archer

Are you by chance confusing "immortal" with "immoral"?

There can be only one.

I thought he did a good job with the lines he was given. But the character was too moody for my tastes. I'd expect an immortal to be good at reading people, manipulating situations, and gliding through bureaucratic nonsense: he's seen it all a million times and knows what most people are likely to think and how they'll react before they themselves do.

Real MacGuffins need to be unique items and portable so you can have chase scenes & people hiding them at the last possible moment in unlikely places. 2 cents

Ssshhh...don't give people the notion that nuking Baltimore might not be so bad.

The Jags laughing all the way to the bank. This is their publicity stunt after all. Personally, I like this kind of stunt. It's like threatening to sign a tall NBA player for the express purpose of blocking field goals.

My youngest kid got her first Moderna dose yesterday by just walking into Wal-Mart. She wasn't in any hurry to jump the line in front of anyone because she already had it last year. But apparently jumping the line is no longer a concern.

You could have an old part of the city flooded in the bay and call it "The Lowlands". Most of the buildings are underwater but the tops of some of them are visible at low tide. Someone "visiting the Lowlands" would be a euphemism for "somebody took them out and drowned them in the bay". That seems like an appropriate thing for the criminal element of a port city to do. Dealer's choice on whether any living beings other than fish inhabit the Lowlands.

Vittles

Aquaman on Chopped Okay contestants, open your baskets. Today's secret ingredients are: Dried Seaweed Alligator Eggs Sea Cucumbers and... Poached Atlantean (FYI: You have to poach your Atlantean since there's no longer a hunting season for them. Or even a fishing season.)

Maybe they could use the old-fashioned invisible ink where you'd have to hold their foreheads really close to a candle before the secret message appears.

"Fauci: Americans 'misinterpreting' mask rules" Some members of the public are incorrectly under the assumption, Fauci said, "that we're saying: 'You don't need the mask anymore.'" "That's not what the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] said," he added. "They said: 'If you are vaccinated, you can feel safe — that you will not get infected either outdoors or indoors.' It did not explicitly say that unvaccinated people should abandon their masks." https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/554261-fauci-americans-misinterpreting-mask-rules Fauci is dancing around exactly why lifting the mask recommendation was a TERRIBLE idea in the first place. At what point in this pandemic has the general public listened to the advice of the CDC and as a group followed exactly what it recommended? I mean, as opposed to doing whatever the hell they want until they're hit up side the head repeatedly then are forced to do something different?

I'd like to demonstrate the mentality of the target audience of that article so you can see exactly why it was written and why The Hill chose it to be good enough to publish. This is a real exchange in the comments of the article. Me: Doing the "holistic view" thing is highly needed. If you can't trust your IT guy to have access to your system, you aren't doing a good job of hiring IT guys. And they need to look at the system whenever and wherever they think there might be a need to. On the other hand, blackballing someone from ever working again in the entire industry because they happened to work at a place which had a security breach is beyond stupid. The person you're interviewing likely wasn't in charge of implementing policy at his business. That's like refusing to ever hire a Volkswagen mechanic because the Volkswagen company for years covered up how much their diesel engines polluted. (The mechanic didn't set company policy, didn't participate in the coverup, and almost certainly had no idea that anything inappropriate was happening because there was no way for him to access that kind of information.) Joe: Why on earth would you hire someone who already destroyed security somewhere else? This is a good suggestion. Me: That "someone" will generally be working with a dozen or dozens of other people. If they pin a security breech to George, don't hire George. But if George is doing everything humanly possible at his task but someone else fails at their task, don't punish George for it. Take this pipeline thing. Okay there's a breech. You fire all the people and they lose all hope of ever working at anything to do with computers ever again. You hire a whole new staff. There's another breech so you fire all of those people. Who the hell is going to be willing to work for you regardless of what you offer to pay them? People who are so bad that they absolutely can't get a job anywhere else? People who are so desperate for money that they'll do anything (yeah, that's a good person to put in charge of your sensitive data). And geezers who are so close to retirement that if they lose all hope of ever working in the industry again, that it makes no difference (and good luck if they're at the top of their game rather than hopelessly out of date). The pipeline HAS TO WORK. But you're guaranteeing that it's going to fail because they can't hire good people to work for them because working for the pipeline is a sure career killer. Now let's look at the long-term effects. Why would you go to college and study to get into that field when the first mistake by any of your co-workers will make you permanently unemployable? The answer is: you wouldn't. People who were talented would avoid getting into that field because they could do literally anything else and have a better chance at a career. So the pool of people who would be willing to do that kind of work would keep shrinking from few new people wanting to get into it and from anyone with any sense trying to get out of it and do anything else before they get blackballed. That's EXACTLY what you DON'T want to happen. You need the best and brightest to be eager to get into the field rather than setting up the field to be so hostile that they want to avoid it at all costs. Joe: Who cares about their schooling? If this profession is causing the problems why would you want to hire them anyway? Even if they have not caused a breach, they are a den of idiots. Why not go with engineers who know how to lock down systems?

