Legally speaking, a citizen can betray a nation. This is Treason.

Can, legally speaking, a nation betray a citizen?

And there's been a new update to firefox and the inbred halfwits at Mozilla have decided to change the look again. For some reason the dimwits are obsessed with the idea we like stupid changes in the look of our software.

In particular, they've decided to make the spacing in the bookmarks folder take up half the page.

Fine, I thought, if they're going to be that stupid, I'm going to go back to a previous version until there's a workaround.

Except I couldn't use my current settings with the old version, because they're assholes. And I had to hit create new profile to get the software to work.

Which means I was dealing with an entirely new installation of firefox, which didn't have my bookmarks, logins, fitted security add ons or any of my settings at all.

After a perfectly logical and reasonable panic attack and screams of rage, I was able to Google the location of the profiles and find my old one still existed. I promptly backed it up.

I wasn't able to copy it into the new profile folders, but I was able to reinstall the borked up new version and use my old profile. No thanks to the so called programmers and designers at mozilla. All the cheesy stink, but tastes of shit. And I was able to get back to running firefox with the bookmark menu fucked up by a bunch of idiots.

Hopefully some real programmers who know user friendlyness from their own assholes will have a work around for this latest stinking incompetence soon.

Well, I'm sure everyone remembers Evgenia Medvedeva and her Sailor Moon-inspired ice skating routine (and subsequent "Sailor Moon on Ice" show).

Well, I'll see your Moon and raise you all five inner senshi.

The Uzbekistani Olympic Rhythmic Gymnastics team has a five-girl floor routine done (in part) to "Moonlight Densetsu" in Senshi-inspired costumes.  I have yet to find footage of their performance at the Olympics, but here they are earlier this year in a competition in Belarus:



(And yeah, I know, they don't have individualized costumes to mark them as the various senshi.  But they should have.  <grin>)

A booklet issued, some 50 years ago. It can be found in scanned form lurking behind this roughly hewn and generally poor quality Link

Most telling, is how much the practical advice tends to focus on fallout and the other after-effects of nuclear weapons themselves and cattle and shit, rhather than what to do when a nuclear bomb drops upon you (Flash, Fry, Bang, Bye). There's a lot of information on dealling with fallout, looking after livestock, and a little on rescuing people from burning houses incase the Soviets missed and incinerated Ballydung instead of Bermingham.

I guess I should put a warning for attempted suicide on this, though not really, under the IC circumstances. Consider yourself so advised.







I dropped the knife with a shudder, and slouched back on the park bench to put my head in my hands. "Another life, but still no goddamn willpower," I lambasted myself. "If I'm this afraid of a little pain, I'll never get any stronger." I knew what the future of this world held, after all, even if I wasn't the biggest fan. Getting pulped by a runaway truck was supposed to happen before being reborn in a new world, but instead it had been how my Quirk had finally manifested, popping back up good as new and just enough stronger and faster to notice in a few days as soon as I got over the disorientation of the out-of-body experience and concentrated my attention in one place. It was a powerful ability for information gathering with just that diffuse, invisible presence, but if it kept enhancing my body as well I could get strong enough to have a meaningful impact on what was coming in the next two or three years, or at least enough to stand a chance in the UA admission exam to be close enough to try.

"... if I wasn't afraid of spilling a little blood," I sighed again, bending down to pick up the kitchen knife I'd snuck out with.

I fumbled it again as a cheerful voice replied, "I could help with that!"

I wasn't expecting anyone to interrupt me, having intentionally sought out the least popular, most overgrown area of the park. Had been too caught up in my thoughts to notice them getting close. The voice was a girl's, and looking up she was a cute blond about my own age, with a slightly too-intense look in her catlike eyes to really mesh with any other part of it. "I'm Himiko Toga, nice to meet you. You were saying something about needing some blood?"

