Grrl Power #1089 – Operation yes take backs
It’s probably best to assume that if an enemy goes for you data, they have some expectation of being able to use it. It bugs me in movies and other media when party 2 does a thing, and party 1 reacts in a predictable way, which is the outcome party 2 wanted in the first place. It seems like an obvious pitfall for any agency remotely involved in security or secrecy to fall for, but I guess they’re still institutions run by people, who are mostly lazy and/or overworked and/or slaves to procedure. Plus, a lot of movies wouldn’t ever kick off if the good guys didn’t get caught with their pants down from the get-go. I just hate it when any average armchair idiot watches to good guys do something so dumb that all I can think of is “There are people who get paid literal millions of dollars for screenplays, and this was the best story they could come up with?” Like in Skyfall, when Q plugs the enemy’s laptop into MI6’s network. Like that dude wouldn’t know about air-gapping, or any remote hint of cyber security whatsoever? All you can do at that point is just shake your head and give up on expecting any sort of clever story from the rest of the movie. I mean, if the bad guy can rely on the good guys doing shit that stupid, the good guys deserve to lose. He ceases being an arch-villain and becomes a high-schooler kicking a disable kindergartener.
I think this is one reason I have a lot of trouble writing villains. I want my good guys to be smart, or at least not act like they’ve recently had a catastrophic stroke, so in order for the villains to make any headway, they either have to ambush the good guys or have plans that are so convoluted and obfuscated that they seem vanishingly unrealistic to come to fruition. Like in Skyfall. When the villain escaped and Bond chased him into a disused subway tunnel, and the villain blew up an adjacent tunnel to crash a subway train down on Bond. The contingency planning for that would take months. Did his detonator have like, 40 different buttons on it so he could set off the correct set of charges depending on when and where potential pursuit caught up to him?
All of Skyfall villain’s plan was so he could take a shot at M, who frequently walks in the open as show in the scene where she turns around to see MI6 blow up. Like he couldn’t just post up with a hunting rifle somewhere. His plan wasn’t to put M in an inescapable box, it was to impress himself, and draw out the screenplay so the movie could happen.
I don’t mean to pick on Skyfall specifically, but it’s easy because it’s super dumb. Not as dumb as The Tomorrow War. Now that’s a dumb movie. Like, every single scene is super super dumb.
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How much you want to bet that the Superhuman NOC List that was taken is in fact, just Zephan’s porn collection. A decoy.
The REAL List, should it actually exist, shouldn’t be physically accessible PERIOD if it’s that valuable.
The hard drive is a decoy. The real list is on a sticky note on the underside of his keyboard!
The hard drive is a decoy. The real list is written on a sticky note on the underside of his keyboard!
Any other form of access would just make it infinitely harder to secure with all the existing physical defense of Archon.
The non-canon “Manual of the Enterprise D” listed a rule that all interior must be combustible in a Oxygen/Nitrogen atmosphere. Because it is damn easy to deprive a fire of atmosphere in space.
And you don’t want to end up with interior decoration that is Flourine in a Metal container. Because Flourine can treat metals as fuel – in a vacuum.
This seems like a decent response on Archon’s part to whatever Intelligence that Arc-Light & Arc-Dark were able to gather about the Ascensionists after the whole Alien Tourists / Sydney rescued by Cora thing.
I seem to remember you writing EXACTLY that same plotline you complain about in the commentary earlier in the comic: Scionia attacking the Veil as a distraction so she could open the Black Reliquary without being noticed. And the Twilight Council fell right into her plans…
It’s been a while, but I want to say that Veil itself was also the backbone of their magical phone network and a variety of other bits. That makes it a high value target on its own in addition to a number of other forms of chaos she was orchestrating.
The first rule of “decoy” attacks is that the attack against the decoy target is very real, and if left unanswered would be catastrophic to the enemy. Effectively, a proper decoy attack should be one that does its job even if the target knows full well it’s a decoy attack because they can’t afford to let the attack go through regardless.
I’d say it wasn’t a decoy at all, because:
– success, i.e. fully destroying the veil would have accomplished the goal: the comm system goes down
– failure, i.e. doing no damage to the veil wouldn’t have accomplished the goal: the council doesn’t have to do anything if the undamaged veil isn’t strained, and the comm system stays up.
It wasn’t the attack itself that made the council act, it was the damage it did. It was a partial success, which turned out to be enough.
Speaking as a military veteran, your analysis is the correct one.
The problem with what most people think of as “diversionary tactics” is that they are surprisingly easy to spot, most of the time. What you really want, is to launch an attack that is aimed at achieving an objective your opponent is unaware of.
This is called tactical repositioning. Rather than a feinting maneuver to divert attention, you launch a serious attack with the intent of _setting_up_ your opponent for something more meaningful. The trick, then, as Yurei suggests – and gets almost exactly spot on perfect – is to make certain that your repositioning attack is non-trivial, and requires the enemy to respond in exactly the manner you want, exposing the (hopefully) unforeseen weakness you want to exploit.
This, then, is where reserves forces come into play, and why they are so utterly critical, both to exploit and react.
Arguably the _best_ (worst) example in US military history, when it comes to using reserve forces incorrectly, is George Brinton McClellan, at Gettysburg.
On multiple occasions, McClellan failed to commit his reserves at critical moments. As a case in point, he order Burnside to take and cross a bridge, promising support. Burnside and his men charged the traitors repeatedly, and were just barely repelled each time. Had McClellan committed his reserves at any those tipping points, he could have broken the traitors resistance, and swept the field. Instead, he spent three days holding back. Yes, he did win the battle, but one slightly greater use of troops would have ended the entire damn war, and seen the traitors hang.
Now, there is a reason I used this specific example. The traitor’s march northward has an excellent example of tactical reposition. Lee’s original goal was the railroad depot at Harrisburg. Aside from from completely disrupting American logistics, it also left Washington D.C. open to direct assault. The move was done _specifically_ to shift the footing of the Army. To get the Americans fighting defensively, and force them to move forces to defend the capital, thereby relieving the traitor forces. And this really was a good plan. The only reason it failed as badly as it did, was that some one in the traitor forces, either through incompetence, or being secretly an agent of the Union, left the entire written plan lying behind them on the march, to be found by American forces.
…and even then, McClellan dicked around for a day before moving.
As a military veteran if I could trouble you for a bit of critique on another convoluted plan (if you want, totally optional). Its an alien invasion plan, there is some concern step 2 may be redundant. However it could be argued its better to cover all the bases. However the plan also requires the population to react in a should be predictable self interest manner. In other words, the civilians, businesses, travel, and governments to listen to and follow the advise of experts in a timely manner, or else the plan goes horribly wrong.
If I could trouble you, or anyone for some critique on The Plan, as well as what people, law enforcement, and the military would do in this situation or attempt to do in retaliation during said event.
The Plan.
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/The-Plan-930130562
Umm… Step two would swiftly suffocate all air-breathing life on the planet, plant and animal alike. The hell is the point of steps 3-8? I’m pretty sure the Cuttlefish would be open to negotiation at that point.
Step 2 , tbe molecular phase shift inhibitor, in truth a synthetic particle mechanism, would be targeting petroleum based fuel sources only. So gasoline, diesel, jet fuels, kerosene, etc…would not be able to combust at a temperature the machines were designed to handle. Not target all matter on the planet. This would be to prevent use of pre electric engines or bypassing them as a precaution so at step 3 they don’t have a large number of humans going to sleep in moving vehicles
Minimize causalities.
Step 2 would thus make many planes crash and ships sink. Trains would still function as would electric vehicles as many of them are not petroleum based. Just make the nano-chemical a superior friction eliminator that turns into glue upon a signal. Population would be limited to foot/animal traffic. If every moving part that would require any form of grease suddenly becomes glue upon stationary status they’ll all find a port of safety sooner than later. People trying to blame production of said grease suppliers would buy additional time.
I don’t think ships just sink when the power is cut, I hope no new models just keel over without a constant engine. But yeah, that’s the point of part 1 being an observable event. A controlled and guided solar storm that will act as a power EMP to knock out satelites, power grids, and most vehicles. The idea being to make this look like it is happening naturally and scientists know what will likely happen when it hits so advise governments and businesses to shut down that day, ground and dock traffic and stay put. The Molecular phase ship inhibitor in part 2 then is just a back up (although certain aliens like the Ju-el would make part 1 of their plan an announcement of invasion and then use part 2 regardless of the likely high death toll and say, “we warned you”. the aliens in “The Plan” however are more in the *humans are animals and we plan to round the up as safely as possible and then clean up this messy planet to put them back in a more controlled environment*.
Which is the concern if part 2 is redundant as part 1 is going to knock out all the electrical systems anyway. It feels like saying (we put up a large wall, but just in case we also put a pit on the other side of that wall).
Hardened electrical systems already exist. Governments never “shut down” for a day contrary to politicians claiming it. Scientists are often ignored. Any EM effect that would do half of what is planned in part 1 ends the atmosphere so just limit it to space. This would allow a stealth approach from a cloaked ship function. This is why phase 2 needs to be the halting of all transportation as best as possible. See “Anchovies Futurama” for that.
The Storm should be at about the same strength if only a little stronger than the Carrington Event (the inspiration behind part 1)
https://www.history.com/news/a-perfect-solar-superstorm-the-1859-carrington-event
what a magnetic storm of that strength would do to today’s technology is a curiosity, and point of interest as in 2012 the Earth missed such a storm by only 9 days, and the solar activity cycle is at its heightened activity in recent years, with eyes on 2025 being a possible peak.
I have read no farther than the first paragraph.
Agriculture.
You introduce agriculture.
This sets up the cycle of resource cultivation & specialization of labor that allows for the arranging of hierarchies, and gradually transitions the population to a sedentary, passive state.
Yes, one might argue that the systemic violence that emerges from these hierarchies & their conflict are a source of casualties, but the OpGoal was explicitly about minimizing – rather than eliminating – casualties.
Extrapolation: “The Plan” is intended to have the native species domesticate and pacify itself, and is presumably about the down side of what we recognize as human civilization.
*sips coffee*
…am I correct?
I had to read that a couple of time as I was like, “How…how did you pick up on the ancient astronauts aspect of this setting?” Because yes, in this setting these aliens did exactly that. A group of them introduced agriculture and stories of them were passed down as “gods”, as a way to halt the million years or so of near zero progress (and in fact too many signs of degrading further and further back to a pre-alteration state) and see if by having at least one need met if this “sapient species” (yes humans), would settle down and evolve into something more akin to their (original) design, once they no longer had to worry about the hardships of living in the wild (as much). *like developing plays, songs, working together for the well being of the community, etc…*
so basic concept, addressed here: (this is more a reaction of watching too many ancient astronaut History channel specials that felt a tad too egocentric specism in their reasoning…seriously aliens needing human DNA to save their own dying race…but what if aliens did modify humans from another hominid..but why.
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Xenogenesis-Designer-pet-hypothesis-922328991
So the Plan, is a (shut it down) contingency. Human civilization is constantly in a pattern of growth and decline, inequality, corruption caused by power and position; the idea not only that humans are unfit and unable to govern themselves effectively to their own better interest and advancement *no humans can govern over others humans* but also the idea that humans are *animals* to this species at the end of the day, but should the humans not only have the ability but are willing and possibly also try to exterminate their own species to as a “humanitarian” act end the experiment and see about “putting the cats back inside off the island”.
So yeah, at its core, social commentary about the state of the world and not being get out of old habits even with new more dangerous toys.
But wandering after the last few years how a modern world would react with this contingency plan put into motion, with all its parts that like the topic here require those subjected to the plan to react in very specific ways for the plan to work as intended.
My powers are many, and varied, and while telepathy is not – yet – among them, I have had a broad education, formal & informal, and lots of exposure to a multitude of pov’s…so basically, the answer to “how did I do that,” is…
…no learning is ever wasted? ^_^’
Honestly, I just recognized certain patterns that I’ve encountered before. Frequently – and I am certain coincidentally – from anti-social doomsday prepper types. I use that term, “antisocial,” very precisely in this case. They are genuinely anti-society, as they’ve convinced themselves that cooperation equals dependence equals weakness, etc. Run that through a set of Poli-Sci analysis lenses (mostly structuralism & realism), then expand your thinking to view humans as potentially dangerous alien creatures…and yeah, there you go.
You devise a plan that turns an adaptive survival trait – social behaviors – into a self-regulating mechanism, and the long odds are that they assume it was all their own idea.
