Little known fact of history.

Today makes the 100th anniversary of the final handover of power and control of Ireland from the United Kingdom, to the then new Irish Free State. Ireland is - at least in its current state - a hundred years old today.

It would be another 37 years and a minor Emergency before the Republic was declared but, for the first time in centuries, Ireland governed itself.

So, I've brought it up before, but it's an idea that just won't leave me the hell alone.  So here we are now.

The basic gist here is that Benjamin has, of course, been catching some flak over his family.  Namely that he's married to a whole bunch of women.  So he makes the decision to get cleanly and clearly out in front of it.

Now, this is an idea that's been evolving in my head for some time, so there's already been some changes to what I had in mind before.

For one thing, all of his wives will be present for the interview.  And secondly, it will be more like a press conference...  except that it will be a very long with with several rounds of round-robbin.  There'll be a short break between each round with refreshments, and even a photoshoot.  The children will be present, though Vivio will only be present for the last round of questions.

Here's my tentative list of Newsies that Benjamin would invite:

Shouko Asami (Angelic Layer)
April O’Niel (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
Aya Shimeimaru (Touhou Project)
Tin Tin (The Adventures of Tin Tin)
Lisa Vannette (Bubblegum Crisis)
Clark Kent (Superman/DC Comics)
Stephen Colbert (The Colbert Report)
Kermit The Frog (Muppets)
Vic Sage aka The Question (Justice League Unlimited/DC Comics)
Sabrina the Teenage Witch
Ford Prefect (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)
Lisa Lavender (RWBY)
Karen Page (Daredevil/Marvel Comics)

Any other suggestions are welcome.

Ground rules for the press conference:

1. No questions about the sex life, please.
   
2. Everyone in the press pool is to be treated like adults, and thus all valid questions will be answered.  However, we will reserve the right that some details be kept off the record for personal reasons.
   
3. Candid photography outside of the photo shoot is allowed, but with two stipulations:
   • No flash photography - there will be infants present and we will do our best to ensure ideal lighting conditions.
     
   • If someone needs to breast feed, then please ask permission before snapping photos.  We're all pretty liberal, but some of us are somewhat less so than others.
     

1. How do you maintain such a large group?
   • We have regularly scheduled family council meetings so we can coordinate and discuss important matters that have an effect on the family, either as a part or a whole.  We strongly believe in Ohana - the Hawaiian word for family.  Those who've seen Lilo and Stitch know that this means that nobody gets left behind or forgotten.  This is absolute and no exceptions are to be made, ever.
     
2. How much money do you really spend on them?
   • That information should have been in the press packets that were passed out, but I can understand if you haven't gone over the fine details already.  Suffice to say, yes, the sum really is as substantial as you think it is.  More, even, when you consider the cost of raising this many children.  Granted, a good deal of the costs are defrayed by avoiding typically traditional things such as childcare and medical fees.  This is actually one of the big advantages: there's always someone available and willing to take care of the children, and we have our own medical professionals in the family.  And then there's the old saw about everything being cheaper by the dozen...
     
3. Is it really worth the headaches?
   • We could never have gotten this far if it wasn't.  Once we had the big fight in the beginning, everyone realized that if we didn't pull together, then someone was going to be unhappy and in a very bad way.  In a ways, it was a good thing that fight happened, because once it did, everyone had gotten enough negativity worked out of their system so they could think straight.  And the consensus was that no one wanted to inflict that heartache on each other.  It wasn't easy at first, but once everyone else began to open their hearts to each other, they found that I wasn't the only common factor between them all.  Which is why they're not all just wedded to me - some of them are wedded to each other as well.
     
4. What's your secret man?
   • Honestly, it was more luck than anything else.  Though at the time, we all thought it was bad luck because of how everything had been turning out at that point.  Especially considering the events of the Emotion Restorer-kun Incident.  But once everything finally began to settle down, we all realized how amazing it was for us to even be in this situation in the first place, and how much of a good thing we could be wasting if any of us simply walked away.
     
5. Are they doing this willingly?
   • That's honestly a pretty silly question when you stop and think about it.  But I'll answer it anyhow since some folks out there may not understand without it being explained to them.  Simply put, yes, every here is doing this willingly.  And if you need any further evidence, there is the fact that Belldandy herself presided over our marriage ceremonies.  If she sensed anything at all was false or coerced, then she would never even let it get that far.  Furthermore, there's the simple fact of the matter that each of us has the ability to kill any one other with a seemingly off-hand gesture.  With that kind of balance of power present in all members of our Tribe, do you really think anyone is being coerced?
     
