Zeropoint

I continue to find it irritating that people use the word "drone" to mean "quadrotor".

7 hours ago, Cygnia said:

A Christmas tree made of meth and beach findings? Must be from Florida!

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

But it's depressing to see how tolerance and inclusiveness are taking hits all around the world.

I agree. I thought we'd been making progress.

Not only does BMI completely fail to account for variations in lean muscle mass and differences in build, it is also biased against tall people: it measures mass divided by height squared, when (proportions being equal) mass should track with height cubed. Also, because of the square-cube law, taller people need to have proportionally thicker limbs to maintain the same strength to weight ratio. With a height of 6' 4", I don't think I could get down to a "normal" BMI without looking kind of scrawny . . . and BMI says I'd have to get down to 151 pounds before I'd be considered "underweight". That's absurd.

22 minutes ago, Old Man said:

And seatbelts.

 

That technology was lost in the Interregnum, along with fuses and circuit breakers.

5 hours ago, Cygnia said:

This is clearly a woman who weighs the same as a duck. Don't piss her off.

Wow. Talk about sloppy eaters!

It's impressive to see a motherhecking star just get . . . ripped apart like that, though!

13 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

But no one actually knew in advance that, when provided with expert information and advice on a range of issues of which he knew nothing, Trump would ignore it in favor of his "instincts."

But we did know of his strong anti-intellectualism and the way he managed to run more than one casino into bankruptcy and the way he managed to make a New York real estate business have worse ROI than an index fund. We knew he didn't care for best practices and that this disdain hurt his operations.

15 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

No one knew he would believe fringe media conspiracy theories over information from the most extensive intelligence service in the world.

His fixation on the Central Park Five and his continuing insistence on their guilt after their exoneration clearly demonstrated his refusal to accept evidence.

20 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

No one knew that he would deny basic human compassion to people based on their country of origin, and arguably, the color of their skins. No one knew that he would deliberately inflame the social and racial divisions within American society to his own benefit.

Uh . . . I can only assume that you, not being American, didn't pay much attention to his presidential campaign. His virulent racism was quite openly displayed. We watched him "inflame the social and racial divisions within American society to his own benefit" during that campaign. That was his main strategy.

23 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

No one knew that he would try to blatantly ignore and even cast into disrepute elements of the Constitution.

His disregard for the law was evident. I don't know why anyone would expect that he'd treat the Constitution any differently.

24 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

No one knew that he would withdraw America from multiple commitments to the international community negotiated by his predecessors, seemingly because he wanted to claim he got "a better deal."

He was well known as a fraudster and someone who refused to honor agreements when there was a financial benefit to be had. New York contractors made no secret of including a "Trump tax" in their dealings with him to ensure they got paid enough up front, because they knew he'd refuse to pay the rest of the bill after the work was done.

26 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

No one knew that he would alienate long-standing American allies while cozying up to the country's rivals.

I'll give you . . . half of this. It's true that we didn't know just how much power Russia has over him, but we did know he was in bed with them.

28 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

In hindsight, the pattern is clear, and the seeds were already planted. We got Trump, but we never bargained for how much Trump we would get.

Like the snake in the old story, we knew what he was when we picked him up. Anyone who expected him to dramatically change who he is and how he operates just because he got elected was a fool.

18 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

You know, I can't really blame Americans who voted for Donald Trump the first time. I appreciate the frustration many of them had with the status quo, the appeal of a political outsider who talked like a populist, and sold a line they wanted to hear. I never bought it myself, but I get why many people were at least willing to give him a chance. Nobody could have foreseen the magnitude of how he would screw things up.

 

But at this point everyone in the world has had years to perceive who Donald Trump really is, what he wants, and where he's leading the United States. I apologize if this sounds harsh... but if Americans re-elect him, they truly will deserve the government they get. I will have pity for them, but not as much as for the rest of us, who will have had no hand in his election but will have to deal with him anyway.

Trump's presidential term hasn't revealed anything about him that we didn't already know. I absolutely can and do blame Americans who voted for him the first time, because we--the nation, collectively--had all the information we needed to know exactly who and what he was. The people who voted for him did so out of either a willful and culpable choice to remain ignorant of his qualities, or awareness of those qualities couple with a decision that those qualities were either excusable or even desirable. No one is in a position to say, "Yeah, he's bad, but I didn't know." We all knew. The people who voted for him knew what they were voting for.

Hmm, interesting. My first impulse was to stat it as a seven-shot Autofire burst, but you could also raise the damage and apply Reduced Penetration.

