Vorlonagent

So, your music...  It seems it goes past 11..
 

Constantly revising one's Mouse Contact List is just the price one pays for being a fox...

A lantern carved out of a strange green meteoric material and matching ring...

This is true. I think I would hesitate to attempt it even within the confines of the esteemed Mr. Adams' own universe.
I would take it even further. I would say that elites and elitism are both actively harmful. They accept members regardless of the actual quality in many cases and in others keep extremely talented people out based on some irrelevant criteria of family, social standing, gender, sexual orientation and so forth. In Danish schools working class children were discouraged from seeking scientific or artistic occupations because they weren't good enough. It took most of the 20th Century to beat this attitude even partly down.

A lantern carved out of a strange green meteoric material and matching ring...

Not surprised in the least.  Just waiting for them to try it with people....
IIRC, 19th Century Germany was really good at uniting against A. anybody trying to attack them and B. any German leader who tried to unify them permanently...
There's SF fans and then there's the muggles of the general public...  
I thought to myself, "Being mutually telepathic would help, right?  Improved communication can't be a bad thing..."
Then I remembered the internet... 
The first time through is always going to be the hardest.  Lots of trial and error, with the emphasis on the error, maybe the occasional creation of a hellish mutant monster as nature's punishment for human arrogance... 
History shows again and again how Nature points out the folly of Man...Godzilla!

/me holds The List, with a quizzical look.  Is that a pun or not?   Makes notation just in case.
 

I didn't go through a comically obnoxious phase.
I'm still not finished.
 

Racism is to divide people by color of their skin. So far, I see very few attempts to stop that: most activists and "anti-racism" politicians prefer to divide people by color, then ensure that all groups get fair treatment. Sure, looking at how unfair treatment some groups are currently getting, ensuring fair treatment for all seems worthy goal, but I have strong suspicion that it is not really helping us to get rid of racism ... and looking at what politicians are doing, balancing all groups seems harder than originally expected. Assuming they are really trying. Botched attempt can make the racism worse.
It's definitely not inevitable, unfortunately. But we can hope.

The topic of how bad things are in the US is really something for the Politics thread, so I'm going to leave it alone.  The multi-generational problem of cleaning out the "isms" embedded in the collective mind of a nation is what I am referring to when I say, "clearing it out is going to take time".  You would be lucky if turning deep societal perceptions are only as hard as turning a battleship or aircraft carrier. 
Gains and losses are going to be the order of the day too, unfortunate as any losses would be.  It's all a process of trial by fire.  The harder the goal, the hotter the flame, the better the results.  Maybe what looks like a loss is just taking a piece back to the fire to burn some dross off it.  The really important stuff will stay, even if it doesn't look like it sometimes, especially if anybody can make money or further their political career by claiming things are worse than they are.
But we'll get there.  Denmark will get there.  The US will get there.  It's inevitable.  Civilization just has about 10,000 years of mommy and daddy issues to work through.

So Susan is still surprised at this point than when offered a reasonable and practical suggestion, Hanma took it to a naughty place?
I thought Susan was supposed to be the smart one.

My mother passed away last night.

No stress.  As i say, we've been down that road and everybody has said what they were going to say. I would only be venting. 
Anybody who is interested and doesn't want to push through politics archives is welcome to IM me.

I took a small action and that balanced the scales nicely.

The other option is that Edward knew full well what Tedd was doing, but kept it a secret, even from Tedd, to protect Tedd from government and/or bad guys and/or keep Tedd from suffering the self-esteem hit he took when Pandora told him the glove wasn't what he thought it was.
Edward seems convinced that Tedd is much more fragile than she really is. He has always tried too hard to protect Tedd from emotional stress, from not wanting to tell him about his mother to worrying that using the TFG to alter his sex would somehow be harmful to him. It's done out of love, a desire to protect Tedd, but it's no less harmful than some of what Pandora has done to her son....

Cheetahs : Greyhounds who got the "Hello Kitty" skin.out of a lootbox...

Cheetahs : Greyhounds who got the "Hello Kitty" skin.out of a lootbox...

Kind of like greyhounds. I've seen video of a running greyhound. They are amazing, beautiful creatures. An online friend of mine owns one and it can run much faster backwards than she can run facing forward. It loves being chased but has to give the silly slow two-legs a big advantage for it to be fun.

I think you're both right.    I think Vlad was such an absurd combination of species that shape-shifting to/from his nonhuman form was so very hard.  Throwing Lespuko into Vlad's mix would have probably saved Vlad a lot of pain but as explained with Grace/Shade-Tail, the Lespuko ability to pick, choose and combine pieces of forms is very powerful and dangerous.  Without the threat of Damian, the Shady corporation lab appears to have chosen to not to take the risk and Vlad paid the price..

Cheetahs are rather high-strung and skittish.  At the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park, they routinely will raise an individual cheetah with a very laid-back dog as a constant companion.  They bring the pair near the crowds, the cheetah starts to get nervous, looks over at their buddy and sees that they're still calm and happy, and the cheetah relaxes and copes with the crowds much better than without that emotional cue.

Ashley will lose this game.
Cheetahs never prosper.

You'd want a class in that.  Some people's sexual history are terribly complicated...
The re's a huge difference in response time between
"Get to the locker and bring out the Old Weapons!"
and
"Fix Bayonets!"

...mostly inflicted by each other on each other before the attack.
You don't cache the low-tech weapons. You make them standard-issue.  At least in the case of commonsense weapons like knives and bayonets.  That, plus decent hand-to-hand combat training should suffice nicely.  Keeping a reserve cache by definition means they will be "specialty" weapons the troops are less familiar with.  You want the bayonet in the soldier's kit from day 1.  And it gives the pulse rifle a dash of steampunk flair to boot.
Edit:  The Evil Overlord list is nearly as addicting as TV Tropes but fortunately much shorter.

#142: If I have children and subsequently grandchildren, I will keep my three-year-old granddaughter near me at all times. When the hero enters to kill me, I will ask him to first explain to her why it is necessary to kill her beloved grandpa. When the hero launches into an explanation of morality way over her head, that will be her cue to pull the lever and send him into the pit of crocodiles. After all, small children like crocodiles almost as much as Evil Overlords and it's important to spend quality time with the grandkids.

...mostly inflicted by each other on each other before the attack.
You don't cache the low-tech weapons. You make them standard-issue.  At least in the case of commonsense weapons like knives and bayonets.  That, plus decent hand-to-hand combat training should suffice nicely.  Keeping a reserve cache by definition means they will be "specialty" weapons the troops are less familiar with.  You want the bayonet in the soldier's kit from day 1.  And it gives the pulse rifle a dash of steampunk flair to boot.
Edit:  The Evil Overlord list is nearly as addicting as TV Tropes but fortunately much shorter.

#142: If I have children and subsequently grandchildren, I will keep my three-year-old granddaughter near me at all times. When the hero enters to kill me, I will ask him to first explain to her why it is necessary to kill her beloved grandpa. When the hero launches into an explanation of morality way over her head, that will be her cue to pull the lever and send him into the pit of crocodiles. After all, small children like crocodiles almost as much as Evil Overlords and it's important to spend quality time with the grandkids.

Personally I'd have said Ewoks.