unclevlad

Republicans will campaign on fear...when is the last time they didn't? Also not sure Manchin, at least, counts as a Democrat at all. Or a centrist. Imposing a requirement on bilateral support is simply contrarian. The downside to pushing for younger, more energetic progressives is, as I think Pariah mentioned, they sacrifice the good for the perfect too often. I don't think policy centrists are the problem. If your only message is "I'm not Trumpist"...yeah, that's totally a losing strategy. If you're "we all have to agree now, so everyone, let's gather round the camp fire"...gahhhh. You're not a decision-maker and you have no business setting policy.

Good Twitter comment: And why pick one when all three fit?

Keep going. If the US throws every environmental regulation out the window, the developing countries will be totally disincentivized to implement anything. Furthermore, this will be another massive blow with respect to US integrity. Trust in the US, in their ability to sustain a commitment, will be eroded that much more. The Trump pullout from Paris won't be the aberration, it'll be the New Norm.

Yep. Won't be tomorrow, but within a generation or two, I think we could rename the planet Giedi Prime.

Oh no. No, no, no. It'll get so, so, so much worse. https://www.vox.com/2021/11/3/22758188/climate-change-epa-clean-power-plan-supreme-court

From his own personal doctor. That brings up several questions I'd love to have answered, but really are none of my business. The one potentially visible aspect: will Rodgers now change personal/family physicians? My, my, and there are more shenanigans. OBJ Sr is hating on Mayfield, saying Mayfield is hating on OBJ Jr, and ESPN is saying Jr may well never play for the Browns again. Which means they'd have to release him, because the trade deadline was yesterday. Sounds like that situation is just one giant <bleep>. And...ya know...when this seems to happen twice? That makes me think the root problem is Beckham. Just pointed out on ESPN bottom line...Rodgers' suspension has totally shifted the lines on the Chiefs game. Pack was a 1 point road favorite after that shoddy Monday night performance; they're now 7.5 point dogs. Over-under went from 55 to 48.5. Other fun fact on the lines...the 1-7 Fins are 6.5 point favorites over the 1-7 Texans. That's a big spread for the NFL...so for a 1-7 team to be that much of a favorite, that opponent has to be really, really, REALLY bad. Consider: the Bills are 14 point favorites against the Jags...and that's one of the best versus one of the worst.

Another consideration would be to start from a Tunneling basis, but what this should cost is ambiguous because skill levels in Contortionist handles most things. Last para in the 6E power description says Contortionist can be used to escape from a collapsed mine shaft. So where does the semi-normal process of contortionist end, and one needs something clearly and dramatically supernatural to get through an obstacle? And as was pointed out, there's a blanket power, Desolid, at the other end, that gets you through almost any obstacle, barring particular SFX. So the window for this power is kinda small.

Damage Reduction actually makes more sense to protect against a 5E killing attack because that massive over-stun gets so greatly reduced. Instead of being Stunned and KO'd, and potentially deeply KO'd, which is going to take the character out for several phases, he's much more likely to just be Stunned. And it's less likely that it'll happen. On the flip side, the character generally takes more Stun from routine attacks. 12d6 normal does, say, 50...which is notably above average. 20 DEF knocks it to 30. 50% DR knocks it to 15. Effectively even against the high damage roll here, the DR is only giving 15 points of Def. And if you drop the total DEF, the residual STUN after the DR is fairly significant. One of the other issues with DR is that it essentially reduces the effect of your regular defenses...because +2 DEF, with 50% DR, only means -1 net STUN received. Overall defense has many variables...CON, STUN, REC, 'normal' defenses, damage reduction, even SPD can be a factor. In a relatively low-middle DC campaign with 6E's stun mult, I think builds where DR works are VERY specific. In higher DCs, or with 5E's massive STUN potential at midlevel damage potential, the target should be larger, but I'm not sure it's particularly large even then.

The cynical part is to say they're doing so, knowing the damage they continue to do, and viewing that doing the damage they know is going on, is the long-term path to success. Like some of the others today, I think we're totally hosed, and there's little to no chance of averting it to any real degree. The Dems aren't going to lose the Senate, I think they're going to be crushed. And in the House. And that'll let the Republicans lock out anything Biden might want. There will be very few Republican candidates against which he'll stand a chance in 2024.

Severely cynical post-election thought... The right-wing pundits have continued to resist moves to quell the pandemic because...pure and simple...they gain from slowing the recovery. The longer it takes, the more the party in power suffers. They aren't in power any more.

