Mike Timonin

Rainesford Stauffer @rainesford.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 09, 2024 at 13:06 UTC

Paid writing opp: 100 Days in Appalachia is looking for politics-related pitches in the lead up to 2024 elections from writers in the region ages 13-24 (for a youth vertical). Pay starts at $200 for opinion, $300+ for reporting. Happy to help brainstorm ideas: rainesford.alexandra@gmail.com or DM.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 09, 2024 at 18:59 UTC

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Bur...

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 09, 2024 at 18:55 UTC

It's over 3 acts, with the first act being right after the apocalypse; people around a camp fire reconstructing the episode (I think it's one of the ones with Sideshow Bob). Act 2 is as they rebuild, and amateur theatricals perform on stage. Act 3 is long after, and it's a Big Performance.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 09, 2024 at 01:35 UTC

What's worse, now I can't find any of the emails with the sig line either...

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 09, 2024 at 01:31 UTC

For a while, the sig in my email featured a quote from the head the US corps of chaplains in WWII. Somehow, a member of his family saw it and contacted me. Despite the fact that I knew it had come from a letter in his papers in the Marshall Library, I could not find the quote a second time!

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 21:48 UTC

@bskyttrpg.bsky.social ChooseAncestry Goblin

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 18:30 UTC

Or even older than that; I've read that the concept of the 7 Wonders of the (Ancient) World was essentially a tour guide for rich Greeks to follow. (There were multiple versions of the list with limited agreement.)

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 17:53 UTC

@bskyttrpg.bsky.social stats

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 13:25 UTC

@bskyttrpg.bsky.social Chooseancestry Halfling

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 12:35 UTC

@bskyttrpg.bsky.social chooseancestry Halfling

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 12:34 UTC

@bskyttrpg.bsky.social stats

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 12:33 UTC

@bskyttrpg.bsky.social chooseancestry halfling

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 12:32 UTC

Choose Ancestry

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 12:32 UTC

@bskyttrpg.bsky.social ChooseAncestry

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 01:17 UTC

You're all set, then! (I assume zucchini and not, say, maple syrup)

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 00:40 UTC

I have two recipes which are basically sauteed. In one, you add maple syrup and red pepper flakes. In the other, you saute zucchini with the chard, and then add lemon juice and feta to finish.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 01:05 UTC

I mean, have you had bake apples?

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:52 UTC

That's where the berries come from!

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:20 UTC

The first stage of the 33 library quest! At 5 libraries, you get a sticker; we visited 4 today plus my home library, so sticker! If we'd managed the last library in the county, I'd get a second sticker, but it was closed for the 4th.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 16:03 UTC

frozenpennies.com/free-non-res...

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 16:01 UTC

Oh - apparently, I could pay to have a card - which is true of a bunch of systems across the country!

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 15:58 UTC

Sadly, only for residents of California. :(

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 15:46 UTC

Oh, is LA open to anyone? NYPL was open if you were in New York State.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 15:45 UTC

YUP! I've got *3* cards through Libby - my local, the system next door to us, and the NYPL - and I use all of them for e-books!

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 15:43 UTC

Ya - I love those little places! But I'm super glad to live in town with one of the main branches that's open 6-7 days a week and has a LOT of resources also.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 15:28 UTC

Too many people got the t-shirt? Repetition is boring? What we're discovering is that there are some profoundly inconvenient branches - only open Tuesday and Wednesday...

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 14:37 UTC

Our local network of libraries is doing a thing this summer where you can visit the different branches for a stamp on a passport to "earn" prizes. So, we have a 33 library challenge!

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 12:09 UTC

I mean, I'm not sure how else you could read it? London makes it pretty damn clear that the protagonist is a moron right from the beginning, and that only the dog deserves to live. As a plus, though, I learned from that story that my spit will "crack" on the ground at -40 degrees.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 01:33 UTC

We're watching it right now...

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 13:59 UTC

There's a pair of towns in Pennsylvania that we go past; Ashley, and Sugar Notch. And they appear on signs as Ashley Sugar Notch. And that's the funniest place names near us. Runners up are West Sparta (This is WEST Sparta!) and the general proliferation of classical names, including Romulus.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 13:50 UTC

We lost our crop of red currants this year - possibly to wild birds, possibly to the chickens, possibly to the goats-be-damned buckthorn; not sure. Anyway, good luck!

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 01:22 UTC

In The Other Place, you once wrote (I'm pretty sure it was you) that if Hope was the thing with feathers, Spite was the pointy bit at the other end, and that's stayed with me.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 01:15 UTC

I like OBS Studio - I've used it to do small edits to recorded lecture video. It seems fairly intuitive.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 22:39 UTC

Some players have a problem with the 4-5 part - they want the thing to succeed, they rolled a success, they aren't sure why there's a consequence that they have to deal with...

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 22:38 UTC

It took a couple of sessions, and there were still some things we needed to work at. The biggest hurdle was the bounded success - when you do a thing, you roll a certain number of d6. A 6 is an unqualified success. A 4-5 succeeds with consequences, and on a 1-3, the action fails (usually).

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 21:18 UTC

In Blades, you do none of that. You start the heist, and when you hit an obstacle, you say, "oh, I prepared for this, I've got [x] in my pocket" and then explain how you use it. You roll to see how effective you were. Need something big? Do a flashback explaining how you got it ready.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 21:15 UTC

It's like the complete opposite of D&D. Think of D&D players planning a heist. They start making lists of all the stuff they'll need, outlining the hazards they expect to face and how they'll deal with them. They might do some side quests to collect things and prepare.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 21:11 UTC

Love it! Did you have specific questions about it?

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 20:09 UTC

@thoafood.bsky.social - really enjoyed the _Frostbite_ episode! Made me think of the idea of History From the Middle. History from the top would be Birdseye flash freezing; from the bottom would be housewives using the food, and the middle is Fred Jones figuring out how to connect the two...

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:38 UTC

I lived and worked here in the States for 16 years before completing the citizenship paperwork - I became a citizen just in time to vote in the 2016 election...

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:33 UTC

And the process is entirely a black box - your paperwork goes in, and there's no good way to know what's going on. The process in the US is relatively smooth, transparent, and fast.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:32 UTC

I worked with a guy who had gotten the work permit and was working towards citizenship. He had contacted his advisor several times in the process and was told, ultimately, to knock it off - every time he called, they had to pull the whole file and it started from zero each time.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:30 UTC

This was more than 20 years ago, so things may have changed, but we got hung up on the requirement for $1000 deposit and sufficient money in a bank account to support us for a year.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:29 UTC

Thread. But, to amplify - when we got married, I (Canadian) and my wife (American) went back to Canada so I could take the last two classes I needed for my BA (there's a story there for another time). We started the process of getting her a work permit. A year later, we gave up and came to the US.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 13:22 UTC

Partly that's because MA has been settled by Europeans for longer than Texas, and partly it's because if you moved far enough away from a town that you couldn't reasonably get to church on Sunday, you built a new town with a new church, because not going to church on Sunday was unthinkable.

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 12:52 UTC

dice get sweaty when they're nervous. Reassure them, remind them that 1 is just a number and it rolls sometimes, and give them some space and time to calm down...

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Mike Timonin @bookreadingguy.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 00:43 UTC

Dessert tonight was black raspberry ice cream, made from our own raspberries and our own eggs. Yum!

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