Sometimes, when I have a dream that is in some way especially disturbing, visceral, or otherwise mind affecting, I will be vaguely out of sorts in a particular way for the next 20 minutes to hour. It's like my body is still reacting to the dream.
If you were a fish-loving Brazilian hypercarnivore with a big appetite attending Tulane University, what might be your favorite restaurants?...
I was hit by a plot bunny, and for various biological and legal reasons, my characters (a Brazilian medical student and a middle class So-Cal engineering student, both giant river otter shifters) ended up at Tulane. I have never even been to New Orleans.
So, for now, I'm looking for a local-eye view on where you would likely go if you wanted some combination from amongst:
Brazilian food
All you can eat (or at least very large portions)
Meat, or even better, fish/seafood
Lots of food for the money (sometimes Ms. SoCal picks the restaurant, and she's more used to frugality)
Fairly near a body of water secluded enough that they can go for a swim after dinner
What comes to mind?
Pandas are notoriously bad at actually digesting the bamboo they eat. Which means that the vast majority of the cellulose in their diet comes out the other end. There are various things that we use cellulose for, And for at least some of them it might be easier to get partly digested cellulose from panda poop instead of trying to get the cellulose from intact bamboo, or trying to chemically digest it with an enzyme solution that we have to make and purify and whatever.
We wouldn't even necessarily have to have the pandas in captivity, strictly speaking. Instead, we could set up panda feeding stations, that are refilled regularly with a combination of bamboo processing offcuts (leaves, branches, damaged or broken pieces) and a few treats to encourage them to show up. Pandas learn that these stations reliably have reasonable quality food, they show up, they eat, they poop, an automated system collects the poop, another automated system refills the bins, everybody wins.
The Eccentric Billionaire has issued you a challenge.
As long as you maintain eligibility, you will get $5,000/day.
But, to maintain eligibility, you need to 1. carefully track everything you eat (and he has *ways* of finding out if you lie or omit something, and 2. not repeat any species of food between days.
For example, if you have (beef) steak today, you can't have cow milk or beef for the rest of the challenge. If you have chicken eggs, then no chicken eggs or chicken for the rest of the challenge. If you have most commercial bread, no wheat, yeast, or sugar cane for the rest of the challenge. And so on. Honey counts as a bee product.
You are allowed to ignore things that are less than 2% of the food on the ingredients list. You are also allowed to ignore legitimately equivalent quantities in things you make yourself (eg if there's corn starch in your baking powder, you can still make and eat something with a little bit of baking powder even if you've had corn already).
You may also exempt one seasoning or fat source from consideration, as long as you are only consuming it in small quantities as part of other food--eg a little garlic on your chicken, or cooking your eggplant in butter. But only one, and you aren't allowed to just eat roasted garlic or a stick of butter if one of those is your exempt additive.
And honest mistakes (eg someone not telling you that the cake they brought in to work to share was sweetened with beet sugar, when you've already had beets; or an ingredient list that just says "natural seasonings" or something) don't count against you, as long as you make every reasonable effort to track things appropriately.
How long do you think you could last? What would your strategy be? Any other thoughts?
Edit: oh, and you can also ignore actual medicine, but not "Well, my doctor told me to eat..." Supplements count if they were advised by your doctor, but cannabis only counts if it's prescription. Alcohol counts as the source carbohydrate, unless you legitimately can't find out what the source carbohydrate is.
They always had plenty of good papadams.
Take a song, please post the lyrics, post the translation in your language, then post some kind of back translation so we can see what your language does with it.
One of my goals with Tana is to have a limited phoneme inventory, so that in theory no one would be barred from learning it or have difficulty learning it just because it uses a phoneme they don't have in their native language.
One of the first words I made was mur. R is not one of my phonemes. And I only just realized this.
Has anyone else unintentionally broken one of their own rules for their conlang like this?
The bored Nth-dimensional being is taking another stab at income inequality. For an 8 hour period of your choice, she will track every cent you spend and every financial decision you make, and then she will make every qualifying individual around the world at least match that spending, proportionally to net worth, over the next month.
