http://freedom-of-art.ucoz.com/publ/free_poser_ds/11

I don't recognize them as being from or inspired by any particular work, but I'm the first to admit I haven't seen and read everything out there.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

I'm playing and it would be nice to try playing with a team. Handle is Bill Halsey
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

... and ends up with Fridge Horror:
5 Horrifying Realities Of The 'Harry Potter' Government

So, how many of these conclusions is Doug going to reach? It can't be "none" - Dolores Umbridge is at Hogwarts, after all.

Hello, and pardon me for the late intro!

This handle is not my attitude nor personality; it's an artefact from the old Gamma World RPG, one of the cryptic societies I though was cool when I was a kid, and lately, my online gaming handle [the only superhero I have left in Champions Online, my first ship in Star Trek Online, my Tanki Online handle, and my Fallen London handle. I go by "Khaat" on SD.net]

I've written scads of absolute drek since being introduced to the setting (SD.net back in August '15, thanks!), most never to see the light of day. I've posted a couple of things in Fenspace "Vignettes", feel free to drop me any feedback.

See you on the boards,
Justin

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/organ ... 1a-rocket/]Vostochny Cosmodrome debuts with the successful launch of a Soyuz-2.1a rocket

Thought folks might be interested...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

I believe it was noted here some weeks ago that Bob of "Bobmin" (aka "Bob and Alyx") had been diagnosed with advanced cancer.  Sadly, he did not beat it -- the following was posted in the Caer Azkaban Yahoo Group this morning:

Quote:From: alyxnw@... [snorkack]Date: Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 9:00 AMSubject: [snorkack] Bob...
Hey, everyone. Quick note to let you all know that Bob passed early this morning. Very unexpected. He was improving, mass had shrunk significantly and he was on maintenance chemo treatments.
When I went to bed, I found him. His passing looked peaceful and I can only hope it was.
Thank you all for being a part of our lives for so many years. You've brought us a great deal of happiness.
~Alyx~

As Eimi flew all but one of her aerial drones back to the
Birdhouse, I stashed the crawlers in a pannier, then hopped on my
bike and made my way to the Bronze. I'd been ignoring it all
this time, preferring to hunt the hunters in the downtown area.
But I really did need to scope it out, and frankly it was
overdue.

I went vertical from the clearing, then shot arrow-straight
across first the spaghetti twistings of the outlying residential
zones, over the (mostly) regular grid of downtown, and then into
the industrial district, where the faux-underground club made a
none-too-successful show of lurking "disreputably" in a warehouse
that was very clearly well-kept and managed solely to house it.

Gods. Save me from poseurs.

It was almost an hour after sunset, so I didn't have to worry
about anyone spotting me dropping out of the sky into an alley
(unoccupied by anyone living or dead) between two *real* working
warehouses. I cut off the engine noise suppression and shot out
into the street. One right turn and I was at the entrance to the
Bronze's parking lot.

So I parked.

Stashing my helmet in a pannier, I pulled TunePlug r.11 out of my
pocket, stuck it in my ear, and subvocalized "Test, test" as my
body heat fed the thermocouple that powered its circuitry and it
began to play a stream of synthesized music.

"Reading you loud and clear, Doug." Eimi's voice was a couple
decibels louder than the music. The plug was a necessary tool
for the times I needed to work discreetly in an environment where
I was likely to run into songs that might trigger my gift. The
music it generated "confused" my metatalent and kept it from
activating if I should come upon a song that normally gave me a
power. I'd built a lot of different versions of it over the
years, and a radio link to Eimi had been part of it since
revision 8. The link was the only reason I was using it now --
with my metatalent in burnout, I didn't need to block it. "I'm
looking for a back way into the club now."

"You little sneak," I chuckled.

"Well, it's not like I can carry the cash for a cover charge in
one of these things," she mock-huffed. "They don't exactly have
pockets."

"That's what we need to add to the next generation design, then,"
I murmured. "I'll see you inside."

"Right!"

Speaking of cover charges, the bouncers at the door were clearly
for show -- there was no line waiting to get in, and everyone got
past them. All they did was check the occasional ID and collect
the cover. And given some of the clientèle that got past them
with the barest flash of a driver's license, it was pretty
obvious that the ID-checking was a token effort at best. They
didn't even bother when I walked up to the door -- they just took
my five bucks and waved me through.

"I've found an open window," Eimi whispered in my ear just before
the muted music from the dance floor hit me. "Whoa. Way to save
on the interior decorating budget, guys -- love the 'early
warehouse' decor."

