half finished bags of trailmix

Probably meaning backwards, highly conservative, people from there are seen as “hicks” or “red knecks,” have an abnormally high rate of incest and child marriage compared to the rest of the country, and any person part of a marginalized group would probably want to avoid.

Dang. I thought the worst Michigan had to deal with now was the smoke from the Canadian forest fires.

It’s been unseasonably hot here in Japan, and I’m in the north part that usually doesn’t experiences heat this intense. Doesn’t help air conditioning isn’t standard here, and I’m been stuck in front of my fan trying to stay cool.

How’s the weather where you are?

If I can help it, I try to support local businesses over Walmart, Target, Amazon, or any other near monopolistic retail chain.

Chick-fil-A, and Hobby Lobby. Owners have been vehemently antiqueer and antichoice, and have funded such organizations and politicians through their business.

Activision/Blizzard and Ubisoft. Both have been accused of large scale sexual misconduct, and neither company has completely dealt with the issue.

Twitter and Reddit. It’s not just that I hate the direction both sites are heading, but I want to fully back and support the open source alternatives that have grown during the migrations of both sites. Besides, Musk has made it to where I can’t even lurk on Twitter if I wanted to.

JonTron. He’s living proof that as long as you’re funny, people will forgive and forget anything. (Look up his history with racism and antivax for those in the latter camp, cause I’m tired of answering the “what he do” question)

The Harry Potter franchise. This one hurt the most because I had just starting to get into the Harry Potter series as the pandemic hit, and I was halfway through Prisoner of Azkaban when Rowling started her campaign against trans people. I Also used respect Rowling a lot because she’s a master at world building, and I had gotten into reading Harry Potter cause I wanted to take inspiration from it for my own work.

Ruroni Kenshin, and Nobuhiro Watsuki’s other works. I can get why people would forgive JonTron and Rowling to an extent, but defending Nobuhiro’s pedophilia is a bridge way tf too far for me.

I play Mahjong. If I try talking to most Americans about it, they’ll think I’m talking about Shanghai, or Mahjong Solitaire.

I actually play 3 forms of it:

Riichi: Standard Japanese rules. This is what you typically see in anime and mahjong games from Japan.

CSM: Competition rules for Chinese Mahjong. This what you’ll typically see played in tournaments outside of Japan

American Mah-jongg: A ruleset with a lot of unique features. An AMJ set contains jokers that can act as any tile in the set. The game is played without being able to call “chow”(taking a sequence of 3 pieces), You “Charleston” for the pieces you need before the round begins (pass pieces to the right, left, and across from you), and the standard hands you can make change on a yearly basis. This is the version you often see played by the American Jewish community.

I love playing all three, but it’s hard to play them in person, because you need to find at least 4 people who can play by the same rule set.

Riichi is easy enough in Japan, but it’s seen as kinda a sketchy game here, and most places you can play it are at expensive and seedy mahjong parlors. Luckily there are a flood of video games based around it that make it more accessible.

Chinese Mahjong is very regional, and each area can have its own variation on the rules, scoring, accepted hands etc. When playing with Chinese friends, I just kinda roll with whatever variation they’re playing.

For American Mah-jongg, because the standard hands change year to year, you have to buy a new card from the National Mah Jongg League yearly in order to keep up with it, so it’s the only mahjong game with a subscription cost built in. Also as mentioned, the game is very community specific, but also the majority of players are often senior aged women, usually making me the youngest at the table by far.

I love playing all three, but it’s hard enough finding someone else who also likes Mahjong, let alone find someone who doesn’t confuse it for the solitaire game. I’m not saying Mahjong solitaire ruined my life, but if I could Thanos snap a game out of existence…

I’ve been trying to be more willing to listen recently. Of course there are some people who don’t want to have a dialogue and will just post their anger and run. I don’t engage with these posts cause the user was looking for a reaction rather than a conversation.

But if someone is willing to explain why they feel the way they do about something, willing to hear criticism, and perhaps even ask me questions, I’m more likely to engage with them.

If I had more control over the types of ads I saw, I would accept this. Often I’m shown something very unpleasant in order to sell a dumb mobile game or something. If any of them had to follow the same rules many content creators had to, they would never be allowed.

The state of ads right now feels like what if Elsagate videos were mandatory to watch? If I really want to support a creator, I donate to them.

Agreed. I just wish there was more to do post game that wasn’t just raids or shiny hunting.

Definitely looking forward to the dlc

Amen!