Pattern Ghost

In Enemy Within, Kirk's bad half and good half are split apart into two Kirks by a transporter accident. Bad Kirk brutally attempts to rape Yeoman Janice Rand. At the end of the episode, Spock quips, "The imposter had some . . . interesting qualities . . . wouldn't you say, Yeoman?" So, you be the judge. As far as Discovery, they didn't really make any point of demonizing Spock that I could see. Other than saddling him with an adopted sister. Considering it was a massive ret-con, I think it was pretty well done. The animosity the siblings have kind of accounts for why Spock never really mentions her in TOS. And they all settle things amicably in the end. Sarek also comes off as a loving father, even.

Just finished Enemy Within. Spock's a dick. (Re: His quip at Rand at the end.)

A while back, I almost TASEd a guy at work. This guy was on an ambulance gurney, with two medics flanking him. Pulls a closed folding knife out. The attendants grab him by each hand, and scream "KNIFE!" I ran around the corner, assessed the situation, saw that I had no real option to disarm the guy due to the one medic having a death grip on the subject's wrist and hand, keeping the fist closed, so drew the TASER. The rest is a blur, mostly. I tunneled on the laser dot on the guy's belly, ordered him to drop the knife, did not hear the reply, did not see the knife drop or have one of the medics call clear . . . then I shouted TASER! TASER! TASER! and moved my finger to the trigger. Fortunately, I saw the knife hand was empty when the motion from the medics jumping back drew my attention. I held the shot, asked if they got the knife, and they had. The recording was corrupted, but part of it was the guy saying he wasn't going to hurt anyone except himself. The entire thing was over in the blink of an eye from my perspective. Fortunately, I didn't have to fire (more paperwork), but it shows how fast things go from a shout about a weapon, to action. Which is why you don't bust out of your door with a weapon in hand when the police knock on it. Or anyone. That guy could have been taken out the same way by a pipe wrench, really.

No, but you play stupid games you win stupid prizes. Whether or not "victim blaming" leaves a bad taste in the mouth, that man contributed to his own death. To only look at the police side of the equation is to fail to learn a lesson in how to safely conduct oneself with a firearm, and when dealing with the police. The department in question has a pretty negative reputation that seems well earned, so I'm not exonerating them by pointing this out. That's just one more reason not to be foolish around jumpy people with guns, and who outnumber you, and who have you outflanked and also have armor and radios.

Just finished the first four episodes of TOS. I'm kind of surprised they didn't title the show "ESPers Attack!" At least they change gears to swashbuckling Sulu in the 5th episode.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but . . . that is a stupid way to answer your door. If he was afraid it may not be the police, he could have asked one of them to step into view, or barring that, called 911 and verified whether they dispatched someone. Barring all that, if he's going to answer anyway, he could have peaked out the door with the gun holstered out of sight, then said, "Hang on a minute, let me get a shirt," and closed and locked the door, stowed the weapon, then went and talked to them. Guns aren't magic charms. Stepping right out your door with a gun in your hand when you can't see what is out there will get you killed whether it's the police or the criminals you're afraid of. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy wasn't a bit impaired by alcohol or something else at the time, because that was colossally stupid judgement. I honestly don't think this was a bad shoot per se. The guy yanked the door open and took a step toward the officer's partner with a gun in hand. The shooter started drawing and going into a practiced sequence of movements as he was issuing the command. There's that reactionary gap in play. Experts can suss it out, but this isn't cut and dry. Edit: Of course, this isn't to say that the cops aren't callous pieces of trash: From this article on the shooting:

IIRC, I believe the Gabbard attack was addressed in the article linked by Cygnia here. The upshot: It wasn't so much as win for Gabbard as it was a strategic error in refusing to discuss the topics by Harris, because Gabbard was distorting the facts:

I think the biggest things Harris has to overcome are her lack of transparency as a DA, and the perception of her as someone who flip flops on issues. I'd never heard any of the issues in the above article raised before, aside from the truancy thing. (Which the article had right: She was trying to target a root cause, or symptom of one, in that case.) She wouldn't have been my first pick, but I'm going to enjoy watching her destroy Pence in the coming debates.

Well, now I know what's worse than a lower back injury. A lower back injury combined with gallbladder surgery. The doc poked five holes in me yesterday, then yanked my gallbladder out through my belly button. The little bastard deserved it, though. It spent four days trying to kill me before I went to the ER. So, there's another month out of work, back injury notwithstanding. Bleh.

Grueny pigs! Makes me nostalgic. We used to call them that for the Grunewald Forest in Berlin. One of my friends got out of his patrol car to take a picture of some piglets . . . and got chased back to his car by the mom. Who rammed the door so hard it caved in. If he hadn't had a partner that day, nobody would have believed he didn't get into a car accident. I have many Gruney Pig Tales. Fun times.

That's what I like about these boards, the clean humor.

They'd get a hearty "This is Spartaaaa!" from me.

