DShomshak

Here, I sympathize: I've toyed with the idea that maybe birthright citizenship should be ended for everyone. As with immigrants, everyone must earn their citizenship by passing a test. But the history of Jim Crow tactics to deny black people the vote shows that it's too easy to manipulate any system or restricting the vote to "qualified" people. Dean Shomshak

Confounding variables are the bane of social arguments based on statistical analysis. Do single-parent households cause poverty, incarceration, sexual abuse, etc? Or does poverty cause higher incarceration rates and incidentally make it harder for families to stay together? Or are these all epiphenomena of something else? The correlations do not necessarily show that you can solve these other problems by pressuring parents to stay together. Liberalism is a package deal. Poverty is declining worldwide along with homophobia, institutionalized misogyny, racism, and many other social evils. The connection between free markets and, say, religious tolerance is that it all begins with the liberal assumption that individuals matter more than traditional elites, taboos and social structures. Once you apply this idea in one part of society, it spreads. For instance, women freed from chattel status start their own businesses, increasing the society's net capacity to generate wealth. I will grant you, many contemporary American progressives seem to have forgotten that free markets are a liberal idea -- free people to seek their own benefit instead of locking them into traditional caste occupations, and give them access to property instead of elites locking up all the wealth -- but economic, political and social liberalism do go together and reinforce each other. On this I'll also recommend Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail, which discusses this in detail. One of their major arguments is that attempts to combine free markets with social and political restrictions are doomed to fail: Either the authoritarian political system chokes the economy into eventual stagnation and decline, or the wealthier population demands social and political liberalization. The upshot is that when anyone seems to be defending Traditional Order, of any sort, I have my doubts. I think the evidence is pretty strong that breaking Traditional Orders usually produces more good than harm. Dean Shomshak

Especially when the US has a record of succeeding by doing things that "established wisdom" said was foolishly idealistic or even suicidal: How can you hold a sprawling country together without a king? Republics might work for city-states in Italy, but not someplace big. (And even in 1776, the US was a big place.) Just the slow speed of communication and travel makes it impractical. How can a country survive without an established church to enforce unity of belief? Or without heavy state censorship? This "First Amendment" thing is a recipe for endless turmoil and dissent! Extending the vote from landed affluent whit males to just anyone? Even to women? Are you mad? Rebuild your defeated enemies, instead of grinding them down in hopes they never rise again? (Right, because "Keep Germany down"worked so well after World War One.) "Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity." -- William Blake, "Proverbs of Hell," in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell But I suspect that "It can't be done" often is cover for, "I don't want it done," because somebody fears for their money or their social status. Like, the fossil fuel industry has an obvious financial interest in blocking renewable energy. But forcing business interests, broadly, to defer to scientific and environmental concerns, broadly, also creates a new social status hierarchy that challenges America's deep anti-intellectual tradition. It ain't just the business leaders who will oppose that change. Dean Shomshak

Indeed. By any standard that can be measured with any degree of objectivity, we are doing steadily better -- mentally and socially as well as physicalloy and economically. See Pinker's Enlightenment Now. And this is true worldwide, not just in the USA, the West, or developed countries. Bluntly, liberalism works. As for anecdotal evidence (sort of an oxymoron, I know), two of my gaming buddies recently felt comfortable enough to reveal the toxic -- even horrific -- two-parent households in which they grew up. So I am not convinced that Two Parents Are Always Better. Dean Shomshak

I am not remotely qualified to venture an opinion whether a universal basic income would be a good or bad idea. I do know the question cannot be answered without experimentation. If the history of science shows one thing, it's that people who say the world must work a certain way, just as a matter of basic common sense, usually turn out to be wrong. Incidentally, an editorial a few months back in The Economist pointed out that economic history for the last 40-50 years has falsified every macroeconomic theory yet advanced. The latest embarrassment is the Federal Reserve's collective bafflement about why inflation is so low in the US, when all economic theory says it should be surging in such a strong economy. (The specific subject of the editorial was so-called Modern Monetary Theory. Most economists think it's bugnuts, and the editorial gave a capsule explanation why, but felt it was only fair to acknowledge that macroeconomics is not currently proving itself as a reliable science.) Behavioral economic studies have also shown that premises economists long accepted as self-evidently true, aren't. As with phrenology, a body of theory based on reasonable-sounding assumptions just doesn't hold up under the test of reality. So experiments must be tried. Dean Shomshak