6. OK but what are you really doing?
   • I'm just doing what I can.  I love them all more than you can possibly imagine, and I didn't want to see anyone with a broken heart.  I know some people think better that than to be shackled in a situation like this.  But to them, let me beg the question: Is it better?  To settle for something less?  You may say that something better will come along.  But will that actually happen?  This entire universe we live in now is an example of transfictionality at work.  People you thought to never have existed are here now.  They are living, breathing beings with thoughts, emotions, desires, and needs.  And with that in mind, the reverse is true.  There is another version of me out there somewhere.  And he never got this chance.  He never even had the opportunity.  He had to settle for less, over and over and over again until there was nothing left for him.  And that right there is my big secret.  The knowledge that if I do not fight for this, then I will become him - a man with everything taken from him.  Not even the means to take revenge against a world that has left him with nothing.
     

Is it just me, or has this feature vanished? It could just be me getting banned from it as a "problem user" since I actually make a point of reporting listings with fraudulent titles or images that don't match the product, which is probably bad for business since it means someone at least has to look at it, and possibly upset the sellers by pulling the item when it's actually bad. Like when it was a ... ahem ... personal massage wand ... listed under toys & games and sporting ad copy that it was a "great gift for kids!"

More commonly things like "War For Cybertron Masterpiece Movie Version Optimus Megatron Car Jet KO Robot" for a knockoff Combiner Wars Grimlock, making the only correct parts of the title "KO" and "Robot" since he turns into a tyrannosaur, or today  when I found some yutz trying to shill the Earthrise/Kingdom Arcee, still available around MSRP $20 since she's quite the shelf warmer, as MP-51 Masterpiece Arcee for over ten times that.

Oh, this is gonna be fun.

Take things you see in every day life.

And pair them up with the characters you KNOW are gonna be the most susceptible to them.

This is a good exercise because this can provide us with great little tidbits for character development.  You know, the things that will make a character jump right out of the screen and turn them into people.

I'll kick it off.

Monster Energy Wrote:There’s this theory that something as small and inconsequential as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can be the trigger that results in a hurricane.
 
Monster Papillon, named for the humble butterfly, has a light subtle flavor with hints of peach and nectarine.
 
You could say it’s delicate and not too overpowering, but get ready to experience your own “Butterfly Effect” as Papillon has a full load of the legendary Monster Energy blend.
 
Flavor Profile: Peach and Nectarine

Joni Mitchell's Blue at 50: Three Canadian musicians share covers from the iconic album

Links to the covers of "A Case of You", "River", and "All I Want" are buried in three places in the article.

RIP Sidney Poitier

It would appear the video card on my home tower system is dying.  It's already very difficult to read the screen and I don't expect it to last much longer.  While I have a replacement in hand it's currently useless because my machine's BIOS doesn't play well with it, as folks might remember.  (And my attempts to update the BIOS failed for reasons I am unsure about.)  So I'm going to see if I can find another of the same card, as old as it is, somewhere on the net.  (And if you or someone you know has a functional NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 they don't need, let's talk.)  Failing that, I might have to do something radical like replace the motherboard entirely... or even get a new machine outright.

Anyway, the point is that for the foreseeable future my access to the forums (among other things) will be limited to my work machine and the occasional session through my phone.  I'll be here, just not as often as usual.

CBC Analysis: American democracy had near-death experience a year ago. This year will test its vital signs

No tl;dr - there's too much in the article to be able to summarize it. There are some "common knowledge" busters in the text.

Previous thread.

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I spent some time yesterday clearing a few more of Iloveicecream's pending edits from the mod queue, and I am growing increasingly less enchanted with him. Of the pages I went through, all of them lacked proper link markup on work names, there were at least four where he dropped new examples randomly into the middle of their sections, and one (which I rejected) which completely lacked any indication what work it was for. He also still has MSWord punctuation issues. There were also a few problems we can't actually lay at his feet which were clearly caused by the brain-dead Visual Editor. (Can we kill that thing? Seriously.)

And I'm growing increasingly suspicious of how much better written his contributions are in direct contrast to how he writes messages in the various discussion threads he's participated in. I haven't caught any more TVT plagiarism (yet) in his backlogged contributions, but the difference in usage and grammar is worrisome.

Anyway, how many times now have we directed him to the Style Guide and other help pages -- pages he either is not reading or whose content he's deliberately ignoring, at that? Even if he doesn't plagiarize again, his steadfast refusal to actually do fairly minor things like mark up links is very definitely in "refusing to learn from mistakes" territory.

Thoughts, opinions?

They've celebrated in New Zealand, so it isn't too early to say "Happy New Year!"

According to the Chinese Zodiac, this is the year of the Taiga:




What?

"Year of the tiger"?

And the Lunar New Year doesn't start until February 1 this year?

Oh.

Never mind the Taiga, then... at least, not yet.


(Source)