Lord Liaden

Thank you, slikmar. If I misunderstood the Doctor's meaning I humbly apologize. 😔

Trace Adkins died?!

Is the parking for major college football stadiums really that limited? I'm no afficionado of the sport, but those stadiums look huge, and they're often pretty full. Parking logistics have to have been taken into account.

Drysdale isn't a teammate, he's a parasite. He'd be all about getting as much of Howell's money as he could for his bank, and holding onto it for dear life.

It also doesn't mean that any media outlet is required to give everyone a platform for their speech. The First Amendment only applies to government repression of speech. Fox News is a business that has to sell itself to survive. Their management has every right to cancel any program they believe threatens their business. This is proving to be the only way to get contemporary media and public figures to consider the consequences of their actions. Hit them in their wallets.

No. The American movies are not devoid of more serious themes. In the first Legendary Godzilla film, we are explicitly told that the arrogance of man is in thinking nature is under our control, and not the other way around. We're repeatedly shown that these giants operate on a scale where we don't even matter. Our vaunted technology is not only stripped away from us, but gets out of our control and nearly causes even greater tragedy. We see the effect of tragic loss on a family, estrangement and obsession. There are constant reminders of the legacy of our nuclear age, whether it's death caused by a reactor accident, the abandoned ruin of the city of Janjira, a rogue nuclear bomb, or a main character whose father died in the Hiroshima explosion. The titular character is described not just as an animal or a monster, but as the embodied balance of nature. The second Godzilla film plays on that balance of nature concept, and how Man has disrupted it, as the precipitant for the picture's main conflict. We have another example of a family broken by tragedy, and how it drives one character into isolation while motivating another to make a disastrous choice with the best of intentions. We get the revelation that these Titans have been woven throughout our history and mythology, back to prehistoric times -- that they were in fact our first gods, and devils. And we have the major character from the first film who lost his father in Hiroshima, sacrificing his own life in a nuclear explosion to help Godzilla, and thereby save the world. In Kong: Skull Island we have a nod to American politics and society in the early Seventies, and how they tie into the expedition to the island. The theme of Man vs Nature is repeatedly emphasized, from reckless deployment of bombs that provokes Nature to retaliate; to the Monarch representative driven by fear that the ancient species ruling Earth would take it back if we don't destroy them first; to the colonel determined to show Kong that "Man is king." That character is portrayed as an old soldier facing lack of purpose without war, but with the death of his men on the island becomes an Ahab determined to kill Kong. Yet on the opposite side we have the example of a human culture on the island that has learned to adapt to the creatures they share it with, and formed a bond of respect and reverence for one species that's actually benevolent. I would never claim that any of these themes and characterizations are the core of these movies. The movies are first and foremost spectacles and thrill rides for entertainment; these elements are seasoning. But the same can be said for most of the Japanese Godzilla films.

After he fulfilled his life's dream, that's exactly what he became.

Honestly, I've seen bigger plot holes in other critically-acclaimed movies. But the mechanics of these exercises in cosmic power were never the crux of this story. The crux was the human drama, how our protagonists, and the rest of our kind, reacted to these monumental events. At bottom those events were created to stimulate and enhance the internal conflicts.

I'm posting these links to the Internet Archive one more time. Shin Gojira aka Godzilla Resurgence, in Japanese with English subtitles. Godzilla 1954, in Japanese with English subtitles.

As I've said before, Thanos is "The Mad Titan." Not "The Misguided Titan" or "The Debatable Titan." He's lived for so long with the tragedy of his planet and the conviction that he could have saved it had they listened to him, he's incapable of seeing the flaws in his plan. Many real-world people suffer such delusions.

Christopher, you may be interested in this D20 RPG written by our own Scott Bennie: Testament. Here is a review of the game on RPG.net.

Was it within Schumer's power to block the resolution being brought to the floor?

