unclevlad

Is it too harsh to think that people who do things like this, are getting what they deserve?

Probably stood him up on a date back in the Pleistocene.

In WtC, the situation in Japan is much the same in principle; in practice, it didn't entirely work out that way, as organized crime took some...including some rather powerful ones. But the criminal supers had to be very careful, and the government hunted for them very extensively.

Super Powereds: powers are effectively mutations...you're born with them, or you're not. There are occasional tech geniuses, so an Iron Man is another option. Supers overall number in the millions, it's believed, but the vast majority aren't that powerful, and many are not combat-effective. A side comment about one character's kid was, she was a super with the power to alter the taste of food. Awesome for dieting and nutrition. In Corpies, a side book to the series, one of the principal characters is a 12 or so on an athletic scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is Olympic caliber. Great for rescue work, nowhere close to adequate for engaging villains. Villains Code: very similar to Wild Cards. The trigger event happened, IIRC, in 1947 with a physics experiment that created elements in the hypothetically stable zone, with element numbers > 300. That led to people with powers, and changed reality. Supers pop up occasionally...many of them minor. But there are also events called Confluences, where side effects of the original accident somehow coalesce. Many more, and on average more powerful, supers are created. Power types and levels are literally anything imaginable...and some are seriously wild. WtC: the Event in the early 2000's was singular. Ever since, tho, individuals gain powers, generally in VERY high stress conditions. Many fall into trope patterns...and some become the pattern that others follow, as belief systems matter greatly. There's magical types...but everyone knows D&D magic is fantasy, so most magical types follow more rooted traditions. (And it's also a justification for making things like demonic summonings harder, IMO.) Vampires and fey exist...and follow the classic tropes, by and large. Some people would probably become like Jedi...that's a firmly established, if relatively recent, archetype. I think Harmon just didn't want to rile Disney up. Breakthroughs are shaped largely by the person and the circumstances. Sometimes they'll become wish-fulfilling...I wanna be a vampire, I wanna be super strong and tough...and others go in different ways altogether. A one-time, never-repeated influx *might* arguably be the worst case. That feels to me the most likely to create an undamped race to the top. Once people get there, little can threaten them. Conversely, if supers perhaps start with a large surge, but there's new ones regularly, there's at least a chance for banding together to quash the worst of the worst, and build to a new stable paradigm.

Celtics suspend their coach Ime Udoka for a year, for an inappropriate relationship with another member of the organization, in violation of team rules. And no guarantees he'll return to the court after the suspension.

There's an interesting story here: https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html about how one can cheat in a live game, but note the problems. And this was amateur play; I doubt the method would work against a master, it seems unlikely a Pi could play at that advanced a level. So, I have to leave the door open that Carlsen believes the rumors, and is going a bit off the deep end. That wouldn't be unique in the chess world.

Major, MAJOR culinary crime committed here. Quite attractive chocolate cake donuts, they look decadent.... But that pale, thin beverage in the cup looks like tea with milk, NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! Coffee and chocolate are a dream combination. If that's supposed to be coffee, there's WAAAYYY too much dairy. If it's tea...nope. I love a good cup of tea...but not with chocolate.

