Hair grows back. Pretty fast, actually. It is extremely cheap, you can do it in your own bathroom. There is virtually no long-term consequence to one’s health in regards to doing crazy stuff with your hair. It’s cathartic and rewarding, and a pretty awesome boost to your confidence to own your own body and identity to the point where you can walk around with brick-red liberty spikes.

Skin, bones, and facial features, however, are a very different story. That is expensive. And it doesn’t fucking grow back.

Source: I have blue hair.

Love reinventing the aristocracy.

Double lung transplants? Before 45? In this country? In one of the most impoverished parts of the country?

I can name maybe 5 people who deserve that. The average idiot who believed a psychopathic liar doesn’t deserve that.

Yzma moment right here.

Narcissists, Machiavellians, and megalomaniacs will always be what they are. But people who’ve been brainwashed literally don’t know any better. I wish I could say it more kindly, but having been on the receiving end of a lifetime of indoctrination into something obviously stupid, I have some sympathy for the people who believed a liar.

I dunno, you called the other guy Eric, so I thought ‘Well, alright, if we’re doing the naming-strangers-on-the-internet bit, I guess I’ll call you Shaun.’ No harm or offense meant, friend. There were places I lived where the bus infrastructure was legitimately that bad. I remember the 3 hour rides to work too. -_-; Those were awful. I spent months camped out at the city planner’s office begging for extra service on my route after I quit that job and got one closer. No dice, sadly.

Well, Shaun, lemme tell ya; I didn’t mind the 4 to 5 hours a week I spent on the train or the bus. Partly, because sometimes I got to meet genuinely lovely and hilarious strangers, and even make friends with people I never would have met otherwise. Or help people that needed help, being in the right place at the right time. I kinda miss that, having chances at being a kind stranger.

And you know, there is the savings to consider. Not having to spend the extra 30 hours at a job I hate to pay for an $800 expense I don’t need was worth the extra commute time, in my opinion. All that extra free time that I wasn’t driving or working to afford driving, I could use to read books. Or write books.

Beyond that, it was nice to have the cheapest and most freeing exercise I’d get. That’s more money I didn’t spend on a gym membership, owning a bicycle and taking it to visit my friends or getting groceries. And when the weather got bad and I needed a car, I’d just call a taxi. Or set up a carpool with a coworker, offer to pay for gas. It was still cheaper than owning a car. It was nice to have a chance to make friends with my coworkers too.

How much effort did it take to plan my entire life around the logistics of taking my bike/the bus/the train? About as much effort as it did planning my life around owning a car.

The only time I ever needed a car, Shaun, was when I lived in the middle of nowhere and there was no public transit. Because the local government designed the infrastructure that way.

I’m sorry that happened to you, dude. Fuck tankies, fr.

o7

I wish more people were this brave. God, I wish more people were this brave.

WINTER RAINS DOWN ON THE ASHES

MOTHER MAKES FUEL FOR THE BONES

MURDER RIPS GODS FROM THE MASSES

MURDER BRINGS

MURDER BRINGS

(okay, the soundtrack to Murder Drones goes really hard, AJ DiSpirito is a good musician, so sue me.)

At tables I’ve played and run in the past, ‘Outsiders’ (fiends, fey, celestials, etc.) embody the epitome of an ideal or motive taken to its logical extreme, for better or worse.

Take Zariel for example.

Yes. Simply put, yes, this was 1000% the right choice for WotC to make, and fuck them for not making it 30 years earlier.

Zero questions here, the only tables I stayed at long term were the ones where orcs and elves and humans had a precisely equal chance of being good or evil. The ones I left? The DMs and players who wanted an instant, easy ‘kill this’ marker were invariably super bigoted in the real world too.

I dunno, Klyden REALLY hated Bortus’ mustache for the brief time he had it.

Maybe. I’m not sure, I haven’t read those yet.

Quick rec for an amazingly good book I read recently. ‘Moonstorm’ by Yoon Ha Lee. It’s a futuristic sci-fantasy where young ‘Lancer pilots’ fight on behalf of a paternistic empire, in a setting where the gravity of colonized worlds and the very laws of physics are governed by the laws of society and the people that comprise them. This phenomenon is so prevalent that rebel factions live out in a segment of space called ‘the Moonstorm’, where anarchistic and communal values lead to an erratic and unpredictable (but undeniably beautiful and free) cosmos. In the Empire, authoritative dogma and rigid social hierarchy leads to ‘normal’ (to us) gravity and ‘predictable’ (to us) celestial body movements. Gravity is a very heavy-handed metaphor for unity and national identity in the story, and it’s brilliant in exploring the divide between an oppressive imperial autocracy and an anarchistic society with just the raw backdrop.

Also, techno-psychic sapient mechs and massive freaking gravity-powered railguns.

“They’re giving transgender surgeries to illegal immigrants in prison.”

*Medicaid

It was a spelling goof, it’s all good. Still reading you loud and clear.

😓 Please don’t give the fash a blueberry fetish. That’s the last thing the internet needs.

That is brilliant. Thank you. I am stealing this.

Was a mental health tech at a psych hospital. Ditto this, when it’s the nurse’s word against yours and the Ombudsman is already overworked and overwhelmed, you’re cooked.

I tried to go to bat for my patients so often, but once the nurses and the aides burn out, they stop doing the job because they care and start doing the job because it’s a job. I had nurses who told me to overchart patients so their insurance would pay more and they’d stay longer. Shady, shady shit.