Grrl Power #924 – Do not taunt happy fun Maxima
Cora is really skirting the edge here, and I’m not really sure why other than it makes me laugh. She does probably have a point about warrantless “wire” taps, especially since she’s using crazy alien tech to tap the A/V feed from someone’s living nervous system. Anything she records would certainly be inadmissible, and there are probably some, you know, privacy concerns.
Her opening word bubble basically boils down to, “Maybe I did a bad, but I definitely did a bunch of goods.” I’m not sure there’s a justice system on Earth that actually balances good deeds out with bad ones. Yeah, there’s character witnesses and judges generally have a lot of leeway in sentencing, but it’s not written down, like a law that says if you’re a doctor and you create a vaccine that saves a million lives, you don’t get 999,999 get-out-of-jail-for-murder cards. Maybe Cora’s thinking of some alien worlds where that is the case, and come to think of it, I’m really surprised I’ve never seen a Star Trek or Doctor Who or something where they visit that planet.
Now that I think about it though, if you lived on that planet and you ran someone over with your car by accident (or murdered your neighbor on purpose, I suppose it doesn’t matter) and you didn’t have a “good” credit, would you go straight to jail, or would you have a year in which you have to save someone’s life, or otherwise accrue enough good credits to balance out the bad? I think a society would quickly figure out that one life for one life simply wouldn’t work. Doctors and firefighters and EMTs could be untouchable serial killers, and I think there’d be a real potential for massive population decline. Plus, there’d probably be services like fake suicide attempts people could “thwart” for good credits so they can go kill their neighbor’s noisy dog or whatever.
Yeah, that system wouldn’t work at all. Still surprised I haven’t seen it on Star Trek.
The new vote incentive is up! 
Maxima won (or lost) the draw this time. There are several clothing/non-clothing variants over at Patreon, including a special version with guest art direction from JJ Abrams. (Yes, there’s a ton of lens flares, hah hah. I amuse myself.) The a-cups will return next month, so please enjoy this offering in the meantime.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
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That store their robbing. I know in Australia, it is illegal to even have brand names of cigarettes on display. is it different in the U.S. or is the store breaking the law?
Different. The product is controlled but that only means its kept out of reach and has to be handed to you. Done more to keep kids from buying it. And of course any small yet additive product is likely to be pilfered.
Unlike australia america is not (as of yet) a dictatorship, though some try.
We are much less strict on a store having the label for the products they sell, you know, in the store next to the product.
Because who allows you to sell cigarettes but bans their label or mention of them etc etc? Why not just cut out the middleman and ban the cigarettes if you’re going to be that draconian.
Australia and new zealand are some of the most hilariously authoritarian places I’ve ever seen in my life outside of actual socialist dictatorships. Y’all probably shoulda kept those guns, for you know, the tyranny stopping, like we do. In minecraft. For legal reasons that’s a joke.
Dont sue me T-series
Wat
I don’t know if you’re just joking about the guns or the government itself but Australia is actually a democracy based on the British, and by extension, the Canadian democratic system. It’s not an autocracy. Unless you were joking, then dismiss this comment lol.
And that’s why they are making it illegal to smoke or display cigarette products, but no illegal to actually buy the cigarettes?
Can’t smoke in public
Can’t smoke in a private residence (in case of children, even though you are single)
Can’t smoke in a private vehicle (in case of children, even though you are single)
Well, actually, yes? A country’s elected representatives deciding to enact different laws to those enacted by another country’s elected representatives doesn’t automatically make one of those countries a dictatorship.
Also smoking laws in Australia vary by state. For example, it’s still legal in Queensland to smoke in public (so long as you aren’t within 5m of an enclosed space such as a shopping centre or hospital), in a private residence (if the owner doesn’t object), or in a private vehicle (unless there is a minor inside at the time).
Just because you have elections, doesn’t mean you’re free. The Soviet Union, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, East Germany, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and California all have elections.
They’re also all tyrannies of one form or another where your civil rights basically end at the convenience of the ruling party and/or their cronies, and where the Elections are ‘secured’ to assure the ruling party remains in power regardless of how that party actually governs.
I’m kinda not surprised Australia and New Zealand have comfortably dropped into that mold, after all, most of the world is comprised of people who really don’t want to be free as much as they want to be cared for and closely supervised.
I like that California is included in that list. I recall hearing about California’s cities voting to make it illegal for farmers out in the rural areas of the state to access ground water so that the cities could have it. It’s like that old saying, democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.
Meanwhile California desperately wants to get rid of the electoral college because it’s “unfair” to them that they ONLY get **the most votes of any state in the country**.
Small correction since there isn’t an edit button. I intended to say above-ground water. The farmers were forced to dig for ground water as a result of this vote.
Hmmm. It’s been a while since I wrote it…
STORY TELLER – You know the story.
There were local people who had the land, and honored and respected the land, and the resources of the land were all theirs.
Then came others, like locusts. The local people agreed to share the land and the resources, but after a while the locusts always wanted more. They came and bred in numbers, and voted to break the old agreements, to demand more, to make new agreements that gave them more of what they wanted and take resources away from the local people who had long known and held and honored the land.
Eventually, the locusts wanted to take it all.
You know the story.”
City Liberal – Yes, it’s terrible what the whites did to the Native Americans.
Story Teller – I was talking about what the city dwellers did to the farmers.
After Cali’s battle over river water, Nestle then lobbied to ban the use of unbottled ground water. Annnd… They won. Then Nestle sued several cities who were distributing tap water. Of course people realized this was insane so there was a whole slew of lawsuits. I can’t remember much now but I remember listening to a documentary about the issue several years ago. Unfortunately, there’s so many different lawsuits against Nestle water I can’t find a source to back up this claim. So treat it as random speculation if you prefer.
His a counter story I’ve seen…
“There was a village that lived in a valley, between two nations, bordering the territory of barbarians notorious for rampages. West of the village was a mountain pass, and was the only way in or out of the valley. The pass was held by two great stone gates. They could be swung at a moments notice, but the bend in the pass before them only left minutes to close it, while the village was several minutes away. As such, someone always had to be posted at the gate. Generations went by, and the valley was inhabited only by the village and the gatekeeper. Then one day, the current gatekeeper died and his son took over. His father had always gone to the village to get supplies, but the son stayed home. With his father gone, though, he had to come to the village. And when he did, he noticed that the people in the village were living better than he. The first thing he noticed was indoor toilets. So, he told them, “I keep you safe every day, watching for barbarians, yet I don’t even have indoor toilet. What if barbarians come while I’m on the toilet?” The people agreed that watching the gate was important, and that people should have running water, so they agreed, and five of their best went out to his cottage to figure out a way to build him an indoor toilet. It took a month, but in the process, they learned more about construction and how to do more things. They came back to the village, and used what they learned to make even more improvements.
When he next visited the village, the gatekeeper noticed that people had electricity. He then insisted that he have electricity. Afterall, improved light-bulbs would make it easier to see the barbarians. The village agreed, it did make sense, and the any modern life should have electricity. So they gave up their best craftsmen again to fix his problem, and in the process, they learned about sending electricity longer distances. Again, they used what they learned to make their own village better when they came back. This went on a few times. He needed a car. He needed TV and his own station to ‘report the status of the gate’. He then needed regular money to fund the gate’s need and upkeep. The list kept growing, and the village kept giving.
The next time he showed up, he decided he was going to ask for something bigger, and was feeling the ability he could ask for whatever he wanted, so he asked this, “I man the gate… at the gate, I see things the rest of the people don’t see. I know about the struggles at the gate. As such, I should have a say in the village, so we can take actions that protect the gate. And there’s things that the gate needs from the village that the village doesn’t know about.” After much deliberation, the people in the village admitted noone in the village knew how the gate or its patrol worked at this point, so it made sense. So, they decided to give him a seat on the village council. Once on the council, the gatekeeper started to push village laws. However, they weren’t just about the gate. At this point, he felt in charge. He saw a pretty girl he liked, and passed a law saying she couldn’t marry her boyfriend. When his car broke down, he made a law that people had to fix his car (even if not everyone elses.) He then started dumping the trash from his cottage in the middle of the village park. When they told him to stop, he passed a law saying he could, and soon the village park was the village dump.
Eventually, the people couldn’t stand it anymore. So, when he was away, they met. They agreed that he had gone too far, so they decided they were going to cut off support. Completely. They cut of electricity, money, car repairs, everything. They removed his seat from the council.
The gatekeeper came back, and demanded they return everything. They refused. He warned them if they didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to maintain the gate. At least the electricity. They refused.
So he stormed back to the gate, and opened it. And, as he warned, the barbarians entered. The council headed out to meet with the barbarians. Facing eachother, the council, used to the attitude of the gatekeeper, asked the barbarians what they wanted from their village. The barbarians responded, “Food. Our villages are dying of thirst. And so we raid for food, and constantly sacrifice our people.”
The council spoke with them, “Would you be willing to trade oil for our food? If we leave our gates open, we can trade with you, and both of us can grow prosperous.” The barbarians thought. Battles could cost many lives, and allies were more valuable than enemies. And so they agreed, and an alliance was formed. All because they threw off the gatekeeper.
The farmer – “It’s a good sign to throw off the tyranny of cities for our small farming villages.”
The storyteller – The barbarians are the risks of food shortages from under-producing farms that are addressed by trading with other places. The gatekeeper is the farmers and rural towns who asked for subsidy and concession – who take way more in taxes than they give (just a single rural school will typically cost two to three times what that county generates in taxes, and that’s before you talk roads, electrical lines, and farm subsidies), and ignored climate change and the needs of the greater community in pursuit of it’s own selfish world view again, and again, and again, trying to control people not connected to it in things it doesn’t need.
When the cities and liberal communities cut them off completely, it’s because they have pushed too far, and decided the cost is worth it for freedom from the rural tyrants. The crops will dry. The land will become parched. The farms will eventually have to be sold. This is not an unintended accident. This is the purpose. The rural, with their constant demonizing of the city liberals, with their constant demands, their constant financial drains have pushed too far. They have exhausted the citie’s and liberals’ sense of community and mutual goodwill with them. We will eat Mexican avocados, Canadian maple syrup, Chinese rice, ocean fish for our meats, and European cookies. Our cars will come from Japan, our computer pars from China. Rural America has turned Suburban and Urban America into its enemy. Demonized the hard working city folk on their talk shows, slandered their heroes of social justice, preached the citizens of liberal cities were not worthy of basic human rights.
