a collection of stuff

“Hey, none of that. You're a valued member of the team, no matter what your power level.”

“I just don't understand how you can tear open that portal to the fire dimension so easily.”

“… fire dimension?”

“Yeah. Where the fire lives. Before you summon it. For fireballs.”

okay so i think a lot of people don't know that in morrowind you can actually make your own scrolls? basically you just use a soul gem like you would to enchant something, but then you enchant a blank piece of paper (you can technically do this with non-blank pieces of paper but why would you). the big issue with this is that a blank piece of paper has a enchantment charge capacity of 5. you can't do SHIT with that. how the hell are the base scrolls you find in the game able to do all this crazy shit but you can't do anything when you do it yourself?

so if i were to make this mod, it would be called "scrollwright." it's not all that complicated i think. but here's what it does, basically:

1.) increase the base charge capacity of regular blank paper to at least 20-25pts. you can actually do SOMETHING with that, albeit not much. i would also recommend, if possible, disabling the ability for non-blank papers/notes to be enchanted, to avoid potentially game/quest breaking accidents.

2.) introduce several new types of blank paper called "vellum"! these are, in order of increasing charge capacity (idk what capacities would be appropriate for each tier though) a.) vellum (netch) b.) vellum (guar) c.) vellum (alit) d.) vellum (kagouti) e.) vellum (scamp) f.) vellum (daedra) g.) ancient/dwemeri papyrus (not sure on name yet)

3.) enchanter vendors will sell some of these with varying stocks, with the daedric (scamp and daedra) vellums being rarer and much more expensive. ancient/dwemeri papyrus cannot be purchased (or crafted as we'll get to in part 4), but must be found in dwemer ruins, usually in sealed containers.

4.) probably only at mages guild enchanters (but i'm willing to loosen this to some other non-guild enchanters as well, particularly in house telvanni), a new service is offered: vellumcrafting. for a relatively small fee (increasing with the power of the vellum in question), you can turn base ingredients you provide into their corresponding vellums. (in the order i gave in part 2, these ingredients would be: netch leather, guar hide, alit hide, kagouti hide, scamp skin, and daedra skin.) again, ancient/dwemeri papyrus cannot be manufactured in this way, only found in ruins. (i believe there is a bug of some kind that makes it so daedra skin does not drop off of the daedra enemies it should (clannfears, daedroths, hungers, ogrims, and ogrim titans) and is only found as rare loot in certain locations. this mod should also either independently fix that bug or else be dependent on the morrowind patch project or openmw, which i believe do fix the bug)

5.) i think a book explaining some of the lore behind these vellums could be fun, too. i'd be willing to write that and any necessary dialogue for the vellumcrafting service if someone were to take an interest in doing the actual modding for me.

1 is basically "change the right number".

2 would need a model, an icon and a texture for each, but then adding that into the construction kit also sounds doable.

3: there are lists for loot and such, you'd have to add your objects to these along with a rarity. i also think hand-placing sone of those materials would make the mod more interesting (although THAT would make it no longer fully compatible with different language versions of the game.

i don't know how to do dialogue though, which at the moment makes 4 and a half of 5 difficult for me.

push in your chairs when you get up from tables.

when people don't push in their chairs, people with bulky aids like wheelchairs and rollators can't get through. also a lot of people who use canes have wider gaits than able bodied people, and having a chair in the middle of their walking path is a real obstruction. while some of us are able to push chairs out of our way, a lot of us are not, and wind up boxed in/out because somebody didn't push in their chair.

The lexical divergences didn't make the mutual intelligibility any service.

Polish: I'm looking for kids at the shop.

Czech: I'm fucking kids in the basement

I ugly-laugh/cackled in a short burst when I saw this.

A) because language is INSANE; B) because OH MY GOD how unfortunate;

and C) that you knew my language nerd self would appreciate this (truly awful) situation.

it took me asking three more times before she finally told me she wanted me to leave the fans where they are instead of moving them to my room or something. and I said oh! I had no intention of doing so but thank you for letting me know what the expectation is.

ID [a scale of a measuring tape, the first small section is pink and over it is written “it’s a girl! (Under 3/8”)”. The next section is purple with and over it is written “unacceptable (surgery)”. The last section is blue reads “it’s a boy! (Over 1”)”. On the blue section is written “Phall-O-Meter”. Under the scale reads “Actual scale. The above are actual current medical standards. Challenging these standards, ISNA works to create a world free of shame, secrecy, and unwanted genital plastic surgery for children born with mixed sex anatomy”]

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

Felicity’s story was set in the beginnings of the American Revolution, and addressed the conflict that she faced when her loved ones were split between patriots and loyalists. It also covered the effects of animal abuse, and forgiving those who are unforgivable.

