I was baffled by the huge “Real Sugar” text at first - assuming it meant instead of diet. Like, surely the assumption would be be that unless it says “diet” then of course it contains sugar - it’s weird to make it such a prominent part of the branding.
I then realised that the US uses corn syrup in loads of stuff, and it probably means instead of that.
La tib yoo layt
Emineminem?
Yes on the first point - it’s closer to how the Italians pronounce it. But Parmigiano and Parmesan are not the same word.
The English word “Parmesan” comes from the French word “Parmesan”, which is pronounced, you guessed it, with a s/z sound.
The soft g/j is not more accurate, because it’s a different word. It’s an over-correction.
FWIW, the word was in English nearly a whole century before the first British colony in America. It really is a word that existed and folk in America changed the pronunciation of.
Foreigners often get tripped up by Leicester - “Lie-Chester” is a common effort.
You do what you’ve got to do.
Frankly I’m a little bemused by you framing being expected to behave like a well-adjusted adult as “tone policing”. Then again, your opening gambit was essentially a “well if you love it so much why don’t you marry it?” kind of reply, so maybe I should have realised it was a non-starter…
I won’t say I’ll miss further interactions with you, but I’ll wish you well nonetheless.
Nobody here is arguing in favour of the downfall of civilisation.
Look, if you want to act like a dick towards strangers then Twitter/X is right across the hall. You’ll have a field day.
Otherwise, maybe try to stop projecting and start acting a bit more civilly? You know, like we do in civilisations.
Let’s not be mean to strangers on the internet, eh?
I meant these days, not in the Dune universe. Stuff like people passing AI-generated stuff as human-generated, and businesses replacing workers with AI.
Neural networks have existed for decades, but it’s only in the last few years have companies started replacing people with the technology en masse.
That’s a weird coincidence - I literally read that exact passage to my kids a few days ago!
The listener replies by saying it should have said ‘Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind’ which I think is doubly relevant these days.
Very much agree. As a UK bod, American chocolate bars generally taste like poison and smell like sick.
My kids were big fans of Mr Beast when the chocolate bars came out, so of course we had to buy it when we saw it. And honestly, it was actually really good.
(forgets that heterosexual women also exist)
He’s also in the Fallout TV series and the Obi Wan Kenobi series
It’s worse than that - he wasn’t being lazy, he was convinced that if he came out of the tunnel, the rain would ruin his paint. Even after it stopped raining, he still wouldn’t come out just in case it started raining again.
Basically he had a mental illness, and his punishment was to be bricked up and forced to watch the other trains going past. One is friendly, one says it serves him right. Because he has no steam, he’s unable to communicate. And all the time his paint is slowly getting ruined anyway because he’s stuck in the tunnel.
As someone who’s had a breakdown, it really resonates in a different way than it did when I was a kid.
This was perhaps the most surprising thing for me too - just how little progress players make in each session compared to what I expected.
Also I was surprised by their interactions with NPCs. The first goblin they captured was made to lead them to his lair, whereupon his throat was slit. The second goblin they captured was made to march about in front of them as a trap detector before they eventually adopted him as their pet.
Huge importance would be read into random bits of dialogue, and I’d have to rework things to make that pay off for them instead of the thing they were supposed to notice.
The idea of someone buying up all the grain for something else was the first thing that occurred to me too - essentially the same as with AI and all the GPUs now.
Maybe for feeding a secret group giants that the crown is using to gain the upper hand in a war.
If you want the characters to be confused, but not the players, pop in some classic tropes.
Two that spring to mind:
Transporter technology - High pitched noise, swirly patterns, a vague sense of being dissolved, then the reverse.
Impossibly sterile rooms - no obvious furniture, panels on the walls automatically open to provide things, beds rise out of the floor, etc.
One of those Bugs Bunny / Yosemite Sam door-after-door-after-door affairs.
Basically have two short stretches of corridor with a door either end. The door at the far end of corridor 1 leads to corridor 2. The door at the far end of corridor 2 leads back to corridor 1.
The mechanisms triggering this are pressure plates along the centre of the corridor 2, skirting along the sides will avoid triggering the plates and allow you to go to the next room.
If a player makes a hole in the door / destroys the door entirely (which I’m pretty sure my players would), they’ll see the distant room magically change to the corridor when they step on the pressure plate.
Stars Without Number is the equally solid Sci-Fi equivalent. My players like their fantasy as DnD, but I plan to win them over with this.
I love the ship combat mechanics - everybody mans a different station according to their skills.
I also love the way that the galaxy keeps going outside of what the players are doing.