ok, i’m gonna make a lotta connections here, but trust me and follow along
griffin had the plot figured out pretty damn well by crystal kingdom. he had determined:
who the seven birds were
that the red robe was barry and one of the seven birds
red robe/barry was in love with the red robe in the cave to whom the umbrella belonged
this cave red robe was lup, taako’s twin
that barry/red robe was a lich, so it is VERY LIKELY he had also planned that lup was a lich, bc i doubt he ever intended to permanently kill taako’s sister
i would like to posit that, based on these decisions, griffin had also:
realized the OP-ness of two in-control, immortal, undead characters
decided that he needed some sort of way to keep that in check
introduced the idea that barry (and by extension, lup) are not infalliable and can lose control as a way to check that
determined that, since this would no longer matter if/when lup and barry are reunited, he needed a stronger, larger control over their power
created an arc based around the dangers of messing with necromancy and introduced a character and deity whose purposes are to prevent reanimation and protect the sancitity of life and death
so what i’m getting down to is that kravitz/the raven queen were introduced in order to show that the constant resurrection of the ipre and, more specifically, barry and lup’s lichdom have consequences
let’s suppose that i’m right. let’s suppose that i managed to guess the actual line of thought behind the crystal kingdom arc and kravitz’s insertion into the plot.
then can you imagine griffin mcelroy’s fucking face when justin announced that taako, brother to two liches, was going to romance the grim reaper
ok, i have to add some of the tags from this post bc they’re some of the best i’ve ever had
i like when you’re in the grocery store and you see people buying eggs because they always pick up the carton and then open it like it’s a metal briefcase full of cash involved in a drug deal and they’re confirming it’s money. “don’t bother counting it, it’s all there. 12.” then they always pick one up and inspect it like, “yeah, it’s grade A alright…the real deal.”
People are checking to see if any of the eggs are cracked you walnut
Tbh, I always saw my mom check the eggs in the carton and for the longest time I didn’t know why and everytime I went out and bought eggs I’d copy her because that’s what everyone does, open the carton. So I’d always just end up staring at an open carton of eggs in the grocery store thinking “Yes. These are eggs”. And I’d buy them.
Smh how come y’all never asked why? I’ve known since elementary school
Social anxiety is usually the answer.
FYI for folk who wondered but didn’t want to ask, you open the carton and gently twist each egg in its socket. If the egg moves smoothly, the shell isn’t cracked. If it sticks, there’s probably a crack underneath (the yolk sticks to the cardboard) and you should not buy it (cracked eggs are potentially sick-making eggs).
Likewise, when buying meat, check to make sure that the plastic wrap is intact, and there’s no juice leaking through. If there is, and you can, you’d be doing a good thing to bring it to the store manager’s attention.
Reblogging for people who didn’t know. I knew but both those techniques are very useful. 🙂
Reblogging for useful knowledge! I’ve been grocery shopping with my dad since I was a toddler, and one of my responsibilities was always the egg checking, so it never occurred to me that people might not be familiar with why it should be done.
Other things that might be useful: Don’t assume all the milk has the same expiration dates. If you notice that the milk you’ve grabbed is close to the date, rummage around for a newer carton. But please also have the decency to put things back tidily when you’re done, don’t just leave milk everywhere.
Ditto for bread. That plastic tag on the opening isn’t just to hold it shut, it’s also got a best before date on it.
Be wary when buying bagged/packaged vegetables. If anything was moist or a little overripe during the packaging process, it’s likely spread. Check the bottom of the container/bag/etc, give it a light shake to move things around a bit.
Most big chains will give you the price per item and the price per gram/ounce/whatever your dry and liquid measure of choice may be. Check these! Sometimes it’s a *much* better deal to buy a bigger package, especially for dry goods which you can store for a long time.
I’m sure there are tons more, but these are all good tips for staple purchases.
Watermelon should sound hollow when thumped. Thump near the top for the best test.
Canteloupe should smell like sweet melon. Smell at the end opposite where the stem was.
The lower end of the pineapple should smell nicely like pineapple. If it’s not ripe, it will smell “green”, and if it’s rotten or mouldy, you’ll smell that too.
Anything non-vegetarian that has a bloated package: Do not eat. It may contain harmful bacteria and poison.
Also, if your bread has gone mouldy, it does not help if you toast it. It isn’t the mould itself that is the problem, it’s the toxins it leaves behind.