That is, if you spend 1% of your initial net worth on something, every qualifying individual will spend at least 1% of their own on the same thing. If you buy food, they will buy food. If you sell stock, they will sell stock. If you pay your taxes, they pay their taxes. And so on. If you wish, the targeted individuals will be broken into cohorts assigned to different months over the next year or two, to reduce economic destabilization.
An individual qualifies if they have a total net worth over $10 million USD, or a total net worth over $8 million USD and an annual income above $200,000. Legitimate money set aside for medical treatments, college education, or the like will be treated as not part of their net worth, but not things simply set aside in a tax dodge or the like. For the purposes of calculating net worth, the maximum value of their primary residence will be treated as $500K regardless of the actual cost, though any income generating portion of the house or grounds will be valued normally.
Their spending will match by category, but will be adjusted appropriately to their interests or circumstances. For example, if you spend money buying alcohol, they will spend equivalent money on their mind altering substance of choice. If you donate to a charity, they will donate to a charity in the same general category of action, eg. environmental, animal welfare, medical research, etc. If you buy something like jewelry, they will buy whatever jewelry they would want. If you buy gifts, they will buy gifts for equivalent people in their own lives. I think you get the pattern. Targeted individuals will think that they are doing the spending voluntarily.
For individuals sufficiently near the low end of the qualifying threshold, the most they will be required to spend is enough to get them down to just below a qualifying net worth. For planning purposes, she will tell you your current net worth at the start of the tracking period.
How do you utilize this opportunity?
Thanks to Elizabeth Wheatly for the idea.
The bored Nth-dimensional being has decided to give you a challenge. You will have approximately 60 seconds to grab anything you want to bring with you, after which you will be transported... somewhere on the planet.
It will be on land, or on a boat within a mile of land. You will not be in danger of dying in the next minute or two. But other than that, it can be anywhere.
You have 30 days to make it home. If you succeed, she will grant you a wish (with a few restrictions--no killing, no mind control, no wishing for more wishes, no omnipotence, and she's not going to monkey paw or jerka$$ genie it, but she might somewhat nerf anything too OP). If you die, she will resurrect you back at home (but no wish). If you don't make it back within the time, she will offer you a ride back home.
She will make sure any obligations (kids, pets, jobs, etc) are taken care of in your absence. And if you sustain any serious injuries or the like in your travels, she will heal you when you get home whether or not you won.
What are you grabbing? Please do this before you do step 2. You don't know where you will end up when you're grabbing things.
Use https://www.random.org/geographic-coordinates/ to pick a place. Pick again if you get an invalid location (including Antarctica, unless you hit an actual base). You may reject your first valid location, but if you do, you end up at your next pick whether or not it's valid. Where do you end up, and do you think you could make it home from there? What will your strategy be?
If you do make it home in time, what are you wishing for?
Also, any other thoughts?
Edit: If you indicate you are able to make it home, but do not indicate what wish you want once you do, you are probably going to get a reply with the word wish machine translated into a semi-random language.
The bored Nth-dimensional being has made you an offer. She will give you the body of your dreams -- healthy, young, attractive, with the build you prefer, all the usual bells and whistles.
There are only two restrictions: your new body needs to be within medically normal human parameters (no wings, or fox ears, or anything like that); and it is the wrong sex, whatever that means for you, and you will never be able to medically transition.
Your new body will still age normally and so forth, this is a reset, not a permanent youth situation or anything, and there is no restriction on socially transitioning.
But if you consider yourself to be female, you will have an "outie" and a more or less medically normal amount of testosterone, and if you consider yourself male (edited to fix an error), you will have an "innie" and a more or less medically normal amount of estrogen. And you can never get either sex reassignment surgery, or hormones to change your sex.
If you are nonbinary, you will be restricted to forms that are fairly visibly whichever sex you identify with least, though you can still customize within that framework.
She will not edit anyone's memories of what you used to look like, but she will make it so that anyone who knows you still recognizes you, and sort out any IDs and such.
Do you take the deal? Why or why not? Any other thoughts?
It's habit forming.
You have hit a financial rough patch lately. Not enough that you're likely to end up homeless, but enough that you're going to be eating a lot of rice and beans, or instant ramen, if you don't figure something out.
