I’m super fun at parties, too! ;)

Have to disagree that it’s not a one-person hairdo. It’s a simple French braid. If she had the Barbie lay across her head with the legs pulled back so it was bent at the hips, she could very easily have done it herself and then positioned the Barbie, assuming she can French braid. You’d only need a couple rows of the braid in to hold it securely, at which point standing it back up would pull the legs closer together and tighten everything up so she could finish and have it held securely.

Or if it was left loose enough at the top the Barbie could have been added after, which the green says may be the case (or that could be colored hair gel, dunno)

(Source: had Barbies and can French braid my own hair)

TIL if a camel spider chases me, I should run like the dickens toward a stationary shadow.

I have no idea when I’ll need that information but I’m glad to have it.

You made me curious so I looked it up. Apparently there’s several things classified as “pope’s hat”.

So the specific one you are asking about is called a mitre, and not just the pope wears them I guess? Abbots, cardinals, bishops, and whomever else do as well, and there are lots of different styles for different groups/sects/whatever. It is thus very difficult to sort out what this article is talking about as someone with zero religious upbringing or education.

Apparently prior to 1927 they weren’t using the mitre at all, and were using a papal tiara, which is frankly quite ugly, so it’s just as well pope Benedict XVI broke tradition and went with the mitre.

In 1963 pope Paul VI was coronated with the tiara, and was the last to be so far.

Also gold and silver count as “white” because the mitre has to be white. So that’s weird af.

There are several styles of papal regalia, so I think it’s, like, a choice? It really doesn’t give a lot of detail on the wiki page about that sort of thing but just based on the number of historical options, popes switching things up, etc. That’s about as much energy as I have to read and report back, so that’s as far as I go.

I’d bet they just tailor a stock one or something for the day 1 thing and then do proper after.

Probably just toggles the visual off for normal running around stuff, but the cutscenes show everything due to poor design.

I have a local burger joint at which I can still get a $2 cheeseburger. It’s plain and everything is an up charge but that’s fine. A whopper or Big Mac clone is some $4.50, so like, it’s still pretty cheap.

However, they have no seating, and it’s an old ice cream shop so just a big kitchen and a tiny indoor order/pickup window and 2 benches. And there’s always a massively long line. Takes easily an hour to get fast food there during peak, cuz nobody goes to the local depressed millennial McDonald’s (one of those sad gray ones)

I think you mean measles? I don’t think smallpox has made a comeback yet (it was globally declared eradicated in the 80s)

The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey?

Meh, I use the same super-weak password for tons of sites I don’t give a flying fuck about.

I took all the military opsec and infosec courses, because I was in intel, and my partner is currently an IT security professional, but some accounts just don’t warrant giving a damn.

I don’t use it for anything important, I let my password manager handle those, but bullshit “create an account to checkout” stuff that I use another payment system for? Meh.

This doesn’t seem like news, beyond looking for something to report on.

It doesn’t. It takes soap to get silicone lube off.

Skill issue.

Use silicone-based lube for water play.

Inappropriately as always ;)

Indeed, it’s never about you.

I know, I was joking in sort of a not-jokey-very-dry sort of way.

I wish there was a universal (lawl I’m unserious but being very dry about it) tag. Because that stuff doesn’t translate to text well at all.

Such a layer of emotion and presentation behind communication to get around! So difficult! And I have a degree based around doing exactly that…

On a side note, we have dry humor which implies a wet humor and… I’m curious what that is but I sort of don’t want to know…?

Well sure, there used to be a lot more horses that died annually, back when they were a primary means of transport.

Popping my sternum in public is the highlight of existing some days. It’s loud, and alarming.

I learned I could do it a decade back but it takes a super specific position that took me many more years to work out so I could do it on demand. Feels amazing.

My hyper-flexibility is probably to blame for it, but it’s super fun :)

Proud of you random internet stranger! Keep up the good work! It’s going to be super duper worth it!