As long as we're casting further afield for useful precedents, a series of Digital Hero issues describe the Temporal League, an Earth-based organization founded in the near future when technological time-travel had been discovered (not dependent on ambient magic), and devoted to preserving Earth's timeline from various threats. Issue #26 describes the origin and organization of the League, and some of its resources. #23 writes up the League's "super-class" operatives, the Temporal Champions, drawn from different eras of the Hero Universe. While #33 details more NPCs, allies or enemies of the League. Although the Temporal League is set in and inspired by the official Hero Universe, Steve Long decreed that no DH article should be considered "official" unless and until it's been transcribed to a published book. That doesn't stop any of us from using it, of course. Moreover, Steve's not in charge any more. EDIT: Here are links to free samples from those articles that used to be hosted on an earlier version of this website. https://web.archive.org/web/20050905011514/http://www.herogames.com/digitalhero/Samples/d23temporal.jsp https://web.archive.org/web/20051126232409/http://herogames.com/digitalHero/Samples/dh26temporal.jsp https://web.archive.org/web/20051225071626/http://herogames.com/digitalHero/Samples/dh33unchanged.jsp

Well, you can't accuse the sheriff of mincing words.

Okay, let's look at this tactically. Once His Orangeness is removed as a threat to the Republican leadership race, the GOP will have at least two, more likely four years to make the electorate forget about him. Right now McConnell effectively controls most of the party; his only opposition, and the only real risk that the party could be divided, is from Trump loyalists. It's to his benefit to render them moot as soon as possible. As you point out, the Constitution says the Senate may judge whether some parts of their activities be kept secret. I'm sure the Democrats would agree for a practical chance to convict Trump; and McConnell's sway with his party right now could mean that dissenters wouldn't be able to raise the twenty votes needed to make the voting record public. Trump loyalists may be angry with the Republican Party at first, might even stop registering as Republicans; but in America right now there are only two realistic options, and Trumpists will never vote Democrat.

Just to keep all our terms straight: Trump has already been impeached a second time. The House of Representatives submitted a single article of impeachment to the Senate, and did so while Trump was still President. What's up next is his second trial in the Senate. The difference now is that many Republicans see Donald Trump as a liability to their own political futures, particularly if he's able to run for President again in 2024. Privately many GOP legislators are sick of the man. What I have hope for is that Mitch McConnell would agree to an anonymous vote on conviction, so that any Republican who votes to convict won't be directly targeted by Trump supporters when their reelection comes up. If senators take that tactic I think they'll get the necessary majority.

That article does raise the possibility that more frequent deaths due to the variant strain may reflect greater lethality, but points out that it could also be because it's just more contagious. And the author takes pains to state that evidence is still at a very preliminary stage.

A distinguished actor Canada was proud to claim.

I think it's time to look at another update to the Champions Universe, a sort of News Of The World II, for three reasons. One, it's been a decade since something substantial about the contemporary CU has been released (Darren's splendid Golden Age Champions adds very little to our knowledge of the world "today"). Two, we're now past the old 2020 end date for the Age of Superheroes from the original time line, so we're clearly dealing with a divergent one that's wide open for further development. Three, Cryptic Studios' current corporate masters show little interest in investing in expanding Champions Online, and even less interest in the tabletop side of the setting; so Hero Games should have much leeway to advance it as they see fit. So it would be great to find out what's been happening. What heroes and villains have retired or died? Who's been replaced in various teams? Did Tyrannon's attack on Earth in 2020 actually happen, and if so, how was he thwarted? What's the status of DEMON after Luther Black's (presumably) failed apotheosis scheme in 2012? Did the Hzeel finally get around to invading Earth? What's the progress in the Lemurian civil war? Did the Apocalypse come to Vibora Bay? Did Calvin Biselle finally leave the MC mayoralty to run for higher office? How about Invictus' plans to run for the Presidency? It wouldn't necessarily have to include much if any new character write-ups, just a rundown of the world's status.

I remember reading a report quoting an anonymous "source close to the President" about Trump wanting to testify before the Mueller probe. His lawyers put him through a mock testimony session, where Trump's own lies, inconsistencies, and confusion ended up making him look like a fool. That convinced Trump to let his lawyers try to keep him from testifying.

I just feel sorry for Mike Lindell's employees. The don't deserve to have their jobs flushed down the toilet because Lindell chose to fllush his reputation.

Whether it's police or politicians, the apologists who keep trying to convince us that we didn't see what we saw, didn't hear what we heard... it starts to get really insulting.

"O'Neil was right. You're a pain in the ass. But you're worth it."

Yes. Yes we do. We maybe shouldn't have them, but we really want them.

Political insanity never really goes away, but it rises and falls in waves. There's very little here that the world hasn't seen before, repeatedly. Right now we're hanging ten on a swell, which may or may not have crested, but it will subside. The energy can't be sustained indefinitely. In the meantime t'll take work to keep from falling off, but we can ride this out. We did it before, and our parents and grandparents did it.