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updatesupdatesupdates · 18 days

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“Call Me Maybe” with every other beat removed

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updatesupdatesupdates · 29 days

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updatesupdatesupdates · 2 months

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Free Palestine

I work at a store. Yesterday walking by the clearance section I saw a boy, probably only a little bit over a year old, flat on his back and sound asleep in a shopping buggy. I said "hello" to his adult simply to acknowledge his sleeping child is precious and he is too.

The self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell has shocked my conscience.

Conscience is a faculty for wrestling with emotions and with reason to figure out what's right and what's wrong. Something I notice about my own conscience is that while I might be pretty sure what's right or wrong, I'm rarely certain about my answers. Maybe that's because my conscience isn't very good, however my sense about the uncertainty is that it's a "feature and not a bug. " That is not being so certain allows for movement and change. But I'm not sure.

In 1965 Thich Nhat Hanh sent a letter to the Rev. Martin Luther King concerning the self-burning of Vietnamese Buddhist monks in 1963. In the letter Thich Nhat Hanh distinguishes between their aims in setting themselves alight and the act and causes of suicide. He also explains how difficult it is for a the Western Christian conscience to understand.

Thich Nhat Hanh notes that for Buddhists suicide is a great crime. In my living, sometimes when I've gotten the news about a person's suicide my reaction has been, "who can blame them?"

When I have considered suicide, I have sometimes wondered if I might commit in a way that might move some people from no-good action. One scenario I've thought of jumping from a highway overpass into rush-hour traffic in protest. Submitting the thought experiment to my conscience it's pretty clear that would just annoy some people, and possibly injure or kill innocents. So even with my imperfect conscience the moral calculus proves such an action wrong.

ADL points out that Aaron Bushnell was the second person to self-burn themselves in front of an Israeli embassy in the USA. In December a person was critically inured after setting themselves on fire in Atlanta. The person's name has not been shared, but a security guard who was burned trying to intervene is named Michael Harris. that event didn't generate much attention. The police officer training his gun on the Aaron Bushnell has gotten a lot of attention, and he remains anonymous so far as I know. But there were people like Michael Harris who tried to save Aaron Bushnell's life. My conscience suggests that attention to them is important. Ruth Gilmore has so wisely told us: Where life is precious, life is precious.

As an American I am complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

In Christian tradition Jesus was confronted with: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” He responded with three stories, "the lost parables." I know these stories, but I'm not so sure I really understand them. As little as I understand, these stories imform my conscience.

I am moved by this post by Veterans For Peace in Common Dreams.

He [Aaron Bushnell] couldn’t bear to see any more people eviscerated and incinerated by American bombs dropped by Israelis on innocent Palestinians.

Wrestling with ones conscience is a struggle. I'm not sure such struggles are heroic, but I'm pretty sure they are necessary and that they are long.

Forgiveness and Love by Meshell NdegeOcello

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updatesupdatesupdates · 3 months

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I'm not saying I'm a mad scientist but sometimes I do think about kidnapping random people into a featureless white room where I won't let them out until they solve a simple puzzle game without instructions.

There's no saw trap to kill them if they fail, they just gotta keep trying until they figure it out. And I guess if they can't figure it out after like 8 hours I'll let them out anyway

#“meh”scape room

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updatesupdatesupdates · 3 months

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updatesupdatesupdates · 4 months

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but seriously if you are at all blogging about the i/p conflict you NEED to read that standing together article from that post i just reblogged. please. please please please please please. these are the people who are actually doing something about freeing palestine and have been for years. And here's the thing:

IF YOU WANT PEACE IN ISRAEL, IN PALESTINE, THESE ARE THE PEOPLE IT'S GOING TO COME FROM.

Because yeah. The way this site is spreading around uncritical posts is a huge issue (and a reason I haven't been around since October). Standing Together is doing a hell of a lot more than blogging about it. They're on the ground putting in the work. Nine days before the October 7 attack, they were in Tel Aviv publicly protesting about the systematic oppression of Arabs (not just Palestinians) in Israel.

"The global left has to be synced with what we need." Trust me, the right is. Boy HOWDY is the right synced. I have gotten more support about my Judaism from the far right than the left and it's??? kinda fucked up??? Someone who worked for Pat Robertson should not feel safer than someone dedicated to activism, but here we are. I can feel how easy it would be to be radicalized towards the right, and I'm actively fighting against it. Now imagine that multiplied by millions of people, plenty of whom don't have the same desire to do so, or feel like they don't have the luxury of safety to do so.

Seeing Hamas being portrayed as sympathetic and talked about like they had a right to commit all of the atrocities that they have is making me lose my MIND. They're a group run by corrupt billionaires who actively started this conflict with the intent of silencing the Palestinian people who have been protesting their tyranny. They have been siphoning money from Palestinians for years and this entire attack is them deliberately throwing Palestinians into the path of slaughter to distract from that fact, the same way that Netanyahu absolutely took advantage of the threat and tragedy to try and get himself off the hook for his own corruption.

Also check out the google doc linked in the article. It's not just a good way to learn how to communicate, but a very good resource for finding out if something you're sharing is worthwhile. In fact, it does a really god job of breaking down why I've felt so uncomfortable about a bunch of the posts on my dash. Some excerpts:

This got way longer than I had intended, but hopefully does its job. Go read the article and, yes, if you need to, reevaluate your activism. Because if it's not what people involved actually want or need, then it's just for you. And that's kinda fucked up.

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updatesupdatesupdates · 5 months

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How to Ditch Amazon

Support your local libraries and the small businesses that are actually making the products you want. Fuck Jeff Bezos and the systemic, universal worker abuse, gaslighting, and brutality they live off of.

