You know, I almost posted that it specifically says on the back "Not to be used for ID", because I remember that on mine. Looked online to be sure I was right, and couldn't find it, so I didn't post it
I had no idea that they removed that. It's not like they changed function!
Writing a book means planning out plot and character arcs and going back to edit and such. Solo RPGs are an entirely different beast. They can inspire books, but they are not an authorial exercise.
From the day care worker's reaction when I almost did this, it's a fairly common phenomenon, especially early on. And especially when they accidentally swap the kids' clothes!
Galaxies are closer together relative to their size than stars; but they're still a few orders of magnitude farther apart than this.
The scale I've seen is: If the sun were the size of a ping pong ball, the next nearest star would be hundreds of miles away. But if the Milky Way were the size of a CD, Andromeda would be on the other side of the room.
At this point, I question whether they're even experts in that kind of finance, or if they're just connected to each other well enough, and have a few willing experts in hand, to maintain their position.
I honestly think the only thing most of them have going for them is that it's their name on the accounts.
I absolutely agree with everything in your first paragraph, and completely disagree with the second! That said, stories evolve at least as quickly as the language they're built from, and I'm sure every family that hangs up stockings has their own unique spin for Santa. But intentionally gaslighting your kids in order to teach an object lesson about how people will manipulate you seems like an awfully convoluted way to go about it, especially when the kid comes out ahead for it!
I think it started as a story to get kids excited, because that's fun. In my family, the kids were brought into the act as they got old enough to understand that the point; and I assume this was very common back when kids had to help with everything as soon as they were old enough. The kids then get to practice giving without any intention of getting recognition for it, which helps make more charitable adults.
That's not to say that the story doesn't get used to enforce behavior - the existence of Krampus shows a long history of that! But I don't think it's used primarily for that anymore.
I was incautious with my phrasing, I should have said something like “humans have a singular capacity” etc. There may well be other storytelling species (in fact, I hope there are!) Whalesong seems like it could have the necessary complexity, for instance. I don't think crows warning each other about particular faces quite constitutes a story, though - that seems more like spreading "we hate that guy!" without any of the context a story would provide. Would be easy to check for storytelling with the species that can imitate speech, though.
I suspect this is a big part of what we're looking for when we're exploring personhood in nonhumans, too - whenever talking to animals, aliens, etc comes up in fiction, people inevitably end up swapping stories with them. Suggests to me that storytelling ability is what people are actually looking for.
I agree with what you're saying, but don't bones count as organs?