What Would The UK Flag Look Like If It Represented Its Constituent Nations Proportionally?

Party Split

We’re already a decent large group, but due to over arching plot, three players recent brought back their old characters from a previous campaign for a storyline. Bringing us to nine players.

DM: “Okay, so we have a few ideas on what to do. What first?”

Paladin: “I have some contacts coming to meet me, so I think I have to do my down time here.”

Sorcerer: “We need to got to Halrua and Waterdeep. I’m the only one who can teleport, so guess I’m doing those.”

DM: “Wait, are we finally splitting the party?”

Monk 1: “I also need to do a ritual to attune to the moonblade.”

Cleric: “I can teleport to Waterdeep, I just can’t get back.”

Sorcerer: “I can pick you up at the end of the week!”

Monk 2: “I wanna go to Waterdeep!”

DM: “…okay. Three way split. Not ideal, but–”

Monk 1: “I need to go to the forest for my ritual.”

DM: “Four way split?”

Artificer: “I need research in Candlekeep. We still have that invitation, right?”

DM: “Okay…five way split.”

Bard: “Six, technically. I’m on another plane.”

The only known copy of the Hussie “First Folio” of c. 1625 exists in fragments in the Bodelian Library (MS. Eng. misc. c. 413). No publishing details are available, provenance is unknown.  

Prologue:

The uncertain glory of an April day, Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, Limns a youth upon which no name did weigh These thirteen springs. That burden will be one He will take up this morn, and so in this This gentle youth becomes a gentleman, By taking on the name that’s rightfully his - A token that betokes a divine plan. Where others, who did Fate give name at birth Can have no say in what their fortune tells (Whether lives of misery or of mirth), This youth may choose his Heavens, or his Hells. He stands now at the door of childhood’s room, Now Let him learn his name, and learn his doom.  

Act 1, scene 1

   Voice: Enter name.

   Boy: Letters are appearing! As if drawn by Some fiery hand - and now I ken they spell The name “Zoosmell, Lord of Dung”? Fie on this, Fie! A shallow jest - better be the names Of rustics than nobility besmirched.

   Voice: Try again.

   Boy: More words appear, these pleasing to the eye - I’ll be “John Egbert”, a name for saints and Kings, I trow. Now to take up arms and go, But where among these cakes and bills for rude Entertainments could they be? In this drawer?

Looks in drawer

   Boy: No arms. Damn my addled mind: they rest Beneath the cake inside yon magic chest.

   Voice: Remove CAKE from MAGIC CHEST

Boy retrieves arms

   Boy: No antics or hilarity for now, I must needs store these in my Sylladex. What else lies here? Some Gyves that feign to lock, A Blade that cannot wound, a Hat, a Mask, Tricks to mimic smoke or blood, a Treatise On japes, a Volume on the life of a Man of wisdom who traffick’d in dark arts. All this I fain would take ‘gainst future need, For now mayhaps this smoke will show it’s meed.

Takes smoke pastilles

   Boy: Alas! my arms I now can’t bring to hand! This Sylladex is like unto the sack That peddlers use to cart about their wares – And all that they have pack’d must be unlade 'Ere that which they pack’d first will come to light. No matter now: anon I’ll set it right.

Examines bill

   Boy: No spirits be as facinerious As these. Though fell be their actions and their Passions run to black, these hell-kites’ exploits Enthrall me and I can’t abjure their charms. How now, a note? My father left this here, A birthday gift to mark my thirteenth year.

Hey yeah I am really in need of some money to replace my laptop because it’s dying to like any amount helps!!!

This is the only way I can earn money and the only way I have any hope of getting out of my current situation with abusive family so please help

I try to mix stuff I hear about in the rest of the world on my twitter but I am still super guilty of this.

Internet woke culture is just caring about US politics and ignoring the rest. Most woke Twitter and Tumblr accounts whether Italian or not discuss issues in the US as if 1. they were universal; 2. there were no other issue or country left in the world. Talk about UScentrism.

you know what, i’m about to say it

it’s not just expecting jews to be or proclaim to being pro-palestine/anti-israel/antizionist that is antisemitic, it’s also expecting them to hold or proclaim to holding perfect pro-palestine/anti-israel/antizionist views and politics all the time. and by ‘perfect’ i certainly don’t mean sensible, nuanced, or productive views and politics, i mean views and politics that unchallengingly espouse the mainstream narrative of a solidarity movement riddled with antisemitism. pro-palestine jews become agents of zionism the second they express the slightest discomfort at the unchecked and rampant antisemitism in the movement, the tokenization of their activism, the exterminatory rhetoric surrounding israel, the use of material produced by people with a history of antisemitism, the abuses of bds, the support for deeply antisemitic & armed religious movements, the celebration of people who killed civilians, the erasure of jewish diversity, history and culture, the denial of antisemitism from the holocaust to the jewish exodus from muslim countries, the inappropriate and ahistorical nazi comparisons, the toxic strategies used to dodge accusations of antisemitism - i could go on. expecting jews to be uncritical supporters of a movement in which antisemitism - that is, for those who forget, anti-jewish racism - has such a large audience and amount of offenders, that’s antisemitism, always.

