Ruh Roh Raggy

"Disproportionate" doesn't mean "only"??

British Museum colludes with pro-Israel lobby to erase Palestine from historical exhibits —— An investigation by Middle East Eye has exposed the British Museum for covertly removing the terms “Palestine,” “Palestinian,” and “Israeli occupation” from its historical displays following intensive lobbying by pro-Israel activists. Internal emails obtained via a freedom of information request reveal that the London institution rapidly altered descriptions of artifacts dating back to 7,500 BCE to appease political pressure groups, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews and high-profile figures. While museum director Nick Cullinan publicly claimed the changes were part of a standard curation refresh and backed by audience testing, the newly released disclosures confirm that no visitor research regarding the term "Palestine" was ever conducted. The internal correspondence details a frantic effort by museum staff to pacify complaints lodged between October and December 2024, with one directive explicitly ordering curators to remain hyper-conscious of the anniversary of 7 October. In one instance, a panel describing ancient rulers of “Palestinian descent” was scrubbed and changed to “Canaanite origin” within five hours of receiving a complaint from the Board of Deputies. Middle East Eye cross-referenced the redacted emails to identify key lobbyists, including right-wing commentators and historians who weaponized access to the museum's leadership to argue that historical references to an ancient Israelite occupation would stoke modern antisemitism. The targeted erasure has sparked a severe diplomatic and cultural backlash, with Palestinian Ambassador to the UK Husam Zumlot accusing the public institution of betraying its historical integrity to serve political ends. Cultural figures and human rights defenders have condemned the museum for complicity in what the United Nations classifies as an ongoing genocide in Gaza, noting that the bureaucratic deletion of Palestinian history in London directly mirrors the physical destruction of heritage sites on the ground. Despite photographic evidence showing that references to "modern Palestine" were replaced with "Gaza and the West Bank" at gallery entrances, the British Museum has refused to answer specific inquiries, issuing a blanket denial to Middle East Eye that any erasure took place.

genuinely so obsessed with this twitter post

Not on purpose!

blorbofication to me is when you love a character in such a laser focus way that you somewhat detach them from the narrative from which they are inserted and treat them in a way roughly similar to how you'd treat an oc for which you still have no story and just like to put them in situations just for fun. which there's nothing wrong with btw, it's just that it can easily lead to people forgetting the character engine in a narrative and not just a barbie doll

LORDE OF THE RINGS

Yeah we’re simply gonna walk in there

(Moooooordor)

Literally anything you enjoy about being a cop can be done better, more ethically, and sexier by some other job. You have a choice to be happier and help more people by being almost anything else.

“just, fuckign, run straight at it screaming.”

i needed this as a background

so the 2026 temperatures surpass the 2050 (!) forecast now - not just in france - and the atlantic hits a breaking point btw

Rest in peace and thank you for the wonderfull impact you made in this world.

OP: This is the first time I've seen the Yellow River's sediment discharge with my own eyes.

(source: Wikipedia)

@mikkeneko

oh my god??

imagine spending money on limited edition boxed schism wine

(This isn't a knock against game designers in particular; most people in general are very bad technical writers, even among those whose job is to be good at it. It turns out that assessing how your own writing will read from the perspective of someone who doesn't know the things you know is an extremely difficult skill to learn!)

(One may be inclined to assume that a game that just says "dice" without further qualifiers must be talking about conventional six-sided dice. If so, one would assume wrongly.)

In my experience it's a three-way tie between "the unqualified die is a d6 because that's what 'dice' means in everyday language", "the unqualified die is a d20 because the author assumes all games are basically identical to Dungeons & Dragons unless otherwise specified", and "the unqualified die is a d10 because it's a dice pool system and the author has never played a game with dice pools constructed from any other kind of dice (and also the text employs but does not define the term 'dice pool')".

Tell that to every iteration of Dungeons & Dragons prior to Third Edition, which would often do daft shit like stating the range of a random number without specifying how to obtain it. Just busting out "4–18 goblins" and leaving the GM to work out what combination of dice and modifiers yields those bounds.

Oh, that's not the worst of it – I picked this specific example for a reason. We also need to consider the possibilities that it's an off-by-one typo for "3–18", implying 3d6, or that it's a confusion-of-similar-glyphs typo for "4–16", implying 4d4!