Hellote

Part of how authoritarianism works is telling you that you can't stop it. And you can't stop it by yourself. But it wants to stop the train of thought there and let you fall into despair.

You need to remember the next part: you don't have to stop it by yourself.

It's an incredible puzzle game. The puzzles are basically Rube-Goldberg machines, where you manipulate objects in a series to effect change in the overall situation. Do you like complex mechanisms and the concept of the butterfly effect? Play this.

The basic gameplay: you are a ghost. You have the ability to posses and manipulate objects, and move from object to object. Someone bas died. You can go to four minutes before their death to change their fate using your Rube Goldberg powers. Also! The puzzles do a great job of ramping you up in difficulty and teaching you the gameplay, but wow do they get HARD in late game. You can replay any puzzle, and also rewind time as you wish. You can't lock yourself out of things by doing it wrong, since you can redo.

The story is SO GOOD. There's a reason why everyone tells you as little as possible -- it's a compelling mystery that sucks you in. The basic idea: you are dead. You need to figure out who you are and who killed you. This spins out into a tale of political intrigue.

It's by Shu Takumi, the creator of Ace Attorney. It has very similar vibes, in that it's absolutely bonkers characters and situations but also WILL make you cry once it's all revealed. Great mix of serious and humorous tones. Seriously, someone dies when a giant roast chicken statue falls on them and the root cause is because of [serious political events]

The aesthetics. Great music, great character design, have you SEEN what the game looks like? Really good use of color and stylization. Character animations are often hilarious.

Missile is there. You WILL love bestest boy. Don't google him. Just trust.

Part 2: HERE

Dart hears some strange noises in the woods.  As he goes to investigate the noises, the rowlet finds a strange baby pokemon alone in the rain.

I really need +anima aus to be a thing, so here's a little guide.

What the Hell is this?

+Anima is a ten-volume manga written by Natsumi Mukai - it is very good and cute, you should read it! What this au would be taking from it, though, is the concept of anima. When a child is put into a life-threatening situation, there's a chance that they will get the power of a nearby animal that will allow them to survive.

Getting an anima is rare enough that, while people are aware of them, they may still mistake fish anima or white bird anima as mermaids or angels. Those with anima are usually treated poorly and feared as something dangerous and scary.

People who have +anima are able to look like normal humans most of the time, using their anima and transforming back and forth at will. When they are not using their anima, however, there is still proof of it as a marking(s) on their body. The mark reflects the animal and what trait it gives them, and the placement usually matches up somewhat with where the animal trait shows up.

In canon, only children will every have an anima. The anima usually stays with the kids for as long as they need it, most (all?) losing it when they're an adult. The exact definition of 'child' is pretty vague - there are some teens who have anima, one is a normal teen though and one is native american-coded (called Kim-un-Kur) and the Kim-un-Kur don't lose their anima when they grow up, and one adult but that one is also Kim-un-Kur.

Can there be fake anima or manufactured anima? Surprisingly, yes! In the +anima world, a scientist figured out how to extract the anima from those with it. If it is done willingly, then that anima can be placed in another. However, the bond between the anima and the new person is fragile, and it doesn't seem to really stick around.

Some additional notes:

There is one instance of an anima being transferred from one person to another. This was with a member of the Kim-un-Kur, and it's unclear if that is a them thing or not

Sometimes, anima are shown going even more animal-like than their anima usually manifests, but this is very rare

Realizing that a species is imperiled has broad connotations, given that it tells us something about the plight of nature itself. It reminds us of the need to implement conservation measures and to protect the region of which the species is a part. But aside form the broader picture, species have intrinsic worth and are deserving of preservation. Surely an oddity such as C. vicinella cannot simply be allowed to vanish.

We should speak up on behalf of this little moth, not only because by so doing we would bolster conservation efforts now underway in Florida, [highlighting begins] but because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing. [end highlighting]

But is quaintness all that can be said on behalf of this moth? Does this insect not have hidden value beyond its overt appeal? Does not its silk and glue add, potentially, to its worth? Could these products not be unique in ways that could ultimately prove applicable?

(Obviously the judgement was an avalanche of 'NTA and also he's abusing you', which she agreed with, and decided to kick him out, so happy ending.)

Anyway I told my husband about this and he was outraged. "I would never do that!" he told me, furious. "I would find it adorable if you had bath snacks!"

Since then, every time I try to have a bath (which I only do as a rare treat) after about ten minutes there has been an anxious scrabbling at the bathroom door.

"Elanor!" he says. "Do you have bath snacks? Do you need anything?"

What you can see here are among the most popular posts of the last month for the convin (Connor/Gavin Detroit Become Human) tag for the last month. And presumably popular in lollipop, cityscape, rick day, eva long, dostoyevsky, and all the other random, unrelated tags added to these posts.

You can see two identical posts made by separate bots that feature a bit.ly (so, disguised, you don't know whether the address is safe/where you're going) link to a website that contains an image of a pretty young women (but who knows what else).

Each post is liked by about a dozen other bots, and only bots. (I reported them all, so can confirm their profiles were obviously those of bots/porn bots.) Some of them even use the same image in the pfp. Some are developed blogs full of porn images, some are clearly newer and don't even have a pfp yet. They are all gaining legitimacy from each other by the likes which act as links to their Tumblrs, and adding legitimacy to the post they have liked, which links to their ultimate goal: the site where they make money in undoubtedly dodgy ways.

