unclevlad

And Flacco gets steamrolled again.  He doesn't deserve that, for sure.  Yeah...other than the game-breaker then back-breaker pick 6's...Texans defense holds Browns to less than 3 yards per rush.  Throw in 4 sacks of Flacco, and the picks were practically inevitable.
 
Back to basketball.  HECK NO, I'm not buying even a single month of Peacock.  NBC's seeing if they can get us to buy it.  The days of mostly-free football are likely numbered, but I'm not going to help kill them.

And Flacco gets steamrolled again.  He doesn't deserve that, for sure.  Yeah...other than the game-breaker then back-breaker pick 6's...Texans defense holds Browns to less than 3 yards per rush.  Throw in 4 sacks of Flacco, and the picks were practically inevitable.
 
Back to basketball.  HECK NO, I'm not buying even a single month of Peacock.  NBC's seeing if they can get us to buy it.  The days of mostly-free football are likely numbered, but I'm not going to help kill them.

GA, I don't think you broke any laws...but ChatGPT probably is.  The rules are copyrighted.  HD is copyrighted.  I doubt ChatGPT has permission.
 
Also, in at leas the skills...it's moronic and, I think in several cases, WRONG.  There's also no consideration whatsoever for END, and some of these will *burn through* END.  Others...how does 15m Teleport with just x4 Mass come out to 75 points?  Several others look wrong...and I think the entire package is wrong.  This:
 
Illusion (Sight, Hearing, Touch) 8d6 (40 points), Area Effect (2m Radius; +1/4) (10 points), Constant (+1/2) (20 points), Selective (+1/4) (10 points), Uncontrolled (+1/2) (20 points), No Range (-1/2) (-10 points). Total: 90 points.
 
No Range is completely mis-applied;  I'm not even sure WHAT it's being applied to.
 
I think getting the ideas for powers...that's interesting.  But its use of copyrighted material is not, and its *gross* mistakes render it useless.
 
Note that there's already some major players suing the AI companies for using copyrighted material to train their AI models without permission.
 

I still remember this from the 80s:
"The Moral Majority is neither."

I don't think we can ignore the fact that hiring Mayo, who is already under contract, means Kraft doesn't have to go through the normal search process.

And now there's a class action suit filed against Boeing on behalf of the passengers on the flight.  It was only a matter of when.
 
There's also serious allegations here:
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/12/1223936777/a-recent-lawsuit-alleges-excessive-defects-at-boeing-parts-supplier

Kicking down a decent-sized tree in reality is extremely difficult.  The tree's structure either bends with the impact (smaller tree) or distributes it through the mass of fibers.  It's a lot more likely to hurt your hand/foot;  the decel as you make impact is delivering a force back into the extremity.  
 
I agree more with CRT, this isn't a heroic move...and the source material frequently is closer to superheroic in the high drama mode.  Writer fiat is the *norm.*

EDIT:  hmm.  Something that might work better than pure damage increase...situational damage.  The tree's a stationary target.
a)  Haymaker move with the sword.  
b)  CSLs, at least 3 points...and all applied to the damage.
 
So now you're adding 5 or 6 DCs of killing damage, that normally would NOT be translatable to a typical combat strike...which is why Haymaker rather than Offensive Strike.

Another point to remember is that Trump's people have been pre-vetting those he plans to name to the senior positions...Cabinet level, and the next level or two further down, that require Senate confirmation...and probably even further.  The first, most important criterion?  Loyalty to Trump.
 
There is a very good chance that won't extend to military commanders, who pushed back against him as President.  Those tended to be senior officers, tho.  That may mean he'll bypass chain of command and find enlisteds who will do it, as Dean notes.  In some cases, like Tlaib who's been censured?  I seriously doubt the search would take long.

A great deal of what's occurred in America since Donald Trump ran for President would have been considered "Hollywood-level BS, beyond moronic" before then. I believe it's important to consider what Trump is asking the courts, particularly the SCOTUS, to give him, and the implications should they agree.
 
Look at what's become of Russia over just the last decade. Which almost certainly includes assassination of political rivals. The road from democracy to dictatorship can be quite short.

That exact scenario was put forth by one of the judges during the hearing.  
 
You're echoing the rhetoric of one of Trump's lawyers on Fox News.

That exact scenario was put forth by one of the judges during the hearing.  
 
You're echoing the rhetoric of one of Trump's lawyers on Fox News.

