Jesus: If There Is Only One Lesson That You Take Away From My Teachings, Let It Be To Love All People

I did not write this - but WOW does it speak to my heart!!! Worth the read.

Barely the day started and... it's already six in the evening.

Barely arrived on Monday and it's already Friday.

... and the month is already over.

... and the year is almost over.

... and already 40, 50 or 60 years of our lives have passed.

... and we realize that we lost our parents, friends.

and we realize it's too late to go back...

So... Let's try, despite everything, to enjoy the remaining time...

Let's keep looking for activities that we like...

Let's put some color in our grey...

Let's smile at the little things in life that put balm in our hearts.

And despite everything, we must continue to enjoy with serenity this time we have left. Let's try to eliminate the afters...

I'm doing it after...

I'll say after...

I'll think about it after...

We leave everything for later like ′′ after ′′ is ours.

Because what we don't understand is that:

Afterwards, the coffee gets cold...

afterwards, priorities change...

Afterwards, the charm is broken...

afterwards, health passes...

Afterwards, the kids grow up...

Afterwards parents get old...

Afterwards, promises are forgotten...

afterwards, the day becomes the night...

afterwards life ends...

And then it's often too late....

So... Let's leave nothing for later...

Because still waiting see you later, we can lose the best moments,

the best experiences,

best friends,

the best family...

The day is today... The moment is now...

We are no longer at the age where we can afford to postpone what needs to be done right away.

So let's see if you have time to read this message and then share it.

Or maybe you'll leave it for... ′′ later "...

And you'll never share it....

Average global temperatures per year since 1880 until 2023.

Suleiman Class Scout/Courier, Type S ship, Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society No 6, GDW, 1980 (William H Keith Jr cover)

A DM’s Fair Play Guide To Plot Twists

I love running a game with a lot of surprises. The challenge to pulling this off well is that, unless you’re playing a one on one game, your players outnumber you: and between them, they have a good chance of figuring out what’s going to happen, no matter how sneaky and clever you are.

The first way of dealing with this - which I’ll just call the bullshit way - is to not give your players the information they need to solve the mystery. Don’t let them find out about the secret society until it’s too late. Don’t give them any reason to suspect that their NPC ally is planning to kill them. Don’t let them find the murder weapon, don’t let them locate the witnesses, don’t give them the chance to skip to the end of their investigation.

This sucks, and if you run your games like this, you’re going to piss off your players. Because it isn’t fair.

In mystery literature, a “fair play mystery” is one where the reader is given all of the information they need in order to figure out the solution before the Big Reveal. It’s what makes the reveal good: that GASP, the “oh shit, the knife! the knife from the party! that was hers! I forgot!”

Pulling off a twist in a fair play game is an incredible feeling. Your players will think you’re a genius (or an absolute dick bastard, which is just as good) and they’ll respect it more when they land in hot water that they plausibly could have avoided. So how do you run a fair play game without your players figuring out the twists ahead of time, given that you’re definitely not smarter than all of your players put together?

By fucking with their expectations.

Here are some things that I keep in mind, to keep my players guessing. And it’s important, with all of this, that if your players see through something, let them have it. They should figure out a lot of things on their own! But if you’re regularly seeding your stories with all of this stuff, eventually your players will miss something. Those are somethings you can build on. The same way that a low level enemy who gets away once can keep coming back again and again until they become an important antagonist, a misapprehension your party proves to have a blindspot for can grow and develop until they get smacked with a breathtaking twist. 

What’s a twist if not the sudden overturning of an assumption you never thought to question?

1: Make your powerful friendly NPCs know a lot…but not as much as the players think they do.

Player characters often end up with powerful allies. It would be very convenient for the party if those allies always had accurate information. Make sure they don’t always enjoy that convenience.

It’s a balancing act: you want your powerful NPCs to be powerful. You want this alliance to be meaningful and beneficial to your players. But give your NPC an Achilles heel of some kind, when it comes to the information at their disposal. The Noble General commands powerful forces and knows the lay of the enemy’s land well…but that doesn’t mean he knows what every squadron and scouting party is up to. The Political Mastermind may know the ins and outs of the court, and have keen insight into the motivations of others: but he has an enemy who pisses him off so much that he loses all objectivity around her. The Powerful Wizard can call upon great magic to aid the party: but his divinations aren’t as accurate as he thinks they are, and he’s prone to finding, in his signs and omens, what he wants to see, more than what’s actually there.

Most of the time, their information should be good! That will make it more likely that your players will trust them the one time when it isn’t.

