Narwhals.

are we drawing the connection between worker safety and consumer safety & public health yet?

More on the health point:

"US Department of Labor proposes more than $1M fine following worker fatality at New Jersey vegetable processing facility"

Fun fact, I make my own raisin bread (in the bread machine, I don't have the patience to make bread by hand) and when I started I went looking for a recipe for the bread, but because I only use raisin bread for toast and I only ever see other people use it the same I tend to use the two terms synonymously so I googled raisin toast recipes.

I’m in my mid-thirties and I have never had sex. I’ve thought about it and could have had one or two opportunities if I put in more effort, but I always decided against it because I just wasn’t into it at the time.

I can safely say that I do not feel I have missed out on anything. I was perfectly capable, by myself, of learning about my own body and boundaries without anyone else there to muddy the waters. The immense pressure that was there in my teens/twenties to Have Sex Just Do It is basically gone. I’m vibing. I’ve got my routine by myself in bed that I enjoy, and that’s enough for me.

And in the unlikely event that I ever decide to have sex with someone in the future, I don’t feel at all like I’m lacking some essential Knowledge or Skill that would “make it good” for someone else. I fully expect to ask my partner out loud what they like and to receive an answer clearly communicated and to relax and have fun. And if it’s a disappointing experience, I’m fine with that too. It is what it is.

Also, on the topic of anime tropes, my mother watched my sister and I watching through Apothecary Diaries (another good anime that I recommend), and she kept asking why Maomao was just a cat sometimes. She also mentioned how confused she was that everyone’s heads and faces were changing shape and color every so often.

Theme: Quick Silly Games

@creacherkeeper Hello friend! I hope you find this helpful! Whipped it up in an afternoon so the summaries may be abbreviated.

ImproVeto, by Plotbunny Games.

ImproVeto is a GM-less mini storygame that lets you tell absurd, fun stories together with at least one other person. It's also a game to help you practice improvisation in collaborative storytelling and the use of the X-card and similar calibration tools for role-playing games.

Impro Veto is quick, GM-less, and doubles as an opportunity to build the idea of safety tools into a game’s mechanics. It’s basically a big game of collaborative storytelling, and players are encouraged to change the direction of the story by vetoing random elements and changing them to continue the story as they tell it. It requires no dice, and can probably be played pretty quickly if you are playing with a small group.

Clown Helsing, by Planarian.

Clowns. We've all seen them… riding their unicycles, blowing up balloons at parties, piling in garish hordes from tiny cars, waddling around in bulbous red shoes, passed out in a dumpster stinking of booze and regret. For what do these martyrs of mirth sacrifice themselves? The answer is they do it for us. Not just to fill our need for laughter and merriment, but because they defy the doom of mankind! Clowns are man's only salvation against… Vampires.

Clown Helsing played closer to an hour for me but I think if you’re putting it before the students in a less casual setting, it might speed play up quite a bit. I’d recommend a) knowing the rules really well before starting play, b) providing students with roll tables so they can quickly create a clown, and c) starting the game in the middle of the vampire fight. I’d also recommend reducing the number of Dignity boxes significantly than what is recommended in the book, especially if you, like me, are absurdly good at Rock Paper Scissors - because yes, RPS is how you solve conflicts in this game!

Theme wise, this is exactly on tone. Your clowns humiliating jerk vampires. Let the buffoonery commence!

The Goose of Grillner Grove, by Jenn Martin.

A  tabletop roleplaying game for 3+ players for 15+ minutes. Play townsfolk attempting to warn a newcomer about the goose that's lived in the area for 20 years, and plagued each of you personally. 

Take turns telling stories about that time when you saw the goose doing something outrageous, but don't violate the two truths of the game- the goose isn't supernatural, and the goose doesn't die- lest you be honked at by the other players.

At the end, decide if the newcomer heeds your warnings...

Anyone who has played the Untitled Goose Game is probably going to have a fun time playing this. This game will probably go longer if you have a larger number of people, but it certainly gives you a chance for people to get used to the improv side of games.

The Octopus Shipwreck Explorer, by SassWrites.

An octopus is exploring a shipwreck. The shipwreck is full of treasure, but the octopus doesn’t care. It’s looking for something else, known only to it and its eight arms. The only hitch is, each arm has its own brain! How will they all work together to survive?

