decades, a quiet war has been fought on this front, with two sides: the side that sees internet users as “mouse potatoes,” destined to passively absorb information feeds compiled by their betters; and the “netizen” side that envisions a truly participatory network design.

This deep division has been with us since the internet’s prehistory, at least since the fight over Usenet’s alt.* hierarchy, flaring up again during the P2P wars, with ISPs insisting that users were violating their “agreements” by running “servers.”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/altinteroperabilityadversarial

Above all, this fight was waged in the deployment of home internet service. The decision turn the already-monopolistic cable and phone operators into ISPs cast a long shadow. Both of these industries think of their customers as passive information consumers, not participants.

As an entertainment exec in William Gibson’s 1992 novel Idoru describes her audience: “Best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth…no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

Contrast this with the other cyberpunk archetype, the console cowboy who doesn’t merely surf the digital, but steers it — the active participant in the technological/media environment who is more than a recipient of others’ crafted messages.

For a long time, Big Tech and Big Telco tried to have it both ways. AT&T promoted teleconferencing and remote family life conducted by videophones in its 1993 “You Will” marketing campaign. Youtube exhorted you to “broadcast yourself.”

But AT&T also set data-caps, kicked users off for running servers, and engaged in every legal, semi-legal and outright illegal tactic imaginable to block high-speed fiber networks.

Youtube, meanwhile, blocked interoperability, leveraged vertical integration with Google search to exclude and starve competitors, and conspired with Big Content to create a “content moderation” system that’s two parts Kafka, one part Keystone Kops.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fairy-use-tale/#content-id

While the questions raised by broad participation in networked society are thorny and complex, one question actually has a very simple and factual answer: “How should we connect our homes to the internet?” The answer: “Fiber.”

There is no wireless that can substitute for fiber. Wireless — 5G, Starlink, whatever — shares the same spectrum. We can make spectrum use more efficient (by tightly transmitting the wireless signals so they don’t interfere), but physics sets hard limits on wireless speeds.

Each strand of wire in a wired network, by contrast, is its own pocket universe, insulated from the next wire, with its own smaller, but exclusive, electromagnetic spectrum to use without interfering with any other wire on the other side of its insulation.

But copper wire also has hard limits that are set by physics. The fastest theoretical copper data throughput is an infinitesimal fraction of the fastest fiber speeds. Fiber is millions-to-hundreds-of-millions times faster than copper.

https://www.eff.org/wp/case-fiber-home-today-why-fiber-superior-medium-21st-century-broadband

We should never run copper under another city street or along another pole. Any savings from maintaining 20th century network infrastructure will be eradicated by the cost of having to do twice the work to replace it with 21st century fiber in the foreseeable future.

Trying to wring performance gains out of copper in the age of fiber is like trying to improve the design of whale-oil lamps to stave off the expense of electrification. Sure, you don’t want anyone sitting in the dark but even the very best whale-oil lamp is already obsolete.

But besides future-proofing, there’s another reason to demand fiber over copper or wireless: symmetry. Our copper and (especially) wireless infrastructure is optimized for sending data to end-points, not getting data back. It’s mouse-potato broadband.

(this is especially true of any satellite broadband, which typically relies upon copper lines for its “return path,” and even when it doesn’t, has much slower uplinks that downlinks)

By contrast, fiber tends to be symmetrical — providing the same download and upload speeds. It is participatory broadband, suited for a world of distance ed, remote work, telemedicine, and cultural and political participation for all.

Fiber is so obviously better than copper or wireless that America paltry fiber rollouts needed to be engineered — they never would have happened on their own. The most critical piece of anti-fiber engineering is US regulators’ definition of broadband itself.

Since the dawn FCC interest in universal broadband, it adopted a technical definition of broadband that is asymmetrical, with far lower upload than download speeds. Despite lockdown and broadband-only connections to the outside world, Congress is set to continue this.

The latest iteration of the Democrats’ broadband bill defines “broadband” as any connection that is 100mb down and 20mb up (“100/20”). Both of these speeds paltry to the point of uselessness, but the upload speed is genuinely terrible.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/future-symmetrical-high-speed-internet-speeds

US broadband usage has grown 21%/year since the 1980s. 100/20 broadband is inadequate for today’s applications — let alone tomorrow’s (by contrast, fiber is fast enough to last through the entire 21st century’s projected broadband demand and beyond, well into the 2100s).

Any wireless applications will also depend on fiber — your 5G devices have to be connected to something, and if that something is copper, your wireless speeds will never exceed copper’s maximum speeds. Innovation in spectrum management requires fiber — it doesn’t obviate it.

Today, the highest growth in broadband demand is in uploads, not downloads. People need fast uploads speeds to videoconference, to stream their games, to do remote work. The only way a 100/20 copper network’s upload speeds can be improved is by connecting it with fiber.

Every dollar spent on copper rollout is a dollar we’ll forfeit in a few years. It’s true that cable monopolists will wring a few billions out of us if we keep making do with their old copper, but upgrading copper just makes the inevitable fiber transition costlier.

China is nearing its goal of connecting 1 billion people to fiber. In America, millions are stuck with copper infrastructure literally consisting of century-old wires wrapped in newspaper, dipped in tar, and draped over tree-banches.

https://mn.gov/commerce-stat/pdfs/frontier-service-quality-report-final.pdf

Indeed, when it comes to America, monopoly carriers are slowing upload speeds — take Altice, the US’s fourth-largest ISP, which slashed its upload speeds by 89% “in line with competitors’ offerings.”

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/27/immortan-altice/#broadband-is-a-human-right

America desperately needs a high-fiber diet:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/30/fight-for-44/#slowpokes

But it has a major blockage: the American right, who have conducted history’s greatest self-own by carrying water for telecoms monopolists, blocking municipal fiber:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/17/turner-diaries-fanfic/#1a-fiber

It’s darkly funny to see the people who demanded that “government stay out of my internet” now rail against monopoly social media’s censorship, given that a government ISP would be bound by the First Amendment, unlike Facebook or Twitter.

Luckily, Congress isn’t the only place where this debate is taking place. In California, Governor Newsom has unveiled an ambitious plan to connect every city and town to blazing-fast fiber, then help cities and counties get it to every home.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/15/how-to-rob-a-bank/#fiber-now

In tech circles, we use the term “read-only” to refer to blowhards who won’t let you get a word-in edgewise (this being one of the more prominent and unfortunate technical archetypes).

The “consumer” envisioned by asymmetrical broadband futures is write*-only — someone designed to have other peoples’ ideas crammed into their eyeballs, for their passive absorption. A consumer, not a citizen.

As Gibson put it, it’s a person who “can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote.”

Cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion.

#pluralistic

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