And sure, the rural people heard each other. And they did it all for squeezing city folk even harder for an extra few bucks for their over-subsidized corn that they feed to cows that we don’t even want to eat except for the fact the subsidies make them cheaper than the feed they give them. Breaking the bonds of trust for mere personal pleasures, living in ranches with room for kids and guests, while people in the city have to spend all of their money supporting the people in the rurals, with a little left over to barely afford sharing a small one bedroom apartment with another rural person. But the people of the cities heard the demonetization by the rurals of them too, and were not pleased. Cities are, by necessity, built on community, and it was assumed that those in rural areas would respect that. City folk found out those in rural areas have zero respect for community and them, and they were not acting in everyone’s best interests. And so, the rural areas are being cut off. Yes, there will be consequences, but the city people will not be stepped on by rural tyrants anymore, and support has been withdrawn. Maybe, in twenty, forty, or a hundred years, after the farms are but fallow meadows or dust, they’ll be returned too. But not until the ways of greed and selfishness of the current rurals is but a rusty footnote in history.
harmony – when you have to explain who everyone in a story represented and explain why it supports your political argument, then you have already failed.
When you do so while already having turned “attacking barbarians” into reasonable people, suddenly in dire need, your storyteller has proven that he is unreliable in the extreme.
That can work for satire, but not for supporting a political viewpoint, especially when you throw a whole bunch of demonizing of farmers and pseudo-vegetarian nonsense about people not eating meat if corn wasn’t subsidized into your explanation. People in California can’t afford housing because of greedy farmers? Well, I’d heard they’ve legalized pot out there, but I didn’t know they’d followed suit with hallucinogens.
My descriptive allegory merely shows the similarities between what the city dwellers did to the farmers, who had an established right to a resource – water, just water – given by law and agreement, and what the whites did to the Indians, which treaty violations had similar characteristics. As soon as the city dwellers, like all whites, wanted MORE of the resources, they violated the agreements and wrote laws to take them.
I haven’t even expressed an opinion on whether one or the other violation of agreements and takings is ethical or moral. I’ve just pointed out that they are of equivalent moral status. And pointing that out required no rambling explanation filled with political diatribes.
See if you can rewrite yours to get your point across without having to explain. When you can’t do that, then you should realize that your point is probably very far wrong.
It depends on when the ‘attacking barbarians’ became ‘reasonable people’
Form the sounds of it, it was at least two generations (or maybe just one and a half) since they were last attacked, greatly depends on how old the New Gatekeeper was at the end of the story (and if they went from indoor plumbing to motor vehicles, that kinda implies a few decades to a century)
Well, it’s still a dumb story. Literally every place that has oil is also a warmonger and they don’t stop being a warmonger just because you give them supplies. Instead, they take those supplies and they bomb you with them. Why? I have no friggin’ idea. Maybe oil makes people crazy.
Anyway, the moment I saw “trade oil for food” I was expecting to see the village razed in short order and was disappointed when it didn’t happen. This is like “pocahontas” happily ever after, you know, forget that the natives were genocided because that isn’t a happy ending.
Dal,
You don’t get it.
Farmers are all “Oh, woah is me, city people are sooooo horrible to me. City people are soooooo horrible. Oh woah is me. Let me play my country song again.” But the moment, the absolute first moment that you even point out that they’re oppressing someone in someway, they’re all “Muh guns, my rights, you can’t make me do nothing I don’t want ta. And I’ll pray ya go to hell just for wanting to be with your wife, ya [insert slur on women of color here]!”
There’s a *reason* I left country living. There is no more self-centered, selfish, arrogant, playing-the-victim group of people on the planet (and the fact they can do both of the latter two without a sense of irony about just emphasizes the level of cluelessness.)
Yes, city people suffer because of country people. A good fifth of the people in cities are people who once lived in country and went to the city specifically to *get away* from the horrible country culture.
So, for once, country farmers are on the receiving end of law imbalance instead of the dealing side. There’s been a long history of country farmers having zero sympathy or empathy for city people, so for once, the favor is finally being returned.
If country folk want people to care about them, maybe they shouldn’t have spent generations building up so much ill will.
Nope, that story about water law in California is not quite correct.
As we all learned in first year Property Law – people have been fighting about water rights for as long as there have been farmers. It starts with upstream farmers fighting with downstream farmers about who gets to use the riverwater – the upstream farmer wants to take it all, the downstream farmer says, no, you’re entitled to the customary use of your water. That is, you get to use some but not all.
Cities inherited this dispute, typically but not always being in the position of a downstream farmer.
Common law being messy, most of the USA has pass statutes to codify the thing.
So that’s where you get the canard that city folk are stopping farmers from using surface water.
—
As for the Electoral College: it’s just a way for 1 voter in Wyoming to have 3 times the influence as 1 voter in California, and for most people’s votes not to really matter since only about a dozen “battleground” states are in play. It means that Republicans in California might was well stay home on election day, because their votes won’t count. When we go to a popular vote system like just about every other democracy, Republicans in California and Democrats in Indiana will finally have a voice (…not to mention Americans of any party in Puerto Rico and the other islands, who were explicitly forbidden the vote because of their race — look up the “Insular Cases” some times.)
I don’t know whether this is really the best forum for discussing American politics.
I mean, based on the last 4 years, I’d be happy for all the Republicans to stay home on Election day anyway.
And the Democrats.
Let the Third Party and the actual Leftists have a chance at this, y’all.
All we need for that to happen is ranked vote. Vote for who you believe in, then if they aren’t in the top two, you get to choose who inherits the vote.
Terrius: Absolutely. First-past-the-post is quite possibly the worst possible voting system that isn’t deliberately absurd. Almost any other serious system would be preferable, but people are too invested in it to change, or can’t get past arguing about precisely which system should replace it.
You. I like you.
two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner: mental image: sheep eyeing one wolf suggestively and whispering ‘wolf’, wolf’s eyebrows raise, it looks at the other wolf and says ‘right, wolf it is!’
Do you have any proof besides “they have policies I don’t like” for Australia being a dictatorship?
Because simply having controversial policies isn’t enough to qualify as one.
Australia is an oligarchy masquerading as electoral representational democracy, as are most western nations.
So, no proof then, got it.
Most people aren’t invested in the philosophical idea of freedom. They just want to be allowed to do anything they want to do, without the annoyance of other people who are different from themselves getting to do what they want to do. They’d prefer an authoritarian state as long as they can be sure that they’re in the ruling class, and resort to demanding freedom when they think they wouldn’t be.
It’s really cute how those of you from a third world country with a gucci belt go on about democracy. While gerrymandering districts and have Rep states changing laws to disenfranchise anyone brown. Go on. Tell us how you’re the bastion of all that is moral and correct while still being fluffers for a dickbag that incited an insurrection and doing everything they can to strip the vote from anyone not republican.
Doing all of that is just a way to skirt existing laws; this only happens under military dictatorships and classic autocracies. Under a proper democracy the opposing party is allowed to and does point out these conflicts of interest for the sake of getting elected. If they choose to avoid the obvious attack it means they’re in on the game, i.e., you really only have one political party.
When you have tech and media that circumscribe what can be discussed, you may actually have no political parties at all.
True, unfortunately. That was the case with mail trains in the early 1900s and phones in the late 1900s. Each time we got an “antitrust” lawsuit instead of actual legislation forbidding this behavior. What you see today is the result of our laxity. The whole “government protection of speech” is hilarious since they break that same protection via corporate legislation. Isn’t that exactly what Section 230 has accomplished? What’s the point of the First Amendment, then?
You have this exactly backwards. Without the Section 230 protections preventing platform providers for being responsible for the content their customers create, platform providers will have to restrict, deny, and cancel any content which they might be held responsible for hosting. Thus limiting the free expression of ideas of those customers.
To give an example, right now Facebook can’t be held responsible for some customer of theirs calling for crimes to be committed. Remove Section 230 and they can be. And suing the wealthy platform provider will be a tasty target, so it will happen far more often.
The easy thing would be to simply not be a platform provider, but what would probably happen is that platform providers would have to be far more draconian about what content they allowed their customers to post. Which would limit, and not enhance, free speech.
And the costs to be a platform provider would go up significantly. Additional costs for lawyers, and staff to screen all the content, would not be insignificant. And so platform providers would almost certainly need to raise their prices. Right now a Facebook account is free, because they make their money off of ad revenues. But if the ad revenues do not meet their costs to operate they may have to charge for an account. And because not everyone is going to be willing to pay for an account, fewer people would be their customers, and so that would again mean that free speech was limited from where it was before Section 230 was eliminated.
Platform providers are already doing that, and not on a non-partisan basis. In the 2020 elections, it amounted to a multi-billlion dollar in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign.
CNN, I believe it was, was caught on tape explicitly deciding on a strategy to deep-six the Hunter Biden stories in order to support the Biden Campaign.
Given that the effective expenditure, interference and effect on the 2020 election was three orders of magnitude higher than the effect of a few dozen Russian trolls in 2016, which was claimed to be of nation-shaking importance, your statement is… problematic, let’s say.
And given that various companies are pushing to put any platform out of business who does NOT line up and ban legal language on their platform that liberals don’t want to hear, the pretense that 230 functions as claimed is laughable.
No, Oberon. Section 230 gives absolute control of all online speech to tech platforms. They have already abused their power more than most totalitarian governments.
What did I tell you about blathering when you don’t understand? I chewed you out for precisely this just last week. You’re not even being a boomer; you need to stop being a dumbass.
Wzaerreazw, you need to learn how to read. You embarrass yourself. Or you would, if you only understood how foolish you were trying to talk about things of which you clearly have no real understanding.
Dal, you’re calling CNN a platform provider. When they publish an editorial this is vaguely accurate, but in general they are not at all a platform provider. They create and publish their own content by reporting on the news with their own words, which platform providers such as Facebook (Reddit, Imgur, Parler, YouTube, TikTok, etc.) in large part do not.
Once you learn what the terms mean, you might have something to contribute to the conversation.
Oberon, CNN is covered under section 230.
So, if CNN republishes a story from Reuters, they’re not responsible. If they republish a story from doomsdayprophecies.info, they’re still not responsible. They’re not responsible for the content of their ads, their 3rd party videos, and their comments section is hosted on Twitter and Facebook, which they are also obviously not responsible for under section 230. How nice.
Know what else?
In other words, they have carte blanche. Oberon, go read the law sometime and get the fuck out of our government you clueless pawn.
But Wzaerreazw, you witless assclown, CNN also published their own content. Which was clearly what I was referring to in my prior post when I said:
And I also allowed for them being a platform provider.
So you’re just really fucking stupid, or you really enjoy arguing both sides of an issue. Probably both.
Again, Section 230 enhances speech by allowing platform providers to exist without needing to fear being sued or otherwise held responsible for the content their customers publish. No platform providers would mean no way for people to get their ideas out to the masses. Whether or not a person thinks this is a good thing or not is a different conversation entirely.
Yes, it gives platform providers the free ability to remove content they do not agree with, but that’s no different than any other business setting up rules of behavior in order to access their services. Do you also think that a store or restaurant with a “No shirt, no shoes, no service” policy is somehow a violation of their customer’s first amendment rights?