…the thing is, any species capable of interstellar travel, with a lifespan that can encompass plans taking ten thousands Terran cycles to stake full effect, and which do not regard this species as “people,” probably aren’t going to waste time on such a plan in the first place. As soon as they calculate that humans are a serious potential threat, it is in their interest to extirpate the species.
Its not that humans are or ever could be a threat to THEM, more so it is taking responsibility for their own actions and humans being a threat to themselves and the Earth’s ecosystems (not that a single planet that has gone through multiple mass extinctions would be treated as super special by this species; why they’d do this whole experiment in the first place). Which I guess I should have linked to the thing that the xenogenesis was a *concept version* of. Just ignore the multiverse stuff (that is to work it into a specific series),
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/The-Origin-of-Humans-921339143
the long short is an insanely advanced species found the Earth, modified some local wildlife via gene manipulation; and then some of them out of curiosity or neglect, took a basic version of the modified animal (no special enhancements other than the cosmetic and trainability ones *see higher intelligence*) and released a population of these back onto the planet to see what would happen.
-like imagine if humans gene modded a living teddy bear version of bears, and then released this animal back into the wild just to see if they could adapt and what would happen if they did.
so yeah, the living Teddy Bears turned into Ewoks, and from this species perspective their cute and cuddly pets turned absolutely wild, and despite clear signs of trying to organize and go back to their creative behavior kept falling back on animalistic traits. But…after a few surprises that on their time scale look out of no where; these creatures are posing a threat to their own existence not only at the territory disputes levels but as a whole and to the entire planetary ecosystems beyond tolerable levels…so time to clean up.
The Plan…is the “humanitarian” version vs the “just exterminate the unnatural mutant pests* version that would be much simpler and quicker, a (we should try to round up as many as possible and maybe see if they can be cleaned up and put on a good track if we step in and help…not in a way humanity would see as self governing freedom though as again, at best humans are like clever parrots to them…
-it is one part inspired by the Human Zoo “we captured you as an act of conservation” and one part Fantastic Planet (only not big blue humanoids…um..usually…and more sense and better care).
-as a note this same setting also has some human abductions the result of “well meaning” tourists who have human-pets back home and think the lone hiker, backpacker, etc..is some poor lost and hungry “kitty” so grab them up and put them in the car to take back home.
Should include this: Aliens that Keep Humans. the species behind “The Plan” would be either 6 or 7 on this list type of actions.
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Aliens-that-keep-humans-worst-to-best-904588794
I believe you meant Antietam, not Gettysburg. Meade was at Gettysburg. He also sat back, when a vigorous pursuit would have pinned the Army of northern virginia against the flooding Potomac and destroyed it.
You are absolutely correct, and thank you for the correction.
It is funny, but also sad that even in the East, the Union had many reasonably decent generals who were always far too busy with politics to ‘act’ like generals. Meade and McClellan were not ‘bad’ generals by most standards. They were not Robert E Lee, but then again, who WAS? Most Union Generals in the East were political by their very nature. Any who wanted to be anything else went out West (or got exiled there when they stepped on the wrong political toes). So, the ones in place were hamstrung by the need to keep from looking bad to their political masters and more than a bit intimidated by Lee. Most generals would have been intimidated, facing someone like that one the battlefield. Every time one of the Union generals ‘did’ come up with a decent plan, (ie manage to actually act like ‘generals’ instead of politicians.) others with more political power swooped in and screwed things up. Case in point? The Battle of the Crater in Petersburg was lost not by the soldiers who fought it, but by the commander who refused to let the specially trained regiment who were set to LEAD it go first. No one ever said WHY the commander at the time denied them the right to go first and basically cost the Union the battle when the advance stalled due to the soldiers not having a clue how to get out of the Crater. We can make an educated guess though. The regiment was black.
And of course, Secretary of War Stanton did not EVER help matters, probably because an end to the war was not in his interests. Funny how little has changed in some ways since then.
I don’t think anyone will argue that Meade missed opportunities. He did. Meade was basically handed a battle he could win fairly easily and did not pursue it to his utmost. Blame communication, intimidation or whatever, the fact remains, he didn’t crush Lee when he could have and that drug the whole thing out far longer.
McClellan was very good at _building_ Armies, and training them.
And…to a certain extent, his unwillingness to sacrifice their lives unnecessarily is a credit to him.
However, the fact remains that he had little will to fight, and to paraphrase Lincoln, he could not “face the arithmetic.”
Burnside was a jumped up administrator, who had no business being at the head of the Army, but he at least tried to fight, and while he was never a great commander, he did eventually grow into someone who could face losses.
It’s the nature of effective attacks. If you’re always trying to plan 3 moves ahead (i.e. your move, your opponents likely reaction(s), and your counter(s) to their reaction) then the story will tend to follow this pattern. This is the same as the alien tourists plot, where the Ascensionists hired a team of supers to go steal alien tech and make a ruckus to draw out Archon, while also having an agent handy (Anima / Concretia) who could subdue targets of opportunity for capture and study. It’s the same as Vehemence’s plan for the superhero brawl: 1. Start big super fight, 2. everyone fights while he absorbs energy, 3. He’s strong enough to jump in and get his Vitamin-V on.
I think it’s fine to use this as a pattern, as long as everyone’s actions are realistic given the circumstances. It’s when the fake-out thinking gets so convoluted as to be absurd that the suspension of disbelief is broken and the story stops being fun.
Rick & Morty did it perfectly. “The Heist.”
Oh yes, absolutely. I loved that episode, for exactly the same reasons that I hate films like “Ocean’s 1X” and the like.
“You sunovabitch, I’m in!”
(And no I am not insulting Bharda… it’s a meme)
https://youtu.be/Pb1eMwm7fS8
Also from Ryan George if you want the less swear-y version
“You sunovagun, I’m in!”
https://youtu.be/hf_7xAX_fBE
Good.
Now we just need to recruit the Ghost of Bob Ross, Gorillynx, Janice from Starbuxxx, and the Last Silurian.
It may be similar, particularly if you’re only considering his one-line description of “It bugs me in movies and other media when party 2 does a thing, and party 1 reacts in a predictable way, which is the outcome party 2 wanted in the first place.”, and not the rest of the commentary. This is an instance of the villain being smart, rather than the heroes being particularly dumb. Even if the Council had known what Sciona’s actual goal was, they could hardly have let the Veil drop. Sciona forced their hand. Yes, if they had thought it through more before reacting, they might have been able to find a better solution that didn’t leave the vault exposed. But they had to respond quickly. Also, they’re not the heroes of the story, Archon is.
No, the attack on the veil was a part of the preparation, not a decoy.
If Sciona had succeeded completely in taking down the veil, the warning system would have been disabled all the same, and if she had failed completely, there would have been no vulnerability to the vault.
She didn’t trick the council into their reaction, she did enough damage to force them into it. If they hadn’t done it and the veil came down as a result, she would have reached her goal as well. They would have had to guess her specific target to specifically exclude the warning system, which they had no time for.
Of course, the council still doesn’t come away as competent, because otherwise they’d have
a) set up a backup warning system
b) prepared a priority list for veil functions.
b1) failing that, attempted to predict and mitigate side effects of the takedown.
But then again, the council is consistently depicted as less competent than the actual heroes.
I’d say they are competent given their after actions, they’ve just been very complacent as the primary hidden power group for a LONG time.
Or Independence Day, where the invading aliens are using an old version of Windows on their computers, so that it’s easy to hack their systems. Yes, I hate “idiot plots”, too.
One does have to ask, though, exactly how the bad guys here found out about “the list”, and where it was stored. This just screams “man on the inside”, and is what really should be worrying them.
Non-zero chance of the Ascenders having oracular capabilities in their ranks. The chance grows ever further from 0 if their oracle’s power suite includes “is a bribable politician” or ” is a former or current? employee of one of the other places the List exists and is also bribable and/or turncoat.”
They were actually after Sydney’s “List” – you know, the blue notebook she keeps i her back pocket?
I expect some confusion about that to show up later.
in a cut scene from Independence Day a scientist says that captured alien tech in the 60s or whenever is the basis for a whole lot of tech improvements for humanity, thus sort of explaining how the humans could hack it
by cut scene, i mean a scene that was cut in editing
The aliens in Independence Day weren’t using an old version of Windows, per se. My understanding is that they created an interface to integrate their system into Earth’s systems to use Earth’s systems against Earth. They literally say “they’re using our own satellites against us”. Where the invaders coordinated a strike by effectively hacking Earth’s satellites and embedding alien code into them.
David was able to effectively do this process in reverse. He had studied the inserted code and how the aliens interfaced it, and then made a human interface with the alien tech from it. Even after that, he still couldn’t do it remotely. Flying the ship he did into the mothership was akin to physically inserting a flashdrive into a closed system–it wasn’t accessible without him already being plugged in.
And the aliens basically told him how to plug in his Windows computer into their own system, by having done it in reverse. In a way, it’d be akin to using a virtual machine. The aliens created a virtual machine inside of their operating system/computers that was designed to interface with Earth computers like Windows. David used that virtual machine inside of their operating system to send something through.
Or something like that. (I’m not technically-savvy, but I know the film pretty much inside and out.)
Bree, stop denigrating yourself.
You got it right. ^_^
This is a pretty good explanation. As a programmer, I rate it “now the plot makes 1% sense instead of 0%”.
PLOT?
The movie had a plot? WHERE?
I watched it to see things explode.
it goes even deeper than that, in a cut but still canon scene the rosswel spaceship crash and all the technology discovered from it served as the basis for modern computing technology and as such our computers are compatible with theirs because they are literaly designed on similar principles and on the same technology
Wait is this they took a magical duplicate that we can track to get there or is this they were capturing me so I left a magical duplicate in my place to lead you to me?
Can’t it be both?
From the level of amused smug on Zephan’s face, I suspect that it’s both.
Maybe it’s one or the other, but he can only keep it up so long as it’s unclear which of him is real? Magically making a quantum superposition visible…
Huh. I read the look on his face as sheepishness.
Zephan is a brain in a magical jar! 10 to 1 odds, can’t win if you don’t play!
Zephan is also a super with a duplication power. 12 to 1 odds! Bet early, bet often.
Zephan has a solid illusion spell, and they’ve “kidnapped” the illusion. 5 to 1 odds. Practically a sure thing!
Zephan has a solid illusion spell, and they’ve kidnapped the original! 7 to 1 odds.
It’s a clone spell a la D&D. 7 to 1 odds. Can the copyright lawyers be far behind?
The clone is also a bomb with a 2 hour timer. Don’t mess with the Zephan! (Zohan, Zephan, close enough)
He’s siphoned off enough of Harem’s power to make a single duplicate. 15 to 1 odds. No one likes a backstabber Zeph.
Well, it’s gotta have something to do with those yin-yang pills he popped in the next-to-last panel, right?
<.<
…are you…are you serious?
Really? You…you don't see what is actually happening, despite having already seen it, just a couple pages ago?
Wow.
That is the problem with unknown bounds to your magic system: Literally anything is possible and at some point probability dies from excessive use of plot-specific magic spells.
This…is not a “plot-specific magic spell.”
It’s literally an agent who was just introduced a couple pages ago.
The think about magic systems…really, any magic system…is that it is frequently much simpler & effective to _not_ use magic to solve every problem.
Did you ever read Robert Asprin’s book, Little Myth Marker?
To be fair, Asprin’s quote is the COST of doing something magically is the same as non-magically. That doesn’t mean the EASE of it is. Clearly, if you have the power to do something magically and quickly, it generally doesn’t cost YOU anything. What you charge the person who wants to use your ability should be AT LEAST what it costs to do it non-magically, on the other hand, since you’ll probably get it done faster and easier.
It’s like if you try to pay for a cast spell. You’re paying actual gold for the magic! Yet it doesn’t actually COST the Caster anything beyond any needed material components, if that. Generally speaking, you could get the same thing done for much less, it would simply take more time, and likely be of somewhat lesser quality.
Also, the Caster takes all the money out of circulation of the local economy until he spends it on something… or burns it away on making magic items and it’s gone forever.
…you’re completely missing my point.
The Dragon Poker game. That Deveel didn’t cheat using magic.
He used a deck of marked cards.
“You get so used to magic being used for everything here, that you forget there non-magic ways of doing things.”
The Great Skeeve
hah! different quote, then. The ‘make me something really big’ with hiring mundane labor or using a genie to handwave it both end up costing the same thing really stuck with me there.
Oh, that’s a good bit too, don’t get me wrong.
I’ve often applied that argument in Mage games.
“Yes, I am aware that I lack the Matter rating to create X thing, that’s not what I’m doing. I am literally converting Quintessence into Wealth, and using it to have X thing built mundanely.”
