leanbeerpantry

[leanbeerpantry]

Visa and Mastercard may be getting a lot of calls about their adult content policies, but I just called in to PayPal and not only was there no wait, the customer service rep I got had never had one of these calls before (they were very nice about it.)

Don't overlook the online processors - even more than Visa and Mastercard they are the ones pressuring online retailers. PayPal is the one that's been pressuring Patreon over the last year or so.

I've had no luck reaching Stripe, all of the numbers people have dug up ring through as disconnected.

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Slice of life tabletop RPG about former living superweapons trying to integrate into human society, with mechanics riffing on many groups' propensity to house-rule critical success rules into their games even in contexts where it doesn't make sense (e.g., like you're trying to persuade someone to do you a favour and you crit and accidentally rewrite their entire personality or something), set up in such a way that it's very easy to score critical successes and complicated steps have to be taken to avoid it.

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Get your copy of A City on Mars signed in person in Fairfax VA on August 5th!

What is A City on Mars?

[leanbeerpantry]

the world gets a lot easier when you learn to be wrong without getting pissed or doubling down. saying, ‘you’re right, that makes sense, I was misinformed, thanks for telling me’ instead of going to war over something your ego’s latched onto will save you time, energy, and the embarrassment of sounding like a whiny little bitch

[leanbeerpantry]

I got all three front panels embroidered in time for comicon! Yes, the goal was to have this done enough for pennsic, but secondary goal was to have it done enough for comiccon and the comiccombat demo, which I managed to do!

Also because someone wanted me to post a video of me twirling, here it is!

(Ignore the fact that I just wore my normal clothes underneath and not the light green kirtle I actually have to go with it)

[leanbeerpantry]

Chinese jade carvings: corn, grapes, cabbage, and bok choy. (cr 簇拥烈日的花)

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pro censorship people are always like “actually I’m living proof that books can be really harmful to kids! when I was a child I read a book that upset me and of course I couldn’t talk to my parents about it because they would throw rocks at me whenever I confessed to reading anything but the Bible, so as you can see, that book was the source of my trauma and warped ideas about right and wrong”

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Violet Sabrewing

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[leanbeerpantry]

Deep Water Prompt #3490

No one at the busy market speaks a word, trading silently for the kind of books and magic tools I haven’t seen in years. ‘SILENCE’, reads the sign in front, ‘OR THE CITY WILL HEAR US.’

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My paramotor was stolen.

The UPS guy just left it on the porch. Didn’t ring the bell. Didn’t try to get a signature.

Minutes later, two assholes in a suburban pulled up, shoved it in the back, and took off. I heard the squealing of their tires as I was walking down the stairs, checked the camera, and realized what had happened.

I’m devastated. And furious. Even if I’m able to recoup the money from a claim, A. That’s going to take forever and B. due to my small size, finding another small/light enough engine in the states will be all but impossible and C. due to super high tariffs, it’s really hard to get the engines from Italy right now. So. I thought I’d get to fly in a week. Looks like it might be months before that happens. I’m so angry I can hardly type. And I feel so useless. Like there’s nothing I can do. Fuck.

[leanbeerpantry]

The chili plant made a deal with their God to only be consumed by things that could spread its seeds and fly. The chili received capsaicin, making itself painful to eat for mammals, but not birds, and all was well for the chili.

Then the human shows up, tastes it, and likes the pain. So now there's this flightless fucking mammal eating the chili. Like not even a fruit bat or anything, a flightless fucking mammal chomping on the chili.

What the fucking shit, God, cried the chili, I specifically requested the opposite of this.

Now hold on, wait a moment, replied the God who talks to plants but has no idea what the fuck these apes are going to do next. It might be something cool.

And in a flash of a second, in barely fraction of the time that chili took to develop capsaicin, the humans went from walking across land bridges and rowing little boats across small waters, into building ships that could cross oceans. More humans tasted the chili, and liked the pain. They took the seeds with them, and planted it elsewhere.

See? They spread the seeds.

They're still not flying, said the chili, still feeling insulted and betrayed.

But before the conversation was over, the humans were still not done fucking around and nowhere close to finding out. The ships became machines, and another machine was invented, capable of flight. Now, not only were the humans farming chili on continents far too far away for any of the birds that originally ate it could dream of flying, but the chili flew with them to lands where it could possibly not grow, so that humans over there could also eat it and enjoy the pain.

You see? They spread your seeds and fly.

It doesn't count as keeping a promise if you only manage it by a fucking accident, said the chili, still somewhat insulted. But nonetheless, the chili thrived.

[leanbeerpantry]

I am no longer explaining my chronic illnesses. I'm only ominously referencing them like I'm a fantasy realm NPC dropping plot hooks:

I am besieged by the affliction

The ritual was successful, but it has drained me. I need time to recuperate.

I can't do that, because of The Curse

Dark forces are conspiring within me. I must conserve my strength to battle them.

Unseen foes assault me. I cannot strike back with blows, but I can lessen their influence by consuming certain alchemical rites.

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[leanbeerpantry]

I am constantly hurt by the callousness with which people dismiss the harm of restricting adult content and porn, only concerned about the knock-on effects for queer people and radical political groups. Sex workers ourselves matter just as much as non sex working queer people and leftists.

We are not canaries in the coal mine whose deaths you can dismiss while you frame groups you actually care about as the sole human casualties of these policies. I need you to care that laws like the Online Safety Act lead sex workers to have to return to abusive third parties to find clients or to work in brothels we hate or to such poverty that we starve. I need you to care about payment processors refusing to pay out for adult content because it means sex workers cannot rely on online work when selling sex in-person becomes too much for our bodies or too risky.

Please care about sex workers' suffering, rather than only the fact your favourite queer game was de-listed from itch.io and that you have to use a VPN to access adult subreddits without giving your ID now.