I don't even know anymore...

Idea: make some new spells that work underwater! I find players are hesitant to cast fire spells (which are less effective) and electricity (due to largely unfounded fears that it could spread through the water). How about a sonic attack spell? We’ve got lightning bolt for a line, fireball for a radius, so let’s make this a semicircle!

things like

the desert as a lifeless wasteland where ‘life is crushed underneath the shifting sands and blazing sun’ blah blah blah. deserts are full of life and they are beautiful and people have lived and prospered in them for eons. please read a book

the desert as an ugly or barren terrain where everything is harsh and threatening

the desert as something scary

the inhabitants as backwards religious zealots

the men as overly violent and oppressive

the inhabitants in need of outside instruction/intervention, i.e. “civilizing the savage”

the “harem” and women as exotic, sensual, mysterious

writing tribalism with no knowledge of how tribes actually function

djinn (or for the westerners, genies)

Islam Lite (the aesthetics or spiritual practices appropriated and stripped of meaning)

sprinkling random arabic words for ✨flavor✨instead of expanding your worldbuilding to include language as well

clothing as oppressive or mysterious, instead of serving its actual purpose (protecting you from the elements, which should be obvious but i guess it isn’t. covering your skin keeps you cooler and safer in most deserts)

people who live in deserts as ignorant, superstitious, uneducated

To anyone writing stuff set in the Mojave/Sonoran Deserts (and maybe the Colorado?) Please please please look up Palo Verde forests!! The trees are green but completely bare of leaves- they photosynthesize directly through their bark. And instead of leaves they have spikes! It's so trippy and cool to be walking through a lush green forest knowing that the nearest water is 50+ miles away.

Other Mojave/Sonoran specific things:

There's tortoises! They're pretty rare to see but you can often find their burrows, or sometimes skeletons

Nightjars will wait till you get super close and then fly up, scaring the crap out of you

There are areas called 'desert asphalt', which are large expanses of black volcanic rock. Looks totally different from any other part of the desert

There are jackrabbits everywhere

Everywhere there aren't jackrabbits there's lizards

It's actually pretty loud; there's loads of insects- mainly crickets and the like- but also lots of birds! You won't see them but by God you will hear them

Wildflower blooms in the rainy season are the most beautiful thing you'll ever see in your life. There will be so many flowers that you never even knew existed

If you live near any mountain range, you'll actually see thunderstorms fairly often. You'll never actually get rained on, but there's almost always thunder on the mountains, especially in the evening. Idk maybe that's a metaphor or something

The world's tallest mountain is mauna kea, it's almost 4000 feet taller than everest if you measure from base to top, most of it is underwater though

The world's closest mountain to the stars is mount Chimborazo, it is both shorter and less high than the other two, but it is closer to the equator, so the bulge of earth makes it ever so slightly farther from the center, so it is closer to the stars

[ID: a reddit comment by tomohawk12345 that reads:

"this sexual minority isn't part of the sexual minority group" 🤓🤓

You don’t see any movement as you go down the stairs, but you’re used to that. You know they’ll all be there by the time you walk through the kitchen door.

As usual, your children have all fitted themselves into the kitchen. The dimensions of the room are a little wobbly with so many of them present, but you’ve long ago learned to ignore how the laws of physics only occasionally apply to them. A host of little faces look up at you anxiously, and you smile gently.

“It’s okay, none of you are in trouble,” you reassure them. They relax - and how astonishing is it, that they trust you so much? You’re so proud of their progress.

One, however, still looks nervous. You beckon him forward, and he comes reluctantly, shoved by his identical older brothers.

“Are you new?” you ask carefully.

He nods, and you drop to one knee. “It’s okay, sweetie,” you tell him firmly. “I love all of my sons, even ones I haven’t met before. Ask your brothers, they’ll tell you.”

“’m here because I heard you were nice,” he says in a tiny voice.

You open your arms, offering a hug but waiting to let him decide whether he wants one. This child must have seen hugs before, because he flings himself into your arms and starts crying. That’s good. Some of your sons are traumatised from what they’ve seen, knowing more slaps than kisses.

Eventually, the sobs dry up, your other kids patiently waiting for your attention again. “Why do we look like this?” he asks, curious.

“Because this is what the first of you looked like - Wilson, where are you?”

A hand raises from the crowd and waves energetically.

“Wilson took on my son’s form to play Child or Double. Calling from downstairs when my son was in bed, getting tucked in when the child I bore was playing out in the garden. Once I figured it out, I hugged him and told him that as far as I was concerned, I now had twins. It took him some time before he believed me.”

Wilson shrugs unrepentantly.

“When my son died, Wilson stayed. It helped, having one of my sons with me while I grieved. Then another of you began to turn up, and I had twins again. Then more. Until now, when I have more of you than will technically fit in my kitchen.” You give your sons a look of motherly disapproval, but they only giggle. They know you don’t mind.