Random might have just forgotten about Chimyriad, getting distracted by the fight with Darude in Galytn.
Lots of people either forget all previous pages, never read them in the first place, or just have no idea what’s going on, ever.
Admittedly, there’s a couple days in between pages, and most people probably haven’t read the whole comic several times. But it is frustrating when people misunderstand the most obvious, basic things.
People have a tendency to forget what happens on the page they are commenting on!
20 Quatlus on twin status.
Thank you for the easy Quatlus (it was the shapeshifter)
You’re currently looking at the shapeshifter. He’s using the magic medicine to allow him to function as a twin.
He is talking about Chimyriad. Now gimme my quatloos.
They took Zephan? So… who’s standing there talking to them?
Astral projection, or something similar?
Or maybe he tricked them into stealing the astral projection
Zephan. I suspect they grabbed Chimyriad instead.
If they have Chimyriad, it’s a good bet that X is there, too, keeping an eye on.
*internal humming* ^_^
Zephan.
I suspect they grabbed Chimyriad instead. Or perhaps a simulacrum.
Unless there are more shenanigans involved, my guess is that they took Chimyriad-turned-Zeph instead to infiltrate the assailants.
I was starting to wonder if they had left a duplicate of Zephan. Hummm
I’m guessing the shapeshifter we saw earlier is involved.
Zephan. They probably grabbed Chimyriad.
Yin and Yang pills? Breathmints? I dunno
Considering how roughed up he looks I’m betting his version of aspirin.
You mean…like, Aspirin? Which is already cheap & readily available?
…why do people think that magicians always use magic for literally everything?
Probably because the comic has already said wizards have a history of using magic for very normal things.
Like using peasant souls to power an magical automatic pillow fluffer.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-995-big-oil-has-nothing-on-big-peasant/
when you have overly complex tools, you tend to over think even basic problems as an excuse to use those complex tools. To the point you can’t think of ways to solve those problems without them.
Its like the surprise of showing some DIY projects that don’t require power tools when they’ve grown up using power tools for every project, “what do you mean I don’t need to wait for my drill to charge to…di you just poke a hole in the rubber with a screw driver?”
“when you have overly complex tools, you tend to over think even basic problems as an excuse to use those complex tools.”
Or, to quote Deus, savior of the universe, paragon of mankind, the hope for a brighter tomorrow (all praise Deus amen), and I quote:
“It’s funny how even large groups can become so paradigm locked on a solution they fail to consider simple workarounds.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-570-the-bamboomanity/
(panels 3 and 4)
“To the point you can’t think of ways to solve those problems without them.”
OR to quote Thor and the SG-1 team from Stargate SG-1:
Thor: “You have demonstrated their weakness may be found in a less… sophisticated approach. We [the Asgard] are no longer capable of such thinking.”
Daniel: “Wait a minute, you’re actually saying you need someone… dumber than you are?”
Jack: “You may have come to the right place.”
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2e6xsx
An automated pillow fluffer is not a “normal” thing.
How many peasants do you know of who can even afford such a thing, even a mundane, non-magical version?
_Obviously_ the automated pillow fluffer has to be powered by something.
Really, Pander, you should chose a better example. Like, say, a horse-shaped iron golem. Clearly, an actual horse-flesh-golem is the better choice. Readily available horse-flesh, and with the added bonus of not needing to keep shoveling dung!
And you could, in a pinch, if you _had_ to, power it with your pillow fluffer soul, in an emergency.
Very versatile.
…
What were we talking about, again?
If you look at the comic page I linked to, yes, an automatic (not automated) pillow fluffer is a normal thing, in the case of the wizard that made the magical automatic pillow fluffer that is powered by peasant souls.
It’s called the maid, who offered to just… yknow… fluff the pillows herself. At a cost of zero peasant souls.
And she was told, with no small bit of animosity, that doing that would defeat the point of having a magical automatic pillow fluffer. :)
So my point was.. wizards use magic for things where a non-magical application is just as easy, if not easier, without all the magical mojo being necessary.
“What were we talking about, again?”
Extremely important stuff which is vital to life as we know it. The fate of nations rests in the resolution of this thread.
*pipe puffing and vaguely affirmative grumbling noises in a generically upper-class Victorian English accent, whilst wearing a very costume-y droopy fake moustache*
Yes, yes quite so good chap.
“His version of aspirin” meaning it’s whatever brand he prefers, magic had nothing to do with it why spend “mana” needlessly on something as simple as pain relief? Sure something magical might work better but I wouldn’t want to take something that might muddle the mind during a crisis.
A couple pieces of Goon Squad?
Those Yin Yang tablets are interesting. Are they supplements to recharge a ‘summon’? Or to recharge the person who powers the ‘summon’? I’m guessing we will find out next time.
I think that played out like that in Star Trek into Darkness. Kirk sitting there realizing that Khan’s attack did nothing but have them all sit in that room at that specific time. It was fairly brainless.
But it can be done well. Very first Die Hard, Hans needs the building power disabled. So he set up events to use the FBI tactics against them. Even his escape plan was to lure the helicopter to the roof, detonate it and leave as just one of the ambulances that would be there. That played the security theme too. And was a reasonable conclusion.
If that box was the only list in Archon, then they are not expecting Archon to rush out to all supers. They don’t know where the supers are at the moment. Also these Ascenders know too much. Exactly what they need to put that box into so it can’t be traced? How to approach the building undetected? Layout for ‘easy’ subdual? And when the head military commander would be away?
They also as far as on screen is concerned, only used lethal force on one target. Arianna.
This reeks not of a theft but a political hit. Max does not schmooze, she does not ‘play the game’. So an attack like this, she won’t mollify anyone. If anything she would make the supers in Archon look like maverick cops. Arianna does the political maneuvering and smoothing ruffled feathers. Remove her and Archon and Archon’s political backers suddenly look like failures.
This makes a whole lot of sense.
I can see someone handing these Ascenders the info they need along with a note attached to a photo of Arianna saying “Kill this person” as part payment for the info.
Any group performing such political manoeuvring will quite happily use the Ascenders to further their aims, and extract promises of future favours returned as well.
I’m on Maxima’s side about the impracticality about watching all the supers.
Call me crazy.
They probably could just give them their number. And then they might call Archon maybe.
That…actually seems like a pretty good idea, just as a matter of policy.
I’m not sure how one would go about implementing it w/o the risk of getting false signals, but…the idea of someone quietly showing up with a satphone and handing it over, saying, “Yeah, we know, and while we would love to recruit you, we respect your autonomy. If, however you either change your mind, or suspect someone is targeting you for “nonconsensual recruitment,” use this to reach us instantly. We’ll come get you, any time, any where…”
That kinda feels more like a support group, than anything else.
Was that a call me maybe reference? If so I get the reference, just not the context
You’re the only one who noticed (and commented on it as far as I can see).
There’s no context. It just amused me that Sydney wouldn’t mind guard duty so much if the dude was hot. (Of course, in the video, he was gay, which is honestly the best part.) But I had to draw her watching someone, and that dude came to mind for some reason.
Is Zeph taking Yin Yang pills there? Makes you wonder if they are just funny-looking candies or some mythical-tier medicine that, in the entire world, only Zeph has recipe for.
Standard plot line: “Now that I have you in this cool looking (but surprisingly easy to escape) trap, I will tell you my diabolical plan!”
or they took someone the mistook for him
like, someone who happens to be able to change into anyone’s likeliness?
*nonchalantly ambles by, whistling innocently*
In Skyfall the laptop was used as a Trojan, and even though they used security measures they didn’t detect his virus until too late.
They corrected this in the recent movie as Q used a Black Box computer to analyse a USB for any possible viruses first.
Plus Silva’s plan in Skyfall was to destroy everything M had built, reducing her life’s work to ashes as part of his revenge, before he killed her.
He also probably had contingencies on his other possible escape routes through subterranean London, why else would he need the full map.
No, they didn’t use any security measures at all. Q plugged an enemy computer directly into the MI6 network giving it access to every other system, a move that should at the very least had him dishonourably thrown out of the Service if not serving time for gross criminal negligence occasioning death of multiple officers of the Crown.
Silva’s plan would have been instantly foiled by the utterly basic opsec of using an airgapped and completely quarrantined system to break the laptop open
The criticism is that a device known to be dangerous should have definitely been air-gapped (not connected to the network at all), removing all possibility of it infecting the network.
If they had created a device that could somehow jump the air-gap, that would have been a better plot device, but it might strain belief.
I would propose the idea that the laptop should have been airgapped, and used in a secure location, but that it contains an (initially inactive) wireless transmitter that can hack nearby cellphones and use them as a jumping point to the secure network. Even better, they could have tried to prevent such a thing by having a no-devices policy, but some dumbass brought their phone because we all can believe someone bringing their phone to a place they were told not to. Plausible and requires only one person’s individual foolishness or forgetfulness, rather than an organizational idiocy.
There’s at least significant problem with these theories of what Q should’ve done, how do they get the information they need off the laptop?
Surely the Laptop has security preventing unauthorised access, as well as having the pertinent information encrypted.
It would take another system with sufficient processing power to crack it and decrypt the files.
In which case all that room should’ve been airgapped and network secure for that scene, and maybe it was.
Yet as stated, maybe the laptop deactivated such as system or circumvented it to hack the building’s network and cause all the doors to open.
That would explain Q’s Black Box computer in the recent Bond film.
Meanwhile back in Galytn…!
I suspect the people that are collecting people and items are like the NID from Stargate SG-1 they think they are the good guys that aren’t afraid to break the rules to get things done. But they use the “dumbest” means and people to do that which creates more problems than the real problems.
Combined with a clear bigoted opinion in general makes for a very bad situation!
Pretty much, plus Sciona DID seem to try to altogether shut down the veil. It was several attacks with no regards to collateral damage.
The hard drive is a decoy. The real list is written on a sticky note on the underside of his keyboard!
*Sorry if this is a triple post. I don’t see my posts showing up.
The ‘The List’ is electron-beam engraved on the *outside* of the hard drive,
the end opposite to the connectors.
Delays are common these days. The comment system is starting to buckle under the weight of years of comments. As long as you don’t get an error page, your post has been successfully recorded, and will appear sometime later.
“These days”? The comment system has never once worked properly. Comments taking hours or days to show up is the rule, not the exception.
Which is bizarre. I’m not sure what software Dave is running, but even a basic WordPress system would not have the slightest trouble with the volume of contents on here.
actually, it works sometimes, just not often. Typically it takes time for me to see a post, but sometimes I’ll see it as soon as I scroll down again. Seems to happen more to replies than new posts.
>>>Not as dumb as The Tomorrow War. Now that’s a dumb movie. Like, every single scene is super super dumb.<<<
Hey! Spoilers!! I haven't watched that yet!
Its dumb but it was still a fun watch.
It’s just another “time loop” story but the action is good for the most part. “Bill and Ted’s bogus adventure” was about as dumb as it can get AND shows the reason that time travel in a war is silly. Both sides would be able to counter the other just by planning it.
It’s like the old slap-fights, you go back and forth until someone can’t take it and quits or you both get tired and give up. Or one gets mad enough to take it to a real fight, which I had the same thing happen during a bout of “trading punches”, pretty much the same thing only you’re hitting the other’s shoulder rather than the face.
Regarding story, Ryan McBeth on YouTube has a nice saying: “Make Dilemmas for your enemy, not Problems.”
Problems have one solution. And thus are easily solved. They are not hard on the enemy.
Dilemmas have multiple solutions – all of which are bad (in different ways).
In this case, Archon faces a Dilemma:
– doing nothing risks the enemy cracking the list and getting what they want
– informing the people on the list risks the enemy tracking those contacts, getting what they want
Not knowing the enemies capabilities it is what is causing the dilemma. In fact, there is a 3rd option: They know they are being tracked and want Maxima or the others to follow them, to capture more.
The Skyfall Laptop could have been improved with one short dialog about how they “have to connect it to the network, because the encryption only works with the physical MI6 Hardware” (not inconceivable, MacOS won’t run with a apple chip in the hardware) – and virtual boxing that hardware would take days to months, more time then they had.
Instantly it is a Dilemma:
– do nothing, risk not having the information in time
– connect it to your network, risk getting yourself infected
Both choices can progress the story.
