TrickstaPriest

On 12/17/2017 at 2:17 PM, Simon said:

Hey, TP...remind me:  have I mentioned cutting the histrionics?  I'm pretty sure I have.  Did I also mention familiarizing oneself with the rules of the thread?

I'm very sorry.  I was sticking mostly to security topics as a neutral input (the office of OPM and so on).  I was hoping to avoid to avoid 'picking sides' and bringing people to the understanding that corruption isn't a 'this or that side' manner.  I didn't mean to make it worse, or to be histrionic.  My apologies.

18 hours ago, Simon said:

In total agreement with the anti "but what about..." statements.

If you want to talk about what Hillary did (or did not) do, that's fine.  But it's entirely separate from what anyone else did.  There is no equivalency.  If you're accused of murdering someone, you don't get to point at Jeffrey Dahmer and say "but he murdered and ate people!".  That's not a defense, it's a deflection.

 

In regards to Hillary Clinton, listen to Old Man -- I work in "security" as well.  What she did in regards to a private email server wasn't great, but is NOTHING compared to what goes on daily at all levels of DC politics.  Not deflection, just case in point of her actions being par for the course:  do you think that Trump's cell (from which he constantly tweets) is secured?  How about the email services of Pence, Ivanka, Jared Kushner, or other top-ranking officials?  Think they're not using their own?  It's a depressingly common occurrence....and not actionable (yet) without flagrant disregard for safety/security.

I can semi-vouch for Simon's expertise in this field >_>

Hillary probably should be looked at for the emails, but so should so many, many others.  Running private email servers is apparently an epidemic in Washington...  and if you think that's bad, how many stories have come out this last year of critical government and military infrastructures being raided? 

I haven't forgotten the Republican voter databank records being available without password protection on Amazon AWS servers X_x  But unless you can understand the data (and it did appear to be anonymised?), it's more interesting for how and what data is being stored to begin with.  For real messes, the OPM (Office of Personnel Management) breach is hideous.  People I know with TOS who haven't been government employees for years have still been impacted.  I can't imagine the amount of special agents who's identities are now out.  So if we are talking about prosecution, I hate to say it but that feels a heck of a lot more political than anything else.  Our government's data security is well over the hill.  The email servers need to be dealt with, but there's simply so much even more critical areas that need to be dealt with.

In general, if you find corruption in a party, it's got to be dealt with.  No one is exempt.  I don't know that the email servers qualify as corruption (at least by personal definition), merely reckless.  But not nearly as reckless as our whole government IT infrastructure right now.

As a vague security stab, Trump's goading of Kim Jong Un "just you wait for what's coming" might have led to the North Koreans searching for, and unearthing, our assassination strategy coordinated with South Korea.  What a ridiculous situation it is, when our strategic military personnel are struggling to work around a PotUS twitter account.

3 minutes ago, Hermit said:

Most Americans I know like Canadians. Snowbirds are a big contributors to the South's tourist industry and more polite than the dreaded yankees.

 

There is that whole Bieber thing though.

 

We had to knock the US down a few pegs somehow.  0:)  Okay, that joke may be in poor taste.

Likely my votes would be like Bolo for much the same reasons.  For an adult game likely the Terra Force idea for its fun premise?  I feel like the kids of villains is an interesting role-playing theme though.  Maybe I'm watching too much hero academia ;p

Wondering if I could ever write 4 pages a day >_>

Looks like you pulled an amazing job, and you still have 5 days left!  You could finish the story ;D

you did it!  Hm.  How many pages is 50k?

I wish I watched more older era movies.  I can't seem to hack it even when I try and emulate the eras in different design concepts.  It's all I can do to try and emulate some of the 'modern retro' stuff going on nowadays

Getting distracted?  I wanted to do the 50k, then I realized how unlikely that was this year.  So hammer away and get it done!  Nah I kid.  But good luck!

Also, happy Tankerday

Hah!  Batman has powers after all

Handy.

10 to 11 ish nowadays.  But I tend to run characters with low def... holy moly I only have a couple brick builds.

Good luck guys!  I've wanted something like this so bad, I was working on my own spinoff organization ("The Qin!") like a decade ago.  Although I'm not familiar with Champions Complete... I presume it'll be close enough to 5th/6th that I can use it

The majority of those statues were placed by the Sons/Daughters of the Confederacy. I have my own thoughts of what their motives were in placing them, and historical preservation isn't in those thoughts.

I've seen some statistics on when most of them were put up.  I wonder how neat it would be to start collecting really comprehensive data on some of this stuff... just potentially useful or interesting.