“It’s not like you need to feed us!” calls out one of your bolder sons. Eric, probably. Your newest, unnamed child looks up hesitantly, then steps out of your arms to join his brothers. Lucas might be a nice name, you think idly. You don’t have a Lucas yet.

“That does help,” you admit. You put steel into your next words. “However, there are Rules in this house, and one of them is no messing around at bedtime. I know that bedtime is a traditional time for the Child or Double game, but four of you is pushing it.”

You’d say more, but there’s a knock at your back door. You turn to answer it, knowing that your sons will have evaporated before your fingers grasp the handle, and brace against the cold night air as you pull the door open.

Two identical little girls stand there. One has a bruise on her cheek, and has clearly been crying recently. The other - the other is a Doubler, just like your sons. After this long, you can tell the difference.

“Please,” the Doubler says, and her voice trembles on the word. “Please. She needs somewhere to stay.”

Part of you is shocked, already looking ahead to the potential legal issues. The rest of you is all mother, and you whisk her into the nice warm kitchen and get her a glass of water.

In the – years? Decades? – since you started here, you’ve seen the Departure Halls change. At first, it was a series of ticket booths at a train station, but these days it’s more like a line of airport check-in desks. One day, perhaps, it will change into something else.

Some really interesting people have come through your check-in desk. Kind people who were never famous, famous people who were never kind, musicians and maintenance staff, cleaners and corporate businessmen. They all have stories. Best of all, if they start screaming at you, then you can shunt them to the Eternal Supervisor.

They rarely come back after that, and if they do then they’re far more polite.

You pass the energetic old abuela her ticket, and she beams and hands you an empanada. “You need to eat more,” she scolds cheerfully, and you’re grateful for the Babylon Reversal that means you can understand any language in the afterlife. Spanish hadn’t been among the ones you spoke when you were alive.

She bustles off cheerfully and you smile as she wanders away, your eyes on your paperwork and not on the unending queue before you. “Next, please!”

There’s a whir, the sound of heavy-duty wheels tracking smoothly across the floor, and you look up to see a pair of cameras staring quizzically at you. “Hello,” it says via whir and squeak.

“Hello,” you say, blinking. Leaning forward, you glance down over the top of your desk at the winged hexagonal base and the six sturdy wheels that carry it.

“My name is Opportunity,” the machine says.

Before you, the history of the being unfurls on your screen. Built to explore, and they did. They lasted and lasted and lasted, and spent nearly fifteen years all alone on a faraway planet, and learned so much, and talked to the people who loved them. So many people loved them.

“Was I good?” they ask.

“You are very good,” you say, tears beginning to form in your eyes. “I haven’t met someone so good since Laika.”

You pick up the Gold Phone on your desk, biting your lip as you smile. Beside you, your nearest neighbours turn to look, awe in their eyes. In all your time here, you’ve only picked up the Gold Phone twice.

1) Who the fuck cares. Who the fuck cares what people do with their time! That's kind of the fucking point!

2) People aren't going to stop laboring. Housework (look, it's right there in the word!) will still need to be done. So will maintenance on our homes and personal spaces. Children will still need carers, as will the elderly and disabled. There are millions of examples of ~work~ that we do all the time, uncompensated, that won't suddenly stop because we aren't forced to sell our labor to provide corporation's profits.

I'm not surprised that what is traditionally women's work is invisible to these dipshits, but it never fails to anger me.

Anyway. Join the IWW.

AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They’ve warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic’s AI training now threatens to “financially ruin” the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.

Authors have until March 30th, 2026 (That is just 9 days as of this reblog, which I am posting on March 21st, 2026) to file their claim against Anthropic to be reimbursed up to $3,000 per work found in the list.

Apparently there isn’t much news coverage of this outside of the islands

Towns are flooded, homes destroyed and collapsed, roads collapsed, lives at risk, gas leaks from the flood damage

Haleiwa and Waialua are currently evacuated because the 120 year old dam is at risk of bursting

Mind you that damn is owned by Dole. Theyve known about it needing to be fixed for years and years and years. Despite having more than enough money they refuse

The state has been trying to buy it out from them for years so they can fix it, but the sale hasn’t gone through

Keep in mind that the Dole family were the ones who illegally imprisoned Queen Liliuʻokalani and illegally overthrew the monarchy.

If I see another goddamn person say how sad this is for the tourists whose “trips were ruined” and compare a messed up vacation to people losing their homes, belongings, and livelihoods, I’m going to lose my mind

I am so lucky that my family or friend’s are safe and the few whose houses flooded didnt have it too bad, but so so so many were not as fortunate

If you haven’t heard anything about this until now, I suggest looking into it

The sirens didn’t go off until the flood had been going on for hours. Our state government is spending so much money on a fucking monorail we don’t need rather than fixing the infrastructure.

It’s been the locals and Kanaka doing the most to help get people to safety from the start

I don’t really know how to end this

I just need to know people are aware