Pattern Ghost

Legends' campiness was great. At least they managed to have fun and not wallow in too much CW angst.

9 hours ago, Pariah said:

Wow. Just ... wow.

 

"Snowflake Mountain" Isn’t Just Pandering to Viewers on the Right. It’s Also Hinting at Where Netflix May Be Headed

While the trailer is barf worthy, I think that Time writer needs to take some implicit bias training.

This isn't a new concept. Outward Bound has been doing it for years.

Teaching self sufficiency, and improving self esteem through showing someone they can do something they didn't think they were capable of isn't some novel, extremist concept.

The Time writer can also F *** right off on her opinions about military veterans. We're people who served, that's it. There's a whole lot of diversity under the umbrella of military veteran.

The show is just being puerile garbage and playing off of generational conflict to promote itself. Nothing new there. Just don't watch it and move along. They have entire categories on Netflix that are the polar opposite of this, so I'm not seeing it as "hinting" at anything. That's just the Time writer sinking to the same level as Netflix.

I tend to view any TV/streaming show through the lens of Sturgeon's Law: 90% of anything is garbage. With shows, you then need to apply Sturgeon's Law to the remaining 10% and feel lucky if you find something that's not awful to watch. Fortunately, given the volume of material available, you can usually find something you like. So, ignore the rest IMO.

Found some talent on a talent show. I suspect this young lady may have a career in music ahead of her:

4 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

Thanks for saving me the effort.

I'm curious: If you were to make one big change to our system, what would it be? No limitations. You snap your fingers, it's done. I'm in favor of getting the big money out of government in the hopes of getting actual public servants in office. What's yours?

4 hours ago, Old Man said:

So you’re just against making changes to laws then.

I guess I'm against the Golden Rule (He who has the gold makes the rules.)

However, I didn't say all laws, did I? I said "sweeping changes," not all changes.

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1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

You do realize that Big Money has been in politics probably since TV became the dominant medium, right?  And that the partisan gulf that's replaced stewardship dates back to Limbaugh, then largely locked in with Gingrich?

No, I've been sleeping this whole time. Thanks for the update. 😁

1 hour ago, Ragitsu said:

regulation/control and general societal improvement go hand in hand

Up to a point. It's important to curb some of our baser tendencies, of course.

Then there's the question of who writes the laws. Currently, it's big business, whether directly or via PACs.

I'm against making any sweeping changes to our fundamental laws until we get big money out of our politics and get some politicians who actually want to make changes based on responsible stewardship instead of campaign contributions and high paying post-retirement gigs.

Do they allow you to use the generated images for anything other than personal use?

13 hours ago, Dr.Device said:

Character portrait for the above Warlock

Um, I'm not sure how to tell you this, but your Warlock seems to have serious cataracts in one eye and a blown out pupil in the other. Should probably get her to an eye cleric. 😁

On a more serious note, that's some pretty cool stuff, I'm going to go check this thing out.

On 9/10/2022 at 7:50 AM, batguy said:

I See what you mean,i hope another game company gets the role-playing game rights to the dc comics characters soon

There was a DC version of the Mutants and Masterminds rules, but it was short-lived. They did produce a few books that you could probably still get second hand.

11 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah I went into the local game store and they have tons of board games, card games, etc, and a corner with RPG stuff.  Depressing, really.

I think board games are the hot thing now, driven by the popularity of the Euro style games in recent years. Unfortunately, they do have more mass appeal than RPGs. D&D continues to be the only thing the general public thinks of when it comes to RPGs, leaving the rest of the industry in an even smaller niche within a niche. ☹️

37 minutes ago, BNakagawa said:

One Brother? (You never refer to an only child as a brother...)

Maybe the other sibling is married, or a sister?

Or in Westeros . . . the sister is the bride

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.

25 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

Two wrongs don't make a right?

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.

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I don't question that at all. What I was referring to was the mythology of the legions of American revolutionary patriots with a stack of guns at the ready, eager to support the independence of their nascent country, driving out the British all on their own; or the rugged cowboy taming the West, dispensing rough frontier justice by virtue of his lightning-fast six-shooter; or the Hollywood vigilante taking the law into his own hands to take out the "bad guys," however those bad guys are defined. The kind of image the Second Amendment fanatics like to extol and try to pattern themselves after, not realizing that a lot of that was just marketing.

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

10 minutes ago, Old Man said:

We’re all aware that the Oath Keepers are ironically named, thanks. 

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?

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

But the historical record illustrates that wasn't always the case, and that said mythology has been promulgated by parties with a vested interest in promoting it, and the savvy to popularize it.

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.

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

Gun possession in itself feels like it creates an escalation mindset, not a de-escalation one.

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.

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

The uncomfortable conclusion is that legal gun owners are the problem.

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.

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

But in exercising their fearful “right” to arm themselves they are in reality endangering themselves along with the rest of us. 

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.

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

You protect the weak and disabled by building a society with enough respect for law and rights, and sufficient control of the means of violence, that incidents like the one we're talking about are very rare. I live in one.

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.

38 minutes ago, Starlord said:

Beyond that, do you have kids and/or close family that works in a school? 

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.

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Maybe she can twerk some more, to bring Wong back.

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

40 minutes ago, Starlord said:

living in the only country in the solar system where one needs to fear gun violence on a constant, everyday basis.

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.

29 minutes ago, BNakagawa said:

Arming the vulnerable is just arming predators with an extra step involved.

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?