2. Let (apparently) less powerful NPCs sometimes know more than the players think they do. 

Most NPCs aren’t the Noble General or the Powerful Wizard. Most NPCs are Daves, designed to get the players from place to place. Most of those Daves know about as much as you’d expect them to. But some Daves have plans of their own.

You don’t always have to signpost with big blinking lights which of your NPCs are ‘important,’ and which ones are ‘unimportant.’ Sneak in a crafty Dave from time to time. That assistant they talk to, every time they go to see the prince? That bitch knows everything, and she’s almost ready to make her move. 

3: There is no such thing as a completely reliable witness. 

If the players only get information from one person, that information should be flawed in at least one, potentially small, but important way. Smart players will seek a second opinion, or at least allow for the possibility that their information may be incomplete. But even smart players get out over their skis sometimes.

4: Let your NPCs be aware of the power of a first impression. 

If an NPC gives a strong first impression of being a particular kind of person, it’s because they’re comfortable giving that impression. That might be because it’s who they are. But maybe not.

One of the first characters the PCs met in a VtM campaign I ran was Gawaine. Gawaine was a good old pine-scented man’s man, with salt and pepper stubble and a blue Ford truck. He listened to AC/DC, and talked about the war. He was affable and honest and willing to lend a hand. You already know Gawaine. Everybody knows a Gawaine. Gawaines are trustworthy, salt of the earth types. You don’t necessarily think to question a Gawaine.

That’s exactly why Gawaine was such a useful persona for Krystiyan, the Tzimisce Voivode, a cruel and alien sculptor of flesh who “never left his haven.” There were plenty of clues that they were the same person, but that campaign was in its endgame before the players put them all together.

5: Sometimes, dangerous and villainous NPCs should be helpful and cooperative. 

Not even necessarily because they’re manipulating the players, or even deceiving them about their true natures, but because their interests and the players’ interests genuinely align…for the moment. 

One of the easiest levers in your players’ brains to exploit is the expectation that people who help you are your friends. Even if your players know, consciously, that they shouldn’t trust this person, most of the time they kind of can’t help it, if the NPC is genuinely helpful to them and at least a little charismatic. 

6: Sometimes, good and valuable NPCs should be unhelpful and uncooperative. 

No matter how mature your players are, there’s a natural tendency to react to uncooperative NPCs with a reflexive, “Hey, fuck you! We’re the protagonists! This guy is an asshole!” so from time to time have a helpful, honest, good-aligned NPC have a wholly justified but as-yet-unknown-to-the-party reason to flatly refuse to deal with them.

7: Every NPC should have a secret. 

Not necessarily a bad secret. Were it to be revealed, it might even make the party like them more! But for their own reasons, the NPC does not want their secret to come out, and they will lie to the party to protect it. Players go crazy when they realize they’re being lied to, and often jump to some wild assumptions about your NPC’s motivations. I’ve had an NPC lie about the opening hours of a shop, and had the PCs assume that they were black market dealers for the villain when the dude just wanted to be able to close early so he could go smoke weed in the park.

8. As a DM, it’s polite to remind your players of the common knowledge their characters would possess…even when it doesn’t reflect the truth.

We all know it’s tedious when the DM calls for a roll when you’re just asking for common knowledge. I shouldn’t have to make a roll to know the dumb space word for plastic in a Star Wars game. I shouldn’t have to make a roll to know who the Holy Roman Emperor is in a game about medieval vampires. The DM should supply common knowledge for free, whenever it comes up.

That doesn’t mean common knowledge is true.

This is different from just lying to your players, because you don’t put the weight of DM word-of-God behind it. It’s not “You would know this guy is a Ventrue, based on XYZ.” It’s “it would be a common assumption that this guy is a Ventrue, based on XYZ.” He might not be a Ventrue. It might in fact be extremely important that he is not a Ventrue. But if it is commonly assumed that he’s a Ventrue, that is - word for word - something you can share with your players. If they don’t look any deeper than common knowledge, that’s on them.

9. Obviously untrustworthy NPCs provide great air coverage for less obviously untrustworthy NPCs.

The obviously untrustworthy NPC might or might not be planning to betray the party. But if you introduce two untrustworthy NPCs in the same storyline, and one of them seems normal and cool and has a genuine plot-related reason to be there, and the other one is Jaffar, Jaffar’s gonna get clocked, but Susan over there will probably slip under the radar, and might even get tapped to help out with the whole Jaffar situation. They might get Susan’s number, by the end of the session. Susan might become an ‘ally.’ Susan might even get romanced by a party member. Play your cards right, and Jaffar might just end up a footnote in the introduction of Susan, Scourge of Worlds and most hated NPC in the entire campaign.

