https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaLHu8UIwGE

I'm not sure about the effect really, but the music is too good to have none. It's not that strong as mental influence powers go, using it during active combat might get you some hesitation at best and seriously provoke the target if their "moment of weakness" is taken advantage of... but if you use it on the right person, at the right time, and in combination with actually following through on the promise it offers, you might just turn an enemy into an ally. Notably, it's effective even on targets that Doug could not normally communicate with as long as they're within his range and capable of understanding the concept of a friend/ally/partner/packmate/etc..

Diplomancing? Doug? Clearly the universe has not yet revealed the true depths of its perversity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9PxOanFjxQ

Effect: The reverse of Steely Dan's Godwhacker that makes deathless beings killable for the duration, for as long as it plays Immortals removes the fatal weaknesses of beings that can normally only be killed by specific methods other than age. Within Doug's area of effect, werewolves won't be poisoned by silver, vampires won't burn up in the sun, jellyfish will regenerate physical damage, etc.. There is no effect if the being could die of old age so its utility is about as sharply limited as Godwhacker, but when you do want access to one of these effects you really want it, and being able to pull out these highly situational "no, fuck you" powers at just the right moment is something of a trademark for Doug, as with any proper wizard.

If Doug happened to visit the Highlander universe, it might also activate pre-Immortals, with the deciding factor probably being whether or not it worked for teh story.

Since the last thread has more than 300 posts, have a new thread.

After four decades of touring (and creating The Elephant Show between tours), Sharon and Bram are finally on their last tour. This tour includes the first major theatre that Sharon, Lois, and Bram played at.

They won't stop recording, though, so children still have some good music to look forward to.

CBC News Analysis: Brett Kavanaugh exposed his political grudges — now faith in a neutral Supreme Court may be lost for decades

How can this person be expected to be impartial when judging the Constitutionality of laws? He's shown himself to have a bias against a particular political party - that can be held against him if he is asked to judge any bills that were written or moved by that particular party. (And it doesn't matter which political party that is.)

That should have been enough to remove him from consideration then and there.

While doing research for another project, I stumbled across this British folktale character and noticed the similarity in names with a particular Harry Potter character.

I suspect that Hogwarts' headmaster would not appreciate being called by that character's name. Being compared to a villain would be bad enough, but being compared to a cardboard-cutout villain... oh, I say, sir.

"What, no - Bumblebore is a giant among men," Doug protested. Then he muttered, "A cannibalistic, evil giant. I need to find a Jack."

I did a bit of 3d modeling again, after having a transformation mechanism occur to me while playing Disgaea 4. I'm particularly happy about the cute little wings, though there are obviously a few notdoneyets here - the head (which I have only a vague idea about,) hands (as always,) feet, and a couple of internal widgets. Care to guess how she transforms?

Alt mode

Nothing too revolutionary about turning into a space-blaster gun, of course, but the way the torso opens up and bits spin around to get into place without needing reassembly is the trick, and it's a much sleeker version than any of the official toys I can think of, or even my obviously-ripping-off-Megatron from ... man, about a decade ago? I don't think I even still have that file ... Atom Smasher. It does still make the body a little bit long for the arms and legs and the bustline a bit top heavy, but eh, give her die-cast lower legs and that won't be a problem. She'll have big metal boots for stomping Decepti-trash! :lol:

I'm waffling between Triggerguard and Ironsights for a name, and also about making the pelvis part (not the "belt" but the block under it) the polished steel color instead of blued, because it looks better as a gun but could be seen as a bit suggestive in humanoid mode, like she's got a naked crotch instead of the leotard effect as it is now. I mean, yes, all-metal robot here with no squishy biological bits involved, but still, this is a family show!

At the beginning of April 2016, we had a thread here about "There may be ruins of a second Viking settlement in North America."  It mentioned that Professor Sarah Parcak had been referred to as a "space archaeologist" because she used satellite imagery to find the possible ruins.

An article yesterday describes laser imaging being used to map the Guatemalan jungle and discover new detail about Mayan ruins.  Though not involved in that project, Professor Parcak did offer a comment:

Quote:“Hey all: you realize that researchers just used lasers to find *60,000* new sites in Guatemala?!? This is HOLY [expletive] territory.”

I just discovered this looking at one of the fanfic recs pages on ATT, where a bot has recently been checking all the outbound links and flagging broken ones.

For those who don't know, ftp.gweep.ca was the home of perhaps the single largest fanfiction archive on the Net outside of the Pit of Voles.  It had stuff dating back to the dawn of Net fanfic, in the early- to mid-1990s.  Does anyone know what happened to it, and when?

Trump rejects globalism, touts 'doctrine of patriotism' at UN General Assembly

Quote:Trump arrived late, forcing a last-minute scheduling switch, then received polite applause but also blank stares as he took his blustery brand of policies to the annual General Assembly.

Speaking in triumphal terms, Trump approached the address as an annual report to the world on his country's progress since his inauguration. He touted economic figures, declared that the U.S. military is "more powerful than it has ever been before," and crowed that in "less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country."

Five sentences into the president's remarks, the audience began to chuckle and some leaders broke into outright laughter, suggesting the one-time reality television star's puffery is as familiar abroad as it is at home.

Quote:The laughter in the first moments of the address evoked a campaign line Trump frequently deployed against his predecessor Barack Obama — who embraced international engagement — suggesting that due to weak American leadership, "the world is laughing at us."