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[thepookainthehat]

There is no shame in an honest day’s work.  No reason to lower your eyes and refuse to answer when someone asked you what you did for a living; no reason to feel like wiping a counter or turning a wrench made you somehow lesser, made you somehow inferior.  Len knows all who labor, whatever color their collar happens to be, and he loves them all with equal grace.  White collar, blue collar, the occasional butcher or surgeon who considers themselves blurred all the way into red collar, they are all his children.

He also loves those who aspire to leave his grace, the artists and authors who dream of making their muse their master, riding their passion all the way to plenty; the ones who dream with genuine delight of the day they can marry and retire, staying home to raise a family, doing the hard work of education and nurturing while someone else serves in Len’s temples.  He loves them knowing they want nothing more than to leave him behind, one more forgotten god on a life path littered with unneeded theologies and thrown-aside prayers.

He has room for them all, and he knows there will always be another, because there is always work to be done, and always hands to do it.  He would prefer that all who work beneath his banner be there of their own free will.  He knows that isn’t the case, and those are the only prayers that he regrets.  The compelled.  The captive.  The nonconsensual.  He cannot free them from his temples, must depend on human hands to untie the knots and undo the locks, but he can hope for them, and he can answer them as kindly as his nature allows.

Len loves the workers.  Len loves the union man.  And Len loves an unvoided warranty.  Take care of what you own, Len begs, or be without.

Len loves you, too.

[thepookainthehat]

“Use your gifts and your talents to greatest possible effect while you can. Spread joy wherever possible. Laugh at jokes. Tell jokes. Make puns and bugger the embuggerances. Read books. Read my books. You might like them. You might find something else you like even more than them. Look for these things in life.

Question authority. Champion good causes. Speak out against injustice. Do not tolerate bullies or bigots or racists or anti-intellectuals or the narrow-minded. Use your education to challenge them. Broaden their perspectives. Make the world you interface with a happier place.

These are your choices. Choices you have been fortunate to have been given, so don’t waste them while you have them. Don’t look back in years to come and wish you had grasped a fleeting opportunity. Grasp it now with both hands, Live. Strive. Love.”

from A Little Advice for Life taken from ‘Terry Pratchett: from birth to death, a writer.’

—Sir Terry Pratchett; April 28, 1948 – March 12, 2015

One of the greatest compliments I've ever received is that I resemble Sam Vimes.

Mind how you go.

[thepookainthehat]

If you knew, then it wouldn't be random.

RANDOM DASHBOARD INSPECTION!

[thepookainthehat]

[thepookainthehat]

something you said has been on my mind for a while - "kink is not inherently sexual". good faith! I don't understand that at all, could you explain it a bit?

This post is educational, hooray! Extensive discussion of kink under the cut. Nothing explicitly sexual is described in detail.

Please note that in this post, I use the terms top and Dom/me interchangeably. This is because I personally identify as a "top" and not a Dom. Some communities draw sharp lines between these two terms, and it's useful to make sure that you're using the same definition as other people when you're talking. Some people use "top" solely to refer to the giving or penetrative partner, which is not synonymous with the dominant partner. Topping subs, power bottoms, and all other permutations exist. I just use that term for myself because I don't like being called a Dom. It sounds like a guy's name to me, I don't like it.

When I text my wife in every morning, "Please bring me my coffee," and she answers, "Yes, Sir!" is that sexual? I'm surely not feeling sexual when I'm barely awake. When I hold my other wife's hand when she's having a depressive fit and tell her, "Daddy's got you, it's okay," that's kink, but it's not sexual. In that moment, neither of us feel particularly sexy, and we're surely not engaging in sex, but it's kink that - forgive the pun - binds us more strongly together.

One of my girls wears a 24/7 collar that I locked in place. (She can ask me at any point to take it off, or she can take it off herself if she wants to, but she chooses this.) That's kink. It's also... a necklace. That's not any more inherently sexual than her wedding ring, though it - for us - certainly symbolizes part of our relationship that happens to sometimes include sex, exactly the same as a wedding ring.

There are a lot of types of kink that don't include sexual contact in any way or which might include sexual contact but don't need to. One of my friends is a sex-repulsed ace bootblack. They literally take care of the boots of tops, usually at play parties. For them, this act of service and submission allows them to go into a particular headspace that's very fulfilling for them. They are explicitly serving the people whose boots they clean and polish. The Dom/mes receive that service and not only get really great-looking boots out of the deal but also get the feeling of power from having someone eager to take care of them and serve them. For some of us, that kind of service allows us access to a feeling of power that can be hard to access in our daily life, and that feels really good.

Sometimes, it can feel good in a sexy way, and sometimes it feels good in a "makes lizard brain feel powerful but not sexy" way. Neither one is inherently better or worse or more or less kinky than the other.

Sometimes, people who like being whipped like it because the line between pain and pleasure is like a wave on the ocean, and they want to surf it. Sometimes, that involves mashing squishy bits together, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, it's just about riding that endorphin wave and then having someone take care of you afterwards.

