Joe Walsh

The Reagan Revolution occurred during my teenage years and I bought in whole-heartedly. I believed less government was better, people should look not to government to solve their problems but to themselves, and that lower taxes on the wealthy and less regulation on businesses would make us all wealthier.

So when it came time for college, of course I chose Business Administration. And that's where I learned how things really worked. You can't administer a modern business without understanding this stuff, so how things work were stated plainly and in positive terms. Things like transfer pricing to minimize taxes, regulatory capture to blunt regulation, and public relations to manage perceptions were just items on the syllabus.

That sort of stuff nudged me a little to the left, but one of the things that drew me over the line was learning the history of business in the US. One of the key lessons was antitrust, because it intersects with so many outrageous abuses by monied interests.

But of course, by the time I was in college, antitrust had already been undermined by the neoliberal view that all that mattered when it came to antitrust was "consumer harm." That led to 40 years of weak antitrust enforcement that's allowed some of the abuses of the past to come back -- as long as a figleaf claim of no "consumer harm" could be made, industries across the economy were allowed to combine and grow more powerful with little pushback. Who cares if all the buyers of a given farm commodity combine and farmers are forced to sell to the one remaining buyer in their area at ruinous rates, as long as consumers aren't affected? And if that one buyer slowly but steadily raises prices on consumers as well, then no one's going to be able to show "consumer harm."

So one of the few bright spots recently has been the Biden administration's antitrust stance. Finally we have an FTC that is at least making noises about doing its actual job. Along with Chairwoman Lina Khan and Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya is making waves. Bedoya's recent speech made plain the early history of antitrust in this country, how judicial activism worked before FDR brought the courts to heel for a while, and how much suffering the system tolerated even as laws changed and decades passed.

The speech is fully footnoted and is a good read for anyone interested in the intersection of antitrust, the courts, the legislature, and labor.

Here's a link to the PDF if anyone's interested:
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/bedoya-aiming-dollars-not-men.pdf

I hope he had fun being a racist edgelord online because his life is going to be very different now.

Avenue 5: Routine cruise around the solar system gets off course with no hope of returning home. Hilarity ensues. Prematurely terminated by HBO, this hilarious satire skewered everything in sight. I'm going to assume they eventually found a way around the overwhelming idiocy and venality they were up against and made it somewhere better.

Burgess Meredith this ain't:

Just an aside: OCR is still so terrible. I expected the tables to come through garbled, but there are so many more problems. The most pervasive one is that hundreds of lowercase "L"s came through as 1s. I guess that's appropriate since this is from the era when lowercase L's were used for ones in a lot of cases, but it's such a pain to fix all the errors ("ro11" and "ski11" and "examp1e" & c.), not to mention all the times they bizarrely came through with a space embedded ("ski 11") -- all in a game that has "11" in it legitimately about a zillion times.

And then there's the problem where every time there's a table in a column, the OCR considers the text in the column directly opposite it on the page to be part of the table, so it interweaves each fragment in a crazy quilt of meaningless text. Finding each piece and then cut 'n' pasting them back together is a big time sink.

Oh, well, it's a hobby!

12 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

If you're interested in a fusion of 3E Champions and Espionage!/Danger International, you might want to look at Super Agents by the late great Aaron Allston, which weaves together rules from both systems. Its examples might be useful to you. It's also a really cool book, like just about everything AA wrote.

Good idea! It is a great book, but I hadn't thought about looking to it for this project. Thanks!

3 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Keep me posted. Very interested.

OK! I'll find a place to share thoughts/progress when I have something interesting. 

Yeah, Champions 3e was great! It was the last edition released as a saddle-stitched book, for one. And it was the first edition that was properly typeset.

But after chewing on the idea of a simpler core for HERO System for a while now, I decided to dump the Espionage! PDF into a text file yesterday and plan to go through it and see if it can be massaged into a smaller, better core for how we use the HERO System. (The core's basically word-for-word the same as JI, so no real conflicts with 3e in general).

I have a vague plan to use bits of HERO 3e stuff as optional supplemental material (Weird Talents from JI, for example) along with (probably) the Champions 3e (or 2e?) Powers system.

But first I need to cut Espionage! down to size, reformat it, etc.

Unfortunately my free time is very limited, so it's going to be very slow going. But it should be fun and I'm looking forward to it.

