Hikaye

I will also have a sorceror in my employ. When a hero or a renegade or a political rival is in a situation where I can safely kill them, they will instead be turned into a bird and added to my aviary. I would not brag about this; it would be a complete secret, known only to me and my sorceror. In situations where I capture multiple people working together, only one would go in the aviary;the others can be imprisoned or killed or whatever. If they escape and I reacquire them later, another one can go in the aviary. The point here is that nobody going in the aviary can safely assume that another bird in there is their teammate.

Because I would be trickling real birds in there, too. And I would train some of them to do 'intelligent' things like tap out prime numbers or scratch shapes into the dirt with their beaks. I would train some of them to pick at the locks and bars as if they were trying to escape. I would not train them all the same way, or train many of them at all.

Sometimes, a new bird goes into the aviary -- fellow revolutionary? Or just a bird? Is it trying to communicate to you that it's human, or just being friendly and imitating you because that's what smart friendly birds do? People would develop opinions and theories over time. They'd amass in a group of the smartest ones, pretty sure that they're closest four or five friends are humans, are using their invented little language of wing-flaps and trills with a human mind behind it... but can they ever really be sure?

Most people, when going into the aviary, would assume that all of the birds are captured enemies. So why are some of them hard to have ongoing communication with, to learn about, to plan with? Are these the natural communication barriers of someone in a bird body, or does being a bird make them stupider over time? Will that happen to them also?

Sometimes, if I capture a pair, I'll imprison them separately, then turn one into a bird and put them in the aviary at the same time as a real bird that's trained to have a couple of their partner's mannerisms.

When I interact with the birds, even in private, I won't secretly mock them or make clever veiled references to their past or act at all like I remember that they were once human. They are my birds, that I imported at great expense. And I've brought a treat for them; some fresh fruit, and another friend to share it with! A new bird!

because SURPRISE, there's no such thing as "plastic" either. every kind of wood is basically the same on a chemical level, but the only thing every plastic has in common is "some of its molecules are long" and that is NOT a quality that determines how things stick together.

I just ordered some stuff I hope will permanently stick a circuit board to a steel sheet and withstand temperatures up to 150 degrees. by the way circuit boards are made of epoxy-bound woven glass cloth which is cool as hell but what the fuck do you glue that with? can any of the 12 kinds of adhesives I currently own do that? no of course not. if I want to stick two pieces of acrylic together so hard they become watertight to a depth of 3000 metres I have some shit that does that, but it does literally nothing else.

-Replacing his vitimens with poision

- getting her brother to invite him out onto his boat and then killing him and dumping him in the ocean and saying he got drunk and fell off.

- get tboned with him in the passenger seat and then once he was in the hospital theres all kinds of easy ways to kill him like not washing my hands after a poop and then touching his wound casually.

-replacing his drink of choice with moonshine!?

- take him on a hike thats locally notorious for a rapid otter attacking hikers and once he had rabies I could just kill him any ol way and say self defense.

Horses are much gentler on sensitive ecosystems, they're more flexible in rocky terrain, and they don't topple over on a hillside.

They can enter dense forests and drag out one specific tree without damaging the other trees and without compacting or eroding the soil.

They also run on hay instead of gas or electricity. Horses don't pollute the ecosystem with either oil leaks, gas stench, or noise.

I have type 2 Narcolepsy. Studies have shown that serious viral infections can cause people to develop Narcolepsy if they are already genetically susceptible to having it. This includes covid. That is what happened to me.

Yall, I can’t believe that I have to do this, but I am going to say this in as clearly as possible

The anon was very confused.

For example, your travelers might know that they're near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester's trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they're coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.

Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter's yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.

They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they're nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.

Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don't just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced-- cut and then regrown--to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.

If they're approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.

If it's a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).

So in Finland they've got a really cool test for assessing how dogs will react to a bear. To make it humane for every party involved they made a remote controlled taxidermied bear on wheels, use bear scent, and hidden speakers blasting bear sounds. A good bear dog will instinctively bark and stand its ground, an undesirable dog will either act disengaged or overly fearful. The test can be used for prospective hunting dogs, nonlethal wildlife management, or just with pets to learn how your dog might react to a real bear encounter. Also it's very silly to watch

Like, yes, we'd like a newer Roomba... but I absolutely do not want one which uploads the fucking floor plan of my house to the Internet.

Would we like a nice mattress with which you can adjust firmness? Yes. Do we want a mattress which tells the company when we sleep? Why is this even a question???

Frankly, a lot of these companies need to see direct and absolutely destructive punishment for gathering data on customers. Things like "Oh, you kept customer names and birthdays in your database and that got stolen by 'hackers'? Well, since you're the company which didn't secure that data properly, you're now liable for every element of identity fraud and financial harm those customers experience. And also a fine which exceeds the profit you made from that data."

you know how in china you can't show queerness on tv? this is not the case if the show isn't airing in china. it can he filmed in china with chinese actors but through a foreign production company and aired internationally, then it is, as we've learned last year allowed.

a while ago there was a thai series that everyone was hyping up as omegaverse but they got so scared of their own premise, they didn't even put omegas in there

not so with desire the series. no, they got it all. omegas, betas, alphas (enigmas also but that's a whole different post), pheromones, heats, ruts, mpreg

below you can see the social media account of the streaming service it's airing on making sure everyone know what's going on

the worldbuilding of the show is really good too. they explain the omegaverse at the beginning for people who aren't familiar with it. we got the omega rights protection act. pheromone gland cancer. covid that gives you omegaverse genders based on your blood type.

