Xavier Onassiss

Beyond Thunderstruck  
 
Beyond Thunderball

Rogue One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Rogue One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Rogue One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Flashdances With Wolves

Flashdances With Wolves

Flashdances With Wolves

I could use one of these devices:
 

Escher's Staircase violates the laws of physics, so of course it's illegal.
 
Occam's Cordless Electric is also illegal in some jurisdictions where bad jokes will get you locked up.
 
The salad shooter is based on a true story that I made up.

A salad shooter used for russian roulette by terminally depressed vegans.

Occam's cordless electric.

Escher's staircase.

From the rational wiki entry for Reason magazine, a libertarian ezine(and, for the record, I know some libertarians whose views I find interesting,, this is just something I found funny):
 
"The first thing one is confronted by when clicking a link to Reason is reason.com asking you to donate money to them. In true libertarian spirit you should ignore their requests to artificially prop up an unprofitable business and not donate a single cent."

Yeah, I deactivated my account on Wednesday morning. Facebook has been dead to me all week!
 
Edited to add: my last post was Tuesday evening. Something about "unfriending the entire country." I wasn't kidding.

I went to the Cranky thread today, and then realized... "I got nuthin!"

I'm just gonna leave this here.
 
http://www.iflscience.com/technology/rumored-emdrive-paper-suggests-the-controversial-thruster-actually-works/

Indeed, the definition seems circular: "All Precursors become peaceful because if they do not, they are not true Precursors."
 
But whatever. I grant you SF writers have done this enough times for it to be considered one of the standard tropes. Just not the inevitable, universal one. And the Aldar still make an interesting commentary on the trope and the trope's underlying assumptions: that "Wisdom/Advancement = Peaceful" and "Wisdom/Advancement = Weakness."
 
Both the Precursors who destroy themselves and the Precursors who are destroyed through pacifism give an element of tragedy to a setting. A third common option seems to be the Precursors who transcend or in some way withdraw from the setting, more or less voluntarily. Such Precursors give a sense of mystery rather than tragedy. Or like the Aldar, no one really knows what happened except they are gone.
 
Dean Shomshak

I don't see this pattern at all: there are too many counter-examples.
 
Larry Niven's Pak Protectors: more than a little war-like.
 
Traveller's Ancients: destroyed themselves in a civil war. Not peaceful.
 
Babylon 5's elder races, the Shadows and the Vorlons: most definitely Not peaceful.
 
Alastair Reynold's Inhibitors from the Revelation Space series: Extremely far from peaceful.
 
Stephen Baxter's Xeelee from Vacuum Diagrams and other novels in the Xeelee Sequence: You're joking right?
 
H.P. Lovecraft's... oh never mind. You get the point.

GM: (describing The Temple of High Light in L5R) "You see some monks working on a mandala like the ones in Tibet." <looks around table to see if *anyone* knows what he's talking about.>
 
Me: <nodding enthusiastically> "Yeah, I learned all about Tibet from Groupon."
 
Other players: <looking back and forth in confusion> "What?"
 
Awesome Gamer Fiancee: <glowering in disapproval> "I can't take you anywhere."

GM: <buries face in hands with cosmic sadness> "Why me?"

One of what?  I learned to drive using this manual:
 
 
 

It's not really "winning" so much as leveling up.
 
A very wise man once told me "Getting married isn't the finish line; it's the starting line."
 
Having figured that out, I think we've got a shot at this.

I've mentioned Awesome Gamer Girl occasionally on the forum, starting when we met back in late 2012. (I think?)
 
It's my great pleasure to announce that she's now Awesome Gamer Fiancee, and she'll become my Awesome Gamer Spouse on June 18th.
 
Also, I've been at my new job for a year as of May 30th. We've just replaced both of our old clunker cars, and finally finished laminating all the floors.
 
The master bath is getting a complete remodel in July....

I've mentioned Awesome Gamer Girl occasionally on the forum, starting when we met back in late 2012. (I think?)
 
It's my great pleasure to announce that she's now Awesome Gamer Fiancee, and she'll become my Awesome Gamer Spouse on June 18th.
 
Also, I've been at my new job for a year as of May 30th. We've just replaced both of our old clunker cars, and finally finished laminating all the floors.
 
The master bath is getting a complete remodel in July....

Rags and I have a lot of conversations like that.

"Stop chewing on my pants!"