Treasures and Hunts
Or should it be kept secret?
I'm warming to having a standard prize at $5,000, with some lower. * One prize is $10,000 *. See pazoozas on the
Treasure page. The $10,000 prize is a selling point, a cause for excitement.
Ghost story! There could be clues to a hunt in a ghost story. Entertaining, even if you don't figure it out. Debatable glimpses into a different view of the world, in two ways.
A murder mystery might be better from a clues point of view, but that is a bloodier business.
A spy story is not out of the question.
A cloak and dagger themed prize? That sounds dubious even to me, but neat components. "Cloak and dagger" is vague, but a couple of board games (Watergate, Shifty Eyed Spies, maybe Mind Management), books,
mystery thriller, likely a code book,
wallet lock pick set.
And money.
Hidden Gems
Easter Egg Hunt
Silver something or other. Coins. Silver alpaca ..
The lower value prizes can be more colourful.
(Night) Out on the Town. Restaurants, tickets for the show, the game, spendin' money. Casino chips! Local.
Cosy cabin. Games and books and puzzles, an object. What would you do for this prize? Maybe it needs a woman's touch.
A hunt that bends toward the Chinese Canadian crowd. Some Chinese writing.
The prize is nine small gold dragon coins,
for the year of the dragon. Could be in one of those new year envelopes, used to give money.
I would find a way to get in Lanterns, a Chinese Canadian board game.
Bit coin and
bat coin.
One of each in a tiny treasure chest. Physical bit coin.
It would please me to have someone on the west coast get a prize that included east coast treats.
Junk food,
drinks including
alcohol. But this is consumables. Alcohol too.
That means going through hoops. An object, e.g. a model ship. Nova Scotia book or two.
I wonder how hard it is to set up a gift card to some store, like Cal's Cacti.
Medical charity raffles, e.g. the Tri-Hospital Dream Lottery, happen. Everybody wins. The treasure finder would get half tickets and would not need to fill out anything. Well .. the devil's in the details.
Tak Is About to Be Your New Favourite Game
The Modern Rogue, a pair of theatrical fellows. Wait till they see Atlantis Chess!
How to play Hidden Identity Chess
short
Atlantis Chess is here! That is the big one. More information in the library.
Someone's confused.
short
Baikal is a drink from Russia the Soviet Union, named after a beloved big lake out east. With multiple ingredients, I can't give a neat
description, but it tastes like Pine Sol. I certainly like it. Russian goods have become hard to come by, at the Ukrainian store.
But I got a version of Baikal made in Ukraine. It doesn't have the Pine Sol taste.
This particular product contains .. what's the word at the bottom left? (and what's with the word on the right?)
The word on the left is lemonade
pronunciation.
I asked the lady if the product contains lemonade, but she said no. Lemonade is a generic name for something along the
lines of flavoured drinks. It reminds me of the way people in the American south refer to all sody pop as cokes.
"Do you want a coke?"
A sneak peek at the Calgary Stampede's 2025 'wacky' midway food
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Hobby shops say it will be game over for their businesses due to Quebec's language law
Artesh Awtash is the Persian word for fire.
You can catch the pronunciation of Iran while you're there.
Crimean Tatars are one of the Turkic speaking peoples. The Turkic languages are not related to Persian. Also what is the plural of people?
What is the Ukrainian letter for the z sound? What about the l sound?
You're going to need the z sound if you want to spell Azov.
And what's the letter for the v sound?
And how about the r sound?
You're going to need it if you want to spell Russia.
We can always start to decrypt things with the word for tank, which is spelled TAHK.
Just make sure the second vowel is not e. It's a sensitive issue.
A bustling metropolis.
Ukraine RESISTANCE Group BLOWS UP Russian Lifeline!
Watch until 4:12 (or more if you want).
Later in the video you'll see Atesh, the Crimean Tatar resistance group whose name means fire, setting fire to another relay cabinet for the Russian railway.
It would be nice to stop the railway. That would cripple the Russian intervention. But damaging railway tracks - however that's done - is something that can
be repaired surprisingly quickly.
See "China's Sinister Solar Panels and the Plan to Black Out the World!"
I get fiction ideas. Nothing will ever come of it.
Alouette, a long-distance space bus.
Big Brother is a strategic reality show. There have been versions in, e.g., Australia. People are locked together in a house for a sustained period of time, with not a lot to do except talk.
