https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vJjIUPRWjg

The Prosperity Gospel folks go a step further and equate wealth and health with the will of god. That being well-off is the direct result of being in god’s good graces. It side-steps observations of financial inequality in the face of moral equality, by hand-waving exceptional wealth as deserved by truly rare and exceptional people. And that conveniently plays off of confusing causation for correlation, so we arrive at “money = godly.”

For the record: I hate that this has a name and it’s a real thing.

I was gonna say. With a crater that large, we all lose.

Venice? Wow, that’s actually kind of on-the-nose for a show of excessive wealth.

https://historywalksvenice.com/article/early-venice/why-did-venice-get-rich/

TL;DR: Venice exists in its current form (canal city on an ever sinking atoll) not because of climate change, and not because of some fishing village put their backs into it for hundreds of years, but because of money. LOTS, and lots of money from a shipping/trade boom a very long time ago.

The fact that Bezos built his obscene wealth on shipping and international commerce, just makes this even more appropriate in a gross kind of way. Like he’s deliberately connecting himself to Venice’s history, and everything that implies.

You know what 'ol Jack Burton says at a time like this?

Facts. D&D defines the chaotic/lawful divide as whether or not the character abides by a code, ethos, or set of rules. So not “Law” in the “Legal Eagle Law Team” kind of way. Chaotic Evil characters don’t really play by any rules, are unpredictable, and are just plain the worst.

“AI e-girl” you say? I know a contractor that might have what you’re looking for.

Hot take: Debris was on track for something like that.

It had “new strange” style storytelling with a very grounded Sci-Fi basis, interesting episiodes, and a conspiracy arc to tie it all together. There were also hints at things well beyond understanding, turning typical X-Files formula inside out: “it’s all explainable phenomena and everyone knows it, but some things take time to understand.” The major flaw here were wooden performances and un-charismatic characters that just fail to pull you in.

That said, there’s no reason to wait for an X-Files reboot. SCP has more than enough lore to get the ball moving, and there’s gotta be a webisode series or small-studio production team out there just waiting for eyeballs and donations.

I LOVE this movie.

“single greatest sci-fi camp fest ever put on celluloid”

Possibly the best way to put it without spoiling anything. The key here is that this movie isn’t dull. There’s shit going on all over the place all the time. But yes, crack open a cold one, sit back, and take it all in.

It’s also a great example of what a movie would look like if it had high-functioning ADHD. It can’t make up it’s mind if it’s a western, skin flick, sci-fi re-telling of Ulysses, low-budget-special-effects tech demo, and “we have Star Wars at home.”

“Fox and Frenemies” it is then.

::checks watch::

Yup, time to fire up my Clutch playlist again.

Yup. They’re called “Whole Paycheck” for a reason.

Easy there, boss. That depends heavily on what state you’re in. And the ones that have “stand your ground” and “castle doctrine” are usually the ones where local police are openly coordinating with ICE.

As a totally cheap-ass DM, my recommendation is to find some printable DnD tokens that you like and glue them to things like bottle-caps, or small round bits of wood (like chunks off of a dowel from the hardware store). There are a bunch around. If you want to splurge, take the bits you want somewhere you can pay for a quality color printout.

Personally, I’m a fan of these generic tokens by “Acquitt”. They’re useful for every encounter: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FV7egJC87nsVUTybGs5E3DwvRihmz6KduUfniSJk6Fec.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D57f11a74865814f31c7236adb1555a43529ca355

I glued these to some sculpey discs of the same color. I also used transparent binder sleeves for HP tracker sheets, so I could use dry-erase marker. Lastly, my battle map was a large (but cheap) poster frame with 1" grid paper inside¹. This let me use those dry-erase markers to draw terrain.

1. For more thrift, some wrapping paper brands print a barely visible 1" grid on the backside. Some quality time with a ruler and pen can turn that into something useful.

A cantrip that’s as effective as “power word kill” on mundane folk? Use 55 times to kill a dragon? How did I miss this?

As a DM, I’d have to implement a house rule that every such insult must be unique, as it is magically bound to the target at that distinct moment in time. And that goes for failures as well as successes: each use burns that phrase forever. At the very least this goes if used repeatedly against the same target. Besides, a good bard should be able to cook up fresh material.

I was gonna say. Now we get to add anti-war protesting to an already lengthy list of complaints. This is going to get huge.

You want to protest the war? We have a whole anti-trump protest movement already warmed up and ready to go. C’mon in.

Well this is pretty par for the course with TACO,

Indeed it is, and I think we’re gonna see it get worse. Trump is an abusive parent/partner. There’s no “doing the right thing”, merely “make sure everyone else is a better target.” Yesterday it was Hegseth, today it’s Gabbard. Tomorrow… who knows?

Where it gets really interesting is that this behavior can create a perverse incentive for his team to undermine one another.

Honestly, this is more OG than most people realize. You’re doing it right.

Coins, and even dice work in a pinch too.

Exactly.

Fuck, I agree with MTG this morning? And I was off to such a good start today.

This moment calls for more beans.