#Road to Worlds 2024

[nonametis]

Those guessing games are getting very hard 😭

[karaptcg]

Road to 2024 Worlds: Week 2

Just one event this weekend and it was a little like 15 player League Challenge. I've been super busy lately and it's early on in the season so hopefully I don't get punished too hard for not going to literally every event all the time because that is expensive and exhausting.

Saturday, Aug. 5: League Challenge, 4th Place (3-3)

I played turbo Lost Box again for the hell of it. Still a pretty awful list but the deck is so powerful it doesn't often matter. I honestly didn't miss Raikou at all this event. (I finally found my copy of it though so I can play a better deck next time!)

Here's how it went: T vs Miraidon T vs Lost Tina W vs Mew W vs Chien-Pao

Starting 0-0-2 is very fun in these tournaments. I was pretty checked out after the second one! But winning the next two guaranteed 4th and the possibility of that happening scared 2 people away from IDing so...small victories?

I actually ended up pairing into the only 3-0 (who also happened to be a friend I've been playing with since I was like 14) in the last round which was a little weird to me as there were other people with better records than my 1-0-2 that could've paired him instead. That man had been drawing god hands all day and he finally hit the end of the streak against me. Good beats, I guess?

Puts us at 20/600.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Road To Ruin

start of a postapocalyptic fantasy series set in an Asian-inspired desert world plagued by dangerous storms

follows a courier who transports romantic letters between a prince and princess, who helps the princess escape across the wastes towards the prince’s safe haven

but they’re pursued by bounty hunters, and accidentally uncover some ancient secrets. and also she’s in love with both of them

dinosaurs, magical motorbikes,

bi MC, start of polyam triad

[kissoflifeig]

KISS OF LIFE ✧ KISS ROAD 1st WORLD TOUR

[valerianinc]

Happy trans visibility day!!!

Art by @vranart

For a long time we wanted to draw one of our lead characters Chanel (he/him) together with CHNT's Sydney because, like we've mentioned in one of our posts, we take a lot of inspiration from this podcast. Also because both of them are:

Fat, trans & fabulous!

[Image description]

A digital sketch of Chanel Boijko and Sydney Sargent, showing them from the hips up. The piece uses minimal colors: shades of blue for the background and the lineart, and pink for the lighting. Both Chanel and Sydney are looking at the viewer, Chanel making peace signs with both his hands and smiling cheerfully, and Sydney leaning on his crutches with a more relaxed smile. Chanel is a short, fat boy with freckles and shoulder-length wavy hair with bangs. He's wearing a dress with puffy sleeves and a flared skirt, heart earrings, and a simple ribbon choker. Sydney is a short, fat man with long wavy hair, with some plants and mushrooms sticking out of it. He's wearing a baggy sweater and a skirt, and several layered necklaces.

[abigailspinach]

“How often in 100 days do you get to change the trajectory of the world? How often in 100 days do you get to do something that’s going to impact generations to come?” Walz asked. “And how often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his a**, sent him on the road?”

The line was well received on the call and almost immediately grabbed headlines. For many Democrats, at least, the online virality – with apologies to Biden’s “Dark Brandon” meme – was the kind they have pined for over the past few years.

Walz also has a personal story befitting the zeitgeist – a family history, as he discussed last month, of infertility troubles, with his wife of three decades, Gwen, which allows him to speak with some authority against opponents or skeptics of in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

“My oldest daughter’s name is Hope. That’s because my wife and I spent seven years trying to get pregnant, needed fertility treatments, things like IVF – things (MAGA Republicans) would ban,” Walz told Harris supporters. “These guys are the anti-freedoms.”

And to draw a bright, cheeky line under his own childhood experience, Walz – not for the last time – recounted that he “grew up in a small town: 400 people, 24 kids in the class, 12 cousins.”

Prior to Congress, Walz was a high school teacher and football coach and served in the Army National Guard. Over more than a decade in Congress, he assembled a fairly centrist voting record. As a first-time campaigner, he opposed a ban on same-sex marriage and supported abortion rights. And once in Congress, he balanced that out with comparatively more conservative positions on gun rights, which resulted in scoring a National Rifle Association endorsement. Walz has since fallen out of favor with the gun lobby over his support for gun safety actions as governor.

