Dream Diary Goats and Rabbits Edition

I am in some northern village in the mountains, and my mother urges me to become rich, and have some ambition. I tell her in a very determined manner that it does not matter that it does not matter how rich you become, but it matters how good you become. I then head out into the mountains and the road leads to a cage with doors on all sides. I am scared of some leopards, and latch the doors on three sides myself. The door at the back is where I came from, the door on the right leads to a path along the edges of a valley, and so does the door in the front. The door on the left leads to a mountain path, that snakes up a mountain side. There are some shops midway up the mountain, a guesthouse even further up, as well as some official looking mountain facility. After latching three of the doors, I carry on forward. Here a mountain goat keeps hopping high in the air and following me. It tries to bite me once or twice, but I escape. Somewhere along the way the mountain goat meets a dog that it knows and the two go away together. I come across a beautiful lush green meadow with a pond full of lotuses in the middle. Here, there are some small brown bunnies and I photograph them. I meet another photographer who asks me where I am from. I say my address, and tell him where I work. He says he has been to my hometown, and that he has seen my place of work, which is a great bank. What he has actually seen though, is my school. I do not correct him on either part. By this time there is another local following us around. We compare cameras and I try to explain to him that he has a better model, and that we review gadgets. 

We see a forest official gassing the meadow, and I ask if it is a good idea to rescue the rabbits. We manage to save one bunny who is just too enormous to carry. I then head back to the cage and see a number of forest officials coming down the mountain path. The shops are closed now. One of them comes to me and tells me to keep the doors open for a few hours as people are going to keep coming and going. He then allows me to open and close the doors, but according to the scheduled timing and asks me to visit again. 

The rabbit signifies luck, the goat signifies wealth. The rest are simple enough to understand. 

Austronesians went to America

Here is a map superimposed on another. One is the spread of humans across land out of Africa. The second is the Austronesian expansion using boats. For some reason, Norse expidition apparently crossed the Atlantic, but the people of Hawaii or Easter Islands did not make it to the Americas across the pacific. The red lines are considered fringe or pseudoscience. 

There is plenty of evidence that this happened though

- Skulls matching pacific islanders in South America

- Similar words in the pacific islands and South America

- Chicken found in South America that is not genetically similar to European chicken

- Sweet potatoes in South America

- Similar boat building techniques used in America

- Custard apple carving in Indian Stupa, and elephant carving in Mayan remains

Those are not Elephants on this Mayan stele, according to scientists

Music listening habits before and after lockdown

So discovered the ganzfeld effect during the lockdown, and this is how my music habits changed before and after the lockdown. The sudden dip is when the lockdown happened.

I also made equipment for the ganzfeld effect by repurposing some old swimming googles, and also do not like to do cham cham in the water any more

D&D Journal - Adventures at Terra Vol 8

Adventures at Terra volumes 

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

30/10/85/01 Tazius
We all wake up except Eric. We pack up and once everyone is ready to move, I use the opportunity to try and train Bubbles to wake people up. Bjorn acts out pouncing, but Bubbles only pounces on him. I ask Syl to explain it to him, which she does. Apparently Bubbles is happy with her name. On command, Bubbles goes and wakes up Eric, so we managed to train the diredoggo a bit.
Eric, Syl and Bjorn have some wine each. Then we start walking towards the point where we are supposed to meet Karthak's men, instead of following Eric to the bandit's camp. Suddenly the guy drops from the trees and says he can take us to the camp, but the way is peppered with traps. Bjorn, Syl and me walk through the traps, carefully disarming them. There are boulder traps and bow traps. We disarm them all, and I climb into the trees, with the help of Bjorn, we set up 34 traps in the trees, that can all be sprung with a single pull of a string. We aim these arrows across the camp. I stay up in the trees with a gagged Eric and Karthak's man, while the rest of the party goes ahead to investigate the camp. We have set up the whole thing in such a way that the arrows will fire around the camp, but leave a safe zone, where the party is supposed to stay.