It all depends. There is no fixed, correct answer. --"Superhuman" doesn't equal "godlike"...and Superman is INSANELY powerful. Obviously, it depends on which one you're talking about, but he's several thousand points IMO, in Hero. (EDIT: built a mostly reasonable version. Characteristics and powers are coming out at about 1300 with, I think, almost all the big stuff included.) --One of the critical, huge scenes in WtC happens very shortly after the Event. I don't recall if it's in the first book; it's definitely in the RPG, and I believe in one of the books eventually. Atlas, Ajax, Touches Clouds, and the rest of those who would become the Sentinels walk into a Congressional hearing about a bill to restrict supers. Ajax gives a speech that is awesome..."we will stop them." And that's the start. --What's the draw to be a hero? Celebrity status like nothing else. In both Hayes' SPU and WtC, popular culture is completely swept up in hero culture...and in WtC, villain culture, but not per se of the "go out and STOMP" villain types. Those are in super prison. Push comes to shove...if suddenly very powerful supers (I like to build SPU characters at around 600-650, with 16 DC attacks max) arise in today's polarized, nervous, and hair-trigger environment...then honestly? I think a billion people would die inside of a couple years, and infrastructure collapse would happen in many places. But that, in itself, could lead to a transition whereby heroes form...and knowing that the entire planet came VERY close to being obliterated, a semi-stable arrangement could be reached. In WtC, Cuba was taken over by the Tyrant...who might well be called godlike, his powers aren't made clear. He has absolute control...but he's not there to exploit. It's described as a mostly free, almost libertarian state. OTOH, there's Juarez, which is still an ongoing war zone that spills over onto both sides of the border. But some of what you're thinking...it's self-correcting to a degree. Mind...it's bloody UGLY. I kinda think that's why Harmon skipped 10 years forward. In Hayes' SPU, where powers became public and more common in the late 50's, there was an extensive stretch where hero vs. villain battles were VERY frequent, and VERY bloody. Another interesting series is Drew Hayes' Villain's Code. In SPU, heroes are heavily restricted and seriously trained. In VC...they're not. In some ways, it's like The Boys...and yes, there's more problems. But one of the subthemes in VC is that a chaotic situation where people run wild, at some point *some* form of control will develop.

Any or all of the above, and a zillion other scenarios. Some things are less likely than others, tho. --Using supers in a military action is a severe escalation in level of force. How severe depends on the damage potential of the super. Not TOO powerful...might be like a controlled chemical attack. Something like Iron Man? Closer to using a bioweapon. A wide-scale energy projector type? Almost like being the first to use a nuke. --The scenario of a super trying to compel a government in some manner is pretty narrow. Opposed supers would tend to intervene. The more likely...and nastier...situation is a mind control type, IMO. Another: the use of supers as assassins. Imagine desolid plus invisible, among others. --Controlling supers is NEVER easy. It's all too easy to paint them into a corner where they think they have little to lose. It's fairly common in superhero lit, that if super powers are reasonably common, then most are relatively minor. As in, shrug off a .38, but a 12 gauge slug...not so much. Take 2-3 punches to bash a hole in a brick wall, rather than be able to run through it with ease. And so on. So...in your effort to control the supers you can't easily restrain...do you make things overly onerous for those who aren't a serious threat? That's an invitation to a downward spiral that ends very, very, very badly. --The underlying culture is huge. Basic respect for human rights or the rule of law aren't automatic. Racial suppression/eradication has too long a history to think it wouldn't start back up. And imagine the different way the sudden onset of supers would affect things in 1990, say...versus just post-9/11, and worse, in the US of today. On BOTH sides. Anger's been building for decades, and violence has erupted at times. Toss in an angry super. Hope you've got enough body bags....

Op-ed about the roots of the current state of the Republican Party, from a former Vermont Congressman, booted in his primary run for re-election for voting for gun control...in 1991. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/opinion/moderate-republicans-gingrich-trump-new-england.html

Ahhhhhh....you can find it. I don't recommend you do. They're...pretty bad. But not bumblebee-stripe throwback bad. And that's just mild visual nausea; watching Trubisky flounder is worse. And the less said about That Other Team, the better.

Hey, gotta root for Sac State. I mean, the Aggies need to earn the #1 spot. Let's keep that competition going! (I mean...who's worse? Sac St or Hawai'i? Especially Hawai'i on the road. If NMSU goes winless, methinks it won't be a contest. That'll include losses to 4 teams in the Bottom 25 this week...at 17, 14, 13, and 4. I am honestly beginning to hope that the conference realignments force a complete schism, where the SEC and Big $0 forge a playoff-level group with its own rules. For the rest...no illusion of even TRYING to keep up with the Big Money. Tighter scholarship limits, perhaps...altho FCS isn't actually much different from FBS. But eliminate the illusion. Also split football from all other sports for conference purposes. One thing that might work, given that, is a promotion/relegation approach. Not like that would ever happen....