Yesterday was a pretty good day.

6e isn't necessarily better than the Fantasy Hero game you have at doing the things that game already does. It just may be better at running any kind of fantasy game anyone can imagine. But if Fantasy Hero 1e presents the kind of game you plan to run, then there's no need to spend time and money on 6e. Go with what you've got (but yeah, as others have said, the Spell Book is nice because it has some errata, and then Magic Items is fine if you'd like a decent selection of pre-built magic items; both are nice, slim, focused volumes that won't take up much of your time).

A.R. Moxon wrote an essay I found to be worth reading: "A Good Guy With A Dinosaur"

https://armoxon.substack.com/p/a-good-guy-with-a-dinosaur

I'm Gen-X and grew up in California, so we had fire, earthquake, and nuclear bomb drills. For fire you'd line up and go outside, and for the other two you'd get under your little feeble school desk, cover your head with your hands, and hope for the best.

3 hours ago, BigJackBrass said:

Obviously not a free peek, but the PDF was released in sections through the Hero Patreon.

Oh, how embarrassing. I've had it all this time? I really should go through all those Patreon files someday. I download them, file them away, and tell myself I'll look at them real soon now. 🙄

Taking a quick glance at the files and, yeah, it's a decent collection of pre-built pieces much like the stuff I've built up over the years. Mine's in spreadsheets, so it's easier for me to use, but I'll have to go through this stuff and see if there's anything I can adapt.

There's an article out about Wyrmwood Gaming (makers of high-end gaming furniture, etc.) that goes beyond the recent sexual assault allegations:

https://gizmodo.com/wyrmwood-gaming-doug-costello-bobby-downey-1850237181

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Over the course of this investigation io9 spoke to nearly fifty sources, including current and former employees, who shared stories that included allegations of rampant misogyny, bullying, dangerous working conditions, and sexual harassment and assault.

I'm hoping we'll get a peek soon, since Jason said a PDF will be available when a small print run arrives.

I have the Amazon POD edition in my cart, but I'm holding off going that route for now.

Wouldn't sharing a creative effort with those who are interested be enough reason?

They really need to bring back intermissions at movie theaters.

I've googled and googled, and I can't seem to find anything on what the substantive differences are.

Just paging through, I can see that there are some slight formatting differences visible here and there, but a spot check hasn't found any differences in the write-ups. And the book itself doesn't seem to contain any mention of why it's a revised edition or why someone would want to buy it if they owned the original edition.

I was tuned out of RPGs at the time, so does anyone remember why the book needed a revision?

The first three episodes of Rain Dogs (HBOMax) have been different, but good. A woman who is a sex worker but wants to be a writer, her daughter, and a friend who is the black sheep of his wealthy family form an unconventional family of their own. It's violent at times, and can be uncomfortable, but the story and characters have been carrying it well.

The first six episodes of History of the World, Part II have been a mixed bag, as expected with a variety show, but overall it's been worth watching.

Wow, I didn't know WaPo editors read this site! It's so nice of them to try answering our questions in a front-page article today:

https://wapo.st/3JQ1yZd

(That should be a "gift article" link that doesn't require a subscription; otherwise, here's the regular link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2023/ar-15-america-gun-culture-politics/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f001)

Their answer as to why the AR-15 is so popular in gun culture today? Marketing.

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The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a bestseller.

The rugged, powerful weapon was originally designed as a soldiers’ rifle in the late 1950s. “An outstanding weapon with phenomenal lethality,” an internal Pentagon report raved. It soon became standard issue for U.S. troops in the Vietnam War, where the weapon earned a new name: the M16.

But few gunmakers saw a semiautomatic version of the rifle — with its shrouded barrel, pistol grip and jutting ammunition magazine — as a product for ordinary people. It didn’t seem suited for hunting. It seemed like overkill for home defense. Gun executives doubted many buyers would want to spend their money on one.

The industry’s biggest trade shows banished the AR-15 to the back. The National Rifle Association and other industry allies were focused on promoting traditional rifles and handguns. Most gun owners also shunned the AR-15, dismissing it as a “black rifle” that broke from the typical wood-stocked long guns that were popular at the time.

“We’d have NRA members walk by our booth and give us the finger,” said Randy Luth, the founder of gunmaker DPMS, one of the earliest companies to market AR-15s.