In this particular case, "community caretaking" meant that if you voluntarily consented to having a mental health exam done to yourself, the police were taking that as consent for them to do a warrantless search of your house and confiscate any firearms which were in the house (whether the guns were yours or not). That's not all that much different from a person who consents to an eye exam having their car confiscated from them, in my opinion. (Hey, you don't want blind people driving cars around do you? Hey, you don't want crazy people owning guns do you? Because having an eye exam proves that you're blind just like having a mental exam proves that you are crazy.) Even setting aside that this behavior by the police was outrageous just on the surface, you wouldn't want potentially mentally ill people from putting off getting themselves checked out because of worries that their guns will be confiscated. If someone does prove to be mentally ill, there'll be opportunities for treatment, for them to voluntarily give up their guns, for their family to convince them to give up their guns, or for the courts to order the guns to be confiscated. Having the police jump straight to punishment without any due process isn't how the legal system is supposed to work. And I'd imagine that's why the Supreme Court unanimously said the police's actions were wrong.

Delta Air Lines announced that all new hires will be required to get vaccinated against COVID-19 https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/aviation/553580-delta-to-require-new-employees-get-vaccinated

Sad that I have to put this in the political discussions but https://act.moveon.org/survey/covid-vaccine-sticker/? -fill out the form to get a Free Pro-Science, Pro-Health, Pro-Vaccine Sticker from MoveOn.

You can still have shortages because of panic buying. I was driving through Georgia before the peak panic hit and before the shortages would normally have hit gas stations...but still had problems at two gas stations (a Wal-Mart station that was out and a Shell station that was out of everything except their super premium). On the way back during peak panic, we filled up in Florida and avoided Georgia as much as possible. We also drove across that bridge in Memphis that had the huge cracks in it shortly before the cracks were discovered and the bridge shut down. But those kinds of problems are par for the course whenever I try to go on a vacation so nothing new. At least the disasters weren't the "it's going to cost you personally thousands of dollars" variety this time. (But the less said about my wife's purchases at our destination, the better....)

I've been willing to cut Mephisto a lot more slack since he erased Spider-Man's public ID.

Sloopy Sales

That sounds like the Patchwork girl from the Wild Cards universe. https://wildcards.fandom.com/wiki/Patchwork

That reminds me of one of my characters, Captain Photon. His only real power was to tell people "I'm fill-in-the-blank" and no matter how ridiculous it was, the other person went along with it...despite the fact that he invariably dressed in a silvery 1950's made for TV looking "spacesuit" complete with a clear plastic space helmet. His sidekick Morty's main power was to produce and hand Captain Photon various props to reinforce whichever fake identity was being used such as a business card which might say "Hugo Rodriguez, Health Inspector" or "Darth Vader, Tyrant in Training". (This wasn't for a Champions campaign so don't try statting out just how expensive that power might be. It was more cooperative storytelling without a GM.)

Two of my mother's sisters, using the internet, recently tried to find ginger tea for my mother so they could buy it for her. They were completely unable to find ginger tea anywhere on the internet. (I mean, yeah they're ancient, but they literally couldn't find ginger tea anywhere on the internet.)

Sloop John A

That doesn't sound very Eternal: false advertising!

Tether Coil Drift Driftwood flounder float buoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sailing_ship_components types of ships: balinger bark barkentine barge bireme brigantine buss caique skiff caracore caravel carrack clipper cog corvette cutter dinghy dhow dogger dory dromon frigate galleon gig hulk junk ketch longship lugger privateer punt schooner scow sloop smack tartan tender trireme windjammer yawl Sailor's use a lot of knots https://www.101knots.com/category/sailing-knots Some of the knots that sound interesting Clove Hitch Rolling Hitch Thief Knot Monkey's Fist