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my character is just "what if a goblin was even more of a little freak"
1st-time dnd players:
barely aware of how characters work so doesn't know what not to do
characters often maybe??? possible but really weird ("can I play as a mimic?")
no optimizing, only vibes (A+, love that)
new-ish to moderately experienced players:
exquisitely detailed backstory and character motivation, possibly with a heroforge design that took 6 hours
digging weird feats out of obscure sourcebooks
character name has 5 layers of meaning
very experienced players:
"this is Grumbo Bungus, he's like if a wizard was Stupid"
finally someone gets me
reject modernity, embrace tradition
I LOVE YOU
I have a limited view of this since the history channel made its pivot to reality TV when I was still a child but what I saw beforehand was largely stuff about ancient Greece, Rome, some Egypt stuff, mostly the technology they had, yeah there was some WWII stuff because of course that was a big history event but god damn I still remember that one guy that was on multiple shows who got so fucking genuinely excited about interestingly made weapons. Imagine Billy Maine's level hype for a cool Egyptian sword and it's 100% real joy, that was this guy. I never learned his name.
The History Channel's decay into what it is now really stings compared to other channels bc its theme was so broad. You could technically do a special on the history of anything and it would fit. I mean, I know they once did a miniseries about the history of comic books, and I think one about stand-up comedy? Anyway they didn't have to dive so hard into unrelated reality shows about truckers
But also that's irrelevant bc what counts as a History Show is limited. When you say "history" you mean what King did what in a Old Year. Like famously they were so fucking obsessed with World War II, and specifically Europe and the Nazis (you rarely saw a doc about the allies or the Pacific front), that people casually called it the Hitler Channel. The pre-Ancient Aliens days of History Channel was typically HITLER AND THE OCCULT, THE NAZIS: CHILLING SECRETS, HITLER'S SECRET DIARIES REVEALED, Modern Marvels: Retracting Bridges, DEBUNKING HITLER'S SECRET DIARIES,
38, I generally don't like yellow but I think it can make beautiful color combinations, sky blue with white and a subtle yellow? beautiful, and a bright yellow with black and deep dark red looks amazing if done right.
25% of the people have a 4th cone and see colors as they are
Given the sudden interest for the color of dresses and vision, here some of the fascinating findings we did recently.
The color nuances we see depend on the number and distribution of cones (=color receptors) in our eye. You can check this rainbow: how many color nuances do you count?
You see less than 20 color nuances: you are a dichromats, like dogs, which means you have 2 types of cones only. You are likely to wear black, beige, and blue. 25% of the population is dichromat.
You see between 20 and 32 color nuances: you are a trichromat, you have 3 types of cones (in the purple/blue, green and red area). You enjoy different colors as you can appreciate them. 50% of the population is trichromat.
You see between 33 and 39 colors: you are a tetrachromat, like bees, and have 4 types of cones (in the purple/blue, green, red plus yellow area). You are irritated by yellow, so this color will be nowhere to be found in your wardrobe. 25% of the population is tetrachromat.
You see more than 39 color nuances: come on, you are making up things! there are only 39 different colors in the test and probably only 35 are properly translated by your computer screen anyway :)
It is highly probable that people who have an additional 4th cone do not get tricked by blue/black or white/gold dresses, no matter the background light ;)
(x)
also this portrays a lack of familiarity with his work, even if you only think "clean" books are real he's written one of those before; "Straight" came out years ago
real books
daily reminder that 'camp damascus' is not my first 'real' book. erotica books ARE 'real' books. also i am not doing a 'character'. chuck has had to say this with every surge of popularity over last decade and here comes another wave. i am so THANKFUL for this timeline regardless
even if the fruit is being varied you still want multiple instances of each treatment, saying you're varying the fruit doesn't excuse a small sample size per fruit
*places an orange just outside a fairy ring to see what comes out* science is more of an art than a science
tldr; just start planting native ferns from seed and no one will stop you
Stop glorifying the grind for money and start glorifying the grind for reforestation, not even a joke, I'm currently landscaping my hostel with a focus on natives (some non natives that I like) and nobody has said anything because who wants to fight for patchy lawn grass and rocky mud, the thing no body tells you when you move out is you can just plant seeds and small plants and no one will stop you. I literally scavenged sticks and piled them in a rectangle and filled them with dirt to make a garden bed and no one has taken it down or asked questions; it's winter so people think there's just a pile of leaves that was never cleaned up. gonna plant ocean spray and beach roses there and no one's the wiser.
