immature techno-geek with moral autism

Like… how does the magic determine where technology begins? I mean, a gun is just a little house for tiny explosions to live… what part of that process is interrupted by magic? Does gunpowder simply not combust in Magictopia?

“What seems to be the matter?” asked the Elf, in that same insufferably airy tone that would have made it a fortune doing voiceovers for shampoo commercials.

Khalil sighed miserably. “Phone’s dead,” he said, scowling at the shimmering city. “Figures. Of course it lets me take a thousand blurry cat pictures and then konks out on me the moment I find something worth photographing.”

The Elf laughed. Khalil suspected it was meant to be a scornful laugh, but his companion had the emotional inflection of an automated voice messaging system, and it lacked punch.

“Foolish human,” said the Elf. “Your ‘phone’ will not work here. No technology functions past the borders of Faerie.”

If Khalil let his eyes unfocus and used his imagination, the expression it wore could almost pass for smugness. “Now hang on,” he said. “That’s a fucking lie. No way is that true.”

“Foolish human, I cannot tell a l—”

“Oh, shut up. You say no technology works here, but you’re clearly wearing some kind of ritzy elf sword. Are you gonna try to tell me that they grow on trees here? Obviously you’ve got smelting and forges and metallurgy. You’re wearing woven fabric, and you stole a bunch of medicine from that pharmacy in Detroit. We rode my bike over that troll bridge and it didn’t stop working.”

“That’s different,” protested the Elf, a shallow groove between it’s eyebrows betraying profound distress. “That’s not technology.”

“It is, though! ‘Technology’ doesn’t just mean guns and electron—”

There was a hand clamped tight over his mouth, smothering him before he had even registered movement. “Hold your tongue before I cut it out of your head,” hissed the Elf in his ear. “You don’t know what you’re messing with.”

It released him, and Khalil stumbled back, staring wildly. It had moved terrifyingly quickly. No doubt it could make good on its threat if it cared to—six years of boxing and he still had no hope of defending himself against something that could move like that.

“What magic doesn’t know can’t hurt it,” said the Elf in a low and strangely unsteady voice, sounding for the first time like a living being. “Be careful what ideas you give it. Some things seem right, and that’s what matters.”

The Elf must have grabbed him hard, Khalil realized, tasting the tang of blood where his lip had been torn open on his teeth. He swallowed, and stared at the Elf in horror. “Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “That your entire magical system, the physics of your entire world… is based… on vibes?”

The part of him that was a twenty-seven year-old peace activist recoiled in disgust even as the ten year-old pirate fanatic vibrated with excitement. If I live through this, he thought, I’ll have to tell my mom that all those hours glued to the History Channel weren’t wasted, after all.

Very gently, he tipped a little of the powder down the barrel of the gun. He had no way of knowing the appropriate amount to use and simply guessed; after all, if his suspicions were correct, it might not matter much in this world.

He pried the moldering leather bag out from under the skeleton’s arm and reached inside. A few dozen lead balls clinked together under his fingers, along with a little bundle of greasy cloth. With trembling fingers, he tore off a square of fabric and wrapped it around one of the bullets. Like a swaddled baby, he thought grimly, and pushed it down the barrel until it was nestled snugly over the gunpowder.

Almost ready, he thought. He dropped a pinch of powder into the flashpan on the top of the gun, flicked the frizzen back into position, and rose to his feet.

“Step away from the Fabio impersonator,” he said, kicking the rotten door off its hinges. “Or I will shoot you with my gun.”

The queen was beautiful, but she was not attractive. No, thought Khalil, that’s not right. She was attractive—in the way that the lights of beachside cities attract baby sea turtles away from the surf; attractive in the way that hot stoves attract curious children’s hands; attractive in the way that trays of beer attract garden slugs to drink themselves to death. 

If you can, it can be nice to have a friendly presence at outpatient appointments too! If you and your friends can use the same medical provider, you could even try scheduling routine appointments in a block, to make it easier to go together.

A friend can help catch little mistakes that probably aren't malicious (forgetting to mask, leaving someone else's water jug in a room, et cetera) too. A friend can also help a patient remember to bring up a topic they forgot.

Some people get hospital delirium, or milder psych symptoms like non-distressing hallucinations. Healthline claims having a friend around is useful for making things feel more familiar and less disorienting, though I haven't verified this.

At least one hospital exists that lets visitors buy food from the patient cafeteria. This was useful for me when I was supporting a friend, as it meant I didn't need to pack meals. I suspect it gives the hospital good incentives to make the food decent, too.

“It is to your benefit to ensure that we, who labor for you in a place you will not venture, continue to carry out your will. This agreement specifies the fate of damned souls. In exchange, it allows us to draw magic from these souls, so we can fuel our spells and maintain our powers.” “I'm not sure I like the sound of that,’ said the flinty Moradin. “Your concerns are entirely understandable, O Maker of Dwarves,” said Asmodeus in his most reassuring tone. “But since we will be separated from you, we will not be able to draw our powers from you, as we always have. You would not wish to make us gods independent of yourselves, would you?”

(Fiendish Codex II, page 4, pub. December 2006)

My nephew is very allergic to eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, and sesame. Last year my sister discovered all hot dogs and hamburger buns now contain sesame. Not "may contain", but listed in the ingredients. This year basically every brand of sliced bread also now contains sesame, making it very difficult to find bread items he can eat.

They're just adding it to their products, so they can just list it as an ingredient and not bother with worrying about cross contamination. And they aren't even bothering with telling anyone. Capitalism is going to kill us all.

"Which brings us back to Kellogg’s. Back in 2016, the company found a way around the added burden and expense of complying with the FSMA: they simply began adding trace amounts of peanut flour to their cracker products. Doing so allowed them to list peanuts as an ingredient of the product, freeing them from having to prevent cross-contact.

If there were a small minority of people who might get sick if they saw a hexagon, I would probably want to list my art as "may contain hexagons" and let other people sort out which pieces did or did not contain them, because consistently warning for hexagons would be extra work for me.

If the government suddenly decided artists can't do that anymore, and that I would be liable if hexagons weren't on the official image description and then someone got sick from an incidental hexagon, I would want to add hexagons to all my image descriptions instead of sorting. If there was also a law that image descriptions couldn't list shapes not present in the image, I would probably start adding hexagons to things so that I could list 'hexagons' in every image description.

Also something I like about playing old games in emulators, you can always pause the emulator.

Also: You don't necessarily have time in which you're allowed to be uninterruptible, but you should probably get to have some.

Some people are caregivers for small children or have other similarly intense and incessant responsibilities. These people kind of need to be on-call 24/7, because even if they've talked to a partner about taking breaks, their child or such might suddenly have a problem that requires multiple people's worth of effort.

The rest of you should get to not be on-call 24/7, though.

Yes, there's a chance someone might have an important phone call for you outside of business hours that can't wait half an hour. It could, in theory, happen that one of my loved ones gets fatally injured in a way that will kill them in a short span of time, but also leaves them capable of saying last farewells on the telephone. It probably won't happen, though, and being on-call 24/7 is a huge cost to pay to prevent this sort of thing.

I take walks without my phone sometimes. I make sure I've used the restroom before taking such a walk, and I check in with my roommates beforehand about whether they need things from me, and I go during hours when I don't really expect to receive an important phone call. These same strategies should also work for gaming.

Also something I like about playing old games in emulators, you can always pause the emulator.