archer

I think dice pools are a pain in the butt. I'm amazed at the number of people who can't glance at 6d6 and add up the number quickly in their heads. So increasing the number of times everyone has to roll a large number of dice plus increasing the number of dice isn't appealing to me.

Ever wonder what happened to him? He tried to steal Hannakah and Kwanza also and is now serving a life sentence in Stronghold courtesy of California’s three strikes law. Justice is served.

Good Lord, you might have just revolutionized my life!

You can take a nice, normal person, make him the boss, and 70%+ of the time he'll turn into a jerk.

Who says anyone wants it to turn out well?

Booster Gold - The new gold standard for comic book mentors Raven - No one has more dimensions than her. Been to more dimensions than her? Has more demon scions than her? More demons in her? Lockjaw - Lockjaw, Lockheed, Loch Ness? A solid lock on third place. Kitty Pryde - Do kitties really have pride? Not according to YouTube cat videos I've seen. Colossus - At least he's the one X-Man who knows how to iron his pants .

Federal judge lifts last of injunctions against Trump's transgender military ban. https://thehill.com/policy/defense/433106-federal-judge-lifts-last-of-injunctions-against-transgender-military-ban In case anyone gets into a discussion in the next couple of days with someone who insists that being transgendered means that the person is mentally ill, this article gives a fairly good layman's description of how and why that isn't medically true. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/10/19/becoming-nicole/?utm_term=.d392e70d37f2

Even with the IRS having taken less money from each paycheck throughout the year, tax refunds on average are slightly larger this year than last year. https://thehill.com/policy/finance/433127-irs-average-tax-refund-up-22-compared-to-last-year Time for a very, very tiny cheer.

Thanks for the information. Yeah, I looked up all the metals which were liquid at room temp. I noticed gallium and laughed at the idea of cesium. But either are probably preferable to mercury, which I understand can leech out of the coal which is found in nature. I was envisioning their scheme turning into hundreds of unintended new toxic waste dumps. I looked at other schemes to remove CO2 from the air and they all suffer to some extent from the problem of getting the CO2 from being dispersed throughout the atmosphere to being physically near the contraption which is supposed to suck it from the air. I still think the best way to approach this is going to turn out to be lower tech than all these as yet uninvented inventions 1) stop slash-and burn agriculture in Asia, Africa, and South America 2) stop the destruction of the rain forest in the Amazon 3) plant fast-growing trees in deforested areas which haven't been converted to other purposes 4) encourage tree growth in urban areas 5) find some way of stopping China from their out-of-control production of concrete (I'll spare everyone the rant) 6) stop agriculture subsidies since they encourage people to convert forests into crop lands 7) give every home its own green power generation system whether solar, wind, geothermal, etc. which would cut fossil fuel demand at power plants, reduce power transmission losses, and make people see that switching to an electric or hybrid car would make economic sense for them. As people voluntarily switch to electric cars, the burning of fossil fuels for transportation would drop drastically. (BTW, that's part of my Green New Deal...not that anyone has ever listened. I love the phrase "Green New Deal". If I'd thought of it and used it, maybe someone in politics or the media would have listened.)

I think they could have mined the character for a couple of more seasons by dumping a lot of the supporting cast (which would incidentally cut production costs), having him working outside of the Star City setting, and having to develop more trick arrows to help deal with a wider variety of opponents and the lack of a support team. But I can understand why they don't want to go in that direction. The writers could have ended several of the last few seasons after the first or second episode if someone on Team Arrow would have just killed the main bad guy when it first became clear that he was a huge continuing threat rather than choosing to let him get away while knowing the bad guy was going to continue to rack up a huge body count. Since the people on Team Arrow regularly kill massive numbers of bad guys, it's never made sense to me when they've chosen to not kill the main bad guy after mowing down dozens of people while attempting to get close to him.