Like, despite what parodies might say, Katniss is nowhere near the stereotypical “unqualified teenager chosen to lead a rebellion for no good reason”.  The entire point is that she’s not leading the rebellion. She’s a traumatized teenager who has emotional reactions to the horrors in her society, and is constantly being reined in by more experienced adults who have to tell her, “No, this is not how you fight the government, you are going to get people killed.” She’s not the upstart teenager showing the brainless adults what to do–she’s a teenager being manipulated by smarter and more experienced adults. She has no power in the rebellion except as a useful piece of propaganda, and the entire trilogy is her straining against that role. It’s much more realistic and far more nuanced than anyone who dismisses it as “stereotypical YA dystopian” gives it credit for.

And the misconceptions don’t end there. The Hunger Games has no “stereotypical YA love triangle”–yes, there are two potential love interests, but the romance is so not the point. There’s a war going on! Katniss has more important things to worry about than boys! The romance was never about her choosing between two hot boys–it’s about choosing between two diametrically opposed worldviews. Will she choose anger and war, or compassion and peace? Of course a trilogy filled with the horrors of war ends with her marriage to the peace-loving Peeta. Unlike some of the YA dystopian copycats, the romance here is part of the message, not just something to pacify readers who expect “hot love triangles” in their YA. 

The worldbuilding in the Hunger Games trilogy is simplistic and not realistic, but unlike some of her imitators, Collins does this because she has something to say, not because she’s cobbling together a grim and gritty dystopia that’s “similar to the Hunger Games”. The worldbuilding has an allegorical function, kept simple so we can see beyond it to what Collins is really saying–and it’s nothing so comforting as “we need to fight the evil people who are ruining society”. The Capitol’s not just the powerful, greedy bad guys–the Capitol is us, First World America, living in luxury while we ignore the problems of the rest of the world, and thinking of other nations largely in terms of what resources we can get from them. This simplistic world is a sparsely set stage that lets us explore the larger themes about exploitation and war and the horrors people will commit for the sake of their bread and circuses, meant to make us think deeper about what separates a hero from a villain.

Because they show up any place suitably fancy, they show up in the wizard's tower and start organizing the books and cleaning out the cupboards of reagents. Even dungeons that have too much class run the risk of attracting a small pack of maids who'll clean the place up and make it- shudder- livable. Totally ruins the use of a dungeon.

Nobody hires them. Nobody lets them in. But once a pack of maids are established, you can't be rid of them. The ones inside let in others. Money or goods disappear like a hidden tax. Carefully hoarded supplies get turned into fancy meals and clothes, whether they were supposed to be used that way or not. Every barracks is as plain as possible to try to avoid summoning such a curse.

But maids require enrichment. You don't have to worry about space — a staff will generally only move into an area that's already large enough for its needs — but they still want to feel useful. They need ingredients for meals and materials for clothing, but if these are provided and it is clearly communicated which stores contain the supplies they need, they will be absolutely meticulous about sticking to them. Managing such matters is easier if you can promote one of your maids to Cook or Butler: these senior positions in a staff server vital regulatory functions in keeping the rest of the staff from either becoming bored (which can cause them to get inventive in undesired ways) or overtired (which can cause internal conflict). A settled staff will either promote its own senior members, or ask you to make the selection. If you can achieve both, so much the better: a well-matched Cook and Butler pair can be among the most potent organising forces on forty-five planes of existence. Note that, in smaller staffs, a Housekeeper may arise instead of a Cook, but is perfectly capable of performing most of the same jobs. Lack of Senior Staff is the number one cause of maid friction. If items are being misfiled or moved from day to day, this is a result of not allowing your staff to spawn seniors.

Learning to live with a staff certainly comes with a period of adjustment may make your dungeon livable, yes, but they were bred to serve the aristocracy and as such have an innate understanding that some living areas are meant to be fancier than others — so show them that some areas are for residents, some for staff, some for guests, and some for prisoners and they will maintain each accordingly. Maids are also capable of being effective dungeon guards, being naturals at observation and stealth. They won't be overpowering prisoners or intruders, but they are perfectly able to trap them and you may even find your staff developing rare "battle-maid" variants.

Your reagent cupboards will be cleared out, yes, but if you put a sheet out nearby with a heading such as "reagent inventory" then you will find that rather than thrown out they will instead be organised, and you'll get a list detailing exactly how much of which reagents you have in stock, too. You're worried about your dragon dung being tossed? Have a quick word with a maid and ask for a container to keep it in. Don't expect to be presented with such a thing — rather, within a day or two you'll walk into your workshop and find that a dragon dung bin has quietly been installed, labelled, and filled.

Valuables going missing is a concern. Labour must be rewarded and maids know this as well as any human. The trick here is to either leave a labelled pay packet out regularly or, if you've managed to obtain a Butler or Housekeeper, speak to them directly and explain how to draw from your designated treasury. (Look, you're of a social stratum to be maintaining a mansion, castle, or arcane tower. You have a treasury, even if you don't realise it yet. You may have to ask your Butler to oversee its organisation in the first place, though.)

Tumblr, I propose a battle of wits!

I have put Iocaine powder in one of these two goblets. You choose, then we both drink.