Conveniently, I just learned about the fan meaning of "shipping" yesterday. (I don't have much contact with online fan culture.) Yes, supers will definitely attract such fan culture, whether they want it or not. Dean Shomshak

Well, the idea that there are ways to "flip" the supernatural character of the region piece by piece makes a nice change from the usual "Find the Dark Lord/other source of the corruption and defeat it in a climactic battle." The challenge could be more strategic: You have to cleanse the wood section by section (and what "flips" each section might be different); and while you can use cleansed sections as a base from which to try affecting still-corrupted areas, creatures and forces in those areas can try to flip the cleansed sections back. Keeping cleansed sections clean might require building momentum -- the more of the wood is cleansed, the longer it takes for sections to spontaneously flip back. Perhaps it's easier to flip sections (either way) based on how many cleans or corrupt sections they border, bringing an element of Go into the situation. Dean Shomshak

This. The chief effect of supers is to personalize activities and conflicts, because the number of people on either side is relatively small. Sure, governments and corporations employ lots of mundande computer security people who try to block the criminal hackers, with results about the same as IRL. There are also a few super-hackers who blow through mundane security like it wasn't there because they are cyberpaths, or super-geniuses, or whatever. They are a terror to everyone with valuable data. And you have just a few super-security experts -- Captain Codebar and WhiteHat, say -- who are the only people able to stop them, because they have the same powers. The two sides never reach an equilibrium, because so much depends on the outcome of each single conflict between these few individuals. If WhiteHat stops the attempt by SyberBadd to steal a country's sovereign wealth fund, the world wobbles on. If SyberBadd wins, a government falls or at least financial markets go nuts for a while. It's the financial equivalent of a major earthquake or hurricane. This means it matters a lot who Captain Codebar and WhiteHat work for. It also means that after the third or fourth time they stop SyberBadd, he/she/it thinks about killing them -- the only two who stop him/her/it from enjoying not just limitless wealth (that would be easy to gain legitimately) but the sadistic thrill of absolute power gained by hitting the financial world like a digital pinata. Adventure results. Conversely, the world becomes a lot safer if someone can capture SyberBadd. Capture or kill the other hacker supervillains -- remember, there's only a few of them -- and maybe WhiteHat and Captain Codebar have the time to debug Chrome, squash the mundane hackers for good, and make the Internet the utopian force for good that was promised. So the stakes are high on that side too. In practice, heroes maintain the status quo, but one can present the promise that someday they could make the world much better. Dean Shomshak

[Accidental double post. ISP seems tetchier than usual tonight.]

And I have to take tat back. The Kurds, as a group, seem to have shown some traits I admire. I am told that in the "No Fly Zone" years, the Iraqi Kurds managed to curb their factional infighting to become an effective political bloc. And Kurdish fighters were among the most effective in pushing back the Islamic State -- including a lot of female soldiers, which stands out in a region that often gives me an impression of misogyny. The stateless Kurds may well have been the US' most reliable allies in the region. I also feel sorry for the Yazidis, who have never been numerous enough to do horrible things to anyone else. The worst I've heard about them culturally is that there's been opposition to taking in the children born to captured and enslaved Yazidi women raped by their Islamic State masters. But that would be a heavy lift for anyone. Dean Shomshak

But George H. W. Bush wasn't a wartime president in 1992. The war to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait ended in Feb. 1991. Dean Shomshak

