Rule #51

What’s been on my mind?

For the past 36 hours, only one question has been on my mind.

With everything he had... With the life he lead... If Anthony Bourdain couldn’t be happy...

Then what hope have I?

Tips for living alone

Buy a bat (I have my old color guard rifle) or similar. Keep it in your room/near your bed.

Get a lock for your bedroom door.

If you’re moving into a new place, change the locks. Who knows who had a key to your place before you.

Keep your phone/a phone in your room.

Get a weather alert system set up. App, weather call, little weather radio that tells you about major weather events.

Adopt a pet

Wave at your neighbors. Take note of the ones that make you uneasy. Watch out for kids always.

Be nice to your mail person. No matter what.

If you choose to drink/etc alone, unplug your wifi router. You’ll thank me.

Have extra seating. People sit when they visit. Your one comfy chair is great for you. Not so great for you + grandma + ur five cousins, your aunt, and a couple others.

Learn the self-Heimlich

When you take a shower, bring your phone to the bathroom in case you fall your phone is no longer halfway across the house, it’s just on your counter

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Idk what else

Wrestlemania 41 Night Two predictions

√ Woman's World Championship Triple Threat Match: (c) Iyo Sky defeats Rhea Ripley and Bianca Belair. Iyo has been pretty much ignored by the other two competitors leading up to this match, which will continue during this match too. Iyo pins Rhea so the "Rhea can't beat Iyo" story can continue. Plus it also keeps the "Bianca has never been pinned or submitted at Wrestelmania" story going too.

√ Sin City Street Fight: Drew McIntyre defeats Damian Priest. The sad part is both of these guys desperately need a win. But I think Paul HHH has decided that Priest is not main event worthy and with this loss will be dropping back down to the mid card. If this match opens the night, then maybe Priest wins. But I don't think so.

√ Intercontinental Fatal Four-Way Match: Dominik Mysterio defeats (c) Bron Breaker, Penta & Finn Balor. It's time to move Dom up. He's still great on the mike and his in ring work has improved greatly. Either Dom pins Pinn Balor or Balor hits his move on Penta only for Dom to attack him and steal the pin. This leads to the break up of the Judgement Day and gets the title off of Bron without him losing so he can move up the card.

√ Randy Orton Open Challenge Match: Despite who his opponent is, Randy is taking the win here. The next PLE is taking place in St. Louis, Randy's hometown, so he'll be challenging the winner of Rhodes/Cena there. Rumor is his opponent will be the returning Rusev (thanks for the spoiler Big E) or maybe Solo Sikoa. I hope it's not Rusev. He should return on the RAM or SAM and certainly shouldn't take a loss in his return match.

√ Logan Paul defeats AJ Styles. Short and to the point, Logan hasn't won in quite a while and AJ, nearing the end of his career, can take the loss. My prediction for who's in the Prime bottle this year is Karrion Kross.

X Woman's World Tag Team Title Match: (c) Liv Morgan & Raquel Rodriguez defeat Lyra Valkyria and a mystery partner (most likely Becky Lynch). I don't think Becky is coming back full time, which is why I'm picking the champs to retain. I suppose they could do a thing where Becky is just "filling in" for Bayley and then Bayley becomes the co-champion. But I think the champs win with Shenanigans which makes Aldis put the match on the SAM with a suddenly healed Bayley and they win them there.

√ Undisputed WWE Championship Match: John Cena beats (c) Cody Rhodes. This match will be loaded with shenanigans. But Cena winning is the much more interesting option. Then he takes on Randy at Backlash (in Randy's home town), then CM Punk at Money In The Bank (c'mon, this HAS to happen). I'll be honest, I have no idea what they'll do with Cody afterwords, but I'm intrigued to find out. Also, Cody got pretty boo'd on Smackdown by the Las Vegas crowd. Curious to see if that will continue tonight.

Important stuff here.

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

- Jill Thomas Doyle

I would add in https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com, especially if you’re like me and absolutely suck at naming things.

The New DMs Guide to: Building a Homebrew World

Every creature, class and caricature can be found for free on the internet, with almost no digging. Dungeons and Dragons has never been easier to play. These are the resources I used to build the beginning of my campaign. This one isn’t for building story, this one is for building world. (Story Masterpost coming soon)

What I Use

The Obvious: dndbeyond.com - Character Builders, Rule Guides, Guides to Monsters, Tips, Tricks and everything in between. Does require a little money to access the full scope of the site, but the free version is superb as well.