Bjorn walks in and starts fighting. I release all the traps. The boulders take out all the houses, the arrows kill one, and injure another bandit. Another bandit manages to step aside, while a fourth escapes by some miracle. Eric starts running towards a fourth bandit. I loosen an arrow and kill the second bandit. Syl casts fairy fire. The chief bandit blows a whistle summoning four abyssal chicken, who promptly start attacking everyone. Galadriel and Syl go down quickly. Bjorn is still fighting, and Eric is running across the camp. I fire at a chicken and miss. Chief bandit blows his whistle again, this time summoning a pair of demonic clackers. Things are about to get bad.  

There are three abyssal chickens clearly visible with fairy fire. One of them is sleeping for some reason. Galadriel and Syl are still down. I shoot one of the chicken and kill them. Donger turns around and runs back towards the fight, and swings his axe on a chicken, and gets his sword stuck. The Dwarf whistles again, summoning a pair of Maw Demons. Bjorn swings his greataxe through one of the abyssal chicken, and gibs it. The other chicken gets saved because of cushioning from the gore from the first chicken, but still gets hit. One of the Maw Demons attacks Donger, and makes him bloodied. I shimmy down the tree. Donger then starts breathing fire for some reason, showing dragonborn powers that we do not know about. We gain three roasted chicken, but all the cacklers and Maw Demons are alive. I zephyr strike into the arena and grab the whistle from the Dwarf. There seems to be some instrument on his wrist. Bjorn says hi Lindir as I approach and bye Lindir as I go away with the whistle. Galadriel manages to become stable. Donger strikes at the cacklers and misses it, then takes a few more down. The scuffle continues. We kill 17 creatures. The Dwarf shouts something about Jak with a K as he gets killed by Bjorn. 

I go and console Eric. Eric talks about Mark the Dwarf, and how they were good friends and spent many nights looking at the stars. I check the shed and find that the goat is alive. I stabilise it. We clear the debris from the kitchen and recover some food. Bjorn checks out one of the rooms, finds a sword and some stationery. 

01/11/85/01 Tazius

We set out towards the next town, Multum and reach there after about a day's walk. As we approach, we see a begger asking for alms, and I give him a bunch of foraged strawberries. The beggar whispers to me that Bjorn, a member of our party is wanted in the town and there are posters of him stuck all over the place. We ask Bjorn to go around the city to the docks on the other side, and steal a boat. Syl, Galad and me head to a tavern, where we get a healthy supply of alcohol. We also pick up plenty of alcohol and some supplies for the river voyage. I make some pitch using oil and soot from the chimney. 

When we head to the docks we find the whole place in uproar. By overhearing snippets of conversations we come to understand that Bjorn has stolen the biggest boat around, the King's Barge and has gone away with it. Down the river we can see a quickly receding bright light. Sylph thinks on her feet and gets a guardsman to steal a boat to follow the Barge. We get on that boat, and catch up with Bjorn. We then take all the loot we can from the King's Boat, ask the guardsman to pilot it, and head on our way. We encounter some river creature on the way, but I'm not paying attention to it. 

Consumable

No time and in a hurry, need to get an outline down. 

IT Teja stroked at his beard under the mask, trying to wrestle it into place, an impossible task. He looked at his watch and waited impatiently for Arun to pick him up. Arun drove around in this orange Honda Jazz, that could be spotted from a mile away. It was hard to lose that car in a parking lot, or anywhere. IT Teja could see the road sloping downwards for almost three fourths of a kilometer, the distance from which Arun would turn around the corner and drive towards Teja. Arun was late and IT Teja was getting impatient. Finally, the twin beams of the vehicle turned the corner, and started making their way towards IT Teja. 

Arun stopped the vehicle next to IT Teja, pulled down his mask, beckoned him and said "Get in!". IT Teja slipped in without a word, and without touching his mask. "What do you want to do?" asked Arun. "Macha looks like there is going to be lockdown again. Have a bunch of things to do. First, need to score, then we have to visit Hamleys." Arun began to plan out a route, then asked "so MG road or Whitehall? We can pick up from civil hospital or Cox town on the way." IT Teja said "My dude's at MG road, he will get it all packed and ready, we just have to go pick it up." 