10. Your villains should always have a secret plan B.

Your villain isn’t stupid, right? And your villain probably isn’t so arrogant that it is inconceivable to them that their plan might fail. They’ve been planning this ritual for ten thousand years, after all. It’s always possible that some plucky band of heroes could show up at the last minute and murder your high priest, or steal your amulet, or seduce your second in command. So what does your villain have in his back pocket to make the players go, “Oh, shit - he planned for this!”

This may mean that there is a whole separate plot happening, running alongside the main story. This is great, because when weird things happen, the players have to figure out whether this is part of Plot A or Plot B, and working out who did what and why gets a lot more interesting. If they end up foiling Plot A, great - your villain was also secretly behind Plot B the whole time, and will transfer all of his resources over to that. 

Sometimes your players will figure out that Plots A and B were both the same plot the whole time, with the same villain at the head, and they’ll feel like the smartest people on the planet, and it will be their favorite moment of the entire game. That’s great! You gave them that!

Sometimes, they won’t. And when the villain of Plot A, apparently defeated, starts laughing and reveals that he was also the mastermind behind Plot B, which is now too late to be stopped, that will probably be your favorite moment of the entire game.

Woody Guthrie and his guitar: “this machine kills fascists” - early 1940’s by SweeetPotato

This is about Sci-Hub. yeah we get it.. gatekeep knowledge and protect the interests of capital…

There Are 96,000,000 Black Balls In This Reservoir!

It’s amazing but sad how much him and Trump have in common.

GOOD ADVICE REGARDING CORONAVIRUS February 26, 2020

As some of you may recall, when I was a professor of pathology at the University of California San Diego, I was one of the first molecular virologists in the world to work on coronaviruses (the 1970s). I was the first to demonstrate the number of genes the virus contained. Since then, I have kept up with the coronavirus field and its multiple clinical transfers into the human population (e.g., SARS, MERS), from different animal sources.

The current projections for its expansion in the US are only probable, due to continued insufficient worldwide data, but it is most likely to be widespread in the US by mid to late March and April.

Here is what I have done and the precautions that I take and will take. These are the same precautions I currently use during our influenza seasons, except for the mask and gloves.:

1) NO HANDSHAKING! Use a fist bump, slight bow, elbow bump, etc.

2) Use ONLY your knuckle to touch light switches. elevator buttons, etc.. Lift the gasoline dispenser with a paper towel or use a disposable glove.

3) Open doors with your closed fist or hip - do not grasp the handle with your hand, unless there is no other way to open the door. Especially important on bathroom and post office/commercial doors.

4) Use disinfectant wipes at the stores when they are available, including wiping the handle and child seat in grocery carts.

5) Wash your hands with soap for 10-20 seconds and/or use a greater than 60% alcohol-based hand sanitizer whenever you return home from ANY activity that involves locations where other people have been.

6) Keep a bottle of sanitizer available at each of your home’s entrances. AND in your car for use after getting gas or touching other contaminated objects when you can’t immediately wash your hands.

7) If possible, cough or sneeze into a disposable tissue and discard. Use your elbow only if you have to. The clothing on your elbow will contain infectious virus that can be passed on for up to a week or more!

What I have stocked in preparation for the pandemic spread to the US:

1) Latex or nitrile latex disposable gloves for use when going shopping, using the gasoline pump, and all other outside activity when you come in contact with contaminated areas.

Note: This virus is spread in large droplets by coughing and sneezing. This means that the air will not infect you! BUT all the surfaces where these droplets land are infectious for about a week on average - everything that is associated with infected people will be contaminated and potentially infectious. The virus is on surfaces and you will not be infected unless your unprotected face is directly coughed or sneezed upon.

This virus only has cell receptors for lung cells (it only infects your lungs) The only way for the virus to infect you is through your nose or mouth via your hands or an infected cough or sneeze onto or into your nose or mouth.

2) Stock up now with disposable surgical masks and use them to prevent you from touching your nose and/or mouth (We touch our nose/mouth 90X/day without knowing it!). This is the only way this virus can infect you - it is lung-specific. The mask will not prevent the virus in a direct sneeze from getting into your nose or mouth - it is only to keep you from touching your nose or mouth.

3) Stock up now with hand sanitizers and latex/nitrile gloves (get the appropriate sizes for your family). The hand sanitizers must be alcohol-based and greater than 60% alcohol to be effective.

4) Stock up now with zinc lozenges. These lozenges have been proven to be effective in blocking coronavirus (and most other viruses) from multiplying in your throat and nasopharynx. Use as directed several times each day when you begin to feel ANY “cold-like” symptoms beginning. It is best to lie down and let the lozenge dissolve in the back of your throat and nasopharynx. Cold-Eeze lozenges is one brand available, but there are other brands available.

