Lee

I'd like to see some links to these interviews and statements by Brie Larson and Scarlett Johansson.
 
The idea that Marvel is somehow portraying white men as inherently evil is laughable on its face. Captain America? Iron Man? The Hulk? Hawkeye? Dr. Strange? Thor? Ant Man? Star Lord? Spider-man? Yeah, no.
 
Do they have evil white men in their shows and movies? Sure. But nowhere is it ever implied that being white and male makes them evil or inferior in any way. 
 
And as for people not going to see Captain Marvel, it's the second highest grossing of the non-team-up MCU films, so I don't think people stayed away in droves. And it really doesn't make sense to draw any conclusions about Black Widow, with the year+ pandemic delay, the new and untested release strategy, and the lack of a China release (as of yet).
 
 

Cause of death was complications from pancreatitis.
 
Kansas rock violinist, singer Robby Steinhardt dies at 71
 
Kansas is one of my two or three favorite bands. Robbie's vocals and violin are integral to their unique sound. He hasn't performed with the band in a very long time, but he will definitely be missed.

I could see Alfred Nobel instead of setting up a system of prizes in penance for inventing dynamite instead funding mystery men to fight evil wherever it is found. And regardless of governments and their laws.
 
He was effectively a multi-millionaire businessman (in today's dollars) who outright owned multiple businesses (including dozens of munitions factories) and had 355 patents for various inventions.

Don't forget Pieces of Eight where a society chops up a classic Styx album and use them for currency.

I fly both a Canadian and American flag and "properly" at that. I'm not particularly patriotic to either Canada or the USA, it's just something I do because several of my significant others are American and I always thought it respectful that I cared about them as I do my fellow Canucks.

And I got my second shot today!
 
 
       
 
No; I am not laughing about getting the shot.  I am laughing about having to erase the typo that read "shart."
 
 
       

I use taverns, a bit, usually because most of my players over the years have come from games where "you are all gathered together in a tavern" was the starting point of every campaign, so they sort of unconsciously learned that "tavern = important." 
 
Before going on, though, I would really like to say that Archer has an excellent point, at least in allusion:
 
If something has historically been a problem in your games, there is no mandate to fix it; leaving it out works just as well, and more than fixing ever could, it offers an immediate and definite solution.  Similarly, if there is a reasonable chance that something is going to be a problem-- say any recent or recurring or just well-known "hot button" issue in the real world-- then a GM wanting to ensure that a game does not go in a direction he doesn't care to preside over is not just in his rights but well-advised to leave that out as well.
 
And finally, before proceeding, I would like to double-down on LL's comment about his game world being "not unduly sanitized."  So what if it is?   If he elects to exclude sex slaves, what's the problem?  _I_ don't use them, either.  To the best of my knowledge (meaning "accepting that I haven't read every single thing and could be wrong."  Now I have taken all the fun about lording a simple error over me  ), Heinlein _never_ wrote a sex scene.  I think the closest he ever got was a couple of people disappearing into a room and the story jumping to the next scene, and even then I can only think of one instance of that.
 
It didn't weaken the story in the slightest.  Frankly, I felt it served the story better that I didn't have to derail my interest in the actual plot while someone explained to me in lurid detail what some fictional character's armpit or butt crack tasted like.  (I still tend to find sex scenes in fiction to be completely unnecessary  filler, be it book, movie, or game.)   
 
I have found that one really great work around to to players insisting on going down the seduction path is role play.  You know: unbutton my shirt to expose my hair pelt, brush my beard back, make moon eyes at him, puff up my lips and say "put those dice down.  Go ahead, Nick.  Seduce me.  Let's get it on."  (if that doesn't do it, delivering my lines while standing up and urgently rubbing my groin helps kill that mood, too.)
 
I also find it unnecessary to this discussion any more than as an example, as it is an example of exclusion that does not weaken the story.  We exclude all kinds of things:  if I declare "flying saucers and revolving six-guns are excluded from my fantasy game," pretty much everyone is going to say "well _duh_--!"  If I exclude JK Rowling's house elves, most people are going to say "good!  That's got no place in proper fantasy anyway!"  If I exclude Beholders, most folks will go "well that's fine.  I don't use them much anyway, particularly after the weirdness that came out of the Beholders-in-Space thing...."
 
I exclude elves, and people go nuts (in general; most of you folks have been pretty good about it) or they say "well, that's either Duke or Talislanta...."  
 
