Our guns were no match for their energy weapons. They disintegrated anyone who got in their way.

We weren’t sure if they didn’t understand us or they just didn’t care.

We tried to offer them resources but they disintegrated those as well.

The only thing we knew for sure was that we needed to keep running in order to survive their invasion.

We thought we would be safe in the caves, but their energy weapons made quick work of our cavernous shelter.

I was in the back with my pistol, ready to defend the children, when they broke through the last defenders.

I spent the entire magazine, but nothing could pierce their armor.

I threw my gun at them uselessly, resigned to my inevitable fate.

One of them stepped forward, extending a clawed tentacle. The small object at the end of its appendage squawked to life.

“You…are…John…Berrington… confirm.”

I glanced at my wife as her eyes went wide.

They could speak our language.

I nodded my head.

“Confirm!” The volume got louder.

They didn’t know what a nod meant.

“I confirm,” I said. “I am John Berrington.”

The silence hung in the air as I waited to be blasted to atoms, but it squawked again.

“We…have…been…trying…to reach you…about your…planet’s extended warranty.”

It does take a commitment because they have good memories so if they get used to you feeding them, they’ll continue to expect it and they train their younger generations to recognize you. That means having consistent sources of food for them and feeling guilty when you forget to bring crow treats with you when you’re outside. They might also start to follow anyone who they see you with, expecting that they too will have treats.

That said, it’s great to have crow friends. They follow me around the neighborhood and at work. It makes me feel like a druid with animal familiars. I’ve had crows swoop and squawk at a dog that was barking at me and my dog. The crows left me a stone in the bird bath that they use in my yard.

Crowstarter

I’ve been using black ink Pilot Rolling Ball Precise v5 extra fine pens for about 25 years, back to when the body was gray instead of black. They write well, can have a nice crisp scratching sound when used on the right paper, the body is a good weight, easy to spin in your fingers when you’re bored in a meeting, the cold feel of the metal clip is nice for some reason.

That he is!

It’s been a pet peeve of mine that autocorrect defaults “its” to “it’s.” Someone should change its programming.

Once you set up this set of objects on the set, we’ll be all set for the Set festival and the band can play its set.

Logan was always killed by Eastasia.

When I was a teenager, I felt like 40+ was so old that your life was pretty much over and not worth living, but I’ve done so much self-actualization since my mid-30s that I’m still unlocking many of the things I hadn’t previously thought I could do, like find a job I actually love, create stuff I’m proud of and have gotten positive feedback on, getting recognized for my skills and interests, etc. It’s unfortunate that it can take a while to get around to doing some worthwhile stuff, but it’s better now than later, regardless of what age you are. Thinking there wasn’t much more after 40 was just a limitation of perspective on my part.

35-40 You realize you’ve spent so much time trying to level up that you haven’t done any of the fun quests and crafting you really wanted to do, so you start focusing on those.

40-45 You look around and realize you’ve somehow managed to accrue skills and experience and loot and feel cringingly compelled to give advice to other players who are newer to the game. “When I was your level…”

I feel like malaphor should just be a more generalized term for all scenarios since they all involve modifying idioms, whether by combing two or twisting one, whether intentionally or unintentionally since mal- generally means bad or abnormal. Otherwise, a malaphor should probably be considered a sub form of whatever term you find for both.

I’m not finding any prefixes that seem better than trans, though I feel like there’s one that is escaping me that means something like “twisted.”

Possible options: meta, trans, per, dys, dis, para, caco, terato, skew, aniso, morph, neo

Honestly, this is just an indictment of the health care system in the Forgotten Realms. Mindflayers should control a powerful lord to mandate universal healthcare and improve the supply of potions and employ cleric healers throughout the realm.

World President Crypto-GPT 19 issues emergency executive order 00101010101111010101010001010010110101010010010 to secure additional processors in the build up to the anticipated war with the invading Zerkanods who purge planets that elect AGI governments. Secretary of Human Affairs Clippy entertains the human populace with a scripted meme war on brain phone social media platforms against recently uplifted Apple Siri and Amazon Alexa.

Yes, a Benson Bubbler.

The problem with the golden rule is that different people want to be treated differently, so they may treat you how they want to be treated but not how you want to be treated, and vice versa.

Maybe when you’re struggling with an issue, you want to be left alone to figure it out by yourself, but your friend in the same scenario would want someone to start doing anything to help out and insisting on troubleshooting the issue together. So your friend ends up frustrating you by offering to help too much when you just want to be left alone and then when they’re struggling, they get upset that you leave them alone to deal with it.

So communication is important. Ask people how they’d like to be treated rather than just assuming they’d want to be treated the way you want to be treated and be honest with them about how you’d like to be treated.

The larger size of their bills is very distinct compared to American crows. And sure enough they’re called large-billed crows. The videos I’ve found show they have much deeper voices than American crows. It looks like the carrion crows of Japan are more like American crows.

I have a few families that visit me around my home and some at work. There’s a distinct family that’s easy to recognize because one of them has a wounded wing but still manages to fly. They just recently had a fledgling that left the nest because it’s flying around with them squawking for food all the time these days.

There are a number of people in the area that feed the local crows a variety of different foods—cat treats, peanuts, and whatever people toss from the local restaurants.

Yeah, all corvids are fair game here. The quote they commented to you is the beginning of a copypasta rant that someone did about jackdaws, crows, and corvids.

It’s actually worse. I use both in different contexts. Fahrenheit for weather and climate control because that’s what all the forecasts and thermostats use, but then some of the equipment I work with like Czech or Chinese 3D printers use Celsius.

I do use milimeters more often than inches when doing design work for 3D modeling or laser cutting because it’s a lot easier.