It occurred to me that there could be a physical connection between, e.g. a BB show in Australia and a BB show in the U.K. This is impossible, surreal, with players going through
doors and down tunnels even though the shows are in different countries. One or two players at a time are allowed to visit, not the whole house (of people), as an earned treat. It's all about
gossip there.
What happens with Alouette, function and plot wise? It's taking a bunch of people for a long distance through empty, dark space. There will be a bit of a cruise ship element, with a need
to keep people stimulated on their journey. There will certainly be scientists and engineers looking for life on distant planets. There will be a diplomat. There will not be war, good luck
trying to spot a gun, although you can catch whispers of shadow stuff / cold war.
The way it works in this universe is you do not see suspiciously humanoid, English-speaking aliens. There are humans, but they have different cultures, like the world here.
Alouette is huge, long. It hangs about planets but does not land. Long story short it does the wormhole thing, but still has to travel more traditionally within a solar system. Extra things can be bolted on to the space ship, we'll call them pods for now. So you could have a fairly big, self-contained pod from the planet Shabadoo that is attached to the Alouette. Some influence from the old show The Starlost there. It is important that the pod is 10cc certified. The latest version. If it isn't, we're going to have a problem.
Here's where the Big Brogther suggestion becomes relevant. The Shabadoo people are in their self-contained pod, but you can also meet some in an Alouette cafeteria. The different pods add some colour. Did you know that section D has a decent pool? One pod has a lot of plants. There are kids, families, among the Shabadoo people. One pod has a Hong Kong chef, together with his robot Hong Kong chef partner. The E pod had better not have contraband. The Ibidee people have their own way of doing things. A murder mystery on the M pod. A diplomat. A couple of espionage people, intensely focused on the Federal Republic of Diblo. A domesticated alien pet.
People are only part of it. Cargo too. Secondary spacecraft.
An exclusive part of a spaceship where the richy rich people are. Money, elite, bordering on conspiracy theory power brokers. This could be part of Alouette, another ship, or, quite likely, just part of conversation gossip. This mysterious exclusive area is something for the imagination to feed on. They actually have this on some cruise ships. It's not really exciting, more personal service.
Planets are more relevant for the Big Brother thing. People on the moon Oxi IV are a small, isolated group, trying to make it work indoors in a little station in an inhospitable environment far from civilisation. Having people visit, and leave, would be an event.
The captain sure has a lot to worry about, a lot of responsibility with things that could go wrong. Is pod D 10cc certified? The latest version?
There is an episode where they get through a fairly tense challenge. The captain is often under stress with all his responsibility, but tries not to show it. But they get through it and all is good at the end of the episode. Then the word "audit" is heard. This sends a chill down the captain's spine. Kind of funny.
Since people are not all coming from or going to the same place, people come and people go with Alouette. Romance is not irrelevant.
AI MINI TARS moving to voice commands
A blocky little robot - the way I like it. I encourage you to look at the rest of the channel. Sarcastic fellow.
Do you know what Parkinson's law is? The amount of time taken to do a project grows to the amount of time allotted for it.
Alouette goes on a long voyage into the depths of the galaxy. A group of scientests/engineers are working on a program
to find life on a distant planet. In spite of all the time allowed for this, the scientists are scrambling at the
last minute to finish and perfect the project. Kind of funny.
Of course the captain has been assured that everything will be ready to go on time.
People will identify with this. The project wasn't quite ready because of this, that factor, don't forget testing.
I'm trying to avoid any reference to violence, everything from war to fistfights. A topic for another day. Anyway
Imagine a country that chooses not to make trouble because the other side might cause chaos within the country. Drones popping out from transported boxes,
spies, assassins, computer hacking, firebugs, information warfare, economic obstacles, separatists or something along those lines, people conned into doing sabotage, more drones popping out, and more hacking, in a world with robots.
Not long-distance missile bombardment, but threats disturbingly within the country,
mysteriously activated from outside at the flick of a switch.
Titanic
You and everyone knows what that means. More than a boat, you know the story just from hearing one word.
Bonaventure
Everyone knows what that means, just from the one word. Another long-distance ship, the Bonaventure, disappeared.
Unlike the Titanic, it hits closer to home, more recent, and there is no explanation for why it disappeared.
Predicting the future. What's the word I'm looking for?
(I heard this right after posting and watching the video.)
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I'm thinking of adding a Time Machine section.
A couch cephalopod.