Photos here.

I just upgraded Firefox to 115.0.1 on my Win10 box, and now I can't play any media files. I can download them and play them locally just fine, I just can't play them in the browser. Is anybody else having this issue?

Since we don't appear to have a thread for podcasts worth recommending to others, here's one. Don't forget to tell folks where to find your recommendations.

I'll start the thread off with a series (or two series, depending on whether you count each year as a different podcast) about writing. Ever wonder what it would be like to step outside of your comfort zone and write something completely different? Three comedy writers did, and the result was the podcast Let’s Make A Sci-Fi!

They started at "What kind of story do we want to tell?", went through the process with some help from various Hollywood insiders, and ended up with a full read-through of the script for episode 1 of a reasonably-hard-SF series they call "Progeny". You may have heard of the voice talent they recruited for the script read-through: Mark "Commander Shepard" Meer, Rainn "Dwight Schrute" Wilson, Suleka "Arlene Branch" Mathew, Carly "Lucinda Pearl" Pope, Ashleigh "Rainbow Dash" Ball, Alessandro "Felix Gaeta" Juliani, Richard "Megatron" Newman, and more.

The project went over so well -- as a podcast, not a pitch to a network * -- that they did it again with Let’s Make A Rom-Com. I think they pulled in all of their favours for the first season's read-through; the read-through for "His Ex-Girlfriend is Salma Hayek" was done by the writers and their spouses.

Both are available at the "Lets Make A" page on CBC Listen or Podtail. Presumably one can find them "wherever you get your podcasts" as well.


* Which is a shame, because I'd love to see "Progeny" as a TV series (preferably not produced by Sy-Fy, though; this isn't space opera), or maybe an anime (if Takashi Watanabe is looking for work and he directs it like he did Starship Operators). Maybe we can add it to My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character if we ever get that setting into space.

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Effect: Anyone in Doug's AoE who causes harm immediately suffers it visited back three times over. Doug is also included, but knows to (and how to) perform more gentle takedowns if needed, and it can work well for escapes or in a situation where there's a wild brawl or two sets of enemies fighting and he doesn't want to be directly and/or visibly involved.

uSpud musician Stewart Copeland has done a full album of Police songs arranged for orchestra and female vocals, making them available on an official official playlist. Quality is pretty good, and I'm sure there's at least a few of the originals in Doug's repertoire already, to adapt some variations of with the new performance. (wasn't Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic what he used to turn Lisa Vanette into Sailor Loon the first time? Maybe it'll work for a different girl, or different power set, with the new one...)

Hm, and has he tried sending letters home with Message In Bottle? It sounds like as good a possibility of any if it didn't have any preexisting effect. It might be more likely to turn into something like that mnaga or LN or whatever it is about an issekai protagonist chatroom given the last verse, but worth a try

Something just for fun. Here's a list (echoed to the wiki) of who is the absolute best of the humans in Refuge in various skills and abilities. (Yes, of course nobody can beat a Celestial without divine retribution, so we won't bother listing how Belldandy's better than anyone else at almost everything.)

Of course, the superlative doesn't necessarily need to be something that people think is a good thing.

Since My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character is a deconstruction, nobody should be the best at more than one thing. That isn't realistic.

I think these are pretty safe to start the list with:

• Closest to Mary Sue: Akari Mizunashi
  
• Greatest scientific genius in the multiverse: Washuu-chan
  
• Most skilled martial artist: Happosai
  
• Most skilled motorcycle racer: Chihiro Fujimi
  

While rooting in the Medicine Cabinet, perchance I found:



These were issued 20 years ago - in the paranoia that followed 9/11 and with Wars and Death and Pestilence, the the entire state was issued with a box of these. One per household - up until about 2008. In the interim period, they have been lost, found, lost again, left in the back of the hot-press, mistaken for paracetamol and generally been left aside as a reminder of a bad joke once played on the national population and something which passed into the annals of what, in Ireland, we call the Grotesque, Unbelieveable, Bizarre and Unprecedented. (Sincerely - it's a book called GUBU nation)

We now cast our minds back to the distant year 2001. Ireland has hope for the future.  The sun is up and the celtic tiger is roaring.  Patios are heated. Properties in the Balkans are bought. We're all partying. There is a sense of all around the land, that each one of us had simultaneously won the Lotto and are finally joining the ranks of the Real countries. Notions abound.

