I was updating HAL's TNB wiki page and realized that one of the things that he probably does to integrate with the other displacees is to play chess with them. Tessa and Ami play chess at a level that would give HAL a challenge (at least to begin with).

And that sent my mind wandering down a path that lead to hobbies.

As mentioned, HAL, Tessa and Ami play chess. Ami also reads.

As per their canon, Soun and Genma play shogi - and cheat.

As per his canon, Sosuke fishes. (Somewhere near Corpus Christi, maybe?)

What do other characters do when they're not working or having adventures?

Remember when Republicans said Dems hacked voting systems to rig Georgia's election? There were no hacks

Quote:On November 4th, 2018, now-Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp announced an investigation into his rival Democratic party, accusing the organization of trying to hack the US state's voter registration system.

The accusation, presented without evidence, was greeted skeptically at the time as it came two days before Kemp, then Secretary of State of Georgia, faced voters in a close race with Democrat Stacey Abrams to become the state's next governor.

It was a hard-fought contest, with claims of voter suppression and other irregularities that saw Kemp winning by barely one per cent of votes cast.

On Friday, ProPublica and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) found "no evidence of damage to (the Secretary of State’s office) network or computers, and no evidence of theft, damage, or loss of data."

That assessment came from a senior assistant attorney general who recommended in March that the GBI's investigation of the claimed incident be closed.

I'm fairly sure we had the DWMB logo image up there from the old boards, didn't we? It's not a major thing, and perhaps the opportunity could be taken to make a new one with a matching green and non-jaggy lettering, but I figured it was worth noting at least.

... and it's San Felix, not San Dimas. That was the town in the Bill & Ted movies

Over the past decade-plus, Peg and I have been buying anime and not watching it, or watching the first couple episodes and then never following up.  The last couple months have given us opportunity and reason to pull all these out and finish them off.  We started with Tenchi Muyo! War on Geminar some weeks ago, followed by Madlax (and when I told Peg about it and Noir being part of an unofficial "Girls with Guns" trilogy, we ended up ordering and watching El Cazador del Bruja).  

And last night we finished up Princess Tutu, which we've had in our collection since we bought it after discovering this AMV some fifteen or more years ago.  (We bought Kaleido*Star for much the same reason, also years ago.)

And the entire reason I'm starting this thread is because, even though there's a Tutu nanoStep already over in DW/General, I now have the desire to write something that ends up with Doug facing off against Drosselmeyer and intoning, in a low, threatening voice, "I'm the natural enemy of the writer.  I'm an editor."

From CNNs Twitter

My 'favorite' part was how they arrest the black reporter, on camera, head off... then realize they should probably arrest the camera crew.

non-embedded

I think it would be just like the more puckish aspects of Doug's power to take the entire effect of this song from the very last line

Namely, if he has ingredients and a heat source at hand, he can prepare any form of fried food from start to finish within the 4:20 duration of the song, and if he's specifically making fried poultry and takes the full duration can produce up to 100x the servings that the available materials would normally yield. This is admittedly a very situational ability and one that you would probably shortly become glad only works once per day if the circumstances did become regular, but very handy when it does apply, to quickly get a meal together on a busy day or when there's a hungry (or just unsettled, people are calmer with food in their belly after all -- and just imagine the sedative power of chicken fried turkey) crowd to handle.

While working he never exactly seems to be moving faster than normal, nor does any one step in the process seem to take an unusually short amount of time, but between one breath and the next he'll have moved on to another stage without a perceptible transition until it's complete and being dished up, with utensils and dishware being summoned as needed and fading away in a similar fashion when no longer needed for the purpose. Trying to cheese the power to get a supply of metal/ceramic/etc. from dishes and cutlery for some other purpose fails as they will vanish as soon as they're no longer needed for serving or consuming the meal, leaving behind a pile of wasted food if the purpose was not to actually feed anyone with it. Even with the honest intent of eating it later, dishware that still has food waiting on it will vanish when his internal uses-per-day clock resets, though the actual food is as real and permanent as normal and will keep or spoil at normal rates, etc. The effect does comply with HPverse rules for transfiguring or conjuring vs. expanding the quantity of edible food, BTW.

