What If Real Life Is The Eldritch Apocalypse, And We Have All But Forgotten Earlier Times, Before The

Oh, crap, I can't get away from this prescriptivist asshole, there's nothing beyond the wall but water

Nerf that Ring of Flight by making it the ring itself that flies, while wearing it, you can move the ring through the air in any direction at will. How the character manages to keep the ring on their finger, and their finger on their hand, is the player's problem.

New RWD just dropped, so

ATTENTION

If you see this you are OBLIGATED to reblog w/ the song currently stuck in your head :)

This is very close to the original concept behind Anguish Languish: words now have to be rationed, just like other war supplies. We have to make do with the words we have plenty of.

OK so my shitpost R&D department was researching the viability of a jocular analogy between national language regulators, war rationing, and soviet bread lines. This isn't a viable product right now so you'll have to just kind of imagine that it's funny, but the idea is, like, people are running out of words because they offshored development and then a war footing devastated international trade, so now there aren't enough words to go around and the government is publishing all these posters encouraging people not to waste them. The government has stepped into nationalize word production and distribution but because all the best words are going to the Posters on the war front, the public has to spend hours in line just to get a random selection of words that they can hardly use. People have to find a way to smuggle in illegal foreign words or rely on unsafe home-brewed vocabulary while repurposing all the new words for munitions and war strategy to talk about groceries and romance. Barter dominates, especially in the provinces, as people try to scrounge together a functional vocabulary to educate their children.

Anyway I'm dropping it because I realized that while this is hard to make into a good joke, it would actually be a fantastic strategy/puzzle game. Someone go make that!

Look at this. Look. At. This.

I don't give a flying flet how unfinished or crude this is. I love it. It's cute and whimsical and the lack of polish just inspires me to share my own stuff.

At the same time, I am awed by anyone who is able to coax this much of their artistic vision out of a damn computer.

Hehe, cow

ok hot take but i think there is, actually, some linguistic utility to calling twitter 'X'. Twitter was a social media platform with certain functions and a particular culture. After elon took it over, its functions dramatically changed, and the culture on it likewise shifted. EG: paid blue checkmarks, moderation actively biased against the non-rightwing, 'cis is a slur', pay-to-win features, active promotion of misinformation, active promotion of toxic posters, worse branding, a stupid fucking AI tool, and a virulently right-wing culture are all new things that came along after elon took over.

I think in a meaningful sense Twitter is a website that is gone now, like google+ is gone. It has been replaced by X, which is a meaningfully different website. That we saw one website slowly transform into the other is beside the point, at this point the distinction between old-twitter and new-twitter is significant enough that i think using the new name actually makes sense.

I've expanded the instructions I gave for apologizing into a detailed listicle. I hope it'll be helpful. Some of the points, however, are very specific to the English language.

1. Don't explain what happened, it will sound like you're justifying your actions. And because of the way our brains work, you're likely to actually start justifying your actions. At that point, you're no longer apologizing. Remind yourself that the apology needs to have priority right now, and that there will be time later to identify causes and solutions.

2. Be specific, or at least use more words than "I'm sorry." "Sorry" is used so often as a polite noise, nearly meaningless, that it's difficult to be sincere, or even sound sincere when using it for a formal apology. Again, this ties into what @theconcealedweapon wrote: we're trained to say "sorry" when we don't mean it, so that becomes the core of the word's meaning, without our even realizing it. And if you're Australian, it gets even worse!

Personally, I use "I apologize" or "My apologies," or in dire circumstances, "Please accept my apology." This allows me to break my conditioning and focus on my genuine contrition, as well as making it clear to others that I'm taking the apology seriously.

3. Apologize for what you did, and absolutely NOT how it made someone feel. The latter is often used for manipulation.

Other things not to apologize for:

that the consequences of your actions happened

what you don't like about the person or group you're apologizing to

being right

being better than the people you're apologizing to

allegedly not having any idea what you're supposed to be apologizing for

...you'd think all this would go without saying, but it can be subtler than you might expect, and sometimes we do it without thinking, because we picked it up as children, from the nastier adults around us.

Instead, take a moment to focus on what you did, and how to describe it clearly in a way that accepts your fault and/or responsibility for the situation. Again, don't bring anything else into the apology, lest you make it seem less of an apology. People are so used to hearing the above crap from unrepentant people, that they will not give you the benefit of the doubt.

4. Watch your tone of voice. This is actually two separate points.

First, yet another thing we unconsciously pick up as children is the obviously sarcastic mock apology. It's not always a bad thing, it can be a joke or a verbal gesture, but you have to make sure you don't let that habit find its way into a genuine apology, and ruin it. This is where the bit about "Say it like you mean it" comes from. The easiest way to say it like you mean it is to mean it. See next paragraph.

Second, if you can't be respectful and express regret, you shouldn't be apologizing just yet. You're not ready. Leave the art of convincingly faking an apology to the con artists and cult leaders. You will probably need to just keep your mouth shut for a while. Acknowledge (to yourself) the possibility that you might change your mind later. In some rare cases, it may be possible to tell people, "I'm not ready to apologize just yet," but don't count on it.

5. (optional) If necessary and you can do it honestly, either characterize what you did, or agree with others' characterization of it, or promise to/ask how to not do it again, or multiple of the above. Say that it was wrong or inappropriate or a failure or whatever. Name people who called you out, say they were right, and repeat what they said about what you're apologizing for. If you promise not to do it again, don't pivot to talking about how great you will be in the future, keep it focused on the apology.

This might be a bit too much for less dire apologies, and you may not be able to manage this if you apologize the minute you can bring yourself to be sincere, but otherwise, you can build yourself some credibility by immediately seeking to improve yourself and make sure that YOU never do whatever-it-was again. It's more for privately apologizing to your direct supervisor, or to a friend.

On the other hand, beware of doing this if you're the authority figure, or are apologizing to a large group, because politicians routinely pivot away from making actual apologies by making big promises for the future. People are wise to this, though, and your whole apology is liable to be dismissed as bullshit if you try to use it for self-promotion.

So many people seem completely unaware of what a genuine apology is.

And that's because children are forced to say sorry on command.

Before they ever had a chance to process what they did, why they did it, what effect it had on others, or what they should have done instead, they're expected to say that they're sorry. And they're expected to "say it like you mean it" with no indication of what that even means and with no time to figure out how to phrase it correctly.

Sometimes, even when the child's actions are justified by any logical reasoning, they're expected to apologize because an authority figure demands it.

The goal of saying sorry ends up being solely to avoid punishment. And they phrase the apology in whatever way the authority figure will accept.

The result is an entire society filled with people who give completely useless apologies that appear like they're only trying to avoid punishment.

I repeatedly spend an increasingly unnerved 10 dream-minutes trying to first turn off the clock radio, then unplug it, then trying to figure out where the annoying music is coming from... I don't actually stop dreaming and wake up until I'm fully panicking because I can't shut off the Eldritch Radio From Hell.

woke up this morning, rolled over, and very confidently tried to blow out my alarm clock like a candle. absolutely no precedent for that.

Ever notice that both Ram and Prius drivers will take up multiple parking spaces, and double down if you call them on it?

I’ve rewatched my fav film, Dr. Strangelove.