Today, the AR-15 is the best-selling rifle in the United States, industry figures indicate. About 1 in 20 U.S. adults — or roughly 16 million people — own at least one AR-15, according to polling data from The Washington Post and Ipsos.

Almost every major gunmaker now produces its own version of the weapon. The modern AR-15 dominates the walls and websites of gun dealers.

The AR-15 has gained a polarizing hold on the American imagination. Its unmistakable silhouette is used as a political statement emblazoned on T-shirts and banners and, among a handful of conservative members of Congress, on silver lapel pins. One Republican lawmaker, Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama, introduced a bill in February to declare the AR-15 the “National Gun of America.”

It also has become a stark symbol of the nation’s gun violence epidemic. Ten of the 17 deadliest U.S. mass shootings since 2012 have involved AR-15s.

This transformation — from made-for-combat weapon to mass-market behemoth and cultural flash point — is the product of a sustained and intentional effort that has forged an American icon.

Wow, that seems like a neat RPG to check out!

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Brindlewood Bay is a roleplaying game about a group of elderly women—members of the local Murder Mavens mystery book club—who frequently find themselves investigating (and solving!) real-life murder mysteries. They become increasingly aware that there are supernatural forces that connect the cases they are working on and, in particular, a cult dedicated to the dark, monstrous aspect of the goddess Persephone will come to vex them. 

The game is directly inspired by the television show Murder, She Wrote, but also takes inspiration from the works of H.P. Lovecraft, “cozy” crime dramas, and American TV shows from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s.

I'm a licensed gun owner and have enjoyed using firearms at the range since I was a kid. Where and when I grew up, most families had at least one firearm, and many of the people I knew enjoyed sport shooting of one sort or another. I sure do.

And still it shocks me to see how for many it's evolved from being a hobby or sport to what appears to be a core identity. One result of which seems to be that many of the folks who understand best what weapons of war do are using every means at their disposal to keep such weapons in the civilian world. I just can't square that in my mind.

Is it the industry propaganda? Walther makes great products, but I get emails from them all the time telling me things like "It's your duty to be prepared" (with their latest product being just what I need in order to do my "duty," of course). Is it stuff like that, from gun manufacturers and their mouthpieces at the NRA?

How did we end up here?

A long time ago, I ran long-term, very popular campaigns that were essentially soap operas. One was set mostly in and around a pseudo-medieval tavern; the second was set mostly in and around a megacorp owner's mansion. While both campaigns were nominally based off of specific RPG rulesets (AD&D 1e for the first, Classic Traveller for the second), both evolved into rules-light story games because that's the direction the groups ended up going in. Sure, there were occasional story-driven missions that were very much like the usual adventures you'd expect in their respective games, but most of the playtime was consumed with pure soap opera stuff with dual loyalties, secret lives, evil twins, dramatic deaths, skullduggery, betrayals, and the like.

I always wanted to pick up a copy of SPI's Dallas RPG and see how they decided to approach the genre.

I wasn't aware of her either, but it appears she's been with Marvel Studios for quite a while, through a lot of successes and some failures:

Quote

Victoria Alonso, the longtime and high-profile Marvel Studios executive whose time with the company dates back to the first Iron Man, has left the studio, multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

The reasons for the exit are unclear, but she parted ways with Marvel on Friday, sources say.

Alonso had been with the company since earliest days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, establishing an enviable 17-year run and watching the studio grow from operating above a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Beverly Hills to being acquired by Disney. During her tenure, the MCU became the highest-grossing franchise in film history.

Alonso joined the studio in 2006 as chief of visual effects and postproduction and helped launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a co-producer on 2008’s Iron Man. She also served as co-producer on Iron Man 2 (2010), Thor (2011) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). Alonso was upped to executive producer on The Avengers (2012), the landmark film that grossed $1.5 billion and took Marvel to new heights, proving that the concept of a shared cinematic universe could really work.

Alonso has served as executive producer on Marvel’s subsequent releases and also worked on its Disney+ TV series. In 2021, she was promoted to president, physical and postproduction, visual effects and animation production.

Last year, she also produced the Oscar-nominated international feature Argentina, 1985.

Her departure comes in the shadow of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania‘s poor showing at the box office and among critics and fans.

(Oops, Ninja'd by Ternaugh! )