Wzaerreazw bleated:
Read the First Amendment, and try to understand with your tiny little brain that it does not protect you or anyone else from being denied a platform to speak by any company. It only protects you from the government restricting your speech.
The government allowing platform providers protections from litigation due to third party content via Section 320 is not an end run around the First Amendment. You’ve never had the right to demand to say what you want on someone else’s property, and that includes their corporate property as well as physical land property. “Get the fuck out of my house with your violent and racist ranting” is the equivalent of what happened to Parler, and Trump.
And also try to understand that the freedom of speech is not universal. The government does restrict free speech in many ways. Ye olde “can’t yell ‘FIRE!’ in a crowded theater” is a classic example. There are many more if you’re capable of finding them.
You really are just mind-numbingly ignorant. The conclusions you draw have no basis in reality. You conflate things that have no relation to one another. Everyone in this room is dumber for having listened to your witless ramblings. I award you no points, and may the non-existent God have mercy on your idiot soul.
Section 230:
1st Amendment:
Frankly, Oberon, you are too stupid and lazy to be reasoned with.
Wzaerreazw, you constantly confuse the government with private companies, despite having it explained to you more than once using small words.
Try again after you catch a clue. You are too stupid and lazy to be reasoned with.
Let me know when you find the word “government” in the First Amendment.
Ups, well, it is there, but I guess even finding a word was too hard for you.
You seem to think that continually demonstrating your ignorance is somehow a win for you. It is not.
I’ll explain once again for you: Businesses do not have to give you freedom of speech. That is not a right that you have, or have ever had. Since this is true, a business not having to provide your ignorant ass with rights,
has nothing to do with your government protections to say stupid things.
Section 230 didn’t take away any right you or anyone else has ever had. All it did was to prevent platform providers from being held accountable for things published on their platforms by third parties: i.e. their customers. Their right to deny you or anyone else service, for any reason they choose, is in no way an abrogation of your right to freedom of speech, because your right to freedom of speech has never existed when it comes to speaking on someone else’s private property.
I’ve explained this to you multiple times now, but you have persisted in insisting that words mean things that they do not. Your misconceptions do not somehow make reality change for your benefit. But that isn’t how the world works, and you’d do well to come to understand that before you get yourself in more serious trouble than an argument with your betters on the Internet.
Do you finally get it?
Of course you don’t.
You are incapable of learning.
You are too stupid for words.
If you insist on replying, you can have the last word. Whatever you say will not change the facts that I’ve explained to you so many times now. But if you really want to make yourself look even more stupid than you have already, have at it, hoss.
Congress doesn’t have the ability to determine constitutionality. By putting that phrase in their law, it’s conflicts with the powers enumerated to them by the constitution.
I stand by my earlier statement regarding the constitutionality of the law as a whole, seeing as Section 230 DOES impose new limits on freedom of speech via libel laws. Not that you care.
Oh, and for anyone else reading this, TL;DR:
Section 230 gives corporations the freedom to remove or alter speech they find offensive without being subject to civil or criminal penalties. This is fine by itself, but it explicitly contravenes the constitution by stating that the constitution does not apply.
Because freedom of speech is constrained by libel and other similar laws, this means corporations can speak more freely than natural persons. This creates a government restriction on freedom of speech. Not corporate. This restriction is entirely from the government.
Oberon’s remarks about corporate speech are entirely irrelevant.
I forgot to mention: freedom of speech is constrained everywhere. Not just private platforms.
Goddamnit. Now I realize how I led this discussion astray. I didn’t focus on the actual restrictions that the law causes. Instead I allowed Oberon to rant about things that don’t matter.
It’s really a shame that honor duels aren’t a thing anymore. A lot of this “winning by whining” nonsense would’ve been nipped in the bud by a gunshot to the leg.
Whatever, not like anyone will read this. To clarify, because apparently I enjoy talking to a brick wall.
I know my life has zero value. Little to nothing of what I say will change anyone’s mind. This has been demonstrated time and time again ever since I was a child and have watched my beloved country fall into disrepair and authoritarianism.
Were the situation slightly different, I would gladly kill someone like Oberon in exchange for my life. Never mind a shot to the leg – we all know that’s nonsense. Better than living in this shithole while he gets paid to pile in more shit.
Throughout decades of trying to converse with the opposition I’ve always tried to talk it out.
It seems I’ve finally been forced to admit that some people must die when they oppose everything that is free and good. The Founding Fathers were willing to commit to war. I am not as eloquent, nor as well spoken, nor as good at debate as they. If they were forced to kill for their beliefs then so too must I prepare for that eventuality. What a fucking shame.
Hey, just because other parties in foreign nations aren’t as dogmatically against each other as the two parties in America are doesn’t mean that they’re a dictatorship or classic autocracy.
The two parties in America are just dogmatic on the surface. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the laws they actually pass: those laws are often maintained and enhanced when the parties switch. Only the Patriot Act was ceded during Trump’s rein after he used it to bomb Soleimani.
For example. Gramm-Leach-Bliley (1999) rescinded all of the most important protections that were passed during the Great Depression. Those protections were meant to prevent another Great Depression. The most critical of which was the law forbidding the formation of a corporation which operated both investment and depository banking. It didn’t take long to see the results of this, did it? Only 9 years later came the 2008 financial crisis.
GLB was passed with bipartisan support. Interestingly, more Democrats supported the law than Republicans. But here’s the catch: Republicans used the law to force the 2008 crisis. Yes, that’s right.
In 2005 a law was put forth to congress called the “Responsible Lending Act.” It asked Congress to audit Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; two of the most heavily hit lenders during the 2008 crisis. Do you know what happened to the man who proposed that bill? He was swiftly convicted of corruption and removed from his seat in Congress.
Does that sound like the two parties are against eachother?
A politician’s literal job is to speak – and lie – with smooth efficiency. If you really take them at their word then you’re either a fool, a tool, or both.
Some laws are enhanced, yeah.
Others are stripped, revoked, or otherwise diminished. Such as what Trump did to ACA during his term or Biden’s reversal of several border policies today.
The country would be even more clogged and ineffective now than ever if Republicans actually strove to strike down every Democrat law, and vice versa.
Uhm, the ACA was not stripped down. Maybe you don’t live here but most of what Trump got rid of were restrictions on how much money could be charged and what kinds of services could be rendered.
The border policy reversed by Biden was just the emergency order. You watch, he’ll complete the wall with proper funding now because “we need proper facilities at the border to take care of the poor migrants” or whatever bullshit they’ll come up with. Had no problem fighting against exactly that every step of the way but now they’ll embrace it. Just give it time.
If you think Australia and New Zealand are Authoritarian then either:
a) You propably got some serious memory loss
b) You need to look at every country BELOW 10 in the Democracy Index. Makes only 157 Countries.
c) You are troll, propably Trumpist
So are you saying that, compared to Austrialia, “Trumpists” are NOT Authoritarian, and thus would view Australia and New Zealand as Authoritarian? Is that a new word for classical Liberals then?
No, I say that Trumpist use the word “Authoritarian” infaltionary to rob it of all meaning, so nobody has a word for the shit they are planning to pull.
Also they excessively use “Communism” as if the Red Scare wasn’t over for half a century. That I think it simply distraction however. They are way to asocial to care about other people!
The red scare is over, huh? Oh, that explains why the largest country in the world is officially communist.
It’s over; we lost.
China is a capitalist country by every practical measure. It’s just a dictatorship that calls itself communist while not following several core tenants of the political theory.
It seems to me that, from a practical standpoint, most authoritarian states are as similar as Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke – the afficianadoes can tell the difference, but it still fizzy junk, just with a different label on it so it sells better.
Whether your government’s Maximum Leader would have sat on the left side of the 1789 French National Assembly, or the right side, probably does not matter to you as his goons are beating you up.
Did you know the United States is nominally a Democratic Republic? Yeah. Turns out you can be a capitalist and also run your government with a different structure. Who knew?
Same could be said of every ‘communist’ country. The USSR was a totalitarian police state dictatorship with a managed economy. Which is about as far from classical communism as you can possibly get. Same thing with ‘socialist’, see also again the USSR (United Soviet Socialist Republic).
An actual communism falls apart when you get beyond the local village level. Socialism does better, if you go by the reed of ‘certain things are considered public resources to be shared’ such as roads and (in many countries now) health care. It’s about as close to communist ideals while at least capable of functioning at scale.
A true Democracy is also impossible on the large scale. Not just because of communication, we have the internet now capable of helping with that (although security is another matter). No, it’s because every single citizen has to vote on every single topic brought up. Which means they also need to be aware of and informed of every single issue going up before a vote. No one has the time to do all that and hold down a living. So some form of republicanism is the best compromise on the national scale. It’s not perfect by any means, and most forms of republicanism practiced these days could undergo an overhaul, but it does beat a dictatorship, which is what China is.
Classical communism doesn’t exist. It’s just a tool to push for revolution. Always has been. Even in villages it rapidly decays into corruption and gangs. Then the gang becomes the new government.
Communism is designed to decentralize power. Once power is decentralized all that’s left is a group of defenseless civilians ripe for the picking.
As a radical leftist myself, I would love to see real communism (preferably anarchy) but both of these systems are non-practicable. They require every member of society to be a strong individual who will not want nor grasp for things beyond his or her means. This is obviously impossible at the moment.
“…calls itself communist while ignoring several core tenets…” I wonder whether they actually do call themselves communist. How would you know unless you speak Mandarin? and even then any attempt to look up such a translation would get the COMMON rendering. As near as I can tell, they appear to be Confucianist, which broadly means a blend of pragmatism and fatalism.
It’s their official, government position. Just like how America calls itself a Republic/Democracy.
Whether or not that’s true you can determine through their actions.
It’s written in their constitution. The name of the ruling party is the Chinese Communist Party. Their official logo is a goddamn hammer and sickle.
Why do you people ask such dumb questions when there’s an entire internet at your fingertips?
Constitution, relevant both to name and (theoretically) to actions. Party name, relevant to what they call themselves but not necessarily to the actions carried out in that name. Party logo, shows historical associations but not necessarily current policies.
(Of course, if you want to get pedantic, they actually call themselves the 中国共产党, pronounced Zhōngguó Gòngchǎndǎng, of which the 共产 / Gòngchǎn part means “Communist”.)
I agree with your points. And while the remark about the logo is true, Scott, strong symbols like the hammer and sickle are almost universally replaced with modern symbology when the party ideology changes. Not necessarily because they revile the old or anything like that, moreso to put forth a “new image” for members of the party and public alike.
The CCP, being the sole inheritor of the Chinese state, has no real compulsion to change their logo or even bother updating their constitution. But as a self-claimed technocracy the CCP has many social, political, and economic reasons to change; were their current state not a reflection of their actual ideological allegiance.