I'm afraid to see Shazam. Batman movies were successful by being dark, grim, and gritty. Then DC's movie branch decided that the reason people liked superhero movies was that they were "dark, grim, and gritty" and made every scene in every DC superhero movie "dark, grim, and gritty" whether it should have been or not. They mostly came out of that poisonous thinking with Wonder Woman but that thinking definitely tainted every Batman movie, Batman vs Superman and Suicide Squad. Now they're giving us a Shazam with a superhero who acts like a juvenile and where scenes are played for laughs. I don't want DC's movie branch to decide that the reason people like superhero movies is that "superheroes act like juveniles and that every scene should be played for laughs". I don't trust that their next "blockbuster" movie and the next few movies after that might revert back to the campy 1960's Batman TV styling if Shazam turns out to be a hit. DC seems to think that there's a secret style formula for successful superhero movies and once they identify that style that they'll be able to crank out movies matching that formula. But if you look at Marvel movies, they do a tortured monster movie, a narcissist inventor movie, a classic ensemble superteam movie, a political thriller, an outer space sci--fi movie, etc. There's no set "formula" for Marvel, just enough good movies being being written to carry the few movies which aren't so well-written. DC is flailing around and I'm afraid that a successful Shazam movie might prolong the flailing rather than end it. I can tolerate every movie being inappropriately dark, grim, and gritty better than I can tolerate every movie having heroes who act like juveniles and every scene played for laughs.

There's also apparently nothing in the Texas guidelines for ethical conduct of judges which would prevent him from taking that action, no matter how unethical his action might appear to everyone. That loophole in the guidelines needs to be addressed. I don't really mind when a juror digs his heels in and refuses to convict because he just isn't feeling the person is guilty. That's one of the known flaws of having a jury composed of normal people and it's the responsibility of the prosecution and defense teams to do their best to weed out potential jurors who refuse to rule based strictly on the evidence presented. I'm no longer eligible to serve on any juries. But back when I was, I'd have had to admit that I'd have a difficult time convicting someone of something that I didn't think should be a crime or impossible to convict where the government blatantly violated the Constitution (drug possession, someone arrested for "public drunkenness" because the police asked him to step from the interior of his home where it was legal for him to be drunk to his front porch where he's technically in "public", questionable searches, anything involving metadata). But being a judge is a vastly different role than being a juror, not the least thing being that a judge is supposed to act like a professional. The judge in this case recused himself during sentencing rather than giving the lightest sentence possible in order to protest the jury's decision, which is more than I would have expected from his actions in the first part of the story.

Booster Gold Lockjaw Hercules Krypto Raven

What if the stripper were to go into labor and I didn't notice in time? I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies!

Ummm...I tend to watch strippers very closely?

Marvel and DC each have a villain named "Holocaust". Marvel's Holocaust is a genocidal maniac whose goal seemed to be to extinguish all life on Earth. DC's Holocaust (acquired when they purchased Milestone Comics and integrated those characters into the DC universe) has nothing to do with Jews or genocide but instead he has fire powers (which I presume relates his name to the original meaning of the word "holocaust").

Yeah, that was her. I thought she had the most growth potential of any of the characters other than the captain or the first officer. I was sad to see her go. Part of the Orville experience is supposed to poke fun at the Star Trek meme that humankind will automatically become more enlightened just because some time has passed. Honestly, we've come a long way on stuff like slavery but we haven't gone very far on adults not acting like juveniles and people still by-and-large get a kick out of low brow humor. If people today read through Shakespeare, they'd recognize all the same comedic elements still being used in modern humor. I'd imagine that humor will still be funny in the future and be a big part of human culture, that romance will still be messy and working through dating will still be a large part of the culture, etc. The Orville's humor is certainly it-or-miss with me. But humor is always it-and-miss when people use it in real life (as opposed to being spoon fed professionally-written humor on the typical scripted TV show). I take a lot of the character's attempt to be funny to the other characters (rather than attempting to be funny to the audience) as being "the guy in your office who thinks he's a lot funnier than he really is". That's a touch of realism in a show which doesn't deal a lot in reality. I found staging a dance contest rather than a gunfight to be funny. I didn't find Mr. Potato Head to be funny but I went along with it because it was in character for the guy who used it as part of a prank.

