Don’t believe Trump lives in a world where “truth” and “lie” has no meaning. He doesn’t lie to deceive. If that was his goal his lies would be more carefully crafted. He lies as a demonstration of power and test of obedience. He is absolutely saying things that no one believes are true, just to make his toadies nod along, just to ensure no one yet feels brave enough to question his pronouncements.
If none are willing to contradict his statements, none will hesitate to carry out his orders.
This is the sort of thing that makes me feel more sympathy for the Democratic party. The party simply can’t win with the left.
The party leadership worked against Sanders candidacy because they are convinced a liberal can’t win in America. I don’t agree, but recognize with Nixon and Reagan dominating over leftist candidates, Carter ekeing out a win as a centrist, Clinton winning convincingly as a centrist, and Obama winning as a rather vague candidate, recent history has given limited reason think a leftist national candidate is a safe bet.
But if voters are supporting Cuomo and the party doesn’t intervene the party is the wrong for not ignoring the will of the voters and tanking his candidacy.
I mean I get it. The left wants their candidates to win, but the lack of consistency is grating. It makes the centrist seem more sensible.
Look up Bureau 13 Stalking the Night Fantastic. It’s from the early 90’s. It’s got a lot of X-files vibes, but doesn’t take itself particularly seriously, and it predates x-files. It’s built on the all conspiracies are true trope, so it’s quite gonzo. There’s all sorts of gadgets the agents have access to that are prosaic today, so you probably want to run it in the era it was written in.
The Open D6 system remains my favorite system. I’ve run my homebrew fantasy games as well as Star Wars games in the system, and have plans for others when the opportunity arises.
Without a purity test how can I tell which members of the tribe are loyal and which might betray me?
For me this changes all the time as I invest in developing something, and inevitably something catches my attention. I’m pretty invested in the Open D6 system, so I’m always riffing on this system.
Lately I’ve been penciling out a game where a party is rewarded with the Charter to the king’s casino. I started with the idea of inverting Ocean’s 11, since every party ever wants to rob a casino as soon as they learn there is a casino. So, the idea is the party has control of a casino and now they have to deal with organized crime, card counters and sharps, rivals, labor disputes, royal demands, and the occasional party that thinks they’ve got a surefire plan for an epic heist.
From age 6 until 18, and age 33 to 45 I’ve line dried clothes, three seasons a year. I can recall one time a bird pooped on a bed sheet.
Do you live below a pigeon roost or something?
I grew up line drying my clothes, and when I bought I house the first improvement we made was installing a clothes line.
If you find clothes and towels stiff after line drying, but there are options to address that issue.
The reason is apparent in history. Party leadership lived through Nixon and Reagan’s punishing wins over a liberal leaning Democratic party. Labor support went lukewarm, and their funding stream dwindled. The left absolutely utterly to fill the gap. Clinton ran and won as a centrist, and just as important his cohort had a plan to fund the party. The ranks of party leadership were filled with this cohort, and the left hasn’t done the work to take back party control.
I quite like Sanders, but his vision of a groundswell of public support fails to account for the importance of campaign spending in election outcomes. It’s not enough for a few charismatic candidates to win, a party needs to win to effect change, particularly in a federal system. That reality, in my opinion, is why the left is still shut out of party control.
All this too say, the party should stand as an anti-oligarchy party, but the party needs a cohesive vision of what what that means.
I’m reminded of the story of Garg and Moonslicer, and I wish more publishers would lean in to this approach to good and evil. A purely lore approach would be enough to frame the conflict around, some races are naturally social creatures, and some races are naturally antisocial. Both have hierarches, but not all races have the same natural concepts of fairness and justice. Any individual can embrace either world view or a mix, but one comes more naturally to each race. Even if humanity is naturally a good race (debatable, but whatever), members can obviously deviate significantly.
Ultimately it doesn’t mater what race the slavers are, I’m not going to worry about the ethics of self-defensing a party of slavers to death as PC or GM.
Gilbert himself didn’t seem sure he had a complete definition, just a critical piece of it. As a psychologist he would have understood sociopathy well, among other psychological maladies. He seems to be making a distinction here, but that is my reading of him. If he could have provided a diagnosis that underpinned becoming a Nazi it would have been a bombshell, but they all seemed rather normal under a battery of tests. Instead of a specific diagnosis, the Banality of Evil became the commonly cited mechanism behind the Nazi’s abhorrent acts. Weak men following vile leaders.
After thinking about Gilbert’s quote I have come to conclude a lack of empathy is a necessary, if not sufficient condition for evil. There may be more to it, but this piece is already enough to oppose evil, and challenging on its own.
I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.
Captain G.M. Gilbert
The army psychologist assigned to interview the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials.
A list of options has been previously catalogued.
I’ll grant you it’s easier to daydream about violence.
The yard spray folks come around every spring offering me a deal because they are spraying all my neighbor’s yards. I’m the only yard with lighting bugs in the neighborhood.
A Silent Spring was supposed to be a warning, not a how-to.
I realized part way through the title works on a few levels. It was refreshing to realize this wasn’t remotely following the 3-act narrative structure and I had no idea what was happening next.
The word exceptional didn’t always mean better. It used to just mean different, as in an exception to the rule.
Wow. I was in middle school and had to do a creative writing assignment, and I wrote a science fiction short story set in a colony on that boundary of Mercury. I thought Mercury was tidal locked. I was praised for my creativity.
I was today years old when I found that Mercury is not tidal locked.
WEG Star Wars 2nd edition Revised and Expanded.
My roommate and I split the cost, and when we moved I kept it. It’s still one of my prized possessions.
The largest stellerator currently operating in the US is. HSX at UW-Madison. The copper magnet coils had to be explosively formed. The coils were delivered one at a time. At one point one was stolen off the loading dock. This caused a lot of panic, as the budget was spent. There was no way to replace the stolen coil.
Something like a day later the sheriff called the university asking the if they were missing a hunk of copper. The thieves took the coil to a scrap yard for scrap value. The yard figured there was no way this bonkers shaped thing wasn’t made to a particular purpose so they played along long enough to call the cops to find the rightful owner.
It’s worth recognizing stellerators since HSX have all been periodic, that is every coil isn’t unique. The designs used to be even more insane.
Ok, so sure, a reasonably large chunk of all states education budget is going away, but for the states that do well, the hole will both be a smaller portion of the overall budget, and easier to make up.
No child left behind testing goes away, so the testing and standards all go away. You can bet the bottom 25 states in education ranking will quietly stop testing and claim they’re doing just great!
It’s the special Ed programs that are really going to catch hell. No dept. of Ed. no enforcement of standards. It will be the easiest portion to cut to save money, and the families left in the lurch will get nothing but thoughts and prayers to fill the gap.