love the woods in winter when everything’s dormant but the mosses are still green and have their spore capsules out. the grind never stops, truly
you forgot piezoelectric polymers for tidal energy, they put these big flexible tubes in the water and when the waves bend them they create an electric charge via material physics
im so excited to use fusion for its true purpose (boiling water)
Indeed! Almost all generators fall under one of four categories:
Spinning things with boiling juice (coal, gas, uranium, geothermal, solar reflectors, nuclear fusion).
Spinning things with Nature (wind, hydroelectric)
Quantum mechanical magic nonsensicals (solar panels)
Fucked up thermometers (the plutonium things they put in Mars rovers and stuff)
we've seen Alador make mittens out of abominations so i propose those are abomination socks, fully waterproof and tear resistant
Are they,,,are they going out into the rain with socks on
I just assumed they're hovering in the air and the robe hangs really low
So like, are we ever going to get an explanation about this height difference?
Its been almost a whole year and that first image still scares me
Why so tall?
pfft, I mean that's basically the plot so maybe it was playing in the background somewhere and you just didn't realize?
can someone who watches spy x family (a show i have never seen) explain why I had a dream where Anya Forger wasn't just psychic, but was also not actually human and was instead an eldritch horror who had taken up residence in a little human girl by sinking its tentacled claws into her brain? And the original girl was long dead, but this horror wanted to be a part of the family so just pretended to be her for fear it would be rejected??????????
once again cannot stress enough that I have never seen an episode of this show
I wanted to be a genetic engineer in the second grade and now I'm going to college for it
can everyone reblog with the interest of theirs that was the most intense or continued for the longest because i’m so curious
rb in the tags what would be the physical feature used to identify you in fanfiction of you if you were a fictional character
Qualifier, *sometimes* you can take out a chunk and everything's fine, most times you take out the chunk and everything isn't fine but you can have exceptions, often there's a collective affect where taking out a chunk is fine so long as you still have other chunks. In biology you learn there are exceptions to every rule, there's even a thing called "the central dogma of molecular biology" that later proved inconsistent. Every month or so I see a post where someone finds an instance where biology is inconsistent and they think "THIS DISCREDITS THIS ENTIRE FIELD" and actually all they found out was it's more nuanced than their high school zoology class. Also for the record, the entire reason science exists is because we don't understand everything, literally the whole point of scientists is they look at stuff we don't know everything about and find out more. "ThEy DoNt EvEn KnOw HoW [bLaNk] WoRkS" yes, that's why we're paying them to figure it out.
It's so funny to me that neuroscientists just pretend to know about the brain. apparently you can take an entire chunk out of the language area and it just works around that. Made up medical field.
wait . . . monday-wednesday=Darius, wednesday-friday=Eda and Raine; who gets him wednesday? Does Darius choose whether to duel Eda or Raine and the winner gets Hunter for an extra day? or maybe he spends the day with Darius and the night with Eda and Raine?
Fuck it, everyone gets joint custody and Hunter gets a million parental and sibling units. Its a win win.
how dare you add more books to my already bloated reading list
Pov: you grew up reading weird fantasy in the early 2000s
when you find a role model who helps you articulate the traits you want to grow into by demonstrating them
they're opening up a new sister store in a different province and they asked me to do some email correspondence with my joint health and safety counterpart out there to help him get set up and run the team, but they warned me before hand that he was "notoriously difficult" so i was absolutely dreading this thinking "shit, he's gonna be one of those guys who thinks taking direction is an insult to his masculinity and he's gonna be rude and suck"
but it turns out he's just really autistic and needs super clear direction + he writes his emails like a 1911 telegram. i LOVE this guy. i've never worked with someone who wrote so clearly and in such detail, and absorbs everything i say. plus whenever he gets an email he responds immediately with "received. response to follow. thank you." top 10 coworkers of all time. top 5 even.