The Late Rodentocene: 20 million years post-establishment

The Map and World of the Late Rodentocene

The Late Rodentocene, 20 million years PE, is a world that geologically speaking has changed very little from the time the hamsters first arrived, save for the rise and fall of the sea levels due to the glaciation of the northern and southern ice caps, which in turn repeatedly exposed and submerged land bridges that allowed hamsters to migrate across continents only to later be isolated from their relatives, to diverge genetically and become a new species.

The climate of the Late Rodentocene is temperate and humid, and conducive to the growth of a wide array of biomes across its six primary continents: small Borealia in the north, Easaterra and Nodera south and east of Borealia, temperate Westerna and tropical Ecatoria across the expanse of the Centralic Ocean, and the oddly-shaped Peninsulaustra at the south of the Centralic. For a brief period spanning a few thousand years, they were all connected when the sea level dropped, bridging them all to Isla Genesis (highlighted in orange), the experimental island where hamsters were first released as test subjects in a secluded environment.

With the land bridges long since sunk, however, the continents have been cut off from one another and in their separation have developed their own unique flora and fauna, such as Peninsulaustra becoming an frigid tundra home to species adapted to the cold, and Borealia, with only a few species making it across the land bridge before it flooded over, now being a thriving hotspot for endemic species found nowhere else on the planet.

The seas are also thriving as of the Late Rodentocene: while no hamsters have colonized it, at least just yet, the warm waters are flourishing with reefs and algae forests that grow with tremendous jungles of kelp that form their own biome from small organisms that take shelter in them. Most conspicuously, however, are the lack of fish: and in the absence of the dominant marine vertebrates of Earth, strange new clades have evolved in the briny depths, to fill the gaps left vacant.

The era is a time of stability: for the next tens of millions of years, the clime and tectonics will change little and the biomes will remain habitable and little-changing. But while the world itself stagnates, its creatures do not -- and this era will be their first big hurrah, as the planet's dominant clade.

Hamster’s Paradise has gotten really weird and unsettling since I last followed it so no longer following it

If you consider yourself an ally of mentally ill people, here are some words, phrases, and general behaviours that make your mentally ill friends and family distrust the true nature/intentions of your allyship:

• Using the word "triggered" in place of "bothered", "upset", or "offended", without regard for the fact that "triggered" is an actual psychiatric term that refers to actual psychiatric triggers. (Also, 99% of the time when someone says something like "oh did I trigger you?", they're literally weaponizing the term in order to gaslight the person they're talking to, which just makes them a really shitty human being).

• laugh reacting, and/or sharing "funny" videos of human beings acting "fucked up" in public.

• conflating the meanings of "psychotic" and "psychopathic"/"psychosis" and "psychopathy" as if they're not two completely different words that just happen to sound similar.

• using the word "psychotic" or "psycho" to describe someone who just happens to be an aggressively shitty person. Actually, to be honest, you should probably stay away from calling shitty people anything that denotes mental illness, like, "crazy" (unless you're mentally ill and reclaiming the word for yourself)... I don't personally have an issue with people who use the word "crazy" to describe erratic behaviour, but a lot of us psychiatrically unwell folks do take issue with it.

• Something a lot of our society has a hard time wrapping their heads around is the idea that people can behave badly and with "evil" intent while being perfectly mentally healthy. Assuming or suggesting anytime an "evil" person makes headlines, that they must be "sick" to be able to do something so terrible is not only highly ableist but that assumption (that only mentally ill people can be evil, or dangerous, or violent) literally leads to the deaths of innocently suffering mentally ill people every single day.

Anyway. This is just a rant, really. Other mentally ill and/or neurodiverse people are welcome to add to the list. Neurotypicals and mentally healthy people can repost or reblog, but keep your opinions and questions to yourself (Google it if you need to), so as not to speak over others who are actually personally affected by this shit. Thanks.

@frislander

Israeli entry for Eurovision in 2009, sung in Hebrew, English and Arabic. The singer on the left is Noa, a Yemenite Jew. The singer on the right is Mira Awad, half Palestinian and half Bulgarian. Both are Israeli citizens.

I feel the lyrics are as relevant today as they were in 2009, if not more so,

Edit: Meant to include a translation

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/there-must-be-another-way-%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9A-there-must-be-another-way.html-0