The country with the largest population is India, you idiot. And the largest country geographically is Russia, which is Ostensibly a Democracy, but essentially a dictatorship.
Nice fucking try.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/
Don’t throw rocks in glass houses. Idiot.
Ah, so “Trumpist” is your euphemism for “Reductio Ad Hitlerium” then. Got it.
ROFLMAO. Wow. After three decades of the left hyperbolically using the word “racist” and two decades of “Nazi” and a couple of years of “Dictator” with no irony whatsoever, laughable as that usage aimed at Trump was, you really have no place to stand when you whine that “Authoritarian” is being robbed of its meaning.
I don’t see how Christopher there is “the left”. You can’t assign the actions of a vague group to one person you know little about and then just claim hypocrisy.
Well, for one, the right doesn’t give a crap about the Democracy Index. The whole conceptual point of the right both in America and internationally is a focus on business, traditional values, and nationalism. The left pushes progressive social causes; the Democracy Index is a wonderful tool for them.
You might want to at least try to define your terms, because I’m pretty sure that the right would claim “Love thy neighbor” and other standard Christian fare as “traditional values” that they support, while at the same time looking to deny rights to gays, women, minorities, etc.
To the right “traditional values” has always meant “me (us/my kind) first, they way it always has been and always should be.”
It’s amusing when someone talks about defining terms, then suddenly starts hallucinating about the other side.
If you mean the right of a gay jerk to demand that a Christian culinary artist creates a ritual cake for the gay’s religious ritual that violates the Christian’s long-held and closely-held religious belief, then sure, most Christians are against that “right”.
If you’re talking about equal rights of any other kind, then you are blowing nonsensical smoke.
Oberon, who passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)? You know, the law which banned gay marriage at the federal level? Yeah, that was Bill Clinton. Pretty sure he was a Democrat.
No, you utter bigot. I’m talking about the right of an individual to walk into a shop which sells a product and be expected to be able to purchase that product and not be denied service because of some farcical mythological belief held by the shop owner which apparently allows them to deny service based on a belief system which could never bear out in any rational discussion of facts.
You are just looking for a work-around for “No Blacks” signs in front of businesses. Because the same myths could be used to support those bigoted beliefs, and have been and still are. The bigoted beliefs that gays somehow hurt the snowflakes they might come in contact with who are apparently so weak that just knowing that gays exist might cause them to break down and suck a million cocks, so they need their belief in an invisible man in the sky to protect them from their deepest and most shameful desires.
ALL Australians outside the oligarchy are left-wing by American standards.
Yeah, not so much. You cannot have any motion, blinking lights, etc on a display in a liquor store. Lots of arbitrary rules here.
So sorry you’re required to consider the health & safety of other people while slowing poisoning yourself.
Well… not really, but as an actual Socialist, I’m ethically bound not to let this nonsense go unchallenged.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled paranoid ranting.
Imagine thinking america isn’t a dictatorship while other countries are.
It’s an oligarchy according to Pew International. Which isn’t a dictatorship but it’s close.
They are kept at special registers or the gas station, behind the desk, and in a glass/plastic locked case.
they are on display, and just like American Breakfast cereals there are way more brands than you would think exist.
the specifics on the law is that they can’t be advertised on television *although banners in backgrounds at sporting events still get away with it as they are not *supposed* to be the focus of attention.
Funny enough they would probably still..maybe, have been able to advertise on television if they hadn’t take the WTF approach of advertising in kid’s shows, then targeting their adds during youth viewing hours, and oh…using cartoon style mascots to advertise their products.
yeah that got the hammer brought down on them hard. By American, sweep it aside and stop giving a damn a little later standards anyway.
Over here, they are not on display, and the door they are locked behind is not see-through
And not even allowed to have them shown on banners at sporting events
Meanwhile, the last time I was in Germany, they still had cigarette machines on random street corners. Though they may
have been empty remnants of the past. Though I could still read the labels if they were.
Those vending machines don’t exist anymore, nor do the candy vending machines exist anymore in Germany…nor the postal stamp vending machines…ticket vending machines for the tram or subway still exist, though, as do the condom vending machines in public toilets. Or they did five years ago.
In germany and in UK, ciggarettes are allowed to be sold and to be smoked in open air (or roofed shelters with two or less walls), in private cars (not business cars and not family cars) and private homes (but only your own, not when you visit friends), but shops are not allowed to advertise the cigs, and brand labels are considered advertisement. Packages have to be neutral in design, may contain the brand name but not brand logo and have to show fear-mongering health warnings in large bold letters. And all that after the huh-hah the big brands have pulled, including lobbying and bribing the european high court to get Death branded cigarettes pulled from the market because they didn’t want their precious cancer sticks be associated with health issues. The owner of Death Cigarettes was perfectly within the law, but, to quoth/paraphrase the judge, “You may be right according to the law, but the law was not written for you to be right, and therefor, you’re wrong”
What is the difference between a “private car” and a “family car”?
Family car regularely has underaged passengers
How would they ever enforce smoking a cigarette at someones elses house? especially if that other person also smoked? who would turn them in?
I actually saw a working cigarette machine recently at a bar in texas, I’m assuming it was working since the price per pack was $10.00 which I was told was above the convenience store prices for the area.
Technically, if everyone in the bar would have been carded, that might still be legal. You must make sure that cigarettes are not purchased by people under 18.
Okay law question as I am seeing it stated the video would not be admissable as evidence.
Is there is a precedence of bugging a person that was not admissible as evidence in a situation like this?. Okay I am getting the no warrant thing, but these two were with a guy who had abducted someone, and then had them abduct and detain a federal agent (Sydney), who then tried to murder said agent, and these two were fleeing when they were bugged.
the federal agent in question can say, “yes these were the two henchmen working with the guy who tried to kill me and was killed in my defense”
as they fled the seen a device was used to follow and monitor their activities. While the method is more exotic, how would this be legally any different than using a drone to follow them as they fled?
In legal terms it comes down to Reasonableness, which comes down to subjective and objective terms. In subjective reasonableness, it might make perfect sense to neuro-bug someone with brain hacking bullets given the exigent circumstance of them being terrorist or terrorist adjacent criminals who just assaulted a federal officer. In terms of objective reasonableness(The view of greater society or the rule spread out to greater society) it would be a very bad precedent to allow that kind of fourth amendment violation. It would also very likely fail the Shock-the-Conscience test, as well as go against previous precedent against warrantless bugging… and thus not only would the evidence be inadmissible, any evidence gathered as a result of the initial information would, too(Fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine). Important reading on the subject: Katz v United States, Rochin v California, Graham v Connor
In terms of drones– there are a lot of laws involving when its okay to use technology to do things like looking over people’s fences, or using infrared to see if people are using growing lamps– which the Supreme Court was also pretty leery about since they ‘cannot distinguish between the thing they are looking for, and when the lady of the house takes a shower’. Information, warrants and their legal ties are kind of a fascinating field, and the Katz case is actually how the US went from being very very specific with the 4th amendment to suggesting a blanket Reasonable Expectation of Privacy. Its good stuff. Hope this helps.
As Rhuen said they were ‘persons of interest’ fleeing from the scene after a federal agent was kidnapped, restrained, tortured and attempted murdered, fairly sure their right to privacy has long been expunged
Also, they are in the act of committing another crime
Not to mention kidnapping and that they still had Concretia’s body. If it wasn’t for Concretia being able to tell the relative position of her body, those trackers would have been the only way to find her body and free her before another crime could occur. Possibly murder.
With regard to Concretia, It could easily be argued that they were actively engaged in enslavement, as she was being kept restrained, and forced under pain of torturous punishment and possibly death to do as she was told.
That credit thing for good or bad there was an episode like that on The Orville essentially a Star Trek spoof there was a planet with a like dislike system like twitter and everyone on the planet got a vote and if someone had too many dislikes they would get locked up and eventually go on talk shows trying to redeem themselves and get their likes back up or they would be lobotomized.
Social credit system? You only have to look to China for that.
It ain’t good, because, duh, government abuses the hell out of it to keep the people down.
Hard pass on anything resembling that. In western countries, all you have do to is say something incredibly stupid on social media to get screwed over (not that *some* don’t deserve it), but that’s easily avoidable by simply not using social media. XD As Quinn suggested above, the endame of that, as satirized on The Orville (great show), was that large masses of people, for the most part, are stupid, brutally unforgiving and make lousy juries.
At this point, I actually just want to see Cora go too far and have to fight Max, just to see Max gratuitously take Cora down a peg. Unlikely to happen, but maybe after 1-2 more outings Cora will go too far.
Actually, I think I would like to see a battle as well – a battle of wits. Unfortunately for Max, she is at a severe disadvantage. Max seems to think force is the only solution to any problem and is angry about just about everything. In a battle of wits, Max is not even in Cora’s league. Cora is staying cool and just playing Max while Max is losing it. Her emotions are affecting her judgment (as has happened too often in the past).
In this situation, Cora can taunt almost as much as she want to. What is Max going to do? Fire her? Try to hit Cora? Try to kill her? Blast her? (Arguable outcome of force field vs force blast.) Max’s high horse admonition about using too much force to save a federal officer’s life would then be just hypocritical bluster. I think Max is too smart to do that so some gasket would have to explode.
Max has never met her match or anyone who could/would stand up to her so force has alway been sufficient. This will be a good lesson for her and maybe she will learn that smarts beats bullying.
If Cora’s so much smarter, why hasn’t she figured out that antagonizing Maxima’s a bad plan?
It’s not as though these two have any reasons to get “one up” on each other, or face any serious risks if they fail to do so. On the contrary, the smart thing – for both of them – is to be easy for the other to work with.
Cora’s still part human. Dumb power plays seem to come with the territory.
Arrest her most likely. Why do you think Max would jump to force?
Also it isn’t that cora is smarter than max by any significant measure, more that Cora is more flippant and more experienced.
Cora, in this situation, is explicitly an out of context problem. By normal circumstances she would probably just be arrested for vigilantism and excessive force. Cora was notified of a crime in progress, federal agents with the explicitly jurisdiction were standing 5 feet away, and Cora went to play sheriff instead of reporting the crime.
But instead person playing sheriff and evaded being prosecuted by the actual laws by being a walking example of special circumstances.
Cora has experience being an out of context problem and what to say to at least make resolving it with in context solutions a massive headache. Everyone else she interacts with… just a massive headache.
Actually, Cora’s a lot stupider than she thinks she is.
And she’s proving that by antagonizing the woman who blew up a Fel Battleship on her own. Something Cora’s ship is likely to explode trying to do.
Wasn’t the entire basis of the disagreement that Cora used extreme force and Maxima didn’t want her to?
She can’t use force against, say, Arianna, when they disagree on something. She can’t use force against Deus. Dabbler tends to act in a very similar way to Cora.