The entire crux of what's included or excluded in any GM's game is "this is how this particular world works."   Magic works this way, or that way, or not at all, and it's all good.  Everyone says "well, that's how this world works."  So one guy has a world where tavern culture doesn't include prostitute slaves.  _That's_ a problem?  I don't recall Tolkien wasting a lot of words on prostitute slaves, and according to people who aren't me, he is the holy grail of fantasy, particularly considering how many fantasy worlds are straight clones of his stuff.  Another guy declares that his world doesn't have taverns.  Fair enough: the cultures of his world don't think you need a special building to gather around inside of and get drunk.  Considering that I haven't been to a bar since I turned sixteen and didn't need a fake ID (it lost its appeal the moment it wasn't illicit), and yet I've still had considerable opportunities to drink with friends and loved ones, I find it pretty easy to envision such a culture.  
 
I realize that the initial question was whether or not slavery is something that occurs in your campaign, but I have to assume that everyone who didn't answer simply "yes" or "no" was inviting a more involved conversation; it makes sense that this conversation moved on to other things that are or are not part of someone's campaigns, at least not routinely, but I don't get the complaints or aspersions about what someone does or does not want to play.  I am sure I will hear the term "realism" at some point, so I'd like to take a moment to say "elves, dwarves, dragons, magic" before that happens.     
 
The simple fact is that the games occur in fictional worlds-- worlds created entirely by one group of people, for the enjoyment of that one group of people.  They are like any other form of entertainment: no one likes all of any given genre.  If they did, we'd have more games about midwestern waitresses having sex with vampires in order to create the ultimate spell to throw sand into the eye of Sauron and get her sheriff ex-boyfriend to admit his lust for his hobbit deputy and they'd spend all their spare time under the neon lights of some motel in New Orleans, at least until the kraken came and they had to time travel back to find Captain Nemo and Jaques Cousteau to deal with this problem, all while trying to single-parent a surly teenager who may or may not be one of the many sons of Zeus.
 
We play in worlds that interest us.  How could it even make sense that we would play in a world that doesn't interest us?  "Dude!  have you seen this awesome new video game?!"   Yeah.  I played through most of it a couple of months ago.  I really, really hated it.  Setting was awful; art was dull.  Characters were uninspired; graphics were so weak I couldn't tell my pack animal from the communal well.  It just sucked, Man.  "Cool!  You should _totally_ play it!  It's really the only video game ever made!  Play it!"  I did.  It hated it.  "Yeah, but you should totally play it.  Any other game is just wrong."   Well, this one has lasers and spaceships.  I like lasers and spaceships.  "It's wrong.  It doesn't have elves; it doesn't have magic.  This one does."   Lots of games have that.  I fact, I beat Magic Elves I and II last year.  "Nope.  Those games aren't this game.  Only this game is worth playing."
 
See?  It doesn't make sense.
 
Pulling from the published stuff:  I have considerable respect (now, and mostly thanks to LL's thread on it some time back) for the "official" HERO System fantasy setting.  I don't _like_ it at all, but I can now appreciate it, on a level or two, for the work and the quality of all the things I care nothing about (politics?  Really?  I want _escapism_, not a new version of what I am trying to escape from).  I _love_ Tuala Morn, though.  Alas, I am the only person in my group who grooves on it, so I will never get to use it, but there it is:  the HERO System doesn't even have _one_ setting: Turakian Age, Valdoran Age, Atlantean Age, Tuala Morn-- and probably one or two that are escaping me.  These are very noticeably not the same.  So what's the problem with one guy's variant or even his homebrew being a bit different?
 
I like hearing about the differences, honestly, but I am certainly not going to complain about or insult them-- they don't affect me _at all_ unless it's something that makes me think "ooh!  I like that!  I think I might try to work in a twist on that for my own game!"  It'd be like me screaming foul because someone says "I really like David Drake's stuff!"  I mean, I don't like it, personally, but when someone says that, the thing that _never_ comes to mind is "Eeeew!  Really?!"  What comes to mind is "Sweet!  He's a reader!"  followed by "Hello, fellow sci-fi fan!"   
 
And that's pretty much where it ends.
 
