Pattern Ghost

The video looked like it had them in their regular IDs instead of disguised as new heroes, more Suicide Squad than Thunderbolts style. Here's the roster: Val (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) Red Guardian (David Harbour) Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell) Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) Seems odd to omit Zemo, since he's been introduced in the MCU and used multiple times recently.

Cobra Kai Season 5 (Netflix): Still good, but not the best season. Still, had plenty of good bits, and some character development. Chozen was great. I suspect they'll wrap it up next season, though I've read that they plan to do spin off shows. Morbius: Good cast, good visuals with the makeup and CGI. Overall, not a bad screen adaptation of the character in those regards. Story was pedestrian, predictable and boring.

But three rights make a left.

Just saw Thor Love and Thunder on Disney Plus. I don't think it earned its ending. If they'd spent more time with Gorr, perhaps it might have. Didn't feel like it had a substantial through line. The levity is fine, but needs to be tempered with some more serious character moments. Gorr might have been better introduced over multiple movies, TBH.

Condolences to our friends over in the UK and Canada.* *and Australia. 😃 Sorry, Seeker fans, was trying to remember if you were also still under the monarchy and forgot to come back and fix it.

Yeah, people tend to forget their heroes were often actually quite the opposite.

You're welcome.

Well, the "oath" in "Oathkeeper" stands for the oath of enlistment to defend the country from all enemies foreign and domestic (with the emphasis on domestic), so . . . great investigative reporting?

Read Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee then get back to me on that one. I have ancestors who walked the Trail of Tears. Our violent expansion was quite violent. And frankly disgusting.

A few points to ponder: 1. Nobody* knows how to de-escalate. They aren't going to magically learn under the pressure of an assault, because they're unarmed. 2. Not every situation can be de-escalated. 3. Every time gun restrictions are loosened, someone makes an argument that it will lead to a massive uptake in violence, and that's not proven to be the case. 4. Advanced marksmanship isn't required for the tool to be effective. If someone is coming at you, they are making themselves a better target. If they are moving away from you (vast majority of people who have a gun pointed at them mid-crime), they are becoming less of a threat. *Mostly nobody. I'm commenting here on my observations of how bad people are in general at it, and uninformed. Just being a little hyperbolic for the sake of brevity. Only if you don't consider the vast majority of legal gun owners who aren't the problem, and fail to recall how many of these shooters were sold guns when the existing system should have prevented it, thus they weren't all "legally purchased" despite what the news may say (often in the same story.) But that doesn't negate your larger point that we shouldn't take the idea of restricting the firearms completely off the table. IMO, it's a matter of both making what we already have in place (early warnings/profiling, information systems for better background checks, police actually following current doctrine in confronting the shooter ASAP, schools not going into lockdown with "shelter in place" as their only instruction to faculty and students and skipping the "Run" part of "Run, Hide, Fight", etc.) work better, and looking at evidence-based measures regarding any firearms restrictions, rather than this "common sense" nonsense. The majority of politicians and general public do not have a good enough understanding of the issues to claim to have common sense about them. Instead, we get knee jerk reactions passed that don't really accomplish much. I'd say there's a matter of degree that you aren't considering. Remember the line, "my right to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose"? Or whatever variant? IMO, there's a middle ground that would possibly reduce casualties in a mass shooting event and not overly impinge on anyone's rights. Do with long guns (rifles, shotguns, carbines) what the English do with knives. Take it out of your home (swinging your fist, limited chance of negatively impacting the public) only with good reason (where you put the public at much greater risk, should you happen to be bent on killing, stupid, or accident prone). Police are then empowered to stop anyone with a long arm and assess them. Taking away all public carry, especially handguns, has been squelched by the Heller ruling, and they tend to be much less lethal. It's not as perfect a solution as simply banning everything, but you're going to need a massive cultural shift before that happens in this country, and we're not going to see that in our lifetimes. I think that low population density and less economic disadvantage also play into it. Also, not having a rebellion against your king, a civil war, and a war of conquest across your Western frontier in your cultural heritage probably also helps. I'm not sure there's an easy way to scale up the advantages that Canada enjoys over the US in these areas. It will take a significant number of generations to deal with the bloody cultural inheritance. Look at it this way: 1865: Slavery ends. 1968 (+103 years):I'm born, Civil Rights movement really kicks off. 2022: (+157 years): I turn 54, and our country is already backsliding. We're only a few generations out from the end of slavery in this country. Which is pretty damned disturbing when you do the math. My great grand parents were around during the slave era in this country. It may be too soon to expect us to start getting civilized. I do see hope in that the latest two "named" generations seem to be significantly less racist and prejudiced overall.

