Stampede Wasteland Settlement pt 7

Woah! Been a while, but time to pick this back up!

Last winners gave us some details on what is unusual about our little settlement;

Everyone in the town is nocturnal and bears the mark of a tech-devil. Fun!

We've only got a couple of details left to establish about this town, and next up is a little bit about the surrounding geography.

If you want to catch up on what this is all about, scroll through my Stampede Wasteland tag to see the previous posts and polls! Long story short, I'm taking us all through a bunch of the Settlement creation tables with the power of tumblr polls.

Actually no one should be having sex. All of us are aged-up minors and the passage of time is inherently problematic

The worst part about this is that some people genuinely have this take:

Oh god this being on my dash is like seeing my own corpse dragged through the town square

Interesting. Quick question tho.

The fact that people in Nicaragua are currently performing backbreaking farming labor for so little pay that being offered a job that pays the equivalent of less than $3.50 USD an hour would constitute an opportunity for upward mobility is...

A. a completely naturally occurring and politically neutral state of affairs, just the way the world happens to be for no reason in particular.

B. a condition that exists as the direct result of decades of interventionism and lobbying by American fruit corporations to deliberately repress wages and labor laws throughout central american countries to keep production costs low for the plantations they own in these countries.

Like yeah the opportunity of being paid $3.50 an hour for doing remote labor for a first-world employer represents a legit improvement for a lot of people in Nicaragua over the work they're currently doing.

But the only way you can classify it as not exploitative is if you ignore that the conditions that make such a dogshit deal look like a legit improvement did not come from nowhere, you dipshit.

Obsessed with the wording of this

☝️ silly form

☝️ SERIOUS FORM ❗️❗️❗️

tbh I really dislike how aphobia tends to be discussed whenever there's some kind of incident that makes it visible to general society. The most common response seems to be some variation of "why would anyone hate asexual/aromantic people, they aren't even doing anything" and it just always sits wrong with me. It paints such a passive picture of our existence and feels like a comment influenced by the level of invisibility that aspec people have in society. Why would you be annoyed by someone who is practically invisible? Just go back to ignoring their existence, it's easy!

But despite the invisibility, aspec people are actually doing quite a lot of things that will piss off queerphobic, right-wing and religious people (and hell, even left-wing people). And the most obvious point is that we are actively not performing heterosexuality the way they want us to. People who's entire world view is "cis men and women should be in monogamous, heterosexual marriage and have (white) babies" are not going to lean back and say "oh but those asexuals and aromantics are fine". They will also hate our guts, and they will come up with all sorts of reasons, including insinuating we're all secretly into bestiality, or mentally ill, or not human, or attention seeking children. It's just plain old queerphobia, and like all queerphobia, there's no inherent logic to it which you can worm your way out of by "not doing anything".

And like, there's a lot more that aspec people do which people hate. Raising awareness about amatonormativity? People feel attacked, they hate it. Asexual people having sex? Or not having sex? People hate it! Aromantic people being in (seemingly) romantic relationships? People fucking hate it! Aromantic people having sex? Ohh people hate that!!

I guess the existence of aphobia can be confusing when you haven't spent much time thinking about asexuality and aromanticism, but in the end, these are identities that aren't heteronormative and they will be hit with the same or similar bigotry as any other queer identity. I just get tired of this response after seeing it recycled for 10 years without ever seeming to go any further.

The other edge to this kind of "but they're not doing anything!" argument is that it implies that other people who are targeted and discriminated against are "doing something" that makes them targets, and that the default state of things is 'everybody minding their own business' until someone does something to anger them.

A member of a discriminated against group doesn't have to do anything to anger bigots. Bigotry is not passive. It's always quite active in searching for an excuse.

no you misheard me, i’m not having a gender reveal party, i’m having a gander reveal party. everyone come look at my goose

There is a word I’m not allowed to use. I love it. I love it so much. But my darling beloved wife hates it with a fiery passion.

I came across it from Anne Lister’s diary, where she says that she would “grubble under women’s skirts” and honestly. The word perfectly encapsulates the fumbling feeling of fighting your way through layers of fabric to reach the promised pussy land.

However the word has been forbidden, reviled from the first moment my beloved heard it. They shuddered and it’s truly one of the only restrictions they’ve ever placed on my vocabulary so I don’t say it. But I do think it, on occasion.

Sometimes the word will pop into my head and I will think it too hard and my wife will turn and glare at me and accuse, “I know you’re thinking it!”

“But I didn’t say it!” I protest. But they’re always right. Even with no context they always know when I’m thinking it.

Today I told my wife, “I shared the unmentionable word with Astrid today and she quite enjoyed it. She repeated it several times.”

They bellowed liked a dying wildebeest and said, “I can go months without remembering that word exists and then it comes up again. It’s so disgusting, it’s what Sméagol would do on the ground digging for worms!”

I was laughing and protested, “It sounds like fighting through skirts, the groping around.”

“No! That is something that happens in the muck and the filth. It’s negative sexy.

“Bet you're gonna take to Tumblr and share it and some people are gonna be like, ‘Oh what a great word! We should definitely use that in our lexicon. Top tier word!’ And you know what? THEYRE WRONG. GARBAGE WORD. GROSS.”

I listened to their impassioned hatred while cuddled in their arms and radiated love at them and remorse for having reminded them about the existence of grubbling. But now you get to hear about it. As a treat.

“At Steve Jackson Games, we are actively assessing what this means for our products, our pricing, and our future plans. We do know that we can’t absorb this kind of cost increase without raising prices. We’ve done our best over the past few years to shield players and retailers from the full brunt of rising freight costs and other increases, but this new tax changes the equation entirely. Here are the numbers: A product we might have manufactured in China for $3.00 last year could now cost $4.62 before we even ship it across the ocean. Add freight, warehousing, fulfillment, and distribution margins, and that once-$25 game quickly becomes a $40 product. That’s not a luxury upcharge; it’s survival math. Some people ask, “Why not manufacture in the U.S.?” I wish we could. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn’t meaningfully exist here yet. I’ve gotten quotes. I’ve talked to factories. Even when the willingness is there, the equipment, labor, and timelines simply aren’t. […] We want to be transparent with our community. This is real: Prices are going up. We’re still determining how much and where. If you’re frustrated, you’re not alone. We are too. And if you want to help, write to your elected officials. Ask them how these new policies help American creators and small businesses. Because right now, it feels like they don’t. We’ll keep making games. But we’ll be honest when the road gets harder, because we know you care about where your games come from – and about the people who make them.”

— Daily Illuminator: Tariffs Are Driving Up Game Prices Now

I saw their email today, from this company founded in 1980 in the period of explosive industry growth that is my main period of interest for this blog. Reblogging here since this is a straightforward explanation of why some of your favorite companies may raise prices dramatically, limit their output, or close up shop soon.

This one’s personal.

On the topic of English people being shitheads towards Welsh people - This fucking dude today on AITA

Yeah pretty sure we’re all hoping for a divorce on this one lol

how did this fucker say it’s “not as bad as it sounds” and then somehow end up being even worse than it sounds by the fourth sentence

That’s what we call growth.