Last but not least: Use best before dates only as a rough guidance. They’re a guarantee by the producer that the product will keep the consistency and other properties. They have nothing to do with food going bad or being unsafe after that date, and the food is perfectly fine to eat after the best before date. However, if food has a use by date (this is usually the case with fresh meat or fresh fish), then you have to throw it out after that date, because that is indeed the date until the producer guarantees that it’s safe to eat. There’s a lot of food going to waste because people think that best before dates are the same as use by dates, compounded by the problem that a lot of people have never learned how to check if their food is still safe to eat.
When buying fruits/vegetables, considering getting frozen ones. Fresh produce is picked before it’s ripe so it will still look nice after transport, but frozen produce doesn’t get that chance to ripen so it’s flash-frozen at peak ripeness. And if you get the store brand (which I’ve never found to be less quality than name brand) you get ripe fruit for cheaper than fresh!
I’ll add that when you buy watermelons, check for little nibbles (tan scar patches) on the outside of the rind. This means the melon is sweet. My grandmother swore by it and its never failed me!
Check over potatoes carefully for moisture in the bag. Moist potatoes will rot really fast, and the rot quickly spreads from potato to potato in a container. You will know rotten potatoes when you smell them. It’s the worst rotten smell next to spoiled meat and eggs. Also, be careful to peel potatoes that are still a little green under the skin and cook them thoroughly.
When buying things like jarred peppers, try to find a jar with smaller ones inside. The larger a pepper is, the tougher it will be. (Also, try a splash of the juice from the jar in your tuna salad when you make it. It’s really good.)
You can buy bread in bulk when it’s marked down and freeze it. I like to get the ‘french bread’ loaves while they’re like .29-.80 cents, because they’re very versatile.
Always check serving size on the label when trying to figure out how much salt, or sugar, or other crap is in a product because sometimes companies try and downplay things that way. Like, most big lars of pickles? Half a pickle is considered a serving. Who the hell is going to eat half a pickle????
(Fun fact in the event of a real emergency: All Newman’s Own brand pet food products are human safe. Just in case.)
Let’s say someone is looking for porn and they put “wife caught her husband cheating,” into Google. There are a lot of porn sites (and some news sites) with that title. So Google has to decide which order to show them in, because most of the time, people pick something off the first few pages of Google.
Google wants to have the very best “wife caught her husband cheating” (or whatever else you search for) sites on the first page of the search. Google has several ways to try and decide which site are the best, but one of them is that it looks at how popular it is by seeing how many other websites link to it. If a lot of other sites are linking to it, it was probably useful to them, so Google will put it on the front page.
So if I’m a sleazy pornsite owner, I could create like a thousand websites and make them all link to my “wife caught her husband cheating” site, and act like a whole bunch of different websites thought it was pretty great. They’d be like “xdfgt .com”, “xdfgy .com”, “xdfgh .com,” just nonsense addresses nobody else was using, or whatever. I’d try to make Google think my site was awesome, because all these other websites are linking to it.
But Google has already caught on to that. Google would know “xdfgt .com” was a crappy fake website, because nobody else is linking to “xdfgt .com”. Any website that is only linked to by crap websites is also crap, as far as Google is concerned. Google won’t put it on the first pages of search results.
So instead let’s imagine the sleazy pornsite owner creates a thousand fake tumblrs instead, like “xdfgt.tumblr .com” and “xdfgy.tumblr .com” and “xdfgh.tumblr .com” and just puts one or two posts on them to add links to the “wife caught her husband cheating” porn site. Google can still tell those tumblrs are crap websites, because nobody else is linking to them. But the difference is … on tumblr, the sleazy pornsite owner can make your website link to him.
Let’s say your tumblr is “mostlyaestheticandfunny.tumblr .com”. If “xdfgt.tumblr .com” likes one of your posts, there’s link on your blogto “xdfgt.tumblr .com.” Somewhere on “mostlyaestheticandfunny.tumblr .com” it will say “xdfgt liked this” with a link from your blog to “xdfgt.tumblr .com.”
Google’s bot looks at “mostlyaestheticandfunny.tumblr .com” and it sees that your blog is a good website. People are linking to it (talking to you or reblogging from you), you write like an actual human being, you have nice pictures, you update sometimes, you aren’t a bot. So Google decides your blog isn’t a crappy scam website. Then it sees the link to “xdfgt.tumblr .com” and it thinks “oh hey, a nice website with good stuff written by a real human linked to this “xdfgt.tumblr .com” I guess maybe “xdfgt.tumblr .com” is a decent website too.”
