Author: Brin

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

8227382159bbeeb61862ebfbf7cf74bcd7487f1d

randomitemdrop:

Item: Bowtie of Charging, a failed experimental charging device created by an eccentric artificer. Initially was designed to charge electrical devices by physical contact, but proved too unpredictable for large-scale manufacture, occasionally even sapping energy away to charge itself. Tie it around an electrical device and roll d100 to determine what the device’s battery percentage will be once you take the bowtie off.

If wrapped around anything else, including a character trying it on as a normal bowtie, roll d10 for every round worn.

2-10: no effect

1: d10 Lightning damage

Tags:

#””failed”” #I mean yeah it’s not *ideal* but as long as you understand its limitations that sounds very useful #clothing #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #pretty things

Umineko characters as dril tweets

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kohomint:

Beatrice: THERAPIST your problem is, that youre perfect, and everyone is jealous of your good posts, and that makes you rightfully upset.

ME I agree

Battler: I TAKE BACK EVERY KIND THING I’VE SAID ABOUT THE GIRLS ON HERE ! SHALLOW AND CRUEL ! HEART LESS DEVILS ! MANIPULATING MY POSTS & TRICKING ME

Maria: i regret being tasked the emotional burden of maintaining the final bastion of morality and NIce manners in this endless ocean of human SHIT

Shannon: if you’re ever wondering if im some other guy, the answer is yes, im him, unless it’s bad to be him, then im not him, im a different person.

Ange: im actualy, probably, the most superbly relatable and normal person in this jail cell as of right NOw

Erika: christ.. ive done it again.. ive posted the absolute good truth shit that every1 has been waiting to hear in this sea of lying crap nonsense

Lion: “This Whole Thing Smacks Of Gender,” i holler as i overturn my uncle’s barbeque grill and turn the Fourth of July into the Fourth of Shit

Eva: the first step to becoming a Millionare is to acquire one hundred dollars

Gaap: i feel truly blessed ,knowing that everyone who has spoken ill of my brand is eating bugs in a cold prison cell

Virgilia: every woman ivr ever spoken to would describe our correspondence as “Graceful”

Bernkastel: i will tell you this right now: I’m from hell. Im highly fucked up. Ive been known to say rude things and watch the carnage unfold brutally

Tags:

#Umineko #(which I finally got a chance to finish) #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #text quote posts #(close enough)

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etirabys:

I googled “how to become a fossil” because I’ve been reading about what archaeology and genetic analysis tells us about ancient humans from their remains, and I feel left out. I, too, wish to be dug up, admired, and analyzed by people unimaginably different from me.  While looking into this I hit the motherlode of good science articles re: informativeness and tone on this topic. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180215-how-does-fossilisation-happen

However, if you want your remains to become a fossil that lasts for millions of years, then you really want minerals to seep through your bones and replace them with harder substances. This process, known as ‘permineralisation’, is what typically creates a fully-fledged fossil. It can take millions of years.

As a result, you might skip the coffin. Bones permineralise most rapidly when mineral-rich water can flow through them, imbuing them with things like iron and calcium. A coffin might keep the skeleton nicely together, but it would interfere with this process.

There is a way a coffin might work, though. Mike Archer, a palaeontologist at the University of New South Wales, suggests burial in a concrete coffin filled with sand and with hundreds of 5mm holes drilled into the sides. This then needs to be buried deep enough that groundwater can pass through.

Archer even suggests getting buried with copper strips and nickel pellets if you fancy fossilised bones and teeth with a nice blue-green colour to them.

I love all the scientists interviewed for this piece.

5. Get discovered

Now you need to think about the potential for rediscovery.

If you want somebody to chance upon your carefully preserved fossil one day, you need to plan for burial in a spot that currently is low enough to accumulate the necessary sediments for deep burial – but that will eventually be pushed up again. In other words, you need a place with uplift where weathering and erosion will eventually scour off the surface layers, exposing you.

One good spot might be the Mediterranean Sea, Syme says; it’s getting shallower as Africa is pushed towards Europe. Other small, inland seas that will fill with sediment are good bets, too.

“Perhaps the Dead Sea,” she says. “The high salt would preserve and pickle you.”

