archer

Since most humans are stupid and the point of the test is to prove that you're human, I can only conclude that it's a timed test and that anyone taking too long thinking about it is definitely a robot.

We spent a LOT of money building schools, hospitals, police stations, electrical systems, water systems, etc. We spent loads more hiring and training police and military. Much of the problem was that there was an active enemy who was opposed to schools, hospitals, and police stations. They didn't seem to have as much problem with water or electricity. And they were violently opposed to police and military. Also we gave the Afghan government money to pay their soldiers. But there were consistent reports for years that pay didn't actually reach the soldiers either in full or on time. There were also scattered reports for years that the government deployed the military without food or water and without adequate amounts of ammunition. We did a lot of the right things for "nation-building" (if you believe in the concept). But the Afghan government wasn't cooperative in trying to run a functional country and the Taliban wasn't interested in having a functional country. When we went in originally, we put the last elected leader in Afghanistan back into power and let him form a government (he'd also been the leader of the Northern Alliance government-in-exile). That was fine in theory and would have been fine if our intent was to immediately declare victory and leave. But the guy was part of the old mujahedeen freedom fighter coalition which had kicked out the Soviets then formed a government and mismanaged it to the point that a bunch of religious students (Taliban) from Pakistan was able to come and oust them from power. Fighting skill is great and being a military leader is great. But that kind of leadership skill doesn't necessarily translate into skill in running a large bureaucracy in a country which has no tradition of an organized and competent government which the populace supports. Say what you will about the war era Germans and Japanese governments. But the concept of "a government which runs the whole country" had widespread support in both places. So replacing one government with another government was much easier there than trying in Afghanistan to replace loosely-organized chaos of Taliban rule with a competent government. When the Taliban took over in 1996, they were for the most part literally a bunch of kids. They had 16 and 17 year olds taking over and being senior government officials. Somewhere around 2010 I saw one of them in the news who after years of running their foreign affairs office had left Afghanistan behind to go to college in the west. He was 29 years old. Not when he took over the senior Taliban government post in 1996 but he was 29 when he was going to college in 2010. And the scary thing was that the people of Afghanistan by and large in 1996 thought that a government run by a pack of kids (from religious schools funded by Osama bin Laden) could do a better job running their country than their government was doing. The pack of kids proved the people of Afghanistan wrong. But the margin of competence between the two was very close. So when we invaded, we put the formerly elected bozo back into power. We didn't have much choice since he was the internationally-recognized leader of the country already. But that was the starting point that we had to work with: seven years of incompetent government by the mujahedeen from 1989-1996 then six years of incompetent government from 1996-2001 by primarily run by a bunch of kids who had no formal education beyond learning to read the Koran. That's not a large talent pool from which to draw competent government officials. /ramble

DC Fandom lists 1244 appearances by him in the comic books. That includes nine versions of him from possible futures. Their fan website always runs behind so the real number of comic books would be higher but call it 1244. It's fine to argue that he's only been in the business for 3 years but we've seen a hell of a lot of him. And this is a jarring change of direction from anything that we've seen. We expect a new villain every month but not a new personality trait. The original comment, or at least one of the first comments, of it seeming fake rather than organic was complaining that they didn't get diversity from creating a new character but from altering one that we know very well at this point. Take Marvel's Hulkling and his husband as an example of not making same-sex attraction seem like a last minute tack-on to a very-well established character. Sure, ultimately we don't own the characters and the writers/editors at DC can do whatever the hell they want with any of their characters at any time. But when they make their characters public, they're intentionally allowing us to form opinions about them. Getting back to your original point. most people who get into cross-dressing don't decide to start when they're a young teen either. But if Tim Drake out of the blue showed up for his next mission in high heels and a very stylish female costume, fans would complain about that too. It's not the high heels and stylish female costume that would be the problem but rather the sudden change with no foreshadowing that it'd be a possibility that it might happen. (At least the lack of foreshadowing would be the problem for most fans.) I'll admit that I don't know how to be a teenaged kid in the 2020's. But I doubt the first indication that someone who might be bi is accepting a date (rather than looking at someone's assets, for example). Comic books are a unique medium in that we get to read a character's innermost thoughts as well as see what he's doing. When you get to read a character's innermost thoughts over a large period of time then you get something happen to his personality that he's literally never even thought about, that seems like the author is cheating rather than treating the reader honestly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Aid

I try to not pay attention to the political opinions of actors as much as possible. On one hand, I'm always playing catch-up when their opinions land them in hot water. But on the other hand, I don't have to agonize over the opinions of famous people who, by and large, aren't any better informed on the issues than the brainless idiots on both sides who I seem to discuss politics with on various news sites on a daily basis.

US State Department this evening issued a statement. They're planning to evacuate the non-citizen employees of the US embassy as well as the citizens "over the coming days". The few translators and their families who've completed the application process will be evacuated to the US. The rest, well, the State Department says it's going to be looking for additional locations where they could be evacuated to. (And while all of this looking around at various international locations is happening, I suppose the Taliban is going to go on vacation for the next few months rather than capture the airport.) The statement doesn't say how those people will be evacuated. But since the civilian flights are already full and probably not going to continue while the airport is under siege, either the State Department is lying or they're expecting the military to provide transportation. https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-from-the-department-of-state-and-department-of-defense-update-on-afghanistan/ https://thehill.com/policy/defense/567964-us-says-its-working-to-secure-kabul-airport-evacuate-americans-and-afghans

You have to watch out for those Swiss guys wielding automatic weapons....

