archer

I think you missed a step or two there. First you have to buy your butler as a Follower. Then the butler buys the Galactica, then the Galactica buys its Vipers, then the Vipers buy their pilots as followers.

Yeah, that's a whole can of worms of its own. It's never been against federal law to own your own muzzle-loading cannon (which has always been undeniably a weapon for military use rather than home defense or hunting). Even today, if it was made before something like 1890, you can buy and own it without any restriction. If it was manufactured after that, you have to buy a $200 permit to legally own it. And that's only due to a law from the 1920's which was written before the invention of a background check. Now your state might have some law on the books which would prevent you from owning it (without first winning a lawsuit overturning the state law). But the federal government doesn't stop you from owning one.

That's an interesting subject. I've heard, proposed, to have a voice match system such is used to activate Siri on an iPhone. A problem I have with that is that idea is that my daughter and my wife can use each other's Siri, even though my wife has a mid-west accent and my daughter has a muddled mess of an accent which isn't very similar. Amusingly, they can also unlock each other's iPhone through facial recognition (though I don't think that look very much alike).

Can you stand your ground when you're committing a drive-by shooting? Enquiring minds in Texas want to know.

By definition, transporting someone across state lines in order to buy medical services is “interstate commerce”. The US Constitution places the power to regulate interstate commerce with the US Congress, not with state legislatures. (US Constitution, Article I Section 8 Clause 3) There’s over 200 years of court cases of state legislatures who attempted to regulate interstate commerce failing. Badly. Even if the medical services were given away for “free”, court precedents still say that is commerce because someone had bought the car which transported the person to the clinic, someone bought fuel for the car, the clinic pays for electricity & other utilities, someone bought the paper and clipboard for the person who’s asking for the abortion to fill out her medical information, etc. And, yes, court cases have gotten that specific and picky in the past when claiming the federal government’s prerogative over regulating interstate commerce. Studied some of those cases in business law class back in the early 1980’s. There’s no way for a state legislature to twist things to try to claim that interstate commerce isn’t interstate commerce. There’s just been too many attempts by state legislatures to do it...and too many failures in court as those attempts fall apart.

Now I am sad....

It was well within the upper limits of what is internationally recognized as a country's airspace...and well below what anyone has ever considered to be outer space. You're not allowed to violate other country's airspace without express permission (barring a declared emergency of a manned craft). The choice on whether to shoot down the offending craft or not is at the discretion of the country whose airspace is being violated. From the Chicago Convention of 1944 that forms the treaty forming the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). It's Article 1 states “The contracting States recognize that every State has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory.” Both China and the US, along with almost all other nations, are part of that treaty. The balloon was bopping along between 60,000 to 90,000 feet, which is well inside the ICAO agreement. To be an illegal target, the balloon would have had to be in outer space and be qualified for coverage under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST), which allows for free passage there for any country. Outer space is generally considered to start at 100 kilometers, which is 328,000 feet. No matter how generous anyone would want to be to the Chinese side in the matter, the balloon wasn't traveling anywhere close to outer space.

You want to put all the mentally-ill people into Congress then raise their salaries???

Bill That Would Allow Inmates to Trade Their Organs for Less Prison Time Introduced in Massachusetts https://www.complex.com/life/bill-would-inmates-trade-their-organs-less-prison-time-massachusetts "the controversial legislation is sponsored by two state Democrats, Reps. Judith Garcia, of Chelsea; and Carlos Gonzalez of Springfield...The representatives argued it would be especially beneficial for people of color, who are at higher risk of organ failure, but tend to have trouble finding a match." I'd be more worried about desperate. impoverished, and poorly-educated prisoners permanently compromising their health by giving away their organs due to pressure by what amounts to "salesmen not making the risks fully transparent"...

The reason no one has the same actors do animation as their feature films is that feature film actors get paid many multiples of the amount of money that voice actors make. There's no way I can see that a cash-poor company is going to be able to make that happen. I'm a big fan of continuity when it comes to stories. But frankly, I don't care whether Thor is voiced by Chris Hemsworth or Travis Willingham or whether Dr. Strange is voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch or Liam O'Brien. The skills of an actor and a voice actor overlap to some extent. But trying to cram every actor into an unfamiliar box looks to me to be a losing proposition to the point that Marvel didn't even try. So even if DC can come up with the money for equal pay, I'm skeptical that it could be an easy transformation to their way of doing business. Next, how the hell is HBO going to do a scripted Green Lantern show when HBO has fired that vast majority of their writing staff and has publicly committed to doing unscripted programming, rather than scripted, because they're bleeding money? Ditto for Booster Gold (who I'd love to see in a series).

I'd pile the team on either side of the door, ready cantrip attacks for anything that looks hostile, then rush in. Hopefully it's something like the Indeterminate Inn which wanders around and tends to appear to travelers in need. There's things way more weird than that in most fantasy settings.

Police perimeter to keep civilians from investigating Call in team Super-scientist and/or mystic specialists to evaluate the situation

I'd be shocked if Dr. Poe hadn't been exploited during his 20 years in prison, whether by the authorities or by some criminal organization. Or both.

I've visited Portland 4-5 times over the last 25 years and it's never struck me as being the slightest bit touristy.

https://www.anglingdirect.co.uk/community/fishing-in-england-your-guide-to-the-best-fishing-spots/

Technically, if I left my wallet in a restaurant, someone could take my credit cards, shove them down someone else's throat, and choke them to death. I shouldn't be held responsible for that person's homicidal action because my wallet and credit cards weren't designed to be physical weapons.

Offer a man a plane ticket and he can fly for a day. Push a man off a plane and he can fly for the rest of his life.

Q: Why is gravity so cheap? A: It's mass produced.

At my college, it was said that a man-eating tiger once escaped there...but subsequently died of starvation.

That's been precisely what's happened in the past. The problem they face at the moment is that they've been electing ignorant people from their base to become Congressmen. So it's really an open question over when they'll reach the tipping point of not being ABLE to swerve at the last moment when playing chicken with the debt ceiling.

It's not uncommon for a country selling arms to stipulate that those arms can't be resold without express permission. And Switzerland has refused permission for other countries to resell Swiss armaments to Ukraine earlier in the war. So this refusal sounds pretty legit.

If you grew the second nose upside down on someone else, they'd be in danger of drowning every time they went out into the rain. It'd make for a dastardly hit-man in some parts of the world....

I'm available for hire. Whenever I sit down, cats come running for a chance to sit on my lap.

I always tell the bartender the brand I like: "I'll have Another."

Coin flips make sense. Potentially playing at a "neutral" site, on the other hand, just guarantees that both teams in question are punished (rather than one being rewarded and another punished). I'd also like to point out that it's difficult to find a truly "neutral site" since there's not going to be a site which is equally-distant from both teams' fan base and with equally efficient, or miserable, travel options.