BarretWallace

Quoted on the Book of Face by our very own Darren Watts:
 
"I get it now. Ted and Heidi Cruz wanted their children to be safe, to have basic sanitary services like heat and running water, to leave behind a third-world apocalyptic nightmare for a safer place. Like so many parents before them, they decided to cross the Mexican border.
@julieroginsky"

My son was fortunate enough to have only the last 3 months of his senior year of high school (class of 2020) screwed up by the onset of the pandemic.  He is self-directed enough that it was rarely a problem.  His school had also read the tea leaves and had been working on a distance learning program for some time, so they weren't caught as off-guard as they might have been otherwise.  Easily the hardest part of the whole thing was missing his friends.  Zoom and related online tools rose to the challenge of managing assignments, but there was just no substitute for mingling with his classmates.  His school did a food drive in May.  While masking and distancing protocols were in place, it was crystal clear that faculty and students alike rejoiced in actually seeing each other.
 
I ache for the Class of 2021, who are missing out on big parts of their whole senior year.  I can only imagine what it's like for younger kids too.

By the time August and September come around, hopefully the vaccination rates will be high enough to keep any outbreak relatively contained.

I too am encouraged by the change of tone with the new administration...but praying that the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train.  [ducks a punch]

Someone said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

I'm not afraid of Donald Trump. I'm afraid of the next person to try to follow in his footsteps, who'll probably be smarter.
 
As a Canadian I've always been grateful that the United States is our closest neighbor, friend and ally. Like all Canadians I've complained about stuff America has done from time to time, but I was never scared by it. I'm scared now.

I applaud the ten Republican Representatives who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, as well as the seven Republican Senators who voted to convict. I know it was a difficult decision that will probably come back to bite them next election season. I thank these leaders for their courage.
 
The rest of the Republicans in Congress can go straight to Hell as far as I'm concerned.
 
I am embarrassed ever to have belonged to this Party.

So I had an in-person Cincy VA medical appt today and they were doing 70 and over Covid vaccinations.  Due to the massive amount of snow that got dumped on SW Ohio last night, they were several no-shows.  As they now had extra vaccines leftover for the day, someone stopped me as I was going out and asked if I wanted vaccinated.  Long story short, I got my first dose of Moderna vaccine today and my return appt. is March 10th.  To quote the famous philosopher Ice Cube, "I guess it was a good day." 

Yah, this isn't a free speech issue.  Dobbs (among others) asserted that the products and services of Dominion and Smartmatic were unreliable.  That becomes defamation.  Free speech would cover the accusations of improprieties at polling places, for example, but do not permit this type of speech.
 
Also:  some types of trolling are not protected.  Smear posts like "this place is a ripoff, they'll take your money and disappear" are actionable...if you can find the poster.  Individual, isolated smear posts tend to have minimal impact, but in other cases it's a severe problem that has ruined businesses.  Heck yeah, that's actionable.  The allegations against Dominion and Smartmatic immediately rose to actionable because of the reach of the medium (Fox) to millions of people.  Now add that it got repeated ad nauseum.  NOW, add in that:
 
a)  it was asserted in places where those machines weren't in use, or were in minimal use and therefore couldn't have been the issue
b)  the courts threw out all the allegations, but the assertions continue.  This goes beyond opinion.
 
In the very early stages, possibly a retraction would've been sufficient.  That stopped being adequate a LONG time ago.  The case for Dominion/Smartmatic is beyond a smoking gun.  It's as if Timothy McVeigh had recorded making the bomb, driving to the Murrah building, walking away to a safe distance, then smiling into the camera as he goes "now watch this!!"  This is why NewsMax cut off Lindell's rant, why Dobbs was canned, why Guiliani's broadcasters inserted a disclaimer during his own podcast...without telling him they were gonna do it.  Fox News will probably survive even a 10-digit judgment;  NewsMax might not survive a much smaller judgment.
 
And yeah, as Simon pointed out:  the First Amendment is asserted *all* the time in wildly inaccurate ways.  Probably not possible in practice, but requiring some basic understanding of civil liberties as an actual requirement to vote is worth considering, IMO.  The problem is, of course, what you would require on such an examination.
 
One of the better, introductory, basic classes I took in high school was a common law course.  I think a one-year, required-to-graduate class covering common law, basic rights (and what they don't cover), and the fundamentals of money management would be a Very Good Thing.
 
 

You are familiar with the tolerance paradox....yes?
 
The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.
 
 

That depends on the game.  If the game is U.S. elections, it just lost a game.  If the game is U.S. elections with lots of rulebending (e.g. gerrymandering and voter suppression), then it's competitive in 2022.  If the game is Calvinball with guns, all bets are off.

Eh...that doesn't bother me so much as saying "yes" instead of "ooooooooohhhh yaaaaaaaaa."  😁

The longer the GOP allow Trump's lapdogs to have a yard to yap from, the longer Trump will be an albatross around their necks. Yes, they'll take a hit in support from his followers in the short term, but they'll have at least two years to rebrand. In the meantime they'll want to minimize Trump's name being raised in a positive context. Right now Donnie is sulking in his Florida tent like an overripe orange Achilles, scared of the prosecutorial vultures circling him. His social media outlets have been muzzled. If the same can be done to his allies, most of his base appear to have a short attention span. Without those constant reminders of their cult leader, they'll start to drift away.