Maybe gods don't intervene directly in the mortal world because they're too powerful; or from their perspective, the mortal plane and all that lives there is just too delicate.

What would happen if Godzilla tried to fight crime or help at a soup kitchen in downtown Tokyo? Godzilla's mere presence in your city causes massive damage, tens of millions of dollars worth of loss, and probably some injury and death. Even when he's on your side, you don't want him showing up in your home city unless things are VERY dire.

How much more powerful is a god than a Godzilla?

You know, I used to like Star Trek as a franchise.

Streaming services would be great if there were ONE, with all content (at least all that a particular viewer were interested in), for less than what cable costs.

When there are a dozen streaming services, and a viewer's desired content is spread across them all, and their aggregate cost is the same or greater than a cable subscription . . . welp, we're right back to pirating being the optimal solution.

Elan has come a long way since the early days of the strip.

That's just begging to show up in my Deadlands campaign.

21 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

The sad fact is that pretty much everyone wants services from the government which exceed the value of the taxes they pay to the government.  Many can't seem to make that simple connection that more, or better, government services requires paying more taxes.

I want services from the government. In fact, I want MORE services from the government. I also happen to be perfectly aware that this will require the government to collect more tax revenue (and/or reduce military spending by being less enthusiastic about killing people overseas).

However, I'm also aware that the very rich and big business are not paying their fair share of the tax burden. We, as a nation, do not need to raise the tax burden on the middle class or the poor to raise revenue. We can get all the money we need by raising taxes on people who can easily afford it--and who, as demographic groups, were paying far more tax back in the '50s that the right likes so much.

8 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

I had to pay hundreds of dollars per month for public schools (property tax) while paying for daycare for my kid who wasn't old enough for school yet.  I would have happily opted out of paying for public school until my child was in the public school system. 

Additionally, I'd stop paying for it when my kid gets out of public school.

This is a good example of why a voluntary taxation scheme or opt-out system is a very bad idea. All of us, including you, ScottishFox, benefit every day from the advantages of an educated populace. That you would only be interested in paying for the education system when it directly benefits you and yours is disgustingly selfish. Would you also argue that if you don't drive, none of your taxes should go to roads?

"I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

While I don't approve of everything that my tax money goes for--like putting kids in cages and bombing brown people's hospitals--I have no problem at all with the idea of taxes or with paying them.

What I do have a problem with is all the entities in our country that aren't shouldering their share of the tax burdern, like big business (Amazon's a trillion dollar company that pays no taxes?) and rich people. I also think churches, of any and all religions, should be taxed the same as any other non-profit organization, but I realize that's not going to be a popular position in the US. 

3 minutes ago, Old Man said:

It's not that they're not bothering to understand.  They understand perfectly.  It's that they don't care.

And it feels to me like we, as a nation, have a narrow and rapidly closing window in which to re-assert the rule of law. Until Trump, we just sort of assumed that the president and his staff would mostly follow the law, or at least try not to get caught. If we don't manage to bring the sword of justice down on Trump & Co., I fear that we'll be entering a new era where it's accepted as the de facto truth that the president and his staff really are above the law.

I do not want to see my country go down that road, and I don't know what I can do to help my country avoid it.

It's small potatoes compared to that, but Trump also violated federal law (18 USC 2074) on camera by displaying his altered map of Hurricane Dorian as an official weather report. He commits small crimes as well as large in office.

3 hours ago, Hermit said:

A police officer murders someone and actually is found guilty.

 

So many folks are surprised that it appears that a cop has faced the same consequence a non police officer would have in the same situation.

I'm one of them. This makes me wonder what made them so quick to throw her under the bus allow justice to be served.

Majel Barrett-Roddenberry or go home.

The simplest thing would just be to take Detect Ghosts for five points and assign it to the Sight group. There, you can see ghosts now.

If you're building something like the Ghostbuster's PKE meter, you start with an appropriate Detect power and build it into a focus, with whatever adders and limitations seem appropriate.

The thing that keeps rolling around in my head regarding the use of swords on spaceships and such is this: how do you ensure that your enemies use them? If you decide to use swords for any of the plausible reasons that have come up in this thread, and your enemies decide that they don't care . . . you show up with swords, they show up with guns, and you either switch to guns or you lose.

I'm definitely NOT questioning deathtraps (a genre fiction staple), nor am I questioning whether this one is escapable (depends on the numbers).

What I specifically AM questioning is: how does writing up the ability to throw someone in a coffin and pile dirt on top as a power have anything to do with how escapable it is? I don't understand what is gained by doing that.