Yeah, things are moving fast. The Taliban has announced an interim government and a new head of government. Taliban forces have entered Kabul to "prevent looting". And not just Kabul in general but occupying the presidential palace (which is kind of the facepalm event for an enemy force entering your capital city). The US embassy has announced that it has ceased all operations. The military is trying to figure out how to evacuate the embassy personnel since the airport is taking fire. 1400 of the embassy employees are US citizens, 2600 embassy employees are not US citizens. No word on whether non-citizen employee will be evacuated or not. Since the city is invaded and the airport is taking fire, expect commercial airlines to cease operations. Over the past week, every seat on every commercial flight has been full as anyone with a valid passport has been fleeing the country. There were approximately 71,000 Afghan translators who worked for the US military (that number including their families) still in Afghanistan waiting endlessly on US embassy personnel to process their visa paperwork. Thousands of that number have been waiting years for the embassy to process their paperwork. Two weeks ago, the administration announced that we would also evacuate Afghan translators and their families who had worked for US non-profits and US news organizations. There's no official tally announced about how many people that was but I'd estimate they were talking over 100,000 people...who are still in Afghanistan because there wasn't even an existing program to, in theory, start getting them out of the country. The 3000 troops Biden announced last Friday to be sent to Afghanistan to secure the embassy and the airport have started to arrive. Since the embassy has already lowered its flag and ceased operations, if those troops are used for embassy purposes at all, it'd be to run around the city and fighting the Taliban while collecting embassy personnel who haven't managed to get themselves to the airport on their own. (The embassy in one of its last acts warned Americans to shelter in place and not try to make it to the airport since there were Taliban out on the streets shooting people.) The 5000 additional troops Biden announced yesterday to be sent to Afghanistan to stabilize Kabul during the evacuation...if they still deploy, they'll be landing in a Taliban-controlled airport and city. The embassy personnel had started yesterday destroying hardware and paperwork in anticipation of having to abandon the embassy some time in the next couple of weeks. Considering that the fall of the embassy seems to have come slightly ahead of schedule, I'm wondering if the destruction is complete or whether random bits of embassy hardware and software will be finding its way into the hands of everyone who we wouldn't want to have it.

Good advice for all volcanoes: never make an ash of yourself.

That's how you Die Harder.

,.,.

Where have all the hobbits gone? https://apnews.com/article/business-arts-and-entertainment-new-zealand-41b6cbaa68ee348cb79213d9e2ea7589

NASA's spacesuits won't be ready in time for a 2024 manned Moon shot. https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2021/08/spacesuits-and-lawsuits-put-2024-moon-landing-jeopardy/184476/

Tim Drake first appeared in 1989 and has had an interest in girls and dating history spanning decades. In 2021, we get the first indication that he's bi. If there's some recent universal reboot, I can accept character changes more easily. But this really feels like DC corporate feeling the need to display more DC diversity and tacking "and BTW he's been bi all along" onto a random existing character. There's a way to make these things seem organic and ways to make it seem...not. People didn't seem to have this kind of trouble accepting Element Lad as being bi, for example.

Well, we've discussed at length in other threads the fact the Disney isn't paying royalties to book authors for their intellectual properties like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc.

I guessed it was sweet potato with deep fried pistachio shells.

I don't think it should be forgotten. By anyone. This is part of a pattern of Disney intentionally ripping off their talent.

Pro-Trump Pastor Who Said Trump Would Be Back in Office in June Now Says He Was Inaugurated on March 4th - as the 19th president of the United States of America https://www.mediaite.com/trump/pro-trump-pastor-who-said-trump-would-be-back-in-office-in-june-now-says-he-was-inaugurated-in-march/ I shudder at the towering intellectual giants arrayed against us.

One of them has to be the "Grond Toss". That one answers the question of what someone means when they say, "I wouldn't trust Grond any further than I could throw him."

Yeah, that long distance drive is the main obstacle for me going with an electric car. I used to have the stamina to drive straight through a 13 hour trip to visit my wife's family in Colorado. I can't do that anymore so we have to add in rest stops, an overnight, and have my wife drive a significant part of the trip. So that's vastly complicated our trips. With the range of the electric cars which were available a couple of years ago when we were shopping, we'd also have needed to stop for two hours for every hour of driving. And that's if we could have found charging stations along the way in the relatively unpopulated stretches of the states which surround Colorado. Our alternative to that would be to have a car payment for a car which we couldn't use on trips to see family and instead have the added expense of renting a car for several weeks out of the year. What I really wanted was a plug-in hybrid. But at the time, getting one with the (increased) size my wife wanted was prohibitively expensive.

Personally, I don't think killing the main character before her movie was released helped anything. It's hard to get emotionally invested in the life of a character AFTER you get emotionally invested in her death scene.

That's not a problem: it's a feature!

Iranian gold medalist in Karate admits sleeping his way to the top. https://thehill.com/policy/international/middle-east-north-africa/566869-iranian-olympian-left-unconscious-in-karate

"Luke...you are my teddy bear." "No! No! That's impossible!"

Just think: the Ford Model T has been a classic for almost 13 years now....