Where to start? I pretty much agree with your comments regarding the movie industry. Long time SF aficionado discovering Heinlein as a preteen. I’ve long held the opinion that that Hollywood is extremely lazy and ignorant (of the SCIENCE component) when it comes to direction and writing. As much as I like the franchise Star Trek has got to be the worst in using unobtaineum and imaginary ‘science. As a substitute for good writing and a decent science advisor. I didn’t think it could get any worse until ‘wokeness’ reared it’s ugly destructive head. We’re seeing woke fails all across the entertainment industry. DC, Marvel, ST, Disney, Amazon and others have literally lost billions in woke productions. What’s happened to the once beloved Star Wars franchise under Kathleen Kennedy’s influence is heartbreaking and appalling much of which had promise in their basic concepts. I really tried to give ST Discovery a chance but with the third season I got halfway through the first episode and turned it off with disgust and sadness. I won’t be tuning into the new season of ST Pickard, that’s just too tragic and abominable. Patrick Stewart was a great Enterprise Captain, but now is only a sad shell of a once great character due to bad writing, directing, plot and idiotic ‘science’. Sad, very sad only.
Incel detected!
Racist too, since ‘woke’ is black slang these dimwits have misappropriated.
Also ignoring canon of the franchise, bad “science”, or just predicting science that hasn’t been discovered yet. You know things like inertial dampers, replicators based on transporter technology (really, if you have transporters that use stored data to reconstruct people from the energy of their bodies, why not make things when you have access to almost unlimited energy to convert to mass?), FTL travel…
I mean, I admit I haven’t really kept up on the franchise since the end of TNG, but ST has a history of grounding it’s technobabble in good theory. The concept of the Alcubierre drive was actually the motivating plot device in one episode.
They even called it a “warp bubble”.
Pretty much everything they’ve ever done has at least _some_ grounding in real theory.
Even Q, ffs. It’s almost impossible to imagine that a being able to perceive & operate in more dimensions than we are could, and would, perform things we’d consider “miraculous,” just because we can’t perceive the mechanics of how it happens.
Picard had a whole speech with that Proto-vulcan tribe leader Nuria about magic just being technology that others do not grasp, straight out of Arrhur C Clarke’s quote:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uii5WrmChbE
Have you ever gotten a /good/ vibe from someone complaining about “wokeness”?
I must admit I have not.
That apply to Bill Maher?
Considering that Bill Maher has always been a dimwitted asshole whose entire schtick is angrily ranting about things he knows little about? You’d better believe the same applies to him.
Have to admit, I liked Bill…when I was going through my “pugnacious asshole atheist” phase.
Then I took a grow-the-fuck-up to my life.
Now I can see him as what he is: an apologist for boomer neoliberal capitalism.
And an asshole.
It’s pretty telling that you bring up that particular dipstick, as though he’s some sort of dearly beloved cult leader around here.
Almost like you think you’re calling out some sort of “hypocrisy.”
I could be mistaken, but I seriously doubt anyone here likes, let alone respects, Bill Maher, or any of the idiotic divisive shit that comes out of his mouth. He’s a neoliberal capitalist who’s mad that “the cool kids” don’t think he’s hip anymore, because we’ve all grown past his style of insult comedy. He doesn’t understand why we’re not laughing anymore when he punches down.
He blames us. He assumes he’s still telling great jokes, and we all just changed.
And he’s right. We did change.
We grew the fuck up.
Probably. I haven’t heard/read his anti-wokeness rant.
Rarely, and even then, they were very explicit about referring to the performative nonsense used by neoliberals to recuperate progressive movements that potentially threaten capitalist power structures.
@ RandomDev123
Nope. Not ever.
Anytime I see that word my instant response is ‘Whoever put that in there has no idea what they are talking about and just wants to rant about something’.
As for Maher? He would have made a ‘wonderful’ member of the Sturmabteilung prior to 1934. Take from that whatever you will.
Red Alert!
*Picard voice*
Seriously, that all you guys got, name calling and ad hominem attacks? Triggered much? FYI I haven’t the faintest clue about the etymology of the term “woke”. To me it’s just a term that showed up in pop culture a few ago and I certainly didn’t invent the term “go woke, go broke” which is happening across the entertainment industry. When someone as far left as Bill Maher comes out against “wokeness” that first hand evidence that its shaking the industry at its roots. The$90 million Batgirl movie got such horrific reviews that they shelved it rather than air it. Buck Lightyear was a major loss. The Little Mermaid trailers are getting trashed. Rings of Power ratings have crashed as has She Hulk. Need I go on because there’s lots more and it’s not my just opinion, those are hard numbers. People by the millions are tuning out of once beloved franchises because bad writing, directing, yes wokeness and straying too far from original canon. You can call names all you want but how about being constructive and showing me where I’m wrong. You won’t, because you can’t. Truth hurting you?
Oh, someone call the WAAAAAAAAAAHmbulance, because Gator here is seriously upset that we aren’t kowtowing to the perpetual brilliance of the objectivist dude-bro.
Keep whinging, kiddo, this is serious popcorn-munching entertainment.
“…as far left as Bill Maher…”
…are you serious? You cannot be serious.
Oh wait….yes, you can. Because you are assuming that you, and those who reinforce your views, are “the reasonable, sane ones.”
Just like everyone else, ever.
Listen up, buttercup: there are two things that you desperately need to get through your pointy little head.
First, your conception of what constitutes Left and Right, are way off. Bill Maher is a capitalist, jingoistic, and thinks anyone under the age of fifty-five is too immature to be trusted with dressing themselves, let alone having an equal say in how the country is run. His answer to “what can we do to solve the problems facing the US and the World at large is, “let the grown ups handle it, we are wiser & we alone know what we are doing.” None of these are “far Left” positions. They are, in fact, Right-of-Center at _best_.
But you can’t see that, because from _your_ perspective, anything to the Left of Ronald Reagan is the Second Coming of Lenin. You either do not have, or refuse to use, any imagination or reason to evaluate people & their political positions outside the context of a century of Wall Street propaganda. This is why you screech about “communism” out one side of your mouth, while completely ignoring the fact that your labor is paying for the murder of poor brown people the world over. You’re not against “socialism,” you’re against socialism for people you don’t approve of. You identify so strongly with a bunch of rich white asshole whom you almost certainly have never met, and whom I will guarantee do not value you in any way other than as a profit generator, that you will happily support a tax structure that privileges them, solely on the quantum of hope that you might, someday, perhaps, maybe, possibly join their income bracket.
“Most men would rather cling to the possibility of becoming rich, than face the reality of being poor.”
Get.
Over.
It.
You want to lash out at someone? I can understand that! By why in the name of sweet FUCK are you lashing out against those in a _worse_ position than you? Do you need to feel superior to someone? Is your self of worth so utterly bankrupt that you need to kick women? PoC? Trans or otherwise queer people? What in the _fuck_ did any of us _ever_ do to _you_?
And yes, I _am_ speaking harshly to you. I _am_ being aggressive. Deliberately! To hopefully get you to think outside your normal frame of thinking and maybe, _MAYBE_ try to examine the thing you call “wokeness” from the perspective of people other then you & your particular in-group.
You are literally wrong, in ways easy to check, on every single one of those “examples”.
It’s so weird how all these media companies that are – allegedly – “going broke” are continuing to make more -allegedly – “woke” content.
It’s almost like they are, in fact, making money.
Without a handful of angry white incel ammosexual neckbeards.
exactly. Why it is hilarious that She-Hulk’s writers so accurately predicted this sort of reaction so as to work it into the plot as a tool of the villains making the show that much more meta.
I mean, She-Hulk has _always_ been meta.
Her, Howard the Duck, and Deadpool can’t be allowed in the same room together, because the potential Fourth Wall Breach would endanger our own cosmos.
speaking of, I have a prediction, just to upset the internet trolls more that the “villain” behind Hulk King, manipulating the internet trolls, and gathering samples; isn’t The Leader, but rather Betty Ross, and the end result will be Red She-Hulk (AKA Harpy). *I predict this would be made a joke, She-Hulk is already a derivative name, hard to imagine in a semi-realistic setting someone would accept a derivative of a derivative and be insisting they call her Harpy or Red Harpy.
I would actually think that it would be entirely in the character of the She-Hulk zeitgeist to set it up for our Green Machine to point out, “You realize that even what they’re calling you is a derivative of what they call me, right? And that what they call _me_ is a derivative itself? Nobody acknowledges you, except in relation, to me. To Us. You’re just an appendage.”
_That_ would set off a super-brawl.
Wow! Just wow. Again triggered much Barda et. Al.? I look at all the responses to my comments and what I see are subjective, emotion laden feedback. Look, I’m giving an objective analysis here based on verifiable data. Too bad you don’t like my use of the term ‘woke’ but it’s a valid term in use with pop culture. Going broke? Yeah they’re heading down that path. Suggest you go to wiki and refer to the movies I listed and look at the production cost vs the box office draws. Hard numbers there.
Sigh. I dislike pointing out my background as I have done before but I do so to keep my comments in context. I’m a 20 year vet with the Army Security Agency and MI as an Electronic Warfare analyst. There are disciplines which are trained in analysis which spans just about everything. Foremost is objectivity followed by questioning one’s own conclusions. If one comes to a conclusion on an issue then the next step is is to look at that conclusion and try to take it apart to see if it is wrong.
From your comments you’re coming from an emotional laden, subjective, ideological point of view devoid of any critical analysis. Numbers don’t lie regarding cost vs reimbursement. So, to keep it simple let’s stick to on subject. I’ll pick LOTR: The Rings of Power. I’ll give you a second choice, She Hulk. Give us an objective analysis of why their rating are tanking.
I get why you do it (because it keeps the task managable), but you can’t just cherry pick two products and say that they prove a general pattern.
You need to find multiple research papers that did multiple large studies that prove a correlation between profitability and wokeness (Which the researchers will first have to define properly). They must compare the results to similar movies (Again, using pre-defined metrics of similarity. You cannot do science after choosing which datapoints you will use) that are less woke.
Complicating the matter is the human nature of movies. Movies are messy and subjective, so the researchers are going to have to employ some really good statisticians.
And that is just the start, because after proving correlation you or they will have to prove causation, and that is a lot harder.
Ah, yes, the battle cry of the neckbeard: Well AKSHUALLY!
Dude, I am supremely uninterested in your supposed – and unverifiable – credentials, none of which matter in the arena of pop culture. I’ve seen this crap before in the early days of the internet, and the first generation of Flame Warriors, back in the 90’s.
You are a Blowhard, and a Centurion, at a minimum, and your only apparent strategic call here is to increase your volume, repeat your opinion, and play the long-suffering martyr.
“Oh, I SO dislike talking about my – alleged – background, but I will GRACIOUSLY do so now, and give you one, last chance to face me in honorable debate!”
Nobody is impressed, nobody is going to play your game, and nobody is going to waste their energy on doing a three-hour Cody Johnston-style tear down of your painfully obvious gas-lighting and pseudo-intellectual sealion impression. You’re doorknob, everybody knows you’re a doorknob, and it is just more efficient to call you a doorknob, and move on, because unlike greater villains like Peterson, Crowder, or Shapiro, you are a nameless and culturally impotent nobody, a nonentity with influence approaching zero.
Letting you carry on costs us nothing, because you have no power, no influence, and no audience. I responded to you as I did previously, in the faint, misguided – and brief – hope that you might engage in good faith. Instead, you’re doubling down on the Brain Jar assertion that you are the “Rational Side,” without even having the basic sense to acknowledge that you’re just as glandular as the rest of us. But, whatever. As mum always said, “a man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still.”
But before I leave you, let me point out something, O Font of Logic.
Human beings are, by their nature, emotional creatures. And not in the economic fairytale sense of being “rational decision makers impeded by emotions.” Rather, according to neuroscience, we are actually _emotional_ decision-makers, somewhat informed by reason. So, as you sit there in the dark of the night, let this find you: to demand that human beings, which are naturally emotional, act in an unemotional, and therefore explicitly other-than-human, manner…is itself irrational.
> Ah, yes, the battle cry of the neckbeard: Well AKSHUALLY!
Nah, that’s not their battle cry. Not anymore, at least. Now it’s “Wow! Triggered much?!” Bonus points if it’s followed by any use of: libtard, snowflake, cuck, NPC, or a condescending explanation about how they have worked for a long time in a field that is somehow tangentially related to scientific inquiry, engineering, or something that is in no way relevant to the discussion or hard science but allows them to attempt to lay claim to rationality.
I stand corrected! ^_^’
Y’know I’ve been following Dave’s GP since he started it, ye Gods, over ten years ago. In addition to Dave’s excellent, storylines, writing and art, I’ve very much enjoyed these comment sections and out of all of the stuff out there, these are the only ones that I read entirely and it’s a treat when someone brings up something new. That said, there’s a lot to unpack here.