If there’s any lesson here, it’s that she should keep her emotions in check.
Been re-reading the comic from the start… I think I prefer the original style… >.>
I agree. The pace was fast, there was a gag in just about every panel and even though they were comic-con type in-jokes they were still accessible. Golden age comics, you might say.
The whole good points build up so you can do something bad that deducts points so long as it doesn’t go below a certain point.
Unless this is some simplified version of a much more complex after life system *with mitigating circumstances*, among the living this just looks ripe for abuse.
the wealthy, using free time and money they build up good “social points” in large amounts by donating to charities, road projects, housing projects, and so forth.
this allows them to balance out negative points like pollution from their factories, breaking labor contracts with employees, refusing to pay contractors, burning down some poor person’s house for fun.
but their good social points are so high because they can afford to keep them high that they see zero actual repercussion for their actions.
That… doesn’t sound all that different from how things currently work. Other than the masses seem to have no long-term memory, and it’s more like whether the last thing the person did was good or bad, rather than the total magnitude of each over the course of their life.
“the wealthy, using free time and money they build up good “social points” in large amounts by donating to charities, road projects, housing projects, and so forth.”
You mean like Carbon Credits?
Similar with iirc carnegie and what happened when an dam on an artificial lake he had for ?country club? burst and killed quite a few people. He threw some libraries at the problem and is still remembered as being the library guy.
Yeah, johnstown flood. Carnegie and co bought an abandoned reservoir and dam for a country club, fucked it up, and evaded most liability when it broke.
Slapping a tracker on a person fleeing hot from the scene of a crime would probably be admissible, without a permit. Hijacked feed of their senses, less so. Though anything recorded in a public space could plausibly be argued into court record.
For something like the store robbery, you wouldn’t bother because there’s recordings on that end and you don’t want to complicate a case with evidence that might get thrown out because it’s unprecedented.
It’s not a real geologic war of words until someone resorts to basalt and flat-earthery.
Just remember that Basalt should never be taken for Granite!
Don’t bet on that, you’ll lose your chert.
Of quartz you will …. but just chalk it up to experience.
I truly appreciate the sediment of what you’re doing here. You folks rock!
The layers of this conversation uplift me immensely.
When you get down to it, most of the entire run of Doctor Who is kinda predicated on the “I did bad things but a lot of good as well” issue. For most of the modern run this has even been an arguing point between the Doctor and his companions or others on many occasions. Entire episodes (e.g., “The Day of the Doctor”, “Into the Dalek”) have centered around the Doctor trying to determine if he is a good man… if the good he does balances out the bad things he has done.
In essence, it’s the recognition that the Universe NEEDS the Doctor. He may have ended many races and done many horrible things in his life, but those he ended he often warned. Those he ended he did so to save others. Even the Doctor has admitted that he has destroyed thousands of entire races and species in his lifetime and he believes that makes him a horrible man who has done horrible things. But others point out and recognize that he has also saved countless worlds and species as well.
In essence, that the good he has done more than balances out the horrible things, whether or not some can see it because they are obsessed with what the Doctor is capable of doing… his potential in the future based on what he has done in the past.
In fact, in the episode “the Time of the Doctor”, Clara convinces the Time Lords themselves to help the Doctor despite (and because) of what he did to (and for) them as a race. She lets them know that all the good and all the bad is everything they need to know about him and that he needs their help because he is on his last regeneration and is about to die… so they effectively pardon him from death by giving him an entirely new regeneration cycle (basically, they reset his regeneration counter).
No, it’s not a “court of law” thing with the series. (Though I believe a few cases it was close enough.) But it is many of the races in the universe that are not inherently destructive (e.g., Daleks) or assimilative (e.g., Cybermen) recognize that the bad he has done is balanced by the good he does… and that his motives are driven by a desire to protect and do good, even if his methods are sometimes rather destructive or final. Even highly warlike and militaristic cultures (e.g., Sontaran, Judoon) treat him with a healthy respect.
Sounds like utilitarianism the way you’re describing it.
IE, weighing how much good you do vs how much bad you do and if you do more good than bad, you’re good.
Sort of like how they did the Afterlife in ‘The Good Place.’ (good show) Which they discovered was an inherently flawed system
Utilitarianism is slightly different in that it’s generally a case-by-case basis. (Each decision being made based on the decision of which choice benefits the most people, or at least does the least harm.) Effectively, one could say that Utilitarian decisions are made in a vacuum where one is guided by an absolute structure. This doesn’t quite apply to the Doctor as he has been known to destroy a species to save a smaller group.
For the Doctor, I would state that “Situational Ethics” is more applicable to his decision making process. In essence, this ethical approach takes each decision as its own ethical dynamic rather than going by iron clad rules. (Utilitarianism is basically a cold calculation that could be considered an “cost-benefit analysis” when it comes to decision making and follows the same guidelines at all times. Hence, an absolute structure.)
Situational Ethics, instead, takes the dynamics of a given situation into account. So it considers things such as motive, method, cost, benefit, cultural structures, and so on for each situation. A lawyer, for example, cannot approach every case the same way as an absolute. They have to examine all of the dynamics involved, as does the judge and a jury, in order to reach a decision.
In fact, you could say that Cora is applying the principles of Situational Ethics to this scenario in that she handled the situation at hand according to the larger dynamics, options, and opportunities. Had Concretia and Sydney not been involved, she may have handled the situation very differently. (E.g., if it was another bad guy in Sydney’s place, but the same overall dynamic, that factor change might have just caused her to shrug and walk away… even though Utilitarianism would have prompted her to waste everyone in the room because they’re all bad guys and taking them all out would benefit society the most according to that ethical structure.)
With people looking at the Doctor, I believe what they’re doing (for the most part) is assessing his “overall ledger”. Now, you could assert that the Doctor makes his decisions based on Situational Ethics, whereas many of the OTHER species in the show look at the simple decision of “should the Doctor live or die” (as a group overall rather than as individuals) from a Utilitarian standpoint in that letting him live benefits more people overall. (As the episode “Turn Left” helps illustrate through whether or not Donna Noble made a single choice that eventually determined whether the Doctor was around to protect Earth or not.)
But even then, the potentially Utilitarianism based decision has to constantly be reassessed according to the trending “balance on his ledger”. Which still puts a bit of a Situational Ethics undertone to it from the outside as well.
Honestly… when I watched Doctor Who, I thought that the whole “he’s a monster” thing was rather… nonsensical. Every single species he wiped out was ACTIVELY ATTEMPTING TO COMMIT GENOCIDE. And usually he would warn them point blank, “don’t try to do it, or I’ll do it to you first.”
Granted, his non-omnicidal actions were often immoral and capricious (On one occasion he sneeringly abandoned a guy for the crime of… seeking knowledge, and it came across more as if he were getting rid of a potential rival for Rose’s affections. On another he derailed what would have been a golden age for the U.K. because he disagreed with the prime minister). But there’s a huge difference between the Daleks trying to wipe out everyone else, versus the Doctor trying to end that threat.
And yet… The Daleks are the one species that he refuses to wipe out when he has the chance!
Mayhaps because he had a hand in their creation? And he views them as his ‘children’? Or like a God and His murderous destructive abominations?
The Doctor has attempted to wipe out the Daleks completely, and the Cybermen, on multiple occasions.
Unfortunately, some might get missed and cause them to come back. Some have managed to travel forward in time from the Time War either the short way through time vorexes or indirectly through stasis. Some have been damaged, or far enough away to escape their attempted total destruction. They have come back from stasis, through being re-awoken, created by a Genesis Pod, slipped through holes in time…
The current Cybermen aren’t from our reality, they were brought through from the alternate dimension where they had a different origin.
The issue isn’t that he refuses to wipe any of them out. He hates the Daleks to such a degree that in “Inside the Dalek”, when he said to one of them “You are a GOOD Dalek”, it responded “No. You are a good Dalek” because of the intensity and consuming nature of his hatred, for the Daleks.
The issue is that they are such iconic and popular threats/villains in the “Whoverse”, that the writers keep finding ways to bring them back somehow. Sometimes a race in the Whoverse can be wiped out. Others are like cockroaches and where one or two survive they can re-create an infestation.
If you’re referring to “the Long Game” where Adam has an implant upgrade in his brain that allows him to access knowledge from the future… (Ninth Doctor’s lone season)… it’s mainly for two reasons. First is that Adam was doing it for very selfish reasons. Wealth and fame. He wanted to be the one to create the tech and basically take it away from the ones who did. Second is that Adam didn’t consider at all the effect of taking tech from 1000+ years in humanity’s future and giving it to current age humans. While there are occasional individual exceptions to those he feels can handle it, the Doctor has virtually always been about the fact that humans develop tech when they are prepared for it (and sometimes, unfortunately, even a little earlier). The fact that Adam snuck around behind the Doctor and had it done, kept it hidden from him until the end, and deliberately went against the Doctor’s orders to stay out of things didn’t help his situation much.
(The Ninth Doctor wasn’t in love with Rose, by the way… She was his best friend, like Donna Noble was to the Tenth Doctor and Clara to the Thirteenth. Eleven was the one who fell in love or got infatuated a little too easily… with Amy, River, and Clara…)
For the second example, in “Victory of the Daleks” (side note, I’m currently working my way back through all of the second wave of episodes on streaming starting with the Ninth, which is why they’re do fresh in my memory… die hard Whovian yes, encyclopedic, not yet…) it would have been dangerous to let Churchill keep advanced tech. Remember (or you might not) that when WWII finished, Churchill wanted to take another war directly to the USSR. It took FDR to help talk him back, and Britain knowing they couldn’t face another war while trying to recover from the one that had just ended to replace him. Had the Doctor allowed Churchill to have that tech, it would have drastically changed human history and would have allowed the British Empire to rise again, unless the entire world set against them. It would have been disastrous.
The thing is, it’s not always about him preserving the stability through taking out a direct threat like the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Wire, the Great Intelligence, and so on. It’s as much in him addressing more indirect threats like not allowing Churchill to become a war monger. Not allowing Adam to introduce tech from 1000+ years in our future. Not allowing people to keep enslaving the Ood (because, among other things, their psychic gifts also make them susceptible to psychic control). Making a deal with the Vashta Nerada to allow him to empty the Library so they can live in peace but the humans trapped there could leave as well.
He understands human nature, so while he’s dealing with races that have the tech to become conquering and destructive monsters… he’s also seen what humans in power are willing to do when they have tech and power (which is why he kept Churchill from having the advanced tech… and why he said the six words that ended Harriet Jones’s run as Prime Minister… and so on). Basically, that many humans in power want to control what they don’t always understand or agree with, and destroy what they can’t control. That while people in general are fundamentally good… there are far too many who are hyper-aggressive, full of hate, intolerant of anything different, and basically @$$holes who are willing to do things like… let’s say… storm the Capitol building of the U.S. in an armed insurrection that results in multiple deaths, with many having full intent to murder elected officials and killing a couple of cops (remember, these are people who claim to support the police) who got in their way. That’s human nature just as much as any good we do for others.