Then it looks at “xdfgt.tumblr .com” and it sees the link to the porn site with “wife caught her husband cheating”, and it says, “well, I guess that “wife caught her husband cheating” site is a good site. I know that because there’s a good site linking to it here at “xdfgt.tumblr .com.” I know “xdfgt.tumblr .com” is a good site because “mostlyaestheticandfunny.tumblr .com” linked to it, and I know “mostlyaestheticandfunny.tumblr .com” is a good site because it is updated and writes like a real person and people talk to it and link to it.”
So basically the porn bots are using the fact that you have a good blog to make themselves look better and to try and trick Google’s bot into thinking they’re very popular and it should put them at the top of its list when people search Google for porn.
It’s really annoying! It would be really nice if the people running tumblr figured out a way to not be free advertising for every sleazy porn site on the internet
hey wow thats actually really useful! and its written in a way that i (a bird with no knowledge of the wizardly internal workings of a website) can understand!
yo guys if you live in the US and use regular absorbency U by kotex sleek tampons please throw them away. they’re currently under recall in america because they’re coming apart in people and leaving pieces which puts you at a huge risk for toxic shock syndrome.
im gonna go ahead and plug the diva cup right now which i live and breathe by. i’ve never had any issues with it and i’m totally open to talking about it!
please be safe y’all!
Not just the US: the recall is in Canada, too. You can find out if any that you’ve purchased are part of the recall right here.
Here’s a little trick I’ve used in D&D games where the premise of your campaign calls for the party to have access to lots of Stuff, but you don’t want to do a whole bunch of bookkeeping: the Wagon.
In a nutshell, the party has a horse-drawn wagon that they use to get around between – and often during – adventures. This doesn’t come out of any individual player character’s starting budget; it’s just provided as part of the campaign premise.
Before setting out from a town or other place of rest, the party has to decide how many gold pieces they want to spend on supplies. These funds aren’t spent on anything in particular, and form a running total that represents how much Stuff is in the wagon.
Any time a player character needs something in the way of supplies during a journey or adventure, one of two things can happen:
1. If it’s something that any fool would have packed for the trip and it’s something that could reasonably have been obtained at one of the party’s recent stopovers (e.g., rations, spare clothing, fifty feet of rope, etc.), then the wagon contains as much of it as they reasonably need. Just deduct the Player’s Handbook list price for the item(s) in question from the wagon’s total.
2. If it’s something where having packed it would take some explaining, or if it’s something that’s unlikely to have been available for purchase at any of the party’s recent stopovers (e.g., a telescope, a barrel of fine wine, a book of dwarven erotic poetry, etc.), the player in need makes a retroactive Intelligence or Wisdom check, versus a DC set by the GM, to see if they somehow anticipated the need for the item(s) in question. Proficiency may apply to this check, depending on what’s needed. The results are read as follows:
Success: You find what you’re looking for, more or less. If the group is amenable, you can narrate a brief flashback explaining the circumstances of its acquisition. Deduct its list price (or a price set by the GM, if it’s not on the list) from the wagon’s total.
Failure by 5 points or less: You find something sort of close to what you’re looking for. The GM decides exactly what; it won’t ever be useless for the purpose at hand, but depending on her current level of whimsy, it may simply be a lesser version of what you were looking for, or it may be something creatively off the mark. Deduct and optionally flash back as above.
Failure by more than 5 points: You come up empty-handed, and can’t try again for that item or anything closely resembling it until after your next stopover.
As an incidental benefit, all the junk the wagon is carrying acts as a sort of ablative armour. If the wagon or its horses would ever take damage, instead subtract a number of gold pieces from its total equal to the number of hit points of damage it would have suffered. The GM is encouraged to describe what’s been destroyed in lurid detail.
This type of method makes it *way* easier to keep track of items, and… it’s pretty darn funny when the players succeed a roll to see if they backed something outrageously stupid. Trust me, the flash backs are hilarious. Never skip out on them.
Blessed of The Traveler is a guide to incorporating transgender characters and stories into the Eberron setting for Dungeons & Dragons, with looks at how several cultures and faiths approach gender, as well as a look at magical transition methods!
Plot Designing 