In no particular order, here are my thoughts:

• most languages need to reform in large ways due to being at least partially tonal/inflection based (such as a rise in inflection to indicate a question). All languages need to add an additional conveyance mechanism to account for the loss of tone and inflection to indicate feeling, and anything else speech patterns normally convey, as suddenly all language works like texting
• people suddenly suck at talking in exactly the same ways they suck at writing, because they have to pick the right conjunction or homophone. Good luck two us all
• directional blinder hats would be a thing almost immediately (something that shields the light but has a covered hole in front to selectively open however wide you need, probably with hand controls and color filters and shit)
• light pollution dies down to facilitate conversation, but dark sky areas have to shutter their projects due to conversational twinkling (sad outcome :( )
• indoor light gets dimmer to facilitate conversation. 60 more stubbed toes happen every month
• sunglasses become the new unplugged headphones
• someone develops filtering goggles that cut the specific human communication wavelengths for people with epilepsy. They are a big hit with commuters and parents
• since people can no longer talk but it sounds like all else remains the same, someone would develop a translation device that does “blinks to speech” for blind and epileptic people, who could maintain use of the auditory old language and still function fine in society (good outcome, yay!) (I considered how they communicate back, but there’s no reason their light thing wouldn’t work so this is fine)
• more people opt to have their outer eyelids removed so they can eavesdrop on conversation while looking like they are sleeping (weird outcome, but it is a surgery that exists and divers sometimes elect to get it done to avoid wearing a mask. Inner eyelid is left in place, can’t tell from outside, but you can see through it apparently)
• private conversations become much more difficult, which forces everyone to act nicer in public, which reduces the amount of time people can be shitty, which in turn makes everyone nicer (yay happy outcomes!)
• it gets a lot harder to hide that you are watching porn or kinky boning when the blinking light gives away the… dialogue. Blackout curtain and door light stopper sales skyrocket literally overnight
• people rarely go missing in the woods or in wrecks. Everyone has a beacon every night, and there are huge social awareness campaigns to use your light this way. An international help pulse is developed so no matter where a person gets lost, they can blink for aid. 1km is quite far, meaning they would light up the area around them, especially multiple people blinking in unison. A project is launched to have satellites scan the night-facing surface looking for the pulse pattern, and is wildly successful. There is a brief trend among young teens to cry wolf, until the bills for wasting global resources start rolling in
• lots of famous people suddenly find themselves jobless, as singing is no longer a career. Since light pulses are completely sensually unrelated to music, instrumental music makes a big comeback, as do poetry recitations and stage plays. All the weirdo instruments from over the course of history are resurrected (best attempt) to add variety to the cultural landscape once filled with voices
• television and movies lose cultural significance as they lose the ability to tell many of the stories they do now (blinky light gives away your location in horror, ruins ambiance for romance, interrupts action sequences, etc. it’s just not amazing for the current form of visual entertainment)
• translation becomes a lot easier, as the effects of accents and dialects diminish. The light pulses can easily be read by software and translated to a different pattern (human speech sounds are so so much harder to parse)
• people have an easier time learning other languages now that everyone shares the same blinks framework; no pronunciation difficulties, just new patterns
• animals mostly very much dislike humans, and find us quite alarming. The blinking doesn’t help. Animals trained to respond to verbal cues have to be retrained to understand the blinks are an attempt to communicate something to them. Many animals now have problems in their homes due to the change (very sad outcome :( )

They make noise, but it’s a verrry different sort of noise.

The third pandemic is a good book about a variety of diseases, including bird flu, mingling in a host (bird) body, morphing into a superbug, and wiping out huge swaths of the population.

If you like to read, it’s quite good, if a bit long. (but notably I read it in 5th grade and hauled around a dictionary for a lot of it… it sticks hard in my memory, because my step dad gave it to me after finishing it himself, and it was a challenge. One of our few shared positive things from the era where he almost killed me multiple times… but I haven’t read it in a hot minute; just shy of 30 years…)

The most likely way it got there is he rubbed his eye and transferred an egg he picked up touching something.

For example (tho probably not the exact method), some species lay their eggs on the coat of horses, kid pets a horse and picks up an egg, rubs eye and transfers it. It hatches and burrows in and the rest you saw.