I vaguely recognized that name, but...? Oh, right, the literal bloodthirsty murder-loli. Yet she didn't have the careless mess of a hair-non-style and at our age she probably hadn't even gone beyond attacking small animals like the pigeon I belatedly noticed she had clenched in one hand. And she flinched as I reflexively grimaced and made a disgusted noise, before exclaiming, "Seriously, a pigeon? Those things have all kinds of parasites and diseases... you might as well fondle a public toilet!" Oddly enough, the addition seemed to restore her good mood, even as she dropped the bird and wiped her hand against her skirt, wrinkling her own nose at the thought.

Still, this could work out.

"Nice to meet you, Himiko Toga. I have the feeling we could be great friends."

---==- + -==---

Not my kink, not my waifu, but it was an idea that wouldn't stop meowing and scratching at the door until I let it out.

This is something I stumbled over just now that might be of interest to folks on Resurgence -- back in 2006, a Ph.D candidate (in Philosophy) submitted a dissertation based around City of Heroes as it existed back then -- Information Behavior and Meaning-Making in Virtual Play Spaces: A Case Study of City of Heroes (PDF link). I unintentionally DLed a copy and ended up reading some of it. A lot of it seems to be taken up with just explaining what's happening in the game to the readers, who are assumed to be ignorant of MMORPGs, but in between there are some very cogent observations on the nature of gaming and the mind of the gamer.

Rock. Beats Handwaved super-Laser.

-------
To: Blackrider@roughriders.fen
From: Jet.Jaguar@Frigga.fen
Subj: This is not a tool of honour.

Hey Ben,

You said you've been working in some rad' areas and we have a little - ahem - experience with that. I know when I mentioned first it you said you'd be interested in one.

I can't take credit for it. It's been sort of fiddled over by a dozen people here who were sick of having their phones cooked, accreting useful features the way planets form, but this is the final version. It's started off as a modified clone of a Seagull ST19, printed off locally. The only fancy part on the workings parts are the hairspring and balance.

So, how you use it.

That's a 24-hour watch face, giving you local time in space. You set that with the 1st, centre lug on the right. You'll have to use it to wind it up, but it'll run for around 30 hours off a full wind.
On the top strap lug, that's a 3-stage radio-phosphorecent indicator. Green == Some Radiation. Yellow == Dangerous Radiation. Red == Potentially Lethal Radiation. It gives you an idea what you're facing.  As for why they're Hello Kitty-shaped
On the bottom lug as your quartz fibre rate-meter with an attenuator if you're getting into a strong radiation field.

Top right button starts and stops the chrono'. Bottom right zero's the chrono' and triggers a piezoelectric reset of the rate meter. It's a bit heavy because you don't want to do either accidentally.

Anyway, the basic way to use it is to use the rate meter - either over the space of a minute for low radiation fields, or direct for high radiation fields - to figure out the dose-rate. Reset the chronograph, and time your exposure to estimate your total dose. It's most accurate around 1000uR/s - it's not great, but it's not terrible either.

Top left knob sets the warning dose limit, using the fourth hand on the display. The bottom left knob lets you set the warning chime to be off,  triggered by the hour hand, the minute hand, or the second hand - depending on how strong the radiation field is.

The case, dial and back-plate are made of iron scavenged from an old power transformer that caught fire, and with a silicon hairspring you can get pretty close to an active field magnet on one of our reactors without upsetting it. Glass is just domed lucite - easy to fix.

We sent one into the ruined reactor hall on the end of a drill bit. It survived radiation that killed anything with a battery and a chip - although all the luminescence was cooked. We set one on top of a field coil on a running core and it kept ticking. Not even Jupiter can kill them.

It's a bit fat. It is not elegant. It's no Patrol Watch.

Might help if you want to know what time it is in the middle of a Carrington event, if you're swimming in a spent fuel pool, or need to know how much time's left on the countdown to a Genesis detonation while you reset the mains.

Let me know how it goes for you, or if you know anyone who might have a use for them.

-Jet.

