The Old Hack

http://egscomics.com/comic/tlod-019

http://egscomics.com/comic/tlod-021

Okay. It is no secret that I am a huge WWII buff, or at least it probably won't shock anyone here to learn it. I love a great many topics related to the war but one of my absolute favourites since childhood is fighter planes. I had a huge collection of model airplanes I'd assembled myself which took up almost half the space of one room. I just got hold of a DVD with a TV program about WWII German fighter jets, something which normally fascinates me endlessly. I sat down ready for an hour of happy geeking out. Then the narrator began. And droned on and on and on. I have never before heard anyone on TV with such a terribly boring voice. After a while I actually fell ASLEEP. The last I remembered was something about having trouble getting the High Command to allocate resources enough to developing their jets and then I woke up to something about how fuel shortages made it nearly impossible for the German jets to take to the air in the spring of '45. That narrator was so boring that he made me sleep through almost a whole program about one of the topics most fascinating to me throughout my life. HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE.

https://egscomics.com/egsnp/assorted-18a-012

http://egscomics.com/comic/tlod-017

If you think ANY form of activism is 'safe' or that activists go into what they do to lead safer lives, look at the safe lives of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela (though I guess you can argue that political prison is 'safe'), or even less notable ones like current generation feminists and Black Lives Matter activists being exposed to death threats, doxxing, 'swatting', rape threats and smear campaigns aimed at destroying their lives. It is an activist act just to protest one's own sexual violation, especially if the sexual predator is in a powerful social position. If you do so, you might find all of the above launched at you in very short order. Also, there might be those who fight who simply choose to do so while hiding from the spotlight. When my late Uncle Georg spread anti-Nazi pamphlets, he didn't do it while wearing a sandwich board reading "COME HERE FOR YOUR NEWS FROM THE FREE WORLD. DOWN WITH THE NAZI OPPRESSORS." It allowed him to last longer, you see, though they did catch him eventually and put him in jail for the rest of the war. I am too emotionally exhausted to argue this any further with someone playing Devil's Advocate for the sake of it. Allow me to boil down political correctness to the simplest possible principle. "Don't call people shitty things. It encourages you to think of them the same way." That's all there is to it and if you think that is pointless I feel sorry for you.

I must disagree. Martin Luther King was exceptional but he was middle class at best and his power stemmed from the bottom. What is more, he was also planted squarely beneath the oppression he was fighting. He was not the equal of a white man in a similar position. You would be surprised at the power of symbols. If an entire generation is taught to think of a group in clearly dehumanising terms and that it is okay to refer to them as 'monkeys', the N-word, 'junglebunnies' and so forth, they will start to perceive that group as subhuman on a level below that of conscious thought. It will become a basic assumption that is never challenged. There is a reason that Hitler and the Nazis attempted to entirely revise the German language and outlawed a great many terms -- it was behavioral modification on a national scale. There are books written on the topic. Yes, that is what the people resisting the activists want you to believe. They are well aware that their OWN behavioral modifiers are being challenged, so they do their best to resist or slow down the change. One way of doing so is attacking the very basis they do it on. ...the 'logic' in that sentence makes my brain hurt. You are really underestimating these women if you think they are not desperately fighting for themselves. Or why else would you constantly be reading of arrests being made and brutal punishments inflicted on the offenders...

http://egscomics.com/comic/tlod-018

Danes love tall tales. Clearly they wanted to hear the Canterbury Tales. It's not their fault that they were a bit early.

They already do that. In Gamergate, for example, the leaders of the mob told the followers, "We are the PCs, they are the NPCs. Anything we do to them is fair game."

Ah, fair enough. Maybe Dr. Insano is holding a clearance sale.

Go pick any of a large number of Black people in the US and call them the N-word. Use a statistically significant amount, say, a thousand or so. Then note down how many of them weren't offended and you'll have a decent starting idea of the percentage involved. If you want to be sure, pick Black people at the bottom of the social pyramid, they should not be hard to find. In fact, just go into the middle of the Chicago slums and shout the N-word as loudly as you can about a half dozen times. The reaction should tell you everything you need to know. Only warn me before doing it, I want to stand back a bit first.

It does have something new to it. In several cases it is revolutionary, from large numbers at the bottom of the pyramid demanding the change of the top, rather than conservative, imposing the silencing of the bottom. Demanding the cessation of use of the N-word, for example. The nearest case of this I can think of is that Byzantine Emperor who changed the state language of Byzantium from Latin to Greek because Greek was the language of the common citizen and Latin only used by the privileged few, though that came from the top, too.

This has been true as long as government has existed. And it is very hard to completely erase a concept. There are still records of the Pharaoh Hachepsut, for example. Still, certain rulers made really good tries, like those Chinese Emperors that decided to reset history by burning all existing records to assure a new Year Zero starting with them. It didn't really work, no-one believed it, but they did destroy numberless invaluable and important texts and works of literature.

The article didn't specify, merely saying that he was picked up shortly afterwards. I figured they noticed the car but it is also possible they got a tip. Still, you're right, the former is more probable.

That was a plot device. I can make my own.

An acquaintance of mine writes ad copy for a local magazine. One column was supposed to read 'Used Dream Cars' in Danish. He typed a bit too fast and messed it up. Autocorrect, helpful as always, suggested an alternative. 'Used Doomsday Devices.' I am still turning that one over in my head. It is just terribly wrong on several levels. Unfortunately my mind is insisting on chewing it over and continually objecting to even the existence of the concept.

Probably badly. He did get caught by the police shortly afterwards, so maybe the neighbour got on the phone to them very quickly after he left.

Adventurer groups can do astoundingly stupid things at times. There was a legendary tale in my community about how a large party of adventurers fought a massively powerful dragon in its lair, lost half their number and then finally managed to paralyse it. Then they started to argue with each other about the loot and did so for so long that the dragon had time to recover from the paralysis. And when it did, it killed the rest of them.

Good points all. Mind you, from what I read I think the poor idiot was simply conscience-stricken and wanted to put the children somewhere as close to their home as possible without actually ringing the doorbell to the place itself. That last might have seemed understandably awkward to him. "Uh, ma'am? Sorry for kidnapping your children, it was an accident, I just wanted your car."

To be fair this is not just in Denmark. A lot of criminals have lines they don't like to cross. Some of which, truth be told, are there to protect themselves. If the guy had been thinking instead of panicking, he might have considered the calculus of being wanted for stealing a car versus being wanted for kidnapping two children. The latter scenario means huge manhunt with police everywhere looking for you. Not a good thing if all you want is to unload a hot car.

We had a variation of this happen in Denmark. A mother decided to visit a store and left her two kids, four and five years old, peacefully snoozing beneath a blanket on the back seat. While she was gone a car thief stole the car, not noticing the children. When he did spot them he decided this was too much -- he was a car thief, not a kidnapper. He asked the children where they lived and drove them home where he dropped them off with a neighbour who happened to be home at the time. Sadly for him the police was already in the area and he got arrested when he tried to leave in the stolen car.

He also did stuff like kidnap a governor from his home to talk him into pardoning an innocent man about to be executed. The early Superman didn't as much respect the law as he paid vague attention to some rough guidelines.

At least he is in our day and time. Back in 1938 when he first appeared he had a rather different attitude.

Which is indeed what he does in the MCU continuity.