Photographer Nicky Bay Documents Mirror Spiders Adjusting their Silver Plates to Appear More Reflective

A very fancy bard commission I finished today!

Lone knight by Zheng Qu

Ellywick by Penett Penett

Castle Howard, UK (by rrog035)

i will say that this coronavirus scare has definitely revealed that minimum-wage service workers are absolutely instrumental for society to function… all the hoity-toity business meetings can be cancelled, the NBA can be cancelled, public schools and colleges can be cancelled, government meetings can be cancelled, but the checkout line at the grocery store can’t be cancelled… in a perfect world i’d hope that this was a bellwether for better treatment of workers like me but i know we’ll just continue to get paid min wage with no rewards or thank-yous from the world during this time lolololol

Stardew Valley villagers are such good people :’)

this is honest to god what we should all feel like at all times

yes, I’m a DM, yes, I love writing, no, I don’t know how distance works. Is that building 100 feet away or 40 feet away? Should you be able to see something ten minutes down the road? Is 1,000 feet long? Is 30?? Is 6??? Could you walk across the continent in 2 weeks or 2 years? I hate this. I hate travel. I hate measurement. Fuck you.

Whether you realize it or not, your brain believes in something called the “Just-World Hypothesis”, and it’s a big part of the reason that we’re all so horrible to each other.  On the surface, you know that the world isn’t fair. You might say those exact words out loud to yourself every day. But deep down, somewhere in the back of your mind, your brain secretly believes that we do live in a fair and just world, where everyone gets exactly what they deserve. Our brains can’t handle chaos. We had to evolve believing that our actions always had rational consequences - if you go out and hunt for food, you get to live. If you don’t hunt, you die. That’s what gets us out of bed in the morning, and lets us muster up the motivation to chase after our goals. We can’t really handle the idea that terrible things can happen to us at any time, for absolutely no reason. So our brains pretend that’s not true. 

And we pretend that we have total control over our lives when we don’t. 

When something bad happens, we need to know the reason why it happened. We need to know that there was a way to prevent it, and if there isn’t one, our brains will make something up. He got cancer because he didn’t eat well enough. She got assaulted because she wore a short skirt. He lost his job because he didn’t work hard enough. We can’t accept that cancer just happens. We can’t accept that assaults can happen to anyone. We can’t accept that our lives are at the whims of large economic forces beyond our control. Finding reasons to blame others for their own misfortunes lets us pretend that misfortunes can always be avoided. It lets us pretend that if we just eat our vegetables, wear long dresses and stay a little late at work every day, nothing bad will ever happen to us.  This is still true, by the way, after something does happen to us, even if it was truly outside our control. No matter how clearly “not our fault” it was, we will still look for ways to blame ourselves for what happened. That’s how strong this instinct is. This is why victims of abuse and assault will bend over backwards to blame themselves, even if they were toddlers at the time of the incident. Because at the end of the day, it’s still much, much less terrifying to believe that “I fucked up” than it is to accept that “I live in an indifferent universe where bad and good things happen to undeserving people, and there’s nothing I can do about it”. We’re willing to throw ourselves under the bus if it means that we can hang on to that comforting illusion.  The problem is, that comforting illusion has real-life consequences for a whole lot of people.  The just-world hypothesis is the reason that wealthy people struggle to feel any empathy for the poor. They don’t want to accept that being rich or poor is largely due to luck and circumstance - it would be hard to live with the guilt that comes with having so much more than other people. Instead, they have to believe that everyone “earns” their lot in life, and that everyone has a fair chance to succeed. They have to believe that the poor are lazy, or stupid, or incompetent, because the alternative is unthinkable. It’s the same reason people struggle to find empathy for criminals, or abuse survivors, or the mentally ill. We need to believe that those people somehow “deserve” their misfortune - otherwise, we would have to accept that we are no better than they are, and that at any time, we could end up just like them.  Believing in the Just-Wold Hypothesis isn’t your fault. It’s always going to be lurking somewhere in your mind, pushing you to blame others and whispering unkind thoughts into your ear. You can’t get rid of it. But you don’t have to listen to it. We’re lucky enough to be able to think and rationalize, and once you know why you have these unkind thoughts, you can ignore them and choose empathy instead. 

Boulder Opal (B-Grade set)

Inspired by the gemstone of the same name this set has a pearlescent brown base with a thick vein of translucent pale blue resin that is filled with glittering iridescent flakes. This is a B-Grade set and is subject to flaws such as sprew marks, surface bubbles, sanding errors, etc. This set will be available on Etsy for $25.

Etsy shop updates every Thursday at 5pm CDT

Shop Update 2/13/20

And those are all the dice that will be available on Etsy tomorrow at 5pm CDT!

Beauty pageant website Missosology posted a bunch of the contestants of Mister Global 2019 in their official national costume portraits. Several of them are very 👀👀🔥

And then there is this guy 🤣:

All of these guys can GET IT, but especially Panama 😍😍

You’re missing a lot.

Oh god oh my god

Time to take a trip to panama and South Africa

I like how so many of these include neither shirts or pants

In response to the racist fuckbags being racist fuckbags on my post about non-white elves, I want to promote a DnD 5e world setting I came across on Twitter called the Wagadu Chronicles.

You can find them here:

https://twitter.com/WagaduChronicle?s=09

They are self described as "An Afrofantasy World |

5e Pen&Paper Adventures & an upcoming online game"

Honestly it looks rad as hell, and you should all check it out.

The art of Mark Maggiori

Oil

The man had one aesthetic and by god did he make it work