Arun floored it. 

They cruised lazily down the empty streets, bathed in the gentle warmth of sunlight filtered through trees, serenaded by emboldened birds. For some reason the conversation came around to NFTs. Arun was wondering what the value of an NFT was, and IT Teja was trying to explain that the value was what people were ready to pay. Arun's argument was that the price of a piece of art was because nothing in the world could reproduce it exactly, so what really was the worth of something that could be reproduced at will. IT Teja tried to argue that in fact, NFTs allowed the content owners to have a proof of ownership, and that art galleries were using NFTs for digital exhibitions. 

By that time they had ended up at the scoring point. IT Teja went in, fired a lamchi, and then came back out to the car. He might have got a few cats in with him. Next, Arun had to go to an ATM, and IT Teja decided to pick up some skins. IT Teja showed the special edition TumbaJamba skins, ones that converted to NFTs once you smoked them. The cover of the skin was also a special limited edition artwork, which you could save and use as a bookmark, or realistically speaking use up as roach. Either way, you owned a token of the artwork used on the book of skins in the end. IT Teja showed the skins to Arun when he came back with the money. 

Together, the two head to Hamleys. Once they were close to the mall, IT Teja called his guy. They picked up the package, which had hot wheels cars, and went home. 

Guernica tribute in Clone Wars

In Clone Wars S05E16, there is a tribute to Picasso's Guernica, which is a painting about the horrors of war, in the backdrop to the fight between Maul and Darth Sidious on Mandalore.

D&D Journal - Adventures at Terra Vol 7

27/10/85/01 Tazius
We bury the one live bandit till the neck, and bury the others. We have the food, play with the dog, and then I start working on the Mancala. This night, I manage to finish making it. Then I try to wake up Galadriel by using the whistle, but it barely makes a peep. She continues to sleep, so I put Bubbles near her, which wakes her up. Bubbles is startled but I calm her down.
Then Galadriel keeps watch. The night passes without event.

28/10/85/01 Tazius
Bjorn wakes up, the Donger, and finally me and the pup. We interrogate the Bandit, who starts crying eventually. We find out that his name is Eric, and he serves someone called Jack. The camp is from a splinter cell led by Mark. We convince Eric to take us to Mark's camp. We make good progress that day. Gondor tells us his story.
He told us he was a soldier, who was disillusioned by the periodic and unnecessary wars. That is where I found Dave. Did you ever think how animals can find us when we are in need? We are a bit secretive so people might think we are secretive. The secret is David has a hidden branch somewhere in the village. Whenever a new person joins the village, they are brushed with the branch, and suddenly all the animals become your friend. This is how even the wild, untamable beasts also become friendly. Then he told us that he was looking forward to the day when we were also blessed with the branch.
Then we ask Eric about him. I dont remember the time before Jack picked me up, but I remember that when I was a youngling, Jack fed me with his hand. Once day, Jack had gone outside, later I came to know he used to go to requisition things from villages. That is our job. But anyway, one day Jack was away from the camp and there were some older people who looked after us. I was one of those inquisitive children, and I went outside camp to look into the wilderness. I was told not to do that, but did it anyway to see what would happen. I saw huge trees, never ending greenery, but the sun began to set and I realised that I had lost my way. I then scraped my knee and started crying. After many hours, I decided if I climb a tree, perhaps I could see the spire of smoke from the big blue fire of our camp. So I climbed the tree, but could not find any fire. That was when I realised I had lost the camp. I worried so much that I fell off the tree and broke my ankle. And I could not walk then. Do you know what happened? Before the sun had risen, I heard Jack's voice calling out my name. He came to pick me up. He was injured but still helped me. That is when I realised that Jack is my Lord. I have never disobeyed his order since then.
I take the first watch then wake up Galadriel. The night passes without incident.

29/10/85/01 Tazius
Another day of walking. We discover that we are going slightly off course. Bjorn confronts Eric, while Donger interrogates him. I give Eric some wine from the skin, which calms him down. He swears that we are going the right way. Galadriel takes the second watch.