I’m willing to bet that there was a cultural shift between when that module was written and now. I am willing to bet that the author and all his friends knew what a prophet-squeeze-monster trope is because it was nearly ubiquitous at the time, but then people stopped using it (likely because it was seen as the “obvious” option) and as a result it stopped being a classic trope.

As a comparison, I am working on a novel with a soft magic system. However, I tend to forget that it is a soft magic system when I am explaining it to friends because it has strict rules for how it works, and more importantly i am a huge Tolkien nerd and forget other people dont even know who Morgoth is. At one point, I made the mistake of telling a friend that “its a pretty standard fantasy magic system” which they interpreted as “it works like D&D instead of like Mistborn”. They then had to double back and ask me what I thought a “standard magic system” was when I started talking about legal standing and precedent letting my wizards cast spells. To me, this seemed normal because that’s how Gandalf does magic. But the current high fantasy landscape has trained people to think of magic as an alternate science where specific inputs get specific outputs, so people tend to instinctively think of soft magic systems as working the same but with less control over the inputs or less reliable outputs.

This was about 12 years ago, i think. By “kid” I mean teenager.

I’m just not used to podcasts sticking around for more than four years.

Feels like every presidential election

I remember song exploder! I listened to it a lot when I was a kid. I’d love to listen to a podcast like that, but with authors talking about their books and explaining why they made the decisions they made

Meaning they haven’t had any big scandals and seem like a good company

My understanding is that Briar is ethically the best, but no one uses it. Signal is the best if you actually want to use it to communicate. Telegram is where the pirates and drugs are.

Here’s the long version: when a dev is making a messaging app, they eventually have to make a choice: do I integrate SMS/MMS? If they want to make this app a daily driver messaging platform to help you ungoogle your android phone, they have to integrate SMS/MMS, which has security vulnerabilities and limits how secure they can make their app. More importantly, people do not tolerate ads on their messaging app, so they flat-out cannot monetize it without losing their entire userbase. If they don’t integrate SMS/MMS, they are creating a closed ecosystem, and a closed ecosystem can be profitable. If leadership changes, the new leaders might decide to turn their users into either cutomers or products.

And how doest thou find these podcasts

I sure hope so. I mean, considering that the people whose names would make it into the book would almost certainly be people I interact with regularly and am close to. I think I would be devastated. Might write my own name in after I figure out I’m the reason my friends are having heart attacks.

Alternative scenario: My typical way to come up with names for characters is to go to Wikipedia and look up obscure celebs and historical figures that seem appropriate. If I use the journal to solo-rpg V:TM with the assistance of the Mythic GM Emulator, I’m gonna have a killstreak in the hundreds and never figure it out.

The only thing that would fuck with this is if the shinigami who owns the book shows up to tell me what the book is for. I may be dumb, but if an obviously supernatural thing comes up to me I’m gonna treat it like it wants to be treated and listen to what it says. Ryuk is getting as many apples as he wants.

Tbh if i came across a notebook with a bunch of ominous bullshit on the inside cover, I’d assume it was a prop for V:TM or some other goth-ish ttrpg. And then promptly ignore the instructions until I notice people dying.

And that’s assuming I don’t just rip out the instructions or glue a picture over it

Personally, I think the big thing is that we need a tool to see who is defederated from who. We don’t want some poor sod somehow thinking that since they are leftist that Hexbear or Lemmygrad would be a good place for them.

I probably would use it like a journal and kill a bunch of people by accident

I had to look up what that was. Very happy I did.

Isn’t there a billionaire who was in the news during CoVid because he gave his employees a living wage during lockdown by not paying himself anything for that time? He’s still a billionaire, BTW, he owns assets that he can liquidate whenever he wants

Op has a history of trolling. To me this reads like bellyaching about being repeatedly calling out on it.

Strattera was pretty useful for me

You must not have been here for the beans

Did something happen on the alien site last week?

Speak for yourself.

Why did you do this to us? Why‽

Read this as 5’9"