HarJIT

Poor Dan.  I'm glad he shared with us just how hard it was to create a comic with a character death.  The Geek is strong with him.  We may have only just met Blaike, but Dan has likely known him for years.

I feel Sweveham has the right of it. We have two parties, with similar policies and practices across both the economic and foreign spheres. They differ primarily on polarized social and operational issues which many European countries don't even debate, such as the right to bodily autonomy for women, or the necessity of taxation to fund the activity of government. Our elections are primarily run around the personalities and social stances of our politicians, rather than the expectation of differing political practice.

Of course, to your earlier post, Sweveham, our parties are nearly arbitrary groupings of politicians, primarily differentiated from one another by branding, fundraising, target demographics, and stance on the aforementioned social and operational issues. They persist because they are so large and pervasive that they've established a dominant binary, it is infeasible to practice politics here without participating in one or the other. If Europe is only just moving toward a post-democratic society, we are honestly further down that road.
 
I believe that we are not, and can not be, a healthy democratic society under the two party system. The enforced binary does not empower politicians to seek change, for it is inherently reductive and repressive. Unanimity in economic and foreign policy has driven decades of interventionism and increasingly unwise deregulation. Even the progress we have made in recent years on social issues is vulnerable in the face of this uneven polarization that prevents functional compromise in these areas. We can, we must reform both ourselves, and our political reality.

RE invisible text problem, I've created a page for it to save posting the same thing repeatedly:
https://sites.google.com/site/harjitegs/910-invisible-text-problem

You know, some days I really get tired of the hate showered indisciminantly on politicians.  Or lawyers, or used car salesmen, or any other entire profession.
The vast majority of people who run for an elected office do it because they honestly want to make the world, or at least their corner of it, a better place.  They start out with something local, they see an injustice, and they step up and try to do something to fix it.  Whether they succeed or not, they discover that they can indeed make a difference, or that inaction allows injustice to continue, and they carry on trying to make a difference.  Sometimes they have to give up a promising career in some other field, or time with their families, or put up with insults from total strangers who know nothing about them but just assume they must be crooked.
Not everyone agreed on what will make the world a better place.  I know I'm not going to approve of all the changes every politician wants to make.  Some of them want to make changes I would find horrific.  But I don't automatically assume they're evil and trying to commit crimes, I assume that they see the world differently and that it might even be possible for them to change their minds someday about the things we disagree about.
The current system makes it easy to make compromises for the sake of the greater good.  Some of those compromises are moral ones, and some politicians end up on a slippery slope towards doing things they never intended, but I do not believe that is the overwhelming majority so many people seem to think it is.
The term "career politician" is treated like it's one of the worst insults you can hurl, but why?  Like any job, there are doubtless tricks of the trade, things you learn how to do better and better with more practice.  Some people casually advocate a "throw 'em all out!" attitude.  Why would we want our country to be run by a group of people none of whom have any experience at doing so?  Seems to me the best way is to have some new members and some veterans to show them the ropes and provide continuity.  Like, you know, any other business/profession/skill set.
Are we really so cynical and pessimistic and even nihilistic that we'd each rather just assume everyone in the world is evil except ourselves?

This is cute. Pandora must really have loved Blaike, considering she still uses his name.
 And I love all this backstory. It makes Pandora into a far more complex and sympathetic character. It seems as if Pandora's efforts to amuse herself by playing with mortals were far more considerate than they would later become. She gave useful information in return and most importantly, seems to care if they got hurt, which she certainly does not do in the story's present.

I was thinking more like Pandora was the Blonde woman. Which raises the question, did she intend on Susan seeing her with her father (or adopted father)? Would make sense if Pandora wanted Susan and Diane to have very different childhoods, Diane seemed to have had a pretty normal if a bit spoiled childhood, while Susan grew up in a broken family. How would Susan have been if her father didn't cheat? Probably the same as Diane I think.