"They didn't," I subvocalized as I pushed my way through the mob
of teens and early-post-teens thronging the crudely redressed
"front office" area which served as a foyer and coat room for the
club.

"They did," she giggled. "They had either a very minimalist
aesthetic or a very minimalist budget when they set this place
up. Stage, bar, and a kind of mezzanine which is basically a few
support columns, a floor and a railing. Oh, and a couple
catwalks, among which I am lurking. That's it." As she
described it, I finally pushed past the loiterers at the inner
door and hit the club floor proper.

Recorded music was currently blasting over the sound system, but
the instruments and amps on the small stage promised a live
performance was in the offing. It was noticeably warmer than
room temperature, as the club's air conditioning struggled, not
entirely successfully, against the accumulated body heat of the
two hundred-plus club-goers dancing, flirting and schmoozing in
the irregularly-lit industrial space. (Not exactly the most
comfortable environment in which to be wearing all leather, but
hey, I've coped with worse.)

The average age of the patrons confirmed my guess that any and
all ID checking was token at best -- easily half the club-goers
were obvious high-schoolers. Most of the other half were college
age. And of course there was me, the world's youngest living
centenarian.

I made my way to the bar and ordered a beer -- a local craft brew
that they had on tap. My metabolism would burn through the
alcohol faster than I could drink it -- beer is essentially malt-
and hops-flavored sparkling water as far as my system is
concerned. (Well, as long as I didn't down a six-pack in as many
minutes, at least -- and even then I'd get only a mild, short-
lived buzz.) I took my frosty mug and made my way to one of
those small, tall tables that are pretty much good only for
drinking and snacking and stood there, slowly sipping and
surveying the crowd.

"Anything?" Eimi asked.

"Nope," I mumbled into my beer. "You?"

"I'm tracking a humanoid on the mezzanine with a fashion sense
and a body temperature both in the mid-seventies," she replied.

I raised an eyebrow. "Male or female?"

"Female," Eimi said, a little giggle in her voice. "Are you
going to..."

"Yup." I unbuckled my jacket enough to bare my neck, then
splashed a little beer on myself. Thank gods for wash-and-wear
body armor. "Guide me in, Mission Control."

"Roger that, Hunter One." This time Eimi giggled outright.

A couple minutes later, I came up on the target from behind.
Brunette, Farrah-cut hairdo, wearing a datedly-Mod avocado
pantsuit. I took another swig of my beer, then began my final
approach. I added a little sway-and-stumble to my walk, and
staggered through the thinner crowd on the mezzanine until I
could "accidentally" fall into her and send her drink --
something radioactive green with a slice of citrus and a little
paper umbrella -- flying.

"Ah, geeze, I'm sorry," I slurred lightly at her as she turned
to glare at me. For a moment I saw a flash of gold color her
eyes, then they were some dark shade unidentifiable in the low
light. Just as quickly her expression flickered from annoyed to
assessing. "Lemme buy you 'nother."

She studied me a moment, her nostrils flaring. "It's cool.
Wasn't what I was really interested in drinking."

*I'll bet, lady.* "'m Quinn. So, whatcha want, then?"

She smiled predatorially. "Charlotte." She slid her arm through
mine. "Let's talk about it."

After one outrageously-expensive mixed drink, about ten minutes
of dancing, and a whole lot of snarky commentary from Eimi,
Charlotte finally led me out a side door into a narrow alley
between the club and a tall concrete fence. "Oh, this is nice
and private," she said, turning back to look at me as her face
shifted from human to bestial. "For..."

"This," I finished calmly as I drove the stake from my sleeve
into her chest. She had just enough time to look surprised
before she exploded into ash -- seventies clothing and all.

"I'm *never* gonna get used to that," I said, coughing and waving
the dust away.

"Just look at it this way," Eimi said, her drone dropping out of
the night sky to hover before my face. "At least you're not
leaving a trail of corpses behind you. That would be kind of
hard for the cops to ignore, after all." The drone waggled
insouciantly. "No one notices piles of dust, though."

I nodded. "True, that." I opened the door back into the Bronze.
"Shall we go back to hunting?"

