Orlion Blight

I call that comeuppance. Then I want him to beg forgiveness of Kaladin and for Kaladin to say, "I am not able to save everyone" as Syl pushes him into a portal to Braize.

I said they switched from Hobbit Snot to the ground up remains of an overworked communist horse that thought he was going to Candy Mountain! Get it right!

As near as we can tell, she doesn't have a dissociative disorder. So that's a clear difference. But, she is clearly not dealing with recent trauma, so there's that for a similarity. It's sometimes easy to forget, but from Wanda's perspective, not a lot of time has passed since Vision's death. For her, Vision died, there was a blip and she went and fought Thanos. I could see people being more concerned with Tony's death and getting the stones back in their places in the timeline and not really checking in on Wanda. Like, she just peaced out and those who should have been her support system didn't bother to look into that.

This episode provided some of the grounding I was craving, so I liked it! As far as what is going on...well... I'm pushing against at least one of the popular theories because frankly, that's kinda silly. And another theory: would make a lot of sense on this episode's context but is also pretty silly. So I'll have to ponder this a bit more.

@Briar King That's because they no longer bind the spine with Hobbit Snot. It's not really their fault, the UK leaving the EU has caused the market to be flooded with products that are essentially watered down Hobbit Snot. Add to that concerns about the spread of covid-19 through Hobbit Snot (the science is unclear if hobbits can get or spread the virus) and Tor had to use Boxer Glue for the health and safety of its employees and customers as well as in consideration of cost and benefits.

Link to whole webcomic in spoiler below

@Briar King We're just waiting for you to post in the forum, then we'll stop

They vary in quality. I liked the recentish Ultimates comics (not to be confused with comics from the Ultimate universe). But keep in mind, I also thought Secret Empire was great. Now, as far as all the comics people are talking about in terms of WandaVision? IMO, they are all garbage. Many in the comics community hated House of M until very recently, now that they think WandaVision might take inspiration from it to introduce the X-men in the MCU. Which would also be interesting because House of M kinda severely limited the role of X-men in the comics to this day. The Ms Marvel comics have been delightful. You should get in on those before her show comes out! I like Moon Knight, buuuut...a lot of his comics are garbage. His "original" run (once he got his own comic) are mostly enjoyable. Jeff Lemaire's run was fantastic.

Double post with a spoiler box! What's in the box?! What's in the booooox?!

Identity Capitalists: The Powerful Insiders Who Exploit Diversity To Maintain Inequality by Nancy Leong.

Lucky! Though, to be fair, I might be THAT weird uncle in my family! Also, full disclosure, I'm thinking of a different Heinlein book (Magic, Inc.) where it feels like he goes into "I must teach an entire intro to civics course to my readers!" for what feels like half the book. He always has some of that patronizing "I'm turning this pulp sci-fi into a teaching opportunity" in most of his works, but it usually works within the story. And what ends up being "controversial" in Starship Troopers does not show up elsewhere in his works. It's a sort of "what if society worked in this way and space bugs attacked" thought experiment. It's not even his most 'controversial' book. That's apparently Farnham's Freehold.

'Controversial' is used liberally when advertising Heinlein. Really, the only controversy is that he still gets plenty of shelf space at the book shops. A good way to look at Heinlein is that he's like that weird uncle at Thanksgiving. Sure, he brings the best sides and you enjoy them, but you'll have to ignore his political talk while you do so.

Just finished season 3 of The Clone Wars. Onto season 4!

@Spren of Kindness I do hope the pacing continues to pick up. The self indulgence in recreating old sitcoms is somewhat irksome to me. For me, the destination will determine if the journey was worth it.

I mean, Elend is always trying to assert that he's important. He's not. He just so happened to be going out with the important character. *we are experiencing technical difficulties*

Fair point.

Zoroastrianism (I cheated and looked up the spelling!) is a pretty old religion, but Hinduism is older by quite a bit. Apparently, you can have atheists that believe in ghosts and the afterlife. I know, I don't get it either but I think it has to do with how "broad" one's definition of atheism is. And with that, I am an atheist. Was a Mormon first for most of my life, became what most would call agnostic and then ended up as an atheist. Specifically, a positive nihilist.