Lashing out? Seriously? I suggest you reread your own comments in this thread then look in the mirror to get a glimpse of someone who’s actually guilty of that. We don’t get a lot of flamers here, but occasionally…
Yes Bharda, humans are emotional creatures, but so are dogs, apes, cats, horses, in fact most animals with a developed brain have them. What sets humankind apart from rest of the animal kingdom is our intelligence, reasoning and logic which has allowed us to create civilization, a space faring one in its infancy.
Military service. You don’t seem to have a problem mentioning your status as a veteran so I don’t quite get why you have such a vitriolic reaction when I reference my bona fides. I retired as a 98J40 BTW, what was your MOS? Heheh, 54C20? Meh, the titles changed so it’s not as apt as it would be in this discussion.
Bill Maher. Well I’m not going to argue with most of the comments regarding that individual. Don’t watch him but I have caught a few clips. Regarding his affiliation, when you have left wing Democrats on one side of the political spectrum and right wing Republicans on the other end, doesn’t take much to figure out where Bill belongs. I’ve caught enough of his drivel to know he firmly votes Democrat and his mean humor is at the expense of Republicans.
Got no clue as to why you tossed in Reagan, socialism, communism, capitalism, Wall Street, etc. just strange.
ST: Discovery. You’re right I am in error. I quit watch halfway through the first episode of the FOURTH season.
Back in a few. Cows got out of the pasture and in my neighbors yard.
Sealion.
Bwahahah. What’s that’s GOT reference? “You know nothing “.
You lose.
Corncob.
So you’re using a term you know nothing about? You don’t even know what “wokeness” is, other than some biased people have told you that something is woke and bad? How can you measure the “wokeness” of something, or determine that it’s related to its failure, if you don’t even know what it is?
> Seriously, that all you guys got, name calling and ad hominem attacks?
Nah. It’s just all that people deserve when they chant insulting bumper-stick aphorisms like “get woke, go broke, hurr hurr”.
> Triggered much?
That word does not mean what you think it means. No one here is triggered, we’re just exasperated that “Internet Incel Nitwit with Unexamined Copypasta Right-wing Talking Points #18483838” has entered the chat.
> Look, I’m giving an objective analysis here based on verifiable data. […] I’ll pick LOTR: The Rings of Power. I’ll give you a second choice, She Hulk.
I’ll counter with:
‘Mamma Mia!’ (2008 film): $609.9 million box office over $52 million production cost)
Hunger Games: $694 M box, $78 M cost
Gravity: $732 M, $100 M
Maleficent: $758 M, $180 M
oh, and how about we close with:
Captain Marvel: 1.128 *billion* box office on a 152 million production cost
I get that being called on your misogyny is upsetting. I’m sorry your feelings were hurt.
I don’t even know where your going with this. Are you saying that my use of “woke” and posting a few references of fails, I’m a misogynist? Wow! I actually quite liked most of your list, probably watched Gravity a dozen times. Malficent was great. Didn’t much like Hunger games not sure why except that I felt it was a bit derivative from many other SF works I’ve read. Not saying it’s bad, just not my cup of tea. Mama Mia is outside my favorite genres of SF/Fantasy. Captain Marvel was good, but there was something not quite there I can’t put my finger on.
The first Wonder Woman was an amazing movie, the second one was an absolute mess and not even Gal Godot’s excellent abilities could save it. Regarding strong female protagonists there is absolutely none better than David Weber’s Honor Harrington and her universe. In my library I can’t think of a male character that quite measures up to Honor. Certainly not Captain Kirk, Lazarus Long comes close as does A.B. Chandler’s John Grimes. Close runners up to Harrington are Schmitz’s Telzey Amberdon ooh and Nile Etland, plus all of Heinlein’s female protagonists especially Friday. Favorite female author C.j. Cherryh and yeah her Morgain is right up there too.
So your calumny of me being a misogynist is total BS. You know nothing of me. FYI my better half is a strong Cubana who would punch you in the face in my defense. I wouldn’t as I carry armed and would smile and defer to you regardless of how much you got in my face…unless you tried to get physical. Happened to me several times. Amusing how over emotional people, going on a tirade with spittle flying, then lays their hands on and winds up looking down the barrel of a S&W .357 magnum …and literally winds up pissing their selves. Never shot anyone BTW, but in after action the LEOs who interviewed me said they would have.
So no, I’m not a misogynist by any means. I married me a STRONG Cubana woman and I do so love and respect all the women. Not so much men. In fact if you want to label me with any kind of a sexual epithet “miso androgynous “ would be a better fit, although hate is too strong.
Sealion.
Yeah, right, you got nothing. Try to contribute some meaningful content.
Really? How about we meet face to face for a real discussion? I live in the tricities area of Washington state. My pub is the Ice Harbor Brewery. No? Name your place and I’ll pay the fare in either place. You up for it? If you don’t have the income to travel here then name the place. I’ll come to you. I got the means because I’m one of those evil capitalists in your view. Put up or shut up.
Corncob.
Imma bottom line here.I’m a hard core constitutionalist. These are the rules we play by and which I am sworn to defend. Tell me where we disagree.
Sealion.
Most of the people who claim to be constitutionalists… don’t know anything about the constitution. You could be the exception, but in general, it’s not the sort of claim that improves your credibility.
Presumably the point was that those are “woke” movies, and they were successful. Either “woke” is tangential to the qualities that make a movie successful or unsuccessful, or it’s just a meaningless signal word, that’s again, unrelated to whether a movie is actually good or not.
All that posturing doesn’t help your case — particularly when you’re accusing someone else of making an emotional argument, rather than a logical one.
Bad writing, directing, plot and idiotic ‘science’ can and have existed long before “wokeness” became a thing. Why jump to the conclusion that “wokeness” is responsible for those failures, particularly without a clear definition of such?
Third season of STD is when they go to the future, right?
You gave up on it after just the first episode? Without bothering to find out what happened after they changed the future and saved all of sentient life in the entire galaxy?
Do agree with you about the ‘wokeness’, the people ‘replying’ to you confirm it
Tell us, what is the definition of “wokeness?”
So let me try to address the “wokeness”. First off, that term has evolved far beyond its roots in the black American community to the whole LGB+ lifestyle. I’m not going to go through that, but will skip to our present times and how wokeness affects the current entertainment industry.
IMHO The definition of “woke” in the entertainment industry is pandering to whatever group to “prove” how progressive they are regardless of the cost of their project. Y’know, I just want to be “entertained “. Heheh…”Are you ENTERTAINED?” No prize for that one. IMHO there’s too many people in the entertainment industry who are deconstructing canons to suit their own mindset as opposed to the fandom base. Look, we view the SF/Fantasy media with a suspension of disbelief. We view our movies and go along with the ride. But, when something goes against canon or what we expect in the genre that pulls us out of that suspension of disbelief and kind of slaps us in the face. The LGBTQ+ crowd comprises less than 3% of the populace. The pronoun sector far less than that. But the bottom line for me is I DONT CARE! When ST; Discovery went all woke ‘pronoun’ crap it pulled me out of my suspension of disbelief. That simple. And according to its reviews and ratings it falls pretty much inline to my OPINION. Nothing more. I got no hate. Only dislike, nothing more.
So if you have a rational response, I’m all up for it.
If not. Well, “I am a leaf in the wind”.
Nobody was asking _you_, sweetie.
*headpat*
So you don’t like ham-handed moralism at the expense of the narrative or other entertainment value of a work. I’d say that few people do. That has nothing to do with being “woke”, but the far-right is working hard to conflate the two, because that’s their go-to tactic: control language to stifle discussion of real problems. Their goal is to associate strawmen with any term they disagree with.
So you’re opposed to catering to minorities. Are you aware that there are slightly more women in the United States than men? And that while ~60-76% of the American population is “white”, depending on who you count, that means straight white men are actually only about 30% of the population. And yet the vast majority of media caters to their tastes. How do you think the other 70% of the population feels about that?
In essence, that’s what “wokeness” is about. The realization that the vast majority of the population is and has been treated as less important, less deserving of representation or having their needs and desires met, and that they’re not going to put up with it any more. No particular cross-section of age, race, sexuality, or whatever other quality may represent a substantial percentage of the population, but the point is that it doesn’t matter. When you slice it down fine enough, every person is different, and yet equally deserving of their rights and needs. No group should get to take it all, even if they actually are the majority. That is why we have a constitutional republic, to prevent the majority from taking away the rights of minorities.
Why get so twisted up when some part of a piece of entertainment isn’t targeted directly at you? Why does making someone else feel included make you feel uncomfortable?
Not a fucking clue apparently, always thought it meant being ‘waking up’, never figured out what they woke up from
Didn’t it come along at the same, or similar, time as the #MeToo bullshit movement?
And Bharda? Does it really matter who gives the definition? Which basically reinforces the point that the people who spout it simply do it because they don’t have a valid point
You’ve just about got it.
You _say_ you don’t have a clue about what has been woken from…and very well, I’ll take you at your word.
In good faith, I’ll summarize: it’s about ‘waking up’ to the systemic injustices that have been baked into society, and demanding they be rectified.
Insofar as this concerns media production, it’s about representation, and inclusivity. I.e., creating content for more than just 15-55 cishet white dudes. Including representations of minority groups that aren’t lazy, harmful stereotypes, or uncritical propaganda favoring the status quo. It means movies with Asian, African, or Latino leading men, it means cartoons that acknowledge the harms caused by capitalism, or that give unreservedly positive representation to LGBTQ+ characters.
It also means examining older work with a more critical eye. The big example I – being a trans person – like to point out is Ace Ventura, and the completely mask-off transphobia it indulges in. Which was very much typical of how media has – traditionally – depicted trans people, and trans women in particular. As either criminals, crazies, or clowns.
Now, to be _very_ clear…none of this means that you – or anyone – is no longer “allowed” to like Ace Ventura. Or…I dunno, John Wayne movies, or Benny Hill drag sketches, or Rambo, or whatever. It _does_ mean, however, that you need to think about _exactly_ _why_ you might be pissed off when someone that doesn’t look like you gets some more screen time, or isn’t portrayed as a familiar & comfortable stereotype.
Is it actually bad content? Or are you getting defensive, because it made you aware of & uncomfortable about something you’d been blithely ignoring or taking for granted before? Possibly even the basic idea that you, yourself, might not be the specific target audience for a given piece of media.
…and She-Hulk is actually a good example of this. It’s a show that centers the experience of a female lawyer who happens to acquire superpowers. That really isn’t the sort of lead that the preponderance of cishet male Marvel fans can easily relate to. They are not. The. Audience.
And I guess some (maybe even most) guys find that difficult to come to grips with. I legit wouldn’t know, I’m not a guy. But the defensive behavior is written pretty damn large.
As far as MeToo goes, politics poisoned that well pretty effectively, but the basic starting point was absolutely spot-fucking on. Sexism, harassment, assault, and general misogyny are far more rampant than society currently wants to acknowledge, and part of the reason for that is the atomization of women via fear & shame. Standing up, and standing together, helps to de-stigmatize the _victims_, and make it easier to identify patterns of behavior among abusers…and that sure seems like something that brings out the worst in a lot of men. Almost like they’re afraid of being exposed, and held accountable.
Weird, considering “NotAllMen,” right? One would have thought those Nice Guys would be all for outing the Jerks, huh?
So, it’s changing established characters, just to make a certain group feel ‘included’, rather than create a new character that represents that group?
Wait, are you saying that straight male viewers can’t watch and, shit-forbid, enjoy She-Hulk? o_O
As for Ace Ventura: it never occurred to me that the point of the movie was to portray trans as evil criminals. The fact they were trans, for me, was irrelevant other than as an explanation on how they managed to evade the very cops they were now leading
Yes, #MeToo started out as a good thing, but, as you pointed out, it didn’t take long before politics took over to make it a lynching-party, accusing anyone they didn’t like and destroying their reputation
Test
Interesting…I keep getting load errors from the server with my actual reply.
Same here, thought that message didn’t go through and shut the whole thing down in a grump
*shrug* ^_^’
We can resume trading blows elsewhen.
Sorry I am in error. I quit watching ST:Dicovery halfway through the first episode of the FOURTH season.
Haven’t reached that season yet, and only started watching halfway through the second because of Captain Pike (originally ignored STD because of what they did to the Klingons and how Burnham seemed to be a Mary Sue and how everything revolved around her… it still does but now ignoring her (as much as possible) and focusing on the story and the other people)
The only Star Trek series that I currently love is Lower Decks. Which is great, and actually feels like Trek despite the intentionally jokey Rick and Morty feel to it…. especially starting with the last few episodes of season 1.