I'd wondered about that as well. My ideas: 1) The Kaylons obviously have limited mobility and flexibility compared to biological humanoids. It could be that the Kaylon haven't figured out how to significantly alter themselves without causing massive problems (certainly the Isaac model displays no substantial visible design upgrades to the normal Kaylon's very limited version of a humanoid body). We know that their bodies aren't airtight so it could be, for example, that they require a heat sink for their power system and use airflow for that. Wearing a spacesuit would make them even less mobile than they are now. Going without a spacesuit could be hard on their components (radiation, heat, cold, etc.) or interfere with their cooling system. Just because they're a mechanical lifeform doesn't necessarily mean that they've spent points in Life Support or operating easily in other environments. They're obviously designed to function in something close to normal Earth gravity. As awkward as they appear in that gravity, I have a hard time believing they wouldn't be the same or worse in lower gravity environments. Humans, on the other hand, seem to get adapt to be able to function in low gravity environments fairly well (if you ignore the long term health effects)...so it could be that the idea of "anyone should be able to adapt to functioning easily in a different environment" is an entirely human-centric way of looking at the universe and doesn't always match reality. 2) Hyper-smart doesn't always mean "reacts well to change" (yes, I'm playing the Sheldon Cooper card). Leaving aside the potential psychological problems which might come from experiencing change, if the Kaylon have been stuck on one planet for most of their history, their entire industrial infrastructure could be based on functioning in normal gravity, normal air pressure, normal temperature, etc. If that's true, any change to that would mean either a complete redesign of their technology so that it would function in every environment or choosing to accept have non-standardized technology. Sure, they're smart enough to do either and probably could muster the resources to do either. But are they motivated to do either when they feel the need to wipe out biologicals anyway and there'll soon be empty planets everywhere? I thought it was interesting that the Kaylon made the decision to construct their war fleet on the surface of their planet when most space design philosophies our culture has at the moment would suggest that construction in zero gravity or low gravity for most things would be more efficient. That could be a combination of bad writing and a limited budget for the show. Or it might be a look into the mindset or technological limitations of the Kaylon culture.

I really, really like code names and secret identities. But you get a lot of names in comics like The Thing, Mr. Fantastic, Triplicate Girl, etc. which seem pretty lame when I step back and think about it. Even "Dr. Doom" would seem pretty lame for the leader of a small Balkan kingdom if it were the name of a new character rather than being a name I've had so many decades to get used to. Players can be hit-and-miss on names for their PC's as well. A lot of times it seems like they come up with a cool name which they want to use, regardless of the character's background or powers. Then they separately come up with a background and powers which they're desperate to build but which has no connection to that name. But they squash the name onto the character anyway because they want to use both that name and that power set right now, even if it doesn't make any sense. I think the Wild Cards universe works without the code name/secret identity paradigm because most of the characters with superpowers are neither superheroes nor supervillains. People might have a code name in that universe but it usually is used as a form of self-promotion (Peregrine) or description (Snotman, Radical, etc.) rather than an attempt to maintain a secret ID. I also am a big fan of costumes for superheroes and supervillains rather than them running around in civilian clothes but that's a different subject.

I find that I'm not particularly fond of a lot of superbeing names. But since other people are making those names choices, I just chalk it up to everyone in the world except me being weird.

Or buy access to HBO rather than wait for it to randomly give away a free weekend then hope they also have Game of Thrones scheduled.

But none of them went into labor....

The theater we go to now has reclining seats that are better than most recliners in furniture stores. And they let you see which seats are already sold and buy seats which aren't close to where anyone else is sitting. We generally go to the first showing of the day on a weekday and rarely have to deal with kids, even during the summer. One of the nice things about movie theaters is that they generally blare the sound loudly enough that I can hear what everyone is saying, even over the soundtrack and background noise.

His power makes it difficult for him to sit on the furniture.