The Old Hack

Obviously Grace is completely nuts about her.

I wonder if there is a FAFO server. If there is, it must have been RED HOT for a while now and this won't have helped much.

Awesome, I just bought popcorn.

Obviously. She is unbeatable after all.

It varies. It is usually the Fantastic Four but occasionally other heroes have fought him, too. Squirrel Girl took him down once. Another time Hercules so hilariously failed to stop Galactus that he actually made the Planet Eater laugh and decide to spare the planet Hercules was trying to protect because he couldn't even remember the last time he laughed. And Galactus has a LONG memory.

Oh dear, how sad, however shall the world cope with their loss. I weep bitter tears, or would if I cared.

We don't know that. Maybe he fell out of a plane window just before the plane crashed. Yeah, I know, planes don't normally have windows. But never underestimate Russian defenestration technology.

I personally restrict Drunken Master to Jackie Chan movies.

It didn't work that well for them in the war of 1904-05 either.

Well sure, if Henry had had an arms depot hand out free bishop assassination weapons to all visitors as well as giving them full information about the Archbishop's home, its security and his patterns of movement.

The youtuber Perun has made some truly outstanding videos on the lamentable state of the Russian military. They are each quite long -- usually an hour or so each -- but very enlightening. Allow me to in particular recommend How Corruption Destroys Armies, How Lies Destroy Armies and How Politics Destroy Armies. In these he goes into detail of how a culture of corruption, political patronage and feuding as well as misrepresentation and outright lies has formed to, well, completely bootscrew the Russian military from top to bottom. Mind you, these three problems are of course not isolated to Russia. All nations have to deal with them. It's just that in Russia all three have grown systemic and endemic. Worse yet, they act as force multipliers for one another. I myself had not kept up and I was astonished by merely scraping the surface of the troubles of the Russian invasion. One of the first things I heard was that they had not been able to keep the advance properly supplied and that alone almost made me fall out of my chair from shock. Keeping your army supplied is one of the most fundamental necessities if you want to win a war. Just the fact that they could not even do that was enough to tell me that something was a lot more rotten in Russia than in Denmark.

I stand corrected. Putin's demonstration of the Russian Army's exact power was a resounding success! It merely did not provide the impression he had hoped for. Ah well.

Actually he was impeached over it. Not even a month after. And no, there was nothing peaceful in his call for rioting. Unless you would argue that four police officers was murdered peacefully during the protests. The counterargument was that this riot happened spontaneously, which I am having some trouble imagining given the large number of weaponry and paramilitary equipment the 'peaceful' protesters brought along. Presumably the gallows that was erected was intended to send a peaceful sign of protest as well? And they merely had the materials at hand through happenstance? Ah. This is a 'polite aside' as opposed to a not very subtle ad hominem where you accuse us of being trained dogs. How nice. No-one even brought up that term, and yet you are throwing it out simply to justify insulting us. Thank you. In any event the employment of dog whistles is moot. There was plenty of evidence during the January 6th hearings that the riot was planned and prepared for. I spent a great deal of time listening to them in toto so I would not have to rely on selected sound bites from biased sources. (Yes, I include MSNBC and CNN in that. There is no substitute for direct observation.) Could you give us a source for this remarkable claim? Also, even if true, did he demand that they provide falsified evidence that his principal opponent in the upcoming election be engaged in corruption? Remember, the former president was not impeached for corrupt exercise of power. He was impeached for an attempt to corruptly influence the outcome of the upcoming election. As you have correctly pointed out, corruption is terrifyingly common among politicians. It is employing their power to affect elections that steps beyond that. That has only happened once before as far as I am aware. A fellow named Nixon, I do believe. He was not impeached as he resigned before it could happen -- and it most likely would have. And yet all of Trump's 44 predecessors managed to get through their elected terms of office without attempting to violate the peaceful transfer of office. I do not really see how you can place an equivalence between that and all other politicians when none of them has ever tried to violate anything as fundamental as the people's right to choose which politician to put in office.

I don't remember Vice President Biden publicly boasting of having incited a riot in an attempt to interrupt a public proceeding and steal an election. Nor of having attempted to influence himself to declare an election invalid. *scratches head*

Quintuple fail if you count the three other failed objectives -- establishing the power of the Russian Army, increase Russia's international influence and solidify its position as a greater power.

https://www.tumblr.com/vaspider/725688445046063104/average-president-has-2-felony-charges-factoid?source=share

Well at least you aren't in the market for MAGA baseball caps.

So does it say anything about how it works when narrow-minded people tell you that you are a terrible person because of what you are?

Absolutely. Agreed with your post in all particulars.

So, I decided just for fun to create a thread specifically meant for gaming stories of all kinds. Tabletop, video games, board games, LARP, war games -- anything goes as long as it is funny and/or memorable. I'll start with this one: context: one of our party members is the dwarven paladin Grim Dark, who is a Doom Dwarf (a homebrew dwarven subrace, needless to say created by Grim Dark's player.) Our party is in a dungeon and the rogue has spotted a particularly diabolic trap of dwarven make. rogue: I don't like this. If I deactivate one part of this trap, it looks like I simultaneously activate a previously inactive part of it. cleric: Oh wow. Can you tell what it does? rogue: well, the currently active mechanism sprays burning oil everywhere if we set it off. The alternate mechanism will electrocute us. wizard: sheesh. What sort of paranoid psycho made this thing? rogue: hey, Grim. You're a dwarf. Do you maybe know something about this kind of thing? Grim Dark: Look. I'm a Doom Dwarf, not a Brain Dwarf. It was generally agreed that Grim had a point.

A historian I read argued that authoritarianism seems to experience a resurgence in America every fifty years or so. Wilson's presidency, McCarthyism and now Trumpism rather lend strength to that hypothesis. When viewed from a certain angle one might even call Lincoln authoritarian. The South certainly would, given his tyrannical and absolutist insistence on limiting the enslavement of Black people. Woe unto America when a ruthless tyrant dare impinge on the right of free men to take slaves.

It's okay. They are not in any danger of running out of sixth story windows. Or maybe they are. I suppose that depends on how fast they are moving as they pass through them. In completely unrelated news to any matters dictatorial or genocidal, Shakespeare is no longer permitted in Florida's institutions of education. His plays contain materials harmful to children. Limited excerpts in pamphlet format may be made available until such time as Adolf Santis again has an inspiration for how to keep Florida's young and children safe from the non-threat of Woke. It is amazing how many solutions that man can come up with for problems that only exist in his befuddled, bigoted and power-hungry excuse for a mind.

As far as I recall he started the war with four objectives in mind: Preventing NATO expansion and causing it to further disunite Impress the world with the power and capability of the Russian military Increase Russian influence and presence on the world stage Gaining more allies and demoralizing his enemies through decisive action So far he is 0 for 4. I do not see that this is likely to change much for the better.

So, to brighten our day a little through some humour at Putin's expense: " The war has not ended because Ukraine insists on defending itself. " -- Darth Putin from the comments: "How dare they not just let his shitty old tanks run over them" "To be fair, the T-14 is a shitty new tank. Also he cannot honestly blame the Ukrainians for not letting it overrun them. It usually breaks down quite handily on its own before it even reaches them." "The Russian armoured divisions are mobile junkyards." "You take that back! The T-14 isn't mobile!" "Our attack plans did not take into account encountering actual resistance. I remain a master strategist."

You can't trust everybody. Tears for Fears exposed them. Everybody wants to rule the world. That sort of ambition is definitionally untrustworthy.