Lord Liaden

This was published in the Sun? Yeah, I think I'll wait to see the documents.

Forget mother-in-law, I want that for myself! That's all I ever wanted a telephone for. My primary 'phone is a land-line. I have an antique flip-'phone, but I literally used it only for emergencies. Most of the time I don't even turn it on.

Dang. That was closer than I expected.

"Tell Mike I always liked him. This was just business."

I feel like I should recognize that face, but I don't. Although I am rather distracted...

Reportedly Trump and Pence really got into it in their first meeting after the riot. Even Trump's closest allies are fed up with that ungrateful, selfish, backstabbing pumpkin. Trump is the epitome of, "What have you done for me lately?"

Which, of course, they did for several of the Showa-era films. There were still echoes of that lightness in some of the Heisei and Millennium era movies, too.

I remember when I encountered Godzilla 1954 as a kid, I was enthralled by the scenes of the giant monster rampaging through the human landscape, but rather put off by the tone and pace of the rest of the movie. I was in my thirties when I rediscovered the movie and could appreciate what it was trying to do, and how well it does it. The whole kaiju genre wasn't really part of my childhood -- I came to my love for it later in life. Maybe that's part of why I prefer the more serious stories to the lighthearted and silly ones.

Exactly. Lawyers will sometimes take high-profile cases where the money is incidental to the publicity the case will bring them. However, association with Donald Trump at this time and in this situation may not be a career-booster, and might even be detrimental.

Yes! I've made that same argument before. Champions Beyond draws a pretty clear distinction between "cosmic" and "mystic" entities, but at the level of entities embodying fundamental concepts of Reality that distinction seems rather arbitrary, and as you point out doesn't really match the source material. (DC's New Gods also blur that line.) In the CU making that distinction has also led to redundancies. Take Dean's definition in TMW of a major Archetype of Nature, the Triple Goddess, responsible for the cycle of Birth, Life, and Death. Yet CB describes a cosmic conceptual entity called Mortalus who essentially performs the same function, with the added dimension of acting to correct major imbalances in either Death or Life. I've considered rejiggering these cosmic types to fit within the framework of the Zoas and give them more interactive roles. In the case of the above examples, I postulate that while the Triple Goddess embodies the instinctive cycle of life, Mortalus embodies the balance of life, the equilibrium among all life forms within an environment. On that basis I would declare Mortalus an Archetype of Order.

Indeed. If you have and are playing the 4E rule set, with the Fantasy Hero genre book plus the two Companion(s) you'd have nearly everything you need for years of play, game-world and real-world.

It appears Trump found a defense attorney as addled as he is. Perhaps by this point his reputation is too toxic for anyone sharper to take him as a client.

Okay, to be clear, I fully accept that the coup attempt was premeditated by Trump. I was only responding to the specific scenario archer had suggested. I don't believe Trump has the brains or guts to have pulled that scenario off. But the overall failure of the coup attempt, like every other Trump failure, was mostly due to his own incompetence. Had he been competent, while I believe the attempt would ultimately have failed, the situation would have been a lot worse. But Pence being killed would not have stopped certification by the Electoral College. The vice-president's role as supervisor of the count is ceremonial, as Pence tried to explain to Trump. He had no power to affect the outcome, it's a formality. Everyone already knew what the count was. Yes, there would have been procedural confusion to sort out, but it wouldn't have stopped Biden's assuming the presidency.

This line came out of a video by Beau of the Fifth Column on a completely unrelated subject, but it's too good not to quote: "At the end of every episode of Scooby Doo, what happens? They rip the mask off of that thing, whatever that thing is, and it's Congress. Some old white dude doing something behind the scenes for money."

But all the Capitol Hill dominoes didn't fall into place until the last moment: the rioters breaking into the capitol, Pence with the nuclear codes being in a vulnerable position. Yes, Trump could have planned out an entire strategy, had his agents planted to manipulate the rioters, to take out Pence and blame it on them, to manufacture a security threat great enough to declare martial law. But that would have required foresight, discipline, and courage, none of which Donald Trump has. But he didn't even need to do that much. Imagine how things might have turned out if Trump just did what he promised his followers he'd do, walk with them to the Capitol. The President of the United States standing with them facing down Congress. Had he been a real leader prepared to seize the moment, that's what he would have done. Luckily for democracy, he has no leadership qualities.