One of the biggest assets of this game is that it can be played with a larger group of people. To speed this game up, you could present some options of goals for the players to choose from, and give each player one action to do before wrapping up the game.

Spin the Fishblade, by Marshall Bradshaw.

Spin the FishBlade is the GMless, diceless storygame where players control one fish with a knife by spinning a knife. It's meant for three to five players to play for one to two hours, telling an outlandish story with some stylized violence. Imagine if Finding Nemo were mixed with an action movie, like Taken, Kill Bill, or Snatch.

You can see in the description above that this Fishblade game is also a bit over the time limit but with some adjustments you might be able to at least introduce the game to folks. You could create a pre-established premise, and provide a number of items for the students to choose as loci. The tone can vary with this game, so establishing a premise that is clearly humorous in it’s intent might get you where you want to go.

Please Act Like A Human, by Eden Reese Potts.

Inspired by Octodad and sitcoms about aliens pretending to be human, you are an extraterrestrial creature with nonhuman anatomy who has crash landed on planet Earth and until you can escape, you have to blend in with the local life forms.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

[ID: edited conversation screenshot:

Blue: what are u trying to say

Yellow: (image of the Cleveland Clinic's Oral Allergy Syndrome article) go here

Blue: in the oral allergy syndrome information ?

Yellow: go in the OAS information

Like, this little indie game put together by a bunch of people who were making the game they wanted to play got so popular one of the biggest game companies on the planet saw them as a threat and tried to snuff them out like a mob boss putting out a cigar. But then players were finally getting the creature collecting game of the dreams so they rallied behind it and even other developers joined in and all that nintendo got for their trouble was a black mark on their reputation and pocket change, largely because their main tactic of having them burn all their money on legal fees failed and they didn't really plan for anything else in their hubris.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall at game freak as they make the next pokemon entries and watch from afar as palworld hits full release and just dumps all over their franchise like the dave matthews band on that boat. How do you compete with something that has no restraints and that fact is what people want? Palworld isn't a theme park experience with linear progression and all the "challenge" nested at the end of the game. It throws you into the world, tells you to survive and grow stronger, and then lets you go ham. You get to participate and work alongside your funky little creatures. You get to customize and empower them. You get to build a mini empire with them at your side. The world is hostile but you have your pals and together you're going to claw your way to the top of the food chain. Pokemon is a guided tour by comparison, and one so sanded down and inoffensive that it treats you like the child you play as. There are no mature alternatives so before it was either suck it up or kick rocks.

And then of course there's the tone. Pals can be violent and the factions you face are actively trying to murder and enslave their way to supremacy of the world. Some of the descriptions in the codex are downright horrifying. What do you mean this funny cartoon squid mummifies things by sucking out their guts? There's a goat demon that kidnaps people in the night and that's its most notable feature. NPCs talk about watching their friends get attacked and devoured by wild pals or lament about how tough surviving is. Everyone has guns and swords and creatures that can elementally annihilate you. Sometimes a pal's special skill is just pulling out a rocket launcher and turning some poor bastard in pasta sauce. That shit fucking rules. These are technically wild animals you are taming and turning into weapons. Violence is inherent. But being evil is a choice. You can be a cruel taskmaster or a psychopathic killer but everyone I know who plays treats their pals like their pets. They take good care of them and get upset when something happens to them. Investment in your pals and having to work alongside them to progress enables an emotional attachment that you kind of have to make up with pokemon, where your creatures are all essentially attack dogs for use in fights. Palworld is different. Not all pals are going to be in your party, many are going to be working at your base or are kept around as mounts, for utility like hauling materials, or even breeding purposes.

On that topic, some pals are purposefully sexually appealing (some by design and others by surprise). There's a whole joke about a separate dating sim where you date pals, which might be a real game someday. There are innumerable furrybait monsters to fulfill any deviant appetite and it's pretty clear at least a few people on the dev team weren't doing this just for laughs. The perverts are calling from inside the house on this one. People joke about certain pokemon appealing to the furries but that's the equivalent of stealing a cookie from the jar while nintendo isn't looking, and something they certainly don't care for. Pocketpair drops an entire pallet of cookies on your front lawn and says "call us for more, ya freaks". Say what you want about it, that tactic has definitely earned some die-hard fans.