Trying to joust on bikes is a bad idea. Plus my friend had access to a scroll saw and plywood. He cut out swords and we swung it at each other. Luckily he also made shields. The worst idea? We had a flail with golf balls at the end. Don’t hit a wooden shield with it. 😜

Eh...that doesn't bother me so much as saying "yes" instead of "ooooooooohhhh yaaaaaaaaa."  😁

You got more notice than my mom did. She read her email at the end of the day Wednesday and found out that she'd been notified (not by text or call as she'd expected, but by email) at 11 something a.m. that the vaccine was available that day at the pharmacy she'd registered with, and she should contact them immediately to make an appointment before they closed. Oh, and when she called to see if they might also be inoculating people Thursday the answer was not only no, but she discovered that the pharmacy had helpfully removed her name from the waiting list since they hadn't heard back from her about making an appointment the previous day and assumed she'd gone elsewhere.
 
I am more than mildly peeved now, and if my mother should contract Covid-19 in the next month and die from it (she's almost 82, has heart problems, and has developed pneumonia in the hospital previously) there are some pharmacy techs who better pray to every god they know of that it kills me too, and fast.

@bluesguy Hey David!!   It's been awhile!  Hope you and the family are still doing well!!
 
 
I know what you mean - it is hard to find other Hero Systems players in Minnesota.  I mostly play D&D 5e, with a little bit of Pathfinder 2e, because that is what everyone else plays.  I love me some superhero gaming though! 

How did you come up with your 'handle' (forum name)?
It's the name of one of the first superhero characters I came up with. Somehow I've never played a version in an actual Champions game, but I've played variations in City of Heroes and Champions Online
 
What was the first tabletop RPG you played? 
AD&D, in my freshman year of highschool.
 
What was the first tabletop RPG you GMed?
AD&D, in college. 
 
What are you currently playing/GMing?
Sadly, nothing currently. I've mostly just played Hero stuff (and variants) since the early nineties. I've mostly GMed the past twenty years or so.
 
Campaigns I've run:
The Knack: A group of people with "Knacks" (minor supernormal or paranormal abilities) are on the run from a billionaire who wants to explout them.
Needle: A not particularly successful game set in the world of "The Peace War" by Vernor Vinge. The only game I ever ran that was based on a world not of my own creation, and it showed.
The Void: Same world as the Knack, but a physics experiment gone wrong unleashes full-fledged superpowers on the world. Some of the same characters, as the Void.
Arcane Invasion: The USA is invaded by an evil wizard and his armies from a D&D like world. 
Gale Force: Same world as the Void, but things have gotten weirder, and now there are frequent incursions from other universes. Gale Force is Chicago's local response team. 
Arcane America: Set in a USA where the Arcane Invasion happened right after WWII, instead of in the 2000s. The PCs are a private security/investigations firm.
Ejecta: There are weird objects that defy the laws of physics (and logic, for that matter). The PCs get caught up in a plot around them.
 
Other:
I used to co-sysop the Red October BBS occasionally back in the day.
Even though I don't post a lot, I'm one of the earliest members of these forums, having come over from previous Hero forums shortly after this site's creation.

😃I live in MN but I am not a Minnesotan 😉
 
Having come from the Southwestern part of the USA, I have an understanding about what ¡Olé! means and what Ole (Danish male name mean).  Confuses me sometimes...

I have a question for the assembled Minnesotans:
 
How rude is it considered to be if you accidentally says "oops" when you should "ope," or vice-versa?
 
 

I guess it's time for me to rant some more.
 
OK, so I've been signed up on the vaccination list since some time early in the month and was told basically, "Don't call us, we'll call you and eventually schedule something". And that was several weeks after first contacting them to tell them I want on the list ASAP.
 
So 6:18 p.m. tonight I get a text that I'm slotted in for 11 a.m. tomorrow morning. So less than 17 hours notice and after business hours so I would have had difficulty canceling any other appointments for tomorrow that I might have had.
 
Oh, no, but that's not inconvenient enough.
 
If I've gotten the flu vaccine in the last two weeks, they told me in that same notification that I can't get the COVID vaccine tomorrow morning. This is the first freaking time they've mentioned anything like that. Fortunately my flu shot was on January 13th so I barely dodged a bullet there.
 
But that's not enough, oh no.
 
I'm supposed to bring my freaking vaccination record with me.
 
I'm not sure if I even needed a vaccination record in order to get into college but if I did, the last time I saw my actual record was decades ago. If I didn't need it on that occasion, the last time anyone saw it was at the beginning of 10th grade.
 
If my parents ever kept it, I have no idea where it would have been kept. And if it still existed in their stuff, it would be in a different state.
 
If my parents sent it to my grandparents when I stayed with them for a while during college, it was likely thrown out or stolen like the rest of my stuff after my grandfather died and my grandmother asked people to help themselves or toss anything that looked like it didn't belong to her (and to please not ask her questions about specific items).
 
 
What the hell is with people who are running these kinds of programs? They've literally had months, in advance, to warn people about paperwork they'd like to look at and things that someone should avoid if they want to get vaccinated. But they can't even type in those sentences onto their website to tell people. They wait until it's literally too late to do anything, then notify them about what's needed.
 
 
For the record, the appointment is at a conference center 18 miles away. That's at least three city borders away (the conference center is in the fourth city over). 
 
There's no public transportation between here and the next city, much less going beyond that. So if I didn't have access to a car, I'd be thoroughly screwed.
 
 
I would hope that the vaccinations are inside since it's been bitter cold here and there's more likely to be bathrooms if we get to go inside. If not, screwed again.
 
Of course if I get COVID because I'm indoor with hundreds of other people, screwed again.
 
But if my wife gets COVID because they put her indoors with hundreds of other people, she'll be dead for the first time.
 
 
I absolutely would not attempt to go to this freak show the county has set up except that my wife is going stir-crazy after more than a year being cooped up in the house. She was under doctor's orders to not attempt to go out of the house because she couldn't breathe even before the pandemic hit. But after the pandemic hit, it went from "this isn't a good idea, this could put you into the emergency room for a week" to "this will put you in the funeral home".
 
So she's months further along the line of being stir crazy than anyone else has been.
 
< /rant >