Space Opera by Catherynne M Valente You know, read something FUN instead of dry ol' science fiction authors (though I did really like Caves of Steel. It's a murder mystery where the detective has to team up with a robot to solve the crime. I think the robot was designed to look like the murder victim? It's been awhile). Any way, Space Opera is Eurovision....in....Spaaaaaace! Or a hybrid of Eurovision and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I haven't watched or read either, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

Just Cosmere. Mistborn and Stormlight Archive are the important ones. Start off with the first Mistborn trilogy (Final Empire, Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages) then Elantris and Warbreaker followed by *shrugs* any other cosmere series or story, but at this point you are well equipped to really enjoy Stormlight. Legion is blah. Reckoners starts off good and goes down YMMV territory. There will never be a sequel to Rithmatist I haven't read Skyward, but it's one of his current active series.

It's not a true ship if it doesn't feel forced and contrived! Kaladin X Odium for life!

Time to see if my opinions have changed! Let's see here... So, 1 & 2 will hold their places fairly firmly for a while. I would probably bump Lord of the Rings down to #4, give #3 to the real MVP: The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Really, 3-5 are just formative works for me, what helped determine what I would read afterwards. I think Titus Groan and Gormenghast are the zenith of fantasy literature currently, but that's probably because I don't want to admit there are John Crowley books that are better or haven't run across the true zenith published recently.

All right, I think I have my thoughts in decent enough order, and a keyboard which will make this easier than typing it out on my phone. Citizenship is going to be tied up in politics by its very nature, so good citizenship will deal with a sort of political action (not political as in Democrats vs Republicans, so calm down moderators and put that ban hammer away). This political action has to deal with maintaining or improving on the governance to be as "fair" (in a Rawlsian sense, I'll get to that definition) as you can get it. This political action is continual, as there will always be those who recklessly or purposefully try to weaken that structure and there is always room for improvement. So, the structure of governance that I have in mind right now is a democracy in the framework of rational pluralism (I also borrowed "rational pluralism" from John Rawls, so you are starting to see a huge influence on my thoughts here). Pluralism because I recognize that two people can use rational thinking and logic and arrive at different ideas of what should be done. So there is a plurality of thought and ideology and that is fine as natural. Someone who has different thoughts and ideologies from me is not automatically irrational, nor am I more rational just by virtue of the stances I take. The conflicts between these ideas would take place in a democratic process to determine the course of actions taken by the government and the process would be more in line with discussion, argument and compromise before a vote. Rational means that some ideologies would not be tolerated because they are incompatible with pluralism. So the most general example of this would be an ideology that would call for extreme limits on the citizenry's rights to speech, say by only having government approved journalism and obligating all publications to be edited and censored by a governmental organization. Since that sets up a society were any sort of pluralism is not tolerated, that ideology should be opposed. Other examples would include discrimination based on one's race, sexual orientation, gender identity, health, religion and the like. Now to get into "fairness". In this case, Rawls uses a thought experiment called the Veil of Ignorance. The general idea is that you are trying to look at how society is or should be from the viewpoint of the least advantaged (which could be due to economic issues, racial policies that haven't been abolished and cultural norms). The way the thought experiment works is that you are supposed to put yourself in the shoes of the least advantaged and consider whether or not you could rationally accept the conditions of society as they are or as you would want them to be. I will have to think of an example, but the criteria is that a least advantaged person COULD reasonably and rationally accept the condition, not that they WOULD (after all, in pluralism, there might be a rational reason why they would not. All we can do is make sure that we don't support conditions that we would reject if in their shoes... like working 12 hours a day for a large bowl of beans a week). So with that minimal and non-comprehensive background: good citizenship means political action where policies and ideologies that threaten or weaken rational pluralism would be roundly rejected while supporting and practicing actions that would strengthen that. At the same time, you would look towards the least advantaged and push for policy changes and updated to societal norms that would be fairer for them (like having a living income. There would be various solutions because of pluralism, so there would be political differences on the HOW. Good citizenship is not reliant on HOW you would rationally make society fairer, but that you would work TO make society fairer).

It depends. As he currently stands? I am more confident in his representations. Aside from having good business reasons for it, he currently has good writer friends that can help him avoid common pitfalls. It's honestly once he gets older and if those relationships get strained that I am more concerned about.