Racing Turtles

A. you can hurt someone (temporary, non scarring pain) and then erase it from thier memory. they will not have subconscious memory of it or dreams about it

B. you can hurt someone, then rewind time only for yourself. you go to a point before they were hurt. they cannot detect this time travel

C. you can hurt someone and then press a button that resets them, mentally and physically, to the time before you hurt them

followup question:

bad-neutral and good-neutral are used to allow some handwaviness about the neutral/middling option

THE WORK RELIES ON YOUR CONTINUANCE

YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO COMPLETE THE WORK, BUT NEITHER ARE YOU FREE TO DESIST FROM IT

I feel this. I do.

The thing that's helpful for me is to remember that while you are just one person, and you are small and tired and scared, you are not alone.

There is a shit ton of work to do, but nobody expects you to do it all by yourself.

The second quote above is from Pirkei Avot, "Ethics of our Fathers." (If anyone else reading this is unfamiliar, this is a collection of Jewish wisdom.) In another chapter, we're told: "Do not separate yourself from the community." I think that's also wise advice for these times. Whichever communities you belong to, remember that you're not on your own.

You're not required to complete the work; it has been ongoing before you were ever on this planet and you will hand it off to the people who come after you. You don't have to do everything, because you are not alone, and together we are far more than just one person. You don't have to do it all, but you do have to do what you can.

good luck babe still makes me tear up when it comes up on my queue btw so chappell roan can shoot paparazzi as far as I’m concerned

its crazy to be alive in a year where my gf can send me billie's Lunch to flirt and I can send her Hot To Go to flirt back so at the end of the day I think it's ok for women to set paparazzi on fire

"it is unethical to experiment on people generally, which makes for a hell of a time designing an ethical way to extract data from them" - there, I've said it like an accountant

why do i have to explain to grown ass adults that human rights r called human rights bc every single human is entitled to them bc they r human, n they should never b taken away no matter who they are or what they did. and that advocating for the removal of human rights, nomatter who the target of it is, is not only incredibly cruel but will eventually spiral and lead to oppression. didnt we learn that shit in like 5th grade.

"well you see taking away THIS group's human rights will fix ever-" no it wont!! it wont!!!!! and it never will!!!!

It's taking you a little longer because you're not lying, stealing, manipulating or selling your soul & that is okay.

Putting all tabletop players into a college level ethics class and forcing them to turn in a paper on moral philosophy before buying a new book

This is…. An interesting thing to say… on this post in particular….

I think a lot of people reblogging this from @probablybadrpgideas are interpreting this as “this would be such a funny wacky way to make the table soooo complicated” but I mean this as a complaint about the way that so many tabletop players seem to just. completely lack an understanding of ethics. what it actually means to behave ethically and treat others ethically. and i dont mean this as "why do people want to be mean and play as villains? :(" i mean "why are there so many tabletop players that sympathize with outright fascist factions to the point of wondering why theyre listed as 'Lawful Evil' in the book"

can you talk me through why this was a particularly bad or challenging thing for your party to have done

Goblins were in fact, for me, a turning point on this concept. I had a player who wanted to be a goblin, and I forgot about this fact up to the point that the party got a quest to kill goblins. As soon as I was announcing the quest I realized it would be a problem, though I didn't have anything else ready so I went with it. And it was! The players immediately questioned why the mayor was paying mercenaries to kill goblins, and then further questioned his justifications, at which point I realized it would be a better story if the goblins were a scapegoat and not an actual villain. This turned into a terse interrogation where the mayor threatened to put them in jail once their questions got pointed enough that he would have to either field accusations or lie; they then went CSI on the situation and drilled through his political cabinet to get answers. I had to improv pretty much all of it and I don't remember the actual ending (I know they sided with the goblins and the mayor was guilty), but this helped me realize that the Gary Gygax writing style of "certain races are just BAD and that's why they hang out in dungeons" was very short-sighted.

D&D writing, by and large, encourages a lack of questions. The surface runs deep. "Go into a cave and chop up goblins." Why are we doing this? "Goblins are bad." All goblins? "Yes."

I think the question of "why are there players comfortable siding with fascist factions and wondering why they're called 'lawful evil'" is pretty easily answered with... because D&D itself is inherently kind of fascist. And it's the most insidious kind of fascist, too- its villains are fascists, so how could you point fingers at the book?

Fire Giants are dwarf slavers. Drow are a megalomaniacal theocracy who hate men. Orcs are violent tribes of marauding killers. Illithids want to destroy all life and keep an entire civilization to scrub their floors. But these narratives still push the idea that "evil" is a racial trait. The players are not only justified in their campaign to destroy these cultures, they're encouraged to do it.

They let the cat out of the bag by making these playable races; because now, they're not cut-and-dry villanous societies. They're people. There are Drow accountants whose lives are about balancing taxes, not worshipping Lolth. There are Yuan-Ti who don't sacrifice babies on altars, and much prefer playing the lute or sewing blankets. Yet we're still expected to read "Chaotic Evil" under the Monster Manual entry for a bugbear and take it seriously.

