Slush 2024-08
The crabs in my lobster pot. The third bird, alive and in a bush.
The walls at Pavilhão Chinês in Lisbon.
Starfleet encounters a libertarian space steading colony in need of help. They attempt to render aid, but the colonists will make no lifestyle concessions nor recognize the authority of Starfleet. This is merely distasteful, until:
- they are found to be harboring fugitives.
- they are inadvertently about to make first contact.
- they are emboldening the local fauna.
- they are polluting a (space) waterway.
What are libertarians doing in a post-capitalist utopia anyway? Seeking scarcity? Owning their religious status?
It seems unfair that I get so much more enjoyment out of a print book, engage with it more deeply and recall it more strongly, than its accessible and cheap digital equivalent. Navigating well-organized and hyperlinked PDF is a joyful experience, but for more than quick reference I must still engage with the tyranny of sequential pages.
It’s hard to characterize with only a stat block. Can we invent one-off “stats” that help with this?
- Credit Score
- Outstanding library fines
- Days to retirement
- Candy Crush Hi Score
- GPA
The statistic itself doesn’t need to matter, it just ends up being “a number the person cares about.”
Using a big lenticular image, could you build a “non-mirror” for a given space? It would track the “reflection” of the room as you walk, but not reflect the viewer.
It’s common trivia that there is no such thing as a fish. What was the first “fish” then? The first aquatic life could not properly be a “fish,” which is a term used by non-aquatic life. The first animal on land would not need “fish:” there would only be themselves and all others. The second animal to walk on land could claim the concept of “fish:” all the life that can’t go on land. They would need it to define (by inversion), the group including themselves and the other land animal.
Twenty-six sins, historical and speculative, loosely defined or expanded.
- Sloth. Idleness and disinclination to work.
- Lust. Intense desire for an immoral object, or a desire which governs reason.
- Avarice (greed). The desire to possess more than needed.
- Envy. The wish for another to lack that which you also lack.
- Wrath (anger). A non-cooperative response to perceived threat or hurt.
- Hubris. Dangerous arrogance or overconfidence.
- Vainglory (boasting). The desire for glory unearned.
- Gluttony. Wasteful consumption.
- Acedia (despondency). Habitually acting without joy.
- Vanity (futility). Ignorance of death and limitations.
- Ignorance. Acting without available knowledge.
- Attachment. Over concern with the material world.
- Aversion. The inverse of lust. A desire to avoid what is moral or a lack of desire which governs reason.
- Obsession. Concern only for a single object to the disregard of others.
- Indecision. Inability to commit to a course of action.
- Selfishness. Concern for the self above others.
- Spite. Acting with the sole purpose of harming another.
- Carelessness. Indifference towards the consequences of action.
- Malingering. The fabrication of illness or misfortune.
- Secrecy. Concealing information from those whom it concerns.
- Annihilation. Attempts to minimize the self in the hope of minimizing suffering.
- Inflexibility. Holding rules above their purpose.
- Leniency. Disregard for societal structures.
- Oath-breaking. Promising what can’t or won’t be done.
- Corruption. Causing diffuse harm for concentrated gain.
- Paradox. Holding (or causing) two irreconcilable truths to be true.
Prebiotics promote the growth of gut flora. Probiotics claim to supplement them. Postbiotics and metabiotics restore some lacking product of the gut flora directly. Our new abiotics go further: containing all the primitive ingredients used in the Miller-Urey experiment and patent-pending nanospark capacitors, abiotics promise to help you spontaneously generate new gut flora when your internal ecosystem is otherwise too barren to continue.
Surely cats don’t have original sin, as obligate carnivores. By contrast, surely worms or some other detritivore must have eaten the scraps of fruit or other fallen fruits.
Fragments
Not even full thoughts. Pre-melted slush, if you like.
- Dai Dark is gritty Dreadstar.
- A wargame called “Team Bride.”
- A Throwbot with a knife.
- 28mm “heroic” scale medieval saints.
- ChatGPT1 for conspiracy generation. Gets you your two layers of depth easily.
- Dazzle Camo Space Marines.
- Bigger Luuke.
- Wingspan: Kanto & Johto Expansion.
- Contract bridge as espionage.
- “Oops! All Safety Tools!” (Surely this was a bit from Dice Exploder?)
- Bad ad-hoc hypothesis: podcast co-host voices grow more similar over time.
- Online Jenga with Octodad or QWOP style (i.e. bad) controls. (Thanks, Dwiz!)
A nonstandard adventure structure could roughly follow the steps of HAZWOPER site entry:
- Off-site characterization, including legal and historical records and interviews with first responders.
- Environmental monitoring and reconnaissance.
- Formulation of a plan, including the establishment of a base of operation, buddy system protocols, and appropriate PPE.
Slide from a HAZWOPER refresher course.
This is an old note, from when ChatGPT was new and exciting. But as applications go, it’s not the worst: it doesn’t have to be very smart or correct and it’s already biased toward affirming the assumptions of your query.↩︎