“I think he was a solid Democratic member of the House with a few twists - focus on ag, farmers, rural areas,” said Democratic strategist Jeff Blodgett, a longtime aide to the late Sen. Paul Wellstone. “I think that he wanted to protect rifles and things of that nature as a rural congressman.”

Walz ran for governor in 2018, emerging victorious by a double-digit margin. He won reelection in 2022 with 52 percent of the vote. As governor Walz had to grapple with divided government and slim majorities in the state Legislature. But in 2022, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (as the state’s Democratic Party is known) won control of both the state House and Senate giving Walz’s party a slim “trifecta” of legislative control.

That allowed Walz to sign into law a raft of expansive social welfare programs such as free lunch for public school students, expansive access to Medicaid, increased protections that allow workers to unionize and expanded medical and family paid family leave.

Through the trifecta, Minnesota Democrats were also able to codify abortion rights into law, increase transgender rights protections, pass a marijuana legalization bill and install new gun safety laws. Progressives hailed the work as an example of all that Democrats could achieve. Former President Barack Obama wrote in a tweet praising the most recent legislative session that it was a “reminder that elections have consequences.”

Walz touted the trifecta’s work in a combative 2023 State of the State address.

“There’s nowhere quite like Minnesota right now,” he told the audience of lawmakers. “Together, we’re not just showing the people of Minnesota what we’re capable of in delivering on our promises. We’re showing the entire American people just how much promise is contained in that progressive vision held by so many people.”

“As governor, he’s embraced the idea that it’s really important to invest in people and infrastructure to grow the economy,” Blodgett said. “And to do it in a way that really helps people in the middle and down below. To me, it’s just a huge focus on economic issues that are kitchen table issues that people care about.”

When speculation began about who Harris would pick as a running mate, Walz started out as the darkest of dark horses. He did get support from a few members of Congress such as Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig and Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as well as encouragement from labor unions. In the end, Walz’s background as a governor experienced in working with Democrats and Republicans and his roots in rural Minnesota made him an appealing choice for Harris.

Walz was also a surprise to Republicans.

“Tim Walz doesn’t even register on the fear-o-meter,” Minnesota Republican strategist Kevin Poindexter said before the announcement, adding that Republicans had been more worried about Harris picking either Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. “Him joining the ticket as VP does not bring anything.”

Democratic strategist Raghu Devaguptapu, a former Democratic Governors Association political director, characterized Walz as a “real steady hand” more than anything else as a governor.

“He’s not the most charismatic guy, but he’s a steady hand. He’s really thoughtful, very likeable. He’s done a really nice job of building a broad coalition of support. … That’s the center of strength around Tim Walz,” Devaguptapu said.

[x-heesy]

𝚆𝚒𝚜𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚗 𝚍𝚘𝚗’𝚝 𝚓𝚞𝚍𝚐𝚎 - 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚜𝚎𝚎𝚔 𝚝𝚘 𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚍. -𝚆𝚎𝚒 𝚆𝚞 𝚆𝚎𝚒 🤍

𝙽𝚎𝚠 𝚆𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍 𝚋𝚢 𝚉𝚊𝚙 𝙼𝚊𝚖𝚊

(𝙼𝚊𝚢𝚋𝚎𝚒𝚊𝚖𝚊𝚍𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚎𝚛𝚋𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚊𝚖𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚢𝚘𝚗𝚎)

[teka-chat]

my last art of 2023, here's a Goldie !

[nonametis]

On the road | 07.05.2024 via insta

[karaptcg]

Road to 2024 Worlds: Week 1

This was my first weekend of competitive play for the new season. Here's what I got up to:

Friday, Jul. 21: Weekly League, 3rd place(2-0-2)

No CP awarding going on here, but I do these to get games in with a couple of friends every now and then. I played Gardevoir with a Lost Vacuum and a split of Forest and Sky Seal Stone.

