Is it possible to put a proper dateline on everything, instead of having that godawful annoying "X hours ago" that shows up any time a post falls between 59m59s and 12h59s? It's one of those minor things that generates annoyance al out of proportion, at least for me... maybe some people like it?

If I'm outvoted, fair enough, and I wouldn't call it high priority anyway, but it always seems bassackwards and a bit condescending to have posts' age clumped up into X hours when older ones show a precise time, as if anyone who made it out of kindergarten shouldn't be able to compare two times if they really want to know how long ago something was posted rather than just "before or after my 'last visited' dateline."

fake edit: okay, probably second grade these days, with how the US education system is going. Still well below the usual user's education level in any forum I can think of, doubly so here with the general focus on literature, a relatively complex MMO, and politics.

One of the single most important characters in all of Avatar: The Last Airbender has been cast for Netflix's live-action adaptation:

The Cabbage Merchant will be played by James Sie, who voiced him in the original animated series.

You may all celebrate now.

It's called Forward and it's described as centrist. Let's hope it has better luck than past attempts at third parties have had.

Article here.

After ten months, sweat, tears, and more pain than I really want to dwell on, my quarter sleeve is finally finished and healed:



And, as a happy accident, the pigments used in the orange and pink are UV-active:




A big shout-out to my artist, Matt, who took a vague idea and turned it into something amazing.  Thanks, Matt!

Once upon a time in a subsection of the fan fiction community there was a distinction between a crossover fic and a fusion fic.

A crossover fic meant characters from one series got dropped into another. E.g. "Ranma goes to Juban and meets the Sailor Senshi."

A fusion fic implied rewriting of the two histories to justify that they were always the same setting. E.g. "Buffy Summers was never a Vampire Slayer. She is however a licensed Vampire Executioner in the State of California and is not happy that her colleague Anita Blake is intruding in her territory."

Now it has been many years since I bothered grumbling about fanfic being labeled as crossover fic when it was clearly fusion fic; but this morning I noticed that the Battletech / Girl Genius fic I was reading (Natasha Kerensky and the Adventure of the Purple Fang) was tagged as 'pastiche.'

From the context of that one fic, 'pastiche' might refer to something like fusion fic once did. 

From the context of skimming the first couple pages of AO3 results for that tag it is a mystery what 'pastiche' refers to.

Have other people encountered 'pastiche' in the fic they read?

If so, what meaning was applied to it?

So says The Huffington Post.

Quote:Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston said during closing arguments that the subpoenas were straightforward and that Bannon chose to blow them off.

“Our government only works if people show up. It only works if people play by the rules, and it only works if people are held accountable when they do not,” Gaston said, according to NBC News.

Based on a famous Irish language novel.

Available behind this link here from the State's Irish Language Channel


As Gaeilge, ach tá fotheidil ann.....

Hermione Granger and The Boy-Who-Lived got an interlude this week.

EDIT: The story by "Jackpot-kun", not the other one.

From a Chinese social network's banned words list.

A short summary
'Winnie the Pooh',
'Diabetic Pooh',   (Diabeetus the Pooh - ed)
'Shithole Art of War',
'Heil Xitler',
'Ph.D. in physics who believes in theism',
'Leader of China's Offshore Hidden Asset Management Leading Group',
'Undressed and embroidered on one shoulder, carrying Maiguang, pulling and rolling crooked neck, throwing coins, primary school doctor emperor' (WTF),
 Cicada 3301 XD - (Remember that?)

A lot of them get a little lost in translation.


Link to Translate list

The Original Chinese, incase that Xit's the bed

ACRONYM Creation Rationalizations, Or: Naming Your Machinery

I've asked this kind of question before, because I tend to have only accidental success at it myself, but anyoine have suggestions for why a power armor might be officially referred to with the letters EZLS? Best I've got so far is Enhanced Zero/zero Light Suit, probably appended to something like Cyberpunk's ACPA as a catch-all for the general class of Armored Combat Power Armor, with zero/zero being either referring to being able to deploy from the air like an ejection seat (zero altitude/zero airspeed to as high as the vehicle can take it) or something like zero reduced agility/zero added sensor signature compared to a normal foot soldier.

Or as the troopers call it, Easy Alice, 'cause it's hot and tight and any conscript farm kid can get in and ride as soon as they get out of Basic Training, but even the old hands have to admit it's damn good fun. Despite not matching the unit's official designation in any way, this also leads to the more complicated recon/spec ops suits (with a notoriously PITA active camo system) being called "Bitchy Betty."

I don't like the Z/Z part as it stands, though, so if anyone can come up with a better rationale to fit the flavor text, it would be welcomed.

Likewise, if anyone's got a piece of gear they want help naming, let 'er rip; I may not be much help but I can try.