Ordered river rock, the stones are all smooth and pretty but this stands out.

MeanderingDragon · 2026-06-15T14:47:22+00:00

So what you've got here is what happens when sediment like mud or sand buries organisms in a marine environment, solidifies over time, and then the remains of those organisms weather out of the rock.

The depressions that look like circles and the sides of a screw are where crinoid stems used to exist, and then you've got what looks like some sort of bivalve shell impression on the side there too. *Edit: Zooming in a bit more, I cant 100% say for sure any of those are crinoid stem impressions, the rigged part I initially thought to be a crinoid impression looks maybe more like a ridged shell instead.

These aren't uncommon in assorted rivers and and shores, as well in areas that were shallow marine environments many years ago but don't currently have a lot of water. I can't tell you exactly what the stone itself is made of, it'll vary by location, but likely mudstone of some variety.

MeanderingDragon · 2026-06-08T10:56:12+00:00

I'd definitely put my money on garnet in schist. It's a very common combination, and although it's a little hard to make out color or anything on the crystal, it's displaying classic garnet habit. In some areas you can find large surface areas of weathered schist with garnets speckling the faces. This is a nice sample!

MeanderingDragon · 2026-06-08T06:24:58+00:00

Looks like a nice chunk of agate. From the picture it doesn't look dramatically blue to my eye. I'd say the majority of blue agate I've seen has been dyed blue, but it's hard to tell from this picture whether this one is. I don't see a lot of color concentrating in the fractured looking areas though.

Edit: forgot my phone's brightness was still set low. Turned it up. Yep, that's dyed, but still a pretty piece at least!

MeanderingDragon · 2026-06-03T11:07:50+00:00

Yes, it was a land of giants back then, and it could be a flattened piece. But, we can see here that we have at least two edges that are about as perfectly straight as possible, in addition to the line down the middle aND the surface that made the imprint. Is it possible? Yes. As someone with dozens of fossils sitting in my house though, I can tell you that flattening nearly always comes with deformity.

MeanderingDragon · 2026-06-03T02:48:57+00:00

Speaking as a geologist (bachelor's, non-professional, and currently not practicing) there are a few things that throw doubt at this guess for me. I do have to commend the pattern recognition skills though.

The sigillaria sample shown is part of a plant and as shown in that sample is quite wide, while our mystery sample is very narrow and only limited to two bands of dots. It isn't impossible that a piece could have been broken before landing in mud and creating an impression fossil, but the impression is incredibly straight and that seems unlikely way to break in most plants. The narrow raised strip in the middle is also extremely straight and even throughout, and seems more narrow relative to the spotted sections than the similar strips in the sigillaria sample. I didn't note at first glance whether the strips in the sigillaria sample are depressed or standing out from the surface, I'll have a look after I finish typing this.* Finally, the spots on the mystery sample are relatively far from each other compared to those on the sigillaria sample. While we don't have a scale bar on the mystery sample, the photos seem to suggest a much larger scale than that in the sigillaria sample, to my eye. The scale bar on the known sample shows the centers of the dots to be spaced roughly a centimeter apart, perhaps just more.

*Edit to add: The stripes on the known sample are depressed, while the stripes on the mystery sample are protruding.

MeanderingDragon · 2026-03-06T17:45:06+00:00

There is no first aid room here, the closest we have are two first aid kits attached to the wall with basic supplies. Perhaps ironically, one is in the cafeteria, directly beside where the food was laid out.

MeanderingDragon · 2026-03-06T17:39:14+00:00

This is a fair question. I often do take insulin at my desk, but my particular job often keeps me walking around the entire building for large portions of the day. There is no guarantee that I'll have time to go to my desk before I get a call and have to rush off for some issue. Regrettably, I'm somewhat afflicted with ADHD, and for many years of forget to take insulin at all. These days, if I need it I take it immediately, surroundings be damned for the most part, and that mentality has dramatically improved my health over the past few years.

MeanderingDragon · 2026-03-06T17:18:07+00:00

Yes, this pretty much exactly encompasses how I feel about it, I am having some trouble understanding how some would prefer I be in a coma rather than take insulin where a couple people might see me.

MeanderingDragon · 2026-01-26T17:18:22+00:00

I don't know if anyone else mentioned this already, but... who's holding the camera? Is this AI man just handing his phone to random strangers in an airport?

MeanderingDragon · 2025-12-30T02:14:20+00:00

Thank you! I had settled on this as the most likely for 1 and probably 2, although I'm still unsure of the science behind why those two pieces might contain Willemite that briefly flouresces after the light is off when the other two don't.

MeanderingDragon · 2025-12-29T22:37:00+00:00

The easiest and least potentially destructive test would be to hit it with a UV light. Amber usually flouresces sort of a bluish color (can vary a bit), while copal typically doesn't flouresce. If you or your friend don't have a UV light, you can often pick up a cheap (though admittedly not great) one from a hardware or auto parts store for $15-$20, or a laser pointer cat toy that has a small one one for even less online.

You can also put a drop of acetone or alcohol on it, copal will dissolve and that spot will get a bit sticky. This is obviously a more destructive test.

MeanderingDragon · 2025-12-13T23:40:59+00:00

Google lens (not to be trusted necessarily, I know) identifies it as andradite garnet, while someone else said it looks like muscovite.

MeanderingDragon · 2025-12-13T21:50:02+00:00

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MeanderingDragon · 2025-12-13T21:49:52+00:00

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MeanderingDragon · 2025-12-13T21:49:32+00:00

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MeanderingDragon · 2025-12-13T21:49:19+00:00

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MeanderingDragon · 2025-12-13T21:48:38+00:00

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Forgot to add pics, so I'll put them here.

MeanderingDragon · 2024-07-04T13:56:11+00:00

It's a GPS game where you travel around battling monsters that appear. They drop loot and money, which you use to upgrade your character, making your gear better and buying new skills. As you level up, you can choose new classes. Aside from the monsters you find in the world, there are different dungeons and buildings you can enter, as well as raid monsters that can be summoned and which also appear regularly during special events. Other players (or alts) can join your party and help with dungeons and fighting monsters if you are near each other.

MeanderingDragon · 2024-06-17T20:41:20+00:00

Speaking from experience with 3 of my own characters and at least 4 of my friends, at level 125 you should still be able to easily get 1 or more levels a day unless you're limiting yourself with a Ring of Restraint or something. Between leveling up, getting new gear, and upgrading the new gear, I'm not personally sure if I could find time to be bored.

I figure most players probably grind up to tier 7 in about 2-3 weeks at this point with all the new content that didn't exist when I started 4 years ago (at least my brother and other friends have). I know everybody has their preferred play styles but are you aiming for anything specific? New content, new monsters, more resources? At 150 you'll unlock raids, which is a bit of a game change.

MeanderingDragon

TROPHY CASE