The really funny thing about Data playing poker with the rest of the senior staff is that, like… with the way his brain works he’s constantly aware of numbers and calculating probability but he would also know that counting cards is against the rules so does he just try to ignore it. Does he pretend not to. Can he like actively choose to discard that information as it comes in so he just forgets every .005 seconds
Data trying his absolute hardest not to accidentally rain man his coworkers. I’m autistic I can make that joke. Data sitting there not so much “playing poker” as “playing playing poker,” as in, doing his best approximation of a human playing poker. He has an algorithm figured out for it. Semi-random to appear more natural, like how his blinking is timed. He is having fun btw. Data loves playing humans
He isn’t trying to win at poker he’s trying to win at being in a social situation & he has found that people like it more when they win a certain percentage of the time. The game Data’s playing in his head is not the same as the game everyone else is playing
Hey! Are there blacksmiths in your story? I’m a hobbyist blacksmith and I’m here to help!
Blacksmithing is one of those things that a lot of people get wrong because they don’t realize it stuck around past the advent of the assembly line. Here’s a list of some common misconceptions I see and what to do instead!
Not all blacksmiths are gigantic terrifying muscly guys with beards and deep voices. I am 5'8, skinny as a twig, have the muscle mass of wet bread, and exist on Tumblr. Anybody who is strong enough to pick up a hammer and understands fire safety can be a blacksmith.
You can make more than just swords with blacksmithing. Though swords are undeniably practical, they’re not the only things that can be made. I’ve made candle holders, wall hooks, kebab skewers, fire pokers, and more. Look up things other people have made, it’s really amazing what can be done.
“Red-hot” is actually not that hot by blacksmith terms. when heated up, the metal goes from black, to red, to orange, to yellow, to white. (for temperature reference, I got a second degree burn from picking up a piece of metal on black heat) The ideal color to work with the metal is yellow. White is not ideal at all, because the metal starts sparking and gets all weird and lumpy when it cools. (At no point in this process does the metal get even close to melting. It gets soft enough to work with, but I have never once seen metal become a liquid.)
Blacksmithing takes fucking forever. Not even taking into account starting the forge, selecting and preparing metal, etc. etc. it takes me around an hour to make one (1) fancy skewer. The metals blacksmiths work with heat up and cool down incredibly fast. When the forge is going good, it only takes like 20 seconds to get your metal hot enough to work with, but it takes about the same time for it to cool down, sometimes even less.
As long as you are careful, it is actually stupidly easy to not get hurt while blacksmithing. When I picked up this hobby I was like “okay, cool! I’m gonna make stuff, and I’m gonna end up in the hospital at some point!” Thus far, the latter has yet to occur. I’ve been doing this for nearly a year. I have earned myself a new scar from the aforementioned second degree burn, and one singe mark on my jeans. I don’t even wear gloves half the time. Literally just eye protection, common sense, and fast reflexes and you’ll probably be fine. (Accidents still happen of course, but I have found adequate safety weirdly easy to achieve with this hobby)
A forge is not a fire. The forge is the thing blacksmiths put their metal in to heat it up. It starts as a small fire, usually with newspaper or something else that’s relatively small and burns easily, which we then put in the forge itself, which is sort of a fireplace-esque thing (there’s a lot of different types of forge, look into it and try to figure out what sort of forge would make the most sense for the context you’re writing about) and we cover it with coal, which then catches fire and heats up. The forge gets really hot, and sometimes really bright. Sometimes when I stare at the forge for too long it’s like staring into the sun. The forge is also not a waterfall of lava, Steven Universe. It doesn’t work like that, Steven Universe.
Welding and blacksmithing are not the same thing. They often go hand-in-hand, but you cannot connected two pieces of metal with traditional blacksmithing alone. There is something called forge welding, where you heat your metal, sprinkle borax (or the in-universe equivalent) on it to prevent the metal from oxidizing/being non-weldable, and hammer the pieces together very quickly. Forge welding also sends sparks flying everywhere, and if you’re working in a small space with other blacksmiths, you usually want to announce that you’re welding before you do, so that everyone in a five-foot radius can get out of that five-foot radius. You also cannot just stuck some random pebbles into the forge and get a decent piece of metal that you can actually make something with, Steven Universe. It doesn’t work like that, Steven Universe.