Although I have not yet watched Strange New Worlds, which all my friends, plus my brother, have said is great. So I will give that a watch as well when I have some time to binge watch it. Picard and STD just are really bad writing to me though and dont ‘feel’ like Star Trek in how anyone speaks or acts. Theh use idioms that are 20th century lingo casually, and unless you’re Tom Paris thats a Star Trek no-no. :)
Plus they ruined the Klingons (as if they never watched any other Star Trek series, and then somehow ruined the Borg, making them a non-threat, which is an impressive feat of not understanding their own intellectual property. I sort of liked Enterprise (it was ‘watchable’ and I did like that it explained stuff about Section 31 some more)…. but the franchise’s storylines were already going down at that point
Totally agree with your Lower Decks comment. I have been binge watching it over the last couple days. The writing and directing are excellent as are the voice actors. They do a good job with the background CGI also.Strange New World is pretty good but it does have its fails. That said it’s watchable but LD still come out on top. Enterprise was good and the best thing it did was to explain the Klingon appearance through genetic manipulation.
The klingon thing was originally touched upon in DS9 (the episode where they go back in time to “The Trouble with Tribbles” TOS episode on that space station), then they fully explain it in Enterprise, yes. :) I thought it was a clever explanation to excuse the advances in Hollywood make-up between the 60s and the 90s. :)
But the part I did like best about Enterprise was to explain how Section 31 got so advanced to protect the fledgeling Federation because of the advantage of the Borg tech. Which tied in the borg sphere that crashed on Earth after the Enterprise destroyed it in First Contact. I liked the whole consistency aspect, which often gets messed up in shows that rely a lot on time travel mechanics.
Yeah, you haven’t seen what they did to the STD Klingons then, which don’t look like either the Space Porto Ricans (no idea where that name even came from) from TOS or the Crabheads from TNG
The difference in the appearance between TOS and TNG was actually explained in Enterprise as a genetic experiment gone wrong. In canon, during the 22nd century, the Klingons had an encounter with a group of genetically engineered humans left over from the Eugenic Wars. They were soundly defeated, and the high council feared that their own lack of skill at genetic augmentation left them will a potentially fatal tactical disadvantage. They salvaged the wreckage of the augments’ ship and recovered several modified embryos in cryogenic storage, which they attempted to use as a template to augment their own warriors. Unfortunately the process was highly crude, and the transcription genes they were using to rewrite their test subjects’ DNA ended up being incorporated into a highly contagious virus which began to rapidly spread through the research facility, the surrounding colony, and the ships that were supplying and defending them. The virus overwrote many of the genes controlling appearance with those of the embryos, producing a large subset of the population that looked human in appearance. The crisis caused a boom in both genetic research and reconstructive surgery within the Empire, culminating in the changes to the Klingon genome eventually being reversed after a century of research.
The reason for the appearance of Klingons in STD is because the writers were being stupid. Some tried to claim that Klingons have changed their appearance before, so why not more than one change? Again… it seems like the writers have no clue about Star Trek, which is troubling since they’re writing it and there are fan films like Abraxas that did a better job. The reason the genetic experiment made them look more human is because a lack of cranial ridges is a recessive genetic trait, which wound up becoming the norm after the encounter with genetically augmented humans. The real life reason for TOS Klingons looking different was simply because of a low budget and less intricate make-up in the 60s. STD does not have that excuse – it was just bad writing, plus I’m thinking that the writers might have forgotten they were in the original timeline, instead of the Kelvin timeline (where the Klingons are a LITTLE more similar to the Klingons in Star Trek: Into Darkness).
I love how most of the answers to this are name calling.
What you describer is how Hollywood work now, everything must be a fake inclusivity cecklist.
Any media that does not center cishet white males is “fake inclusivity.” Okay.
*eyerolling intensifies*
FOAD with your woke justifying SJW, BS “CISHET” terms. Whatever does that even mean? More progressive move the poll post BS.
Corncob.
So, just in the same way that you perceive terms like “cishet” as just meaningless signal words that identify group affiliation, so too do other people perceive terms like “woke”. In the same way that you’ve disregarded Bharda’s opinion without engaging with it in good faith, Bharda and others on this thread did the same the moment you started making vague and empty complaints about “wokeness”. They took that as a clue that you had nothing intelligent to say, and you haven’t done much since to change that perception.
“cishet” is a shorthand for cisgender heterosexual.
Cis is the opposite of trans. So, whereas I am transgender – assigned male at birth, have since transitioned living and presenting female – you (I assume) would be cisgender. It’s just a bit of technical jargon, not some sort of secret code.
But, in fairness, it is new to most average English speakers, and it’s not at all unreasonable that you didn’t know what it meant.
I hope I’ve cleared that up for you.
Yes fake inclusivity because most hare poorly made and forced, mostly when they forcibly put them in someone else work.
Like the Rings of Power.
But someone also make the new Kung Fu (Chinese characters played by Chinese actors.. Inconceivable), Carmilla and Winonna Earp
Oh man. Can you imagine how truly great the original Kung Fu would have been had they cast Bruce Lee as the lead vice Carradine? I mean it was pretty good as it was but having Bruce as the lead and choreographer would have taken the show to an entirely new level.
Have seen two seasons of the Nu Kung Fu (hoping there is a third as hinted at the end of second), and there really was no connection with the original, so they could (should) have given it a different name to avoid confusion
Apart from one character on ‘Winonna Earp’, they were all new characters created for the show
No idea about ‘Carmilla’, don’t believe that made it down here yet
There is one alternative they haven’t considered – which is publishing (or even leaking) the fact that the list was stolen – this warns all the people affected but without giving any additional info on who it affects.
On the other hand, it is a PR nightmare, but it does protect the relevant people without giving away any info the bad guys don’t have already. And we need to keep Arianna busy.
Not a good option as it would panic every Super in America.
The convoluted plan is often to throw off the audience as the audience so often sits in a third person omniscient position to the story. Knowing things the good guys can’t know in the story, but also the bad guys shouldn’t and the audience can and usually does take this for granted. So things get a bit silly for the audience sake, or in some cases the idiotic response is the realistic one as the characters don’t know what the audience does. Classic example person going into basement in horror movie when the power goes out or hears a noise. What the audience forgets is this character isn’t supposed to know they are in a horror movie, can’t hear that music, and has no idea there is a threat. So like most people in real life checking the breaker or seeing if something is broken or rats got into the basement etc… Is totally natural. We could for a more genre relevant point out blunders in law enforcement and politics reactions.
When dealing with security you have to balance security and accessibility. If you make critical information too in accessible, in a fault, in a foot of concrete, in a supertanker filled with lead, you may as well not have the information.
If you make it too accessible. then it does not matter how you encrypt it. Eventually someone will break the password, and you’re done.
What I would recommend with something like this is keep it offline, as they did. Separate the data into several different drives. keep the drives in several locations, and never let the key holders or the drives to come together unless the data is needed.
We could go further into this, like allow several alternate keys, but you get the idea.
Make it possible to get one drive or key, though very difficult. Make the holder of a drive useless on his own. And if one drive or one key is compromised, you would have time to secure or destroy the other drives.
To get all the data together at once you would effectively be breaking into NORAD when they accessed it, or have to locate and steal a minimum of 6 people and drives from separate parts of the world simultaneously and force them to cooperate.
Good luck with that.
BTW : Yes, this is a modification of the process needed to restart the internet.
I do love me a writing philosophy that starts with the heroes being clever, talented and capable (though not perfect and definitely prone to some biases or flaws as just about all people are), with the villains being so dangerous in some aspect that despite the extreme power of the heroes the vllains are still a very dangerous threat even if the heroes commit no unforced mistakes.
And of course they must ultimately rely on delegation for any large scale operation, and the quality of that delegation will depend heavily on leadership skills. It’s very possible that Maxima while extremely powerful is actually not necessarily the best command of the nations’ superheroes.
Then we also get the influence of politics. What will the department of superpowered people do when a very corrupt part of the goverment wins the election and gives them direct orders to do very unethical things with a high probability of casualties or catastrophe and just a thin enough veneer of deniability that the order is still legal?
Maxima is an incredibly good commander of the nation’s superheroes in part BECAUSE she’s so powerful. (Training, experience, etc. makes up the rest of the reasons.) Maxima can’t be literally everywhere all at once, but in terms of supers, she’s one of the closest they have for the task.
The only others on the team remotely close are Sydney (hahahaha good luck having Sydney as a commander with her as she is right now–maybe like ten years from now, but current Sydney, not a chance) and Harem (who lacks the personality/experience/trustworthiness of the job).
Max has the speed to be *almost* everywhere *almost* any time, while also having the military experience, trustworthiness, etc. expected of a commander. Which makes her quite well suited for the position.
Could there be someone who theoretically could be better eventually?
Sure, maybe.
But right now, with what America’s got at their disposal, Max is the best for commander imo.
…I wonder.
If…if Sydney started teaching Math 40K?
Then…maybe regular weekly RTS/CivBuild games?
How likely is it that Math could evolve into Kongming?
> The only others on the team remotely close are Sydney (hahahaha good luck having Sydney as a commander with her as she is right now–maybe like ten years from now, but current Sydney, not a chance) and Harem (who lacks the personality/experience/trustworthiness of the job).
I respectfully disagree. Part of Sydney’s goofy demenour and playfulness absolutely sprint from her subordinate position on the team and very recent and abrupt upheaval of her entire life.
We’ve seen her be quite serious in stints and stitches, especially when the chips are down. I firmly believe that if she was placed or forced into a position where she *did* have to lead, she’d probably very quickly knuckle down and excel.
That said: Sydney doesn’t want that, nobody else trusts her to do that, and her natural talents do not lean in that direction. (Syd shows a lot of signs of an introverted planner who uses bravado and absurd behavior to cover up a massive insecurity in public. Vastly unlike the people actually selected to manage Arc-SWAT.
I mean the best commander might be one with the literal ability to be many places at once and do many thing simultaneously (Harem could be considered a superintelligence in that she can keep many trains of thought going at once, at least many enough to control each body independently when none of them are doing something very distracting). She’s probably personally unsuited but someone with a similar multi-body power might be much better for the role.
There might also be someone with a better thinking-power. Or just a regular non-powered person.
Max has one big downside in her leader role: She’s also needed in the field doing actual fighting, and you don’t want the person who is supposed to be in overall command to be busy punching people instead of focusing on battlefield awareness and ensuring all necessary communnications and support gets to where it needs to go.
You want someone in battlefield and strategic command who is focused on commanding.
There’s also the potential that superpowers makes a person prone to certain biases or even messes with their overall mental state, which is another reason one would highly consider outright banning anyone with superpowers from an officer role. You might not unreasonably assume that they’re all too compromised for leadership positions outside of their immediate situation, even the superintelligences might be limited to advisory roles only with no direct authority.
You notice how Dave have very scrupulously avoided having the direct intervention of any political persons?
Yes, Barry showed up, once, on new comic day, but all he said was “New comic day is important.”
And Dingus Con never even got to make an appearance, nor has ol’ Status Joe.
…I think we can look forward to this continuing.
At least, until FDR returns from the Great Beyond to run for a fifth term. X’D
remember that in this comic time is moving very slowly. after some of the debates post Barry and a few other semi traumatic events there was and is a lot of speculation about how certain years would be handled. I think Dave is just going to ignore it. it might have been smarter to use SG-1’s tactic of NOT trying to look too much like the current office holder, then one can just ignore years where the ruling Cabal gives us a choice between fresh fertilizer and spoiled fish.
Sounds about right.
So anyway, you’re voting for Giant Douche, right?
MY bet is still that it is not the real List.
Leaving such in an easily (for supers) accessed safe is almost like hanging a big red ‘rob me’ sign around your neck and taking long walks in dark alleys.
Can you spell the word ‘trap’?
Why do you think its not the real list after these three have been talking about it as being the real list? Why would they be lying to EACH OTHER? :)
I would have just let The List be partial information – say, the address of every person on Earth. Only useful if you have The List 2, which is a mix of Supranyms and “Civilian” labels, and The List 3, which is the relational database.
Of course, you need to make the thing actually possible to use, as well. If you can only look at The List if three people plug in USBs in three different rooms, it will be pretty hard to look up people in it.
If Zephan had a chief rival similar to Zorglub from the Spirou series…
Go here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorglub
Never underestimate the perfect storm of stupidity and bad luck.
Anyone ever watch Contagion (2011) and thought, “no, that’s stupid, nobody could be that grossly incompetent” or “no, that’s stupid, nobody should buy into such obvious snake oil like forsythia”?
Well. COVID.
Take a victory lap, dude.
Since you mentioned Tomorrow War, I have a couple of quick comments.