You know, Karnak and Karate Kid are the two poster children in comics for Find Weakness. Does anyone know if they've ever failed to Find Weakness after studying an opponent? If not, then the opponent can't resist them, so no defensive side to worry about. You could just add damage dice with activation rolls, with a custom advantage that I'll just call Cascading for the heck of it. Cascading: If this activation roll fails, no further Cascading activation rolls permitted. So, you could have +2 DCs of damage on a 14-, +2 more DCs of damage on an 11-, and +2 more DCs on an 8-. If you make the first roll, you get +2DCs, then roll the second roll. If you pass that roll, you're up to +4DCs but if you fail it, you only get the +2DCs, etc. If you blow the first roll, you're out of luck. The numbers were randomly selected. You could do increasing DCs as the activation rolls decrease, pick different activation roll cut offs, such as starting higher or lower and changing up increments, etc. This isn't going to work out mathematically equal to Find Weakness, but some tweaking of the numbers involved based on campaign limits could make it feel pretty close, I think. It's essentially an easily-pushed power. Which is what it is in the comics in practice.

Sometimes, he just says stuff for the laughs. I found some of the other material more interesting. Like 1950's Karen at 21:20. Washington, though, was also one of those opposed to abolishing slavery when the Constitution was originally drawn up.

NSFW Language Warning, but worth a watch:

Zoo (Netflix) Seasons 1-3. Pretty bad, full of Hollywood-isms, but I kind of liked it anyway. Third and final season really jumped the shark, and also had a cliffhanger ending. I guess they didn't foresee their inevitable demise. Premise is animals evolving in unexpected ways, and turning on humanity, so it's a pretty good watch if you're nostalgic for killer animal movies from the 80s. Umbrella Academy (Netflix) Season 2. Easier to follow than Season 1. Pretty decent, but the new has worn off compared to Season 1.

And sometimes younger people go off on tirades at the least provocation. Reading this article, I think we may have a case of a little bit of both: https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/george-rr-martin-hugo-awards/ So far, I'm seeing him mispronouncing names, even though he was supposed to have had been provided a pronunciation guide. The horror. Then he's being accused of ". . . continually name-dropped John W. Campbell, a writer who had a Hugo Award named after him until 2019, when the title was changed to the Astounding Award on the heels of a scathing speech given by winner Jeannette Ng." Ng, apparently, gave a damning speech condemning Campbell as a fascist, while accepting the award named for him. Here's an excerpt from said speech, from the linked article: “John W. Campbell, for whom this award was named, was a fascist,” Ng said at the time. “Through his editorial control of Astounding Science Fiction, he is responsible for setting a tone of science fiction that still haunts the genre to this day. Sterile. Male. White. Exalting in the ambitions of imperialists and colonisers, settlers and industrialists." I don't have any polite words for this nonsense. I'll say that the reason the best new writer Hugo was named after Campbell was that he was noted for nurturing new talent. I corresponded briefly with him before he passed, just asking a question about his book on fiction writing, and found him to be polite and generous with his time. Didn't seem too bad for an old white guy. I just found out from this article that his name was removed from the reward, and I'm fairly disgusted by that. So, I'm thinking this may be a bit on each side. Martin likely knew Campbell and possibly regarded him as a mentor or at least respected him as predecessor -- and keep in mind, Martin has a TON of editing projects under his belt, and up until AOIAF, was better known for editing -- so, I can see him being a bit annoyed. And I see a hell of a lot of hypersensitivity in that word diarrhea from Ng. You'll notice that article has a lot of interpretations of what Martin meant, but no direct quotes from Martin's speech. To me, that's a pretty big red flag. But what do I know, I'm just an old white guy. Here's an article by Cory Doctorow on Campbell's racism and weirdness. Much better context than the Ng speech, which was brief: https://locusmag.com/2019/11/cory-doctorow-jeannette-ng-was-right-john-w-campbell-was-a-fascist/ So, it looks like Ng was right. I still would like to see these things in Campbell's words, but haven't been able to dig them up. Doctorow has been in the field for long enough to be a trusted source, though. I think there's still a lot of hypersensitivity here (decrying colonialism, etc. in a genre about exploration and yes, colonial expansion which used to be pretty mainstream fare), but Doctorow gives some solid examples that cast Campbell in a bad light, especially on matters of race.

Whoever wrote that headline needs to learn to use punctuation.

The reason was that the trial was in the same city that he bombed. Which is a fair call, to be honest. I'd just as soon leave it up to the aggrieved community, but our system is supposed to try to be as neutral as possible and have decisions made on the facts of a case rather than emotion.

Finished Season 1 of All Rise. Still mediocre, but some good performances. I like the cast, don't like the show much. I'll probably keep watching it as a guilty pleasure. Watched The Magicians, Season 4 (Netflix). Pretty good. The usual off color humor and dialog, and hairy situations. Has fallen into a pattern. Still liking it, but thinking that ending it with Season 5 (not on Netflix yet, but has aired on SyFy) was probably a good call.

There are plenty of supporting documents from the time of the writing of the Constitution to clarify the intent behind the document's wording. I think the biggest issue is that a revision would require an immense level of control by one party or the other. I don't know if I'd like a revision framed by a single, and these days likely extremist, viewpoint, no matter which side of the aisle it fell to.

Not all laws are secular. 😉

Finished Season 2 of Discovery. Actually liked it a lot. Upped their game from Season 1, really enjoyed the cast dynamics. Watching All Rise, a few episodes in. Courtroom drama/feel good show starring Simone Missick. Writing is pretty bad, but I like Missick and some ot the other cast members (Reggie Lee from Grimm in a supporting role, and the girl that played Gypsy on Flash). I really don't recommend this one, but I'm watching it anyway.