Nope, but I have a 9 year old niece. Before I moved to a consulting role for a friend's company, I received notices for local lockdowns for schools in the area, and other serious crimes. I've secured scenes or several times for shooting victims (gang members, all of them) coming into emergency rooms. Part of my new role is giving training to organizations, including Active Shooter response. It's pretty familiar territory. As far as random violence goes, I live in the Seattle metro area, and there has been an uptick as the homeless population has exploded. Not that homeless people are bad, per se, but when the local government refuses to prosecute any crimes and demoralizes and guts their police department, you also attract bad actors to the area. I've watched the local population become more and more violent with our security officers over the time I worked for the hospital. One of my friends who also worked managing hotel security had his director shot by a transient trespasser a bit over a week ago. A few years back, two guys I knew who worked at the gas station down the street for me were murdered by a recently released felon for trying to break up a fight between the felons and some construction workers. Before that, we had a shoot out in the parking lot of our apartment between two Russian gangs, resulting in several injured and two dead. All that said . . . I don't walk around in fear of gun violence. I don't carry a gun. I generally only carry weapons professionally, though I do always carry a small folding knife, so some people might see that as a weapon. I just like not using my teeth to open stuff, and don't view it as such. I'm also trained and experienced in de-escalation, some self defense (not a pro fighter by any means), crime prevention and situational awareness. Heck, I'm teaching the last two tomorrow. So, I admit I may be the odd man out. I still don't think that people who live a normal life and don't intentionally put themselves into bad situations on a regular basis have a great cause for concern. The lock downs are mostly idiots being idiots, to be honest. Either pranks or administrators vastly overreacting to situations. If we were better at early intervention, they'd be much less of a concern, IMO. Edit: I'm not saying this to in any way diminish your concerns or fears. I'm just sharing my perspective, and hope you find some small value in it.

It seems to be the product of a distracted and disorganized mind. Perhaps not the target audience for Hero? "There is no base mechanic. " I think this is the most telling comment. And it's not all the author's fault, though they didn't even bother to mention what version of the game they're playing at the point they make this statement*, so I'm sure it's at least partly their fault. But, are the base mechanics hidden under the examples in some editions? Or too far in the back? (I don't know, really. I haven't picked up the books in a while and done an actual front to back read through.) So, there may be something in the presentation of the material to look at. I suspect this is a case of a poor reader not being serviced by rules that are a bit heavy in presentation in some editions. Also sounds like someone raised on modern "narrative" RPGs.** (I put "narrative" in scare quotes, b/c Champions was the first game I remember that actually had rules to give players and GMs story hooks. I was amazed by this, when I first saw limitations and advantages in 3rd (or 2nd?) edition.) *The author mentions Fred, but doesn't actually state what edition they're reviewing. The complaints about the level of detailed examples in the rules seem to be more of a 6th thing to me, though. **Plot twist: After reading to the end, it seems like they're familiar with some older systems, but have a preference for rules light systems. Which hero kind of is, if you boil it down, but most new players don't view it that way.

Twerking isn't very precise,what if she gets the wong number?

Do we need to? We have a problem with criminal on criminal violence, mass shootings, some domestic violence and some stranger on stranger violence, usually criminal on victim. In general, there's no great need to walk around in fear all the time. It's wasted mental energy. That won't sooth those who are genuinely worried, of course, but it's the truth. I think the first step is to work on the underlying issues around each category, measure the results, refine them. The tools are less important, but sure, go ahead and look at them. But first, try to remove the motivation to kill. There are areas who have had great success, for example, with gang violence, but other metros don't attempt to duplicate their methods. Mass shooters for the most part exhibit similar warning flag behaviors, but police and social services don't follow up when those are brought to their attention. Why don't we have crisis intervention teams investigate these people, and sit them down and talk to them? Give them a chance to vent their issues in a safer manner, at the least. Then there's political violence, which now is a thing again in this country after that lovely gathering on January 6th. I don't see any simple solutions there. That's the violence that concerns me the most at the moment, and largely because I lack faith in our parties to let cooler heads prevail. Even if we lock up a certain ex-president, he'll just spew his rhetoric from prison and likely gain influence rather than lose it.

