Stryx-9

For your consideration: this looks like a screnshot from a Mystlike about football, and that's a concept I think should exist in this world

She's standing on the tail end of her skateboard as she pulls a black stick out of her pocket and places it between her lips. The tip of the stick shines a bright green LED as she sucks on the pen, and she huffs out a thin white cloud. The smell of grape flavoured candies and weed gently caresses the wind as you walk along the sidewalk. You stop for a moment, but she notices you staring at her. She turns her head to you and frowns.

"Can I help you," she asks, with a tinge of disdain dripping from every word. You look at her with mild concern.

"Don't you think you should get out of the middle of the road? You could get run over," you state plainly.

She kicks her foot down on the tail of her board, popping it into the air. She snatches it with her right hand, then shuffles the board between her arm and torso as she walks towards you. The faint aroma of jolly ranchers and marijuana grows to a fever pitch as she closes the distance between you. She stands above you, looking down her beak into your eyes despite having a height disadvantage while you stand on the elevated curbside. She moves the black vape pen from her beak to her pocket as the sun glints off her sunglasses.

"Honey, these streets are mine as much as yours. They were mandated by the state, but built by the working men and women who keep this country moving. The men up top in their suits and ties want to tell you what to do on these roads because they wanted them, but the people who built them get no say in the matter.

Quite frankly, I stand in the middle of the road because they want to rule us rather than the reverse. We elect them, we put them in power, and yet we are beholden to them rather than them being beholden to us. It makes no sense to me, and it shouldn't make sense to you, either."

She places the tail of her board between her foot and the street, then pushes off and rides down the street. She lazily leans to one side, turning the board to the center of the painted yellow lines. You tilt your head as you watch her ride into the distance. What a weird girl, you think to yourself.

Her board catches a pebble and dumps her face first into the pavement.

i don't exactly know why but for some reason the screensaver on my pc doesn't seem to like working sometimes. it will work if i go through the process of entering the control panel, select a different screensaver and click apply. but eventually it will just stop working again, so i have to go back and do it over again.

and like, im genuinely unsure if this is a genuine intentional function, or if win10 is having a weird fit about this specific feature. a desktop shortcut for microsoft edge keeps popping up on my desktop after i delete it, so at this point i can't tell if the OS is malfunctioning on a very basic, mundane level is intentional or not. for all i know, the screensaver deactivates because microsoft thinks everybody's monitors are new enough to not have to worry about burn-in, even though it is 2023 where new monitors that have any modicum of reliability beyond a couple years will cost a few hundred dollars.