New Apollo 18 lore just dropped

If this is for personal interest, go into it with relatively concrete questions, and then try to answer them.

For me a couple drinks makes me more social, less literal, and less prone to overthinking. For me, the key is not overdoing it, starting in the tipsy pocket without leaning into drunk.

A man, obsessed with trains, finally sneaks into the engine one day. He’s having the time of his life for a few minutes before he screws up a switch and derails the train, killing dozens of people.

His trial is quick, and he is sentenced to death. The day arrives, and for his last meal he requests a single banana. He eats it, he’s strapped into the electric chair, and when they pull the switch… nothing.

They delay the sentence for a day, to examine the chair for defects. They tighten all the connections, check the wires, and test to make sure it’s working.

The next day, for his real last meal, he again requests a single banana. He eats, they strap him in and pull the switch. Again, nothing.

They delay one more day to tear the chair down to every component, test everything, reassemble, test again. They’re confident that the chair is working properly.

Next day, he asks again for one banana. “Oh no no,” the warden says “I didn’t know how you’re doing it, but you’re not getting another banana”. They serve him roast beef and potatoes, with apple pie for dessert. They strap him in, pull the switch and… nothing.

The bananas had nothing to do with it, turns out he was just a bad conductor.

Not just the words, I need to know every instrument’s part by heart.

Barbarian: Ignore me, I’m a normal lamp

Guards: Y-yup, nothing to see here.

Only if you have an air dryer too

Was he familiar with Ghislaine’s horse?

Someone needs to ask Trump which one it was, at a press briefing.

Epstein email asking if Putin had pics of Trump blowing “Bubba”, which was one of Bill Clinton’s nicknames

Right, what I’m saying is where do you draw the line at where “in the sun” ends?

What? You didn’t verify anything, you just said you remember being told once. It’s not an obvious fact because it isn’t true, you made it up. It’s not foolish to believe a word means what it means, you can just look up the definition. Are you high or something?

Whoever told you that was incorrect. Literally means the plain textbook definition of the words written, as opposed to euphemism or metaphor. If I say “I would literally die on this hill”, it means that there is an actual large mound of dirt that I am willing to lose my life on.

Any other interpretation is literally incorrect.

I’m thinking about it, and I think they might be right. Sunbeams are a part of the sun, albeit mingled with atmosphere. If they were in direct line of the sun, i could consider them technically, literally, correct.

It all depends on whether you consider an object bathed in the radiance of something to be “in” that thing, but I’m kinda inclined to consider that.

Starship Troopers is not misunderstood satire

I’ve read a lot of Heinlein, and while I don’t think “satire” is quite the right word, I’d consider it more of a thought experiment than sincere belief.

As long as they stay to the right I don’t care that much

I’m fine with language evolving over time, but I reject “literally” being used to mean “figuratively”. Distinguishing figurative from literal is, literally, the word’s one job. Take that away, and the word literally doesn’t mean anything but a generic intensifier. There literally isn’t another word that fulfills that disambiguating purpose, this semantic drift only decreases clarity.

You avoid growing plants because it’s emasculating.

I avoid growing plants because I’m awful at it and it’s cruel.

We are not the same

Maybe it would help to know that the Fey are known to delight in wordplay based magical trickery (e.g. the old “Can I have your name?” bit). It’s not just that the pun exists, but that it’s not the DM just making them roll for “fall” damage because he thinks it’s funny, it’s the sort of thing that canonically happens in the Feywild.

The typical therapist advice about focusing only on the things you can personally change does not work well on macro issues. Issues that were created by lots of people working together like climate change require a bunch of people working together to fix.

But collaborating with others to address macro problems is something you can personally do.