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updatesupdatesupdates · 6 months

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You Wake Up Cursed

[+Curse]

FOREST

North:

>13

South:

>7

CLEARING

[+Key]

Path:

>2

Opening:

>26

GATE

Trail:

>2

Lock

[-Key]:

>19

PLAZA

Stairs:

>56

Archway:

>39

Alley:

>32

CAVE

Beast

[-Blade]:

>61

Retreat:

>7

SHOP

[-Coin]:

[+Blade]

Door:

>19

Backdoor:

>45

COURTYARD

Guardian

[-Orb]:

>65

Captured:

>99

MARKET

Doorway:

>32

Grab:

[+Coin]

>51

PURSUED

Flee:

>51

Discovered:

>99

CLIFF

Descend:

>19

Slide:

>13

DEN

[+Fang]

Waterfall:

>78

ENTRAILS

[+Tooth]

Entrance:

>126

HUB

Straight:

>151

Left:

>143

Right:

>154

Down:

>148

LAKE

Swim:

>83

Climb:

>56

UNDERNEATH

Outlet:

>111

Fissure:

>90

Surface:

>78

GROTTO

Selkie:

>95

Dive:

>83

EMBRACE

Kiss:

[+Orb]

>90

DUNGEON

Struggle:

>99

Wait:

>99

Gnaw:

[+Wound]

>107

PASSAGEWAY

[+Torch]

Grate:

>111

SEWER

Pipe:

>78

Ladder:

>120

HIDDEN

[+Crown]

[+Jewel]

[+Scepter]

ANTECHAMBER

Trapdoor:

>111

Portcullis

[-Combination]:

>126

THRONEROOM

Mosaic

[-Tooth]

[-Fang]:

>133

Window:

>19

ASCENSION

Refuse:

>126

Accept:

>138

LABYRINTH

East:

>69

West:

>154

HALLWAY

First:

>69

Second:

>138

NICHE

Crack:

>159

LOOP

Exit:

>69

TUNNEL

Ahead:

>143

Behind:

>138

PLATEAU

Stones:

>162

OVERLOOK

Campfire:

>162

Up:

>167

PEAK

Dragon:

>172

Hide:

>179

BENEATH

Claws:

[+WOUND]

>179

Tail:

[+WOUND]

>179

MAW

Attack:

>184

Surrender:

>186

SLICE

>188

DROP

>190

TWIST

>192

PLACATE

>194

PLUNGE

>196

PLEDGE

>198

SEVER

>200

APOLOGIZE

>200

[-Curse]

---

Obviously, the spirit of the 200-RPG exercise is to make a tabletop role-playing game, but I hope I will be excused a single-player text adventure RPG.

How to read

LOCATIONS in all-caps.

Choices: followed by colons.

>Numbers move to that line.

[Brackets] are your inventory.

(Okay to archive)

Tumblr 200-Word RPGs 2023

Last November, we did an informal game jam for folks who wanted to write something for Writing Month, but would prefer to write fewer than fifty thousand words of it. You can find the complete list of participants for that event in this post here. There's also an off-Tumblr archive of entries whose authors gave permission for them to be preserved here, if any of those links turn out to be broken.

Last year's collaboration went over well enough that I thought we might dust it off again this year. To be clear, this is just for fun – it's not a curated jam, and nobody's judging winners or handing out prizes..

If you'd like to throw your hat in, just follow these steps:

Step 1: If you're unfamiliar with 200-word RPGs, read a bunch of last year's entries (linked above) or browse the 200 Word RPG Challege archives at https://200wordrpg.github.io/ to get your brain-meats properly configured.

Step 2: Write your own 200-word RPG. If you're not sure whether you have 200 words or not (and with RPGs it can genuinely be difficult to tell!), you can use the word counter at https://200wordrpg.github.io/wordcount to check.

Step 3: Reblog this post and append your 200-word RPG.

Step 4 (optional): Please indicate in your post whether you're okay with having your 200-word RPG archived off-site for posterity – if you don't say anything one way or the other, I'll assume the answer is "no".

(As before, as a courtesy to anyone who's creeping the notes, please restrict non-200-word-RPG commentary to replies and tags until November 2023 is over – let's make the actual games easy to find!)

#tumblr 200 word rpgs 2023 #200 word rpgs

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updatesupdatesupdates · 6 months

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updatesupdatesupdates · 7 months

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To celebrate the first of Halloween, I have to share with you my recent discovery: The Living Tombstone’s remix of Spooky Scary Skeletons and Freaks by Timmy Trumpet & Savage have the same BPM.

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updatesupdatesupdates · 8 months

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My partner and I loved Cook Unity when we lived in their delivery zone!

I think I'm finally about to try out a prepared meal service. I have been saying for years that they're a scam because it's so much extra money just to not have to go grocery shopping and/or cook. I told myself I didn't need it, that it was lazy and I know how to shop and how to cook so what even is the point?

But I don't. I don't grocery shop or cook, at least not as often as is required to have healthy home-made meals every day. So I end up living on ramen and Lunchables or spending $20 on fast food every day, which is most likely more expensive and definitely less healthy than a meal service. But I keep telling myself that it's not worth it, that if I just buy and make my own food it'll be cheaper. Which it would be. If I did it.

So I've finally decided to shop for the person I am, not the person I wish I was. No amount of shaming myself is going to suddenly motivate me to buy fresh produce three times a week and cook an entire dinner every night. I might as well do what I can to eat more healthy, balanced food.

That being said, does anyone have any suggestions? I'm looking specifically for services where the food is already cooked (fresh or frozen is fine). It doesn't have to be strictly microwaveable, just pre-made.

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