Ohh man. If what's in that report holds up, virtually every judge in the country would impose a max sentence, I'd think. And Ruggs and the passenger still being alive seems a miracle. If the Raiders got a copy of this report last night, not waiting is fully explained.

Yeah. For me, DCV is a factor in building overall defenses...but not for determining how much defense is needed against single shots. Even if my DCV is 5 higher than your OCV, you hit on a 6- and that's 10%. My overwhelming-seeming advantage still means I take the occasional hit...so I need enough defenses/CON to avoid being Stunned, at least. I don't necessarily need high enough defense and STUN to take *several* hits in short order...that won't happen often at all. Note that this isn't a Hero problem. Almost every system has similar issues. In older Shadowrun...I think I played mostly 3rd...needing multiple hits, on a d6, meant that a 1 point adjustment to the target number was often HUGE with small dice pools, and forcing the target number to 6+ pretty much meant you needed massive pools to get even 2 or 3 successes. d10 systems like Vampire were similar. In D&D..let's use 3rd Ed's notations. Lots of aspects here...4-5 point difference between attacker's bonus and defender's AC was nice, but hardly decisive. The rules of 1 and 20 seem to mimic Hero's 3 and 18...but they're 5% chances rather than 0.5% chances. Trying to fully mimic comics is impossible, as noted. There's been a thread on FB over the last couple of days, about one author's book series. The series is based in the 30s and has magic. People are going, hey, how would rune magic, which is the main character's form of magic, work today, with tablets, with printers? The only correct answer is..it'd work however the author wanted it to work. No legitimate comparison can be made to any other writer's world, or to gaming...because the inner workings are completely constructed by the author. There is no rational basis for any of it. That holds true in fiction, and particularly true in comics where combat is almost always wildly unrealistic. In a comparative system like Hero (and most others)...this can't happen. Hero is heavily simulational, too, which is the exact opposite of comics, and broad sections of superhero and urban fantasy.

The Fanduel recommendation was take the Boys and give the points. And posited whether the Broncos might already have checked out for the season, as a consequence of the Miller trade. That *screams* "our season's done, we're bailing, start the rebuild" and yeah....even this early, there feels like a real chance that'll happen. If Dak's feeling good and can play the whole game, it feels like this might make the Pats-Jets game look like a contest. This is turning into a potentially bizarre week, with the Raiders, Broncos, and now Packers losing players in the manner they've been lost. And Tennessee with a key injury. And yes, the report on Rodgers on ESPN says: Which means a full 10 day quarantine. He can't come back any earlier than the 13th...so his status for the game against the Seahawks on the 14th is no better than Rusty and Ill-Prepared. Yeah, if you're a Packer fan, not being vaccinated is a big disappointment. I'm neutral...and, I'll grant, NOT a fan of Rodgers...but my feeling is, it's his own selfish fault.

And.......unvaccinated Aaron Rodgers tests positive. Unvax'd protocol means he won't be allowed to play against the Chiefs. What looked like the marquee game of the week is now rather lackluster. Hey, Mr. P! Your Broncos are gonna be on Fox...Sunday early game for most of the western US. Of course, they're 10 point dogs so it might not be very pretty for em.....

I dunno, the Braves winning showed that the regular season is a farce, in many ways. 52-55 on August 1st. Get hot...36-18 from then on. 88 wins wouldn't have been enough in any other division; it wouldn't have earned a WC in the AL, but it would've been enough in the NL. Stay hot in the playoffs, and that's not common. Plus, a big negative for me was that Atlanta scored MOST of their runs off home runs. Lead off the series. The back-to-back game reversers in game 4. The 3 run shot last night early, and arguably Swanson's 2 run shot in the 5th that seemed to kill any hopes Houston might've had. Heck, even d'Arnaud's 8th inning homer in game 3. Those were big momentum plays. We also saw the problems, I think, with starters not going any notable distance, or maybe better to say, the big risk of that. The Astros' bullpen made more mistakes...because they were over-exposed in an extended series? Who knows, one can argue either way. Or the fact that you've got to use so many pitchers...13 for the Astros...just points out the risk that some Won't Have It. Garcia and Valdez started 4 games for them and gave up 14 runs in 11 innings. Ah, well. It's over now. Time to see whether there's a lockout, and how they mess around with the rules THIS time around.

