Win by a Mudslide: A blast from the past

The "Win by a Mudslide" boardgame was an extra in the module "Where's George", which was an adventure for Tales from the Floating Vagabond TRPG.

Board:

Pieces:

C.O. Cthulhu, Elder Party:

凸凹

 Pronounced dekoboko 凸凹, the words mean rough in Japanese and sure look like it.

More Ascension of a Bookworm speculation - Spoilerific

P5V2 ~50%, I predict that the legendary holy book is a magic tool manifested by an individual, not a physical item.

A more orthodox twist would be that the holy book is written in disappearing ink that only manifests to the chosen.

Represent

Regarding "Q Force", Netflix delivered. On that subject, there is plenty of representation: Mineta (My Hero Academia), Mandy (I am not Star Fire), Snowflake & Safespace. They are even represented in live action media: Chris Chan, who identifies as trans.

Mandy especially represents the community who craves representation in the media. Geeky Sparkles over at Clownfish TV  is a mother & a teacher who used to be involved with her school's book fair. She described Mandy as an awful person, who raged at her mother and disliked herself. In a creepy turn, short & squat Mandy fell for a California-type blond, who bore some resemblance with her mother. Without improving in personality, Mandy gains powers, saves the day & gets the girl. Thus she started to like herself once the externalities changed. Now, Geeky said that Mandy doesn't have a character arc. I respectfully disagree. 

The world conformed to Mandy's wishes. Mandy did not need to compromise with the world. In fact, she could not have, because that would have invalidated her prior emotions, so she stayed the wretched human. This is the SJW mindset, where the world must change to alleviate their twisted psyche. They push people's language to change, public restrooms must accommodate their inclinations, and government must enforce this warping on the world. That is the character arc of the activist and the revolutionary.

The results are scattered throughout the 20th century, and they are being razed in the great reset, even as our pop culture is in the spate of remakes.

Ascendance of a Bookworm Guesses

 Here is some speculation regarding Ascendance of a Bookworm. I am following the j-novel.club weekly releases. The only spoilers that I am using are the color pictures from the future volumes that can be accessed via bookwalker.jp.

As of 07/05/2021, j-novel.club is up to Part 4 Volume 2 part 5.

1. Regarding the Duchy Foundations, I have cobbled a preliminary guess that they are located & locked away in each of the dorms. During the high beast test, Rozemyne mentioned that the Academy grounds were supposed to have been the place where the gods appeared.  As the site of the origin of the nation, having the Foundations of the Duchies set there would not be out of the question. 

The claiming of the Divine Wills in Part 4 V1 showed the grounds used by the Academy still contain sites of great practical & historic significance beyond Academics or diplomacy, i.e. it is not just a school ground.

Circumstantial evidence: 

* the dorms prevent entry from outsiders. 

* They have rooms for the Archduke & 

* were constructed from the special white stone. 

*They also have the teleportation circles. These are very powerful features that hint toward a purpose rather than just housing students.

I emphasized that this is preliminary, because it was mentioned that Duchies could be invaded if the Aub does not supply enough mana. Can an archduke conquer another duchy if the Foundation is off limits? Can the invaders force their way in through the teleportation circle? Or can the Sovereignty grant access to the conqueror once the defeated Aub cannot no longer function & render mana, tribute, etc. to the Sovereignty.

Another question is if the Duchy Foundation is in the dorm, isn't it too dangerous not to have a standing army? Answer, it is protected by the Sovereignty and there is a truce in place not to attack the dorms head on. This is the biggest hole & why I have not presented this as a theory.

2. From the jureve's description, humans can have mana harden in a near death situation, implying that feystones can be harvested from humans as well. There seems to be a taboo against harvesting and using them. It also looks like they are not kept as keepsakes.

I am guessing that the feystones of dead nobles are returned to the Farthest Hall. The feystones of executed nobles are snuffed out & obliterated like the traitors of Hasse.

This is not supported by text, which is why I have not brought it up in the forum.

A word to gardeners from an engineer

A little while ago, gardener & author David the Good broadcasted his creation of terra preta on Youtube, which is a layered soil and detritus mixture that has the potential for long term fertility. One of the components were broken pottery shards. One of his video commenters mentioned seeing plants prospering next to some old bricks, which are also fired clay. 

I emailed to ask if the function to improve drainage like vermiculite or perlite. He agreed that they were probably alike.

Thinking about it again, I think that the desired property is the stabilized porosity. The weight of the soil above can compact the soil, which will squeeze out the spaces. Fired pottery or porous bricks do not compress under the weight of several feet of soil. From an engineering perspective, dense and less pervious brick is desired. A gardener would want the most porous brick with the highest water absorption.

