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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • If you have normal darkness everywhere, there isn’t a reason to use it, but you don’t always have darkness everywhere. In fact, you generally don’t.

    Not all monsters with darkvision have access to light sources. Even if they do, they may need an action to use it or may be out of range. A torch or the light cantrip only has a 40’ range. If you collaborate on positioning with the caster, you can basically set yourself up to have advantage every turn thanks to the darkness, since as a ranged attacker you don’t have to stay within 40’ of your enemies.

    Also, Gloom Stalkers can’t see through Darkness like Warlocks can, so this effect is useful to them in a way that the Darkness spell isn’t.

    That all said, Tricksy wouldn’t do anything if it didn’t block nonmagical illumination, so it’s reasonable to run it as though it does. Sure, it still wouldn’t block even a cantrip, but it would block torches, lanterns, the sun, etc…

    And running it as though it doesn’t block nonmagical darkness results in nonsensical behavior. You’re in a torchlit chamber and use the ability - now there’s a cube of darkness, blocking the light of all four nonmagical torches. If you move one of those torches away and back, why would it suddenly pierce the magical darkness? If it wouldn’t, why would a new nonmagical light source?



  • I gather you’re from the US.

    Yes, but also the prison abolition movement is US specific. I’m not affiliated with it, to be clear - not that I oppose it or anything, but I certainly don’t speak for any of its activists.

    If we “only” reduce the prison population to 5% or 1% of its current count in the process

    Then why call it abolish prisons?

    Have you ever heard the quote “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars?” “Abolition” is a goal, an ideal - and even if it isn’t accomplished fully, working toward that end goal and considering everything necessary to get there along the way is the point.

    Along those lines, I posit that if 90% of prisons are torn down or repurposed and the remaining 10% are drastically changed - holding fewer prisoners; not being privately owned and operated; focusing on rehabilitation, like learning new job skills, when possible, and otherwise simply being more humane, then the prison abolition movement would have succeeded.

    But if you disagree with the name, what would you call it? “Prison Reform” is already taken and means something drastically different.

    And to be clear, for some the goal is to eliminate prisons entirely. The movement isn’t monolithic. Abolishing the “prison institution” as it exists today is a pretty common goal, though, and using “prison” to mean “the prison institution” is a pretty common literary technique called “Synecdoche,” which you likely use every day.

    I see now that you’re trying trying to trigger an additional emotional response. Working on association, rather than logic.

    It’s a logical association, though. If the name evokes feelings of slavery, that’s a good thing, as the situation is similar enough to slavery to warrant that.

    Slavery in the US is still legal (so long as the person is in prison). Black Americans are 5 times as likely to be in prison as white Americans. A black man born in 2001 has a 20% chance of being in prison at some point in his life.

    The systemic oppression of black Americans is obviously because of racism, and the parallels between slavery and the prison institution aren’t accidental. For example, here’s a quote from Slavery and the U.S. Prison System:

    Gary Webb’s famous investigation revealed that the CIA was operating a gun-running and drug-smuggling operation that brought guns to the Nicaraguan contras that the U.S. was using to destabilize the popular government in that country, while bringing cocaine into the U.S. and funneling it to street-level dealers with access to black inner-city neighborhoods.  The history of black street gangs is part of the afterlife of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s counter-intelligence program that actively sabotaged black social movement throughout the long civil rights era.  Bobby Lavender, one of the founders of the Bloods in Los Angeles, explained that the COINTELPRO assassinations of black leaders, and the terrorizing of rank-and-file civil rights activists, left an organizational vacuum in many communities that youth like him filled with their “own brand of leadership.”  COINTELPRO established a pattern of law enforcement interference and sabotage of black self-determination, including gang truces, from the 1970s through to the present.

    Such manipulation, especially, is something I would not want to be a part of. It’s vile.

    Personally, I think the systemic sabotage of black people’s livelihood, communities, and families is vile, but you’re welcome to your opinion.


  • The name is important because of the parallels between slavery and modern day prisons.

    At minimum, the movement is about completely rethinking our approach to dealing with crime. If we “only” reduce the prison population to 5% or 1% of its current count in the process, we won’t have abolished all prisons, but we will have succeeded in abolishing many parts of the current criminal justice system.