In the US, tipping is such a trash fire. The problem is that you’re practically trapped in the system. It’s being implemented all over the place now, but restaurants are the classic example. If you go to a restaurant, the tipping standard is now about 20%, but 25% is not uncommon. You can technically choose to not tip, which allows the restaurant to pay your waiter less than minimum wage for that service. (technically the restaurant has to pay them more to make up for undertipping, but it’s average, not per-hour)

So your choices as an individual are to: tip the standard 20-25% (participating in an awful system), not tip (enabling criminally low wages), or never eat at restaurants. There were a few no-tip restaurants that popped up in my area a few years ago that I tried to support, but they all went out of business, likely because people can’t do math - “these restaurants cost 20% more! I’m never gonna go there and instead I’ll go to that other place and tip 20%!” It fucking sucks and everyone hates it, but there are basically no proposals to ever change it.

One of my favorite down-to-earth celebs. Hoping he gets through treatment and beats cancer back hard. Hail to the king, baby!

They’re minerals, Marie!

Strong agree on Dead Like Me! I’ve rarely met anyone else who’s seen the show. It’s not perfect, but some moments were absolutely adorable. The plot of the movie wasn’t bad, but the recasting was awful, because Mandy Patikin was half of the heart of the show.

He moves slightly faster than your walking speed, but slightly slower than your running speed. Every few minutes, he will get stuck at a tree root.

What is the charge? Eating a succulent meal?

Rocket is another name for arugula, the leafy green veggie. I only know this from watching British food Youtubers, so I think it’s a regional name

I have a rule as DM that I will never fudge rolls against the players, but I will fudge rolls in their favor if it fits the narrative. Three players consecutively miss an enemy? Oh no, next turn it got a critical fail and then failed a Dex save, slipping and landing prone. I guess the players get advantage on melee attacks! Don’t do this often, but I’m the right spot it’s fine.

Monsters can just be dumb, too. INT of 6 means those Blobby Blobs are gonna fight poorly, attacking the tank and splitting up attacks. Also, the players don’t know your monsters’ stats, so you can make an attack that would get it to 1 HP instead kill an enemy. I also don’t do this often, but sometimes they just get unlucky, and no reason to TPK.

Speaking of TPK, you can let them fail forward. Monsters rarely have reason to attack downed/unconscious PCs, so let them roll death saves, but it usually takes a while to die. Everyone’s unconscious? Stop combat, no more death saves. Instead, they wake up as prisoners and have to escape. I had a particularly fun one where my players would have died to a trio of night hags (if you’ve played Curse of Strahd, you know the ones). Instead, they woke up and were given a mission, but the bags also stole parts of their “souls,” taking Max HP from one player, speed from another, giving one a trait that they would lose all hope, stealing another’s eye (disadvantage on Perception), etc. Then they had to fulfill the mission, but later came back at a higher level and beat the hags, gaining their souls back. Everyone loved getting revenge!

Forbidden chicken nugget

I use DDG, which works for about 90% of my searches, but when it doesn’t work, I go back to Google, often in a private window. I do agree that Google is still just, I dunno, better?

Gotta trap him in the pantry

Wow, Miez has a gorgeous home, with plenty of space to play and look down on others from above! So nice of her to let you live there!

Vielen Dank!

But what if one desires a woman that can both make preserves and crack wise? Am I doomed to loneliness?!?

A møøse ate all of my pøtatoes

And then I go back inside and have a whiskey

Oh, I thought you were a newbie; you’re an expert! I never really read much of the comics or YA novels either, except for Dark Empire, because I was tired of references to the revived Emperor that I didn’t understand.

The X-Wing books are great, but take place in a few spots in-between the other books, so that’ll be a fun revisit of older stories. The New Jedi Order is a re-envisioning that is over a massive number of books, but feels like every book goes so fast or has major consequences. Be prepared to be upset about characters you might love, but I think it’s close to the peak. I believe the many authors got together and plotted out the whole thing before it started, which is nice. What comes after is okay, but I think they knew Disney was buying by that point, so there’s not a great “ending,” even if some novels are still delightful. Also, if you haven’t read some of the Tales books, like Tales of the Bounty Hunters, those are fun (mostly) self-contained stories you can hit in-between the main novels.

Man, I wonder if I should start a full reread. I’m sure I’ve forgotten so much that I would still be surprised by plots.

I still own and occasionally re-read some of the Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU) novels, which are relabeled to the non-canon “Star Wars Legends” now. IMO, they’re so much better than the direction the Disney canon went. Since they’re by so many different authors, the quality varies wildly, but I’d say my favorites are Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole, and maybe Kevin J. Anderson. But some other individual books or trilogies are great, too. The whole thing is huge, but frankly just fun serialized reads, so not too difficult to get into.

Truce at Bakura kind of kicks off the whole thing, but the best intro is the trilogy by Timothy Zahn, which starts with Heir to the Empire. There’s a few books in-between Truce and Heir if you want, like The Courtship of Princess Leia and the excellent X-Wing series, but I think the Zahn trilogy really sets the bar high for everything. If you’re interested in following up, that’s where I’d go next, and then you can go back and fill in the others if you wish. One of the issues with the EU is that while you don’t need to read every book/comic, they do form a continuity, so it can be mildly confusing if you read a reference to something you haven’t read about yet.

The evidence around field sobriety tests seems to be horribly mixed based on the source, but it kind of seems like the consensus is that while they might be decent, the false positive rate is horrendous, especially for something that can have a terrible penalty (both criminally and socially).

When I was younger, I had a really strong opinion about drunk drivers and how they were menaces and awful people. But today, I’m a lot more forgiving, both because a ton of people are wrongfully charged and even can be convicted (sometimes even of a lesser offense), but also because I’m so much more skeptical of police officers now. Plus with the one guy I know that actually was drunk driving and got a DUI, he says he totally deserved it and completely changed his drinking habits. But that was over 20 years ago, no one was hurt (no crash, just pulled over), and he still isn’t allowed to drive past 10pm, still has a mandated breathalyzer on his car, and can’t go to Canada. Complete overpunishment.

Every time I see a Swords Comic, I think, “They have to be running out of things to do, right?” I mean, how many ideas around swords can you have?

But Garfield has been around approximately 300 years just making jokes about a fat cat. But they usually suck now, and that makes me sad.

But then I remember that Dinosaur Comics has done over 4,000 comics with the exact same panels every time, and whenever I find time to check it out, I always laugh. So I guess that makes me happy, because if you’re funny and clever and talented, you can keep it up. Thank goodness for talented creators. Not sure why I went into this rant here on a random Saturday, but probably nostalgia. Anyway, thanks for posting.

This is utterly adorable! Such a dapper gentleman you have!