Please be aware that I’ve only seen the trailers, not the movie, so I don’t know what twist they may have tried, or not.
Earth getting kicked in *** by aliens. So the humans go back in time to recruit people from the past to bulk up their military in fighting the aliens.
Totally stupid idea from the get go!
If you have time travel, even if limited, you go back to the past and begin preparing for the invasion a long time before it happens! That includes developing and building new weapons and defenses!
The large scale deaths of predecessors will have extremely drastic effects in a very short time, and the longer it goes the exponentially larger these things get.
So you do NOT send the predecessors to the future to risk dying, you send your intel and resources to the past to secure a fighting chance, and you keep doing it until you finally succeed.
I don’t mean fail and try again, no I mean something where you’ve now got the resources to research the aliens biology, weapons, defenses, tactics, etc and the ability to send it into the past before the aliens show up. If your first iteration of the past doesn’t have what you need to win, you take all that, and send it back to the past. Now you’re a lot further along than the last iteration. You keep doing this until you have a way to win, and then you unleash it upon the enemy when they show up!
Always try to have a contingency expedition ready to go back with what you’ve got before you “have to”, because most invasions have some kind of pre-invasion surveillance, and upon detecting your messing around, they may attack long before they did the first time. That’s why you have to be able to instantiate another iteration before the prior schedule would indicate.
So long as the invaders don’t have the time travel tech of course. If they do, it becomes a time war, which is the most truly screwed up mess it’s beyond comprehension. Putting spaghetti into a running blender is infinitely less complicated than the mess the timelines of a timewar become, and they only get worse from there.
The only viable first move in a timewar is to eliminate the chance of anyone else being able to participate in a timewar.
I admit The Tomorrow War has a really dumb plot with a lot of plotholes that make no sense for any group that cravked TIME TRAVEL, but it was still a fun movie for me if I turned my brain off for a bit. :). Then again I can say tgat for a lot of movies that I’ve liked, watched once, then never watched again.
If you’d like a smart movie (albeit dated), then get a copy of Walter Matthau’s Hopscotch.
Just a good time, all around.
Good film. “Sunovobitch better STAY dead!”
“The feather’s in what?”
I’ll check it out. Walter Matthau was a good actor.
they could have gone back to Tesla and helped him with the Teleforce.
Without spoiling it too much, that actually is the ultimate plan in “The Tomorrow War”. The “recruit soldiers from the past” part was necessary to buy the future enough additional survival time to hopefully develop the means to nip the creatures in the bud and get that sent back to the past for use.
is he taking yin yang pills?
It would be great if one could get George Takei to be the voice of Zephan if this was ever animated. But I wonder if one of Harem took his “Place”? Somehow, Z has someone other than him on the other side of wherever he was taken and he can follow himself and lead the way for the Others to Kicka** and get back their stuff.
Security is like backups. you have to set it up _before_ you have to use it. jn the end you are raising the bar on potential loss of information. it still can happen, but it becomes harder.
you also have a balance point. eg. you don’t put a million dollar lock on a 40$ bicycle. you also don’t make it so secure it becomes exceedingly difficult to use. people will by default find ways to circumvent it.
Is it just me, or does Zephan’s forehead look disturbingly like Deus’s right before his third eye opens?!
Because… that could be Really Bad. Or it could be some higher-dimensional being pranking on we poor lowly 4-d’ers. That pyramid-with-an-eye thing could easily be connected. This MEANS SOMETHING!
It doesn’t seem reasonable to expect a station-wagon from the 1970’s to stay in such NEW(ish) condition after being used for normal, everyday, transportation (as panel 3 seems to suggest).
You are not a Car Person, then. X’D
Where I live, we have a weekly Car Show. You would not BELIEVE the rides that come out. Driving on our busiest city streets, including the Main Street district, and yet are _always_ absolutely cherry.
In fairness, this is Not My Thing. Still, I can’t help admiring these guys.
My dad worked on a yellow 1958 VW bug convertible for 30 years beofre handing it off to my youngest sister who shared his passion for automobiles. My sister finally got it into show condition. LOTS of blood, sweat, and tears into that car. And now? She drives it and her teenage son is not allowed to touch! :)
Even as cool as it is, it has NOTHING on the Model T that drives around my neighborhood sometimes.
Yes, that is crazy but OMG, it is fun.
It is possible, though most of the time there’s either an incredibly sentimental reason (dead mother/father’s car), or it was used in a movie and the owner was a huge fan. Also a great deal more likely in arid areas that are well away from the issues stemming from being close to the ocean, or salt treated roads in winter. Locally we call them garage babies due to how much the owner fusses over them…
Also, I know a couple of people who have an unreasonable amount of love for the 1970’s good ol’ Lincoln townboat, and it’s a treat hearing them simultaneously complain about gas prices and how current car styles have no class…
One nice thing about transitioning to an electric infrastructure for personal transportation, is that we can, conceivably, start getting artistic again. ^_^
Given electric cars have been more than a century in the making- I would love to see some of the more wild 50’s designs come back in fashion in electric format.
I’ve always felt that hydrogen powered cars were more likely the future than electric cars, given electricity is produced creating the same types of pollutants that are produced by gasoline-powered engines. Plus the more electric cars there are, the more strain is put on the electrical grid, forcing shutdowns and blackouts, as we’ve been discovering in California.
Hydrogen fuel-cell powered cars, on the other hand, do not have these negative side effects, and the only thing produced as an emission is water/steam. :) Plus unlike electric cars, hydrogen fuel-cell cars can get refueled in the same amount of time as gasoline-powered cars, which is a LOT faster than recharging a battery-powered car. Plus it’s a lot easier to retrofit gas stations for hydrogen than to retrofit them as electrical charging stations.
And of course, very importantly, there’s no strain on the electrical grid.
The only negative currently about hydrogen fuel-cells, at least according to people in the business like Elon Musk, is that, and I quote, “The efficiency of electrolysis is … poor. So really you are spending a lot of energy to split hydrogen and oxygen.” He’s also said ““Hydrogen is quite a dangerous gas. You know, it’s suitable for the upper stage of rockets, but not for cars”.”
Now I’m not actually worth $200 million+ (yet) but I have to disagree with Musk here. I think that the benefits gained from research to make the process of splitting hydrogen and oxygen less expensive and energy-intensive is far more than the MULTIPLE proven flaws and negative side effects from electric cars, at least when taken on a MASS scale (which is something you have to take into account if you’re wanting to replace all gasoline-powered cars in an economically viable way).
As for the danger… electricity is dangerous also, as is gasoline. There are ways to make it safer though, just like with electricity and gasoline.
Oh, and since in a hydrogen fuel-cell car, most of the technology is in the bottom of the frame, you can be just as ‘artistic’ with those cars as you can be with electric cars. :)
I largely agree with you, but the public imagination is focused on electric cars.
Fwiw, at least here in CA, we’re trying to kill the fossil fuel industry, and expand our renewables production.
One advantage of electric cars is that they automatically gain whatever improvements are made to the electrical grid, without having to change the cars themselves, again. Just because much of our current electrical generation also creates pollution doesn’t mean that electricity is a poor choice in the long run. Primarily it shifts the burden from the individual to companies and the government.
I’ve always thought fuel cells had a lot of potential, and there have been a wide variety of alternative fuel projects that have just never gotten off the ground for some reason. Hydrogen does have some drawbacks, however. There are always tradeoffs. It is difficult to store, particularly safely, and safe ways of storing it tend to be very heavy, which reduces the efficiency of using it. The cheapest ways to produce it also tend to create a lot of pollution, so it’s just shifting the generation point, much like using the electrical grid. Electrolysis isn’t likely to get any more efficient, just because of the laws of physics. There are alternative means, and I imagine we’ll discover more in the future, but electric cars may still be the better approach with improvements to battery technology, even if we’re burning hydrogen to create the electricity.
While hydrogen is flammable, it’s no moreso than fossil fuels are (as far as I recall, although I do think hydrogen fires are invisible to the eye, which just means it needs to be properly managed, like any green fuel source should be), with the benefit of having a byproduct of water, instead of pollutants.
As for production:
Hydrogen is fed to the anode, and air is fed to the cathode. In a hydrogen fuel cell, a catalyst at the anode separates hydrogen molecules into protons and electrons, which take different paths to the cathode. The electrons go through an external circuit, creating a flow of electricity. The protons migrate through the electrolyte to the cathode, where they unite with oxygen and the electrons to produce water and heat.
If you’re meaning the production of hydrogen itself, you use what’s called an electrolyzer. Electrolyzers can be either polymer electrolyte membranes (a type of plastic), alkaline (using hydroxide ions), or solid oxide electrolyzers. The solid oxide electrolyzers are the onle ones that involve using heat (around 700-800 degrees C, although they’ve been able to get it down to 500-600 degrees C). The other two don’t involve heat.
Alkaline electrolyzers operate via transport of hydroxide ions through the electrolyte from the cathode to the anode with hydrogen being generated on the cathode side. Electrolyzers using a liquid alkaline solution of sodium or potassium hydroxide as the electrolyte have been commercially available for many years.
Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzers use a solid specialty plastic material. Water reacts at the anode to form oxygen and positively charged hydrogen ions (protons). The electrons then flow through an external circuit and the hydrogen ions selectively move across the PEM to the cathode. At the cathode, hydrogen ions combine with electrons from the external circuit to form hydrogen gas.
I think it’s very possible to increase the efficiency of electrolysis depending on which TYPE of electrolyzer is used for hydrogen production. PEM seems the safest, while alkaline would be the cheapest to use with our current grid. Although people would get over fear of nuclear power, solid oxide seems perfect.
An important reason for thinking hydrogen fuel cells are the best bet is because, even if you can make electricity production completely clean (ie, properly managed nuclear power or geothermal power), you still have the problem of storing electricity. It can’t be done long term as electricity because of the limitations of capacitors, unlike with fossil fuels or hydrogen. It has to be used, or it’s wasted. Unlike when you use it to produce hydrogen. Plus all the other reasons I mentioned. I think California might wind up EVENTUALLY realizing the main problem with EVs being the large amount of electricity needed which strains the power grid, in ways that hydrogen production would not.
Hydrogen has a lower ignition point than fossil fuels, and is… more gaseous, to put it simply. It will escape more easily and more quickly. It is harder to control, and thus needs to be managed more carefully. This isn’t an obstacle to its use, but a consideration.
Production, however, is a problem. Barring revolution in our understanding of physics, you can’t get more energy out of something than was ever put into it. With naturally-occurring fuels, we cheat: we use the energy that natural processes have put into the fuel, and thus gain more energy than we expend. There is very little naturally-occurring free hydrogen. We have to produce it ourselves, which requires generally more energy than we get out of it. That makes it just a storage method, rather than a means of gaining energy. You’re not reducing dependence on the energy grid that way, because you’re going to need that energy to produce the hydrogen that you’ll use in a fuel cell. And it will cost more energy than just using that electricity directly.
We’re more likely to make advances in electrical storage than we are in overcoming conservation of energy. Hydrogen is an inefficient means of storing energy. Unless we find some naturally-occurring supply, it’s not a feasible means of generating a surplus of power.
“Production, however, is a problem.”
I literally just explained the three major methods of production.
“Barring revolution in our understanding of physics, you can’t get more energy out of something than was ever put into it. ”
Not a factor – hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe. And while you can’t get more energy than you put into it, matter and energy can be converted back and forth, which is sort of the point. If you are using something that is the most plentiful element in the universe, you’re going to be able to get a LOT of energy converted, not to mention get the electricity converted into a type of matter that’s easier to store than as raw energy (electricity) and for a MUCH longer period of time, which allows for easier transfer and storage for later, far longer than a capacitor will work.
“That makes it just a storage method, rather than a means of gaining energy.”
Um… that literally is the main problem with a LOT of green energy. The storage of it for later periods.
Which is the point of a hydrogen fuel cell.
“We have to produce it ourselves, which requires generally more energy than we get out of it.”
This is actually completely untrue. I’m sorry but you’re incorrect here.
“And it will cost more energy than just using that electricity directly.”
Again, incorrect. Check out what’s happened with Germany’s attempts to use green energy as their main source of power. The problem came with not being able to store the electricity for long, which forces them to sell it at a loss right away. Now if they were able to convert it to a usable, storable structure like hydrogen, it would be FAR easier to store and transfer, plus very easy to convert from hydrogen back into energy afterwards.