A curator of a, shall we say, specialist website contacts you. He makes you an offer. He will arrange for you to take some photos and/or videos of body parts and/or activities that you do not particularly consider to be sexual. Think, for example, pictures of your elbows, or videos of you popping balloons. The photography session will last about a day, and you will be able to refuse any particular shots that you find problematic for whatever reason, as long as you do allow a reasonable number of them.
He will pay you enough to live comfortably off of for at least a month. And the images do not contain any clearly identifying information (eg your name or face), unless someone can recognize your elbows or whatever, so you don't really have to worry about any impact on future jobs or whatever (unless you want to get a job as a hand model or something, maybe).
But your images will be on his website as long as it lasts (no takedowns allowed, unless you repay the money with interest), and though you may not consider what was recorded to be particularly sexual, there will be people around the world jorking it to your pictures and/or videos. And you don't get any subsequent royalties or anything, just the initial payment.
Do you hesitate? Why or why not? Any other thoughts?
(If you are not currently an adult, assume this offer comes after you are an adult)
Luckily, we found her before our important client was scheduled to receive her "donated" heart.
I found a picture from around 100 years ago with the same little girl in it, down to the pattern of her freckles.
The exercise is approximately as follows:
Take a song.
Please say what you are translating, then translate it, then back translate it to English again.
I will be starting my first example, House of the Rising Sun, shortly after I post this.
Imagine all of this being said in a slightly terrible French accent.
Robert and Sophie were a young couple, they were very much in love. Robert asked Sophie to marry him.
Sophie said that she would marry him, on one condition. Whenever she wished him to, ah, consummate their marriage, he would do so.
He thought about this, but figured he was French, he could handle it. So they were wed.
A little while later, they were driving in very heavy traffic, when Sophie says "Robert, Robert, I must have you now."
Robert replies "Can it not wait, Sophie? We are in the middle of traffic."
Sophie sobs "Are you telling me you're going to break your solemn promise to me?"
So, he pulls off to the side of the road, and they go underneath the car.
A little while later, a policeman comes by. "Sir, what do you think you are doing?"
Hastily, Robert replies "I am fixing my car, officer."
The officer replies "You are not doing this, and there are three reasons why I know this. One," he raises one finger, "your feet are pointed in the wrong direction."
"Two," a second finger, "people who are passing by are looking at you and shouting 'Vive La France'"
"And three," a third finger, "someone has stolen your car."
The basic idea is as follows:
Rather than using some purely arbitrary number to determine the theoretical maximum natural lifespan, derive a number from actual survival rates of people who reach the average lifespan.
For example, if the average lifespan is 75 years, and the average 75-year-old will die at age 85, that can reasonably be taken as the point at which, with presently available medical technology, your life probably can't be extended a whole lot even if whatever specifically killed you was cured. Basically, it can be argued that at that point, you're dying of old, rather than necessarily dying of the specific cause that killed you.
Then, use that, rather than an arbitrary cut off, to determine how many years are lost to a given illness or other cause of death every year.
This would be better than simply using average lifespan, which is heavily skewed by a lot of often quite preventable early causes of death, or picking an arbitrary number that might be either too high or too low, which would either overvalue or undervalue minor increases in the lifespans of the relatively old. And since it is a data driven figure rather than an arbitrary cutoff, it will naturally change to reflect actual changes in how long people are managing to live, because of changes in medical technology or whatever.
Then, whether you use that figure by itself, or something that is adjusted by quality of life metrics of some sort, you can get a data-driven figure for how much potential human life is lost to a given condition each year. Then, a little simple math will turn that into research dollars per year lost or whatever, and leave you as close as you can reasonably get to an apples to apples comparison between things like, say, research into rare childhood cancers, vs Alzheimer's research.
If we just use something like the average lifespan, then we could easily be undervaluing things that could give large numbers of people a couple of extra healthy years. But if we use the maximum lifespan of the luckiest few people, then we are going to be spending disproportionate effort on trying to eke out what may only be a few extra months for people who are essentially dying of multiple conditions at once. I think the average lifespan of people who managed to make it to "old" is probably the sweet spot between those extremes.