So The Other Night During D&D, I Had The Sudden Thoughts That:

More medieval dyes for y'all!

For a while now, I've imagined Hephaestus having his workshop built around the fact that he can't use his legs:

- he sits in a chair that's inside a pit and is able to travel in a circle, allowing him to travel around the perimeter of the pit, letting him touch every station.

- each station has all he needs to work there: grinding status has all his grindstones and files and a vise; he has a pile of materials with a scale for weighing; a vast collection of crucibles with a mold making area next to it; and his furnace with is manned and managed by a couple cyclops.

Once he gets a commission, he figures out what he needs, makes a master of it, wheels himself to the material section with a crucible in hand, weighs it all out, packs it, then turns to the furnace and gets that cooking while he's prepares the mold.

When it's ready, he moves back to the fire with the mold on his lap, puts the mold down, and pours.

This system does get overhauled when Greece transitions to iron; still being in a pit, but it's more compact; he just needs tongs, material, an anvil, his grinding station, and his forge. Any heavy hammering is done via Cyclops.

Any "magic metal stuff" (carbonizing, smelting, etc) os wrotten down and done off-site.

The Boulder of Sisyphus will always roll, regardless if you're pushing it or not.

If I had $100 and I divided it among 0 people, how many dollars would each person get? Zero, for there's no one to divide the money.

There, I divided by 0 and didn't break reality

If your democrat friends start muttering about stolen election conspiracy theories, the time to have a sit down with them and express your concerns is NOW, while you still have a chance to reach them, not 6 months from now when they're fully conspiracy-pilled.

Here's some of the talking points and why they're bullshit:

'10 million votes don't just disappear!' -> Joe Biden's 81 million votes were a statistical outlier, sparked by the recent experience of the Trump presidency. The democrats failed to maintain that sense of urgency, but Harris still got more votes than Hillary Clinton, more than Obama and more than any previous democratic candidate. These numbers are not weird at all.

'The Republicans tried to infiltrate election- and vote counting organizations!' -> yeah, they did, and yet hundreds of independent legal observers didn't see anything go wrong enough to raise any alarms. Independent exit polls are also very consistently similar to the counted votes. Tons of international organizations specialized in this stuff observed the election and didn't see a reason to raise the alarm.

'But I know a dozen democrats whose mail-in votes were not counted!' -> In any election a certain number of votes are registered as invalid because something was wrong with the ballot. In a country the size of the US, that translates to many thousands of votes. The internet allows these people to find each other, creating the false impression that a suspiciously large group of voted was not valid.

'Musk used Star Link to mess with electronic voting!' -> Electronic voting machines are not connected to the internet and dozens of independent media have already debunked this myth. It is absolutely impossible to use Star Link to fake election results.

'There is voter disenfranchisement!' -> This is true. This has always been true, for every election. It's an issue worth talking about but it's not a special secret conspiracy that's unique to this election.

But just as importantly as the facts: sit down with your friend and talk about the anxiety that's behind their conspiracy leanings. Acknowledge their pain and fear. Help them find ways to feel less powerless and regain their sense of agency. Take them to a mutual aid event, involve them in a fundraising event for a marginalized group, invite them to a local community effort. If they spend more time feeling connection and empowerment and less time doom scrolling online, they're far more likely to stay in reality.

Even with the sound off, I can still hear this

Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land Gameboy Advance 2002

He’s so cool

It's funny that we see craftsmen do their thing, but almost never see them slave away at farming resources. We never see the lone young blacksmith devote weeks to make their charcoal or making everything for corner of the craft that they want to explore, but have nothing to do it.

There's only two shows that do that, but one covers all of science, and the other is an average Joe that makes crude tools rather than devoting countless hours to refine each stage of their adventure.