"Yes," Eimi replied. "Let's." The microcopter shot through the
door and I followed.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

It looks like Wall St. already has forgotten what caused the great recession of 2008. Bernie was right.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... eet-213822

I liked the ff paragraph:

A widespread failing in the United States is the degree to which banking authorities treat their charges with undue deference. At the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole conference in 2008, the group of bankers and regulators exploded in anger when former central banker Willem Buiter dared to point out the obvious, that the Fed had a bad case of “cognitive regulatory capture,” meaning it “listens to Wall Street and believes what it hears.” Or as German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble put it: “If you want to drain the swamp, then you don’t ask the frogs for their opinion.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... z46UWmMKYx
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... t-at-work/
This is a becoming to be a common tactic by GOP state legislatures in the South for such issues like higher minimum wage, transgender and plastic bags banning. And these are governments that are crying against federal government prempting them. Yet, these folks have no problem doing it to municipalities. Same thing happened in Birmingham before I left. One community voted to raise the minimum wage. You should had seen how fast Montgomery slapped them down.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice – Review
Okay – right out
of the gate – I am planning on spoilering the fuck out of this film, you
if you want your movie-going hymen to remain unsullied, then read no
further.
First off, this movie sucks more ass then the cleansing
cycle of a colonic irrigation machine (which means it simultaneously
blows more ass than a colonic irrigation machine – and isn't that a
pleasant thought.) Though having written that, it sucks in different
ways than I was expecting. For example, I admire Zack Snyder's
commitment to the show don't tell school of film making, but in this
case it would have been more effective for him to have written 'Martha'
on his penis and personally dick-slapped everyone in the audience.

The plot is a hot mess; we are talking about gorilla's throwing
handfuls of steaming spaghetti in marinara sauce at the Mona Lisa in an
act of art-world bukkake that would set both tips of Salvador Dali's
moustache aflame. The writers clearly wanted an ensemble team of the
Joker, Lex Luthor, the riddler, a slacker sphincter-douche, and a high
functioning autistic savant as the villains, but they decided to spend
the money on other things and just rolled them all into Lex Luthor. Why
anyone would give this guy unsupervised access to an alien ship, or
even unsupervised access to a vending machine is a mystery that the film
doesn't have a clear answer for. His motivations are kind of
understandable (In a raped by Zeus as a swan sort of way) but his plan
falls squarely at the intersection of bug-fuck and nuts; with no way
that he isn't going to end up dead or in jail. If he is a super genius
it is of the Wile-E-Coyote school of super geniuses and he was at the
bottom of the class. He isn't the only one struggling with motivation,
as both Batman and Superman flip like coins on their reasons for doing
what they are doing and then suddenly become best of buddies after a
Martha in the face from the director.
Pacing is terrible right
across the board, with long stretches being tedious in the extreme, with
only a handful of action set pieces, most of which (with the exception
of Batman's Martha themed beat down) being merely okay. I would be very
interested in seeing the Director's Cut with the 30+ minutes of
material restored – not because I think it will improve the film, but
more because I want to see what was less important than unending cuts of
people walking towards graves or abandoned mansions through long grass.

Now most of all what annoyed me about this film was that there was not a
single drop of hope in it at all. No real hope for a better world, no
sense of accomplishment by the protagonists, nothing is made better be
their actions. If this was Inside Out, Sadness would have capped Joy
in the face with a .32 leaving, Anger, Disgust and Fear to clean up what
is left behind (and for the record, the wall behind Joy would be
brainier than the Lex Luthor of this film). I can't recall smiling in
this film or laughing. At all. Watchman had more jokes and genuine
laughs in it. Let that sink in for a moment, the bleak and desolate
deconstruction of the superhero genre had more smiles and laughs in it
than the film with three of the most heroic, recognizable, icons of the
genre.
Okay I will admit I smiled once. At Doomsday. Not
because they chose that particular piss poor storyline to use in the
film, the Superman Dies bit. No. I nearly laughed because the ship and
Luthor going on about the 'dread mutation'. Then we see Doomsday, and
he doesn't have a pecker (or any genitals for that matter.). In species
with two sexes, that is the sort of mutation that tends to sort itself
out of the pool pretty quickly. Dread mutation. Yep. You're looking
at one.
So what did I like. Ben Affleck is the best Batman since
Michael Keaton; and Jeremy Irons does an interesting scruffy version of
Alfred the butler, acting more as a partner than a slightly
disapproving parental figure. Gal Gadot isn't really given enough to do
to get even a glimpse of what her Wonder Woman is like, but there are
glimpses of genuine enjoyment in her eyes during the final battle, so
that might bode well for her take on the character.
Oh and the
setup for the next films was extremely lame – one step away from having
Batman stumble across them on trending YouTube videos. Each and every
one looking dark, brooding, tragic and as much fun as a boot delivered
at high velocity to the jacksie.
This film is cordially invited to eat a keg of dismembered donkey dicks.