Worlds are big, and they are a lot of work.  The idea of your world not including something that doesn't interest you-- or perhaps personally offends you, or has proven to be a problem in the past-- saves not just the effort of having to build something you don't want anyway, then having to deal with the ramifications of something you weren't interested in personally, then having to play a game in a world that doesn't appeal to you-- but it saves games and possibly friendships.  Let's say for example that I hate Tolkien elves (because I do, so it's easy to select as an example), but I decided to cave to the "well, it's just not fantasy without a race of too-beautiful-for-words nigh-immortal better-than-everyone-at-everything supermen running around!" crowd.  Okay, fine.  Elves are real.  Have some elves.  Let me just sprinkle a few here, a few there, a few more yonder ways....  before you know it, I've got six players who are elves, who want nothing more than to roam through the elven lands, doing elven things, learning elven lore....   Well, I'm going to have a blast, aren't I?  Suppose I do the only thing I can think of worse than including elves, and decide "dwarven women look just like the men and have beards and everything" poppycock.  Well, the only two players I have who play dwarves at all are both female (even though one typically plays male dwarves), and I have heard enough of their opinions on that subject to know that it's going to wreck their good time, so....
 
If I remove elves and dwarves entirely, have I customized the world to prevent problems, or have I somehow sanitized it?  If I remove sex slaves, have I sanitized it, or have I created a world where people find such things unthinkable?  Is removing taverns sanitizing?  Or have I created a culture where drinking is an intimate thing, done only with close family members and the closest, most dear of comrades, and exclusively in the privacy of one's own home?  Perhaps it's simply the culture that one _only_ drinks with friends, and only of the wine that he brings to the home of a friend?    Is it something new and different?  Perhaps fantastic?  Or sanitized?
 
And even if it is completely, hopelessly sanitized, or hopelessly ruined, or whatever-- these are the private worlds of a private group of people doing things that will never affect anyone who doesn't like it.  Why the complaining?  It's really easy to not get forced into such a game: just keep doing whatever it is that you have been doing up until this very moment, and it will never affect you.  What logic is there in participating in what is essentially a "tell me this one thing about your personal world" thread and then complaining when others do the same?

“When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

And can we send her to India with it?
 
No, scratch that... they're dealing with enough grief already.

Fine then....the fact that humanity thinks it's "fashionable" again less than 100 years later is still pretty depressing. We learn....nothing. Sigh...

The fact that humanity wants to do the fascism thing all over again...less than a 100 years later...just depresses me beyond belief.

I mentioned this before...the "girl power" scene was set up like a comic book splash page. If that isn't in genre....I don't know what is. A similar scene occurs in the first Avengers movie and nobody complains about how "forced" that is.

I'm pretty cool with just having the extra two months of peace of mind that I wouldn't have had if I'd waited until someone tried bribing me to get vaccinated.

Racism isn't limited to the South. My mother's family is from Pennsylvania and my father's from Alabama and in visiting both locales growing up, I can tell you I saw a heck of a lot more overt racism in Pennsylvania.

Man, I thought my ear hair needed trimming.
 

My Dad called me a couple of hours ago to tell me that Mom had died in the night. She'd been in a long-term care facility for a few weeks, then moved to a hospital. When the therapists came in to get her up and going this morning, she was gone.
 
No word yet on cause of death--she'd been undergoing treatment for heart issues, muscular atrophy, and blood chemistry imbalances--or funeral arrangements.
 
Prayers or similar are appreciated.

Captain Marvel isn't trying to realistically portray military pilots; it is very deliberately evoking the action movies of nineties including and especially Top Gun.  
 
By the end of the movie, she has regrounded herself by renewing her connection to those closest to her, has claimed her full power, has seen through the lies told to her, overcome her hatred of Skrulls and has set out to rescue the Skrull species from extermination.   That sounds like a Hero to me.

Charisma and likability are subjective.  I found her likable enough and a number of female movie critics whose reviews I read found her more likable and relatable than Wonder Woman.
 
As treating everyone except women like dirt, no.  The character that she forms the strongest bond with is Samuel Jackson's Nick Fury, who is very definitely male.  The people that she "treats like dirt" are those who try to push her around or take advantage of her.

Compare Danvers to Maverick in Top Gun. There's a lot of similarities in their arrogance and confidence. But it's okay for Maverick because he's a guy and not okay for Danvers?

When William Penn founded the colony of Pennsylvania, his two maiden aunts moved to Philadelphia. They were very independent ladies who refused to live upon their nephew’s largesse, but they were skilled bakers and they did allow him to set them up in a bakery from which they could support themselves. They did VERY well. In fact, they became very well known, and not just in Pennsylvania. They had customers in the neighboring colonies, as well, and they were especially renowned for the quality of their pies. What they DIDN’T know was that he also quietly instructed the colonial governor to exempt their bakery from any taxes. As a result, they were able to sell their wares more cheaply, and while this was good news for them and their customers, it was terrible news for anyone else who hoped to open a competing bakery. Indeed, most would-be bakers quickly realized they simply couldn’t compete at all. Without a comparable tax break, they could never hope to match the pie rates of Penn’s aunts.