Okay, given the previous discussion in the planning thread about ITEM coming to San Antonio, this part will need to be changed to reflect that...

"Rob-san, you said you're a building manager in theory now?"

Rob sighed. "I should have kept my mouth shut." After a quick moment, he continued, "When I accepted what I thought was going to be a quick job to tide me over until my pension payments started, I though my role was to help the Senshi and the ladies from Judgment branch 177 adapt to a normal, quiet life. Help them learn how to live in a strange country, give them moral support, and all that. But it's been the exact opposite - things have been getting more stressful since last September, not less. AMALGAM, the Unseelie and ITEM in Ottawa, the Witches in San Antonio, Therestina in D.C., the medical issues that Minawa, Ginga, and Subaru have, that mess that Doc Doof made of so many cities... stress factors have been piling up, not going away. And we still don't know who played with our emotions way back when." He turned to Mike, who'd brought a tray of drinks. "Thanks, Mike." Leaving enough loonies on the tray for the round, he started passing them to his companions, keeping a Dominion City saison for himself and a Pelee Island Winery pinot noir for Hyoga.

"I thought ITEM was on our side now," Mamoru replied as he accepted a Sapporo.

Rob nodded weakly. "They are, Mamoru, but with friends like them... At least Mal only has to worry about Jayne. I have to worry about both Meltdowner and Frenda."

"But you are handling them," Mike pointed out as he pocketed the money. "You're more capable than you think you are."

"Thanks again, Mike. It's just wearing me out." He turned back to Keiichi. "And despite all that, I'm still keeping the workload off my lady-loves' shoulders."

Here's my proposed change...

"Rob-san, you said you're a building manager in theory now?"

Rob sighed. "I should have kept my mouth shut." After a quick moment, he continued, "When I accepted what I thought was going to be a quick job to tide me over until my pension payments started, I though my role was to help the Senshi and the ladies from Judgment branch 177 adapt to a normal, quiet life. Help them learn how to live in a strange country, give them moral support, and all that. But it's been the exact opposite - things have been getting more stressful since last September, not less. AMALGAM, the Unseelie and ITEM in Ottawa, the Witches and ITEM in San Antonio, Therestina in D.C., the medical issues that Minawa, Ginga, and Subaru have, that mess that Doc Doof made of so many cities... stress factors have been piling up, not going away. And we still don't know who played with our emotions way back when." He turned to Mike, who'd brought a tray of drinks. "Thanks, Mike." Leaving enough loonies on the tray for the round, he started passing them to his companions, keeping a Dominion City saison for himself and a Pelee Island Winery pinot noir for Hyoga.

"I thought ITEM was on our side now," Mamoru replied as he accepted a Sapporo.

Rob nodded weakly. "They are, Mamoru, but with friends like them... At least Mal only has to worry about Jayne. I have Benjamin has to worry about both Meltdowner and Frenda."

"But you are handling them," "Benjamin has them handled," Mike pointed out as he pocketed the money. "And don't try to put yourself down.  You're more capable than you think you are."

"Thanks again, Mike. It's just wearing me out." He turned back to Keiichi. "And despite all that, I'm still keeping the workload off my lady-loves' shoulders."

I think my character would also interject on Rob possibly taking too much onto himself - that he needs to find responsible and capable individuals to delegate tasks to.

Thoughts?

Probably around the late eighties to early nineties, there was a song that prominently featured the lyrics "bullet with ... butterfly wings," almost certainly at the end of the chorus since that's the only line I can rememeber. It is not the Smashing Pumpkins song by that title, which is all I can find trying to search for the words (and which at no point actually features them in the lyrics of the song itself) though the singer had a similarly rough-ish sound to his voice. In my mind, the music around that patch of vocals was almost but not quite like the end-of-chorus flourish from Prince's When Doves Cry on a guitar rather than piano, but this is rather less certain because that was also in rotation on MTV, which is definitely where I heard it, to get muddled together.