Um… he actually told Rose that he loved her – right before Donna appeared for the first time. Granted, that was David Tennant as the Doctor – but it’s still a case of the Doctor being blatantly biased.
Also, he abandoned Adam in such a way that the guy was at risk of being vivisected by someone else who would then steal and claim the futuristic technology. It was glib, it was cruel, it was capricious, and it was indefensible.
What he did to Harriet Jones was ignore her very, very legitimate reasons for blasting those aliens. They DID almost wipe out a massive percentage of the population, while trying to enslave humanity. And humanity DOES need to be able to defend itself without the Doctor’s presence, because if he’s not there than they are in deep trouble. And to top it off, he of all people has NO right to lecture someone else about killing someone to protect others.
That’s one of the more important things to remember, and that the better episodes do remember: the Doctor is NOT infallible or always in the right. I quite enjoyed seeing Queen Victoria award knighthoods to the Doctor and Rose… and then banish them both from her kingdom, calling them out on their crap.
The Doctor often screws up. He often makes mistakes. Including mistakes regarding moral decisions… the First Doctor was actually quite a selfish schemer at times, before he ended up falling in love with humanity and sought to emulate mankind at its best.
The Tenth Doctor was in love with Rose.
It was Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor (not in love with Rose) who left Adam to his fate. There was no competition for her affection or as a romantic rival because the different incarnations of the Doctor are fundamentally different people who simply share knowledge. The Eleventh Doctor, for example, knows who Rose Tyler is, but has no special feelings for her despite his predecessor being deeply in love with her.
Basically, there was no romantic rivalry at all between Adam and the Ninth Doctor because the latter saw Rose as a great friend, not as a love interest. So the idea that there was a romantic bas on the part of the Ninth Doctor is a moot and fundamentally non-existent point.
Yes. He abandoned Adam in a way that caused risk to Adam. It was harsh and yes, somewhat cruel. But it was pretty much along the lines of “You put yourself in this situation by your greed and selfishness, not to mention your unwillingness to stay out of trouble like I told you to. You made this bed, you lie in it.” He specifically told Adam to stay out of trouble and not mess with things. As with the other Doctors, this was a warning that Adam refused to heed in favor of his own self(ish)-interest… so, as he has done with so many others who did not heed his warnings, he effectively let the punishment fit the crime.
Also, keep in mind that Adam always planned on going back home to his own time. That’s why he kept calling his parents and leaving messages with data only he could interpret on their answering machine. It was his intent to return home and use that information. (Which he would actually need the implant to translate regardless.) The doctor simply gave Adam what he wanted in the first place: to get home with advanced future tech that could be taken advantage of. Nine simply allowed the monkey’s paw aspect of Adam’s plan to take effect and left him to live with it.
With Harriet Jones, he didn’t ignore her legitimate reasons. He had no issue with the fact that Torchwood had a weapon capable of taking out an alien spacecraft. What he did to her career (and it was something she came to grips with and accepted later) was because the situation had been resolved and the ship was leaving. What Jones did was effectively the same as a general ordering his troops to open fire and slaughter a retreating enemy force that had already agreed to leave in peace and not come back. It wasn’t the existence of the weapon that angered him. It was that she blatantly violated a peace agreement with the Sycorax by killing them as they were departing for good.
There is a significant difference between having a gun in your home to protect against a home invasion and killing someone in self defense… and shooting someone in the back after they agreed to leave your property without confrontation and to stay away after they had an argument with you in your yard.
And yes. The Doctor is fundamentally as human as any actual human… he just takes it up a few notches due to his nature.
Can you say for sure that the Sycorax (or any other warmongering space civilisation) would have staid away for good? Or built up their forces, wait until The Doctor was away, and then returned and blow the shit out the population?
As the Great Shaka Zulu said: “Better to kill the dog at your feet, than to allow it to slink away and return as a jackal leaping for your throat!”
The Sycorax agreed to a peace agreement because they had just had their arses handed to them and their current world dominating plans scuppered. Why would they not return later and try again?
Didn’t the “do not taunt the happy fun Maxima” joke already get made on a previous page?
It’s been done a few times… Maxima has no follow through though….
This is the same thing that baffles me about the later Transformers movies. Why the hell are people continuously taunting the godlike beings? “I know you’re a being of morals and ethics, so I’m going to antagonize you over and over and over and over again, insult you and poke at your buttons, because I KNOW you won’t do anything because you’re a ‘good guy.'”
Cora has literally seen Max blow a hole in a ship that scared the SHIT out of her, has watched her take out a group of supers AFTER she had to break free of some ridiculously powerful stasis tech in a way that should have been impossible, and her thought is, “Oh, I should definitely mock the rules and laws of this planet’s most powerful LEO after she’s had a bad night, that’s not going to go badly for me at all.”
I just…I know, I know, its’s a story and these are the conventions. It’s just a thought process that NEVER makes sense to me no matter how many times I see it.
you actually can’t win in this area. *warning spoilers for Ex Machina* in Ex Machina Caleb releases Ava. Ava leaves him there to starve to death. I have seen this justified because Caleb didn’t rebuke Nathan, the CEO of the company, for his treatment of Kyoko. Nevermind that the power differential between Caleb and Nathan is about a big as you can get. Nathan could send Caleb home and fire him and there would be no recourse. in reality given how remote that house was supposed to be Nathan could throw Caleb out of the house which would kill Caleb again with no real repercussions. Nathan would claim ‘I don’t know what happened, he just walked out and when we finally found him, he was dead’ dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t.
Its not that surprising to them. People have habitual behavior, Cora is used to acting like that, even around authority figures because she “gets things done”. Given Max is a person standing in front her (and looks like she could be a shinier member of a species that there is a male of on her crew) Cora could easily fall back into her usual habits and routines in the situation.
Because while there could be a second later thought, “wait…shit, she has god like power”, there is nothing to remind her of that everytime Maxima is around.
It kind of goes back to the gun thing Maxima was talking about, Maxima can do alot more damage with her finger but her finger isn’t automatically going to be regarded as a threat as that’s not how all other fingers one is likely to encounter works so your brain won’t automatically go there. A gun on the other hand is only ever a weapon and you learn this through out life so you know automatically to regard it as a threat.
Habit and norms as it were.
If Maxima had a plume of glowing energy hair, always glowing eyes, claw like fingers, was nine feet tall, and always floating and speaks with a voice that heats up the air and can be felt inside your mind and soul; then you’d never ease up around her and always regard her as a potential threat, the biblical awe factor (a being of reverence and to be feared). the unreal and sense of dread and threat to be respected at all times.
however Maxima is just above average height, speaks like a normal person, and aside from having pointy ears and a reflective skin there is nothing to remind you she is dangerous; which is good for her, imagine trying to be on a team and public relations when you walk around 24/7 looking like you could set things on fire by standing next to them, or could at any second go cosmic horror on everyone. Yes Maxima can do those things, but there is no constant visual reminder of that, especially if you are accustomed to being around aliens and other sapient life forms all the time with a wide range of appearances.
in short Cora is used to this situation and being around a wide range of different species, so she reverts to her usual behavior because that is just what she is used to and nothing about Maxima to her presents its self as a constant reminder she could vaporize her.
Also a few days look to have gone by, Cora is getting a feel here. She just needs to build a better repour with Maxima before pushing her after a frustrating day like this.
“Because while there could be a second later thought, “wait…shit, she has god like power”, there is nothing to remind her of that everytime Maxima is around.”
Cora already knows Maxima tends to not go for a kill shot as a regular thing when doing so would make things so much easier. It actually massively frustrates Cora that Maxima does not go for the kill shot first to end a fight quickly.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-908-bombast-industrial-complex/
Cora might realize this is NOT the case with Maxima always, if she knew about how Maxima was when trying to stop Sciona. Back then, she DID go for kill shots first (hence why I point out that Maxima can be a bit hypocritical).
Heck, during the press conference, the whole point of what Maxima did to the tank was to let criminals know ‘I will incinerate you if you get out of line.’ Although there, it might have just been a way to threaten without actually having to do so – but it actually winds up encouraging supervillains to try, like Vehemence (and others on the supervillain boss splash page).
The tank demonstration works against anyone who knows their limits and didn’t get a big ego as a result of their power pretty much anyone Z through C power class should if they aren’t crazy back down after seeing that. The problem comes when you get people who think of themselves as living gods, even a C+ or B power class who has never met any other super or supernatural or fought against military grade weapons, might think of themselves as invincible living gods. That ego and being told they aren’t the apex predator in the woods. Well they get territorial, and that wounded pride gets them to instead face the challenge head in to prove their dominance. Which Maxima also talked about, their attention is now on her. The real problem like Vehemence is when there is another S class out there who takes that bait and threatens to drag the boat under.
Yes. Vehemence almost entirely took Maxima’s boast as a direct challenge to him. :) It’s not like Maxima and other superhumans did not exist BEFORE the press conference, and not like Vehemence did not know of the existence of many other superhumans before the press conference. Yet he didnt try something like this until after Maxima made that ‘challenge.’ To which he said on the splash page “Challenge accepted.”
Even Maxima was surprised about Vehemence, because someone of his power had managed to keep such a low profile for such a long time.
Largely because Maxima does assume (not without a lot of good reasoning) that she is the most powerful person in the world and no one should dare mess with her, lest they reap the whirlwind. Again – Maxima has two main character flaws. She’s arrogant and she’s sometimes hypocritical. The press conference part was an example of arrogance. Justifiable? Yes… it’s justifiable that she’d think she’s the most powerful. But it’s also arrogant because she never considered that there’s anyone potentially more powerful.
But like I said, I like heroes to have character flaws. Tony Stark is arrogant too. So is Reed Richards. So is Captain Marvel ESPECIALLY so (and especially during and after Civil War II. Cassandra Cain (Batgirl before Stephanie Brown) was waaaaaaay arrogant, even when she’d occasionally be beaten or outsmarted. Hal Jordan was very arrogant before he became Parallax (which was a huge silce of humble pie after he was no longer Parallax) – and Hal is still super arrogant in the DCAU, but he has some of his best lines because of how arrogant he is. Dr. Strange – quite arrogant. So is Wonder Woman often arrogant, and in New Earth she was often called out on that as a morality lesson. Most of the Guardians of the Galaxy are pretty arrogant. Pretty much all of them except for Groot (although they’re arrogant in a hilarious way). Thor was put on Earth without his powers in his first movie because of his hubris. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibrUREcu_h4
And Hulk is suuuuuuuuuuuuuper arrogant, “HULK IS STRONGEST THERE IS!” is one of his catch phrases (largely because he usually is the strongest there is).