Louisiana Department of Health confirms 2 cases of coronavirus variant first detected in India

"And I'd have gotten away with it too, if those meddling kids hadn't stepped on me with their van!"

I think that the article shows a lack of understanding of the breadth of the security field, focusing only on auditors.  Auditors monitor/check to ensure compliance with security policy.  Security policy is based on best practices and is intended to protect an organization from the human factor -- legitimate users who are compromised.  This is an important (and very difficult) area to protect....but is far from the whole of security.
 
Auditors do not (and are generally not qualified to) check for vulnerabilities within the systems that their security policies are looking to protect.  Again, their security policies look to protect from the human factor -- George down in finance browses to the wrong site (or clicks the wrong link, etc.) on a corporate system....that kind of thing.
 
Hackers (ethical or otherwise) look for and exploit vulnerabilities both at the software/hardware level and the wetware level -- whatever is going to get the access that they are looking for.  Security policies will help to keep the legitimate users of a given system from unintentionally providing that access, but that's an extremely tall order and not even half of the battle.  An organization needs to know (and fix or at least isolate) the vulnerabilities at a software and hardware level in their systems...and for many, that's a very expensive and invasive proposition. Companies like Colonial Pipeline have systems that were designed a LONG time ago, generally jerry rigged into providing networked/internet access.  Security policies that are properly designed and implemented can help to limit the extent of a given breach, but don't really address the underlying vulnerabilities that may have lead to the breach in the first place. This doesn't devalue them, it just means that they're only part of the solution.

I'd like to demonstrate the mentality of the target audience of that article so you can see exactly why it was written and why The Hill chose it to be good enough to publish.
 
This is a real exchange in the comments of the article.
 
 
Me: Doing the "holistic view" thing is highly needed. If you can't trust your IT guy to have access to your system, you aren't doing a good job of hiring IT guys. And they need to look at the system whenever and wherever they think there might be a need to.
 
On the other hand, blackballing someone from ever working again in the entire industry because they happened to work at a place which had a security breach is beyond stupid. The person you're interviewing likely wasn't in charge of implementing policy at his business. That's like refusing to ever hire a Volkswagen mechanic because the Volkswagen company for years covered up how much their diesel engines polluted. (The mechanic didn't set company policy, didn't participate in the coverup, and almost certainly had no idea that anything inappropriate was happening because there was no way for him to access that kind of information.)
 
Joe: Why on earth would you hire someone who already destroyed security somewhere else? This is a good suggestion.
 
Me: That "someone" will generally be working with a dozen or dozens of other people.
If they pin a security breech to George, don't hire George.
 
But if George is doing everything humanly possible at his task but someone else fails at their task, don't punish George for it.
 
Take this pipeline thing. Okay there's a breech. You fire all the people and they lose all hope of ever working at anything to do with computers ever again.
 
You hire a whole new staff.
 
There's another breech so you fire all of those people.
 
Who the hell is going to be willing to work for you regardless of what you offer to pay them? People who are so bad that they absolutely can't get a job anywhere else? People who are so desperate for money that they'll do anything (yeah, that's a good person to put in charge of your sensitive data). And geezers who are so close to retirement that if they lose all hope of ever working in the industry again, that it makes no difference (and good luck if they're at the top of their game rather than hopelessly out of date).
 
The pipeline HAS TO WORK. But you're guaranteeing that it's going to fail because they can't hire good people to work for them because working for the pipeline is a sure career killer.
Now let's look at the long-term effects.
 
Why would you go to college and study to get into that field when the first mistake by any of your co-workers will make you permanently unemployable? The answer is: you wouldn't.
 
People who were talented would avoid getting into that field because they could do literally anything else and have a better chance at a career. So the pool of people who would be willing to do that kind of work would keep shrinking from few new people wanting to get into it and from anyone with any sense trying to get out of it and do anything else before they get blackballed.
 
That's EXACTLY what you DON'T want to happen.
 
You need the best and brightest to be eager to get into the field rather than setting up the field to be so hostile that they want to avoid it at all costs.
 
Joe: Who cares about their schooling? If this profession is causing the problems why would you want to hire them anyway? Even if they have not caused a breach, they are a den of idiots. Why not go with engineers who know how to lock down systems?