That would have been a very clever, imaginative and bold adaptation to a rapidly evolving situation. Hence completely beyond Donald Trump. Don't get me wrong, IMO he's selfish, ruthless and desperate enough to have tried it if he thought of it. Just not smart or brave enough.

If that's what you want to say cosmic energy is in your game, sure. But while cosmic energy in the source comics can do nearly anything, so can magic. So can psionic energy, certainly when it's pumped up to Phoenix Force level. Or Menton level, if we talk about the CU and Menton's latest incarnation. That quality alone wouldn't argue for any of these forces being more "fundamental" than the others. In the Champions Multiverse, the higher planes of Yetzirah run according to magical principles. Cosmic power has only been mentioned in connection with Malkuth dimensions, like our universe. The beings and spirits of Yetzirah, even gods and dimension lords, don't use it as far as has been revealed. Whatever one would call the interaction of Binah and Chokmah, none of those existing terms appears adequate. However, Da'ath is the link between the other two sephiroth, and also on the border between Atziluth and the lower planes. If conceptual entities draw on the power in Atziluth, Da'ath is probably their conduit. And maybe the actions of mortals can inadvertently pierce it and release "spills" of reality warping.

In the CU other-dimensional planet of Lythrum, it's theorized that the dark matter of its dimension is suffused with magic, which both Lythruman sorcerers and scientists can tap and utilize for a wide range of effects, having "darkness" SFX. In fact Lythruman technology often incorporates magic, in ways Earthly practitioners of either discipline don't understand. Science and sorcery are so different as to normally be incompatible, but a few brilliant researchers, like Professor Paradigm, Gyre of the Devil's Advocates, and Baelrath of the Lemurians; and some races/civilizations such as the Lythrumans, the Elder Worm, and the Gremlins; have learned to blend them. Those examples could support an argument that science and magic are both aspects of something more fundamental. (May I just add that I'm really enjoying this discussion.)

Which will, of course, occur just after warranty runs out.

The world most of us perceive and interact with apparently runs according to Newtonian mechanics, and they describe and quantify such things just fine. However, your example would explain why the technology of the more advanced alien races in the CU was mostly not impacted by the loss of magic. Over their much longer period of civilization they discovered more of the principles governing the physical universe, on which they could build a path to even more discoveries. But without understanding the foundation of that path, there would be no way forward. OTOH the change in physics due to magic/splunge/reflections/whatever created alternative paths that sufficiently gifted scientists could perceive and exploit based on their existing understanding of science. In the Champions Universe the technology of the Gadroon and the Malvans is illustrative of that gap in understanding. Captured Gadroon gravity-based tech has defied human analysis, because it appears to operate on principles even super-scientists have never imagined. While human scientists trying to understand the non-functioning Malvan devices in their hands has been likened to Neanderthals trying to reverse-engineer a supercollider. Another example from fiction would be Hugo Danner, the prototypical superman of Phillip Wylie's novel, Gladiator. Danner's superhuman strength and durability was the product of a treatment invented by his biologist father. That invention didn't fit conceptually with mainstream biology, which the elder Danner said was based on a mistaken assumption; but that assumption was so logical, so reasonable, that it could be generations before the mistake was discovered, if ever. For my part, I keep thinking of the theory of dark matter. To explain the difference between the measurable mass of the Universe, and what we can actually see in the universe, we invented something with the properties necessary to fit. But no one has found dark matter yet, and we have no idea if it exists or if something completely different is happening. Holy Crap! What if dark matter is actually ether?!

A tad lengthy, but illuminating.

Steve Long did produce a nice, inexpensive 36-page 5E PDF mini-setting book with a very similar flavor.

What I had heard at the time, from Whedon and other people involved with Age of Ultron, was that Whedon was too exhausted from that experience to consider taking on another movie of that scope for the foreseeable future, which I could believe. There were also reports that Joss was unhappy with studio meddling, but he and Marvel both kept their public comments civil and respectful. This is the first I'm hearing of significant upsets on the JL set, although lots of people have come out recently with serious complaints over Whedon going back decades.

Her acting was improving with experience, too. No awards likely in her future, but competent.

Condos in Hobbiton.