In another video a woman cultivated a microbe rich mixture, then shot it through a sprinkler. While the exposure to oxygen was brief, the injected air & hang time could not have helped the microbes survive. In fact, the environmental engineers call it biological oxygen demand (BOD), the calculated aeration that a river, stream, or body of water needs to freshen itself.

Here is a rule of thumb:  when it comes to fertility, do the opposite of what civil engineers do.

In geotechinical engineering class, students receive dire warnings about the water retention & looseness of organic soils. Large buildings crack where there are large soil movement. Fertile soil compresses a lot under weight as the air and water spaces and plant fibers deform under the massed weight of  the building. Cracked building can become unstable and result in collapse. The seal against weather is broken, leading to infiltration of mold and mildew as moisture gathers in the building. These infiltrators can cause serious heath conditions in humans as well as eat building components. Inviting the great outdoors into the indoors is a death sentence for electronics and machinery.

The variability of life also translates into variable soil stiffness and strength. These all make construction more difficult and costly as soil remediation, such as compaction, mixing cement into the ground, or adding gravel to the ground. 

All of these actions directly contradict what farmers and garderners do. A tractor loosens soil, at least in the short term, while a compactor will densify. In fact there are tests & methods to find the optimum soil wetness and number of runs of the compactor to achieve density. Cement plus soil hardens into a low-strength concrete known as soilcrete. Imagine trying to plow that. Gravel are pieces of hard rock & provides a stiffer surface for vehicles to drive over, which is why it is used for driveways. Holes are also drilled in the ground & gravel is compacted in to make stone piers, as an alternative to piles or concrete piers.

The simplest solution would be to not build in organic soils. This was the solution for millennia as many cities were built in land that the farmers couldn't use. This was typically harder and firmer soil than the surrounding area. There are cities built on river deltas such as New Orleans or swamps, like DC or St. Petersburg. 

However, government managed to foul even that up in my hometown, which passed brownfield legislation years ago. Any industrial site (brownfield) must be restored to pristine condition prior to reuse. This applies even if the new occupant is another industrial use. That added cost incentivizes buying out farming land for conversion to industry and housing. 

Keep in mind that the original urban site was chosen, because it was was on hard land that was unsuitable for agriculture. The urban site also became enmeshed in the transportation system. The double whammy comes in with resources spent to extend the transportation system and the utilities. The site also has to be prepared with the aforementioned compaction or piles to rest on the soft soil in addition to paving. 

It's lose lose all around. The lawmakers came in the spirit of wrath; to punish someone, anyone, for polluting the ground. This in contrast to the spirit of cooperation to put that patch of land back into use with a measured requirement to restore the land to usable, not pristine. Instead of putting money into iron fisted enforcement, put money in incentive directly for the restoration, to restore the land into use & restore jobs back into the cities.

Amend that, gardeners, when it comes to fertility, do the opposite of engineers & gardeners.

There is no housing crisis

A house is the foundation and frame, facade, windows, plumbing, electricity, heating, ventilation & air conditioning. They are all tangible components that can be altered and set with physical tools, whether it is a saw, nail gun, or back hoe.

A home is the living that happens underneath the roof and between the walls. They occupy the same footprint, but they are two distinct ideas. With care and love, a lean-to, tent, or cave can be a home. 

Indeed, in Cleveland, the concrete walls and joists overhead were a dungeon rather home for several captives.

I point this out, because when activists talk about a housing crisis, they are wrong. Houses are going for $1 in Detroit. East Cleveland probably has the similar opportunities. Ditto for Schenectady, NY prior to the wave of Guyanese immigrants, which was left behind by GE. The rural areas likely have affordable land & buildings.

If you asked me if I would want to live in Detroit or these other places, my answer would be no. If I wanted to live in these places, I would already be there. However, my objection to these other locales has nothing to do with the concrete, studs, or piping that make up the houses. The quality of life issue has to do with crime, lack of jobs, and lack of services. The are problems with people. These are problems with the community. These are problems of people setting bad policies.

The housing crisis is misnamed, which misdirects resources and ire. This is not a problem that will be solved by general contractors or mortgage brokers. Bringing in mix trucks and shipping 2x6's will NEVER make Detroit more habitable. Switching from on-site building to prefab will do little if either building get shot up. Few people have the capacity to fix-up a foreclosure if employers flee from high taxes and restrictions.

Moving people to ready homes with Section 8 worked for the households with stable works at the head of household. Once the program expanded, crime followed to the new neighborhoods.

This is a human problem & the broken humans have be fixed or set straight enough to make homes of the remaining houses. As for who broke the homes and the humans, I refer you to the activists themselves. You can't ask them, just observe the communities they work in and the wake of destruction that followed since the 60s. Calling it a housing crisis is not an accident, it is a way to guilt and pressure that banks that are holding the money, and just follow the money.