Do you have any direct evidence that this is a widespread problem? No anecdotes, because I can toss out press clippings of elderly and infirm people running off or shooting attackers all day. Where's the evidence that vulnerable people are having their guns stolen on a widespread basis enough to impinge on their rights?

It went out of print, then got bought by Pulsar games, who turned it into Blood of Heroes and replaced the DC stuff with house setting stuff. It changed hands a while back, and I think has remained out of print. Someone should probably buy the rights to the MEGS system, then build a better game around it. Here's a Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_of_Heroes_(role-playing_game)

I tend to go with Teamwork, Tactics, Oratory and Persuasion for Leader type characters to start. Sometimes Streetwise and/or High Society, depending on background.

Being bulky is only one possible special effect for a high Body or CON. IMO, Characteristics should be treated the same way as Powers with regards to SFX. To the larger point of combining traits just causing bookkeeping for the exceptions, I wholeheartedly agree. BESM/Tri-Stat was especially bad about this, if you cared about getting granular with your character building, since the stats were so broad.

This is 'Murica! Can't get the guns out of our politics or our politics out of our guns. Guns are the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups of political discussion.

Seems easy enough. Let's do that. Shouldn't take more than a long weekend, right?

House of the Dragon: So far, it's OK. Don't have much love left for the franchise at this point, but the wife wants to watch it. Acting is pretty decent, especially the young version of the main character and Matt Smith. Not looking forward to the time skip where they switch out the younger actresses, but crossing my fingers the older versions will be good. LotR: Rings of Power: So far, pretty good. Galadriel is good. Not too arsed about her being a warrior based on descriptions of her in the 2nd age in Tolkien, even if he never stated it outright. Diversity casting doesn't bother me, though I think they should hang a lantern on Nori and her mother (adopted? Harfoot genetics different from big folk?), loved Bronwyn's badassery moment. First episode was a little slow, but it looks like it's picking up steam pretty quick by the second. Purists have complained that they left out stuff from the Silmarilion. (Based on stuff I've seen on the web and YouTube.) That's because they don't have rights to the Silmarilion. The second age stuff is based on the appendices to LotR, and that leaves a LOT for the show writers to fill in. Never Have I Ever: Funniest thing I've seen in a long time. Main character is a very bad decision-maker. Drama bits are also satisfying. Great show. Hellbound: Korean show on Netflix. No major resolution in season 1 for the overarching situation, so if it doesn't get a season 2, we're going to be left hanging. Otherwise, good watch, just want more answers. Indian Matchmaking: God help me. You will know that Sima is from Mumbai by the end of this, if you have any brain cells left. Kind of one of those guilty pleasure things, minus the pleasure? Locke and Key: Latest, and final, season dropped recently. Good show, fair way to wrap it up, though IMO the weakest of the seasons. Overall, show is worth a watch, and better than I thought it would be based on trailers.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think it looks a lot better than the early trailers, but not quite as good as the movies. I don't expect movie budget FX in a TV show, and the rest of it has been good enough to push the issue to the background for me.

They're two different classes of events, and those classifications give context to an argument. To conflate them when constructing an argument is an error, IMO, so fair game to point out. Killing 10 people in one place in a short amount of time is vastly different than killing 10 people in several different places over a longer time. There have been mass stabbings that have exceeded this, and would qualify as mass murders, but this isn't one of them. IIRC, those all took place in confined spaces or in one case where the victims were small children. In any of those cases, a firearm would have been vastly more devastating. It's important to make good arguments when discussing these things, and that means accurate analogies, IMO. There's a reason that law enforcement does not defend against knives with less lethal options, and that reason applies equally to civilians, IMO. The police, whether obligated to or not (and the answer is "not" in this case), cannot possibly intervene in a use of force situation until it's over, unless they're standing right there when it starts. It's not unreasonable for civilians to have the means to present equal or superior force to defend themselves. For the record, I think it's a bad idea to conflate mass shootings and their causes, including the role of availability of firearms, with personal self defense. Taking measures against the tools of mass shooters can probably be done in a way that doesn't impinge too greatly on lawful firearms owners who wish to have the option for defense or recreation.

Bigger gun. You don't really need armor piercing bullets to get a through vest, just more speed with enough mass for the most part. Or an ice pick or sharp screwdriver, depending on the armor.

Papyrus font reminds me of the Civilization board game.