Ah, but wartime presidents get reelected, no matter how incompetently they bungle the war. Just look at George W. Bush and Afghanistan and Iraq. Though technically the wars were swift and successful; it was the occupations afterward that became debacles. I expect that war with Iran would also be tremendously popular with Trump's base, which seems to share his obsession with crude dominance and submission, humiliation and revenge. Cool footage of bombs dropping in Tehran to wipe away the decades-old humiliation of Americans held hostage! Then it would become a horrible quagmire because Iran's leadership has been paying attention. But if Trump timed it right, the horrible quagmire would become clear after the 2020 election. I am not a mind reader, so I can't prove this is Trump's thinking. Perhaps I traduce the man. But such a scheme seems consistent with what I've seen so far, and what is reported from people who know him well. As for getting out of the Middle East... I share your disgust. Everything about the Middle East repulses me except for art, architecture and other cultural achievements that are all centuries or millennia old. But LL is right: We can't just wash our hands of the place, even though I can't think of any good course of action. Fortunately, this forum often reminds me that the world holds people who are smarter than me. If I could have ten minutes with Pres. Rouhani, Ayatollah Khamenei, or someone else in a position of power in Iran's government, I would urge them not to fall for what I think is Trump's gambit. The more reasonably they behave, the crazier and more foolish he looks. And truly, Iran-haters in America should worry more if Iran really doesn't seek a bomb with its nuclear program: It means they are planning for the post-petroleum age, while the US currently is not. Dean Shomshak

Many years back, I ran a few campaigns in my Fantasy Europa alternate-history setting. Preparing for it, I transcribed a bunch of D&D magic items into Hero because, well, apart from the FH Magic Items book that was what I had to work with. I never used any of them. One of the core ideas of Fantasy Europa was that Europe was still recovering from the apocalyptic destruction of the Monster Wars. I wrote up a few tremendously powerful and destructive artifacts -- banes -- left over from the wars, such as the Bane of Grimwood that was still spontaneously causing monsters to be born from ordinary animals. I never got a chance to use any of them, either. The campaigns that turned out to interest me just didn't go in those directions. So what mostly turned up? Many adversaries had low-power amulets of protection (just a bit of Armor on an Independent Focus -- this was 4th ed.) so the PCs couldn't one-shot stun them with a lucky killing attack. A few adversaries, such as a Satanic sorcerer or a mad priest of a malign entity from Beyond, had magical staves or similar implemnents that could do Drains, Flashes, Entangles, and other non-STUN/BODY damage. These had Side Effects or other unpleasant conditions on their use, such as requiring human sacrifice to recharge or making the wielder another mad servant of Sutekh, so the PCs wouldn't snabble them up. I wanted the campaigns to focus on the PCs' own capabilities, not the loot they acquired. All in all, these were low-magic item campaigns. It helped that they had definite endings planned from the beginning, so there was never any intention of Zero to Hero power growth. The PCs started as remarkably competent individuals; they ended as somewhat more competent individuals. Oh -- one player built his PC around a collection of minor magic items, such as magic boots that increased his mobility. (Probably based on the D&D Boots of Striding and Springing.) But he was still highly skilled without them. Dean Shomshak

Eh, don't be too sure about that. IIRC the Nazis were willing to declare the Japanese were honorary Aryans. They were... intellectually flexible that way. (It's easier when your ideology is nonsense to begin with.) So Baron Nihil might be willing to work with Joseph Otanga on a strictly business basis, for the moment. Otanga is an African, but he's an African with power and the right sort of homicidally ruthless attitude. Maybe there's some Aryan blood up the family tree. Or maybe his transformation to superbeing made him Aryan, and -- him being a shapeshifter and all -- some day he'll see the light and assume his new, true form as a blonde white man! (Which is not within Otanga's power set but, well, Nazi crazin ess.) The situation would certainly be unstable, though. Dean Shomshak

Eh, don't be too sure about that. IIRC the Nazis were willing to declare the Japanese were honorary Aryans. They were... intellectually flexible that way. (It's easier when your ideology is nonsense to begin with.) So Baron Nihil might be willing to work with Joseph Otanga on a strictly business basis, for the moment. Otanga is an African, but he's an African with power and the right sort of homicidally ruthless attitude. Maybe there's some Aryan blood up the family tree. Or maybe his transformation to superbeing made him Aryan, and -- him being a shapeshifter and all -- some day he'll see the light and assume his new, true form as a blonde white man! (Which is not within Otanga's power set but, well, Nazi crazin ess.) The situation would certainly be unstable, though. Dean Shomshak