From the comments to the story: Typos are as per the comment, but hey, if the writer's on his phone, it happens. Can't argue much, altho I might pick slightly different (but not less critical) adjectives, save to say those go back further than Trump. Those have been in the Republican campaigning playbook for a long time.

Better idea. WVU vs. Va Tech on ESPN. Save yourself the torture. After that's over, there's some baseball.

In WtC, in most of the US, heroes are in crisis response teams; much of their work is, as noted, disaster relief and aid. But they're also the ones to take down any powered criminals...because the cops can't. The Sentinels, the team the main char's a member of, have multiple heavy hitters, so they get the call for big takedowns. One of the aspects is also: who has oversight? In Drew Hayes' Super Powereds and WtC, that's a civilian function. In WtC, the CAI teams are state militia, and there's a federal department as well. In SP, it's all federal. In both, you *must* be accredited to actively use powers legitimately, or at least with shielding against liability. SP takes that to an extreme: it's a 4 year program called the Hero Certification Program, and it's highly competitive, with (probably too) few graduates a year. The comics allow vigilantism to run amok, and that isn't practical given the serious damage a super on super fight can cause. Costumes in both also serve another purpose: recognition. While obviously someone can try to exploit that angle, it's still preferable to know that when that guy says "GET DOWN!!"...you really need to listen. Both series point out the trust factor. In the SPU, there's a second tier of supers that are purely first responders, NOT authorized to enter into super combat except in self-defense. They're called PEERS..privately employed emergency responders. He also set up an overarching Super Athletics Association, because supers vs. non-supers is like Georgia versus a high school JV team in football. And both WtC and SP have supers dedicated to just cleanup operations...lots of them.

And I see your true colors Shining through I see your true colors And that's why I love you So don't be afraid (don't be afraid) To let them show your true colors

AL Central has likely been locked up tonight. Cleveland smacks around the White Sox, putting the Sox 6 back with 13 to play...and they lose the tie breaker. So if the Sox finish 12-1, Cleveland could go 6-7 and still take it. Minnesota also just lost to KC, so they're 9 back. I believe they also lose the tie breaker, so their elimination number should be 4. Sox and Twins face similar odds to get a WC spot; Tampa Bay has the same record as Cleveland. Seattle's tied in the middle innings right now; if they lose, they'd drop 1/2 game behind TB with 1 fewer win.

I'll recommend Marion G. Harmon's Wearing the Cape series. The premise is that, on one day in the early to mid-2000's, the EVENT happened. The entire world literally blacked out for 3.14159+ seconds...and everything changed. A baggage handler at O'Hare saw a plane falling out of the sky...and flew up to help it land. Elsewhere, those of a less altruistic bent found themselves with the means to commit mayhem...and did. In the first days, panic rose quickly, and some seriously restrictive legislation was introduced...until an incredible speech from one of those new supers, backed by that baggage handler and a few others. Harmon has advanced degrees (his words) in Literature and History...and they're both evident. The world building is, IMO, second to none. The series starts about 10 years after the EVENT; the opening scene is the lead character suddenly gaining her powers (from a car wreck...powers almost always arise from very high-stress events, and are generally connected to the event, the person's personality, and the like) and moves forward from there. In the comics, to be sure, high-powered supers fighting leads to lots of collateral damage...and heroes generally don't die. Harmon tosses those out. The damage is *immense* in some cases...in one book, a villain with earth powers triggers a magnitude 9 quake in southern California...with its massive web of related faults, and very high population density. It's incredibly ugly. And it's not the only one. The novels go into the geopolitical issues from time to time; there's more in the WtC RPG, particularly about how those early years from the EVENT to the start of the series played out. One of the books involves dimension hopping, including to alternate versions of the WtC universe, which lets Harmon play out other scenarios that lead to some VERY difficult situations. Harmon does go into many of the questions you're asking here. He does use the costume paradigm, for heroes...because the symbology is so known. Superman is the Ultimate Good Guy, and using that costumed symbology helps the very scared norms accept that they have help. Drew Hayes in Super Powereds did something very similar, where supers went public in, IIRC, the late 50s...and adapted strict standards to try to ensure public confidence.