They are doing this to legitimise their websites for search engines like Google, but if you don't care about that, it has the same effect in your Tumblr tags.

If we don't stop them, ALL your favourite hashtags are going to be full of meaningless posts like this, and probably porn you don't want to see (very different from porn you DO want to see).

This is why we report and block, lads. Not just because they are annoying and irrelevant to us, but because if we don't stop them they will take over this hellsite, and they very clearly do not understand the nature of the hell in which we live.

This patient isn’t usually mine, but today I’m covering for my partner in our family-practice office, so he has been slipped into my schedule.

Reading his chart, I have an ominous feeling that this visit won’t be simple.

A tall, lanky man with an air of quiet dignity, he is 88. His legs are swollen, and merely talking makes him short of breath.

He suffers from both congestive heart failure and renal failure. It’s a medical Catch-22: When one condition is treated and gets better, the other condition gets worse. His past year has been an endless cycle of medication adjustments carried out by dueling specialists and punctuated by emergency-room visits and hospitalizations.

Hemodialysis would break the medical stalemate, but my patient flatly refuses it. Given his frail health, and the discomfort and inconvenience involved, I can’t blame him.

Now his cardiologist has referred him back to us, his primary-care providers. Why send him here and not to the ER? I wonder fleetingly.

With us is his daughter, who has driven from Philadelphia, an hour away. She seems dutiful but wary, awaiting the clinical wisdom of yet another doctor.

After 30 years of practice, I know that I can’t possibly solve this man’s medical conundrum.

A cardiologist and a nephrologist haven’t been able to help him, I reflect,so how can I? I’m a family doctor, not a magician. I can send him back to the ER, and they’ll admit him to the hospital. But that will just continue the cycle… .

Still, my first instinct is to do something to improve the functioning of his heart and kidneys. I start mulling over the possibilities, knowing all the while that it’s useless to try.

Then I remember a visiting palliative-care physician’s words about caring for the fragile elderly: “We forget to ask patients what they want from their care. What are their goals?”

I pause, then look this frail, dignified man in the eye.

“What are your goals for your care?” I ask. “How can I help you?”

The patient’s desire

My intuition tells me that he, like many patients in their 80s, harbors a fund of hard-won wisdom.

He won’t ask me to fix his kidneys or his heart, I think. He’ll say something noble and poignant: “I’d like to see my great-granddaughter get married next spring,” or “Help me to live long enough so that my wife and I can celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary.”

His daughter, looking tense, also faces her father and waits.

“I would like to be able to walk without falling,” he says. “Falling is horrible.”

This catches me off guard.

That’s all?

But it makes perfect sense. With challenging medical conditions commanding his caregivers’ attention, something as simple as walking is easily overlooked.

A wonderful geriatric nurse practitioner’s words come to mind: “Our goal for younger people is to help them live long and healthy lives; our goal for older patients should be to maximize their function.”

Suddenly I feel that I may be able to help, after all.

“We can order physical therapy — and there’s no need to admit you to the hospital for that,” I suggest, unsure of how this will go over.

He smiles. His daughter sighs with relief.

“He really wants to stay at home,” she says matter-of-factly.

As new as our doctor-patient relationship is, I feel emboldened to tackle the big, unspoken question looming over us.

“I know that you’ve decided against dialysis, and I can understand your decision,” I say. “And with your heart failure getting worse, your health is unlikely to improve.”

He nods.

“We have services designed to help keep you comfortable for whatever time you have left,” I venture. “And you could stay at home.”

Again, his daughter looks relieved. And he seems … well … surprisingly fine with the plan.

I call our hospice service, arranging for a nurse to visit him later today to set up physical therapy and to begin plans to help him to stay comfortable — at home.

Back home

Although I never see him again, over the next few months I sign the order forms faxed by his hospice nurses. I speak once with his granddaughter. It’s somewhat hard on his wife to have him die at home, she says, but he’s adamant that he wants to stay there.

A faxed request for sublingual morphine (used in the terminal stages of dying) prompts me to call to check up on him.

The nurse confirms that he is near death.

I feel a twinge of misgiving: Is his family happy with the process that I set in place? Does our one brief encounter qualify me to be his primary-care provider? Should I visit them all at home?

Two days later, and two months after we first met, I fill out his death certificate.

Looking back, I reflect: He didn’t go back to the hospital, he had no more falls, and he died at home, which is what he wanted. But I wonder if his wife felt the same.

Several months later, a new name appears on my patient schedule: It’s his wife.

“My family all thought I should see you,” she explains.

She, too, is in her late 80s and frail, but independent and mentally sharp. Yes, she is grieving the loss of her husband, and she’s lost some weight. No, she isn’t depressed. Her husband died peacefully at home, and it felt like the right thing for everyone.

“He liked you,” she says.

She’s suffering from fatigue and anemia. About a year ago, a hematologist diagnosed her with myelodysplasia (a bone marrow failure, often terminal). But six months back, she stopped going for medical care.

I ask why.

“They were just doing more and more tests,” she says. “And I wasn’t getting any better.”

Now I know what to do. I look her in the eye and ask:

“What are your goals for your care, and how can I help you?”

-Mitch Kaminski