The Freakonomics radio program interviews Presidential aspirant Sen. Cory Booker: The United States of Cory Booker (Ep. 238) - Freakonomics freakonomics.com/podcast/cory-booker Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “The United States of Cory Booker.” (You can subscribe to the podcast at iTunes or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.) The junior U.S. Senator from New Jersey thinks bipartisanship is right around the corner. Is he ...

Apparently there's still one bipartisan issue in Congress. Today my local paper ran a brief article off the wire about how members of Congress from both parties say one of the top demands they hear from voters is, "Do something about those blankety-blank robocalls!" Some are working on bils to address the problem. Dean Shomshak

I've been trying to figure out "conservatism" for years, by observation of what people who claim to be conservatives say and do. (The definitions I've seen are too variable.) I've concluded that "conservatism" is a coalition of several ideologies, only tangentially related, but fall into two main groups. First is the conservatism of caution. Go slow, baby steps, try not to make things worse. "Conservative" as "Not Radical." I mostly agree with this: People are not infinitely malleable. Sweeping policy changes can be costly errors. I view the establishment of same-sex marriage as a model for conservative progress: Nudge people along gradually, give them time at each step to see the world doesn't end, and here we are. Hard for the LGBTQ along the way who want to live their lives the way they want, and seeing that every argument against them doing so is flipping nuts, but it avoided a backlash. A conservatism of form, but not content. The second cluster -- pro-business, religious, racial, others -- seems to have a perhaps subtler common pattern: An underlying assumption that people are not equal and should not be treated equally. There's a hierarchy, an Us and Them: of races, of classes, of a True Faith vs. Infidel, of nation against nation, of Real Patriotism vs. squishy internationalism, etc. You can argue with this. I don't claim to vast expertise here. But I think it accounts pretty well for the vahavior I see, Dean Shomshak

I loved the early run of Thunderbolts. I think you could make an excellent movie about a group of third-tier villains who try to become superheroes as a scam, then -- some of them, at least -- find they are better at being heroes than villains. And like it. Avengers: Endgame might even leave the situations that made the Thunderbolts think of the scam: A lot of the world's leading heroes have vanished. Who shall take their place? (Yeah, I haven't seen A:E yet, and won't until my local library gets the DVD. Movie theaters hit my price point years ago.) Dean Shomshak

Oh, and LL listed some other characters I created as well. Harpy would be an excellent choice for a "Task Force X" as she is quite sane. She'd participate as a chance to be reunited with her daughter, and play it straight. PCs might find her quite sympathetic. Enough perhaps to wonder where the line is between "I'm doing this to be reunited with my daughter" and "The government holds my daughter hostage." Because the sort of people who'd run a Task force X are, um, not particularly nice. Evil Eye might seem like a good choice, though some of her powers are, well, disturbing. Like, pulling people into her eye where they are apparently gone forever. Is it worse than just killing them, which a Suicide Squad is probably expected to do? Maybe; maybe not. Do the people running the op care? Probably not. The real question is, do they realize that Evil Eye is compromised by Archimago? If they send her on a mission with supernatural aspects, this could get sticky. Frag is more openly problematic. Her temper and love of massive destruction make her unreliable under pressure. The government would have to be overconfident or short on candidates to employ her. Still if you need someone to blow things up real good... or as an expendable distraction... Oh, and there's an Archimago connection here, too. That's potential issue with many mystical super-criminals: They come with baggage the average government just does not understand, that can bite their handlers in the ass. LL didn't list him, but Hell Rider might be a good candidate, especially if he's beaten the deadline for his pact coming due. Again, not crazy. For other mystic villains in the right power range? Black Fang's too savage, and his human half James Talmadge would want to stay in prison where he couldn't hurt anyone. Tappan Arkwright III is similarly not his own man. Mother Gothel is not likely to stay in custody: As a spirit, she'll just get herself killed back to the Land of Legends. Ditto for any of the lesser demon lords. Witchfinder might be recruited and play the same role as Thunderbird. None of the Sylvestris are plausible: They're so deep in the Mystic World they tend not to be noticed by mundane authorities. If they are exposed and captured, odds are that the Patriarch either springs them from prison or kills them so they can't talk. The Vandaleurs are looser, so some of them might be possibilities. Chatoyant would seem an excellent recruit: An invisible, intangible spy who can manifest from the Astral Plane to attack? Yes, please, just the thing for surveillance and intrusion. And the government can hold her body hostage for good behavior. And really, what are the odds that Tezcatlipoca would notice and take an interest? If any of the Devil's Advocates are captured and stay in prison long enough for a Task Force X to be a possibility, be afraid. Be very afraid. Because Demonologist wants them in prison for some insidious/apocalyptic scheme of his own. And the government will never have leverage over members of the scarlet Moon. It's always the other way 'round. Their only likely involvement with a Task Force X is running it. Dean Shomshak