when I first read terra I thought he was talking about earth and spent way too long wondering why that was bad before reading the rest
every meal is russian roulette
AU Master Post
I am the weakest, the most wanting in wisdom, I know, And my life, if lost, would be least missed, truly 🪓🌿
(below the cut are more doodle of lord and lady Bertilak with Gawain, look up at your own risk)
Keep reading
How To Read An Academic Text
for the anon who asked about tips on how to read and grasp ideas more quickly and effectively in nonfiction articles and books, this is an exercise that one of my favorite professors in college always has his first-year history students do when learning how to read scholarly texts, and it seemed kind of juvenile and pointless at the time but in retrospect i think it was probably really helpful
before you start reading SKIM the text while searching for a few specific things (my prof had us highlight them in different colors which you may or may not find helpful. seems stupid but honestly helps if you’re struggling.)
main argument. look for this in the beginning and the end of the work. if the the text is written well, you should be able to highlight one (1) sentence in the intro that really encapsulates what the whole thing is about and the author should bring the reader back to a more nuanced reiteration of this argument in the conclusion. that’s the whole point of an introduction and a conclusion. this is actually a lot more challenging than it seems like it will be and many passages might be masquerading as the main argument. especially if breaking down a text like this is new to you, often you’ll have to read the whole introduction and then go back and realize that this one idea is the central point that everything else is supporting, but it’s important to really know what the MAIN main argument the author is trying to make is as you properly read through the entire work, because this is what will guide you through the rest of the text.
context for this argument. in history, this is the historiography, but it will be called different things in different fields. basically, what is the context in which the author is making this argument? what is the existing body of knowledge that they are establishing themselves as a part of and what other ideas are they in conversation with? what is the angle that they’re using to approach their specific argument or research question? in history articles or books, this will often be a whole section of the introduction where the author explicitly references previous scholarship and arguments other people have made in the past. this is helpful because it can let you know if you have the requisite background knowledge to properly engage with this author’s new argument, and if you don’t it gives you other works that you should look into to build up that contextual understanding. more importantly though, it enables you to understand how the author has positioned themself within the field, which, along with just doing your research about the author outside the text, can help you understand their overall perspective and potential biases, which you should always keep in mind as you read any argument. once you do a lot of reading in a specific field, you’ll start to see the same basic ideas referenced in many texts, and this is what we mean by historiography. this is the body of scholarly work that makes up a field of study, and this is what you should aim to have an understanding of in order to really understand where new arguments sit within them. we call that last part the intervention — what is this person trying to say that hasn’t already been said before? why is their idea new and interesting?
sidenote: it can be helpful as you’re doing this to make a note of key concepts/terms or definitions that the author introduces that you may or may not understand. sometimes especially if they are new terms in the field, they will be a part of the author’s intervention/main argument, but sometimes they’re just specialized terms that are already commonly used in the scholarship. so accordingly, sometimes these concepts will be defined in the text but other times it will be assumed that you will understand them because they are part of the already established lexicon in the field (in which case, simply make a note of it to look up later, but try not to get too bogged down in this in your initial reading if possible). either way, this is not part of the main exercise of breaking down a text, but it can be extremely helpful and is also how you build up your own vocabulary of specialized terms and concepts as you get to know the subject better
sequence of smaller arguments/points that build up to their main argument. in a book this is often easily delineated into the individual chapters of the book so you will be able to get a general idea of it through the table of contents, but a lot of the introductory chapter should just be the author going through each of the subsequent chapters and laying out what they are going to say and how it supports their main argument. honestly, scholarly texts are incredibly formulaic because it’s not about flowery writing, it’s about making your argument clear and supporting it well. so once you figure out what these signposts usually look like and where to look out for them in texts as you’re reading, the process of reading will get much easier. you should already have your prebuilt formula in your mind because you know how every single text is structured, then with your initial skim fill in the blanks to that formula with the specific arguments introduced in this one, then you can proceed knowing that everything else in the text that you will read only serves to support that. you can also do this same process for each of those chapters and build out an outline for yourself of each one to guide you through as you read. you should know the main point of the chapter going in from your overview of the book as a whole, but before you start reading the chapter it’s helpful to skim through and look for any headings to have a map of how the author will make that point.