That whole campaign is sponsored by the people who own Hobby Lobby. They know that their toxic brand of hateful bigotry, disguised as religious belief, is radioactively unpopular. Through their own actions, they have turned off an entire generation.

So they spend money on a misleading campaign, designed to trick people into thinking that He Gets Us is an alternative to the toxic and hateful bigotry the sponsors of He Gets Us are hoping to drive them toward.

All of that money could have done legitimate good, made a meaningful difference, and would have actually made a better case for the Canon Jesus than their deeply misleading and sinful efforts to promote Fandom Jesus.

I am not a Christian, but even I know that if the Jesus described in the gospels was a real person, and if he actually said and taught the things the Bible says he said and taught, he would be at the front of the line, decrying the He Gets Us people.

Either they don't get that, or they don't care. In either case, spending money to trick people into following you, rather than spending money to meaningfully and immediately improve people's lives (as Jesus taught, bee tee dubs) just tells everyone that these people are American Pharisees.

If Heaven exists, I would pay a dollar to see the look on their face when the bouncer tells them they aren't on the list, as a consequence of their choices.

This voting season, please don't get conned into voting for the agenda of a bunch of rich, thieving, tax dodging, power hungry enemies of democracy just because they promise they are "Christian."

"There's no thought crimes and no thought heroisms" is honestly such a good piece of life advice.

You could be having the most fucked up problematic thoughts 24/7 but if you treat people with kindness, the good you do is the only thing that matters. But if you have only the purest thoughts and all the correct beliefs, it doesn't matter one bit if you spend most of your time being an asshole to people.

#fandom needs this one

My dad has bees. Today, I went to his house and he showed me all the honey he had gotten from the hives. He took the lid off a 5-gallon bucket full of honey and on top of the honey there were 3 little bees, struggling. They were covered in sticky honey and drowning. I asked him if we could help them and he said he was sure they wouldn't survive. Casualties of honey collection I suppose.

I asked him again if we could at least get them out and kill them quickly, after all he was the one who taught me to put a suffering animal (or bug) out of its misery. He finally conceded and scooped the bees out of the bucket. He put them in an empty Chobani yogurt container and put the plastic container outside.

Because he had disrupted the hive with the earlier honey collection, there were bees flying all over outside.

We put the 3 little bees in the container on a bench and left them to their fate. My dad called me out a little while later to show me what was happening. These three little bees were surrounded by all their sisters (all of the bees are females) and they were cleaning the sticky nearly dead bees, helping them to get all of the honey off of their bodies. We came back a short time later and there was only one little bee left in the container. She was still being tended to by her sisters.

When it was time for me to leave, we checked one last time and all three of the bees had been cleaned off enough to fly away and the container was empty.

Those three little bees lived because they were surrounded by family and friends who would not give up on them, family and friends who refused to let them drown in their own stickiness and resolved to help until the last little bee could be set free.

Bee Sisters. Bee Peers. Bee Teammates.

We could all learn a thing or two from these bees.

Bee kind always.

also: the bees aren't strong enough to pull the drowning ones out, and the humans aren't delicate enough to clean them off afterwards. helping takes a lot of forms.

There are so many unintended consequences to well-intentioned actions. It feels like a game you can’t win.

#CHIDI WAS RIGHT

The Good Place really went with making their new Point ‘there is no ethical consumption under capitalism’ and I respect that

And then went on to say “blaming individuals for all of this is absurd and evil, as is locking them up for punishment instead of rehabilitation” and I respect that

Also, “consequentialism is a fundamentally flawed branch of ethics”

I actually love hearing about reformed people's stories. I love hearing about people who were in toxic communities or people who used to objectively be dickheads talking about how they got out of that. How they made themselves better.

I hate how most people's initial reaction to stories like that are things like:

"How could you have ever done those things?!" "Oh my god, you believed those things?!" "Well it doesn't un-do the harm you did!"

People incessantly advocate for change but then refuse to allow people who have changed the grace of being acknowledged and given opportunities and chances.

I love hearing about ex-antis talking about how they don't spend their days being angry and sending death threats anymore.

I love hearing about ex-homophobes who realized there's no magic law about what is "natural."

I love reformed bullies talking about how they made amends with their victims and spend their days being considerate of others.

You can't scream about wanting people to change but then expect them to spend the rest of their lives stuck in the past and on who they used to be. You can't expect people to spend the entire rest of their lives grovelling and apologizing and demeaning themselves.

Instead of clinging to who they were, latch onto who they are.

Ask how they got out of it. Commend them on changing. Enjoy that there's one less cause of harm in the world.

The duality of man is thinking “children cannot help themselves and we all need to be patient with them as they explore what it means to be human in public” and also “damn, I wish this crying baby was not on the plane rn :/“

Just as courage is not the absence of fear but doing the brave thing in spite of it, patience is not the absence of irritation but doing the kind thing in spite of it.

thou shalt err on the side of compassion