Two days after Twitter applied Fact Check links to his insane ranting about mail-in election fraud, Trump has signed an executive order intended to strip online media companies of their liability protections for daring to apply evidence. The man has his priorities.

Because the Great White North can fuck things up, too.

Military report reveals 'horrific' conditions at Ontario long-term care homes

tl;dr: Military medics and related specialists were called out to help out in five nursing homes in Ontario during the pandemic. They provided a report about what they saw to the Premier of Ontario.

Spoilered to protect the squeamish:

Spoiler

Quote:Cockroaches, rotten food, patients with ulcers left bed-bound, staff moving from unit to unit wearing contaminated gear.

Those are just some of the disturbing conditions detailed in a Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) report made public Tuesday and based on the observations of its members at five Ontario long-term care homes deemed by the province to have required the most support.

non-embedded

i. Paradoxe de la Lumière Noire

ii. Live, Die, Kill
Consider this question 
Look deep inside
Deliver a true confession
What are you willing to live for

Consider this question
Open your eyes
Examine your own reflection
What are you willing to die for

When your backs’ against the wall
And the times uncertain
Consider this question
No standing by

When flesh and blood are threatened
What are you willing to kill for

We seek
To understand
We cry
With hand in hand

The bridges we build to connect
The distance that makes us forget
Hate dividing us
Love reminding us of our shared humanity
Hope can be a shadow fleeting
I would rather die believing
Capture it all in a final act of faith

We seek
To understand
We cry
With hand in hand

A story that needs to be told
An answer that begs to be found
The beauty we wish to behold Is never too far away

iii. The Embracing Circle

iv. The Pursuit of Truth

Mothers for their children
Husbands for their wives
Martyrs for the kingdom
Fighting for your life

A soldier for his country
A junkie for the high
Teachers for their students
Vengeance for a crime

Rebels for their freedom
A tyrant for the praise
Cowards for salvation
Money, love, and fame

Noble embrace
We lay down our lives for the cause
Death over shame
Grace before glory

v. Surrender, Trust & Passion

To really feel the joy in life
You must suffer through the pain
When you surrender to the light
You can face the darkest days

If you open up your eyes
And you put your trust in love
On those cold and endless nights
You will never be alone

Passion glows within your heart
Like a furnace burning bright
Until you struggle through the dark
You'll never know that you're alive


Now, my first thought was either something to induce meditation on self-knowledge, or perhaps a mild compulsion to think about what things truly matter and what does not, such as might be useful during a negotiation perhaps (especially given how super-long the whole track is, at over twenty minutes) but then it occurred to me that this might be the song to call an Usagi Tsukino simulacrum, as both the "look inside for what really matters" and "put your trust in love" messages do fit the over-arching themes of her series, and the extreme length would give his power time to build up to pull off some pale imitation of the silly bullshit she can do by the end, if it starts with her on her rookie outing form at first and progresses as she did while Doug knew her through the duration rather than being a snapshot or composite impression of her most recent abilities. Still not up to the level of the actual Silver Crystal, but even just calling on his own capacity and whatever environmental resources might be available Doug's power should be able to do quite a bit with 20min of charge time.

He's got an actual imprint of Usagi in princess-form keeping watch over the memory packet holding his time with them IIRC, so the simulacrum might be more than just his impressions of her - or might even manifest from listening to the song to see what it does, while those memories are still locked away. That might be a new one even for him, to create a sim of a person he doesn't know he knows.

Hey guys!

I would have posted this in the usual videos thread, buuuuuuut given that there's so much to cover here, I figured it might be best off in its own thread.  In this way, the videos shouldn't get buried too quickly, giving you a chance to bookmark the thread for later perusal, and it will cut down on posts I'd otherwise be making to the regular video thread.

Some of ya'll might remember that wonderfully explanatory video I posted some time back about how the manual transmission in an automobile works.  Well, in this thread, we're gonna see that video again, along with more videos that will show you:

• How does an automatic transmission work?
  
• How does a torque convertor work?
  
• Automatic Transmissions Vs. Manual Transmissions - The Pros and Cons of Both
  
• The Best of Both Worlds: The Dual Clutch Transmission