The map is full of puns. They haven’t managed to burn any buildings down yet but it’s still early XD

We’re playing 5E currently because I have quite a few newer players and it’s all they know. We’re playing in one of my homebrew settings that is a fantasy version of our city!

I don’t get to play TTRPGs in person very often these days, but we have a session this evening so I spent the weekend making lots of handouts and visual puzzles for my tavern notice board! Also got a chance to make some 3D terrain and paint some 28 mm scale miniatures which was challenging but very fun.

Yes there seem to be a lot of people of the position that having retirement investments = hoarding wealth…but the majority of us don’t get pensions and not having retirement accounts of any kind under those circumstances is horrible financial strategy if you want to do anything other than subsist after retiring.

Totally fair point! I think that’s why accompanying the reports with the ability to listen in while I actually play through a session would improve the “spectator” experience. But this is definitely a passion project and not something I anticipate building a large audience for. Thanks for stopping by! :)

Zip is my home instance so that’s why I created it there, but that’s a great point…I’m still getting the hang of the Fediverse.

Other notable additions from Wikipedia:

“Walz received a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood in 2012, from the American Civil Liberties Union in 2011, from the American Immigration Lawyers Association in 2009–2010, from the AFL-CIO in 2010, from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 2009–2010, and from the National Organization for Women in 2007.”

And:

“Walz was ranked the 7th-most bipartisan House member during the 114th Congress (and the most bipartisan member from Minnesota) in the Bipartisan Index created by The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy, which ranks members of Congress by measuring how often their bills attract co-sponsors from the opposite party and how often they co-sponsor bills by members of the opposite party.”

In other words, Walz seems to be a champion of progressive ideals while also being more than willing to work with those across the aisle. This is a great thing for swaying independent voters.

We can be nice about helping people who ask honest questions too :)

Many people are unfamiliar with the concept of different communities having different rulesets. Even people who come from reddit land.

Rule 2 of the community guidelines does state that all political pictures (defined as a picture of a politician of any country of any planet) are prohibited and will be removed. So they are not wrong, in spite of the down votes. I do wonder if the community were to have a similar poll today on whether these types of images should be banned how it would turn out, assuming the community has grown significantly since the months that have passed since the prior vote. The second choice was very close in the original poll which would have provided an exception of one political picture allowed per current event.

Edit: here’s the link to the community poll for context if it helps anyone else!

Understood and completely agreed with your sentiment. Obviously any time of sweetened drink is going to be less healthy than water. It is also undeniable that our corporate funded research papers have frequently resulted in and continue to result in biased and often completely non-credible conclusions.

I still assert that “safe” is a relative term, and one issue I have is the lack of nuance associated with certain headlines. For example, the IARC Group B classification that the WHO cites is the same risk for cancer as “engine exhaust or occupational exposure as a hairdresser.” So yes, excessive aspartame consumption is definitely objectively bad for you compared to drinking water, but the cancer risk is not extensive compared to many other things we are exposed to on a regular basis.

“JECFA concluded that the data evaluated indicated no sufficient reason to change the previously established acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 0–40 mg/kg body weight for aspartame. The committee therefore reaffirmed that it is safe for a person to consume within this limit per day. For example, with a can of diet soft drink containing 200 or 300 mg of aspartame, an adult weighing 70kg would need to consume more than 9–14 cans per day to exceed the acceptable daily intake, assuming no other intake from other food sources.”

Also I very much appreciate the great discussion on this!

Don’t know that I agree with your spin that this news is negative in any regard. Also, aspartame is one of the most studied food additives of all time and has been repeatedly proven safe.

Your claim that it “can have an event worse effect on blood sugar than sugar can” has also been proven false. See “Metabolic effects of aspartame in adulthood: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials” by Santos et al from 2017.

Among other conclusions, the study found that “aspartame consumption was not associated with alterations on blood glucose levels compared to control or to sucrose and on insulin levels compared to control or to sucrose.”

If you’re referring to “Rule of Law,” then yes, it is amazing and worth praising. Unfortunately the US is in an accelerating downhill backslide away from Rule of Law back to Rule of Men. And we will all be worse off for it. There is no copium involved in appreciating adherence to Rule of Law because the alternative is tyranny.

At this point I am having to hold out hope telling myself that we are probably in for a couple decades of horror until the old guard dies off and the pendulum swings back to liberalism and progressivism. I love the idea of America but I don’t love America right now, which is painful to acknowledge.

It is almost a certainty that Trump will lose the popular vote. It is highly likely the election will be extremely close still because of the electoral college. In a country of hundreds of millions, it only takes hundreds of thousands of voters in swing states to change the outcome, regardless of the majority.

Colter Wall, Joshua Quimby, and Nick Shoulders too!

It’s not a numbers thing, it’s a facts thing. That’s just how criminal justice works (or is supposed to). So to address your second paragraph―the number of people and whether they are men, women, or otherwise is entirely irrelevant. If someone can be proven to have done wrong, they did wrong, period. I’m not stating I agree or disagree with his acquittal, I was just making sure I hadn’t missed some news that he had, in fact, been found guilty. I’m well aware that wealthy people and, in particular, powerful men get unfair advantages in the criminal justice system.

I’m gonna have to go with Adam Savage. I loved Mythbusters and continue to watch his Tested one day build videos today and view him as something of a role model from a creative standpoint.

Also to chime in about your mentioning of Kevin Spacey, the guy is definitely a weirdo and has done some really tone deaf things (coming out as gay in the midst of being involved in sexual abuse accusations, posting videos of himself as Frank Underwood denying charges levied against him on YouTube, etc.), but wasn’t he acquitted of or found not guilty in literally every sexual abuse charge that was brought against him? And in both the US and the UK?

Currently readingA Separate Peace because I was convinced my high school self was just too immature when he labeled it as the worst book he has ever had to read… it’s not the worst book I’ve ever had to read but it’s not a good book either.

Next up will probably be either The Guns of August or Teddy Roosevelt’s autobiography.

I just finished up Red Rising and I really enjoyed it but I can’t bring myself to dive headlong into a series right now. My current read is A Separate Peace and next on the docket will be the autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt.

I tend to struggle to finish books that I start but this year I wanted to get better about reading so I set a very modest goal of 14 books. I’m already finished with five books since the start of the year!

I think the prior reply explained it best though. You’re not literally copying and pasting a fictional character into your world and just changing their name. You’re using good characters from fiction and copying their tropes into your world. Because those tropes work and they exist for a reason.

In any work of fiction, including building a TTRPG world, it is assumed you will be borrowing inspiration from other sources. I can’t imagine having to try to come up with 100% unique characters and ideas to run for my players. I’ve had lots of instances too where I come up with something I think is original and a player asks “oh wait, is this inspired by X?”

Point of the ramble being: everything has been thought of to some degree—it’s how the applications are used in your world that make them unique. Plus when we encounter a character that reminds us of an existing really good one, I think it makes it easier/more comfortable to get into a good RP mood with them. And even more fun when you do subversions of their existing character.

Gilmore Girls. I know the show has some problematic humor but it’s one of the best shows I’ve ever watched as far as characterization is concerned. The writing and the characters have a way of sucking you into the story that I haven’t really found in any other show.