And I like these comic book/movie characters. It makes them sort of relatable, because if you were legitimately one of the best in the world at something, you might get a bit of a swelled head as well. :) It also means they’re not perfect. Perfect people get boring.
I mean I also like more humble characters also, like Superman or Spider-Man or Captain America, but it can get a little boring after a while. Take Fallout 4. Preston Garvey is probably the single most noble character in that entire game. And Curie’s probably the kindest and most ‘innocent’ one, and probably the next most humble next to Preston. But I find characters like Cait, John Hancock, and MacCready to be a lot more interesting overall (but I admit I really love having Curie as a companion).
I don’t count Dogmeat as a companion because he’d always be the best companion because he’s a good doggo, even though he keeps almost getting himself killed.
Although we’ve gone off on a tangent from Cora being comfortable being flippant around Maxima because Maxima doesn’t look like her power among other reasons for Cora to behave normally. I do want to address the keeping a low profile for so long.
Honestly I think the best power classes to keep a low profile are the lowest and the “higher” ones. The lowest because duh Z class is so subtle you can go your whole life without even realizing you have a power and F is either so side show like or so hard that it comes across as a trick to most people or won’t peek anyone’s interest as a useful ability.
but you’d think S class, or heaven forbid Omega would be super noticeable, maybe trying to conquer the world or eco terrorism or proclaiming themselves gods and ruling over cults. But when you think of it not from a golden age-dark age comics outlook and think of it in the deconstructionist view; such as if it was our world and you had that power what would you do?
you get some potential, in need of nothing, that ego may even fade away, you don’t have to prove yourself, you don’t need anything. Some S classes could decide to just explore the world, do a little good here and there that doesn’t draw that much attention as they don’t want to be famous. Because they may have those same fears Sydney had, if they put on a costume and flaunt their powers they will draw the attention of every government, wannabe tyrant, religious zealots, ect…with a myriad of agendas and beliefs from (we want to research you, to you better serve our country, to trying to figure out how to kill you if you say no…or realizing the obvious weak points in your defenses that the average street thug you’ve stopped never would..oh hey Sydney’s orb weakness being obvious thanks to being on camera…and of course being harassed by people who think you’re a god or the devil or some other monster…you may think, but you have all that power you can make them stop…oh yes because using FORCE to stop people won’t just result in being used as a reason by others to increase their efforts to contain and destroy you, even if you are some high powered S class or Omega where they can’t, you won’t know peace ever again.
Power draws attention and not everyone wants that attention, some would rather sun bathe on the back of an airliner on their weekends and hang out in Hawaii before going back to work on Monday, taking real advantage of that kind of power to actually go out and do stuff you want to do. and honestly like in Marvel comics some of the really powerful ones often find a way to go off planet and explore out there, no better way to keep a low profile on Earth than to not be on Earth.
Almost guarantee anyone beyond Omega will probably start to view Earth as small and either end up out in space or exploring different dimensions and the multiverse. Honestly most S classes may end up the same way. Earth lacks S classes and above not because there are so few of them, but because their power opens up new doors and opportunities away from Earth. Why stick around and deal with Government BS when your crazy high level power has attracted the attention of another dimension in need of a hero and you can live out a champion of the magic realm fantasy for real, or else be flying around the solar system. ect…
so many reasons why high levels of power would go unnoticed by Earth governments.
Here’s the big thinker on that, if you had the powers of someone like Superman, Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch, or Thor. and in the real world, so no supervillains trying to take over the world on the daily, no constant alien invasions, with all the political confusion, ambiguous good and ambiguous evil that amounts mostly to disassociation, ignorance of each other’s lives, and good old fashioned greed and pride. Also no daily bank robberies, police scanners mostly tell you stuff after the crime is already over, ect…
what would you do with that power. First thought in most people’s minds is make their own lives better, if not certain just how durable you are, possibly avoid too many conflicts to avoid the hassles mentioned above.
I mean the situation matters, and your own outlooks, but what if you don’t want to go on patrols, play cop, or potentially become a government stooge, or be expected to put out every fire, stop every flood, ect…the Metro Man burn out, its your power, you can do good, but you shouldn’t be obligated to be either a super hero or a super villain. Not when the real world isn’t so easily divided and taking sides can have some serious long term problems.
Honestly I’d like to know more of Vehemence’s background, like was he a mercenary, an expensive hitman, just some guy who could sense other supers so made a point to remember where they were, and had only gained some power from the occasional bar fight, brawl, or riot, and it was only after seeing a whole team of super heroes existing and one really powerful one that he got the idea in his head he could power up more than he ever could before and be free to do anything he ever wanted; with Maxima being the only threat to that he could think of, especially after she blew his arm off.
Maybe because those laws are legally binding without Maxima’s presence? And, under those laws, Cora is not culpable. At all. Threatening an LEO execution-style means 51 shots to the head and torso will go unprosecuted. And so, what’s the difference between Swiss cheese and shredded cheese? Not much.
People here put a lot of emphasis on Maxima being responsible for Cora’s behavior, and they’re right, but they also somehow miss the fact it was Maxima’s missteps that led to that much force even being an option. She’s responsible for not controlling the crime scene as she did during the super brawl. Cora is only ‘guilty’ of saving a LEO’s life; if you can call it guilt.
People, including DaveB, have put forth the rationale that you don’t get ‘good credits’ that offset later crimes. Again, this is true, but misses the fact that a crime committed in the process of stopping a larger crime is indeed considered by the legal system. Many real-life cases are dismissed or adjudicated ‘not guilty’ precisely on this basis.
>Maybe because those laws are legally binding without Maxima’s presence?
Except the characters that do the taunting thing are all almost exclusively rogues, people with grey scale morals, and just generally embody the idea that “laws are just words on a piece of paper”.
So it’s odd to see them have such conviction in the law protecting them when antagonizing someone.
Savvy criminals often know the law better than you. They should – they’ve lived a life closer to the justice system. Heck, some of them get their legal degree in jail. All paid for by your taxes; if you’re American.
That’s… not how it works. You’re cherry picking multiple anecdotes to create a fictitious scenario.
Incidentally, the one who got his legal degree in jail? He did so in order to PROVE HIS OWN INNOCENCE AND EXPOSE THE CRIMINAL MISCONDUCT OF THE ARRESTING OFFICERS. He is now a practicing attorney who specializes in defending the wrongly accused.
“The one who got his legal degree…”
Yes, because there’s only one.
I moved out of my home state because criminals were regularly beating the legal system. Of note, one of those was arson of my own fucking house. Sure, maybe that’s anecdotal, but it was important enough for me to flee with my family.
Let me put it this way:
Cora may know that if, for whatever reason, Max snaps and squishes her head, the golden bitch will likely get legally punished.
Which is great and all… but it won’t make Cora un-dead! And Max might not even go to jail forever, as far as she knows.
This is, of course, just an example. I don’t think Max is close to snapping like that nor is that the reason Cora is being a little sassy.
But other characters definitely have, and it’s odd to seem them so okay with the idea of dying and being possibly, maybe avenged by the legal system.
we’ve had thousands of rioters throwing rocks and full water bottles at armed cops in riot gear….. happens all the damned time, and you have your panties in a wad over Cora baiting Maxima who she knows uses lethal force only as a last resort? People think they are bullet proof, hence the issues getting the populace to lock down completely in a pandemic…..
Wait, Maxi is expected to call a ‘Time Out’ in the middle of a fight to make sure all her people are accounted for?
Sydney flew off while Maxi was still in the stasis!!! Maxi had no way of knowing where she was, hence her asking for her report when Maxi flew back from her unexpected swim
Actually that’s reasonably true of military combat as well…. but there’s usually a dedicated Platoon command keeping track of that rather than squad leaders… but squad leaders are expected to know where their members are at any given moment.
How does she except the enemy to agree to the ‘Time Out’?
Real people do lots of stupid things to satisfy their egos. And occasionally die for it, though apparently not often enough to discourage the behavior.
Social power is generally not a function of actual killing ability, particularly if those involved are hesitant to kill. In fact, I’d suggest it’s more a function of willingness to command or harm others.
A few things building up on the back burner here.
First, how come no one else noticed Sydney had sent a quick one name call and was then cut off, or attempted to call her back and realize something was wrong? Maxima has an excuse because her collar was broken, Dabbler I have no clue why she was out of commission for so long from one little love tap to the jaw, but there were three other team members who should have heard and picked up on that, and there should be trackers in those collars and some alert that goes off if they are removed improperly. If not before they should be installed now.
the other back burner item is Sydney’s glasses.
if Maxima and everyone else doesn’t know about them yet this could present a major problem. Remember how Maxima insisted the rebreather be given the4 once over to make sure it wasn’t bugged despite coming from their own tech supplier. Well this is alien tech, that can send and receive messages, potentially even record what Sydney sees.
and she has been wearing them inside a government building and potentially in sensitive areas and meetings.
The military put the boot down on furbies back in the day, and having phones on, doubt they’d be too happy about this. On mission sure, but if she is still wearing them everywhere else at the facility that is a serious problem.
All valid points. I hadn’t even considered the glasses, which makes me now wonder if Cora has ulterior motives. This could become a serious breach later on; even if we don’t consider Cora herself being a mole.
By the way, yours is the first post I’ve enjoyed reading over the last few days. Thank you profusely for focusing on things that both matter to the plot and are also actual valid concerns.
Agreed. This is a nice set of potential drama, of the “No good deed goes unpunished” type.
1) Sydney had tech she apparently did not disclose.
2) That tech has not been analyzed and is a security risk.
3) Dabbler may be able to review it and give a clean bill of health, but is Dabbler trustworthy in this matter. given the personal relationship with the creator of the tech?
4) Oh and by the way, is someone NOW going to notice that Sydney cheated in qualifying on the gun…?
1-3 yes,
4: its not an aim bot, its more like an advanced teaching tool, she still has to aim and even with it still wasn’t perfect.
I don’t think she had ulterior motives but also I don’t see it above her to have tapped Sidney’s glasses and record and use whatever she find, maybe not for blackmail but at least for the lulz, for example, I could easily see her keeping a record of Sidney/Frix “date” for her personal library.
I don’t think it’s been established that someone is listening in on all their communications. In fact, it has been established that their communication systems have private channels. While it would have been wise for Sydney to broadcast her message to her entire team, she specifically uses Maxima’s name, and therefore may have directed her message to her alone.
I do agree that they should have a notification if someone’s choker has been removed. I would even argue that there shouldn’t be any way to remove the chokers without notifying someone, because if it’s possible, an enemy will find a way to do it. They just need to operate under the understanding that the wearers will voluntarily remove their own chokers at times, and that it should only be treated as an emergency event if there are other contributing factors.
