A lot of people you read about who grew to be leaders in their field by some ridiculous age like 25, spoke fluently in 5 different languages, etc. etc. did so because they had three things: dedicated one-on-one tutors, an appreciable collection of slaves and/or other general servants to free up their personal time, and enough family wealth to pay for both from the time they could walk.

Mozart was composing as a toddler, but he also came from a wealthy family of musicians that taught him basically nothing else. Ever. That was the one thing. He hyper-specialized in music and socially he was the guy that got bored and did cartwheels and meowed in public. If Mozart was in your position, with the kind of loving care and finances most students have today, he would have been the kid in class who beatboxes over the teacher.

I'm actually still coming to terms with this myself. with mixed success. I've always loved art, but I've never been where I want to be. I've been making strides again, but the further I take it, the more it becomes apparent that 90% of the problems I've ever had with it were not me, they were because no one ever bothered to teach me. And I'm pissed about the decades I lost simply because child me was never shown concepts that would have changed everything.

Do not judge your own accomplishments on the same scale as someone who had ample time to devote to their studies because their family had house slaves doing everything you have to do by yourself.

Having a tea party isn't girly, though. Let kids play how they want.

Not even solely relegated to old people, either, unless the fediverse thinks 30-40 is old. We had one woman come by our shit little dollar store about 20 minutes after we'd closed. So, long enough for us to start counting out, cleaning, etc., but not long enough to go home yet.

Noticed the door was locked. Noticed those of us not still busy were hanging out and chatting while we waited, surreptitiously watching this person. Visibly read the store hours. Tried the lock again.

Started prying open the door while we all stared in horror, ended up breaking it, then threw a whole fit to boot because we couldn't sell her anything with all the tills in the back room and we kept trying to kick her out for some reason.

She wasn't even high. She was just that entitled, because very often for suburban moms, the rules don't apply if you don't let them.

Fable does this too. At least the third one. I'd married a beggar with the honest intention of lifting up one of my kingdom's most socially aware instead of settling for some brainless, peacocking noble, and all he did with his time on the throne was become a national embarrassment on the same old street corner.

So. Remembering the existence of this "Henry VIII" achievement that I'd thought I was never gonna bother getting. I took my beloved beggar-king down to the treasury, positioned him at the very top of the overflowing pile of gold he always seemed to forget we had, and shot him in the head. And then I started thinking about that achievement.

There were a lot of NPCs that really did bug me.

For context, earlier this week Hasbro (owner of Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering) announced that it would be laying off 1,100 employees as a way to "modernize our organization and get even leaner". Not soon after, it was revealed that an avalanche of employees from both D&D and MTG had been laid off.

In an investor meeting in October this year, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks specifically mentions Baldur's Gate 3 as a contributing factor for a 40% increase in digital gaming revenue, alongside Monopoly Go! and Magic: The Gathering.

Well yeah, obviously you gotta fire whoever was the cause of a 40% increase in revenue, otherwise that could even raise to 50%. Where would it end?

Always safer to go with what you know: letting the ravenous mob desperate to throw money at you know just as soon as possible that you're taking steps to remove anything they liked about your product.

Do you think they can get lean enough to break even in their future?

And one unusually eloquent zombie who apparently showed up one day and refuses to explain himself to anyone.

But I audibly laughed. Brilliant. Thank you for this.

I was up at an Airbnb in Boston years ago and I still very much remember one entire third of the bed I was given being covered in different throw pillows. It was bad enough to actually be funny, and more intrusive irl than the photo I had to take would have you believe. Where the photo cuts off is the edge of the mattress.

I had to move them every night in order to go to sleep, and put them back every morning when I made the bed. I counted. There were sixteen of them. Everyone else's beds were the same way.

But the boxes were taken to the dumpster, yes? With time saved, even? Someone in a managerial position would rather hire, train, and pay a devoted garbage person instead of three adorably unpaid raccoons?

My problem is my cat likes me too much. She's such a big fan of me that she'll accept things from me that she turns her nose up at if anyone else offers, and this list accidentally includes things like cornbread and orange juice.

Cats are so famous in their hatred of citrus that it's commonly used and marketed as a cat repellent. This fucker is over here voluntarily drinking my orange juice purely because she saw me drinking it and she wants to be like me.

I'm honestly pretty sure I could just hand feed her medicine at this point and it wouldn't even be a fight.

Since I feel the sudden urge to vent, I've never forgotten staying at this one homeless shelter several years ago.

We found out much later after the place was shut down that they'd actually been receiving more than adequate donations the entire time, but the staff was just taking it all home with them and telling us that there was no food to give. They could do one or sometimes two meals, but never much, never more, and not dependably from day to. They had none.

So obviously we believed them and since this was just...the position we were in, I was taking the money I was technically required by agreement to save for a place and using it to buy food for myself and anywhere from 1 to 4 of the other residents.

One of them was Gabriel, who came in with the clothes on his back and a guitar. Gabriel was religious, but one of the painfully few who put the kindness part first and he was very sweet and tended to be walked on for it and to become depressed for being taken advantage of.

When he took his guitar around looking for gigs, I went with him for moral support. When one of those was a church, I sat in with the flock even though the related trauma makes my skin crawl. When winter drew close, I bought him what I still think was a pretty snazzy jacket.

I split a meal almost daily for months, because I'm not going to see anyone hungry when I can afford it, even though none of us could really afford it and doing so was imperiling my future. When he found out the fiance he doted on was banging his best friend while he himself was homeless, guess who was there to cry on immediately.

I don't regret any of those, to be very clear. I'd grudgingly do it again, because people matter more. But to think to check up on him some years after we parted and find him thanking god for looking after him during that time was a direct slap in the face. Over a decade later, it still stings.

Of course it would be god. Looking after each other like sentient, suffering beings, that's god's doing, personally stepping in to work his mysterious ways. I only take the blame for the bad shit.

I'd believe it if I hadn't already heard of Musk being the type to fire workers in his line of sight at pure random simply to fire someone. It apparently got so bad that aids would plan the route he would take to the meetings around having as few victims as possible out in the open.

It would be a smart move for anyone, and he is succeeding to a good extent (they'll just go elsewhere?), but I think that's just a happy accident of his. I feel like he's really just using it as a chew toy so he can feel all big and important with the headlines. If he were being journalistically gray rocked, I wonder what he'd do.

I'm opening up a rival called "social media." Already, we're on everyone's lips, set to have a userbase spanning half the web.