Certainly looks possible.
And while we're at it, I'm not certain we should bury the theory of Susan and Diane being related to Adrian just yet. Young Pandora bears a pretty strong resemblance to them. So being Adrian's half-sisters could be possible and still explain the Susan-like illusion Adrian put on Grace. Pandora could have used magic to suppress the elven nature of Susan and Diane so that even other immortals couldn't detect it. She was disappointed that Adrian couldn't act to his full abilities growing up, so made sure that Susan and Diane didn't receive those restrictions.

Why not?  She could've changed the sheets.

I have added Ashley -> Diane and re-reckoned the rankings without counting orbitals.  This gives a better idea of hubs in the core of the 14 itself rather than the periphery: Susan, Nanase, Ellen, Elliot and Tedd stand out (especially the latter two), with Justin prominently behind due to ships being primarily orbitals (suggesting a peripheral role).
The graph drawing is copyright © HarJIT 2015, 2016.  May be freely redistributed subject to the following:
 

Is this another dream where Tedd advises Elliot about his live life?
Funny how we ended with two cases of "characters being more sexy than (supposedly) told to" this month.
The relief from not having four breasts more than compensates the annoyance of not being cat girl.
Actually, I think Rhoda interrupted them little too early for that ...
... well, two boys kissing girls can't be gay, right?

If the next arc is Sister III, WHICH sisters will be involved?
Nanase & Akiko
Noriko & Mrs Kitsune
Grace & Vladia
Susan & Diane
Diane & Rhea
Sarah & Carol
Pandora & Eris
Melissa & The Gossip
Or will it be a brother-sister story?
Elliot & Ellen
Helena & Demetrius

Is it weird that the first thing that popped into my head after seeing this was Tedd and Elliot telling their shocked friends "It's not gay if we're both girls!"
Also, it seems I'm not late to comment on these pinups this time. Yay.

I did edit the image in response to proposed amendments, which altered the perceived centre somewhat (may be redistributed freely subject to the same conditions) - dashed lines denote so-called orbitals separate from the core 14:
As for edit mode, my Greasemonkey script again (yes, I'm going to keep posting this when it comes up, for the benefit of anyone who missed my previous postings).

This is not Ellen in a 40's style pinup.
This is a photo of Mrs Dunkel's grandmother back in 1943.

There is something deeply satisfying about deleting 10 years of email from an ex job that I never want to have any thing to do with until the heat death of the universe. And maybe a little later than that.

I'm sure the megacorporate lawyers are saying that. The difference is that governments answers to people. Corporations answers to shareholders. The answering might not be sincere - in BOTH cases - but the difference is still there.

I am so sorry to hear of this. You, his family, and his loved ones have my full sympathies. May he find peace.

This is technically a "happy" announcement, but I have decided to take a break from all news regarding Brexit. I had attached myself too emotionally to the event even though I'm an Australian. I need to calm myself, and perhaps make sure my away time from all Brexit news lasts as long as until the UK confirms for certain they're staying or leaving.
And already I'm breathing better.
Ps: By making this post, I hope it'll be easier to hold myself accountable to not listen to Brexit news.

It is. Even being only mildly genderfluid. Not that I'd equate it, or even compare it, to what someone who's transgender deals with - I've had dysphoria for hours *total*, they suffer it for hours *daily* - but it's nonzero.

Yes--once you've already sunk the development costs (which makes up about 80% of the cost of a game outside of marketing/advertising), then you may as well recover whatever revenue you can by selling it, considering that the alternative is to get ZERO revenue by not selling it. The only times when it makes sense NOT to release it are when 1: there is still significant expenditure needed before it could be released, or 2: releasing it would harm sales of your other present or future products (e.g. you think it will flop so badly that it will hurt the franchise's popularity).

That would give you Cannon canon.  What we're looking for is a real-life canon cannon.

I agree so very much with that. I don't think Edward understands how much he has hurt his son, but Tedd no longer feels safe around his father and that is a terrible situation for both of them.

HAIL ERIS!
ALL HAIL DISCORDIA!

I googled "Danish explosive ducks" and somehow found myself reading "5 Amazing things invented by Donald duck"...

Dropped and currently falling at 9.8 meters per second per second.