wcw43921

Command 101--A starship runs on loyalty.  Not just loyalty of the crew to the Captain, but the Captain to the crew and the crew to the ship.  Pike demonstrated that loyalty--"I believe in the Enterprise."  And that belief--that loyalty--was rewarded.

I like that they're giving nods to previous Star Trek episodes. The week before we had the control center in the structure on the comet that responded to musical notes ("The Paradise Syndrome"), and this week we had not only someone who was secretly a genetic augment ("Doctor Bashir, I Presume") but a person being stored in a transporter pattern buffer for an extended period ("Relics"). And this past episode we had a shipwide catastrophe with which the crew had to contend ("Disaster"). This is something I figure will continue.

Okay, I am officially ready to promote Christopher Pike into the top three along with Jean-Luc Picard and Ben Sisko.

Self-serve laundromats could work well for that purpose.  You'd need money for the initial setup, but after that it's a minimal investment of time and effort to keep the detergent and snack machines stocked and to collect the change at the end of the day.  You could also hire the plucky gadgeteer genius who builds your weapons and does your computer searches to maintain the machines and keep the place clean.  Self-serve car washes can also work well for this--just a daily visit to make sure the detergent and wax dispensers are full. and the change machine is stocked with quarters.

Another possible funding source are those video casino game arcades.  Those seem to be everywhere--convenience stores, laundromats--heck, I passed by one set up in a double-wide trailer on a road out of town.  You would need someone to make change and sell drinks and snacks, and cash in the occasional big winner--but again, that's a job for your resident genius gadgeteer.

I got a pet newt.
 
I named him "Tiny".
 
Why Tiny?
 
Because he's my newt.

I like the idea of using one or more laundromats as a funding mechanism.
 
It gets bonus points for also being a potential draw for organized crime types looking to sell the new business owner protection.
 
I think most heroes would steal from criminals rather than commit forgery. I could see them committing Leverage-style scams though.

1 DC (District of Columbia) is bad enough. 12 ?
Think of all the wretched lobbyists......
 
 
In other news the guy who designed starships for Star Wars has died.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-61547986
 
And on a personal not the headmaster at my old school died aged 92 the local paper has said. He was married for over 65 years

Maybe a "Dark Net" site. A hangout for pro-Vigilante types with an otherwise innocuous Patreon-style system.

Foxbat, definitely.  Also, every "dark hero's" favorite adversary--a group of pseudo-anarchists who livestream themselves destroying things for the sake of destroying things.  Then the hero shows up, and that's usually the last thing they livestream.
 
I can't really see heroes doing something like that--maybe in a four-colored campaign, but not in the "grim-and-gritty" world of Dark Champions.  Same with a Patreon page, or a GoFundMe campaign.  ("Help me avenge my family's death by freeing me up to beat crooks with my bare hands!")

I swear by Allah, Buddha, Cthulhu and The Flying Spaghetti Monster--this is a real book.

NFT...the T stands for "Tulip"!
 

Like new Shimmer, which is both a floor wax AND a dessert topping, Ghostbusters managed to be both wacky comedy AND supernatural horror.  A truly incredible achievement.
 
Bairtd Searles, the movie and TV reviewer for Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction when it came out, compared the initial "play the supernatural for laughs" to the frothy fantasies of Thorne Smith, sliding seamlessly to something worthy of H. P. Lovecraft. He was gobsmacked.
 
Dean Shomshak

Heh.  Could be I could've done something like that.
 
My blood type is AB-positive, one of the types on the infrequent side.  What turned out to be more important ... there is a virus whose name I do not remember, whose effect is, if you are under 24 hours old, it kills you; if you are over 24 hours old, it does nothing.  Most people you see have it.  I don't, or at least didn't at the time.
 
In Austin I lived eight blocks from the blood bank for years.  They knew the blood type thing, the no virus thing, and the lived-nearby thing, and as a healthy young man in his 20s, they called me up like clockwork as soon as I was eligible, and at least twice they wanted to skate in below the hematocrit threshold because they had an AB-positive infant in the region who needed a transfusion today.  I didn't quite rack up five gallons donated in my time there, but it was close.

"Let's get it done, people. We've got a planet to save before breakfast. <aside> I love this job."

I'm sorry, but I can't let remarks like that slide any more. You're looking at the situation as though it will continue to be politics as usual. I respectfully submit that it will not. The Republican Party, at the national and state level, are instituting policies designed to secure the numbers for them despite the will of the people. Gerrymandering. Voter suppression. Placing their loyalists in key election-deciding offices. If this process isn't halted and reversed, they will have a lock on power regardless of what the real vote is.
 
I also used to think Mitch and other Republicans were just "chumming the waters." I no longer believe that. Books are being banned in schools, books with the actual history of America's past sins, books addressing issues around race and gender, books describing the rise of fascist states. The GOP want Americans ignorant, and thereby manipulable and controllable.
 
There's no surprise in remarks by the likes of Matt Gaetz that "over-educated women" are problematic, or by Mike Pence that American society has to return to "traditional Christian family values." But that's not fringe any more, it's become mainstream Republican talking points. Are we supposed to believe it's all just talk, that there's no intent behind it by the privileged white men doing it? We have legislation up for debate in more than one state right now, that would classify abortion as murder. The mask is morality, but the true face is control of women's lives.
 
Most alarming to me is recent statements from SCOTUS, like this leaked draft ruling that calls the very concept of right to privacy into question, from which many progressive rulings have stemmed: gay marriage, homosexual sex, access to contraception. We also have recent remarks from Justice Clarence Thomas blaming demonstrations by people on the political/social left -- expressions of free speech -- for the growing disillusionment of the American people for their governmental institutions. The classic fascist tactic of "othering" a group without actual power, blaming them for what goes wrong so people won't notice the hand in their pocket and knife at their throat.
 
There's an agenda at work here. There's a goal the Right is working toward, and it isn't the America we all grew up with. It's a fascist, racist, classist semi-theocracy in which a minority of people with the "right" attitudes, background and appearance make decisions for the rest of us, and the rest of us do what we're told or suffer. We've seen country after country go down this same road for a hundred years. The past six years have seen results we all thought "possible but unlikely" actually come to pass, and each has been worse than the last.
 
These people have to be voted out, now. It doesn't matter that Democrats aren't perfect and have fallen short of their promises and potential. They aren't the ones actively trying to subvert democracy and cast the United States back to the 19th Century. They can at least hold the line. If Americans don't vote Democrat, Republicans will do everything they can to hold onto power forever, and every person in one of the vulnerable groups they'll victimize will suffer for it. If the Republican Party is destroyed, another opposition party will arise, just as the Republicans under Lincoln replaced the Whigs. Probably a much healthier one. But not voting because no choice is good, is giving the keys to the one that's actively evil.