Think of it like your email provider: you can still get email from Hotmail even if you have an AOL.com account.

Where this analogy breaks down is that some instances have defederated from others. This means “we don’t want your data, and we won’t import it.”

But if you pick an instance that is widely federated then you can see and interact with most of Lemmy.

I actually just finished my weekly session running MotW, our second in the campaign.

I’m really liking it so far; it’s probably my favorite PbtA other than the original AW so far. They seemed to understand the design philosophy better than most.

The investigate a mystery move in particular works really well to keep the momentum of the game up.

It’s my favorite TTRPG! I’ve probably played more Apocalypse World than anything else.

I will say that it won’t work for every group; it has a tendency to go PVP, and the players need to be able to handle that. However, because it doesn’t shy away from PVP conflict, the MC gets to be more of a player than in most other systems (even other PbtAs). I’ve run in so many different settings, too: an interstellar colony ship 200 years into it’s voyage (and 50 years after a war), a military base that got time-portaled to dinosaur times, a waterworld archipelago, etc. I’ve played campaigns where I ran a taco truck or killed an eldritch god, and they were both just as compelling.

Play some Apocalypse World!

Corey Robin wrote the best criticism of Rand, IMO:

Since the nineteenth century, it has been the task of the left to hold up to liberal civilization a mirror of its highest values and to say, “You do not look like this.” You claim to believe in the rights of man, but it is only the rights of property you uphold. You claim to stand for freedom, but it is only the freedom of the strong to dominate the weak. If you wish to live up to your principles, you must give way to their demiurge. Allow the dispossessed to assume power, and the ideal will be made real, the metaphor will be made material.

Rand believed that this meeting of heaven and earth could be arranged by other means. Rather than remake the world in the image of paradise, she looked for paradise in an image of the world. Political transformation wasn’t necessary. Transubstantiation was enough. Say a few words, wave your hands and the ideal is real, the metaphor material. An idealist of the most primitive sort, Rand took a century of socialist dichotomies and flattened them. Small wonder so many have accused her of intolerance: When heaven and earth are pressed so closely together, where is there room for dissent?

Far from needing explanation, her success explains itself. Rand worked in that quintessential American proving ground—alongside the likes of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, Steve Bannon and Glenn Beck—where garbage achieves gravitas and bullshit gets blessed. There she learned that dreams don’t come true. They are true.

Reactionary ideology is absolutely associated with the far right.

Conservatism is a reactionary ideology.

Conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, and agency the prerogative of the elite. Though it is often claimed that the left stands for equality while the right stands for freedom, this notion misstates the actual disagreement between right and left. Historically, the conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for the lower orders. What the conservative sees and dislikes in equality, in other words, is not a threat to freedom but its extension. For in that extension, he sees a loss of his own freedom.

-Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind

You can do a lot to improve how it looks, too. There’s a lot of custom terrain, and you can download meshes made from satellite photos.

It also works better in VR.

I should get back into that one. I played some in early access, and it was fun.

It’s my favorite racing sim. Good pick.

I’ll definitely look at Sailwind, I’d love a good sailing sim. Thanks for the rec!

That was another great one; it’s one of the most fun eras to fly in.

It’s a blast! It’s a bit like the folk music side of classical.

As an amateur I mostly play with friends at reenactment events, probably one every month or two. There are frequently balls with period dancing for which we play the music, usually whatever the dance master/mistress chooses.

I play with a few people who get gigs everywhere from colleges to Renaissance fairs, many have day jobs and supplement with music. There’s a pretty big crossover with people who play Celtic music too, so Irish bars are another place that some folks play.

There are systems like Blades in the Dark that bypass all the planning phases and just let players jump into the interesting parts of the story. Better yet, it has mechanics to support this kind of play.

“Simulation” type RPGs can be done on computers these days with much more detailed and satisfying tactical combat, but narrative-focused games that play more like an episodic show is where the really interesting TTRPG stuff is happening in my opinion.

I run an amateur early music group, we play at reenactment events.

I’m working on my sight reading, but I feel like that’ll always be the case. I’m pretty decent at the soprano and tenor recorder in the keys of C, G, and F so I need to work on more keys.

I’m decent at picking out a tune on my lute, but I need practice on playing the bass notes simultaneously when reading notation, and to just improve on reading French tableture in general.

I’m always excited to try new things; we’ve got a few vocal pieces that we’re picking up soon.

I wish this motherfucker had to live off of SNAP for a month while working a shitty and dangerous minimum wage job.

Should have been “Milky Whey.”

It’s also important to note that the bill of rights doesn’t say it applies to citizens; it refers to people.

For example:

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Relevant passage from The Dawn of Everything by Graeber & Wengrow:

Let’s begin by asking: what did the inhabitants of New France make of the Europeans who began to arrive on their shores in the sixteenth century?

At that time, the region that came to be known as New France was inhabited largely by speakers of Montagnais-Naskapi, Algonkian and Iroquoian languages. Those closer to the coast were fishers, foresters and hunters, though most also practised horticulture; the Wendat (Huron), concentrated in major river valleys further inland, growing maize, squash and beans around fortified towns. Interestingly, early French observers attached little importance to such economic distinctions, especially since foraging or farming was, in either case, largely women’s work. The men, they noted, were primarily occupied in hunting and, occasionally, war, which meant they could in a sense be considered natural aristocrats. The idea of the ‘noble savage’ can be traced back to such estimations. Originally, it didn’t refer to nobility of character but simply to the fact that the Indian men concerned themselves with hunting and fighting, which back at home were largely the business of noblemen.

But if French assessments of the character of ‘savages’ tended to be decidedly mixed, the indigenous assessment of French character was distinctly less so. Father Pierre Biard, for example, was a former theology professor assigned in 1608 to evangelize the Algonkian-speaking Mi’kmaq in Nova Scotia, who had lived for some time next to a French fort. Biard did not think much of the Mi’kmaq, but reported that the feeling was mutual: ‘They consider themselves better than the French: “For,” they say, “you are always fighting and quarrelling among yourselves; we live peaceably. You are envious and are all the time slandering each other; you are thieves and deceivers; you are covetous, and are neither generous nor kind; as for us, if we have a morsel of bread we share it with our neighbour.” They are saying these and like things continually.’ What seemed to irritate Biard the most was that the Mi’kmaq would constantly assert that they were, as a result, ‘richer’ than the French. The French had more material possessions, the Mi’kmaq conceded; but they had other, greater assets: ease, comfort and time.

Twenty years later Brother Gabriel Sagard, a Recollect Friar, wrote similar things of the Wendat nation. Sagard was at first highly critical of Wendat life, which he described as inherently sinful (he was obsessed with the idea that Wendat women were all intent on seducing him), but by the end of his sojourn he had come to the conclusion their social arrangements were in many ways superior to those at home in France. In the following passages he was clearly echoing Wendat opinion: ‘They have no lawsuits and take little pains to acquire the goods of this life, for which we Christians torment ourselves so much, and for our excessive and insatiable greed in acquiring them we are justly and with reason reproved by their quiet life and tranquil dispositions.’ Much like Biard’s Mi’kmaq, the Wendat were particularly offended by the French lack of generosity to one another: ‘They reciprocate hospitality and give such assistance to one another that the necessities of all are provided for without there being any indigent beggar in their towns and villages; and they considered it a very bad thing when they heard it said that there were in France a great many of these needy beggars, and thought that this was for lack of charity in us, and blamed us for it severely.’

Wait, I thought conservatives were all about “State’s rights?” I’m starting to think that’s only a threadbare excuse to do the most racist shit imaginable, because that seems to be the only time that argument is applied.