as you are doing this, it can help to take very very brief notes—do NOT get bogged down in the details because it’s very easy to do that once you start taking notes, but just skim the chapter/article/book beforehand and physically write out an outline of the sequence of points the author is going to make so you can refer to this map as you actually work through the text. (again, if the text is well written, the author should have made this clear; usually it’s just the chapter titles and section headings so you should be able to easily pick them out as you skim)
basically, this is the process of writing an academic/nonfiction text but in reverse. you’re breaking the text down into its skeleton so you can have a clear idea of how the author has structured their argument, and you can always refer back to this as you read if you find yourself getting lost.
think about how you first learned to write a 5-paragraph essay in elementary school: introduction + 3 body paragraphs + conclusion. hamburger with two buns and lettuce/tomato/burger in the middle. look for topic sentences and supporting evidence; break larger passages down in to what role each individual part of it is meant to play. you should always view each of these parts as supporting the work as whole, and should remind yourself of that in order to discern what is actually important to take away from the text vs. what is relatively unimportant / there for support only.
it’s easy to get lost or bogged down in wordy writing and complex ideas, but if you know that THIS sentence is the argument and this next sentence only exists to support that argument, you will always be able to find your way back to the underlying structure that the text is built around. as you’re reading, you know should always know where you’re going and how the author is planning to get you there.
it may seem like a lot of extra work to skim a text and write out an outline before you even start properly Reading, but trust me it makes things much easier in the long run and you will get much more out of your readings. honestly my professors would tell me that you only really have to read the introduction (+ table of contents), and the conclusion to understand get the main point of what an author is trying to say, and only if you really want to get into the weeds of their specific primary evidence then you should go through the other chapters.
in a scientific research paper it’s even clearer. it’s literally: abstract + introduction (incl. literature review) + methods + results + discussion + conclusion (sometimes included in discussion). explicitly the same structure every time, and each section will have a heading in bold. when reading scientific papers for general knowledge, unless you really want to get into the weeds, you often just read the abstract + introduction then skip to the discussion, and refer mainly to the figures to quickly guide you through the key points of the methods and results.
remember that reading a work of nonfiction, if you really want to actually understand and internalize new knowledge from it, should not be the same process as reading a novel. it’s not a journey where you’re along for the ride where the mystery of how it’s going to end is the fun of it. you shouldn’t worry about skipping to the end for fear of spoilers. you WANT the lay of the land before you start so you can better understand not only 1) the points the author is trying to make but also, when you go back to properly read more closely, 2) the between-the-lines of WHY they are making those points and how they are constructing their arguments, what they might be leaving out, and where their biases might be.
also, in academic texts, the conclusion should be perfectly comprehensible without having read through the rest of the chapters; there are no plot twists or climactic moments, or at least there shouldn’t be, given the author should have presented the main argument upfront. reading the conclusion first can help give you an idea of how the author claims they will convince you of their argument in the preceding chapters, so knowing that you can have an idea of what to look out for when you go back and see if they have laid out the support for that argument successfully.
i know this explanation is way longer than it needed to be, especially for a process that really is quite straightforward, but hopefully some people find it helpful. remember: find the main argument, contextualize the text in the larger body of knowledge, break down the rest of the text into its basic structure that should all lead back to that main argument. read the rest of the text to see if the author succeeded in effectively convincing you of that argument.
further useful resources on How To Read:
How to Read in College by Timothy Burke, Swarthmore College
How to read a (good) book in one hour by Christopher Kelty, UCLA
How to Read for History by W. Caleb McDaniel, Rice University
How to Read a Book by Paul Edwards, University of Michigan