While it’s possible that someone will think to ask how Cora knew Sydney was in trouble, and either she or Sydney will reveal what the glasses are capable of, I don’t think it’s likely to be considered a problem any more than their use of cell phones and taking pictures on the premises. As has been mentioned before, they’re treated very differently than typical military personnel, because they can so easily walk and find a job in the private sector.
You know i would not be surprised if Sydney got an exp point for this, she’s obviously been stretched and learned something besides.
It will be interesting to see how the orbs interpret this event. It may be that they give her a point but also DEMAND, in some way, that she spend it on a specific thing…
“Look, I have a point to spend, but THESE nodes are blinking purple…”
Actually Ive always assumed the “level up system” to in reality to be a set of built in safetys to stop a new user from cracking the planet in two which only levels up after a certain level of usage has been reached.If this is true Sydneys chance of “levelling up” are there but still pretty low.
Sides quite frankly the orbs are as overpowered as all hell and Sydney having more powers than the entire Justice League would make her boringly overpowered.As is her shield plus the orb of her choice makes her nigh invincible to the point that….welll….to be mean someone like her can actually play hero and be a complete spazz without being in danger at all most of the time.
… Why? She did literally nothing with her balls (other than have them be used to secure her in place)
We don’t have formal laws for this kind of credit, no, but I think this is the idea behind presidential pardons in the US. If someone contributes exceptionally to the good of the country they can be pardoned for the crimes they commit, goes the theory. Although, this assumes that the elected presidents will be good statesmen who also issue pardons for exceptional good deeds, rather than crooks who abuse the system to bail out their cronies, so ehhh…
“t the bad? I think a society would quickly figure out that one life for one life simply wouldn’t work. Doctors and firefighters and EMTs could be untouchable serial killers”
Hm….
ya know…. there’s a book (or book series) just waiting to be written there, I think.
The philosophy of criminal law has a long and distinguished history, and the principle of restorative justice that you propose is used sometimes. IIRC some tribal courts in America use a this restorative principle at least for lower level offenses. Often the community is too economically poor to be able to afford to lose a breadwinner who did wrong, and the victim may prioritize restoration over punishment.
It doesn’t seem to be workable where the ties of community are weaker or there is gross disproportionate power, e.g. where a person with more resources would be happy to bully or abuse people if he can just write a check to make them go away. The law is at least partly about order .. that’s why criminal trials are The State vs. The Suspect, not The Victim vs. The Suspect.
in the navy one ah-shit cancels 1000 atta-boys
“The career of many a seaman starts in basic and ends in the Chief’s Mess.” – Someone, sometime, probably.
@ Daniel M Ball (March 5, 2021, 10:57 am)
“… East Germany … all have elections.
They’re also all tyrannies of one form or another where your civil rights basically end at the convenience of the ruling party and/or their cronies, and where the Elections are ‘secured’ to assure the ruling party remains in power regardless of how that party actually governs.”
Little update: There is no East Germany any more … cap.. err… democratic liberty has taken over again.
Election are held to ensure the powers in power stay the same, as in any western country.
He agrees with you. He’s just noting that unfree nations sometimes have elections to create the illusion of freedom.
Some nations do have free elections. Don’t be so cynical. They’re among the minority now but they did once exist in great numbers.
He also seems to be disbelieving that a free, fair, and honest vote can reveal that a majority in some countries would rather not worry about there being a lot of guns around. But it’s a fact. Most of those legislatures passed gun control laws because their constituents demanded them, and would rather live in a country where there aren’t a lot of guns.
There have been tyrant states where leaders too weak or too cowardly or too widely hated have confiscated all guns. It does not follow that all states where guns are outlawed are led by people too weak or cowardly or widely hated to survive if the people have guns.
I have guns. I’m a hunter. But I think most of the people who collect guns and have reasons for doing so that involve pointing them at people are, to be honest, people I’d rather didn’t have guns. And I think people who think their guns are to fight tyrants, but who also voted for Donald Trump, are at best easily duped and have demonstrated that they are too stupid to even identify a tyrant let alone resist one.
Studies show that nations with a lot of legal guns tend to have less gun murders. And robberies. And rapes. And… Well, you get the point. USA is actually the odd man out. Per capita, BY FAR the most U.S. murders are committed by blacks, who of course tend to live in strong gun-control cities.
Most gun control laws at the federal level were passed illegally. The 1934 NFA was just a tax and a registry; you had to pay and register your weapon or face criminal penalties. Yet the Hughes Amendment closed that registry while still requiring you to register. So, it defacto bans those weapons while not officially being a ban.
If you think that’s fair and honest then I have 27 bridges to sell you.
Oh, and by the way, the top 5 mass murderers in human history with a combined kill count of over 200 million? Yeah they all liked gun control, too. In fact, Hitler banned guns only for Jews! Truly a progressive thinker. /s
I have a thought about Syd being able to use her shield orb and kablammo orb at the same time, while in sustained flight.
Air at sea level is about one kilogram per cubic meter. Thin but breathable air on the Tibetan plateau is around 660 grams per cubic meter. Syd looks like she probably weighs around 100 kilograms.
So if she bubbles up with her shield enclosing 300 cubic meters but fills that volume with 200 cubic meters of sea-level air, then she floats above sea level on the forcefield alone, and can continue to use her kablammo orb indefinitely.
300 cubic meters isn’t really all that much; it’s a cube just under seven meters wide.
This doesn’t grant the ability to maneuver, so this only solves the staying-off-the-ground problem if she wants to be in mid-air and keep shooting. But she’d still the same problem of being easy to target as when she lets go of the flight orb and goes into a ballistic trajectory to fire.
Good lord. I said 100 Kilograms. No, Syd doesn’t look anywhere near 100 Kilograms. I should have said 50.
That reduces her smallest possible buoyant bubble to 150 cubic meters in size.
Why you kill someone is completely relevant.
During war? they pin a medal on your chest
because they were about to kill the president/prime minister/monarch? if you’re secret service you get a promotion, if you’re a private citizen you’re a hero.
Because they were about to kill a dozen people? Hero@
Because they were about to kill one person… you’ll see the inside a courtroom but probably not the inside of a prison.
Because they were going to kill you? you gotta have some good proof in court, but probably get away with it, or get a lighter punishment.
Because they parked in your space? Because you thought it was funny? generally the system is not so forgiving at this point.
Random thought:
Sydney’s skill tree. When she filled up the speed one high enough there was a branch to make a portal, If I am remembering correctly this also had multiple levels. The portal Sydney got is the basic one.
Which stands out, each orb seems to have a base ability and goes up or branches off from there, if anything like a normal game skill tree the branch off is also the basic form of this.
Yet when Sydney got a portal she didn’t get a jump gate, hyper drive, ether dive, or any other portal limited by distance and obstacles; she apparently got what is considered so advanced to the rest of the galaxy that even with tier 2 tech it still takes alot of energy and/’or sacrifice to pull off.
Yet there looked to be more levels above it. This is telling, it likely means to the builders of those orbs the most advanced portal the Aetherium Causeway is their idea of a basic portal. The more advanced forms will probably be traveling to other timelines, realities, and maybe even other multiverse clusters,
All of that sounds very plausible. I like it! :)
Another random thought on the function of the orbs.
what if nothing happened to the original owner, one theory I’ve not seen put forward yet, and only has occurred to be thanks to watching episode 8 of (So I’m a Spider So what), what if the orbs were put in front of Sydney while she was diving to find as part of some game and the being that did that has been watching her this entire time.
So far the theory in universe by Sydney is SOMETHING bad happened. Some sort of problem during an aetherium causeway to Earth causing some sort of glitch.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-637-beware-the-history-tab/
See panel 7.
I know, but I trust this story not to fall into the old trap of (I just guessed but since I am a main character my first guess is 100% correct absolutely).
Also kind of feel like the time distortion blood gate may have caused that glitch, which is as good a guess as Sydney’s as she never even saw that tab until she got that power unlocked.
although “something bad” could be anything from dead pilot to higher dimensional being child dropped their toy at the nature reserve while packing up to go home and their parents will just buy them a new one, if we want to go with the partially right trope.
A scary thought that Sydney should be concerned about.
She has twice now had an opponent prevent her from using her orbs, and both times said opponent ponder if killing her will release the orbs so they can take them. and that was just from individuals who saw them as items of power, Sciona and no-named guy who is now effectively meat paint.
Add to this Cora told Sydney her orbs may be Nth tech because of how easily these small objects opened up what is considered a powerful form of portal, and their upper limits could be out there. and that if anyone found out about them being Nth tech they’d be after them to study them, everyone from the smallest empires to possibly even the 3rd tier civilizations who are below the Nth (honestly for a few reasons should probably be the most worried about these guys),
so everyone from Jawas to the Vorlons and Star Gate Ancients could be after them if they found out about them.
those ascended class especially troubling because of their power, influence on other species who may view them as gods or perfect enlightened beings so follow their words without question, and the chip on the shoulder issue….when glowy psionic energy squid people are used to being the biggest fish in the cosmic seas they like to stay that way, and knowing there is something above them may not sit right so finding any evidence of something above them either needs to be destroyed or taken so they too can “have the power”, they believe they deserve.
No heres the scarier thought.Anyone who wants/fears this level of power can easily get it.All they need to do is have someone with a sniperifle patiently wait til Sydney goes back to her comicshop where as spazzy as she is shell be easy meat to shoot and loot with almost no chance of spotting the sniper before they can make the shot.
In short going after Syndey when shes playing hero is a mugs game cause therell always be a cavalry ready to step in.When shes not near an army of trained supers?Anyone could take her down cause shell be too busy memeing to even be prepared for a random attack from behind with a lead pipe.
yeah even if they have nothing to base it on they should seed the idea (call it a theory or hunch) that if Sydney is killed the orbs won’t just drop and become loot but instead pull a green lantern’s ring and fly off to find someone else they consider worthy.
Just as Sydney has seeded the idea *at least two henchmen believe it and may tell others* that there is an orb AI, to cover up that she has an unexpected (the glasses) form of communication.
Tactical misdirection.
because yeah, it looks that currently people have come to the conclusion that if Sydney dies they can just take the orbs. When there is nothing to really base that off of (especially not for the general public).
honestly even Archon and Sydney are just guessing that something happened to the previous orb wielder; for all we know the *toy dropped by Nth dimensional being child* could be true, or the classic “we’re just going to drop this off on a random planet to see who we can mess with” bored celestial beings…or Sydney is a chosen SIM avatar and the orbs are limiters for the game and its so immersive she only has her memories of her current life…so think Isekai meets that arcade game from Rick and Morty).
among other ideas, but yeah getting the idea out there that they can’t be stolen would at least make her no more a target than any other cop/federal agent.
new gravatar, one of my own designs!
dang, it didn’t change
I was briefly thrown by the use of the term “neurotransmitter” given that it already has a valid use in the realm of biology.