Every Democratic legislator and candidate, and their allies with a platform, need to hammer home publicly every one of these anti-democracy actions. They have to tell the voters in no uncertain terms: "The GOP want to make your vote, your voice, not matter. They think they know better than you what's good for you, what you want. They want to tell you what to do and make you obey. They don't want to represent you, they want to rule you."

This is the problem with trying to emulate the comics; The Hulk held up the Himalayas in Secret Wars.  Now, he's very strong, but it doesn't matter how mad he gets, he's not going to be holding up billions of tons of rock.  Every so often writers get a bit crazy in what they have characters do and you have to hold those outliers as mistakes or exceptions rather than how to build a game or a power.  Spidey could easily uproot a small tree but I don't know how big a tree it was (don't recall that issue).

Well, we can...actually do this.  With some work.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d018/e3e81929583d82067a120adf8d0c134acefb.pdf
 
The key number...they gave 60 kN (kilonewtons) force.  The newton is the standard unit of force, it's 1 kg-m / sec^2.  To lift 1 ton, you're lifting against gravity, which is basically 10 m/s.  So..it's 10,000 newtons.
 
So a lifting STR of 6 tons can uproot the stump.  Call it 8 tons to rip out the entire tree.  40-45 STR for the trees discussed in the paper.  50, if you want some safety margin, and some SFX...that the mythical's STR grasps the entire tree, which is why it doesn't split or crush at the point of contact.  Something of the classic issue...fine, Superman can *lift* the large jet, but in this context?  The entire force required to lift it would be exerted by his hands, so the force exerted at the point of contact is almost beyond belief.  TV Tropes has fun with this one.
 
Another potentially useful page:
https://thetimberlandinvestor.com/how-much-does-a-tree-weigh/
 
The redwood from CRT's post...92m would be 3x the last column.  Diameter...15 feet, or 180 inches.  Use the 22" column, now it's 8x.  Volume increases as the square of width...so 64x.  OK...as an estimate?  200x the 95' by 22" amount of 4 tons, so....800 tons for the tree.  That's even before the root ball.  So, we're talking 80 STR to handle the mass, treating it as freestanding.  

Another potential issue is later mods by third parties.
 
I suspect, tho, that Old Man may be right.

Q: What's one of the fun parts of Monte Carlo studies of early Solar System dynamics?
 
A: It's less fun 4.5 billion years later.

Well, we can...actually do this.  With some work.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d018/e3e81929583d82067a120adf8d0c134acefb.pdf
 
The key number...they gave 60 kN (kilonewtons) force.  The newton is the standard unit of force, it's 1 kg-m / sec^2.  To lift 1 ton, you're lifting against gravity, which is basically 10 m/s.  So..it's 10,000 newtons.
 
So a lifting STR of 6 tons can uproot the stump.  Call it 8 tons to rip out the entire tree.  40-45 STR for the trees discussed in the paper.  50, if you want some safety margin, and some SFX...that the mythical's STR grasps the entire tree, which is why it doesn't split or crush at the point of contact.  Something of the classic issue...fine, Superman can *lift* the large jet, but in this context?  The entire force required to lift it would be exerted by his hands, so the force exerted at the point of contact is almost beyond belief.  TV Tropes has fun with this one.
 
Another potentially useful page:
https://thetimberlandinvestor.com/how-much-does-a-tree-weigh/
 
The redwood from CRT's post...92m would be 3x the last column.  Diameter...15 feet, or 180 inches.  Use the 22" column, now it's 8x.  Volume increases as the square of width...so 64x.  OK...as an estimate?  200x the 95' by 22" amount of 4 tons, so....800 tons for the tree.  That's even before the root ball.  So, we're talking 80 STR to handle the mass, treating it as freestanding.  

A functional definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over, expecting a different result.
 
Like...rooting for the Vikings.
 
Or the Raiders.
 
Or the Broncos.

Eagles are waving the white flag, looks like.  Mariota's in, with a minute left in the first half.  Eagles just have few weapons, Hurts is dinged.  

Oh.  My.  Lord....
 
Tyler Goodson and, to a degree Gardner Minshew, are getting no sleep tonight.
 
Texans up 23-17, a minute left.  It's 4th and 1.  Shallow little wheel route to the back in the flat.  Not a perfect throw...wrong side of the back, forcing him to spin...but Goodson had his hands on it, and I think also looked a bit away, starting to run before completing the catch.  DOINK.............................
 
Incomplete.  Texans can't quite run out the clock, but they're able to run it down to 8 seconds before punting.  They take the intentional safety with 1 second left, and the Colts don't get divine intervention.
 
On the flip side, the Texans' kicker is breathing a massive sigh of relief...as he pushed the extra point on the go-ahead...his first missed XP of the year.
 