Sometimes, people want to be tied up in elaborate shibari knots and fucked. Sometimes, people want to be tied up in elaborate shibari knots because that process requires a lot of trust and is an intimate ritual that takes a lot of time. Sometimes, it's both. Sometimes, people want to tie up others because it's a beautiful work of art, because that ritual of binding is a ritual and accesses something sacred for them. Sometimes, they want to be tied up because it's playtime, and that's fun for them! Sometimes, they want to be tied up because when they're tied up, they are 0% in control, and they want to just surrender control to someone whom they can trust.

Some people want to go into sub space - that headspace I talked about earlier - because in their everyday life, they have a lot of responsibilities and stress, and going into that space where nobody can ask anything from them, where they have no responsibility to make any decisions at all, is a relief to them. That might involve squishy bits, or it might not. Some people like going into that sub space because being someone's Good Boy, Sweet Girl, or Good Pup is gender-affirming for them. A friend of mine only feels really safe when he's got his pup hood on, because that means he's With Master, who will protect him.

Some people get gender affirmation out of being in control, being someone's Daddy or Mistress, Sir or Boss. It allows them to access a power that helps them to square their shoulders and take on the world.

All of this entirely skips over the fact that a person's primary sexual organ is between their ears, and some people do get sexual fulfillment out of kink even when no genitalia are involved at all, but I cannot stress enough that the reasons that people enter into the multitude of kink situations in the world are as varied as the people involved. People gain access to comfort, to feelings of stability and order and control over their lives, to gender affirmation, to endorphins that are or aren't sexual in nature, to release from responsibility, to ritual and intimacy, to the ability to provide for others and take care of others in a way that their outside lives may or may not permit. For that matter, they may simply gain access to a paycheck, and that's fine, too. That's no more or less "selling your body" than when I used to run my ass off for 13+ hours a day at my retail job, and I guarantee they're making way, way better money.

The fact that so many people see kink as only and purely sexual means they're missing out on so much of what kink can offer, and narrowing down the experiences of others to this tiny little sliver of what actually exists. Yes, it can be sexual, but it doesn't have to be. The reasons that people engage in kink are as varied as the reasons that people engage in any other kind of interaction, and the fulfillment they get from it is as varied, too.

[thepookainthehat]

He wept, which implies eyes or eye-like organs, and he is often described as speaking. This is more of a derivative from a negative, but since other portions of the bible describe miracles of speech-without-words-or-mouths, it strongly implies the existence of a mouth, tongue, larynx, vocal chords, etc.

TIL there is no physical description of Jesus in the Bible.

via ift.tt

[thepookainthehat]

[thepookainthehat]

I'm like, genuinely frightened about what would happen to the city of Baldur's Gate if there was a huge earthquake, having now seen just how many puzzle dungeons, crypts, secret undercities, temples, murder basements etc are crammed under it. Like if you were going to dig it up to lay fibreoptic cables you'd probably unleash 50 different horrors per street.

[thepookainthehat]

Number of Goblins, ranked

One Goblin - That's just a goblin. He's probably just getting his groceries or something. Leave him alone, you asshole.

Ten Goblins -- That's a fairly normal amount of goblins. There's generally around ten goblins in any given situations. They're just here for aesthetic, so you know it's a fantasy world. Remember to tip them when you leave.

One Hundred Goblins -- Ok this is too many goblins, but this is a reasonable amount of too many goblins. Like, this is maybe an army of goblins or something? My point is that they're probably here for a good reason. Best not to mess with them, they're likely load-bearing in some way.

One Thousand Goblins -- This is probably a goblin town, in which case this is really more a case of One Human, which is a completely different list only available on goblintube. If not, all these goblins are lost. Return them to the goblin town. The orcs are worried.

One Million Goblins -- A million goblins? I'm not sure I've even seen a million things in my life , and now there's a million goblins? That's, like, all the goblins. Why are you at a convention of all the goblins? Are you a goblin? Actually, no, that would make sense. Yeah, that's probably what's going on here. Sorry you had to find out this way.

One Billion Goblins -- Ok, look, at this point you have clearly been sent to a future time where humanity is extinct and goblins have inherited the earth. I can think of no other explanation for a billion goblins. This sadly means that you're the weirdo, and you have to go be a cryptid now. At least you can find a phone and read the goblin creepypastas about you.

One Trillion Goblins -- How? What is happening? This is more goblins then there are birds, and they'll all in your house? How is your house this big? Wait, forget the goblins, how is your house this big? Are the goblins here to guillotine you? Probably! Move out of your stupid mansion and let the goblins have it, you weird rich bird-hoarding freak.

One Quadrillion Goblins -- One quadrillion? I'm only like 80% sure that's even a real number! Luckily, you won't have to deal with a quadrillion goblins for long, because soon they'll collapse together under their gravity, forming a far more manageable single planet-sized goblin. Picard's not gonna be happy about this one!

