Joe Walsh

They need to remove her from the  Homeland Security Committee immediately. Preferably from office, but that attitude isn't appropriate to sitting on that committee or anything intelligence or security related. ETA: I've seen people actually lose top secret clearances for way less than the views expressed in the article below.
 
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/marjorie-taylor-greene-defends-national-052635902.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACpacYumG7-4ot4_37AdHQMcQ4ooc_GvPSDvMoQWEDSKr9kHbrKzT1wlHQE7YJkYsMw_7D8CCubyY9o9JaLwZyauW4Lvpiz7NF4ekzXDCTA-dKmuFuRdx8z2CNQ6v8nzBarva4yGWgdX4PGbeFzifYqqPXaLvPB2X6ruABHGE3eU

I was away for a while working on non-Hero projects.
 
Now I'm working on Atomic Sky and the Hero System for Foundry VTT so I'm back to more active lurking/occasional posting.

Not much in need of rules discussions of late, so not posting/reviewing stuff like that. I plan to share more Atomic Sky stuff once the rough edges get filed down. Playtesting for that is going well. Keeping the content/approach more core Hero than some of the experimental stuff I did for Narosia.

Progress as of today:
 
- Full text dumped from the official PDF to a text file.
- Full text (less tables, images, etc.) has been given one pass to fix the many, many OCR errors ("L" substituted for "1" and vice-versa, bits of text moved around randomly on pages with tables or images, random spaces and garbage characters inserted or substituted, etc.).
- All the tables from the first 26 pages of the original book have been recreated in semicolon-delimited format so they can be turned into tables as desired (most word processors can go from this format to tables with a couple of mouse clicks).
- Made a few random notes for later, such as that the final paragraph under the Languages skill should list Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean as the more difficult-to-learn languages (per multiple sources, including Rosetta Stone).
- I'm sort of dreading recreating the table on page 34, but I did choose this task after all!
 
Lots to go, but that's where I am on this right now. My free time is limited, but I'm hoping to make more progress next week.

As mentioned in this thread, I decided to try going back to the earliest non-Champions HERO System game, Espionage!, and work from there to find something that will work for how my group uses HERO System and which is easier for newbies to learn.
 
To avoid derailing that Champions 3e thread, I'll post updates here for those interested.
 
I'm just at the start of the process, but here's a basic overview of my plan so far:
Get Espionage! into a usable text format, with a stopover at the complete text which I plan to send to Jason in case he ever has a use for it. Remove the flavor text, CIA info, and such that's specific to the spy genre, leaving behind a more generic RPG. (Espionage was clearly meant to be a generic modern heroic RPG that defaults to espionage, so that won't be too hard.) Determine what (if anything) needs to be added from contemporary HERO publications. Determine what (if anything) needs to be added from 3e publications. Determine what (if anything) needs to be added from later HERO publications. Integrate everything, editing and/or rewriting as needed. Add any illustrations that may be needed (grenade scatter diagram, etc.) Playtest.  
My goal is to end up with a complete but minimalist RPG along the lines of Classic Traveller, B/X D&D, etc. I'll share my journey here for those interested.
 
(For those not interested, I'm sorry for cluttering up the board. This seemed the best place to put this.)
 

For me, a big influence was crossovers. Not the giant events that ended up being annual sales pushes and were therefore driven into the ground by the demands of publishing rather than those of the story. I'm talking more about where you might have, say, Cloak & Dagger run across various supers while going about their own adventures: Spider-Man, Daredevil, Punisher, etc. And maybe end up having to deal with a villain or two borrowed from those comics such as Kingpin in addition to their own unique villains. And then C&D show up as guest stars in a few of the bigger comic books. Stuff like that.
 
In my days of heavily running Champions campaigns for years, it was nice when I could replicate that feel of a real comic book universe with stuff going on all the time just outside the heroes' range of vision, occasionally impinging on their stories and giving them a chance to help out a more well-known and/or more-powerful hero, or help a hero who's just starting out, or maybe even set some misguided fool on the right path after the fool nearly causes a disaster while trying to play hero. That's how I ended up with binders and expanding files filled with character sheets, campaign write-ups, notes, maps, and so on.
 