EDIT:  I think the Hades Herald just pushed out a special edition, warning of a massive blizzard.......the TEXANS are in the playoffs!

From Wikipedia, if you're wondering which to consider for your character...
 
 
English – 245 million (78.5%)
Spanish – 41.3 million (13.2%)
Chinese (including Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and all other varieties) – 3.40 million (1.1%)
Tagalog (including Filipino) – 1.72 million (0.5%)
Vietnamese – 1.52 million (0.5%)
Arabic – 1.39 million
French – 1.18 million
Korean – 1.07 million
Russian – 1.04 million
Portuguese – 937 thousand
Haitian Creole – 895 thousand
Hindi – 865 thousand
German – 857 thousand
Polish – 533 thousand
Italian – 513 thousand
Urdu – 508 thousand
Persian (including Farsi, Dari and Tajik) – 472 thousand
Telugu – 460 thousand
Japanese – 455 thousand
 
This does say "spoken at home" and not those picked up as a second language, so it may reflect immigration over the last 40-odd years more than anything.  Still interesting that, say, French and German are down so low.

From Wikipedia, if you're wondering which to consider for your character...
 
 
English – 245 million (78.5%)
Spanish – 41.3 million (13.2%)
Chinese (including Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and all other varieties) – 3.40 million (1.1%)
Tagalog (including Filipino) – 1.72 million (0.5%)
Vietnamese – 1.52 million (0.5%)
Arabic – 1.39 million
French – 1.18 million
Korean – 1.07 million
Russian – 1.04 million
Portuguese – 937 thousand
Haitian Creole – 895 thousand
Hindi – 865 thousand
German – 857 thousand
Polish – 533 thousand
Italian – 513 thousand
Urdu – 508 thousand
Persian (including Farsi, Dari and Tajik) – 472 thousand
Telugu – 460 thousand
Japanese – 455 thousand
 
This does say "spoken at home" and not those picked up as a second language, so it may reflect immigration over the last 40-odd years more than anything.  Still interesting that, say, French and German are down so low.

India has half the *reported* deaths.  With India, there's always a serious question about the completeness.
 
Brazil's medical care, considering the population as a whole, is several steps behind Germany's.  On that basis alone, a higher death rate could be expected.  
 
And...OK, yeah, it's nice they're down...but...WorldOMeters reports 1800 deaths in the last 7 days;  over 1900 in the 7 prior days.  We're still talking 90-100,000 deaths per year, world wide.  So it's still a significant problem...just not a major crisis.  And it looks like we may have reached a steady state.
 
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#daily-deaths
 
That's a good 6-7 months of steady numbers, with just expected random variation.  Unless something dramatically changes insofar as treatment goes, it's likely this is the norm.  The GOOD!! news?  This should be lower than deaths from the flu.

HRRH is the baseline sense to justify being able to eavesdrop on any form of radio traffic...police broadcasts, standard radio/TV, whatever.  Once the radio is located, HRRH allows the listening of anything going in/out.
 
The problem with cell phones is there's hundreds or thousands of calls on the same frequency, so you can't simply tune to that frequency...trivial with HRRH...and pick out a specific 
 
Telepathy, when it comes to computers, is reading the data stored on the computer, IMO.  This isn't telepathy, it's not reading the data on the computer, it's reading the transmissions.  
 
Why would it require a Sys Ops roll?  What system is being operated?  It makes no sense to make it a Sys Ops roll, if the purpose is just to cut costs.  I'd rather use a power skill, but overall, it's not worth it.  The mind scan wasn't terribly expensive...and even the RSR Sys Ops would take the active point penalty.
 
Plus, in a case like this, it's not the active points in the power that matters, it's the size of the haystack that's concealing the needle you're trying to find.  That's what Mind Scan's # of minds modifier captures.
 
 
Yes, those aspects of Mind Scan work nicely.  I'm not worried about attacking through the Scan;  the purpose for it is to justify that a particular cell phone can be located, and listened to.  
 
The writeup at this point doesn't use Mind Scan per se.
HRRP (Radio Group), Discriminatory, Analyze, Rapid:  x100, Targeting, Telescopic:  +24, Tracking (55 points)
+10 PER with HRRP (10 Active Points); Only to offset # of sources (a la Mind Scan # of minds) (-1/4)
and for breaking signal coding
Cryptography 21-
 
The Mind Scan was an initial thought for the location aspect...and it still can work.  I think this buys me the aspects of locating and tracking that a maintained Mind Scan would have, and it's mechanically cleaner, IMO.