More Goblins -- Fuck off, you do not have more then a quadrillion goblins. Why are you lying? Are you worried I won't like you if you don't claim to have an implausible number of goblins? Don't worry. Your worth is not dependent on your goblin numbers. Go back to the actual number of goblins secure in the fact I love you, no matter how few goblins you have <3

[thepookainthehat]

I'm re-reading the Discworld series for reasons, and honestly the most relatable part of reading these as an adult is how many of the protagonists start out being tired, used to their little routine and vaguely disgruntled by the interruption of the Plot. Sam Vimes wants to lie drunk in a gutter and absolutely doesn't want to be arresting dragons. Rincewind is yanked into every situation he's ever encountered, though he'd much rather be lying in a gutter too. (Minus the alcohol. Plus regretting everything he's ever done said witnessed or even heard about fourth-hand in his whole life.) Granny Weatherwax is deeply suspicious of foreign parts and that includes the next town over; Nanny has leaned into the armor of "nothing ever happens to jolly grannies who terrorize their daughters-in-law and make Saucy Jokes"

Only the young people don't seem to have picked up on this---and that's fortunate, because someone has to run around making things happen, if only so Vimes and Granny and Rincewind have a reason to get up (complaining bitterly the whole time) and put it all to rights. Without Carrot, Margrat, Eric, etc. these characters don't have that reason; they're likely to stay in the metaphorical gutter and keep wondering where it all went wrong or why anything has to change.

............well, that's not quite true. You get the sense that Vetinari knows how much certain people hate the Plot. And as the person sitting behind the metaphorical lighting board of Ankh-Morpork, he takes no small pleasure in forcing the Plot-haters specifically to stand up, and say some lines.

[thepookainthehat]

Bold take, but if an airport cannot fit carryon baggage, it has been oversold. Do not tell me 'we will check your carryon free of charge': you are not providing me with a service, you are escaping culpability for your business decision.

It is not, and has never been 'more convenient' for you to put my bag in checked baggage, because the things I have with me are with me for a reason. In my case, I have temperature sensitive medications, but I have long included a toothbrush and a quick change of clothes in case - as is so frequently the case - you (the airport) lose my checked baggage.

If you wish to say "we erred, and now we need help", then do so. Do not pretend that this is some favour that you are doing me. Pay me, or at least fucking apologize.

[thepookainthehat]

I'm working as a professional DM for the city I live in. Adventures and sessions are based on dollar store finds, and the PCs do not complain.

The reason tabletop RPGs use polyhedral dice – in spite of them being such an unlikely thing to have on hand in the pre-gaming-store era, and rare even in the roleplaying hobby’s tabletop wargame predecessors – is because there just happened to be an educational supply store where they could easily be sourced near where the designers of Dungeons & Dragons lived.

The reason that D&D dragons are colour-coded is because the game pre-dates the widespread availability of fantasy minifigs, so they represented dragons using plastic dinosaurs from the local five-and-dime, and those are just the colours that the plastic dinosaurs used to represent each type of dragon happened to be.

The reason that iconic D&D monsters like the bulette, the owlbear and the rust monster exist is because one day, a bunch of bootleg Ultraman kaiju figurines just happened to be mixed in with the plastic dinosaurs, and – being unfamiliar with Ultraman, and the bootlegs in question being almost unrecognisably shitty anyway – they statted up what they thought the figurines looked like.

Sometimes I wonder what the history of the tabletop roleplaying hobby would have looked like if any of those coincidences had lined up just a little bit differently.

[thepookainthehat]

More to do with "constantly online" than cloud specific, I blew a fuse (literally) during a portion of pandemic lockdowns when grocers were only allowed to sell "essential items", and was told to order them online by the nearest vendors that had them. This led to a discussion about how many electrical devices function poorly without power..

smartphone storage plateauing in favor of just storing everything in the cloud is such dogshit. i should be able to have like a fucking terabyte of data on my phone at this point. i hate the fucking cloud

[thepookainthehat]

most of the talk on this website about Game Changer is how Sam Reich psychologically tortures his contestants, but I want to make it clear to the uninitiated that he's actually extremely ethical about it

He sends out a company wide email and asks them to choose episodes based on a chili pepper rating system

meaning he doesn't put 🌶️🌶️ people into 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ episodes

they're also big on consent ie cast and crew have to be okay with it before they'll do nudity or something like that in an episode

it's like the bdsm of psychological torture. safe, sane, and consensual.

the contestants know what they're getting into, and they're full down

[thepookainthehat]

Person who really wants to be dominated by a strong-armed authoritarian in a snappy uniform, but also they want to keep their kinks ideologically pure, so they split the difference and fantasise about getting their ass beat by the inspector-general of the US Postal Service.

[thepookainthehat]

Thinking of the larger context of LOTR and like, the fellowship swapping old war stories and shit and Sam just says “Yeah I killed a huge spider…Shelob, I think?”

And Gandalf just blinks and is like, “You what now?”

“Yeah, killed it. Had to save Frodo”

Gandalf elects not to tell Sam that he killed the spawn of a primordial demon.