Doctor Teneber in a Suicide Squad team could get interesting, depending on what he thinks of the mission. He could assure that the other members will complete the mission -- whether they die or not. OTOH, if he thinks you're worth it he might really, truly bring you back. And I guarantee his teammates will find him creepy as hell. His teammates did, back when he was my PC. That was a very dark supernatural campaign, but Doc T turned out to be the most disturbing character in it. Dean Shomshak

Donald Trump said recently that "America is full." No room for more people. So I went to the 2019 World Almanac and looked up some numbers. USA Land Area: 3,531, 905 square miles People's Republic of China Land Area: 3,600, 947 square miles About 2% difference. USA Arable Land: 16.6% PRC Arable Land: 12.7% The USA has a fair bit more (though comparing the quality/productivity could be complex). USA Population: 329 million PRC Population: 1,384 million China has 4.2 times the population of the US, and it's been quite a while since I last heard of massive famines. (Which were the result of Communist Party politics, not natural failure.) China's population is still a lot poorer, but it's catching up fast. (And the poverty, is significantly due to past mismanagement.) All in all, China seems able to continue supporting its population. It imports a lot of food and raw materials, but so does the US. I conclude that the US can support a significantly larger population. But then, that's an argument based on facts and numbers, which is elitist of me. I am sure that Donald Trump did not mean the US was physically or economically incapable of supporting significantly more people. What he did mean... Well, that would be speculation on my part. (He did also say that immigration agencies were overwhelmed by the numbers of applicants, which is at least a claim susceptible of rational analysis. But it would also seem to be rationally solved: Hire and train more personnel.) Dean Shomshak

Next stage: The scams. For instance, property owner covertly pays a super to visibly "take and interest" in the property, to con real buyers into paying more. Dean Shomshak

I've heard of, but not seen, a British comedy show sketch about Ecky-Thump (spelling uncertain), the "ancient Welsh martial art of fighting with a black pudding." I assume that means wielding a black pudding, though I cannot swear to it. CORRECTION! Remembering this prompted me to look it up. It is the Lancastrian martial art of wielding a black pudding, and was revealed on the show The Goodies, in an episode called Kung Fu Kapers. But my attempts to paste in the Wikipedia link are not working.. Dean Shomshak

One of All Things Considered's go-to stories is The Actual Expert Dissects Trump's Latest Idiocy. Today, it was Trump's assertion that Mexico could easily shut down the flow of illicit drugs to the US. They interviewed Gil Kerlikowsky, former Commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection, and before that Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He said that of the drugs that kill people -- meth, cocaine, fentanyl, and the like -- about 90% of what enters the US comes through regular, legal ports of entry. And the single largest channel is plain old U. S. mail. So if you really want to interdict drugs, start at the post office. Kerlikowski also noted that Mexico has its own drug problem, and their agencies and our agencies cooperate intensively trying to stop it from both sides. Pissing off the Mexican government, endangering that cooperation, is very much Not Helpful. Dean Shomshak