Joe Walsh

Thanks for that, Deadman. I'd always wondered about that.

Right! That's a tough post to react to.

Well, the White House produced that summary, so I don't see how they can complain about the content.

Watching Rick and Morty on Hulu. It's good -- funny and disturbing at the same time! It provides plenty of food for thought if you're into that, or you can just enjoy it at the surface level and ignore the deeper issues raised. I'd never seen an episode, and I'm kinda glad I missed it since that means I get to watch three seasons over the course of weeks instead of years.

I have to admit I liked Hart to Hart. Well, Stefanie Powers anyway.

Spoilers, man!

Combat! is a great TV series. It featured an American infantry squad making its way across Europe. Every hour-long episode features plenty of action and a guest-of-the-week, but the story is always focused on the squad members and their character development. Truly great stuff.

I first saw Stardust when it was playing on the return leg of a business trip. I glanced up a few times and was like, "Oh, geez. That looks awful" and went back to my laptop. But eventually I plugged in my headphones and started listening. And by the end, I was really enjoying it and wished I hadn't missed the beginning. So I bought the DVD, then the Blu-Ray when we upgraded to that. We've probably watched the movie a dozen times. It's great every time!

As far as the big news orgs? Yeah, they suck and have since the beginning. Which is not to say that there aren't people in their newsrooms doing good work every day. And every once in a while, those orgs will get a story out there that actually makes a positive difference. But they can't be trusted as a daily, sole news source. I do keep up with them daily, but just to scan through and see if anything they have is worth reading. I get most of my news from Reuters and AP News, which are a bit less bad than most. I appreciate ProPublica a lot. They do good investigative work, so I feel good about supporting them. Other than that, I read Common Dreams, keep up with economics via Calculated Risk, and then read a bit from Vox and the like. It all gets sort of tiresome after a while though.

That's the Republican playbook now, unfortunately. And if somehow Beshear makes it in there, look for the legislature to strip his office of as many powers as they can, etc. It's how they do things now. They have no respect for democracy, the law, or anything else that may prevent them from serving the billionaires who fund the whole right-wing universe.

Isn't it in the Book of Ezeshekel?

Exactly! Just bizarre, over-the-top stuff.

GA comic superheroes can also have very silly and/or nonsensical powers or ways to use their powers. And how they acquired their powers can be nonsense as well. In a good way, of course! This book has some gems in it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1631407457/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It is nice to see! I hope they're able to maintain their commitment as they get married, have kids, and slide into middle age instead of turning away from such things like most seem to do.

It's really remarkable. I realize the Bible's a dense document that was written in times and places far from here and now, and then translated by various people at various times and with various worldviews and agendas. In my youth, I went to a private Christian school, and then of course to Sunday School on the weekend. I studied the Bible six days a week and heard from the pulpit three days a week. A lot of what's in that book still makes no sense to me. But it's not hard to get the gist of the New Testament: Be nice to other people. Telling people of your good deeds means you've chosen earthly rewards instead of heavenly ones. Storing up earthly treasures makes it harder to get into heaven. And so on. Yet, the message is so easily muddied by those with an agenda. There are companies promising to help you invest your money on the stock market in a Biblical way. And the other day the TV was tuned to the 700 Club in the office building's shared breakroom and they were saying that if you donate to them, God will make you wealthy. The more you give, the more you'll get. 🤨 Hmm. Maybe we do need another thread. 😁

SPD 4 means acting once every three seconds. That seems reasonable at first thought. Hmm. Could a trained, experienced soldier in a target-rich combat environment aim and fire a weapon that quickly without sacrificing accuracy?

Yeah, BO was such a disappointment. His rhetoric soared, but he clearly had no clue how to handle an opposition party that wanted him to fail at any cost. At first I thought it was just his inexperience as a politician that was hurting him, but as the years wore on it just seemed that he was temperamentally unable to deal with the reality he'd been dealt. As for the future, I think we'll need to do the work of electing people to Congress who share our philosophy if we want things to really change, rather than just looking to the Presidency as a means of change. And of course we'll need the President and Senate to work together to make sure the courts aren't filled with people who want to block progress. There's a big job ahead, in other words, and I fear that even under the best-case scenario it will take more than my remaining life to get things back to where they were when I was born.

If that's what voters want, then sure. But it doesn't have to be that way. We turned from Hoover's approach to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl to FDRs, for example.

They're starting to realize it's no longer tenable to deny the problem, so now they're preparing to shift to attacking the remedy. That's the standard damage control move, unfortunately.

Keep in mind those quotes are from the 80s. I'm hypothesizing about how the original designers may have seen things in the early years, based on what they were saying at the time. And as @Christopher R Taylor said, the original Enemies books featured a lot less resistant defense than we're used to seeing in the Steve Long era.

Right. That brings to mind the admonition in the 4e rules that, "Characters should realize that a Killing Attack is just that - a killing attack. Characters who don't want to seriously injure or incapacitate their opponents should probably choose another Power." Or, as stated in 3e: So maybe it was thought that any balance issues would be addressed by the legal and social implications of KAs.

The internet weirds everything. 😕

Yeah, CC just misses it. There's a decent amount of stuff in there to help folks get started, but not quite enough. I'm a proponent of keeping page/word count down, but I think it would have been good to at least provide a FHC-like PDF support pack with CC that had a good selection of templates and other materials to help folks get started.

Are they going for bonkers amounts these days? I'm out of touch with that stuff.

I'm not sure I'd be in favor of boosting the STUN total from killing attacks. I'd love to hear why George MacDonald didn't choose to do it as you (much later) described, way back when he was designing Champions 1e. He must have considered it. Why use two completely different different damage throws when one (with the "bypasses unresistant defenses" proviso) would seem to do? I'd be curious if it was aesthetics or numbers.