I mean, more and more places are leaving databases full of data on the open web cause of AWS.  Why not us?  0:)

I just know we'd be much better off if both went away.   I really wouldn't know how to grade the 2. (The former obviously acquired quite the negative yardage last weekend, of course. So they indeed are quite ahead, behind, whatever)  But, I don't want to kid myself into believing either serves a positive purpose.

 

 

Note: I find Antifa kind of ironic, in that a group who names themselves Anti-fascists, essentially, seems so.........fascists.

I guess to me I care less about whether they seem ironic than whether they probably kept other people from being beaten and killed.  Though I can't say for sure how that would have gone.  I can't really say much though, I agree with others in saying that 'pro Nazi/KKK' protesters have a 'proud history' of killing many, many innocent people.

What if's aside, I really wonder at how many protesters there were on either side of that conflict.  Would be interesting to see demographics of the protest.

I don't know you, but it seems you're a Slayers fan. I approve.

Also, I think you are the first person on the Hero Games forum to recognize and refer to the reference, and maybe the third overall in the near-fifteen years I have been on herogames/herocentral  You rare dog you.

I don't know you, but it seems you're a Slayers fan. I approve.

It took me a moment to figure what you meant.  Yes, first and only cosplay  I was quite disheartened when I lost the custom cape I sewed for it.  Though the crappy clasp I made for it should go die in a fire.

But enough about GURPS....

HAH!  I keep on telling myself I'll learn that one... HERO works well for superheroics, but I find I have trouble with any concept in which being knocked out is more rare versus being killed...

When I first read your message, I thought "What does he mean irrelevant roleplaying games?" In a case of how mistaken interpretation can start wars, I was going to completely dress you down. Then I read it again and saw that the word is irreverent.  So never mind then. Carry on. Nothing to see here.

 In your defense, this is hilarious.

Good posts from Tom and Dan.  As much as I want to ratchet back the tension, it's very hard for me to think the two groups equivalent.  It does feel like Trump wants to be the "anti-Obama"... that's his hand, his playing cards.  It's a mess.

In other news, back to distracting myself with irreverent roleplaying games!

Well said. 

 

For an Atheist Foreign influence whose loyalties to Aquaman have never been confirmed!!

 

(Sorry, trying to lighten things up. I'm sure you love Aquaman in your heart- all good people do)

Dammit Hermit, you had to post this just when I ran out of 'likes' for the day

That sounds dangerous, Amorkca

Noted, hawk.  Tempting, though I'm so bad with Hero builds to begin with I just custom design everything... and overdesign the written powers far beyond what the Hero system can actually handle!    I will enjoy reviewing your writeups, I'll have to power up HeroDesigner again to read 'em!

This 'superhero gallery' business intrigues me.  That and I love designing characters and powers (but not statting them out.  shush)

All the fight against global warming, all over again.  Can we handle Lamar Smith the Canadian way?  >_>

AI is already starting to disrupt white collar work in Japan.  Solar is rapidly becoming a thing, which is fascinating to me.  But a lot of the talk about 'new technology' creating ;new jobs' feels less like retraining people who lost their jobs and more like grabbing onto more new young workers...

The alt-right has a different definition of "innocent people" than most folks who are, you know, sane. A definition that is not all that inclusive.

 

They bring to mind what Fred Rogers told his audiences about "scary mad wishes" -- intrusive, terrible thoughts children and adults get that feature intensively destructive things towards people (especially loved ones). He reassured the children who were watching that thoughts are not actions. Just because you have a terrible thought doesn't mean it's automatically going to happen, and it doesn't make you a horrible person. You are only a terrible person if you act on those ideas. That's why actors who play villains are usually not villains themselves, why a writer of horror stories can still be a decent and ethical person, and how a person who foresees a terrible future can act to prevent it.

 

Throughout this campaign cycle, and probably for the next four years, I will be wrestling with the notion that many of the intrusive thoughts I have are shared with powerful people who can act upon them. In my case, the intrusion is disordered and does not at all reflect my actual values. I hate them, and hate myself for having them, but will usually act in the complete opposite direction. The problem is that there are people in positions of power who think many of the same things and do not consider them intrusive at all. And that scares me. It really does.

This political cycle there appears to be a lot of pushback, I hope that has good results for preventing a lot of this.

That's a direction I have not expected.  I thought suggesting that humanity was ending the world was what was necessary to earn the raucous laughter of the inane and boorish.  Apparently suggesting anything is wrong at all is enough.

I kind of told my friends that I expect this presidency to lie somewhere between the McCarthy and Nixon eras, and in that I have not been disappointed yet.