Let’s not forget the endless conversations about which park is Werewolf territory and which is Gangrel Vampire territory. Then the slow realization that you don’t live in a place cool enough to attract any supernatural presence.

To make things even more awkward, prior to making promises to the Jewish community, the UK had already made promises to the Arab community to provide independence to Arab Palestine in exchange for fighting the Turks.

What a hottie.

The scientific method is more about falsification than problem solving.

“If you ever succeed, devise and implement a test to see if it was a fluke.”

I’d reply that anyone can justify any conclusion if they’re allowed to pick and choose the evidence under consideration. We should aim to produce a political theory that accounts for decades of history and change.

From the DNC’s perspective, going left lost against Nixon of all people, during a deeply unpopular war. Going left was crushed by Regan. Both Bush presidents won by attacking centrist candidates from the right. Clinton ran very centrist campaigns and won. Obama was at best more practical than ideological. Carter and Biden picked up the pieces of disasters, but that didn’t translate in to long term gains, and neither of them got credit for what wins they delivered the left.

I agree the DNC should go left, but I understand it’s hard to make the case based on the last 60 years of experience.

I too grew up in an era of action movies, where the good guy divisively self-defenses the bad guy to death, saves the world, goes home and has marital relations with the prom queen. It’s a powerful story, but ultimately it’s just a story.

Peaceful resistance does work, but there isn’t a single event that achieves change. It has to be an accumulation.

Rosa Park’s arrest didn’t achieve anything “in terms of change”.

Ghandi’s protest fasts didn’t achieve anything “in terms of change”.

When the Baltics had their singing revolutions, there wasn’t a single performance that achieved anything “in terms of change”.

All these were parts of larger efforts of peaceful resistance that culminated in change.

What did Cory Booker’s speech achieve? It’s too early to say. It’s possible it will be part of an accumulation that culminates in measurable results. On the other hand, it’s possible cynicism will poison the resistance and it will achieve nothing. We’ll only know once the history is written.

I remember watching an interview with the CEO of SUN microsystems in the 90’s argue that you didn’t need to know how to run a nuclear power plant to use a light switch, and you shouldn’t have to know how a computer works to use one.

I guess his vision came true, and we’re mad about it?

Don’t believe Trump lives in a world where “truth” and “lie” has no meaning. He doesn’t lie to deceive. If that was his goal his lies would be more carefully crafted. He lies as a demonstration of power and test of obedience. He is absolutely saying things that no one believes are true, just to make his toadies nod along, just to ensure no one yet feels brave enough to question his pronouncements.

If none are willing to contradict his statements, none will hesitate to carry out his orders.

This is the sort of thing that makes me feel more sympathy for the Democratic party. The party simply can’t win with the left.

The party leadership worked against Sanders candidacy because they are convinced a liberal can’t win in America. I don’t agree, but recognize with Nixon and Reagan dominating over leftist candidates, Carter ekeing out a win as a centrist, Clinton winning convincingly as a centrist, and Obama winning as a rather vague candidate, recent history has given limited reason think a leftist national candidate is a safe bet.

But if voters are supporting Cuomo and the party doesn’t intervene the party is the wrong for not ignoring the will of the voters and tanking his candidacy.

I mean I get it. The left wants their candidates to win, but the lack of consistency is grating. It makes the centrist seem more sensible.

Look up Bureau 13 Stalking the Night Fantastic. It’s from the early 90’s. It’s got a lot of X-files vibes, but doesn’t take itself particularly seriously, and it predates x-files. It’s built on the all conspiracies are true trope, so it’s quite gonzo. There’s all sorts of gadgets the agents have access to that are prosaic today, so you probably want to run it in the era it was written in.

The Open D6 system remains my favorite system. I’ve run my homebrew fantasy games as well as Star Wars games in the system, and have plans for others when the opportunity arises.

Without a purity test how can I tell which members of the tribe are loyal and which might betray me?

For me this changes all the time as I invest in developing something, and inevitably something catches my attention. I’m pretty invested in the Open D6 system, so I’m always riffing on this system.

Lately I’ve been penciling out a game where a party is rewarded with the Charter to the king’s casino. I started with the idea of inverting Ocean’s 11, since every party ever wants to rob a casino as soon as they learn there is a casino. So, the idea is the party has control of a casino and now they have to deal with organized crime, card counters and sharps, rivals, labor disputes, royal demands, and the occasional party that thinks they’ve got a surefire plan for an epic heist.

I’m reminded of the story of Garg and Moonslicer, and I wish more publishers would lean in to this approach to good and evil. A purely lore approach would be enough to frame the conflict around, some races are naturally social creatures, and some races are naturally antisocial. Both have hierarches, but not all races have the same natural concepts of fairness and justice. Any individual can embrace either world view or a mix, but one comes more naturally to each race. Even if humanity is naturally a good race (debatable, but whatever), members can obviously deviate significantly.

Ultimately it doesn’t mater what race the slavers are, I’m not going to worry about the ethics of self-defensing a party of slavers to death as PC or GM.

I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.

Captain G.M. Gilbert

The army psychologist assigned to interview the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials.

The yard spray folks come around every spring offering me a deal because they are spraying all my neighbor’s yards. I’m the only yard with lighting bugs in the neighborhood.

A Silent Spring was supposed to be a warning, not a how-to.

The word exceptional didn’t always mean better. It used to just mean different, as in an exception to the rule.

Wow. I was in middle school and had to do a creative writing assignment, and I wrote a science fiction short story set in a colony on that boundary of Mercury. I thought Mercury was tidal locked. I was praised for my creativity.

I was today years old when I found that Mercury is not tidal locked.

WEG Star Wars 2nd edition Revised and Expanded.

My roommate and I split the cost, and when we moved I kept it. It’s still one of my prized possessions.