Here's how it went: T vs United Wings W vs Palkia T vs Lugia SS W vs Fusion Mew

Played against my testing partner in the last round and absolutely blew him away with the Sky Seal Stone he didn't know I put in my deck. We usually know each other's lists very well, but he had just gotten back from vacation and I took our resulting testing drought as a fun opportunity to surprise him.

Saturday, Jul. 22: League Cup, 20th Place (3-3)

Played the same list as the day before. Daniel Altavilla, Chip Richey and his brother were there playing, along with a few other local friends. The cup ended up with 40 players and was an absolute blast.

Here's how it went: W vs Inteleon Urshifu L vs Lugia L vs ArcUmbreon W vs Fusion Mew L vs Chien-Pao W vs Lugia SS

So close but so far. I can't say I didn't have fun though. I definitely had variance not go my way a good number of times.

In Round 2, I played a Temple of Sinnoh and Iono'd my opponent to 2 cards. I needed them to whiff a counter stadium for a turn to have a chance and they...didn't. Kind of unlucky, given that they hadn't thinned their deck much that game but such is life.

In Round 3, I lost after missing a highly probable Boss's Orders for game. On my final turn, I had 9 cards left in deck. I drew for turn, taking me down to 8. I used Mew's Mysterious Tale finding an Ultra Ball, thinning my deck down to 7. I used Refinement to draw 2 cards, taking me down to 5. Then, I played the Ultra Ball to find Shining Arcana Gardevoir, played it and used Shining Arcana to draw 2 more cards, leaving my deck at 2. My 2 remaining Boss's Orders were in the bottom 3 cards. Woof.

The other loss I'm honestly not sure how I managed. I had some awkward draws but it felt okay-ish. I probably just made a couple misplays that I can't remember. No X-2's made cut that day so I didn't feel too bad about it.

A friend ended up taking it down with UrshiInteleon. I probably would not have fared well in that top cut anyways.

Going 3-3 at my first League Cup of the season is a time honored tradition with 3 seasons of history behind it, so...yeah. Tradition!

Sunday, Jul. 23: League Challenge, 3rd place (2-0-1)

I was conflicted on if I even wanted to go to this one. I hadn't heard good things about recent changes made to this store, but I decided that Championship Points are more important than well run events so there I went.

I was a little burnt out on Gardie, so I decided to sleeve up Turbo Lost Box, turn my brain off and have some fun. I couldn't find my copy of Raikou V and didn't have extra Forest Seal Stones handy so I ended up just playing a weird suboptimal list. It was just a small event after all. Most of the more invested players in the area travelled the extra hour to the League Cup that happened on the same day.

Here's how it went: T vs Chien Pao W vs Lugia W vs Lugia

There was supposed to be a fourth round, but the organizer made a mistake. I wanted to play more Poke, so I was left a little disappointed but it is what it is. There were 3 2-0-1s by the end and my resistance ended up being the worst.

One story I really do want to share is that my round 3 opponent conceded after seeing his opening hand, packed up all his stuff and declared "I'm going to go home, get drunk and watch Tokyo Ghoul." and then did exactly that. My opening hand was fire and I'm a little sad I didn't get to play it out but at least I got a funny story out of it.

My testing partner ended up getting first with Fusion Mew though! The car came home with 25 CP so...profit?

That was the whole weekend for me! Pretty uneventful but I got to play three days of Poke so I have minimal complaints.

10/???

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Walking In Two Worlds & The Everlasting Road

YA sff set in the near future where an opensource augmented reality is commonly used like social media, and there’s also a completely virtual fantasy game version

follows an Anishinaabe girl who who’s the top player in the VR game, and is constantly fighting to keep her place against the misogynist neo-nazi group in second place

as well as her real life, dealing with being a shy and self-conscious teen growing up on the Rez, and her brother having cancer

and a Uyghur boy who’s moved to her community from China after finding acceptance in an online community (even when he doesn’t agree with their more extreme views) - but when he gets to know Bugz, he has to decide who truly deserves his loyalty

great mix of sff and culture, the future while also very real community traumas of the past (and present)

[kissoflifeig]

KISS OF LIFE ✧ KISS ROAD 1st WORLD TOUR

[legofanguy]

Road Trip AUgust

A Inuyasha, Legend of Zelda, Swtor, World of Warcraft, Wildstar, Urusei Yatsura, and Fairy Tail crossover for @promptsbytaurie event AUgust 2024 day 8 road trip AU, featuring my original characters.