Samantha’s stories centered around the growth of industrial America, women’s suffrage, child abuse, and corruption in places of power. Also, it emphasises how dramatically adoption into a caring family can turn a life around.

Kit’s story is one of my favorites. Her family is hit hard by the Great Depression, and they begin taking in boarders and raise chickens to help make ends meet. Her books include themes of poverty, police brutality, homelessness, prejudice, and the importance of unity in difficult times.

Molly’s father, a doctor, is drafted during the Second World War. Throughout her story, friends of hers suffer the loss of their husbands, sons, and brothers overseas. Her mother leaves the traditional housewife position and works full-time to help with the war effort. They also take in an English refugee child, who learns to open up after a life of traumatic experience.

And then there are the later dolls, that kids younger than me would have grown up with (I was just outgrowing American Girl as these came out), like Rebecca, the Jewish girl who dreams of becoming an actress in the budding film industry, or  Julie, who fights against her school’s gender policy surrounding sports in the 70s, or  Nanea, the Hawaiian girl whose father worked at Pearl Harbor.

Nah.

OP (of the tweet thread) was either a actively trying to start shit or is just a huge fucking moron. Probably both.

I’d like to point out that the company that makes American Girl dolls actually doesn’t skimp when doing their research and they don’t make the dolls with the intent to be offensive in any way:

i think back on this & realize that as third graders we were talking about how awful slavery was & because we were simply innocent kids without any societal or institutional influence yet, all of us could kept saying “why would you treat a HUMAN like that ?!” this one girl for her birthday invited all of us for her party & she got the Addy doll - every single one of us (boys included) held her & was in awe of this doll - it was such a touching experience.

i went back home about a year ago & ran into my third grade teacher in the grocery store. she said that year opened up a whole new teaching structure for her. she now reads american girl stories to her students starting day one of class every day to calm them down after recess & she’ll get through maybe four or five sets of books a year. she has the dolls in the room with packets on information from the doll’s time period that her students can “check out” to take home for weekends to care for them.

we oftentimes overlook how powerful toys can be in influencing young children & american girl honestly knew that kids could read intense moments in history & synthesize the issues to learn how to be a better person. my grandma bought me my first doll, molly, when i was only six & the dolls became a huge part of my childhood. when i turned 21 a couple years ago - we were living in minneapolis - she took me to have lunch for my birthday at the american doll place in the mall of america & bought me the Addy doll for my birthday. it was such a powerful moment i hasn’t expected.

I learned a lot of my core beliefs from these girls.

These are from one of their latest books, A Smart Girl’s Guide to Body Image:

They got a lot of flak from conservative parents for this and they did. not. back. down.

Their newest historical doll, Claudie, is a black girl growing up in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her story is about Black artists thriving, and making a safe, beautiful place for themselves in a society that tries to reject them. It teaches about the NAACP’s protests against lynchings, in ways kids can understand, but there’s also so much Black joy and creativity showcased in her story.

Another historical doll, Melody, is growing up in the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement. She faces the struggles and triumphs of attending a newly integrated school, and learns about the bombing of a Black church in Alabama that killed four little girls her age. Her stories show how black people found support and community within the church, as well as music— she loves to sing! If you have a free hour, I highly recommend watching her special on Amazon (free with prime). It stars Caila Marsai Martin from Blackish and it will make you weep.

The girl of the year for 2022, Corinne, is Asian, and her story touches on the issues of anti-Asian hate in the wake of covid. When conservative parents threw a fit about this, American Girl went ahead and made the girl of the year for 2023 Asian, too.

Any of their dolls can be customized with assistive devices like hearing aids, service dogs, and wheelchairs. They also have bald dolls, to include stories about girls battling cancer or alopecia. And it’s not just girl dolls— they have boy dolls now, too! And dolls with no gender assigned to them! People complained that they couldn’t find any dolls in the Just Like Me line that looked like them, so they now give people the ability to create their own custom doll, with tons of different options.

but lets not forget sergei prokudin-gorskiy, who developed a similar process in 1902, published in 1903 and then toured russia to take hundreds of color photographs:

This is Leo Tolstoy, author of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”.

Alim Khan, Emir of Bukhara…

…and his Minister of the Interior.

A Type B-15 steam locomotive…

Another of those peasant girls with guest-gifts of berries…

The Church of St John the Baptist at Staraya Ladoga…

…and a Sergei Prokudin-Gorskiy self-portrait.

Unlike some current selfies ;-> he’s not dominating the image, so here’s a closer shot.

Nice hat…