I, as many others do, hope that this pandemic will be reasonably contained, BUT I personally do not think it will be. Humans have never seen this (edited: animal)-associated virus before and have no internal defense against it.

Tremendous worldwide efforts are being made to understand the molecular and clinical virology of this virus. Unbelievable molecular knowledge about the genomics, structure, and virulence of this virus has already been achieved. BUT, there will be NO drugs or vaccines available this year to protect us or limit the infection within us. Only symptomatic support is available.

I hope these personal thoughts will be helpful during this potentially catastrophic pandemic. You are welcome to share.

Good luck to all of us! James Robb, MD FCAP

{ MASTERPOST } Everything You Need to Know about Getting a Job, Raise, or Promotion • Bitches Get Riches

You were told never to enter the crypt… told that the sacred knowledge buried there would break the minds of the weak-willed. You were told… and you disobeyed. Now, as you creep your way forward, guttering torch in hand, you wonder if you’ve made a fatal error. The cobwebs hang thick before you, obscuring your […]

Getting a job:

Ask the Bitches: What the Hell Else Can I Do to Get a Job?

How to Write a Resume so You Actually Have a Prayer of Getting Hired

How to Write a Cover Letter like You Actually Want the Job

How to Frame Volunteering on Your Resume When You’ve Never Had a Job

Prep Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself: Getting Ready for a Job Interview

Common Job Interview Questions and How to Answer Them with the Confidence of a Mediocre White Dude

10 Questions You Should Never Be Asked in a Job Interview

What to Wear (and What Not to Wear) to a Job Interview

What to Do When You’re Asked About Your Salary in a Job Interview

How NOT to Determine Your Salary

How to Find Remote Work: On Getting the Elusive Work-From-Home Job

High School Students Have No Way of Knowing What Career to Choose. Why Do We Make Them Do It Anyway?

The Actually Helpful, Nuanced, Non-Bullshit Way to Choose a Future Career

Myers-Briggs Personalities and Income

I Just Applied for a Job. How (And When) Should I Follow Up?

Our Best Secrets for a Successful, Strategic, and SHORT Job Search

Freelancing and side jobs:

Should Artists Ever Work for Free?

Stop Undervaluing Your Own Work, You Darling Fool

Romanticizing the Side Hustle

The Ugly Truth About Unpaid Internships

Freelancer, Protect Thyself: The Importance of a Fair Contract

Ask the Bitches: My Boss Won’t Give Me a Contract and I’m Freaking Out

I Lost My Job and It Might Be the Best Worst Thing That’s Ever Happened to Me

Workplace benefits:

Workplace Benefits and Other Cool Side Effects of Employment

Your School or Workplace Benefits Might Include Cool Free Stuff

Take Advantage of No-Copay Medical Care

Dafuq Is a Retirement Plan and Why Do You Need One?

How to Save for Retirement When You Make Less Than $30,000 a Year

Season 2, Episode 6: “Someone Offered to Mentor Me! How Do I Be a Non-Sucky Mentee?”

Navigating the workplace:

My Secret Weapon for Preparing for Awkward Boss Confrontations

Are You Working on the Next Fyre Festival?: Identifying a Toxic Workplace

Woke at Work: How to Inject Your Values into Your Boring, Lame-Ass Job

Looking Weird at Work

Short Hair DO Care: Why Is Short Hair Still Controversial?

How to Successfully Work from Home Without Losing Your Goddamn Mind (Or Your Job)

Season 1, Episode 1: “Should I Tell My Boss I’m Looking for Another Job?”

Accepted a Coworker’s Social Media Friend Request? Yeah, You’re Gonna Regret That.

Season 1, Episode 5: “I Don’t Love My Job, but It Pays Well. Should I Quit—or Tough It Out?”

Season 2, Episode 7: “How Do I Throw My Incompetent Coworkers under the Bus?”

Getting a raise:

Salary Range: Are You Asking for Enough?

A Millennial’s Guide to Growing Your Salary

The First Time I Asked for a Raise

You Need to Ask for a Fucking Raise

Should You Increase Your Salary or Decrease Your Spending?

Getting a promotion:

Santa Isn’t Coming and Neither Is Your Promotion

How I Chessmastered Myself into a Promotion

Job Hoppers vs. Career Loyalists: I Want to See Numbers!

The Fascinating Results of Our Job Hopping vs. Career Loyalty Poll

Confession: I Hate My Job and I Don’t Know How to Leave It

A New Job, a New Day, a New Life, and I’m Feeling Good

Season 1, Episode 9: “I’ve Given up on My Dream Career. Where Do I Go From Here?”