Create your own world map: Inkarnate.com - awesome map creator with free and Pro versions (at very reasonable prices). Example:

The Best of the Dungeon Builders: http://www.dungeonographer.com (free and paid versions. I use the free one) - dungeon builder, but you can make anything! The best dungeon maker I’ve found, with sheer simplicity of use balanced with scope of opportunity. Example:

How deep do you want to go? Donjon’s Generators - https://donjon.bin.sh Calendars? Loot? Dungeons? Demographics? Inns? Towns? Magic Shops?

Cities are big. Someone else can build it. fantasycities.watabou.ru (free) - City Map Generator. Great for creating big cities or tiny towns, and so much easier than building every single major city of your world, if you want to have those maps.

There are plenty of places to download and print tokens for combat play (if you want to use a map at all) online, but I bought mine from: SidequestTTM

Watch and Learn

The Bare Basics of D&D - Handbook Helper. New too Dungeons and Dragons? The team behind Critical Role have a whole (and continuing) series on the basic rules of D&D 

Matthew Mercer and Satine Phoenix’s GM Tips - Some of the best Game Masters in the world share their tips for Mastering the Game. I’ve watched the whole thing twice and always learn more.

Matt Colville’s Running the Game - An incredible video resource that goes from building the very start of a campaign to how to navigate tough spots, how to plant story hooks and some of the best advice I’ve ever seen.

Other Great Resources

“All You Need” Site, http://autorolltables.github.io/index.html - need an npc? A plot? A settlement? A monster? An encounter? autorolltables will make it.

World Map Making: http://www.hexographer.com - specific style of simplistic map making, very useful though I don’t use it myself. 

Azgaar World Map Generator: has landscape, political boundaries, names and more. If you don’t want to design your own, this one’s a perfectly viable option.

https://sketchbook.com: free drawing software, very intuitive but no map making specifics. 

https://rpgtinker.com:  great for more complex characters.

Dungeon Building: https://deepnight.net/tools/tabletop-rpg-map-editor/ - a fantastic but very simple map maker, works best in Chrome and requires flash.

Extras

Make your homebrew content look official

Need a Monster? - roll20 

I am sorry. I’m bashing Apple here. And for good reason.

This is a plea to my followers.

Stop buying Apple products. I know you’ve used them for most of your life, and I know it’s inconvenient to move to a new brand because in most cases, you cannot take your contacts with you on various chat apps.

I know this is inconvenient. I truly do.

But Apple is not the company it was before. There is now no difference between an Apple computer and a Windows computer in terms of graphic design. I know this for a fact. I had to use both in college 20 years ago, and non-apple computers are now generally better for design work than Apple computers.

Most non-apple companies encourage self-repair of your own devices, while Apple refuses it. I also know this for a fact, as I watched Apple computers become slowly less reparable through the late 90s and early 2000s. Where I was once able to do the repairs on our office computers, we had to start sending out our Apple devices because they started gluing things down on their logic boards. Notably the glue they used was not heat-resistant and led to device damage should the heat sink system fail. But they did this because they wanted to dig more money out of their customers.

Apple software is also designed to fail. I cannot believe people are still buying new devices after the scandal where Apple was slowing their phones in order to force people to purchase new versions.

Apple hardware is designed to become obsolete. Motherboards and logic boards are designed to hold exactly what comes attached to them and will fail if upgrade attempts are made.

Apple refuses to work with software developers despite promises of cross-compatibility. One of the very first coding problems I discovered was to discover a gigantic hole in a software program that made a plotter (giant printer) compatible with iOS. This caused a memory leak, leading to necessary resets of the computer after every 2 feet of printing.

I know that it’s not possible for most of you to just throw your devices away and buy a new one. I wouldn’t be able to do that, either. But eventually there will come a time when you have to upgrade, and I encourage you to take the plunge and purchase a non-apple device. I don’t even have a recommendation for you because literally anything is better than Apple. A rock that you write on is better than an Apple phone.

Unfortunately I expect to be shadow-banned on Apple devices because of this, and I’ll try to report on decreased activity as much as I can.

It’s time to stop trying to beg Apple to change. They won’t. It’s time now to just stop supporting Apple.

"The best thing we can do with power is give it away" - On the leftist critique of superhero narratives as authoritarian power fantasies:

The ongoing "Jason Todd is a cop" debate has reminded me of a brilliant brief image essay by Joey deVilla. So here it is, images first and the full essay text below:

"A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power. I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large. But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe in fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read. The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact… The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return. Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story. But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive. We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies. But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you). The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take. So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it. That’s not why children read it. We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson… The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY." - Joey deVilla, 2021 https://www.joeydevilla.com/2021/07/04/happy-independence-day-superhero-style/

Everyone wins.