A group of families from New York are on a road trip across the USA. The first stop on the road is Hocking Hills in Ohio, and the families park their RVs at the camp site. The younger children run to play in the playground as their older siblings and parents set up the camp, with Inuyasha, one of the fathers, moving a table with his daughter Moroha as his wife Kagome get the food ready.

At their camp site, Charlotte Hyrule hold her phone up as she try to get a signal and she ask her mother Zelda while her father Link is put the heavy stuff up, "Mom, where can I get a signal for my phone?" and Zelda tell her older daughter, "Charlotte, the whole point of this trip is to not be on your phone." and Charlotte is spechless.

Meanwhile, Charlotte's young sister Sonia check out the camp with sisters Towa and Setsuna. The camp look nice and it has a swimming pool, but some parts of it look a little old.

At the Mirsan family camp site, the twin girls Kin'u and Gyokuto laugh about the green hair boy Kitaro Moroboshi as he try to start a fire for his little sister Nyoko and her best friend Nasha Dragneel. At the table, their younger brother Hisui is playing a card game with Michael Shan, Ash Dorne, Petra Spar, Kevin Piece, Max Revel, Samson Cadera, and Tao Yaza.

At his family RV, Gramakk the orc read a guide on Hocking Hills as his wife Zanawe put their son Kokdutu to bed.

The next day, the families get ready for a day in Hocking Hills, with Juliasa making sure that her teenage daughter is okay and to not act like her father Crual.

On the park, the families travel around the sites and the girls take selfie of themselves in nature.

Back at the campsite, the adults make plans on where to go next and Inuyasha said to them, "Why don't we travel on Route 66?" and the adults look at each other about the idea.

Soon, by the morning light, the RVs travel on the famous Route 66, starting at Chicago, Illinois. The families first explore the famous sites at Chicago for three days before they hit the road again. While traveling in Illinois, they see the Gemini, the town of Springfield, and Dixie Travel Plaza.

The RVs arrived at Missouri, and they see the World's second largest rocking chair in Fannig, Red's Giant Hamburg, 66 Drive-In, and Ted Drewes on their journey.

The RVs arrived at Kansas, where the families visit Baxter Spring Independent Oil and Gas Service station, drive through Rainbow Bridge, and visit Williams' Store as well Kan-O-Tex Service Station.

The RVs arrived at Oklahoma, where the families visit Blue Whale of Catoosa, Pops restaurant, Round barn, Milk Bottle Grocery, Rock Cafe, and Foyil Filling Station.

The RVs arrived at Texas, where the families visit the Leaning Tower of Britten, Cadiliac ranch, The Big Texan Steak Ranch, and U-Drop Inn.

The RVs arrived at New Mexico, where the families visit Blue Swallow Motel, El Rancho Hotel & Motel, and Maisel's Indian Trading Post.

The RVs arrived at Arizona, where the families visit Wigwam Motel, Standin' on the Corner Park, Jack Rabbit Trading Post, and Meteor City.

The RVs arrived at California, the last stop of Route 66. In California, the families visit Elmer's Bottle Tree Ranch, Cucamonga Service Station, Aztec Hotel, and Los Angeles.

In the Los Angeles hotel, the adults start their plans for the road trip back home and the locations to visit.

[merpmonde]

A few more odds and sods from Triberg. I'm not going to show much more because someone commented on a previous post saying that they will visit Triberg in June, so I'm not going to spoil everything for them, particularly regarding cuckoo clocks.