And he was out driving a Vette at 3:30 in the morning. Reportedly at high speed in a residential area. Young, rich, and stupid. And cut by the Raiders last night. They didn't even wait for the exempt list. Sportrac is showing his contract numbers with "these figure assume that future guaranteed salaries have been voided (conduct)" as a qualifier, so the Raiders clearly feel they've got enough grounds to sustain voiding his contract and saving at least some money. And yes, he's looking at jail time. Conviction on the major charge (DUI leading to death) is 2-20 years, and probation is not permitted (per ESPN story).

Because the problem of climate change wasn't recognized. They are deeply interrelated...the byproduct of human activity causing major ecosystemic damage/disruption.

Fortunately, the restraining order is implemented as a Barrier around my house.

Sudden thought as I'm finishing the dinner prep. We often get hung up on the power names as labels, whereas what matters is the mechanics. You want an ability to bypass non-solid obstacles by making yourself small enough to slip through the gaps. Small enough. Shrinking, with the limitations of Instant, and No Growth Momentum. I'd probably allow NGM in 5E because Shrinking is very expensive considering the big KB drawback. The SFX is diffusing your body to pass through things. Might not get you through a fine-mesh screen but it allows bypassing a lot of obstacles, and it's scaling in a positive manner. The SFX can be stretchiness, or Sandman's sand-cloud ability. At higher levels, turn to water or gas temporarily. And hey, in 5E, it'd fit into an EC.....<ducks and runs>

Mmm...yeah, that's true. The "double one dimension to halve another" is an adder in 6E; it doesn't exist in 5E. And yeah, in 5E, Stretching is obscenely expensive for what you get from it. Personally, I'd rather use 6E as a basis; I can trim out the excessively fiddly aspects easier. With 5E...I'm NOT a fan of figured characteristics; ECs are good in principle, but can just be an excuse in practice. Several powers are IMO *very* poorly priced. 6E VPPs separate pool size and control cost, making them far more versatile; 5E's VPPs are fine for some things, but terrible for broad, general use (like a mage). Of course, some of this is one of my favorite builds hits all the bad spots in 5E. Extra Limbs; Stretching, only with Extra Limbs; +STR, only with Extra Limbs. So "hand to hand" but with nice reach. It allows for an HTH type with lots of flair. (If you have HSMA, it screams for Qwan Ki Do.) But more of it is that 5E, due to the influence of figured characteristics, is implicitly biased to Characteristic-heavy characters. 6E isn't perfect, but it mostly avoids that.

Gosh, I didn't realize you cared...... I'm so moved..............

Mr. Fantastic has Stretching, and LOTS of it. That carries with it the ability to pass through small openings, per the power. Sandman has some form of Desolid, plus Stretching IIRC. He's probably something like APG alternate Desolid, about 3-4 levels, plus DI (to fix the the mass alteration and additional KB built into the APG alternate DI...and perhaps then some more, as I think he's heavier than normal). It's messy in that they're both Always On, and the suggested approach is to simply tweak the stat blocks. The simplest way to handle passing through the tiny spaces would then be Double Jointed (duh) along with a big Contortionist bonus. OR, as noted, just build this with alternate Desolid with Can't Move Through Solid Objects, and DI and make em Always On and have done with it. That won't be cheap. Alternate Desolid is 5 points per level; DI is 4. Always On requires 0 END and Persistent. That also means they can't be mutually linked...and that nothing else should be linkable *to* them. Works out to 42 points for +20 STR, +8 normal PD and ED, plus the mobility aspects. So probably a pretty good deal but nothing earthshaking. Mind, I'm not super crazy about doing it this way; APG Desolid has too many secondary effects (mass, KB) and a badly defined major aspect (the Def of the material is irrelevant). But that's because its upper end must be equivalent to Desolid; that's exceptionally constraining to turn into a scaling power.

Ugh. Yeah, not what I want to hear. That said, fine, there's always some fraud going on, and throwing out the numbers altogether is absurd. But it's not good if the lie has a kernel of truth; it makes it far harder to counter.

This kind of BS is also indicative of why US medical costs are hopelessly out of control. it also plays into narratives such as "the numbers for Covid are massively inflated because the hospitals get paid more for Covid cases and deaths."

Ehh, this isn't a Raiders issue for once. https://riduiguy.com/10-nfl-players-charged-with-dui/ It's a young, rich, and stupid problem. Once he's formally arraigned and charged...might not take very long...he's gone from the team. With a fatality involved, he's going to be on the exempt list as fast as the paperwork can be completed. Oh, and to plie onto the Oscar Meyer bandwagon: https://ftw.usatoday.com/2021/11/jaguars-urban-meyer-new-low?itm_source=parsely-api