Tags:

#death tw #interesting #the more you know

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vyrenrolar:

hedgehog-moss:

I often wonder what my pets have named me. Humans are a visual species and like to name our pets based on their aspect or colour, so I think my dog with his smell-based worldview would come up with a smell name. I imagine something cute and cheerful and a little over the top in a dog way, like Applefriend Cake, because my laundry product gives my clothes a sweet, slightly apple-y smell which might remind Pandolf of happy memories of tasting cake crumbs. Unless he was feeling serious the day he named me, and basing himself on the fact that I read a lot and my hands often smell like book pages when I pet him, and went with something more decorous that translates to Paperdust Pal. Cat naming conventions are more enigmatic since they are less preoccupied with human affairs. My catgiven name was probably the result of a secret ballot vote among my cats, who decided upon something that resonates with cat history and heritage—a dated, unfashionable name if they felt a duty to honour one of their ancestors or if I’m lucky, a mythological figure from cat lore.

this is such a good post now i want to know what the cat i live with calls me

Tags:

#names #cats #dogs

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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moonlit-tulip:

One big problem with mystery shows, as compared with (well-signposted) mystery novels, is that they don’t give the viewers time to think things through before the parlor room scene. There’s no clear narrative break-point where the viewer knows they have all needed evidence to solve the mystery and can stop to think; even if the detective comments that they know who did it, what are you going to do, pause 3/5 of the way through the episode to comb over all the clues and discuss the mystery with your friends and so forth? That’s impossible during the initial serialized release (since TVs don’t allow one to pause), and impractical when watching via stream or disk (since it requires groups of people to take the generally-unnatural action of staying paused in the middle of an episode for an extended timespan, and that’s if they know where to pause at all).

Fortunately, there happens to exist an already-developed TV structure perfect for avoiding this problem: the structure of the 1966-1968 Batman series. Each two-episode story (which was the show’s default length, albeit with occasional exceptions (always in the longer direction, not shorter)) ends its first episode with Batman and Robin in some sort of death-trap, and its second episode starts with them escaping the trap and ends with them beating the story’s villain(s).

I’d really like to see a mystery show based on a similar structure. The default story length is two episodes. The first episode of each story ends with a dramatic reveal after which, by one contrivance or another, the audience is clearly told that the case is now solvable. The second episode then starts with the protagonists responding to the big reveal, and ends with the parlor room scene. Live viewers get a week to think through and discuss the solution between the episodes’ releases, and after-the-fact viewers get the advantage of a clear narrative break-point at which to coordinate their pausing-and-thinking, for an overall-improved mystery-solving experience relative to the current one-episode-per-story status quo.

(For bonus quality-of-life, make sure each episode is free to stream at least until the release of its associated parlor-room-scene episode, such that live viewers are on equal footing with archival viewers in terms of being able to rewatch pre-reveal episodes and refresh their memory about all the clues.)

maryellencarter replied: The 1970s Ellery Queen TV show had a point just before the last commercial break where Ellery would turn to the viewer, recap the case, and mention that it was now solvable. At original broadcast it would only have given you a few minutes to think things over, but it was sort of a thought in the same direction.

Tags:

#interesting ideas #story ideas I will never write #oh look an update #replies

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systlin:

c-is-for-circinate:

A particular distinction I often wish got made in discussions of privilege (and those who have it, and those who don’t) is the difference between privileges which, in a fair and just world, everybody ought to have, vs the privileges that nobody ought to have.

Many things in the world qualify as privilege.  Being able to marry the person you love is a privilege.  Feeling safe in your own neighborhood is a privilege.  Having the space and security to put down a task, a fight, a social justice issue, and walk away for a while and rest, is a privilege.

And also: being able to hurt somebody else and get away with it is a privilege.  Knowing that others are likely to take your side in an argument, whether you’re actually right or not, is a privilege.  The ability to horde or destroy common resources like water and rainforests is a privilege.

Exercising an everybody-ought-to privilege isn’t wrong.  Using it in such a way that it interferes with another person or people having access to everybody-ought-to privileges is.

Having access to nobody-ought-to privilege is a flaw of the system, not the individual who has access to those privileges.  Using a nobody-ought-to privilege is a fault of the person.

Refusing to use your everybody-ought-to privileges “until everybody has them”, or demonizing their existence, so rarely helps anybody.  Straight people refusing to get married didn’t contribute too terribly much to gay marriage; you don’t make somebody else’s neighborhood safer by deliberately making your own more dangerous.  Insisting on never putting down or walking away from a social justice fight because other people can’t isn’t a recipe for progress, it’s a recipe for burnout.

There’s a difference between helping yourself and hurting other people.  We should talk more about finding ways to do one and not the other.

This is an excellent point.

Tags:

#yes this #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #discourse cw?