$60-70? Nah. More than I'd spend regularly, but very reasonable for a special occasion. Most I've spent? 30th birthday. Born in '58...there are good wines out there, but they're scarce. But '59 was one of the great years in Bordeaux. '59 Palmer. $500. In 1988 dollars, mind. And totally worth it. It's a lot harder nowadays to pull the trigger, because wine prices have skyrocketed beyond reason. Very good California Cabs like Diamond Creek could be found for around $30 a bottle in the mid 80s; that'd be about $80 now. But the current prices...closer to $300 for recent Diamond Creek offerings. I'd shifted away from Cali for that reason, mostly doing wine from Spain or Chile, and in some cases, some of the blended Cali reds that were quite good, and TONS cheaper. So, yeah, I'll grant you can get a very enjoyable bottle for a lot less, but the really good stuff can be on another level altogether.

Even if the incoming troops are somewhat better off than you suggest, the logistical and command/control failures have been blatant, frequent, and ongoing. It's quite possible that this many more troops will allow a Russian advance...potentially at high cost...but for how long? They'll fall flat on their faces again; that's perhaps been the one consistent aspect here. And yeah. This is becoming...if it's not now...an atrocity against the Russians, almost as much as against Ukraine.

But it isn't about actual truth. It's about reinforcing a perception. Elsewhere, the in-box this morning had one from NYT, promoting a 30 minute video about the attack on democracy. I presume it's paywalled, so no link. The 2 major points: --voter suppression efforts aren't the #1 issue. They're anti-democratic, they're probably racist...but their impact is far from clear. --the bigger problem is a concerted effort to distort the voting process at its very source...the polling places. By bringing in poll workers. Training them to challenge voters *extensively*, to create the perception that widespread voter fraud *is* happening...when the fraud is being performed by the poll workers. And this is targetable...election results are tallied at the precinct level, so you challenge in heavily Democratic precincts. There's never been evidence of widespread fraud...so, well, heck, we can't have that, so let's CREATE THE EVIDENCE. Oh, and of course, it's in all these Democratic districts.

Diamondbacks and Dodgers are playing a day-night DH today. LONG day for the players; the 1st game just ended, the 2nd game starts in about 3 hours. D'Backs have a great game going. Up 5-1 going into the bottom of the 8th. Hey, great! Way to start a double header, right? Single. Homer. Error. Walk. Walk. Pitching change. Single. Infield Single...tie game. Strike out. Strike out...almost out of it at least with a tie....but no. Another infield single. Dodgers take the lead. Strike out. Strike out. Foul out. Game over. It's not just the Rockies, Mr. P.... EDIT: and the Pirates lead 8-4 going into the bottom of the 9th. Judge homers. Double. Walk. Single, loading the bases. Stanton blasts a grand slam. Yankees walk it off 9-8. 5 batters, all get on, all score....

Ohh man. Was at the local Albertsons yesterday. In the little sectional, specialty fridge in the aisle, between the dairy and the eggs...very much a prime spot...there it was. Egg nogs. Multiple variants of egg nogs. And it's not even equinox. I talked to one of the long-time employees; he said yeah, it was upper management pushing this stuff out SUPER early, and that wasn't the only thing. I believe he said some of the Christmas liquor gift boxes...buy the bottle, get the (sometimes) nifty glasses...were either out, or were coming out Real Soon. Mildly interesting? NOTHING for Thanksgiving yet, I don't think. Thanksgiving gets...kinda short shrift. There's lots of stuff, but it's not out for nearly as long. At least there. I think Bed Bath & Beyond hits it harder. Mildly annoying...20-odd years ago, September and October were awesome beer months. The fall seasonals were numerous and YUMMY. AND not all of em were pumpkin-based. Now? Almost nothing. There's still Rogue Dead Guy, which I do love, but not a lot else. Then again, that's also been true with winter/Christmas beers...dropped from maybe a dozen to maybe 3...? There's a VERY good chance that it's a local issue. The good ABQ breweries (and there are several) haven't done winter seasonals that I can recall, and the general out-of-state brands' availability has been on the decline for multiple years.

Feels like that holds true for many of the DC writers

Eowyn, how you've changed!!!