I'm not smart. I just have a file of tricks that I use to behave like I was smart.
when you get called smart and you feel horrible because now people will expect you to be less slow than you are and know things you don’t and not forget how to do things like talk and eat and look for lost objects and you’re like “I’m not smart” and people think you’re insulting yourself or fishing for more compliments but you’re just trying to say “I am not what you think I am” which is true
I call this the screwdriver principal. You know how, when someone else is fixing something, and it's not going well, you have an urge to take the screwdriver away from them? Even when you know that they know what their doing? Even if you know that they know what they're doing better than they do?
Has anyone else noticed how, when you have a chronic condition of some kind, that there’s always the basic assumption from people around you that you’re not already doing everything you can?
It’s all about the illusion of control. People who are healthy like to believe they can always keep being healthy if they do the right things. They don’t want to think about how good people get struck with terrible circumstances for no reason.
So they keep assuming that if they got sick, they could do something to make it better.
And if you’re still sick, that must mean you’ve done something wrong or not done enough.
Nail. Head. The same attitude can be seen in how a lot of people talk about poverty.
My friend got married yesterday and we missed the wedding because of work but we made it to the reception. Because its mid-September and the reception was in a nature center (awesome!) there was a little bit of a fall theme. Not overbearingly, but the tables all had these tiny pumpkins.
So they’re cleaning up at the end of it and we’re still hanging out because we haven’t seen these people in forever and we can talk until three in the morning when we get together. All of a sudden, the Maid of Honor hands us a tiny pumpkin.
“Take one.”
“Um… okay?”
“Take another.”
“….?”
“It is my duty as Maid of Honor to make sure that the guests leave with an uncomfortable number of tiny pumpkins.”
So it turns out that she’d gotten a bunch of them for a Halloween party last year and after the party was over her mom threw them into the compost heap thinking that would be the end of it. But what she didn’t seem to realize was that if you put pumpkins in a compost heap- it grows more pumpkins. It grows pumpkins exponentially. Serious mathematical anomaly pumpkins.
So this year she has even more tiny pumpkins and she figured it would be a good idea to have them as decor for the reception. BUT- she would still have to throw them out at the end of the day and no matter where you throw them you are doomed to have a ridiculous amount of tiny pumpkins growing SOMEWHERE at your fault.
So everyone left with at least two tiny pumpkins and that’s how we made friends with the Maid of Honor.
So I forgot about it and then the next morning I woke up and found these two tiny pumpkins in my purse and had a puzzling moment of ‘what?’
We were invited to the Maid of Honor’s house the other day so we could:
take some of the flowers off her hands
help with some post-wedding stuff
watch the presidential debate
play Clue for like three hours
drink a lot of booze.
And there are just… tiny pumpkins EVERYWHERE.
They were in the bathroom.
At the end of the night, I counted 26 tiny pumpkins, and that was just what I could see.
Spock: I have absolutely no feelings, none especially regarding other beings. I am devoid of all illogical emotion. I love no one. It is in my blood, and no man can change that.
The rogue missed the session where we planned our complicated scheme for the next plot arc (which we’ve decided will hereafter to be referred to as Scheme2016). So I was talking to this player today about what his role in the scheme would be.
As the skill monkey, there are several parts of the plan that he is by far best suited to pull off. So I filled him in on what the general plan was, and started discussing how he might use his skills in the session to make it work. He wasn’t super fond of my first idea, but was able to come up with a few other options that were both creative and workable.
His teacher happened to overhear part of our conversation, which revolved heavily around bluffing, disguises, strategy and intrigue in general. And later the teacher came up to me and was like “Is he really able to follow all that? I’ve never seen him so verbally fluent. He’s normally so robotic” And I’m like “He’s not just following it - he’s innovating and always seeking out new ways to try things. When he doesn’t understand something, he asks about it. He even researches things on his own time. He is one of my more creative and motivated players”
So anyway, I’ve got another teacher who is impressed by how the kids are doing in my club. Someday all will understand the greatness of tabletop roleplaying games!
It's Super ButtButt! I guarantee you there's a hind paw RIGHT down her cleavage. With nails.
Artist Leesha Hannigan often delves into fantasy realms in her work, but we especially love this touching image of a girl holding her dragon. The piece, titled “The Quiet of a Beating Heart”, calls up a lot of questions in one simple image: is the dragon hurt? Has he been in a fight? Or is he blood-spattered from feeding? What are the herbs the girl is carrying? Does this girl have the Official Tor.com Dream Job of DRAGON VETERINARIAN? And if so, does she need an apprentice?
We promise not to tickle them while they’re sleeping.
“I want to get across that bisexuality isn’t just a transitional state from being straight to gay, or that, you know, you just help out when the homosexuals are all busy.”
Deutsche Bank is in deep trouble. Its stock price has plummeted in recent days after the Justice Department demanded the gigantic German bank pay $14 billion to settle claims regarding its sale of bad mortgage-backed securities in the the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The bank's shares fell to a new low on Tuesday over reports it might be seeking a bailout from the German government—which Deutsche Bank has denied. The crisis has exposed the fragile state of one of the world's largest banks, but it also highlights a potential massive conflict of interest for Donald Trump.