Anvils are really fucking heavy. Nothing else to add here.
Making jewelry is not a blacksmithing thing unless you want jewelry made of steel. And it will be very ugly if you try. Blacksmithing wasn’t invented to make small things.
If there’s anything here I didn’t mention, just ask and I’ll do my best to answer.
President Biden signed the executive order January 27, 2021. This is the first time I’ve even heard of this. Here are a couple of links with more info:
Biden gets a lot of flack for being a generic neo liberal rather than a cool leftist, and trust me I’m 100% on board with criticizing Biden, but it occurred to me that, at least by my standards, he’s the best president I’ve lived under. Clinton was just “What if Reaganomics but with a saxophone”, Obama did pass the ACA, but he also cut it to bits to appease the republicans who didn’t vote for it anyway, and he constantly bombed middle-eastern civilians. I’m not even gonna bother mentioning any of the republicans since I don’t need to convince my intended audience that they’re bad.
Biden, while he’s obviously had some major bad decisions (breaking the rail strike, failing to defend trans rights), has done more actual good than I think anyone else I’ve lived under. He’s nearly completely ended drone strikes, he’s addressing the debt crisis (everyone knows about the $10k, but very few I’ve seen know about the changes he’s made to how federal student loans work that make them far less of a burden/deathtrap), and now there’s the above, which I’m just learning about.
Never let perfect be the enemy of good, and while Biden is very far from being a perfect president, I’m pretty comfortable calling him a good one.
For all the people who insist they never trust politicians, they are sure adamant about waiting until the stars align and political Jesus comes down from the clouds to save us. If you actually didn’t like or trust politicians you would accept that the great majority of the time we are going to have to work with mediocrity.
Biden is boring and uninspiring for sure, but he is significantly less offensive than the vast majority of other options and he is someone we can influence. We want someone we can influence and push towards our positions. Biden has shown that if he isn’t an ally, he at least can be persuaded or pushed into doing what we, the left, want. There are few candidates we can actually say that about.
The point is not that he’s perfect. The point is that he’s very clearly shown that he cares about using his political mandate to make things better. The point is that he cares about accountability. The point is that he cares about what historians will say about him in the future.
The point is, these are good qualities in a leader. The kind of qualities that we can work with.
“We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.”
I assume some kind of deal was cut in which silence on these issues was a condition of the agreement so I just want clarify.
IT IS A BAD THING that democrats are not making a big show of their accomplishments.
It benefits the conservative agenda to keep these things out of the news.
It benefits the conservative agenda for progressives to be kept in the dark when the administration makes real progress.
It benefits the conservative agenda for progressive constituents to believe that our leaders are ineffectual, and that voting for them doesn’t accomplish anything.
If the administration isn’t going to make a big show of it, we need to.
“The magic system is never fully explained” yeah that’s how life works. Imagine having a story set in modern day America and the characters have several pages of exposition on combustion engines and telecommunication networks before we get to the plot
i think this is absolutely correct and good writing advice but also victor hugo would like to have a word with you about the parisian sewer system circa 1832
victor hugo would like to have many words with you about the parisian sewer system circa 1831
“there’s a guy in the walls” movies exist in a universe that I fucking WISH was real. imagine how easy it would be to install stuff in walls if the space behind a wall was not 3.5 inches/8.9 cm deep and I could get my whole self in there. of course that would mean a guy could get in there too, but what are the odds.
<currently blogging from inside this idiot’s walls>
PLEASE help me feed these ethernet cables downstairs or I’m gonna kill myself before you get a crack at me
thread it down here champ, we’ll get this installed come hell or high water
you are the best scary murderer who could have ever crawled into my walls
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