The Black Forest is well known for its cuckoo clocks, and Triberg is home to the most extreme: the largest, which is a possible stop on the Railway Adventure Trail we covered yesterday, and the smallest, which are housed in the Schwarzwald Museum. But there is also a "first biggest cuckoo clock"... in Schonach. This would be the first clock to be recognised as the biggest by the well-known record book, but it has since been overtaken by the one in Triberg.

It's closed on Mondays, so all I have is this photo from the main road between Triberg and Schonach - in which I've cropped out the clock on the left. The clock is on the old road between the two towns, which is much nicer and at times bucolic. Schonach has a ski jumping hill which I'd like to visit, but didn't manage to fit it in on my one-day trip.

Between the waterfalls and the first biggest cuckoo clock is the Bergsee, a tiny lake with a simple café-restaurant on its edge - decent food, calmer* and not as pricey as downtown Triberg. The lake served as an alternate venue for ice-skating competitions in the 1920s, when Berlin wasn't cold enough!

[gentlethorns]

eeeeee excited to write after work even though i'm exhausted bc my period is coming and i'm flaring up AND i had to be on the truck unload today so my body hurts SO bad. i got some good scenes coming up bc this story is reaching terminal velocity!!!! struggling not to rush to the end and let the story organically run its course through me but it's so hard lol. i want to have it done by the end of next week so i'll have something to celebrate by the weekend

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"America First tapped into the widespread isolationism that was among the nation’s most powerful impulses in the thirties. In rejecting the League of Nations, imposing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and redefining the war as a scam, America had returned to its long tradition of non-entanglement and unilateralism. FDR’s hands-off “Good Neighbor” policy toward Latin America, welcomed south of the border, was much in the same vein. The Senate was dominated by isolationists, including Republicans whose populism meant that FDR could count on them to support his New Deal as long as he steered clear of intervention. Polls showed that Americans overwhelmingly opposed getting involved, and by 1940 the ranks of isolationists were swelled by defections from the pacifism that was once widespread but no longer seemed credible. Right-wingers were especially eager to keep out of war, but so were left-wingers. Nobody was more isolationist than the communists; taking their cue from Moscow, which had made its peace with Hitler, they loudly advocated keeping America out of war. This made for some strange bedfellows, even if the romance was short-lived.

Antiwar music lovers on the right and the left, for example, both applauded Songs for John Doe, a scathing album issued in March of 1941 by a pioneering folk group called the Almanac Singers. The Almanacs included Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Millard Lampell; later Woody Guthrie would join. Reflecting a change in communist orthodoxy (Seeger was a party member), the previous anti-fascism of the Left was abandoned after the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement in favor of keeping America out of the European conflict. Thus, the album earned praise from the Daily Worker newspaper for attacking the prospect of American involvement in the war.

One song implied that the urge to war was yet another New Deal effort to eliminate surpluses, except instead of burying agricultural excess the plan was to “Plow under, plow under, / Plow under every fourth American boy.” The Almanacs leveled equally savage musical denunciations at Roosevelt in “The Ballad of October 16th,” whose lyrics bitterly commemorated registration day for the new peacetime draft:

Oh Franklin Roosevelt told the people how he felt. We damned near believed what he said; He said, “I hate war—and so does Eleanor, But we won’t be safe till everybody’s dead.”

Eric Bernay, in his midtown Manhattan record store, The Music Room, supposedly had so many requests for the record from America Firsters that he kept it hidden in the bathroom. That may be, but the album probably got more attention on the left. “After one performance before the League of American Writers,” Richard and JoAnne Reuss report in their history of leftist folk music, “Theodore Dreiser jumped up, planted a kiss on the cheek of a startled Lee Hays, and declared, ‘If we had six more teams like these boys, we could save America!’ ” A few months later, after Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the album was withdrawn and the Almanacs started singing a very different tune. The title song of their next, and last, album, “Dear Mr. President,” insisted that “Mr. President, we haven’t always agreed in the past, I know,” but the important thing now was “we got to lick Mr. Hitler.”

- Daniel Akst, War By Other Means: How the Pacifists of World War 2 Changed American for Good. New York: Melville House, 2022. p. 53-55.