“We’re more likely to make advances in electrical storage than we are in overcoming conservation of energy”
Um… that’s exceedingly unlikely to happen any time soon. Thanks to physics. Capacitors have limitationsamd ALWAYS leak relatively quickly – often between 20 seconds and 40 minutes, unless it’s a dry/solid supercapacitor made of an amorphous TiO2 surface with nanometer sized cavities, rather than the normal liquid solvents. As this description sounds… it’s insanely complicated and long-lasting supercapacitors being used as ENERGY STORAGE devices long term not likely to be all that effective. At least not without being huge and prohibitively expensive. So far, no research has been performed on the use of capacitors or supercapacitors as energy storage devices in circuits.
Hydrogen, on the other hand, is relatively simple, as are the methods of extracting it from water.
“Unless we find some naturally-occurring supply,”
Water. Water is the ‘naturally occurring supply. H2O. The H stands for hydrogen. Hydrogen is literally the most plentiful element on Earth, AND in the universe. The entire surface of stars almost ENTIRELY of hydrogen and helium. And when I say almost, I mean over 98%. For reference, the Sun, a relatively small star, is almost 110 times larger than the Earth.
Hydrogen is also plentiful in hydrocarbons, and graphene-based fuel cell membranes can potentially even extract the miniscule amounts of hydrogen that are present in AIR.
The only real barrier with hydrogen is the current high production cost for electrolysis of water. Even then, it’s mainly because you need so much water to produce a lot less hydrogen gas (about 1000 gallons of water produce about 7 kg of hydrogen gas). Not really a problem given how water is extremely plentiful, and the fuel cell converts it BACK to water afterwards anyway. If as much attention was put towards refining electrolysis methods as we have tried (with VERY slow success) with EV, we probably would be a LOT greener and a lot safer, with a lot fewer pollutants.
Boring math below:
Hydrogen is measured by the kilogram. 1 kilogram is 1 gallon of gasoline equivalent (gge).
$0.0015/gallon + $0.987/kg (gge) Refining Costs = $0.9885 = $1.00/kg (gge) using Atmospheric Electrolyses.
$1.8015 = $1.80/kg (gge) using Compressed Electrolyses.NOTE: It takes 3 gallons of water to make 1 kg of hydrogen, 1 gallon of water = 0.38 kg of hydrogen, roughly a 3:1 ratio. Therefore: 1000 gallons of water ÷ 3 = (produces) 333 kg of H2 ÷ 50 gallons per drum = 6.66 “barrels of H2” per 1000 gallons of water. That is equivalent to a 7:1 H2 to crude oil ratio.
So while it takes a LOT of water to produce a lot less hydrogen:
1) Earth is covered with water (about 71% of the Earth’s surface). This does not include hydrocarbons.
2) The hydrogen is converted back into water afterwards with the hydrogen fuel cell.
“Hydrogen is an inefficient means of storing energy.”
No, it’s actually one of the most efficient means, in fact. You’re confusing production cost with efficiency of the medium. A capacitor is FAR less efficient. Hydrogen is the simplest, lightest, and most plentiful element in the universe, as well as the most plentiful element on Earth and in our solar system.
It doesn’t matter how plentiful hydrogen is in the universe. What matters is that it is rare for it to not already have stable bonds to other atoms. Again, unless someone discovers a way to violate the law of conservation, and thus makes perpetual motion machines possible, which is widely considered impossible… it’s going to take at least as much energy to isolate hydrogen as burning it will produce. This is basic physics.
Uh, shouldn’t the first obvious clue to finding the bad guys be the fact the bad guys not only knew about “the list”, but also knew where it was located? That hints of an inside job or internal security leak.
Start the search there.
Or someone with x-ray vision, psychic powers, the ability to tell the future in a limited way…
Superhuman powers would change many of the rules.
Well, except for Batman. Because he is Batman!
Whenever a villain does something unrealistic like dropping a train on the pursuer I always assume that the villain has about 1000 tricks up his sleeves just in case, like Carmen Sandiego, and he uses whichever ones are available at the time. But I didn’t actually watch Skyfall. Bond is not my thing.
Daves commentry for this one does present a huge problem for him when it comes to writing challenges for his heros.Since he wants the main cast to be extremely competent it puts any villains at a colossal handicap in the plot since Archon literally has a roster so overpowered that theres no realistic way for any villains to ever really succeed in any of their plans-hell even this current villainous plot nearly failed instantly and only ended with a partial win for the bad guys due to dumb luck.
Or to put it another way look at superman,The only reason his storys ever work is because the writers give his enemys a lot to work with and even then its a struggle to write a compelling story with him in since theres a limited number of ways to beat a superhero that strong barring massive asspulls. Dave definately screwed up a little when he decided to make Halo Maxima and Dabbler so versitilely powerful,Heck even the B team(aka everyone else) can easily deal with most threats with very little trouble too.
Ironically almost all of Daves villains so far are massive idiots which makes them even easier for the cast to deal with.
I actually went and read the rules for the power system he quotes, and the general consensus was that ‘power reserve’ was the most versatile AND most powerful of super abilities… and Max has a very strong power reserve, in addition to being top tier of the standard power curve.
So, yeah, she’s definitely the Superman of the toon, if not quite that strong, but she’s got no known weaknesses, either. Granted, magic did bypass her invulnerability at the vault, but she was powerful enough to Reserve up and work right through it. We’ll see how she does getting blasted by magic.
Come to think of it magics the best way to deal with her though the council are kind of idiots too.
If they hit Maxima with even something as mundane as a sleep spell shed have been instantly taken out of the fight when she got attacked by whats supposed to be their most secure facility in the world.Instead the security system used a debuff spell instead which is worthless not only against her but couldnt even stop Dabbler who is more the kind of person the defenses are made to counter.
If i was making a security system undersea for a collection of whats essentially scp items-some of which could possibly end the world- Id have loaded up the entire place with spells and traps designed to kill and cripple the attackers while the system locks the place down and floods out all access areas with seawater just to make sure.Not to mention having every spell and enchantment to erect magical barriers ( both offensive and defensive) placed into every inch of the place too.
Funnily enough the Dresden files series did a much better magical security set up for dangerous legendary items in the book Skin Game which made even the first step to get in be incredibly fiddly(A method that had to be done or its impossible for anything short of a bigname god to get in) and the four “gates” after that needed some highly specific skills and a good chunk of luck to get through along with someone willing to die so their soul could unlock the final gate which was instant death for even something as strong as Maxima if they tried to bruteforce their way through.
The funny part?All this security wasnt designed to keep people out but to make sure that the artifacts inside were truly despirately needed by the people coming in.Also this break in was not only instantly noticed but was expected and approved of in advance which is why the security was so passive.
Maxima absolutely has a weakness, and it’s an easily exploited one.
Limited focus.
Remember the steak house.
And NYC.
In the first case, she had to focus so heavily on DEF that she had effectively 0 STR v. Vehemence.
In the second, she was so invested in SPD that her DEF was too low to tank Brüt’s sucker punch.
Similar to The Periwinkle Butt-Sniffer, she can have any one of her powers maxed out, but not _every_ one of her powers maxed out.
That’s not a weakness, that’s a limitation of a great strength. Her defaults are already top-tier among any supes. Her boosts enable her to match specialists in a specific area, just not in all areas at once. That’s not a weakness, like, oh, kryptonite, or electricity shutting her down.
A weakness would be ‘she’s vulnerable to sleep spells’, which isn’t true, if the vampire domination she was already able to defy is any sign of things. She wasn’t able to ignore the debuff at the vault, but she was simply powerful enough that it didn’t matter. The spell also worked just fine against the Council, who definitely aren’t combat types if they didn’t bring defenses against it… whereas Dabbler had a literally Legendary-class defense against it, and Halo beyond legendary.
As both Dabbler and Vehemence have found out, all forcing her to armor up does is lead to a standstill as it limits her offense until she has a moment to get away, it doesn’t actually win the fight unless you can still overwhelm her somehow and tank her default power level. She’s still powerful enough in all other categories to wreak havoc.
A “weakness” doesn’t need to mean “instantly and overwhelmingly crippling.”
It just needs to mean, “removes ability to act.” Its an exploitable vulnerability, and what really matters is how it relates to a given objective. As was suggested above, the trick is to create a dilemma.
“You can ramp up your strength enough to free the hostage, but that would leave you vulnerable to my X Weapon. You can ramp your armor enough to resist the weapon, but that leaves the hostage in my power.”
…now, Max being a good soldier, the hostage is going to die, because she’ll make offing the threat her priority. But if the _objective_ is to undermine Archon by showing that they will _choose_ to trade on hostages’ lives…
I think Maxima’s MAIN weakness is her arrogance. She tends to underestimate others, assuming she is the strongest one around. It’s not without good reason since she usually can back up her boastful claims, what with her being one of the most powerful supers on Earth, but we’ve seen a few times where this has gotten her into trouble.
Most notably with not taking Vehemence as a serious threat that she couldn’t overcome until it was too late, when going up against Death Toll, and when fighting the Super Mannekiller. In both instances, she had to be saved by another person. In the first case, by Sydney and her strategy to beat Vehemence (plus distracting him at several key moments. When going up against Death Toll, had Sydney not intervened, it’s very likely that Death Toll would have developed an ability which could take out Maxima, making him even more of a threat. And with the Super Mannekiller, Maxima ASSUMED that even if the super mannekiller could copy her powers, it could not copy the intensity of those powers… with absolutely no foundation to think this. She also underestimated its existing powers, which included the ability to vampirically mesmerize or dominate a person…. a power to which Maxima is NOT immune. Had the lens not already been cracked, it may have been able to get a bit of Maxima’s blood and duplicate her powers, much like Amazo gaining Superman’s powers in the DC universe. Had Hiro not intervened with a move that caused the Super Mannekilller to explode, Maxima might have made the Super Mannekiller too powerful for even her to handle.
She also does have some more definitive weaknesses that can be exploited. She is apparently very likely susceptible to mind control (based on what happened att he Mars factory). She is susceptible against magic – it’s noteworthy to mention that one of the two people to ever fight Maxima to a draw (before the Super Mannekiller and Vehemence) was Dabbler – who employs magic, super science, and a range of other powers (although Maxima seems to NOT be affected by the succubus ‘beholder spell’ which seems to affect everyone else to varying degrees of effectiveness, but only seems to piss Maxima off.
Maxima is ALSO susceptible to alien technology, although the aliens would need to be a LOT more prepared than Lapha and her team were. Even so – they did manage to temporarily immobilize her. Had they been able to get her into the stasis chamber (which Sydney prevented from happening), they might have actually succeeded. Also, had Lapha understood her quarry better and her powers, they might have had countermeasures in place to better contain Maxima and hold off her team until they could capture her.
Also, despite Maxima’s tough talk, she has not shown an ability to get through Sydney’s shield yet, even if she doesnt dismiss the possibility that she can (after the live fire test with Sydney before the tank demonstration).
Maxima also needs to breathe – she needs to wear a mask when she goes up too high in the atmosphere, even if the freezing temperature itself doesnt bother her. One of the big dangers about Darude was that he could force sand down her throat to suffocate her, which is a reason she needed the mask for their second fight, and why she was hacking and coughing after the first one. Also, Vehemence was about to kill her by choking her to death.
Maxima needs to be able to touch whatever she’s attacking. She outright stated that she couldnt do anything to help Concretia when Concretia and Hench Wench were both intangible, and another of the problems about fighting Darude was his relative intangibility to most attacks except the plasma blast, which vaporized sand (and his ability to reform whatever sand was vaporized with more sand from the desert).
In addition, while Maxima does have very good hearing – although people are not sure if it’s superhuman or just really good hearing, according to both Harem and her ability to hear the Council talking low to each other in the Dark Reliquiry (although Dabbler and Sydney were ALSO able to hear them), X seems to be capable of escaping her detection, so as long as a person has the ability to also occlude sound, she does not have any particular visual super-abilities like Superman does with thermal vision, xray vision, etc., to detect invisibility.
Finally, Maxima is able to be distracted, both by anger and by arguments or putting her on the verbal defensive (as Sydney showed when she got that elf out of trouble from his checking out her sexy pointy ears).
I wonder if the list even exists….I mean, you would update it and keep it safe. And many on the list would have harmless powers. Maybe the ‘list’ is a decoy and there isn’t a list. Maybe it isn’t a decoy – maybe is it bait?
Why does no one ever make a vault with a second vault accessible inside it only with a keyfob used outside of it for normal stuff. Decoy in first vault, clicks keys in pocket as open it to get to second vault. Decoy item set with timed delay phone home magic version of tactical nuke that goes off if it finds it is unable to make contact in 24 hours. Oops, one less villain lab/lair to worry about.
*shifty eyes*
Who says they haven’t?