In the past few years, Trump obtained $364 million in loans from Deutsche bank via four mortgages on three of his prized properties: Miami's Doral National golf course, Chicago's Trump International Hotel and Tower, and the newly opened Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, a few blocks from the White House. A foreign entity holding so much of Trump's debt—financial leverage that could affect the decision-making of a future commander in chief—has raised alarms among ethics watchdogs. But with Deutsche Bank floundering, the possible conflicts posed by Trump's loans are compounding.
The financial health of Deutsche Bank is important for Trump's corporate empire. Because of Trump's history of failed projects and repeated bankruptcies, many of the world's top banks have long stopped doing business with him. Deutsche Bank was one of the only major banks—perhaps the only—that would work with him, and their relationship has been rocky. Trump wore out his welcome with Deutsche Bank's corporate banking arm in 2008, when he attempted to get out of paying $40 million he personally owed the bank after his company failed to make a payment deadline on a larger $640 million loan for his Chicago project. But Trump has maintained his relationship with Deutsche's so-called "private bank"—an arm of the bank that caters to wealthy people and has more flexibility in its lending standards than the corporate side. The four loans Trump currently has with Deutsche Bank are each from the private bank, a Deutsche Bank official told Mother Jones.
Deutsche Bank has vowed to fight the US government over the hefty fine it is threatening to impose. The bank has said it is prepared to pay no more than $2 billion or $3 billion and noted in a statement last week that it has "no intent to settle these potential civil claims anywhere near the number cited." Settlement negotiations are expected to take months, raising the possibility that Trump might be in the White House when a final decision is made. In an unprecedented face-off between a foreign bank and an administration led by a man deeply in debt to that bank, how would Trump balance the public interest with his private interests? Could American taxpayers be assured that a Trump administration would aggressively seek the maximum penalty against a lender that played a role in tanking the economy in 2008? Or would Deutsche Bank receive special consideration or favorable terms because of its ties to—or leverage over—Trump?
The news media has paid attention to the debt Trump, via partnerships, owes a Chinese bank. But Trump's relationship with Deutsche Bank has yet to receive much scrutiny. And if Deutsche Bank continues to falter, there is the possibility that it may need to sell off loans, perhaps including the Trump loans. It's hard to imagine a more staggering conflict of interest than a potential or sitting president's debts being placed on the global market. What individuals or financial institutions here or abroad might buy them? Meanwhile, Trump has offered no firm explanation for how he would separate himself from his businesses—or his debts—if elected president.
NASA created retro travel posters for different locations in our solar system in hopes of inspiring young people to imagine a future where common space travel is a possibility.
i hate when people call certain dog breeds ugly like dogs dont even have a concept of beauty they only understand love and loyalty how could u project the worst of humanity onto something so pure
“Animal Crossing, The Sims, and Minecraft are all worldwide sensations made by what one would now consider to be AAA companies, and yet, since not one of these games has violence as a core mechanic, each and every one of them has been criticized as not being ‘game-y’ enough.
The fact that the same criticism is levied at so-called ‘casual games’ and ‘casual gamers’ reveals a link between the two: games that don’t include violence as a core mechanic are perceived by the community as being fundamentally more feminine than games that do. Games with women-majority audiences, women-majority casts, and women-majority dev teams are frequently lumped in with this kind of critique.
Violence, goes the logic, is what makes a game masculine — and, by extension — being masculine is what makes a video game a video game.”
Today the Department of Awesomely Good Deeds salutes Mike MacMillan of Skeptisketch, who risked supreme stinkification to help a skunk who’d gotten its head stuck in a soda can somewhere in the wilds of rural Ontario. He calls it the bravest thing he’s ever done.
Concept: Some jackass shows Bucky how to make a blog and it becomes really popular. Not because it’s the blog of James Buchanan Barnes, American Legend, War Hero, Infamous Assassin, Alleged Terrorist. Nobody even knows it’s his blog. It gets really popular because people think it’s a really great shitpost generator or something. Because Bucky is just a Weird Fucking Person and everything he posts on his fucking personal blog comes off as somewhere between dril and Jaden Smith and people are like “this is some quality garbage right here” and thus Accidental Memelord Bucky is born.
Bucky posts things like
“What is wrong with bananas. I ate a banana today and it was Wrong. America why”
“Every time I put on my eye makeup it gets bigger. My whole face is eyeliner now.”
“Why does friendship feel so much like punching”
“When I wake up in the middle of the night I am either thinking ‘who am I? does my life have meaning?’ or “did I already eat all of the plums?’”
“Why are you so grumpy” they ask me. they do not realize this is just my Face.”
“I know i said i would give my left arm for a cup of coffee but i am more awake now and i would like my arm back please”
“I guess I must have done something horrible in a past life. I mean. I definitely did something horrible in this life, so. “
