There Was A Young Man From Peru

hate how all these apocalyptic films show society breaking down the hot minute the grid goes down, with all the survivors banding off into tiny violent gangs that prey on each other.

bitch you are a member of one of the most social species in existence! it is actually insane the extent to which humans have evolved to use cooperation as our main survival tool. humans have been building and then rebuilding societies for as long as disasters have been bringing them down. an apocalypse would be fucking awful, but the survivors would end up building communities and networks and pooling resources and knowledge, because that's what humans do. that's what they DO!!!

I'm pretty upset, angry and scared at the moment. The government has gone out of its way to harm trans rights in the UK. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64288757

Ah, is that what the pandemic was. Unsanitized database inputs?

The grim reaper was initially illustrated as doing a mundane, regular job that everyone has seen done - a reaper swings his scythe and the hay falls, just as easy as people fall as death swings. Now many people who have never been to a farm only know the scythe as the weapon of Death personified, and farmers in most places of the world don't even use them anymore.

Imagine Death personified as someone doing a modern regular, mundane job. Imagine thinking "hoo boy, this is it for me. The Grim Bin Man is coming to collect, hauling my sorry soul into the trash compactor of his great eternal garbage truck."

Petitions - UK Government and Parliament

Petition: Reverse the decision to block the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill

I want the Government to reverse their decision to block the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, as this legislation contains importa

hey if you're a UK resident can you sign this petition and if not please rb to spread the word

this is an official UK government petition that they have to respond to if it reaches 10,000 signatures

This dates the OP's trip. These days you'd never be allowed on a plane with a safety pin!

When I graduated high school my folks decided to go on a family trip to Europe. I was extremely surly about this as I had an undiagnosed UTI but I was extremely excited to speak German with native speakers, convinced I would be an asset to my family across our travels.

Tragically, it was immediately apparent that three years of public school German meant I could communicate at the level of a first grader.

I was nonetheless elated when a child approached me at the train station to ask “Haben sie ein Kuli?” “Do you have a pen?” I was able to say, “Nein, aber ich habe ein Bleistift!” “No, but I have a pencil!” The kid seemed confused by my triumphant tone but borrowed my pencil anyway.

But my absolute greatest victory in vocabulary came during an airline check. They had me go through a metal detector, and they assumed my belt had set it off. I knew my belt was non reactive metal but! My favorite jeans had lost their zipper and I had them safety pinned shut.

The man approached me with a metal detector and seemed puzzled my belt wasn’t reading. I remembered the safety pin in the front of my jeans and I happened to know the word so I joyously announced, “Ich habe ein Sicherheitsnadel!” “I have a safety pin!”

As if to an infant, the man said slowly, “Nein, das ist sein Gürtel.” “No, that is your belt.”

I waved at my crotch and insisted, “Nein, in mein Hose ich habe ein Sicherheitsnadel!” “No, in my pants I have a safety pin!”

I couldn’t remember the name for zipper but luckily he caught the shine of the metal where a zipper should be and finally realized why this crazy American teenager was gesturing to her crotch. He scanned his machine over the offending pin which pinged and he cleared me to go.

I marched off to board the plane in a glow of pride that I had gotten to use an obscure word and the poor man got to return to his day.

Of course, multiple years is a long and normal amount of time to remember someone's brain fart.

DMing is hard. I acknowledge this. Weaving a story with words for long periods of time means you’re gonna say something silly sometimes when your brain blips. And it’s not your fault that it’s so silly that your players share it around turning it into an inside joke, immortalizing your brain fart moment forever.

My DM was narrating a scene between our tiefling rogue and the NPC she was romancing. He was trying to set the mood for their first kiss, up on a tower overlooking the city, looking into each others eyes. They’d just been on a romantic date, there was a bottle of wine between them. And this was their moment.

The NPC leaned in to kiss the rogue and the kiss was, according to our DM, “long and normal.”

The entire session went off the rails. We became ungovernable creatures of hilarity. How long is normal?

We are informed normal is six seconds and we devolve even further into chaotic paroxysm of laughter. The DM desperately tried to rein us in but for the rest of the session everything took a long and normal amount of time.

My betrothed and I would kiss each other while counting to six in our heads then declare afterward, “Ah yes! Long and normal!”

I accidentally told my school team about it, reasoning that they’d at least never meet the DM who lives out of state. They’d say we needed the scene to be the long and normal length, or hold a pose for a long and normal time.

At the end of the year I invited them to my house for a celebratory meal and was surprised when my DM joined the DnD video call early. My teammates looked at him, expressions slowly spreading into evil grins. “Long and normal!” They greeted him.

He turned a look upon me of utter betrayal while I hustled them out of my house.

“It’s been a year!” He cried at the unfairness.

“Maybe it’ll phase out by next year,” I told him.

dreams

Do you think it would be possible to do this in reverse for minor surgery if for example someone was allergic to anaesthetic?

Like set the whole thing up, then draw with a pen where the incisions "would be" to "prepare" while the real hand actually has the operation.

I suspect the brain might reinterpret the sensation as drawing with a pen rather than being cut with a scalpel.

However, running this experiment would be probably too risky because of the damage possible if it didn't work and the patient flinched.

Given what I've heard about being stabbed in the back with a knife (it just feels like you've been punched apparently) if you don't know it's a knife, I suspect it probably would work.

Not willing to try though.

this is insaaaane, our brains are so fucking weird