ijuin

eg Race started to matter politically once it became clear that political authority was needed in order to force social stratification (i.e. keeping the less-favored groups out of the professional and ruling classes). White farmers don't campaign against black folks when 90% of blacks exist only in subservient roles--they do it when the black folks actually start to compete with them for jobs, housing, schools, and influence. Nobody bothers to spend effort on preventing earthworms from flying, after all.

I know that it's officially illegal to view any video that the copyright holders have decided is not profitable to release in one's country/region, but that's not what I was asking. I was asking if it is possible to play a UK or Europe region DVD (or Blu-Ray) on one of its native players, but is connected to a US-region television set. I want to know if it's possible to just pop in the disk and go, without having to deal with file management or conversions or any hardware outside of the DVD player and television.

ehahe I've been wondering about compatibility issues regarding buying DVDs from UK/Europe--do you need only a DVD player with the correct region encoding, or do you also need a TV set that can display PAL or whatever digital format has replaced it? As far as I know, my own TV can only display ATSC/NTSC . . .

Or, more likely, she was interpreting it more narrowly, as in "no, none of my cousins or other known family look enough like me to vindicate Ellen's assumption that she has just met one of my relatives".

Prime example of the Streisand Effect here, in which raising too much noise in the course of trying to get something taken OUT of the public eye results in increasing its publicity instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

We also saw customers being attracted by viewing Elliot and Susan's antics entertaining.

Tensaided seems to act as though he is the supreme authority in his store, with no corporate overseers who might overrule his eccentricities.

If you can afford it, you might want to look into getting a HEPA-rated air filter (they can be had for 60-100 bucks). One of those would help greatly in clearing airborne allergens in your bedroom.

I'm not certain of the meaning of "superannuation" in this context. Could you enlighten me?

Yes, I do like the teasing expression, with the tongue stuck out.

Who else here thinks that the pink haired girl resembles a Tea'd Heidi?

Legally speaking, use of magic in committing a crime may just be an extra "enhancement" to the charges, like how robbery, assault, or battery charges are strengthened when the offender used a "deadly weapon". Edward very well may have told his superiors that Tedd is tinkering with Uryuom Cosmetic Morphing Devices and exploring their applications to Humans, but not that the device in question is banned by Uryuom governments. He may have also omitted the fact that Tedd has mastered techniques for creating "clone forms" that may be able to spoof biometric security measures such as cameras, voiceprint, fingerprint, eyescan, and possibly even DNA analysis. As for the flying saucer heat shields thing, any time that you're moving faster than 2 km/s or so through atmosphere, you're going to heat up, so it's worthwhile to be able to survive it even if "heat shield" means "coated with super-resistant ceramic that lasts a hundred years of service" rather than "sacrificial ablative material". Also, aerobraking is free delta-v, so unless you're packing so much propulsion in your landing craft that the 8-20 km/s that you would save with each aerobraking reentry is completely irrelevant, then you may as well not look a gift horse in the mouth.

Enough times I've come across a situation where I'm talking to two groups at the same time, and group A demands terminology X and takes offense at all others, while group B demands terminology Y and takes offense to all others. In such a situation there is NO way not to offend one of them, because satisfying the one inherently offends the other.

But to be serious, a saucer shape is good for a landing craft--edge-on it behaves as a lifting body, and flat-on you can use the underbelly as a heat shield for atmospheric entry. Anyway, when Will and Gill spoke about the TF-Gun being illegal on the Uryuom homeworld, to me it seems that they were speaking in a manner that implied that even on Earth they weren't sure that they were 100% out of the reach of the long arm of the law of the homeworld governments. This would imply that it is not a journey of multiple years to travel between the Uryuom planet and Earth. Also, since we have not been told the human name for the Uryuoms' native star, it is probable that said star is not one of the ones that has a well-known name among humans (e.g. Tau Ceti or Altair or Vega), but rather is one that we only know by a catalog number (e.g. Lalande 21185 or Glise 581).

Sadly, some folks just seem to be fishing for reasons to be angry.

They strike me as the embodiment of the ultimate dream of a group of extra-immature Frat Boys and bully-type high school athletes--their society is set up to give them (or at least those who dominate among them) all of the sex, booze, and bullying that they could want.

The real trouble comes when people within the group itself can't agree on the terminology with which to refer to themselves, and each sub-faction rejects the others' choices of terms. The infighting can be epic, and all outsiders had better agree with ALL sides of the argument (including agreeing with each side's rejection of the others), or else be branded an enemy. It's "my way or the highway" with multiple mutually exclusive "one true ways", meaning that there is NO possible position or lack-of-a-position that will not make you somebody's enemy. Hooray for double binds.

It's El Goonish Shiva!

Yes, the Bromans would probably count as "inherently offensive to women", and deserve a good beating.

Yeah, it wasn't really clear that Tedd's female transformations were part of his/her self-image prior to summer. Before that, they were always presented as something that Tedd did for the experience of doing them.

Abraham appeared to have something like this, with that object that he transformed into a sword and then an axe. Reshaping something into an object of the same substance but a different shape may also be easier/more resistant to disenchantment than converting something into a different substance (e.g. steel pipe into steel sword vs. wooden pole into steel sword). As for the laser gun idea, any laser gun that Susan gets her hands on is probably going to be Uryuomtech or some secret DGB device. The Uryuoms are implied to be at least a century or two ahead of us technologically, after all--they've had FTL travel since at least 1947 (Date of the Roswell Incident. We know for sure that they've been on Earth for at least forty years minimum since Noah is a second-generation Uryuom/Human hybrid and William, who was Born in the USA, is at least 36 due to the "I could run for President" comment nearly a year ago in story time.).

Yes, Elliot seems to self-identify more by values such as friendship and loyalty and honesty than by masculinity. It probably helps that Elliot's friends, aside from Justin and Greg, are all either female or do not conform to masculine stereotypes--this prevents the sort of "echo chamber" effect that happens when people of exclusively one type gather together.

Wait, there's a King's Quest newer than Mask of Eternity?!

Well, the "cute and sexy" part in the penultimate panel definitely seems to be tied to the girliness.

Any melee weapon of the blunt impact type may fall under the unarmed category.