I haven't read many post-90s mainstream comics, but if there's something out there like those 80s Cloak & Dagger series and even their back-of-someone-else's-book pages and their occasional guest appearances (the poor sods always seemed to be an afterthought for Marvel), I'd say take a look at that stuff. On the one hand, you have intensely personal and unique stories for Our Heroes, but on the other they are definitely part of an established universe and are therefore both constrained by it and given opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have.
 
Other than that, it was the indie stuff that had the most influence on me. Mostly stuff with a tinge of humor. I've been wracking my brain for years trying to remember a B&W indie supers comic that had a superman type who just wanted to be left in peace to read Anne of Green Gables, but the villains just wouldn't leave him alone. His best friend was named Apache Joe as I recall. I'd love to pick up a copy of those someday, but I can't for the life of me remember the title of the comic. I wish I hadn't gotten rid of 90% of my comics 20+ years ago.

Progress as of today:
 
- Full text dumped from the official PDF to a text file.
- Full text (less tables, images, etc.) has been given one pass to fix the many, many OCR errors ("L" substituted for "1" and vice-versa, bits of text moved around randomly on pages with tables or images, random spaces and garbage characters inserted or substituted, etc.).
- All the tables from the first 26 pages of the original book have been recreated in semicolon-delimited format so they can be turned into tables as desired (most word processors can go from this format to tables with a couple of mouse clicks).
- Made a few random notes for later, such as that the final paragraph under the Languages skill should list Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean as the more difficult-to-learn languages (per multiple sources, including Rosetta Stone).
- I'm sort of dreading recreating the table on page 34, but I did choose this task after all!
 
Lots to go, but that's where I am on this right now. My free time is limited, but I'm hoping to make more progress next week.

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
 

One of the views that carried over from my conservative years is my admiration of Teddy Roosevelt. Sure, he's not unproblematic (which president is?) but he did have his moments.
 

One of the views that carried over from my conservative years is my admiration of Teddy Roosevelt. Sure, he's not unproblematic (which president is?) but he did have his moments.
 

As mentioned in this thread, I decided to try going back to the earliest non-Champions HERO System game, Espionage!, and work from there to find something that will work for how my group uses HERO System and which is easier for newbies to learn.
 
To avoid derailing that Champions 3e thread, I'll post updates here for those interested.
 
I'm just at the start of the process, but here's a basic overview of my plan so far:
Get Espionage! into a usable text format, with a stopover at the complete text which I plan to send to Jason in case he ever has a use for it. Remove the flavor text, CIA info, and such that's specific to the spy genre, leaving behind a more generic RPG. (Espionage was clearly meant to be a generic modern heroic RPG that defaults to espionage, so that won't be too hard.) Determine what (if anything) needs to be added from contemporary HERO publications. Determine what (if anything) needs to be added from 3e publications. Determine what (if anything) needs to be added from later HERO publications. Integrate everything, editing and/or rewriting as needed. Add any illustrations that may be needed (grenade scatter diagram, etc.) Playtest.  
My goal is to end up with a complete but minimalist RPG along the lines of Classic Traveller, B/X D&D, etc. I'll share my journey here for those interested.
 
(For those not interested, I'm sorry for cluttering up the board. This seemed the best place to put this.)
 

In the Golden Age, the reason for the heroes to be active is clear-cut, the near-universally-loathed  Nazis, who frequently have their own supers. TBH the first I ever heard of the "heroes cause escalation" trope was in the movie, Captain America: Civil War. In the long history of comics, the supervillains exist and cause harm all on their own, as per human nature. They have to be stopped, and superheroes are usually the only ones with the power to stop them. It's true that one supervillain can become fixated on one superhero, e.g. Joker and Batman, and may create trouble aimed at the hero that sometimes causes collateral damage; but that's been the exception. Yin and yang, not cause and effect.

Both the Roosevelts seemed anti business abuse. I remembered the old cartoons of Ted dropping blockbusters on industries
CES

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
 

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
 

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
 

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
 

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
 

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
 

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.
 

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

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