What happens if there's an accident at a British nuclear power plant? The Shadow of the World Trade Centre still falls across the world. What if they go somewhere else next? Somewhere - with substantially more fallout?

The Minister of the day comes on to the radio to calm people's fears. What do we do in the event of a Nuclear Accident?

This was the result as Joe Jacob comes on to the radio to talk to RTE's Marian Finucane (Note: The article is framed by current events - but the interview is the important thing)

It's 30 minutes long. It can be summarised in one line:

"But What do I do now Minister?"

You think it's a skit at first. But by the end, you realise that, all along, Ireland never changed. And maybe, have an inkling why people are suspicious of nuclear power on this island to this day. 

God help us if they ever give these people responsibility over anything that could possibly have consequences.

From the member profile, which I won't quote in its entirety because there's a link in it:

Quote:Location: COCKAYNE, York

Wikipedia Wrote:Cockaigne or Cockayne (/kɒˈkeɪn/) is a land of plenty in medieval myth, an imaginary place of extreme luxury and ease where physical comforts and pleasures are always immediately at hand and where the harshness of medieval peasant life does not exist.

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Sort of a counterpart to Invincible, All Fired Up gives Doug and his allies an edge on anything directly affecting them that "grit your teeth and GO HARDER!" can't help with. It's not quite at the level of making enemies (again in game terms) make combat rolls twice and take the less favorable result, but sometimes it feels close, affected allies are more likely to "have a bad feeling about this" about ambushes, traps, or even social missteps, and more likely to get a good result on random and semi-random events like (in character) dice rolls or card draws unless someone is cheating so hard that there is no possibility of success. The rickety old car will start on the first try despite the movie monster beating on the glass, the rotting footbridge will hold until everyone is across but break under the opponents, and so on. The results favor life over death, even for opponents, unless they are already seriously trying to kill Doug and/or his allies themselves, so such events are unlikely to be fatal in their own right, but effective at turning the situation in Doug's side's favor.

As an odd quirk (Doug suspects the line "I felt a kick inside" is to blame) any stage of reproduction from conception to delivery is much more likely to occur with the best results for both mother and offspring that are physically possible as of the time the song is played, including having issues like infections or drug interactions correct themselves if played before they've gone too far, and the more favorable of any available genetics active while damaged or inferior (as in health and survivability) genes fall dormant. Again, the song favors life, so spontaneous recovery is far more likely than a spontaneous abortion unless there is no way for the pregnancy to have a viable result, and it all but guarantees conception if used as an "anti-morning after pill." Discretion is therefore advised, for obvious reasons.

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me, hearing this for the first time in decades a few days ago: "My god, she basically outlined the entire modern Shonen Battle genre back in 1985."

While "invincible" might be putting it a bit strongly, there's no denying that this song can let a group Doug is playing it for turn the tide in a close battle. In rough tabletop terms (general ones, since I'm not familiar with V&V) it lets Doug or any ally in his area of effect roll twice and take the better result any time "grit your teeth and GO HARDER!" can affect the result - morale, resisting compulsions or death effects, fighting through pain and injury, that kind of thing. It's not a berserk state, so they won't keep fighting if the enemy surrenders, or if objective is already secured and there's no reason to keep the field, or even if whoever is in charge of their side decides the battle is lost and they need to retreat (unless they were hotheaded fight manics who'd ignore such orders normally) but they're much less likely to break and be routed. Even so, it's one he needs to use with caution, since fighting on despite pain and injuries means probably making the actual wounds worse to one or another degree - fear and pain serve solid purposes in terms of survival, and short circuiting that can have consequences -- though that never seems to be quite as bad as it could be either. Even if there isn't any evidence he can point to that the song provides any actual protection or healing, mental and physical trauma suffered while under its effects is more likely to be survivable and heal properly even without further powered intervention, commensurate with the level of normal care available to treat them.