L. Rhodes @lrhodes@merveilles.town

"Archaeologists believe the object, made from swirling blue and white glass with a small 'crown' of white glass droplets, is a gaming piece from the Viking board game hnefatafl ('king's table'), or a local version of the game."
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/06/boardgame-piece-first-viking-raid-found-lindisfarne-archaeology

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Two papers, both by Lee-Ann Sutherland of the James Hutton Institute, on the role of agriculture and the rural idyll in Stardew Valley…
Journal of Rural Studies: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2020.05.002
Agriculture and Human Values: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-020-10121-w

Tried bitters in my coffee, on the recommendation of one of the "try bitters in everything" articles that were apparently trendy a few years back.

Not bad. Just not necessary.

I think part of what went suboptimal tonight was that we've been playing UVG as a kind of surreal spaghetti western, and my players have adapted to that by looking at most situations in fight or flight terms.

Assuming people still want to play, I'll probably switch settings after next week. Mothership, most likely. Then, when (/if) we come back to UVG, I'll lean further into the weird and exploratory.

Very subdued UVG session tonight. My players doggedly avoided every potentially interesting encounter or opportunity I gave them. They've recovered the MacGuffin, and are making a bee-line for the bounty. Taking this as a sign that next week's session should be devoted to wrapping up this campaign. Gonna work up a final encounter and some potentially interesting consequences, and hope it's all small enough to fit in ~2.5 hours, yet still satisfying.

Still on the lookout for a good, New Yorker-esque deep dive (though preferably not book-length deep) on bitters. In the meantime, here's a shorter piece on some of the science behind their medicinal claims: https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-basics-of-bitters/

"He calls it a 'chaos garden' […] The blanket of plants crowds out most unwanted species, including weeds; the cucumbers and squash and other flowering species attract beneficial insects that keep pests like 'squash bugs' at bay; the dense foliage increases soil moisture retention and reduces the need to water; and the plants tend to mature at different rates, allowing for several months of a diverse bounty rather than a monocrop that gets harvested all at once." https://civileats.com/2020/05/12/most-farmers-in-the-great-plains-dont-grow-fruits-and-vegetables-the-pandemic-is-changing-that/

The Really Hard Problem of social media is arranging your account (follows, filters, lists, etc.) so that it consistently delivers pleasant surprises without drowning them in a sea of dreck.

Anyone run across any good, long form articles about bitters? Throw me a link.

I don't know if it's widely used within the field, but Merlin Sheldrake uses a wonderfully evocative word to convey the perceptual world as fungi move through it: rotscape.

If I'd had more experience going into this, I'd have probably found a way to smooth out the complexity of this set piece. My players were allied with a steppelander clan in a battle against an invading army. The goal was to deliver the central MacGuffin to a transdimensional gate while fighting en route. Activating the MacGuffin unleashed the goliath axolotl, which turned the tide of battle. They just eked through, but not without permanent consequences.

Finally got to use the visual aid I put together for the big combat set piece I arranged in the Ultraviolet Grasslands #ttrpg campaign I've been running the past few months.

In case anyone is interested, this book (which is Open Access) seems to cover a lot of ground: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/33578

Also gonna see if I can track down a copy of this: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691000305/the-culture-of-the-meiji-period

Still open to suggestions, if anyone knows of something similar.